The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  Carin had started up from the dream, gasping for breath that didn’t, for a moment, seem to be there. She’d disturbed Verek, but not enough to bring him fully awake. He’d rolled over onto his side, taking with him most of the blanket they were sharing. Carin had tiptoed off then, leaving Theil to sleep alone. Her night had been so restless, so full of dreamscapes and images, he certainly could not have been resting soundly beside her.

  He was awake now. “Alice!” he shouted. “Where are you?”

  It took Carin a moment to realize that she wasn’t back in her dream, back in Alice’s rabbit-hole adventure and swimming around in Alice’s tears. No, this was reality. The day was dawning, and she had been missed.

  “Coming!” Carin shouted, splashing out of the pond and grabbing her clothes. “Be right there.”

  On her way back to camp, she met Megella—or “Millicent,” as the wisewoman was known to her patient. Since Flynn the goatherd had joined their party, they had been going by their aliases. Flynn knew Verek and Carin as “Forester and Alice,” husband and wife, ordinary southern citizens who were fleeing the twin scourges of strangleweed and bleeding disease. By great good fortune—so they told Flynn—they had fallen in with the wisewoman Millicent, whose skills as a healer had kept them safe.

  Wouldn’t Mister Flynn be appalled, Carin thought, if he knew where ‘Alice’ really came from, and how she had inflicted upon Ladrehdin the devil’s-weed and the Ashen Curse, two separate plagues from two different worlds.

  “There you are,” the wisewoman said, catching sight of Carin through the brush. “Your man was quite concerned, waking up just now and finding you gone.”

  “I went for a bath,” Carin said. “I would have got back sooner, except it felt so good to soak for a while.”

  Megella nodded. “Had I opened my eyes earlier, I would have joined you. But now there is no time. ‘Forester’ is keen to be away and to see what your fires have left in their wake.” The wisewoman rattled the handle of the bucket she was carrying. “I am off for water to make the tea. Go eat your breakfast, widgeon, and dry your hair. You’ll catch cold, running around with a wet head.”

  As Carin approached camp from behind the wagon then, out of Flynn’s sight, Verek caught up with her, grabbed her, and kissed her with all the urgency of their first reunion, when she had come to him on Earth.

  “I thought I’d lost you again,” he murmured. “I thought the strangleweed had you, or the dolphyn had drawn you into the void and drowned you in that ocean of nothingness.”

  Drowned, Carin thought. There it is again.

  She rose on tiptoe so she could whisper in his ear. “No, my lord. I just woke up early and decided I wanted a bath. I wish I’d taken you with me.”

  “Why? Because I stink?”

  “Partly,” she whispered. “Partly that. But mostly for the chance to get your clothes off you.”

  Verek made a sort of rumbling sound deep in his throat, like he was trying to clear it but couldn’t. He pulled Carin tightly against him, and was tracing her contours with both his hands as they kissed, when Megella came to the wagon to dig her favorite herbal tea out of her packs.

  “Not now, you two,” she said, interrupting them. “Daylight’s wasting. Carin, er, Alice needs her breakfast. And you, Master Forester: you need to see to the horses. This wagon will not hitch itself.”

  The woman pulled a cloth from her packs and tossed it to Carin. “Go to the fire, widgeon, and dry off. And be of good heart. Our friend the goatherd is much improved. I think we can safely leave him with any survivors we meet who will consent to take him.” Megella smiled. “And then you two can have your privacy again. Drisha knows I am quite happy to give it to you, anytime the pair of you want to go behind the wagon.”

  * * *

  Privacy was in short supply all that day. After their breakfast of goat and tea, they hitched up the wagon, settled Flynn comfortably in billows of blankets, tied the bobtailed horses to the tailboard, and resumed their journey, Carin driving. With Megella’s patient propped up in the wagon bed barely an arm’s length behind her, Carin found her tongue displeasingly tied.

  Every time she started to talk to the wisewoman, she realized the subject was off limits. She did not want the goatherd hearing her Alice-drowning-in-salt-water dream. She could not discuss magical subjects. If she had been alone with Megella, she would have talked over ideas for widening the reach of her sand-spell. Killing strangleweed that way was potentially far safer and less destructive than burning the countryside to bare soil.

  For that’s what Carin’s magical inferno had done. As they followed the road northeastward, dropping gradually toward the coast, moving through a landscape that became increasingly wetter, marshier, and more potholed, they saw what Carin had wrought. Any place her fires had touched, the vegetation was gone. Not scorched, not charred nor blackened, but gone. The ground had been wiped clean.

  Her inferno had destroyed the strangleweed across a broad front: that much was true. But had it also sterilized this land? Would anything ever grow in this place again?

  Out of the corner of her eye, Carin saw Flynn sit up in the wagon bed and stare at what had to be, for him, a frighteningly alien landscape.

  He was born and raised here, she thought uneasily. He knows the heath and the marshes and every plant that used to cover them. What’s he thinking now?

  Could the man possibly believe that a fire of natural origin, even the hottest firestorm ever sparked by summer lightning, could have obliterated a landscape this way?

  For most of the morning, Flynn said nothing. He seemed to be as tongue-tied as Carin felt. Megella—“Millicent”—spoke to him from time to time, asking how he fared, urging him to drink more water, fussing that he would catch a chill or suffer heatstroke, depending on how many blankets he was under at the moment. The man answered her with unfailing politeness, but he had eyes only for the barren landscape where his goats had once grazed in fields of relative plenty.

  Toward noon, Flynn cried “Stop!”—so suddenly that Carin hauled back on the reins before she even thought. Megella’s cobs threw up their heads in surprise.

  The man clambered out of the wagon and ran from the road’s packed surface to fall on his knees in the soft, sandy soil beside it. He bent over the dirt, cupping his hands around something Carin could not see from her post on the wagon seat. He stayed there, rocking on his knees, bending almost double as though covering his discovery, protecting it.

  “What in the name of mischief is he doing?” Verek asked, riding back to see why they had halted, why Megella’s patient had flung himself so precipitously out of the wagon.

  When Carin could only shake her head in puzzlement, Verek dismounted and went to join the man. He approached the fellow slowly, cautiously, as though he thought Flynn might spring up and fly at him for coming too near whatever the man was protecting.

  But Flynn, catching sight of him, beckoned “Forester” closer, seemingly eager to show what he had found.

  “It’s marsh elder,” the goatherd said in a voice that still sounded raw and raspy. “A new spring shoot of it.” Flynn pointed. “And there’s another. And here’s more!” He got to his feet and lurched along, calling out every time he spotted new growth.

  “That’s fine, man,” Verek said, going after the fellow and steering him back to the wagon. “It is a good sign. The fire did not destroy the roots. Seeing this, I am convinced that burning off the strangleweed was the proper course of action. To judge by these new shoots, the land will soon recover. You’ll go back to raising goats out here.”

  Flynn wobbled to the wagon; Verek helped him up. The man’s eyes were shining. “Thanks be to Drisha and a host of mercies,” he rasped. “I thought it was all gone. Everything burned and gone …”

  “There’s life here still,” Verek said, plucking a sprig of the marsh elder and handing it up to Megella. “But not enough to feed five horses. We must press on and find water and browsing for these animals.”
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  He remounted. Carin shook the cobs’ reins, and on they went. They did not stop to eat a midday meal but gnawed cold goat meat as they traveled. Verek allowed only brief rests, taking a few minutes at long intervals to dismount and move among the horses, checking the tack and harness to be certain none of the animals developed sores.

  Carin took advantage of these moments to get down and stretch her legs, while Megella hoisted herself into the bed of the wagon to fuss over her patient.

  The wisewoman remained puffed with pride over saving the goatherd from the bleeding disease. The man appeared to be quite well now, except for his lingering weakness.

  And that, Carin thought, might be only a pretense. Now that Flynn had got over his shock at the burning of his world, he was obviously enjoying his status as the wisewoman’s sole patient.

  Were there no other people around here to help? Carin wondered, scanning the horizon and seeing no movement. Flynn wouldn’t want them dropping him off in the midst of this desolation. He would have to stay with them, however long it took to find him some company other than their own.

  By day’s end, they had still not met any other refugees or travelers. The road remained deserted, as it had been since they left the main highway north of Plainsboro.

  But they were coming to the edge of the huge swath that Carin’s inferno had burned bare. Here, some of the native vegetation had survived. And scattered through it were occasional clumps and festoons of strangleweed.

  “At last,” Verek called from his position in the lead. He pointed to his left. “That green swale. There’s water down there, I’ll wager, and no weed showing. It’s the best we’ll do tonight, I think.”

  They pulled off the road into a grassy clearing that sloped gently to a good-sized pond. Low, leafy trees lined the pond’s far side, their branches drooping almost into the water. From the wagon seat, Carin eyed the branches and the water’s edge, looking for tendrils of strangleweed. But this little oasis appeared to be free of devil’s guts.

  Efficiently they commenced the tasks of setting up camp. Verek unhitched the team. Megella angled to the nearest brushy patch in search of dry sticks for kindling. Carin lifted a kettle down from the wagon and went for water.

  She paused on the bank, again running her gaze over its vegetation. But every plant that grew in this swale seemed to belong here.

  Only when she had the kettle fully submerged, in a two-handed grip, did she see the tendrils. They shot out of the pond’s cold, clear depths, filling the kettle’s bowl and whipping around its hanger and both of Carin’s arms. Before she could do more than gasp, they had yanked her under.

  The tendrils wrapped around Carin’s chest, constricting so tightly that air was forced from her lungs. Her life’s breath bubbled to the pond’s surface. She still held the kettle. The tendrils locked her hands to it, and the weight of the weed-wrapped brass was enough to drag her to the bottom. The pond was not very deep. By the last rays of the sun refracting through the water, Carin saw mats of strangleweed carpeting the pond’s silty bottom.

  It’s hiding, she thought. The stuff has learned how to hide.

  She was suffocating, but the sight of the sly, stealthy weed angered her more than it frightened her. Carin fought to wrench free of the wiry tendrils. They only grew tighter. Several slithered up from her chest to finger her neck, as if they meant to toy with her before they strangled her.

  Then a featureless form sank through the water beside her. Carin sensed it as a shadow blocking the sun. She could not turn to see what had joined her in the pond. The tendrils held her too firmly.

  But she glimpsed a boot—one she knew well. On more than one occasion, she had undone the braid that fastened that boot-top and pulled the soft leather off its owner’s foot.

  The foot kicked violently. Theil Verek was fighting for his life. And Carin knew: he had jumped into the pond after her, and now they were both in imminent danger of drowning.

  Carin’s hands were pinned to the kettle. She could not see them under the enveloping mass of greenery.

  She could not see Verek’s hands either, but she could picture them. His hands had enthralled her since her first meeting with him in the woodland of Ruain. Even then, when Carin had been fairly certain he would kill her, she’d been fascinated with his lean, long-fingered hands.

  Now she pictured Verek lazily lifting two fingers of his right hand, the way he had raised them the first time he’d cast the spell of stone on her. She saw his unhindered fingers point to the strangleweed that bound her hands. In her mind, but through Theil’s fingers, Carin worked the magic, twisting his spell of brief paralysis into a deadly enchantment of her own devising: the spell of sand.

  The tendrils up and down her arms disintegrated. Carin pulled free of the sand that now filled and buried the kettle.

  Immediately straightening all ten of her fingers, she threw the spell the length, breadth, and depth of the pond.

  Every wisp of weed crumbled away.

  Thick, gritty sand swirled to the bottom. The kettle disappeared, deeply buried, and Carin’s senses nearly slipped away with it. She hung at the edge of consciousness, aware of little now except a desperate need to breathe.

  And then she was in the air, dragging it into her lungs, gasping painfully and so loudly that she could hear nothing else. Verek held her head above water. She felt him against her, his chest heaving with hers as he also sucked in the life-giving element.

  Presently, when Carin could begin to catch sounds other than their agonized breathing, she heard Megella calling, “Oh, Drisha!” Again and again the woman cried out. “My ducks! I thought I had lost you both.”

  For a time, nothing else penetrated except sensations: grit and water gave way to grass and a breeze. The breeze felt cold. Gooseflesh rose on Carin’s arms, and her legs seemed weighted down.

  Her limbs lightened a little as Megella worked Carin’s sodden clothes off her. A blanket mantled her then, bringing warmth. The blanket smelled like the inside of the wisewoman’s cottage, scented with every healing herb that grew on the southern plains.

  A fire began to crackle in the dusk, throwing off heat that made every other sensation run together, then melt away. With her eyes closed, Carin drew deep breaths, checking to be certain she could fill her lungs with all the air she wanted. Reassured that she could, she drifted into sleep, to dream of Verek’s hands, to dream of the times she had gently traced the scars they bore and the times she had kissed the stump of his little finger where it had been removed from his left hand in a wicked ritual to “concentrate the mind.”

  The mind: Carin’s felt softly unfocused now. But working her sand-spell through Verek had wrenched her wits almost inside-out, such had been her more-than-mortal effort of concentration.

  Dismemberment? Crude and unnecessary, scoffed Carin’s dream-consciousness. To sharpen the mind’s focus, rendering its thoughts acute as rays through a sunglass, nothing surpasses the experience of drowning.

  Chapter 13

  Liquid Fire

  Megella said, “You ought to be resting too, nephew of mine.” She sat with Verek at the fire, sipping tea and watching him watch Carin. “I am well awake. If our matchless destroyer of strangleweed should stir in the night, I will rouse you.”

  Meg leaned over to check on Flynn, who slept opposite Carin. “In my supplies, I still have a few doses of sleep-for-now,” she added. “If the goatherd should wake, I will put him under again.”

  Verek shook his head. “When that fool rouses, I want the pleasure of slugging him back to oblivion.” Theil clenched his fist as if anticipating the moment. “I wish to Drisha that goatherd’s path had never crossed ours. He’s been nothing but trouble.”

  Nephew, you speak unfairly, Megella thought.

  The man had, in fact, been no trouble at all—until now. Flynn had been a model patient, submitting to any treatment Meg dispensed, never complaining. But in the pond this evening, he had seen too much. The party of “Forester, Alice, a
nd Millicent” had lost the trust of this simple lowlander.

  When Carin went into the water, it was Flynn, ironically, who raised the alarm. Meg had been squeezing through bushes at the edge of the clearing, snapping off dead limbs for kindling. She neither saw nor heard a thing. Even Verek, who generally kept an appreciative eye on his lady love, had been distracted, his back turned as he unharnessed Megella’s cobs.

  If Flynn had not witnessed Carin’s tumble into the pond, the girl might well have drowned. But the man came flying down out of the wagon, shouting at Verek and gesturing wildly.

  “The young missus! Sir—she’s gone under!”

  Thus alerted, Verek had been the first to reach the water. He had immediately jumped in—a nearly tragic case of leaping before he looked.

  Flynn had quickly skidded to a stop on the bank of the pond, and Megella had raced across the clearing to stand with him. A shaft of sunlight, perfectly illuminating the underwater scene, allowed them to witness it all: The strangleweed wrapping Carin up to her neck. Bubbles rising as her life began to be squeezed from her body. The weed grabbing Verek too, but not ensnaring him completely. He was trapped, helpless … except he had one hand free. His right hand. He managed to keep it clear of the writhing, slithering tendrils.

  With it, Verek reached out to Carin, but with a gesture that Flynn must surely have thought odd. Verek seemed not to grab for the girl but rather to aim for her, as though his hand were a weapon.

  And indeed, it became one. As Flynn and Megella watched, fire spouted from his fingertips. It streaked through the water, blindingly bright but having no more effect on the fluid than did the late-day sun. The pond did not boil, steam did not rise, the surface did not explode.

  When the fiery streak hit Carin, it seemed to pierce her, though she appeared unharmed by it. But as it penetrated the clump of strangleweed binding the girl’s hands, it blew the tendrils to dust. Sand roiled, clouding the water, ruining the view from above.