Carin burst into tears. Her insides felt full of cuts, as if packed with broken glass.
“Shh, sh-h.”
Verek stroked her hair, comforting her, holding her while she cried herself dry.
The evening was well advanced, the fire burning low, when Carin finally sat up, wiped her face, and looked into Verek’s eyes. “Maybe they will all rot soon,” she whispered, sounding more hopeful than she felt. “The arrows and my shirt, and your papers …”
Suddenly inspired, Carin added, “Maybe it’s a good thing that I’d already broken Lord Legary’s spell by then, on that page I stole. Maybe there wasn’t any magic left in it by the time the weeds took it.”
Verek inclined his head noncommittally. “Perhaps. I cannot help imagining, however, the ink from a wysard’s pen dissolving in that alien ocean, diffusing to the very roots of those plants. Already we are witnessing some of the repercussions, in the form of the strangleweed that seized my aunt.”
Carin straightened and looked for Megella, seeking assurance that the wisewoman had not stumbled into another patch of the devil’s-weed. But Meg was only sipping her endless cups of tea, looking up at the stars, obviously listening to every word while pretending to give her companions their privacy.
Verek spoke again, reclaiming Carin’s attention. “The arrival of the weed here on Ladrehdin makes me doubt that we have seen the last of your friend,” he muttered.
“The woodsprite? You don’t think it’s dead?” Carin exclaimed, half fearfully and half hopefully.
Verek shrugged. “The creature has proved to be remarkably resourceful. It may find a way to use the artifacts of Ladrehdin that you were forced to leave behind. Do not forget, fìleen,” Theil added, brushing his hand down Carin’s arm, “that I once attempted to show the goblin how to conjure an image and imagine itself crossing the void. If it has progressed in its mastery of magic anywhere near as far as you have come, then it may well have grown strong enough to make the leap. It traveled with you through the void, observing you, perhaps feeling its way in the currents of power as you did.”
Carin sat back, thinking, pulling the pieces together. She remembered the woodsprite describing its experience as Verek’s prisoner:
“The magician took me deep underground to the pool like a perfect mirror … He proposed delving into my buried memories … I sought my world, but no image rose … ”
Verek was studying Carin by the light of their dwindling campfire. “What are you thinking, fìleen?” he asked softly.
“I’m just realizing that the woodsprite did not lose its memories of its home world as completely as I did of mine. Oh, we were both in the dark about our origins, as long as we stayed here on Ladrehdin.” Carin glanced up at the stars. “But when I carried the sprite back to its native world, its memories returned—like a flood in its mind, the creature told me. It seemed to remember the old days and how things used to be in that place.”
Carin shook her head. “I’m still mostly ignorant of the world called Earth. Even when I followed you there, and you asked me to read its books to you, and we stayed long enough to look at its maps and go through that house where I used to live, I couldn’t remember a thing. It’s strange.”
“‘Who are you?’ asked the Caterpillar,” Verek muttered.
“What?”
Carin stared, momentarily at a loss. But then she had it, catching the allusion: The haughty blue caterpillar in the mate to the Looking-Glass book had questioned Alice, in just those words, from atop a magical mushroom in Wonderland.
“Oh, right,” Carin said, nodding. “And Alice’s answer was, ‘I hardly know, Sir, just at present.’”
She smiled, then shrugged. “But maybe it’s for the best. This way, I have only one world to worry about. Earth must take care of itself. We will be busy, I think, stopping the strangleweed from choking Ladrehdin the way it has suffocated Angwid.”
“Then let us get our blankets from the wagon,” Verek said, standing and throwing wood on the fire, “and go to sleep. I am uneasy, thinking of what tomorrow may bring us. But we should rest before we face the new day.”
“Nephew,” Megella called when she saw Verek on his feet. “I require an orb of Ercil’s fire. I wish to read tonight.”
“You know I cannot help you, Aunt,” Verek said with a growl of frustration in his voice. “I’ve no powers—remember?”
“Then you do it, widgeon,” Megella said, looking at Carin. “I am told that any novice wysard can conjure Ercil’s fire, just as any novice learns early to cast the spell of stone.”
Carin shook her head. “Not this novice, I’m afraid. Some spellwork, I’ve caught on to easily enough, but summoning fire that burns without heat is a skill I have not mastered.”
“Wheesht.” Megella eyed her. “You prefer a blazing hot inferno—so I have noticed. Well then, be pleased to find for me that recipe book of my sister’s that I gave to Theil and he gave to you. I am half-remembering a brew, and I’m thinking that Merriam may have written down the full instructions.”
The wisewoman turned to Verek. “And you, sir—have a drop of this.” From under her pillows, Meg produced her stolen jug of wysards’ waters. “It should not take much to light enough of a spark in you to give me a gleam of Ercil’s fire.”
“Is a light in the night so important, Aunt?” Verek asked, scowling, visibly annoyed by her insistence. And perhaps puzzled. Megella normally guarded the jug of magic as if it were the most valuable thing in the world.
Which, in fact, it might be, Carin’s instincts hinted. She had climbed up in the wagon in search of the recipe book, and now she stood erect, gazing out to the east. A faint glow lit the sky. It could not be the sun—dawn was many hours away yet. And this glow was not steady. It seemed to shift about, to …
Spark, Carin thought, feeling queasy. It’s sparking like the woodsprite used to when it jumped through the trees. Only it would take a million woodsprites to cover that much space.
“Look there,” she said, calling her companions’ attention to the horizon. “What’s out there? Is that a city I’m seeing—that glow like swarms of fireflies? I didn’t know Ladrehdin had any city big enough to be that bright at night. It looks like every candle and torch ever made is flickering in the distance … but just below the horizon, with the light of the flames reflecting off the clouds.”
Verek sprang into the wagon bed and stood beside her. After a moment’s concentrated study, he cursed so softly that his aunt wouldn’t hear him, only Carin.
“Those are not city lights,” he muttered. “This road leads to the coast, and I believe there is nothing between here and there but hardscrabble heathlands, and edging the water, widely scattered fishing villages. That glow is far enough out to make me think we are seeing past the shore. We’re seeing the clouds above the eastern ocean, and they are lit from below by something in the ocean.”
“Sweet mother of mercy,” Carin swore, also under her breath. “You know what that sparking reminds me of? You’re thinking the same thing, aren’t you?”
Verek nodded. He stood stiffly scanning the horizon. Then he stepped down and faced his aunt.
“Stop!” Theil barked, so sharply that Carin jerked her head around. She craned her neck, from her vantage point above him now in the wagon, to see what had provoked him.
“Wheesht!” exclaimed Megella.
Clearly startled, Meg fumbled with the jug she was starting to uncork, causing Carin a moment’s terror that the wisewoman might drop it. “What troubles you, nephew?” Meg snapped as she steadied her grip on the pottery.
“Unstopper it no more,” Verek ordered. “Put it away.”
“Why?” Megella demanded, frowning. “A drop of wysards’ waters sufficed for the spell of forgetfulness you cast upon the Crowters. Why should it not serve you for the conjuring of the light that I need?”
“The waters of the wysards do not serve me,” Verek growled. “I serve them—and I serve at their pleasure. The waters have
made it plain that I erred in calling upon the powers for a frivolous purpose—a mere spell of forgetfulness. I will not compound my error by dissipating the strength of that”—Theil gestured at the jug Megella held—“upon anything so slight as Ercil’s fire.”
“But …” the wisewoman began, then hesitated.
Carin swung down from the wagon bed and stood looking up into Theil’s face, reading him. He was angry, but also she detected the shadow of deep anguish.
“What’s happened?” she whispered. “When—or how—did you learn of the waters’ displeasure?”
Verek bent to rub his hand down his thigh—the gesture that seemed to silently scream his frustration over the loss of his powers.
“Did you not wonder, fìleen,” he softly asked, “why I gave Megella no assistance as she fought to save those who lost their lifeblood while we tarried beside the blocked road? Did it not occur to you that I would have sought strength from the wysards’ waters, so that I might lend that strength, in turn, to the wisewoman and her remedies?”
Straightening, Verek added, “And were you not surprised that I failed to call upon the powers which are captured in that vessel”—again he pointed at the container in Meg’s hands—“to aid you as you attempted to destroy the crystals?” Theil patted his trousers pocket in which he’d carried his amulet since losing his silver neckchain to Carin’s magian inferno.
Carin touched her amulet as well, through the fabric of her britches. The crystal seemed to give her a twinge. She shifted her stance in a vain effort to avoid it. Then she shook her head.
“I guess I was too wrapped up in myself, feeling the ‘art magik,’ intent on conjuring the hottest fire I could. I didn’t stop to think that I could have had your help … if you’d taken a moment to tip a blob of that liquid ice into your hand.”
Verek grimaced, drawing his lips back from his teeth in what Carin would have taken as an expression of rage, except she saw the pain in his face. She reached for him and held him tightly. Under her hands, his muscles felt corded with tension.
“You tried to help?” she murmured. “Is that it? You took a gobbet—”
“No!” Verek snapped. “I took nothing. I was not permitted to touch the power.”
He swallowed, briefly shutting his eyes as if his throat hurt him.
Then, looking intently at Carin, he added, “When I learned of that child bleeding, I sought for the strength to save her … but I could not so much as pull the cork from the jug. You understand? To me, those powers”—Theil nodded at the container Megella still held—“are forbidden. That realm is not now mine.”
Carin started to protest but found no words.
What do I know? Hardly anything, she thought, realizing how little she really understood of wysards’ waters and the working of magic. She wanted to believe Theil’s powers would return when they reached Ruain. But Verek knew wizardry far better than his “apprentice” did. Perhaps he knew his fate. To argue with him, from Carin’s present position of ignorance, would benefit neither of them.
So Carin abandoned words, preferring instead to kiss Verek—and to keep kissing him, deeply, until she’d gained his full attention. Now the tenseness she felt in him sprang from a quickening of desire, and Carin meant to keep him in that state, keep him distracted for as long as she could.
“Let me see to Megella,” she whispered. “Then, my lord, we’ll flit behind the wagon.”
“Hurry!” Verek softly urged her, his breath coming short as Carin slipped from his embrace.
She rushed to Meg and snatched the jug from the woman’s hands—so violently, she practically yanked Megella off her feet as she relieved her of the forbidden magic. Ignoring Meg’s indignant “Tah!” Carin vaulted into the wagon and shoved the jug under the seat. Then she fished out the recipe book and the bag of candles she had toted from the wisewoman’s cottage.
“Here!” Jumping down, Carin almost knocked the woman over as she thrust the book and the candles into Meg’s hands. “Now you can read through the night. And if you spot any strangleweed—sing out. We’ll be awake.”
Megella was left huffing, seemingly unable to respond. But as Carin grabbed Verek’s hand and they sped for the shadows beyond the reach of campfire and candlelight, the woman recovered her voice.
“Wheesht! Go on, you two. Leave the midnight watch to me—I shan’t doze either. I have had an idea, and I am quite eager to see whether my sister bears me out.”
Carin heard a sound like the riffling of pages, and briefly imagined Megella flipping through the recipe book. But she heard no more, for her attention had fixed on Theil Verek—as fully as he was attending to her.
Chapter 11
The Second Scourge
Megella, in the coolness of the spring morning, watched Carin work magic against several clumps of strangleweed that they spotted from the road. The girl’s mastery of her “spell of sand,” as Carin called it, was impressive. Clump after clump disintegrated, leaving nothing but ridges of powdery sand. Remarkably, the girl seemed never to tire of performing the magic. Every wysard of Ladrehdin whom Megella had been privileged to see at work had felt the strain of it, usually sooner rather than later. But this novice magician seemed to grow stronger and more confident with each spell she cast.
Meg observed, however, that Carin occasionally made a face, as though the girl suffered momentary discomfort. The episodes were fleeting and seemed to escape Carin’s conscious notice. The girl made no complaint. Her only reaction to the twinges, save for grimacing, was to give her pocket a one-handed slap as though irritated by what she carried there.
And what other irritant can my widgeon have pocketed, Meg mused, but that crystal dolphyn she tried to get rid of?
“Bury it,” Megella had advised her, and had said the same to Theil. “If you cannot burn those amulets, then bury them deep and hide the spot so that none may suspect what lies below.”
“I would never rest easy again!” Verek had exclaimed, looking appalled. “Forever after, a fear would torment me, that—someday, somehow—the amulets would be rediscovered and misused.”
“Besides,” Carin had added, betraying a seeming ambivalence about the amulet in her pocket, “we can’t be separated as long as we have the dolphins. They’ll pull us together even if we’re on opposite sides of the void with a great formless ‘nothing’ between us.”
For those reasons, then—and perhaps for others they wouldn’t speak aloud—the pair had gone on keeping the amulets close, and both seemed to think it advisable to carry a dolphyn apiece, as if to separate the amulets but only slightly—never more than Carin and Verek themselves were separated.
Like attracts like, Megella thought. Even empty-handed … or empty-pocketed … I think those two would pull together across the deepest chasm that nature or wizardry could interpose between them.
On this day toward noon, the travelers pulled up at a pond that supported a particularly heavy infestation of strangleweed. Megella said nothing as Carin, scowling, bespelled the invaders to dust. But when only one smallish clump remained, she put out her hand to stop the girl.
“Leave this one to me, widgeon. I want to try something.”
“But—”
Meg shooed Carin away. “Just put the kettle on, girl. The big pot that Theil got in trade at the Greaterford blockade camp. I am going to cook us up a mess of devil’s-guts.”
Carin sputtered something dubious under her breath, but the girl went to draw water from the cleared pond and do as Megella asked.
From the ground under a scrubby tree, Meg picked up a sturdy, good-sized stick. Cautiously she approached the strangleweed, goaded it, and kept annoying it until the entire clump had wrapped itself around the stick and seemed to be trying to strangle the wood. Carrying it then like it was an adder on a stake, she hurried to the waiting kettle and plunged the devil’s-weed into boiling water.
“Eeeeeeeee!” came a squeal from the clump. It was a small sound, barely audible, but one that Megell
a had not expected. Weeds, in her experience, did not shriek.
She watched the clump boil down to a mush that eventually became a sauce, dark green and smooth. She dipped up a cupful, and over the objections of Carin and Theil, stirred it with her finger.
“Yecchh!” Carin exclaimed. “That’s disgusting.”
Theil wrinkled his nose at the pungent odor of rendered devil’s-guts. “What are you going to do with that, Aunt? I am not eating it, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’d starve first.”
Meg shook her head. “I would not feed it to any healthy person. But find me another victim of the bleeding disease, and I will test my idea and my sister’s recipe.”
“Merriam?” Verek arched one eyebrow. “How could my grandmother possibly have had a recipe that calls for strangleweed from another world?”
“Nothing so exotic as that,” Meg said. “Merri’s recipes used our own homegrown devil’s-guts. I have never had occasion to try them. The farmers around Granger were adamant about keeping strangleweed out of their fields. They would burn a crop to the ground rather than let the parasite spread. In all the years I lived there, I never saw an infestation of the weed, seldom came across even an isolated clump. But I vaguely remembered a remedy made with the stuff. And according to Merriam, the strongest preparation consists simply of boiled-down devil’s-guts.” She gestured at the kettle full of green sauce. “I will not hesitate to try it on anyone who is already bleeding to death.”
They ate their midday meal sitting upwind from Meg’s smelly concoction. After wrestling the kettle, with its contents, into the wagon and wedging it tightly, they resumed their journey along a road that was angling slightly north but mostly east. When Megella asked Theil about it, he explained his choice of route.
“No wagon-roads lead directly into Ruain, of course,” he said. “My ancestors ensured that the province would forever remain private and apart. Every map of the grasslands that I have ever studied shows the main highway north from Plainsboro taking a sharpish turn to the west long before it begins to approach my lands. This road, however”—Verek gave a nod, indicating the way they were going—“heads to the coast, then up it, coming nearer my borders than any other.”
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