Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2)

by Don Callander

  A great rift opened and the lake waters plunged into the new chasm. The sides of the rift directed a jet of superhot steam straight upward—a thousand feet, two thousand, a mile or more, where it cooled rapidly and began to rain down as a fine, still-warm mist, washing dust and mud before it.

  Luckily, the mud flowed infinitely slower than the waters had. By the time the great avalanche had reached Coventown and its castle, the refugees had topped a far ridge and reached relative safety. Myrn’s magic had done the trick.

  Douglas and Myrn watched in horrified fascination as the steaming mud flow delivered a tremendous blow to the yards-thick castle walls, and carried them away as if they were made of sand. The tallest tower toppled into the vale, the sound of its collapse lost in the overall din.

  “Will it quiet down now?” asked Myrn, smiling tremulously at Douglas. “The mountain has spent its pressure for the while, I hope.”

  “No way to tell. Let’s get to safety,” said Douglas. He allowed himself to be carried swiftly through the air, heading east and a bit south, toward Pfantas.

  The ground below them jumped and twisted as lesser earthquakes spread from an epicenter within the mountain.

  The feeling of dire tension and pressure was finally lessening and they flew on through warm rain toward the darkened horizon. At last they passed over untouched forests and sighted Pfantas’s steep cone ahead.

  Douglas pointed to the hillside clearing he and the Sea Otter had selected as a campsite when they first came to Pfantas. As they touched down on the bit of smooth, green lawn he had planted—it seemed a great, long time before—there came an unimaginably loud explosion from Blueye.

  Treetops above them were whipped in demonic fury by gusts of gale winds. Looking back, they saw a rocketing, spreading plume of black and red smoke, coruscated with white-hot flashes of lightning.

  “She blows!” shouted Douglas above the infernal racket. He swept Myrn into his arms and they clung together, watching in awe as the cloud rose and rose, higher and higher, straight up into the clear afternoon air.

  At last it slowed and began to spread westward with the high-level Sea winds from the east. In the wake of the streaming cloud, back-lit by the lowering sun in the west, torrential rain fell on the barren Emptylands beyond the Tiger’s Teeth.

  “Well, it may do the least damage in that direction, I guess,” said Myrn, expertly calculating wind, altitude, and direction. “The watershed in that direction slopes toward Emptylands and the Great Steppes, according to Augurian’s old maps.”

  “Always the Aquamancer,” said Douglas in mock surprise. “Water, water, everywhere!”

  “As for me,” snorted the pearl fisher’s daughter, “I’ve had my fill of fire for today—and tomorrow and tomorrow, also.”

  “But not of Fire Wizards,” said Douglas, “I hope.”

  “Of course not!” She grinned at her betrothed.

  The pair walked hand in hand to the very top of their hill to view the scene of destruction.

  Where the rising badlands beyond the pine forests had been was now a vast steaming, barren, bleached plain. Of the mountain itself nothing remained but a low, smoldering, still-quivering stump. In the far distance, several other mountains spouted flames and gases, hurling vast chunks of glowing rock into the air, higher than the strongest birds could fly.

  “What of the others?” asked Myrn. “Did they get out in time?”

  “I don’t know,” answered her husband-to-be. “If they are far back there, there is little anyone can do for them. But if they had time...”

  They flew back along the road to Coven as far as the edge of the pinelands, looking for survivors. There came at last a shout and, dipping down in that direction, they found a crowd of people, led by a tattered young man with a tall staff bearing a makeshift pennant of white and red.

  “There’s Willow!” cried Myrn, “and the Coventown people, I think. If Cribblon reached Pargeot, Marbleheart, and Caspar in time, and I’m almost sure he did, they’ll be waiting for us in Pfantas!”

  They hailed young Willow, who left his exhausted band of ex-slaves to rest on soft, fragrant pine needles under the restlessly tossing conifers, and came to meet them. They embraced each other and all three cried tears of relief and joy to find each other safe once more.

  “I’ve no idea,” began the boy, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I think most of ‘em left when I called to them to get out.”

  “I’m sure some poor people got caught in the steam and the mud,” said Douglas, soberly. “It was so awfully quick.”

  “Set your people to camp in the hills by that stream there. There’s good water in the creek and shelter under the trees. We’ll send them food and clothing from town,” said Myrn.

  “If there are enough handkerchiefs among them, I can make them into tents,” said Douglas.

  “And Wong Tscha San will help, I’m sure. You haven’t met him, but he is a much more powerful Wizard than are either of us, yet,” said the Apprentice Water Adept.

  They said farewell to Willow and flew as swiftly as the pin could take them—which, as Finesgold had said, was really fast!—across the pinelands, over the creek with its two-plank bridge, and to the back gate of Pfantas, landing on Main Level.

  Crowds of citizens who had been watching the eruption of Blueye and the destruction of Coven in mixed horror and gratification rushed to greet them and get the latest news.

  At Pfantas Inn they were greeted with immense relief by Caspar, Pargeot, Marbleheart, all looking none the worse for their escape from the volcano, Cribblon and Wong.

  Said he, pulling a comic face, “I stayed behind and enjoyed this pleasant village on its hill as much as the fireworks you provided. Most fitting!”

  “You mustn’t believe him,” said Featherstone. “He has worked very hard to help us!”

  “It was the least I could do, after the kind hospitality you have shown me,” said the Choinese gentleman. “Besides, it has been so long since I worked my little spells, I vastly enjoyed it. Mostly, we planted flower beds and arbors of new trees.”

  “When the eruptions began, he told us we would have victims to feed and injured to heal, so we’ve set up hospitals and kitchens,” added Featherstone.

  Pargeot greeted Myrn a bit sheepishly.

  “I could think of no other way to help you than to give myself up to the Witchservers,” he confessed.

  “Dear Pargeot!” Myrn laughed fondly. “Do you realize that if you had not, I might have taken two or three days to annul Emaldar’s hex? The mountain would have blown up long before I got there and hundreds would have died horribly, including Douglas, Cribblon, and Marbleheart.”

  “I...I really hadn’t thought of it that way,” admitted the Seacaptain. “I thought I might have made a perfect ass of myself.”

  “Well,” chuckled Myrn, “nobody’s perfect.”

  “The Witch? The Coven?” asked Pargeot, blushing red at her teasing.

  “Emaldar’s dead, burned in the fires of Blueye, I’m afraid,” said Douglas. “We tried to save her, but—”

  “Douglas tried to save her. I arrived after she was gone, but just in time to save him,” Myrn insisted, and the whole story had to be told right then and there, with as many Pfantasians listening as could crowd into the inn’s common room or lean in at its open windows.

  “This day we’ve seen mindless and inhuman power beyond our wildest imaginings,” said Wong, nodding to the crowd and especially to Douglas and Myrn, “and also goodness and courage so completely unreserved that it fills me with wonder to remember it.”

  The onlookers shouted their agreement and applauded while the young Wizards blushed deeper and deeper crimson.

  A new-old voice spoke from the door to the common room.

  “The Witch is destroyed, and her Witchery annulled by two of Wizardry’s finest,” said Flarman Flowerstalk.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Pfantas Reborn

  “Magister!” Myrn and Douglas s
houted together. They pulled the Pyromancer into the center of the room and Augurian after him. “How wonderful to see you here!”

  “Welcome to Pfantas, Wizardly sirs!” said Featherstone, bowing and shaking their hands by turns. “We are greatly honored!”

  “Here is Wong Tscha San,” said Caspar to the elder Wizards. “I’m sure you know him or know of him.”

  “So we do!” cried Flarman, beaming at the Choinese Magician. “By reputation, at least. My very great pleasure, sir!”

  “No less than mine, estimable Pyromancer!” said Wong, bowing deeply. “I was able to follow your recent adventures in the matter of the Ice King. I regret deeply that I was unable to render you any assistance at the time.”

  “Think nothing of it! We understand perfectly,” Flarman reassured him. “Hello! You must be Marbleheart, the famous Sea Otter. Well met!”

  Marbleheart offered his right front paw and explained his origins in a large, subarctic bay called the Briney.

  “Well, Apprentice,” said Augurian quietly to Myrn. “You were more than just moral support to Journeyman Douglas, were you?”

  “I was of some assistance, I think,” said Myrn. “You’ll have to ask Douglas. I confess, Magister, that I would have come, at any rate, just to share this adventure with him.”

  “No one will blame you for that,” said Augurian, flashing one of his rare smiles.

  “Now, my friends,” Flarman was saying, having shaken hands with the entire town council and a quarter of the population of Pfantas, it seemed, “we have come, not just to meet new friends and greet old ones, but also to assess the damages done by the Witches of Coven, and to see them set right as much as magic and goodwill can do.”

  “Let’s begin at once,” suggested Augurian.

  The three elder Wizards and the Journeyman Pyromancer sat down at the large library table in the center of the common room and the whole story was begun, all over again, from the very first.

  The proceedings began with Cribblon, who was the first to call the Coven to the Wizards’ attention. Douglas then described his Journeying and Myrn spoke of Finesgold’s gift and her flight to Westongue and to Old Kingdom with Pargeot.

  Marbleheart was asked a number of questions about what he had done and seen, especially the episode of the barrows on the edge of Last Battlefield.

  The Choinese Magician told them of his discovery of Coven and how he had enlisted the assistance of Caspar Marl in to rescue Douglas when he thought he had been made captive by the Witch Queen.

  “We were not needed, after all, but it was worth the trip to meet my fellows in Wizardry,” Wong ended with another bow.

  When all had finished reporting to the hushed crowd and the deeply interested Wizards, Augurian turned to the Journeyman by his side.

  “You realize, I am sure, that with Emaldar’s destruction beyond recall, all her spells and enchantments are rendered null and void. We’ll have no trouble with them, as we do with Frigeon’s enchantments.”

  “I should have been aware of it,” murmured Douglas. “It was not a consideration when I went into the mountain to help her. I simply thought she deserved better than to die in those terrible fires. But she would not be saved. I must admit I have no regrets about the outcome. At the same time it doesn’t give me any pleasure.”

  Marbleheart had mentioned the four-leafed clover and Featherstone said that almost everyone in Pfantas now wore one or carried one in a pocket.

  “It was the clover that saved your life,” Flarman said to Douglas. “As so often happens, the good you did for others provided you your own salvation, when things got too hot.”

  Douglas shook his head. “I just happened to have the clover up my sleeve, is all.”

  “Thanks to the Barrow Wights business,” put in Marble-heart. “A Man, or an Otter, makes his own luck, as my mama once said to me when I was a kit.”

  “And all Emaldar’s spells were reversed, then?” asked Featherstone. “The enslaved are now free of her spells? And the Witchservers no longer have power?”

  “You understand it perfectly. Nor can much evil befall you hereafter, while you have the quadruple clover close to hand. Very quick thinking on your part, young Douglas, I must say,” said Wong, nodding his approval.

  “Well... I used the clover for its powers against all kinds of evil. I admit, I forgot it was great for curing burns and wounds, also, until I needed it sorely.”

  “So great problems are many times solved,” said Augurian.

  “Nevertheless,” interrupted an older citizen in the crowd, “without a trial and conviction, it will be difficult to settle many of Pfantas’s financial and business problems. Where two people claim a single business, because Emaldar enslaved the father, for example, and the son took over...”

  “That is for the state to determine, I would say,” said Flarman.

  “I hasten to point out,” said Wong, “that there has existed no state in Kingdom for over two hundred years.”

  “Yes, that’s very true,” agreed the Pyromancer. “Augurian, what say you?”

  “If the people of Pfantas were to form a government, including courts of law, who could say they didn’t have jurisdiction to find in such matters. It was similar in the case of the Ice King, you recall.”

  “Not quite,” objected Douglas. “When Frigeon was tried it was before the regularly constituted court of a sovereign state, Waterand Island. Both state and court pre-existed long before Frigeon became a criminal.”

  “You argue, then,” said Wong, leaning forward, “that a crime committed where there is no state nor a state court, is not a crime?”

  Douglas rubbed his chin worriedly, glancing sideways at his Master. Flarman sat back and reached for his pipe.

  “You got yourself into this, son,” he chuckled, “and you’ll have to argue yourself out of it.”

  “We want to be fair to those Emaldar harmed—many very painfully, even to death,” said the Journeyman Wizard. “But...”

  “But,” finished Augurian, “we Wizards have no brief to do more than examine her deeds from a professional standpoint and make our recommendations to the court, whatever it is, and no matter how recently formed. I should think Pfantas’s new government, especially as it is based on a previous, wrongfully overthrown government, would suit quite well.”

  There followed a lengthy and extremely wordy discussion until Flarman threw up his hands and said, “We Wizards have determined the facts of the matter and will make recommendations to the Pfantas Town Council, which in fact pre-existed Emaldar’s misdeeds by many centuries, for their future safety and consideration of claims and adjustments.”

  “You would place the burden on us, then, Sir Wizard,” said Feathers tone.

  “My good, young man,” said Flarman, blowing three smoke rings in the manner of Bryarmote the Dwarf, each within the one previous, “that is exactly where it belongs! If you wish to govern yourselves, you must take the responsibilities of governing—and justice is a major responsibility.”

  “Will you at least recommend how we should proceed?” asked another Pfantasian.

  “To a certain small degree. We’ll certainly tell you what can be done; never what must be done. You’ve already made a good beginning, I see. Emaldar is gone for good and her enchantments are nullified, as far as is historically possible. What remains is your task, citizens. You are, after all, the ones who suffered.”

  Featherstone and the newly reconstituted town council went into session even though it was very late, in the inn’s taproom and didn’t reappear until several hours after dawn the next morning.

  ****

  “Now, I have some professional questions,” said Douglas, raising his hand. The Wizards and their party gathered about the fire. Nobody yet thought of bed.

  “The floor is yours,” said Augurian, leaning back to listen.

  Said Douglas, “Myrn tells me that she saw six Black Witches fleeing Coventown just before the eruption. They were, she surmises, the other
members of the Coven, deserting Emaldar. Where do you think they went?”

  “As for why they left,” Myrn stated, “I think they sensed the coming explosion of the volcano. Also, perhaps they recognized that Emaldar was about to lose to the combined Wizardry against her. They spoke to that effect as they fled.”

  “They knew in advance of our success?” asked Marbleheart in surprise. “They foresaw the future?”

  “No, not exactly,” said the Apprentice Aquamancer. “They suspected that Emaldar had overextended her powers. Am I not right, Magister?”

  “Witches are never comfortable sharing their powers, and thus are never willing to accept risk,” Augurian affirmed. “When things went smoothly, the Six Sisters allowed Emaldar to use them. When opposition rose, however, they fled. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Captain Pargeot has told us of his one interview with the Witch Queen in the presence of the Six Sisters. They believed they saw uncertainty and confusion on Emaldar’s part toward a prisoner who normally would have been slain out of hand,” added the Pyromancer. “Emaldar never before had suffered anyone to deceive her as Pargeot and Cribblon had. It foreshadowed the end of their alliance.”

  Augurian nodded. “Witches are solitary creatures, which is why Covens are so rare. They agreed to lend Emaldar their power, so when she appeared about to lose her own, they merely took theirs back and left at once. I can hardly blame them, speaking from a purely professional standpoint.”

  “And where do you think they’ll go?” repeated Douglas.

  “Scatter all over World, most likely. As I say, Witches are lone creatures and prefer to live by themselves, using their magicks for their own benefit, in selfish pleasure and creature comfort. When Men threaten them, often hoping to gain some of their imagined wealth or powers for themselves, any Witch can be dangerous. If everyone left every Witch strictly to herself, each in her hidden place, there would be much less Witch trouble.”