The fool, Megella thought, looking back at Carin. I send him the perfect girl—gifted, exotic, with the most beautiful head of hair—and he installs her in the spare bedroom. Men! They are impossible to understand.
Megella set a plate of biscuits on the table and gave her guests saucers to catch their crumbs, then sat down next to Carin. She put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and hugged her. Then she leaned back to continue addressing, and studying, the wysard.
“Yes, I lived in the blue bedroom and made good use of the kitchen in that wing of the house. Legary’s library, too. He had an extensive collection of herbals. I learned enough from them to set up in business as a healer—not what I had planned at the time, but a necessary recourse after Merriam walked out on Legary and I went with her.”
“My grandmother left him?” Verek muttered, looking narrowly at Meg.
Megella nodded. “She did. I came south with her and we found a pair of miserable little villages that needed our services. I settled here at Granger. And after all these years, I am still barely tolerated. These people would gladly burn me on a bonfire, except they need me to cure their colicky babies, stiff joints, and scrapied sheep.”
She clucked her tongue, then added, “Merriam did rather better. My sister chose the next town up the road. She stopped there just as the village’s old wisewoman lay dying. That beldame was beloved of all. She gave Merriam her blessing, handed over her secret recipes, and formally named her ‘wisewoman’ in her stead. Merri was always on better terms with her customers than I have been with mine.”
“Meg and Merri!” Verek suddenly exclaimed.
Megella laughed. She saw Carin look from him to her while chewing steadily: a witness who was content to sit, eat biscuits, and listen to this history that long predated the girl’s arrival in this world.
“I have heard no one call us that in decades,” Megella said, sobering, retraining her gaze on Verek. “Where did you hear those names?”
He shook his head. “I do not remember exactly. I must have been very young. They were merely storybook names to me. And I cannot tell you what the story was. Only the names, ‘Meg and Merri’—that is all I recollect.” He was studying Megella’s face, frowning now with concentration rather than antagonism. “Did I know you? When I was very young, did we meet?”
“No.” Meg shook her head. “I left before you were born, and I have never been back.”
Verek’s frown deepened.
Careful, Megella thought. You’ll wrinkle up like that permanently. Try smiling more and frowning less, nephew of mine, if you want to stay handsome for two hundred years and more.
“Why did my grandmother leave?” Verek asked then. “Why did you both go?”
Megella sighed. “Don’t be dense, boy.”
Carin jerked her head around, looking decidedly alarmed, as though she thought it were unwise for anyone to speak to the Lord of Ruain that way.
Meg patted the girl’s hand. “Don’t worry, widgeon. He won’t smite me with a bolt of lightning. I’m family.” She pushed the plate of biscuits across to Verek. “Eat, sir.”
She paused, eyeing her noble guest, then opted for bluntness.
“Your grandmother left when Legary struck a bargain with that wicked necromancer to marry her to Hugh. ‘I will not live under the same roof with that creature!’ Merriam said to me. ‘I will not see my son befouled by her.’ We could do nothing to stop the marriage, you understand.”
Under Meg’s gaze, the color was rising in Verek’s face—no dark flush of wrath, but such a burning discomfort that Megella felt a rush of pity for him. She softened her tone.
“Theil Verek, you know what a powerful wysard your grandfather was. That sorceress Morann was nearly his equal. What could two ‘weird sisters’ do against them? If we had stayed, if we had said a word against the marriage, one or the other of them would have killed us. So we left quietly in the night.”
Megella started to reach across and take Verek’s hand, but she stopped herself.
He is obviously not a great one for open displays of affection or emotion, she thought with a glance at Carin. The girl was averting her gaze, looking into her teacup, trying to give her wysard his privacy. Carin’s hand, too, had made a small, unfinished movement toward Verek, as though she also wished to comfort him but had thought better of it.
“Merriam was devastated, of course, when Hugh died,” Meg resumed. “‘She did it!’ That’s all I got out of Merri for weeks afterward. ‘That creature did it. She killed my son.’
“We could not prove it, of course. By then, we were deep in the South and able to catch only snippets: fleeting glimpses in still ponds, flickering scenes in roadside puddles, a few dim images in our tea dregs. Merri wanted to go back. She had these mad notions about destroying Morann and rescuing her grandchild … removing you from your mother’s evil clutches.”
Megella poured Verek a fresh cup of tea and handed it across to him. He took it mechanically, his gaze never leaving her face and no word passing his lips.
“I talked her out of it,” Meg went on. “‘What can you do?’ I asked her. ‘Hugh is dead. You cannot bring him back. That baby has Morann’s blood in its veins. The poor thing is destined for evil. Even if you could rescue the infant—which you cannot—the damage has already been done. It is a child of death. It will grow to be a ghoul. You mark my words.’”
“Megella,” Carin muttered imploringly, still staring into her teacup. “Please.”
“It’s all right, widgeon.” Meg reached to give the girl another hug. “I have been proved wrong, haven’t I? Theil is not a ghoul. Legary worked wonders. I never knew what Merriam saw in Legary, why she had married him in the first place. But after Hugh died and we’d given in to despair, convinced that Hugh’s child could not be salvaged, we began to hear encouraging news. Only snippets—never more than snippets until Myra got the post of housekeeper there at the manor and let us know that the necromancer had fled before young Theil was completely ruined.”
“You know Myra?” Verek murmured, finally regaining his voice, though sounding dazed. “I hope you are not going to tell me that she is also my great-aunt.”
Megella laughed.
“No, no relation there. Myra was our bit of good luck. Thank the powers for that chatterbag. I could hardly believe it, the morning I drew water from the well and saw Myra’s face wavering in my bucket.” Meg gestured at the oak water pail that stood near the door, awaiting a refill. “She and I had a long talk. I told her everything I knew of the history of House Verek, and Myra enlightened me about its current state.”
Megella paused, remembering that long-ago conversation. Then with a nod, she added, “How pleased I was to learn that the necromancer was gone, and that Legary had finally recognized the enormity of what he had done and was sparing no effort to repair the damage. The boy Theil was showing great wizardly promise, Myra said, and only occasionally did she seem to detect a shadow in him … something dark that hurt him and made him cry out in terror.”
Verek plunked his teacup down on the table so hard that it should have shattered. And would have, if Meg had not long ago woven an extra bit of toughness into the clay from which the cup was fashioned. A moment of mitigation saves a month of mending: that was her motto.
Up the wysard jumped to his feet; he grabbed the oak bucket and headed out the door before even Carin could react. But the girl’s reflexes, much quicker than Megella’s, had her through the door on Verek’s heels before Meg could do more than rise from the table.
Following them outside, her knees creaking as she went, Meg found the pair at the well, their heads together as they stared down into a dripping bucket newly drawn up. Their backs were to her, giving Meg a clear view of Verek’s arm tight around Carin’s slim waist, the girl pressed close to the wysard’s side.
So, Megella thought, something’s there. No hand-holding in public. But in private … what? Have the two of them … ?
She rounded the well, s
haking her head.
“Nephew, did you think you could summon Myra any time you pleased? You wysards: such an arrogant lot, bending nature to your will, casting your spells and expecting immediate results. Those of us of lesser ability must wait for the stars to align, the sun to set on the evening of the solstice, the moon to reach full. The heavens were perfectly harmonious at the crack of dawn when Myra and I talked at length that time. It has seldom happened since. Mostly we content ourselves with brief messages at irregular intervals—
“As a matter of fact,” she interrupted herself, “I owe Myra an answer. Some time ago, she told me that young Lanse had returned alone from your expedition to the West. But then he left again and she sent me word, asking that I watch for him in case his path brought him this far south.”
“And has it?” Verek asked.
Meg shook her head. “I have not seen the boy. I’ve had no news at all to communicate to Myra—until now.” She clucked her tongue. “Wheesht, the old goose will be quite pleased to learn that you two are here with me. When last we spoke, she was afraid she would never see either of you again. Her ‘good master’ and that ‘lamb’ Carin might be dead, she thought.”
“How will you answer her?” Verek asked. “By what method, I mean?”
“Bring that bucket back to the house—filled—and I may explain the matter to you … by and by,” Megella said, leading the return to her cottage. “By Drisha, it is handy to have a man around the house. First time in memory that someone other than myself has hauled the water from the well.”
Meg rubbed the calluses on her hands. She turned to wink at Carin.
“Take care, girl, to hold him as close as he holds you. Else, a canny woman might take him from you.”
Carin blushed crimson but she smiled back and looked pleased, as though gratified to hear somebody say it aloud: the wysard was hers.
Megella pushed the cottage’s shutters open and left the door standing wide. “No one followed you from the village, I don’t believe. Better for all, if people take no interest in you.”
“But the wheelwright and Brin,” Carin said. “They’ll tell the world they saw us. He will, anyway. Crowter used to gossip with everybody who came into his shop. He tells everything he knows to anybody who crosses his path. By now, the whole town probably knows we’re here.”
Megella shook her head. “I tossed forget-for-now powder into their faces after you spoke with them. It’s weak—nothing like the spell of forgetfulness—and it will not last long.”
She looked at Verek.
“You, sir, will need to bespell them properly. I fell under suspicion for a considerable time that summer when Carin disappeared from the wright’s household. Some in the village said I had cooked and eaten her. If word gets around that she’s back and she’s been to see me, the fools will never leave me alone. Their story will change to suit their latest notions. Next they’ll be saying I sold her down the river to an even worse master than Crowter, and now she’s dead from maltreatment and her ghost has returned to haunt me. I do not want the aggravation.”
She jerked her head at the door. “We won’t any of us be safe from their tales and their prying—and a possible visit from the constable—if you do not stop Crowter tongues from wagging.”
“Hunh,” Verek grunted. He held out his hand, palm up. A light flickered there, very briefly, then winked out as if a wind had gusted through an open window.
“It pains me to admit it, Aunt Megella”—he paused, looking startled to hear himself address her that way—“but I cannot even conjure Ercil’s fire these days. My powers are gone. They have been since I battled Morann. Everything I had, I put into that fight … and it was not enough. I would have died, if not for Carin and her dragon.”
He arched an eyebrow at the girl, sharing a thought with his lady that Megella could not read.
Meg shifted her gaze between them, studying their faces. Carin had eyes only for her wysard. She looked a little worried, but resolute.
“It’s just that he’s been away from Ruain for so long,” the girl said, speaking to Megella but still looking at Verek. “When we get home and he can draw again from his wizards’ well, he’ll be all right. He just needs to soak up the magic of that place.”
“Tah!” Megella let out, so sharply that both of them turned to look at her. “Finally. I have wondered for years why I dared to take it, since I have never had the courage to use it.”
She reached under her bed, pulled out a jug, and plumped it down on the table. It landed with a thunk, muffled by the thick, ropy coils of wool that wrapped the jug completely except for its neck, a high collar of brown pottery.
“This is water—if I can call this substance ‘water’—from Legary’s wysards’ well.” Meg glanced at Verek as she uncorked the jug. “I stole it when Merri and I left. Afterward, I wondered why the well had not killed me where I stood. I was no wysard, I had no business in that cavern—I was not even a blood relation, merely Legary’s sister-in-law. The power of that place should have destroyed me the instant I dipped this jug into the pool.” She shrugged. “Perhaps the well foresaw this moment. Perhaps it knew that you would someday need a refreshing splash of your native waters.”
Verek touched the coils of wool. “It’s cold. I feel it even through its wrappings.”
Meg nodded. “It has stayed cold all these years. Every once in a while—not often, for I am not that brave—I pop the cork and breathe a little of the vapor. It could be only a fancy of mine, but I seem to know some benefit from it. My potions are the strongest in this region, I save almost every villager or animal that seeks my help, and I have outlived my sister by many years.”
Verek looked intently at her. “My grandmother … she is dead?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Not for you,” Meg said, continuing to be blunt with him, “but for Merri. You never knew her. You can hardly be expected to mourn the death of an old woman who was a stranger to you. But I wish Merri could have lived to see her grandson grow into a decent man. She was relieved beyond words when I told her how Myra described you in the water bucket that morning:
“‘He’s a fine boy,’ Myra said. ‘A bit hasty of temper, too quick to anger at times—and unnervingly violent in his anger—but he’s a good-hearted lad. He is a natural-born healer. He brings home injured birds and other creatures he finds in the woods and restores them to health. Lord Legary is teaching him about herbs and potions and remedies.’”
“Yes,” Verek muttered. “My grandfather was an excellent teacher.”
“But in that way,” Megella countered, “you seem especially to take after your grandmother’s side of the family. Merri was a great healer. So was our mother, and every woman in our line for generations.”
Meg turned and rummaged again under the bed. “In fact, I have a book to give you. It’s Merri’s recipe book. Every medicine she knew how to make, everything she had learned from our mother and all the knowledge she came privy to when she replaced the revered wisewoman of Winfield—it’s all in here.”
Straightening, Meg blew dust, spiderwebs, and cat hair off the parcel she had dragged into the light.
“My sister wanted you to have this if I could devise some means of getting it to you. I never expected, myself, to lay eyes on you, Theil Verek.” Megella put the leather-wrapped parcel on the table beside the jug of wysards’ water. “I almost gave the book to Carin when I sent her North to find you. But when the time came for the girl to go, I could not give it up. It is among the last things I have of Merri’s, and I doubted the Lord of Ruain could ever treasure it the way I have. And so, selfishly, I kept it.”
Verek, to Meg’s surprise, reached immediately for the book, bypassing the magic liquid that might restore a measure of his powers. Carefully he opened the soft leather cover and paged through its contents, pausing briefly to run his gaze over formulas, tracing his fingertip over his grandmother’s neat, clear handwriting.
After a few moments of study, he handed the volum
e to Carin. As the girl took it without a word, Verek looked across at Megella.
“I value my grandmother’s gift so highly, I will use it in partial payment of a debt that can never be repaid.” He put his arm around Carin’s waist and drew the girl to him. “Do you think Merriam would have approved?”
Megella nodded. “I am sure of it.”
Then she tapped the jug. “But let us delay no longer. I fear the forget-for-now powder will soon wear off. Try a little of this and see if it gives you what is rightfully yours.”
Verek took his arm from around Carin. The girl stayed close by him, only leaning aside to lay the book down at a safe distance from the open container of magic. Then, without hesitation, Carin picked up the jug.
No fear there, Megella thought, watching her closely. Either she knows too little about wysards’ waters to fear them, or she is experienced enough to believe she has some degree of competency with them. Can that be? So soon?
“How much?” Carin asked Verek. “Maybe a hen-egg’s worth?”
He nodded. “That should be adequate for a spell of forgetfulness. I have never tested the waters this way.” He glanced at Megella. “It would never have occurred to me that they could be removed from Ruain, or from the well itself.”
Megella smiled at him and shrugged. “Drisha protects fools and imbeciles. Whether the deity will also intervene on your behalf, I would not venture to guess.”
Verek was still looking at her, obviously trying to decide whether he had just been insulted or complimented, when Carin tipped a glob of liquid glacier out of the jug and into his cupped hands.
“Drisha’s bones!” the wysard swore. Flinching at the sting of that preternatural cold, he ripped out another oath. “Blind me! Years and leagues should have dulled the bite. They have not.” That last word, he almost howled. Verek staggered around the room, rolling the glob in his hands, barely able to maintain his grip on it and making little puffing sounds as he endured its ice-needle intensity.
The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3) Page 2
