The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  In an aside to Carin, who was driving the wagon as Theil rode alongside, he added: “Did you know, fìleen, that I own extensive coastal lands?”

  The girl shook her head. “Myra only mentioned farms and dairies. From everything she brought home in her wagon, that market day when she drove with Lanse to the village—Fintan, I think she called the place—I realized your property was good land. But Myra never said anything about a seashore.”

  Verek chuckled. “That might be because my housekeeper hates fish in any form. She would rather live on squirrel than eat anything finned. I have been known to ride to the seacoast, however, on a quest for crab legs.”

  “Is it far?” Carin asked with obvious interest.

  Hmm, Megella thought. The water-sylph misses the ocean. I predict, nephew of mine, that you will be journeying to the coast more often in future. Your lady will demand it of you.

  “Quite far,” Theil answered. “But the roads are good, the towns prosperous, and the people hospitable.

  “At least,” he muttered, turning serious, “they were. I wonder now if my people are even still alive, and if my lands produce anything but weeds. I have been gone too long from Ruain.”

  With that, Lord Verek kicked his horse into a trot and rode on ahead. He did not pull far in front of them, however. Around a bend in the road, in a dip that was lined with scrub, they came upon him. Theil was off his horse, bending over a man who was lying on his side in the middle of the road.

  Even from her nest of blankets in the wagon bed, Megella could see the blood pouring from the man’s nose.

  She nearly broke her neck throwing her covers aside, scrambling to the kettle to scoop up a cupful of green, and stumbling out of the wagon to rush the congealed sauce to her patient. Meg smeared it over the man’s face, getting it in his eyes and mouth, pushing it as far up his nostrils as she could force it.

  “More!” she cried, waving her empty cup at Verek, who was staring at her like she had lost her mind. “Bring me more. And keep it coming.”

  Carin joined in, and the two of them supplied Megella with uncounted cups of the sauce until Verek decided she might as well have the whole kettleful. He heaved it out of the wagon and carried it to her. Then he helped Meg strip off their patient’s clothes and slather the man in green sauce, taking care to force the stuff into the patient’s every bodily orifice.

  When the kettle was empty and the man was greener than ryegrass, Megella looked up at last. She discovered that Carin had built a fire in the roadway, had water heating in their next largest cook-pot, and had a clump of strangleweed wrapped around a stick. The weed writhed angrily, its tendrils groping for something to throttle. But the girl plopped the clump into the dust of the road, keeping it well away from any potential victim.

  Then Carin went to work clearing the largest infestation they had yet encountered. Strangleweed was everywhere, festooning the scrub on both sides of the roadway. The girl moved with graceful speed, almost dancing from clump to clump, her hair shining in the sun as she reduced acres of devil’s-guts to harmless ripples of sand.

  Megella glanced at her nephew and found him watching the girl, the expression on his face full of admiration. And not only for his lady’s spellcraft, Meg suspected.

  But when Carin had cleared the weed from the scrub vegetation nearest the roadway, they saw the true enormity of the task ahead. Strangleweed choked the landscape to the north and south for as far as they could see. And several dead goats lay covered in the sand produced by Carin’s spellwork.

  The goats explained the presence of Megella’s patient, why the man had been alone, on foot, so far from any apparent habitation or settlement. Evidently he had been herding the animals, and his goats had probably fallen victim to the devil’s-weed before the man comprehended what was happening to them. Or perhaps he had already fallen ill by then, and he lay here in the dust, fevered and bleeding, helpless to act while an alien scourge strangled his livestock.

  “Nephew, if you please,” Megella said. “Get me another clump of that weed. I fancy there is some improvement in our patient already. The bleeding from his nose has stopped.”

  “By the powers!” Theil exclaimed, as though astonished that Meg’s outlandish remedy showed real promise.

  While Verek tramped north to harvest devil’s-guts, and Carin pressed on a little farther to the south, destroying festoons of the weed as she went, Meg boiled down the first clump that Carin had secured. By the time both had returned to stand beside her in the road, Megella could say with certainty that her strangleweed sauce was working.

  “Look at him,” she almost crowed, pointing at her patient. “Sitting up, sipping tea, no blood oozing anywhere. I always knew my sister was a brilliant healer, and now the world should know it. Strangleweed! Boiled weed to constrain the blood.”

  Verek studied the man, looking suitably impressed, but grim.

  “There is a certain justice in it,” he muttered. “An invading weed from one world to counter the pestilence that has flowed to these shores from yet another distant place.”

  “Speaking of distant …”

  Megella trailed off as she scanned the road in both directions. It was empty.

  “When we set off from Granger,” she resumed, “I dreaded the prospect of encountering other travelers, for fear of confronting thieves and cutthroats. But now I wish our path were less lonely. I would accost any southbound riders, tell them of this remedy for the plague, and beg them to spread the knowledge to all whom they met.”

  Verek nodded. “The deserted state of this road surprises me. I would have expected far more traffic between here and the eastern coast.” He sighed. “But the twin plagues—disease and devil’s-guts—seem to have halted all commerce.”

  Then he shook his head. “I do not think, Aunt, that you—or anyone—could cook enough devil’s-guts to cure all the citizens of Ladrehdin who must, by now, have contracted the bleeding disease.”

  Verek pointed north. “And even if you could perform such prodigies, you would hardly dent the scourge that is covering the land. Weed hangs in curtains out there. It drapes every bush and shrub. And where the land is even slightly marshy, the weed grows so thick that nothing can be seen of any mud or water under it.”

  “Burn it,” Megella advised.

  Verek canted his head. “I wonder if it will burn. The weed is sappy green, and the land here is threaded with streams and seeps in which the noxious stuff may lie low and escape the flames.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Carin interjected from her post beside him. “I can burn it.”

  Megella heard the confidence in the girl’s voice. And so, apparently, did Verek. He looked at his lady, then nodded.

  “Yes, I think you can.”

  Theil walked over to speak to the man who had been sitting quietly, looking dazed and a little nauseated as he sipped the tea Megella had given him. She had also returned the fellow’s shirt so he could at least partially cover his nakedness. He was humiliated enough, she thought, to be sitting in the dust slathered in stinking green. No man in his condition would enjoy being seen naked by the lissome, ruddy-haired young woman who was standing with Megella.

  “You, sir, are looking much better,” Verek lied as he crouched beside the man. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ll live,” the fellow rasped. “Didn’t think I would.”

  Verek gave a half nod, half shrug. “Nor did I. But our excellent wisewoman here”—he tipped his head in Meg’s direction—“brewed a remedy that appears to be as effective as it is improbable. You are the first patient she has tried it on—and the first victim of the bleeding disease, to our knowledge, who has not succumbed.”

  The man peered up at Megella.

  “My thanks to you, grand’am,” he rasped.

  “No need to thank me. We are both indebted to my late sister, Merriam of Winfield. Do you know the name?”

  The fellow shook his head. “No, ma’am. But I am a man of these parts hereabouts. Nev
er ventured far. Was born in this scrub and figured to die here—just hoping to die of old age, is all.”

  “Tell me, then,” Verek said, reclaiming the man’s attention. “If we fire this countryside to clear it of strangleweed, how many lives will be threatened? Will we risk burning your neighbors? Or their livestock?”

  The man shook his head again.

  “Ain’t many folks out this way in the best of times,” he said, husky-voiced, “and there ain’t been nothin’ good about times of late. First came the devil’s-guts, slithering along to strangle everything and everybody. I seen it choke cattle and goats, and people, too, who let it get too near. The weed has covered the houses in the villages, and I hear it’s sunk boats up and down the coast.”

  The man paused for a sip of tea to ease his throat. As he continued, he rasped a little less.

  “Some people got out ahead of it. Some, like me, had a struggle rounding up our animals and herding them over this way, trying to keep ahead of the weed as it came crawling after us. Didn’t do me no good. My goats are all dead now.”

  The man raised his hand to the sky as if challenging Drisha.

  “Warn’t that devil’s weed bad enough? But no! The second affliction come on us then. Right quick, people started bleeding. And once the blood begun to flow, there warn’t any stopping it—not until a body was dead.”

  The fellow rubbed his nose and looked at the dried blood, mixed with powdery green, that flaked off in his hand. “I don’t know how you folks saved me, but if the devil’s-guts hadn’t done throttled my goats, I’d give ’em to you to square the debt.”

  “And I would return them to you just as quickly, with my thanks, for I am no goatherd,” Verek responded. “But what you have said eases my mind about the rightness of setting this countryside ablaze. We will burn it, and trust to providence that anyone who may still be alive out there will escape both the flames and the weed.”

  “Flames,” the man muttered. He sat up a little straighter, looking suddenly inspired. “Say! If’n you ain’t troubled by the way they died, devil-strangled and all, then help yourselves to the meat.” He gestured toward the dead goats beside the road. “Butcher all you want. Why, I’m feeling stronger just thinking about a big mess of broiled goat for supper.”

  Megella was not surprised when Verek quickly accepted the offer and went to collect three of the youngest animals that had suffocated under strangleweed. He is accustomed to meat and bread three times a day, she thought. And why not? He’s the lord of the manor, and even far from home he is willing to work like a wolf in pursuit of a good meal.

  Carin, who had by now left Megella’s side—with her weapons shouldered—went to help her wysard secure their supper. Meg saw them brushing sand off the goat carcasses—sand that had been strangleweed before Carin’s spellwork transformed it. Obviously, they were not troubled by a little magical residue.

  The girl went on from there, walking northward to the uncleared tracts. When she was far enough away that Megella’s patient would not be able to see, or hear, exactly how she set the fires, Carin shot two arrows into the scrub.

  Meg could not hear the girl either. But she saw the landscape respond to the one-word incantation that Carin would have shouted at it: “Burn!” The girl’s conjured blazes roared through the scrub, consuming everything: bushes, stunted trees, and strangleweed. From the southwest came a breeze that fanned the fires, urging them on, whipping them toward the distant coast to destroy all of the invading devil’s-guts the flames could reach.

  As Carin headed back toward camp, Verek quit watching the girl and returned to the business of butchering goats. Megella helped her patient get dressed.

  The man’s name, he informed her, was Flynn. And though he was rapidly improving, Flynn had lost enough blood to be weak. The man re-collapsed into the dust of the road as soon as Megella got his trousers on him. She rolled up her oldest blanket, pillowed his head on it, and left Flynn to sleep while she gathered brushwood from the south side—the uncharred side—of the road.

  “How long will it burn?” Megella asked, keeping her voice low as Carin rejoined her. “And how far?”

  Carin shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never set a fire like that and then just left it to burn itself out. For all I know, it’ll burn until there’s nothing left to burn.”

  “Wheesht,” Megella murmured. “Then I am glad we will be crossing the path of that fire as we continue to the northeast tomorrow. If it does not stop when it reaches the coast, then you may be called upon to summon up ocean waves to drown your magical flames.”

  “Well,” Carin said, “I’ve never actually done that, either—not on purpose anyway.” The girl drew the crystal amulet from her pocket. “I kind of think the dolphin called up that last wave, the one that put out the fire when Theil and I tried to destroy the crystals.” She frowned and shook her head. “Maybe we shouldn’t have made the attempt. Something about this”—the girl hefted the amulet in her palm—“feels different now.”

  Megella sighed. “We are all learning by trial and error, and we are bound to make mistakes. I am just happy that you have not accidentally turned me into a hedgehog, or burned yourself to a cinder, or done anything else irrevocable as you learn your craft, my dear young wysard-in-training.”

  Meg looked to the northeast, where Carin’s conjured fires blazed spectacularly now that the sun was lowering in the west.

  “Tomorrow, widgeon,” she murmured, “we will see what you have wrought.”

  Chapter 12

  A Concentration of the Mind

  Carin awoke so early, it was still dark enough to see the flashes like fireflies that brightened the east. She knew she wasn’t seeing the flickering of her conjured blazes in the far distance, or the first light of a new dawn. She recognized the singular nature of those twinklings on the horizon. They put her strongly in mind of her friend the woodsprite, who used to spark alongside her through the trees of the northern forests and the western mountains. Carin stood for a moment studying the distinctive glimmers, aching.

  The sprite wouldn’t like it here in the east, she thought as she stepped past a thicket of the dusty brushwood that dotted these low inland plains. The creature would find this scrubby stuff too short and too weedy for its taste. She could almost hear the sprite piping in its thin, reedy voice: “There are no high trees here. I cannot leap to the sky to see a woodland stretching before me for leagues.”

  Carin passed among the horses that were quietly browsing whatever they could find on the unburned side of the road. Her sand-spell had effectively cleared all the strangleweed from this area; they need not worry about their horses meeting the same fate as Flynn’s goats.

  But scattered through the landscape southward were patches that sparked and flashed as distinctively as the twinklings in the east. Though the strangleweed was not as thick to the south, the stuff was definitely out there, and spreading.

  How she hated it. The weed had tried to kill her on Angwid. And now it was here, threatening her adopted homeworld.

  All thanks to me, Carin thought bitterly. She’d botched it, abandoning her weapons and papers—and her friend—on Angwid. A wretched little sigh escaped her.

  As she studied the glimmers to the south, Carin considered touching off another magical inferno and sending it to consume the weed. But already a breeze was stirring, rustling the reeds that grew in the pond near their camp. When Carin reached the pond, she tossed up a handful of powdery dry silt from its banks. The breeze took the powder northeastward. Until the wind shifted—which wouldn’t happen until months from now, when the winter winds began to howl down from the highlands—she didn’t dare set a fire that could blaze back across their path and consume them.

  At the pond, Carin stripped and waded in. She had no soap, but she scrubbed all over with the fine sand that lined the pond’s bottom and banks. Much of it was strangleweed sand, the product of her spellwork.

  Carin sifted it through her fingers, and smiled. She’d r
eworked the spell of stone into something all her own—something more powerful. The spell of stone was easy to break. Verek had taught her the trick long ago. The victim only had to build a mental image to transform the stone of that spell into something breakable. Verek had suggested eggshells. But Carin’s favorite image was mud—a thin glaze of mud that quickly dried, covering her body in a brittle coating. All she had to do to break Verek’s spell was to imagine the dried mud flaking off her skin.

  Her sand-spell, however, was fundamentally different from Verek’s paralysis hex: it disintegrated the victim’s consciousness. With the mind no longer intact, the victim had no imagination left, no way to think itself out of the ensorcellment. Her sand-spell was permanent.

  To use it on a human would be murder. But Carin had no qualms about bespelling the strangleweed. She wanted it dead—exterminated.

  She finished scrubbing but stayed in the pond, floating on her back, watching the dawn break. The cool water was reviving her after a restless night. Carin’s sleep had been broken by a procession of dreams. Most of them, she couldn’t remember. One, however, kept coming back, replaying in her thoughts, impressing her with a sense of urgency.

  In the dream, Carin had been crying, and she hadn’t been herself. She’d been Alice—the same little Alice who had passed through the looking-glass and discovered the incantation that summoned the Jabberwock dragon. This time, though, Alice had fallen into a rabbit hole that went down and down like a very deep well.

  Like a wysards’ well, Carin thought, remembering.

  At the bottom of the well, Alice had succumbed to tears. In her frustration and loneliness, the child had cried an ocean of tears, and into that salt water she had then slipped and fallen. “I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” Alice had said, swimming about, desperately seeking a way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!”