The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  Verek nodded. “Her crossing the barrier, oblivious to its very existence, is what saved her life—and ultimately preserved mine as well.”

  He squeezed Carin’s fingers, deepening the fiery flood that was washing over her. As he released her hand, Carin did not look at him. He’d directed his gaze at Megella all through their exchange, and Carin followed his lead. Questioning the wisewoman was the only way she could divert—temporarily—the upwellings that were melting her inside.

  “Megella,” Carin said, a bit breathlessly for someone who had been sitting quietly and sipping tea, “looking back on it, I don’t see how I ever made it all the way from here to Ruain by myself. How did I find enough to eat? How did I not get caught or killed along the way? Master Welwyn—Lord Verek’s wizard-friend out west—said I never would have made the journey alive if I hadn’t felt an irresistible urge to go north to ‘find sanctuary and claim my blood-gift,’ as he put it.”

  “Very astute of the man,” Megella murmured.

  Carin held the wisewoman’s gaze. “But you gave me that urge, didn’t you, Meg? I couldn’t do anything but go north.” She rubbed her forehead, remembering. “Sweet mercy, I couldn’t stop going north. Even after I’d reached Ruain and Theil Verek had taken me home with him, I still wanted to go north. I nearly died trying.”

  “She was relentless,” Verek said with a groan. “She stole my best mare and rode straight toward death. The wasteland dogs almost tore her apart. Indeed, after I’d found her in the wilderness north of Ruain, where the dogs had treed her like a skinny, red-haired squirrel, I’ll be damned if she didn’t still try to run from me. The minute I had cleared her a path through the dog pack, she was afoot and racing away again. Perhaps, Aunt Meg, you overdid it a bit. What did you use? A potion of compulsion?”

  “Just a little power of suggestion,” Megella said, sounding slightly defensive.

  The woman stood and began clearing the table. “I’ll say no more. You will not be getting all my secrets, young man. You wysards have your magic spells, and that’s enough for you to know. Leave us poor village wisewomen our simple brews and homespun charms—

  “Although,” Meg interrupted herself, straightening from her work and looking askance at Carin, “I am sure my sister put every recipe she knew into that book she made for young Theil. Take care, widgeon, what you reveal to him, won’t you? We women cannot remain mysterious if we tell our men everything there is to know about us.”

  Carin laughed. “I’ll keep him guessing if I can, Megella. But he has a way of finding out all my secrets. I doubt I can guard my tongue.”

  As Carin spoke, she leaned across Verek, reaching to collect his empty cup. She felt his breath on her cheek, and then he kissed her softly on the neck.

  That whole side of her body blazed, set off as if by a lightning strike. If she hadn’t had the table to lean against, she would have fallen into his arms then and there.

  “Show a bit of decorum, you two,” Megella said with what Carin took to be mock severity. “I am going into the village in a few minutes to see how Crowter and Brin are faring under your spell of forgetfulness. The gossips may have other news of interest; they sometimes do. I will listen long and take my time returning. How the two of you choose to spend the morning in my absence is your business and none of mine. I trust you will do what pleases you.”

  The wisewoman smiled at them as she lifted down several multicolored shawls from a peg by the door. “If, however, you can catch your breath long enough to talk it over, I would like you to settle your plans for returning to Ruain and tell me how and when you mean to travel. The sooner you set out, the better. You must go and get your strength back, nephew of mine.”

  Megella wrapped up in her layered shawls and started through the open door, but stopped again and looked at Carin.

  “I am strongly tempted to come with you, widgeon.” The woman combed her fingers through the fringes of her shawls. “Thank the powers for the tides of magic that washed you ashore in my village when you were a slip of a girl—rewarding me so richly for my years of watching and waiting, so that now my task here is finished. I have done my part to replenish Ladrehdin’s ebbing pool of magic: I sent the traveler north to find her wysard. Now I expect the pair of you to produce a nursery full of gifted offspring.”

  Meg smiled at them again, then sighed. “I would like to be there to midwife your children into the world. But though I am not yet doddering, I am undeniably showing my years. I would slow your journey home, and get in your way, and generally prove to be tedious company.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Carin exclaimed and was gratified to hear Verek respond at the same moment: “Not at all!”

  “Of course you will come with us,” Carin added, or started to add. But Megella cut her off.

  “Do not be hasty, my ducks.” The woman shook her head. “Think carefully. It is a long way from here to Ruain. I cannot walk it cross-country as you did, widgeon. I cannot ride horseback that far. I would prefer to make the trip by wagon. Which would mean keeping to the roads and meeting other travelers, and possibly dealing with highwaymen.”

  Megella shot Verek a quizzical look. “Theil, if you were fully possessed of your powers, I would not worry for an instant. But in your current circumstances your weapons will be your fists and that overly fine dagger you wear at your side.” The wisewoman clucked her tongue. “It tells everyone who sees it that you are a wealthy man. Our party may be seen as easy pickings—a creaky frump and a lissome young woman escorted by a lone gentleman of obvious high birth who appears to have met with a spot of trouble:

  “‘Where is his sword?’ they will wonder. ‘Where is his horse? Does he have money on him? Or jewels perhaps? Let us kill him and search his corpse.’ This journey, if I make it with you, will have its risks.”

  Verek laughed. “You need not talk to me of risky journeys, Aunt. I have become accustomed to them.”

  He reached to pull Carin to him, his arm around her waist. Carin had trouble catching her breath then, and not just because he was holding her so tightly.

  “And here stands the most accomplished traveler who ever lived,” Theil murmured. “She has been to realms far beyond the ken of any man of Ladrehdin.”

  Verek paused, and then with his free hand dug into his belt-pouch. “But to answer you, Aunt, on the question of money: I do, in fact, have some.”

  He revealed a fistful of gold coins, minted to no pattern ever seen on Ladrehdin. It was gold from Carin’s home world. Verek had discovered the cache almost immediately upon fleeing Morann’s mountain eyrie, crossing the void, and arriving by mistake at Carin’s childhood home. Someone had left the coins sitting out in plain sight, obviously not worried about losing them to thieves. When Carin came to fetch her wysard home to Ladrehdin, he had shown her the gold, then pocketed it.

  “This will be sufficient to buy horses and a wagon,” Verek said, “and a serviceable blade if there is one to be found in this low country. But more importantly, it will buy a bow for my lady.” He put the money away and wrapped both his arms around Carin. “I assure you, Aunt Megella, once Carin has a bow in her hands again, you and I will travel in comfortable safety.”

  “Comfortable?” The wisewoman sniffed. “Tah! Travel is never that. But I will settle for the safety.”

  “He’s exaggerating, you know,” Carin mumbled from within Verek’s embrace. “I’m not that great with a bow.”

  But Megella could not have heard the demurral. With a final flick of her shawl fringes, the wisewoman had cleared the threshold and was gone, leaving Carin alone with Verek.

  He did not bother shutting the cottage door behind the woman. With a throaty, wordless growl that said he knew everything Carin was thinking, he collapsed with her onto the bed in the corner.

  She melted against him, afire, lost in a flood that soon had her sweat-soaked, out of breath, barely coherent but gasping his name. His first name.

  Chapter 3

  Settled Accounts<
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  Megella, determined to give the lovers the best part of the day to themselves, stayed gone for hours. When she finally ventured back, she returned to an empty cottage. The breakfast dishes had been washed and put away and her bed was neatly remade—the top blanket smoothed more carefully than she had left it that morning. But of the lord and his lady, Meg saw no sign.

  “Well, my ducks, have you gone on without me?” she muttered to the empty room. “No blame to you if you have. I would only be in your way.”

  She hung up her shawls, changed her walking shoes for mucking boots, and went out to the cowshed to see whether Carin and Verek had made off with the good quilt on which they’d slept last night.

  And that was where she found the pair, out behind the shed, striving mightily to resurrect an old wooden crate that was half buried in the packed ground. Carin’s red sash—which, yesterday, the girl had worn in fetching style to cinch up her shirtwaist—was now employed uselessly as a pulley-rope.

  What a waste of good wool, Megella thought.

  Aloud she demanded: “What in the world are you doing?”

  Carin straightened and stood kneading a muscle in her neck, wincing a little.

  “We thought this old box would be good for packing your dishes,” the girl said. “Keep them from breaking in the wagon. But it’s not coming along willingly. It may have to stay where it is.”

  “Of course it will stay,” Meg said crisply. “And so will my dishes. I have no need of them.” She waved her guests away from their pointless task. “The best way to help me pack is to allow me to do it myself. A few favorite concoctions, my best recipes, a sackful of books, plenty of blankets and the bare necessities of clothing—nothing more will I need.”

  “But with a wagon, we’ll be able to haul everything, even your furniture,” Carin said with a puzzled air. “Don’t you want your things?”

  “Wheesht, widgeon! Look around.” Meg waved her arm. “Do you see a wagon here? No, you do not. On the first leg of our journey, we must go afoot. I will let Quandy—the cow—carry my few possessions on her back to spare mine. But I would not dream of asking the old girl to haul my teacups or my rocking chair.”

  “Drisha’s teeth,” Verek swore as he wiped his sweat-dampened hair off his forehead. “Aunt Megella, please tell me I will not be herding a milk cow all the way to Ruain.”

  By the powers, he really is quite a good-looking man, Meg thought, studying Verek’s well-proportioned, sleekly muscled frame. He got his face from that seductress of the West, but for the rest of him Carin can thank Legary and my good sister. I see both of his grandparents in the way he moves.

  “You need not fret, m’lord,” she answered him. “Quandy is a good cow but she’s of a southern breed. She would not thrive in your northern climate. I will take her only as far as the next town—Winfield—and we’ll sell her there. She should fetch enough to buy me a cart or a light wagon that is big enough to stretch out in. You younger people may sleep on the ground and never feel it, but I’ll be wanting my blankets piled high in the bed of a wagon.”

  “But why not sell the cow and buy a wagon in Granger, and save yourself the walk to Winfield?” Carin asked. “People know you here and you know them—you know who’ll give you the best price.”

  “Tah, widgeon. I know these people too well. There is not a soul in this benighted village that could or would meet my price for Quandy. Attempting to sell her here would only rouse the public curiosity, and the whole of the village would be out here nosing into my business.”

  Meg crooked her hand, bidding her guests return with her to the cottage.

  “I stopped by Crowter’s shop today,” Megella said when they were back at her table and she had the tea steeping. “I spoke briefly with him and Brin, and both seemed safely under the spell of forgetfulness. They showed no sign of recalling their meeting with you in the street yesterday. But just as I walked in, I spotted the glint of gold in Crowter’s palm. Theil, he was studying that coin you gave him, obviously puzzled and straining to remember where he’d gotten the thing.”

  Megella shook her head. “Those coins you brought back from Carin’s native land are strangely marked, and the simple-minded souls of this village may decide they are the devil’s lucre. Knowing how hotly these people rise at any such suspicion, I prefer to not be here when Crowter tries to spend that gold he’s got in his pocket, and questions are raised about where he got it, and his forgetfulness fades, and the entire village—with the priest at the head of them—marches to my cottage, bearing torches and flinging accusations and demanding explanations.”

  “Speaking of explanations,” Carin interjected, looking intently at Verek. “Why did you give Crowter that money? What were you buying?”

  “You, of course,” Verek replied. A half smile played on the wysard’s lips. “When the wheelwright saw you with me, he surmised that I had stolen his servant from him. He demanded payment. He also wanted gold for that horse you took from his stable.”

  “But I turned that horse loose and sent it home. I’ll bet Crowter cheated you, my lord,” Carin said, the girl’s tone mock-serious. “The dun made its way back to him, and now he’s got both—his horse and your gold.”

  “Perhaps so,” Verek replied. “I found it significant, however, that the wheelwright asked more for the horse than he did for you. I paid dearly for an animal that I never laid eyes on. You, however, I got for a pittance.”

  The girl laughed.

  “I’m a bargain at any price,” she said, “and you know it, sir.”

  Verek tipped his head in acknowledgment.

  “The wheelwright could have demanded half of Ruain, and to keep you I would have given it to him,” the wysard said softly, no hint of teasing in his voice now.

  The lovers locked eyes.

  Megella cleared her throat. “Wheesht—not now, you two. I want us to be away at cockcrow tomorrow, so let us drink our tea and then begin our preparations.”

  She looked them over. “The pair of you have nothing to pack. I never saw two travelers as poorly equipped as you are. You go dashing around to this world and that, carrying only what you can cram into your trousers pockets.” Meg shook her head. “You are welcome to look around my cottage and the cowshed. Take whatever you like—my kitchen knives, perhaps those dip candles I bought in the village yesterday, or a piece of canvas for a tarpaulin. Quandy is sturdy enough to carry most of it. And if you wish to lash together bundles to haul on your own shoulders, you will not long be burdened. I expect we can fit everything into my new wagon once we reach Winfield and make our purchases.”

  “But what about your chickens?” Carin asked as if the thought had just struck her. “What do we do with them?”

  “Open the coop door and let nature take its course,” Meg replied. She drained her teacup, then added, “Stray dogs will get some of them, I do not doubt. But my birds are wily. They can fend for themselves.”

  She stood and headed for the door. “I’ll wring two of their necks right now. We’ll have chicken for supper and save the rest of the pork you stole in the village yesterday. That ham should travel with us: it’s smoke-cured and will keep.

  “Its owner is livid, by the way,” she added. “I heard him calling his neighbor a thief, and I could hardly stop myself from revealing how much of it I ate at breakfast this morning.” She patted her stomach. “I will boil some eggs in the shell to take, too. For the first few days of our journey, at least, we shan’t go hungry.”

  Megella studied Carin. “Widgeon, if you are as good with a bow as your man claims—or even half as skilled as you were with your sling—then I will expect you to keep us well supplied with fresh meat along the way. We have had a bumper crop of rabbits and prairie hens in these grasslands since you left.”

  Chapter 4

  Distant Suns

  Carin’s new bow could not compare with the indigo-blue beauty that Verek had given her before they’d set off from Ruain. But it was a serviceable weapon. Verek pic
ked it out for her, with a quiver of undecorated arrows and a similarly plain purchase for himself. He grumbled about the stiff draw of his new bow, though he had bought the best from the Winfield bowyer’s limited inventory.

  He enjoyed better luck down the street in an odd little shop that sold a bit of everything, much of it secondhand. Hanging in its scabbard in a dark corner was a sword of surprisingly high quality. The seller could tell Verek nothing about the weapon. It had been gathering dust in the shop for years, and the man was delighted to exchange it for some of Verek’s otherworldly gold. The strange, unreadable markings on the coins seemed not to trouble the shopkeeper in the least.

  They met up with Megella at the wainwright’s, where the wisewoman had chosen the smallest, lightest, four-wheeled vehicle the wagon-maker had.

  “What do you think of it?” Carin whispered to Verek as they stood to one side, watching Meg bargain with the wainwright. “It’s kind of … more colorful than I was expecting.”

  “It’s preposterous,” Verek replied. He snorted, rather loudly. “Even the village idiot would feel shame to be seen in that thing.”

  Megella glanced round at him, then returned to her haggling. If the wisewoman had heard, she was not dissuaded. Moments later she rejoined them, patting the embroidered purse at her waist.

  “Quandy fetched a pretty price,” the woman whispered, visibly pleased with herself. “And the wagon cost me hardly anything. It’s just what I wanted, too. The perfect size.”

  “Well,” Verek conceded, eyeing the vehicle’s elaborately painted green, yellow, and red designs, “at least it won’t require much horseflesh to pull it. The thing looks like it could take wing at any moment. If strong winds buffet us up the road, you may go sailing, Aunt.”