The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  When she had Carin beside her, the girl with an arrow on her bowstring, Megella shook the reins and her two cobs obediently began rolling the wagon over the bumpy ground toward the blocked road. She did not look back. She did not allow herself to imagine all the people in the far south who might, at this very moment, be bleeding to death.

  I cannot help them, Megella knew. I have no remedy to offer them.

  In moments, Verek was riding up on her left, his bow also at the ready. They angled gradually across from the stock pond, taking a line that would bring them onto the road north of the haywains that had been positioned to block it. The armed men of the patrol shouted at them to stop.

  Verek shouted back: “I do not threaten you with disease. But if you get in my way, I will kill you.”

  He punctuated his words with an arrow that thudded into a cart’s top rail inches from one man’s head. At Megella’s side, Carin stood up and braced herself with her knee on the seat. The girl loosed her shot, and buried an arrow practically in the toe of another patroller who was standing several yards behind the roadblock and taking aim at Verek. The man yelped and leaped aside.

  “Back off!” Verek yelled. “As you see, my women and I are perfectly fit. Why give your lives for nothing?”

  Megella would have liked to have seen Carin’s reaction to Theil calling her “his woman.” Or one of his women. But the girl, muttering something about needing to square her stance, had vaulted the wagon seat and was now standing in the bed behind Meg. The man she’d nearly pinned to the ground had sprinted for cover and was staring out at her from around the corner of a parked haywain.

  Theil rode slightly ahead, taking care to stay out of Carin’s line of fire. Needing both his hands for shooting, or threatening to shoot, he guided his horse without touching the reins. The animal he had purchased in Winfield had not been trained as a bowman’s mount. But in only a few days Verek had taught the horse to respond to the pressure of his knees and legs and to subtle shifts of his weight in the saddle.

  He is as good on a horse as Legary ever was, Megella thought, watching him. She had often asked her sister—only half playfully—why she had married Legary. But the first time Meg saw the man ride, and saw the look in Merriam’s eyes as she watched Legary handle a horse, she had understood. Grace, power, and speed made an intoxicating combination.

  The leader of the patrol was shouting at Verek. “You show no symptoms? No bleeding?”

  “None!” Verek yelled back.

  The headman lowered his bow and signaled to his fellows to yield. “Then pass,” the man said in a resigned tone. It was clear the patrollers were not trained soldiers. They were probably the craftsmen of Greaterford—the town the men had set out to protect from the plague—and they were not up for a fight they could not win against a well armed party of obviously healthy travelers.

  And these men must have seen Carin’s astonishing bonfire last night, Megella reflected. What would they have made of that inferno? The sight of it would have cowed any onlooker. Nothing about that fire had appeared natural. But the topper, of course, was the wave of water that had winked into existence, doused the magian blaze, then washed away all traces of the funeral pyre.

  “Water-sylph,” Verek had called his lady, as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did.

  They had reached the road. With a sigh of relief, Megella guided her wagon onto the packed and level surface, leaving behind the gullied ground she had been bumping over from the stock pond to here. Verek rode ahead, still holding his bow at the ready. Meg glanced over her shoulder to see Carin standing firm in the wagon bed, guarding their backs, prepared to shoot down any pursuer.

  But no one renewed the challenge. They followed the road the short distance into Greaterford and found the town deserted. At least, the streets were. Megella glimpsed curtains moving at windows. Faces peered out briefly, then retreated behind tight-shut doors and latched shutters.

  These people are taking no chances, she thought.

  But Theil was. He had shouldered his weapons, and now he was reining up in front of a bakery. The shop was closed, like every other shop on the street. But the aroma that wafted out to them promised fresh bread—or fresh enough, at any rate.

  Verek dismounted, strode to the door, and pounded on it. “Open up! I will buy whatever you have. Day-old—doesn’t matter.”

  When no one answered, Theil pounded harder and shouted louder. “I have gold. I pay well. Cease your fright. No sickness here.”

  Nothing. The shop remained as silent as a mausoleum.

  Carin jumped down from the back of the wagon. Megella watched the girl scan the street up and down, check the alley alongside the bakery, and run her gaze over the windows of the shops and residences opposite. Apparently satisfied that they were not about to be ambushed, she shouldered her bow and joined Verek at the bakery door.

  The pair stood with their heads together, speaking too softly for Megella to hear. Carin put her hand on the door’s lock, and Verek covered her hand with his. Guiding her, Meg wondered, through the steps of a spell, the way he guides his horse with a little pressure? Within moments, they had the door open and were disappearing inside the dark shop.

  Wizardry in the service of theft. Megella watched them a tad disapprovingly. But I suppose the girl did have to steal to survive on her first journey to Ruain, and the lord of that realm is entitled to a bite of bread with his supper.

  Verek did not wait for supper. He came out of the bakery gnawing on a loaf of dark rye, and Carin appeared in its doorway with several loaves sticking out of the cloth she had wrapped them in. She paused long enough to shut the door, and Megella glimpsed her casting—by herself—the small spell that was necessary to relock it. Then Verek was remounting, still enjoying the rye, and Carin was stowing the other loaves in the wagon.

  “We paid,” the girl said cheerfully as she rejoined Megella on the seat. “Theil left gold on the counter—way too much money for a few loaves of yesterday’s bread. It’s got to be the best sale that baker ever made.”

  “Did you wave those crystal dolphyns about while you were in there?” Meg asked.

  Carin shook her head. “We kept them in our pockets. It seemed best to leave well-enough alone, rather than take a chance that they might do more harm than good, as far as plague-averting goes. Which reminds me: You weren’t telling the truth, were you, when you told Lummis that you’d treated Granger’s water to keep the village safe?”

  Megella looked at Carin and smiled. “You’ve found me out. I have taken credit for another’s work. It was you, of course, who imparted immunity to the villagers.”

  “Me?” Carin exclaimed. “What did I do?”

  “You bobbed up in the millpond when you were a slip of a girl, freshly arrived from that world where you had had a crystal dolphyn for a plaything,” Megella said. “That same winter, I treated everyone in the village for a strange malaise that I had never seen before. People came to me, feverish, complaining of aches, their eyes bloodshot—and most of them with persistent nosebleeds.”

  Carin gasped.

  Meg nodded. “I did not know it then, of course, but I was seeing the early symptoms of the bleeding disease. The symptoms, however, remained mild and soon subsided. No one became seriously ill. And though the disorder seemed not to respond to any remedy I prescribed, I was satisfied that it posed no real danger. When all my patients had recovered, I forgot the episode.” Meg reached to pat Carin’s arm. “At the time, knowing nothing of your origins, I never suspected that it was your sudden arrival which had brought on the malaise. Now, I am certain of it.”

  “I brought the bleeding disease to the village?” Carin asked, staring back wide-eyed.

  Such beautiful green eyes the girl has, Megella thought. One can glimpse the sea in them.

  “I believe,” Meg said, continuing aloud, “that a breath of contagion did come with you through the void when Morann opened it to snatch you from your world into this one. The people of th
e village were only briefly exposed. And thanks to that early exposure, they are now immune to the bleeding disease in its more virulent form.”

  Carin gave a wry little laugh. “Master Crowter might have treated me better if he’d known I’d be saving his life from the plague.”

  “I doubt it,” Meg said. “The man has no imagination. Which worked to our benefit, did it not, widgeon? If he had been a little less woodenheaded, you might have found it more difficult to give him the slip and visit me from time to time. Before you began to call on me, I had never had company for company’s sake. Those of the village who came to my cottage wanted only to have their hurts salved. But you, duck … you came to talk. I was charmed.”

  Carin laughed again, sounding truly happy. “You were the only person in the village I could talk to—other than Brin. And she and I had to be careful. We didn’t want her father figuring out that I was not a complete imbecile. So when I couldn’t talk to Brin, and I got tired of talking to myself out past the millpond, I would come and practice the tongue of Ladrehdin on you. You were very patient with me.”

  “I was intrigued by you,” Meg said. “Early on, I realized how different you were from the other children of the village. At first, I would not allow myself to believe that I had actually found a candidate for apprenticeship. It seemed so unlikely that a child of the plains could have any trace of the gift.”

  “You told me, though, that I wasn’t of the plains,” Carin murmured. “Remember?”

  Meg nodded. “I do. The more I saw of you and the more we talked, the more convinced I became that your place was with Theil Verek in the North. Indeed, the wysards’ waters themselves told me that you would be a fit apprentice for the last magician of Ruain.”

  “Oh?” Carin asked, looking at her with interest. “How do you mean?”

  Megella tipped her head back, toward the jug of liquid ice that rode in the wagon. “As I told Theil, I have been brave enough, very occasionally, to pull the cork from that jug and try to smell it, or peer down into it, or turn my ear to it and listen for the voice of power. It is a presumption—I am no wysard.”

  “But you are a woman of Ruain,” Carin murmured. “Maybe that’s enough.”

  “Perhaps so,” Megella mused. “In any event, when you came along, widgeon, and puzzled me so, I dared to unstopper the jug and ask the waters a question: ‘Should I send the foundling, Carin, north to join Lord Verek?’ It was the only time I ever questioned the wysards’ waters, and the only time they spoke—aloud—to me. ‘Yes,’ came the reply in a voice that I cannot describe. It was eldritch.”

  “It’s like seashells,” Carin said. “Or like you’re hearing the sounds of lots of little fish darting through the water, the sunlight shimmering off their sides.”

  Megella tilted her head. “That is quite an apt way to describe it.” She eyed the girl. “You have obviously heard the voice of power.”

  Carin nodded. “It used to terrify me. Whatever it is, it’s not human. It’s … cold, and glittering, and beautiful. Sometimes it seems willing to do as it’s asked, but other times it seems completely indifferent—or not there at all.”

  As she spoke, the girl locked her gaze on the wysard who rode ahead of them.

  What is she remembering? Megella wondered. Contests of wills between Theil Verek and the supernatural? Or perhaps the girl herself has challenged the power and made it serve her. Meg shivered despite the warmth of the spring day. That, she thought, is the difference between a wysard and a wisewoman. I would never have had the courage.

  Megella pulled up on the reins, easing the wagon to a halt.

  “Here,” she said, handing the lines to Carin. “You drive now. I am joining my blankets and getting some sleep. Sitting up all night, watching people bleed to death, takes its toll. I am exhausted.”

  * * *

  Meg woke in the late afternoon to find the sun at her back. The road had curved sharply to the east, and the landscape had roughened. Rolling hills and grasslands had given way to a scraggy, brushy waste. Scrub vegetation covered the ground for leagues in every direction.

  “Where are we?” Megella asked, leaning over the back of the wagon seat to speak with Carin.

  The girl shrugged. “Just following the road still. We passed through a town called Plainsboro while you were sleeping. It was livelier than Greaterford. People were in the streets, going about their business. They stared at us, a few of them, but no one bothered us. They weren’t in a panic about keeping disease out. Maybe they’re far enough from the trouble in the south to not be worried about it yet.”

  “That roadblock at Greaterford may be doing some good,” Megella commented. “If it keeps the worst of the outbreak confined to the deep south—and slows the rumors that are bound to spread faster than the malady—then I cannot begrudge the delay those men caused us.”

  Meg scowled at the scrubland around them. “But are we not heading too directly eastward now? It has been many years since I covered the distance between Ruain and Granger, but I do not believe I ever took a route through here. This landscape is not at all familiar to me.”

  “Me either,” Carin said. “I never walked this road after I left the village. But then, I mostly traveled where there weren’t roads, and lived on rabbits and berries. If I came across a farmhouse, I’d take a little food if they had it to spare.” The girl glanced around. “No farms out here. This looks like a good place to find game, though.”

  The words were barely out of Carin’s mouth when Meg saw Verek bring his bow up. He kicked his horse to a run and raced off into the scrub. Theil shot twice, at something Megella could not glimpse from her perch in the wagon. But after the second shot, he reined in, then circled back to join the wagon, signaling Carin to stop.

  “A wild pig,” Theil said as he rode up, almost grinning. “We will eat well this evening. There is a water hole over here, too, just in that thicket. Let’s stop here for the night.”

  The girl guided the wagon as Verek directed, and soon they had a fire crackling, water boiling, and tenderloins of pork spitted. While Verek finished butchering the hog and Carin tended the horses, Megella ventured into the scrub.

  “Don’t leave my sight,” Verek barked at her in a tone of warning that few men would have dared to take with her.

  “I shan’t go far, Theil,” Meg replied, trying not to sound testy. His sharpness, she knew, arose from his genuine—and deeply touching—concern for her welfare. “I’m just after parsnips.” Or any other edible plant she might turn up.

  On the farthest bank of the water hole, Meg parted a way through a patch of the rushes commonly known as green-toes. Delighted by this find, she pulled their long rootstocks from the mud and snapped off handfuls of the youngest, tenderest shoots.

  She had collected a nice bunch for their supper when she took a step too far. A tough green string, and then another, and then a great tangle of them shot out of the undergrowth, wrapping around Meg’s foot and ankle and holding her as tightly as if she had stepped in a bear trap.

  Too startled at first to do more than try—unsuccessfully—to yank her foot free, Megella watched speechless as more wiry stems came wriggling out of the cool shadows, groping toward her like thin green fingers as she leaned back to avoid them. One of the stems snaked up her leg, under her skirts. Meg did not like where it seemed to be aiming. She—who knew plants like any mother would know her children—did not like any part of this nastily aggressive weed.

  She found her voice.

  “Help!” Megella screamed. “Theil! Carin! Wheesht, I need help here.”

  Chapter 10

  Carin’s Confession

  Carin dropped a pot of tea, splashing its contents into the fire and sending up steam. She was halfway around the pond, racing toward the sounds of Megella’s shouts, before she realized she had forgotten her bow. Verek didn’t have his either. But his sword was in his hand as he, too, ran to the wisewoman’s aid.

  “Oh sweet Drisha!” Carin swore as she sk
idded to a stop several steps from Megella. “Oh, not this! It can’t be.”

  But it was. Carin would know those wiry stems anywhere. This green assassin—or one just like it—had almost throttled her on the third leg of her journey beyond the void. Now it was here on Ladrehdin, where it had no business to be.

  “Wait!” Carin yelled as Verek raised his sword, evidently prepared to cut his aunt out of the tangle. She put out her hand to stop him. “This stuff loves water. I’ve seen it choke an ocean. If you slice it up into the pond, it might multiply and burst back out in a big enough mass to strangle us all.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Verek asked through gritted teeth, still holding his sword at the ready.

  “Let me try the spell of stone on it,” Carin suggested.

  “Good.” Theil nodded approvingly. “Just as I taught you.”

  Well, no … not exactly, Carin thought. The way Verek had worked the spell, the subject turned to rock, as immovable as a mountain. Having the mass of greenery set up granite-hard around Megella would not help the woman. She needed to be able to pull loose—and quickly, to judge by the increasingly alarmed expression on the wisewoman’s face. Meg was turning purple.

  “Don’t panic,” Carin called to her. “This shouldn’t take long.” Not if things went as well as they had in her few moments of practice on Earth, where Carin had been inspired to work out her own subtle variation of the basic spell.

  She stiffened the fingers of her right hand to point them all at the tangle that bound Megella. In her mind’s eye then, each wiry string became merely a snail trail in sand. Carin imagined standing with Meg on a beach, hearing the sounds of the ocean, watching snails glide over the sand and ease their way up Megella’s feet. They left behind visible trails that had no substance.

  “All right now,” Carin told the wisewoman, still seeing only snail trails, still pointing at Meg’s attacker. “You can step away. There’s nothing holding you.”