Shen seated Carin and Megella at the table, poured them cups of homebrew, then excused himself to go help Verek tend the horses.
Meg, sighing contentedly, reclined in her chair, glad to have a backrest after her long, slouchy horseback ride.
“You seem rather quiet tonight, widgeon,” Meg said, eyeing Carin across the table.
For his guests, Shen had lit every candle he owned. Their light glinted off Carin’s mane of auburn hair and struck sparks from the girl’s startlingly green eyes. She was tanned from their weeks of summer travel, but otherwise the girl seemed none the worse for the long exposure. Living rough had not sapped her beauty. She was radiant, almost preternaturally so, as if infused with the elements—a creature who could move with ease through any realm, be it rocky, airy, fiery, or liquid.
Meg could not shake the image of Carin standing barefoot in the sand, the storm-wracked ocean roiling behind her, rain falling in blinding torrents, her hair streaming on her shoulders, and a finger of fire dropping from a lightning bolt to touch the girl’s hand. Meg sighed again and shook her head at the memory, half convinced she had only dreamed it.
“Where have your thoughts strayed?” Megella pressed the girl when Carin let the silence stretch on.
Carin lifted her chin, then slowly pulled the crystal dolphyn out from under her shirt. She studied it in the candlelight for a moment before tucking it back out of sight.
“I feel …” the girl murmured, then relapsed into silence. But after a lengthy pause, she glanced at Megella and went on:
“All afternoon, I tried to believe it was only my imagination—or my happiness at being back in Ruain. But from the moment we climbed the cliff and crossed into Theil’s lands, I’ve felt this crystal tugging at me. Very lightly, to start.” Carin touched the pendant through her shirt. “And still barely noticeable, only slightly stronger the farther west we get. It’s like the dolphin is seeking something.”
“Another of its kind, perhaps?” Megella softly suggested. “Did you not tell me that a third crystal waits in the chamber of wysards, close by Ruain’s wellspring of power?”
Carin nodded. “I used to think of that third dolphin as my anchor. I trusted it to keep me from getting lost in the void between the worlds.” She tilted her head. “But the void should never be opened. It’s dangerous. The things that pass through can be deadly.”
“Like the bleeding disease, and devil’s-guts.”
“Right.” Carin leaned back in her chair. “Otherworldly plagues, and even alien magic.”
Carin’s gaze was unfocused. The girl had the same sort of look that used to come over Merriam’s face when Merri shared her memories with Meg. Carin seemed to be gazing into her past for particular memories, sifting out the salient points. She tilted her head as though mentally picturing certain items.
“A book made the trip through the void at the same time I originally did,” Carin said. “Back when I first bobbed up in Granger’s millpond, a book from my old bedroom on Earth floated into the wizards’ well at Theil’s house. In its pages, I found strong magic.”
“The power you used to destroy a necromancer?” Megella muttered.
Carin nodded, and again touched the pendant under her shirt. “As long as Theil and I have the crystals, this world remains in danger.”
Both fell silent. Meg suspected that Carin was remembering her attempt to destroy the crystals, months ago at the stock pond south of Greaterford. From the girl’s inferno of magian fire, the amulets had emerged unscathed.
But now the travelers had returned to Ruain, a land that seethed with magic. Would Carin repeat the attempt before they reached Verek’s manor house? Or would she wait to combine her strength with the power of the wysards’ well?
The prospect of those two entities united against a common threat sent a cold little thrill through Megella. Such combined power would be spectacular to behold … and terrifying.
She set down her cup of beer, got stiffly to her feet, and started slicing the cold meat that Shen had put on the table for their supper. What with waiting for the two men to get done stabling the horses, Meg had gotten hungry. Her mouth watered as she carved the knife through the roast venison loin.
Meg noticed Carin’s gaze slowly focus on the meat and the moving blade. The girl was returning from deep thoughts and, possibly, future plans. She sprang to her feet.
“Let me do that, Megella,” Carin said. “You must be worn out from riding all day. You didn’t get off that horse one time, and I know from experience how much it hurts when you’re not used to it.”
Meg shook her head and waved away the girl’s attempt to take the knife from her.
“I am hardly tired at all, widgeon. I napped the full way from the cliff to here. You were right about ‘Bob’ being easy to ride. The fellow is a four-footed easy chair … Why don’t you find another knife and cut us some of that cheese? I cannot tell from the aroma what variety it is.”
Carin did as Meg suggested. After slicing and sampling the cheese—which turned out to be mare’s milk—the girl absentmindedly twiddled the knife and went back to worrying out loud.
“Maybe we just have to be careful with the crystals. If we lock them up somewhere safe, maybe bury them under the wall at Theil’s house, they won’t be used to open the void ever again. Maybe that’s all we must do to keep otherworldly dangers from coming here.”
Meg clucked her tongue. “You would be wise, I believe, to bury the crystals in an unmarked grave. And then to eradicate any mention of them in Legary’s—um, I mean Theil’s—books, to keep your wizardly descendants from ever learning of the existence of such powerful charms.”
“My wizardly—” Carin broke off. She eyed Megella.
Meg chuckled. “Yes, widgeon, your descendants. They will be many in number, I predict, and all possessed of a great gift. Why do you think I have persisted in making this journey to Ruain with you and your lover? For the pleasure of a long, hard trip? No, I accompany you in anticipation of midwifing your children into this world.”
“Right,” Carin said rather blankly. Then she smiled and touched her belly.
The first child already conceived, Megella thought, watching her.
Then the smile left Carin’s face. The girl raked her cheese knife across the grain of Shen’s rough table. She tapped the wood, as if evoking the protection of a tree spirit.
“I don’t deserve to be this happy,” she said almost in a whisper.
“Tah!” Meg scoffed. “After what you have endured? Five years of menial service in the household of that blockhead Crowter? And then a time of hardship far beyond my view, as you made your lonely way to Ruain, thence with Verek to the eyrie of the necromancer? And then: such travels as I cannot imagine, to far and unwholesome places.”
Meg reached to touch Carin’s hand. “Duckling, I can think of no one who is more deserving of a little happiness. I am delighted that you and Theil, having come safely through your perils, are now firmly bonded, the one as devoted as the other. Each of you is exactly what the other needs, I daresay.”
The look on Carin’s face was hard to interpret. It seemed to be equal parts hope, guilt, and fear.
“But I am a murderess,” the girl whispered.
“What? Wheesht,” Megella muttered, belatedly recalling the episode with the goatherd. Flynn’s demise had nearly escaped her.
Meg felt a rush of alarm, not so much at remembering Flynn’s fate as at nearly forgetting it.
What else am I forgetting? What must I do to keep my memories?
Megella cleared her throat, feeling now that she should tread carefully.
“I do not pretend to understand the ways in which your gift has matured,” she said slowly. “When you were newly arrived in Granger, just a scared little girl with big green eyes, I sensed a deep strength in you.” Meg squeezed Carin’s hand, then straightened.
“As the years passed and I watched you grow, I realized you were the very thing Lord Legary had despaired
of finding in this world: a natural adept. Or perhaps not so natural,” Megella added, and immediately regretted it when Carin’s head whipped around, her gaze boring into Meg’s.
Then the girl shrugged one shoulder, her characteristic gesture of nervous tension or, sometimes, anger.
“‘Not so natural’ is right,” Carin said. “Theil once told me that I shouldn’t be here. He’s changed his mind, I think. But I know Ladrehdin is not my natural home. I come from Earth. Whatever gift I have was born ‘out there.’”
Carin gave the cheese knife a vague wave, then resumed her seat at the table. She toyed with her cup of beer but did not sip it.
After a pause, she added, “It wasn’t until I killed Flynn that I really understood how dangerous I could be to Ladrehdin.” Carin sighed. “The truth is, Megella, I’m a trespasser—an invader here, the same as the strangleweed. That stuff, if it gets out of control, can destroy everything in its path. And I’m afraid I’m no different. What if I get out of control? What happens if I can’t restrain myself? You must admit, the results were pretty grim the last time I messed up.”
“But as Theil has said, you are young and largely untrained.” Again Megella leaned toward the girl, both for emphasis and to signal her trust of Carin. “Already you have shown a new mastery. You worked the spell of sand with perfect control when you stopped the spores from sprouting inside our skulls!”
Again came the one-shouldered shrug. “I’m not sure that was a tough-enough test,” the girl said, stubbornly. “I had the weed up my nose too, remember. I can probably trust my natural impulses to keep me from killing myself—that’s simple self-preservation.”
Is it? Meg wondered, thinking of the girl’s dunking in the Easthaven harbor and the whispers about a suicide attempt.
But Carin was still speaking, and Meg lent an ear.
“Whether my instincts will rein me in to protect the people I love … I think that’s debatable,” the girl murmured. “I had a good friend once, and the creature went half out of its mind, worrying that I was going to leave it behind to die, and it got so scared that it grabbed me and hurt me a little. It didn’t do anything, really, it just squeezed me.” Carin rubbed her wrist as though recalling the sensation.
“Unnh!” she exclaimed then, a sound of disgust. “You know what I did. I followed my ‘natural impulses’ and I got out of there. Off I went, thinking only of myself … leaving the woodsprite to die.”
“But did the creature die?” Meg shot back. “If Theil’s suspicions are correct, then you might very well see your woodsprite again. We are back in the forests of Ruain, as I am sure you have noticed, widgeon.”
Megella would have liked to discuss the matter further, to dissuade the girl—if she could—from holding herself to blame for the misfortunes of every soul she had ever met. But booted feet came tramping up on the porch, and the two men entered the cabin, talking loudly together, Shen bowing his noble guest through the door ahead of him.
“Please pardon our keeping you waiting so long,” Verek said, bending over the back of Carin’s chair to kiss her. “Those two bobtails refused to enter the barn, but stood stolidly in the yard, ignoring our efforts to coax them with rations of oats. Finally we stripped the pair of their loads and turned them out to graze whatever they can find. The grass is thin under these bristling cedars, but those horses seemed as happy as colts in a spring pasture.” Verek laughed. “I wonder that you did not feel the cabin shake, the way those brutes were kicking up their heels. They have put on flesh—and better fettle overall—since we acquired them.”
“Please, my lady, eat,” Shen said, indicating the meat and cheese. He went to a cupboard that was built into the wall opposite the dog’s bed and pulled out a basket. “Madam Megella,” he murmured, approaching Meg almost diffidently and lifting a cloth to reveal a stack of oatcakes, “will you take bread?”
“With pleasure.” Meg delicately dabbed her napkin to her lips. “I think I speak for all three of your guests when I express my thanks for a meal that offers nothing dried, cured, jerked, or salted.”
“Mmm,” mumbled Carin and Verek together, appreciatively, both with their mouths full. No one spoke for a good while then, as the travelers stuffed themselves with the delicious, well-seasoned roast. When they finally finished, Shen stepped again to his cupboard and brought to the table three bright-red apples.
“Where in creation—!” Verek exclaimed. “This is a rare treat.” He took a crisp, crunchy bite. “How did you come by these?”
“Traded for ’em,” Shen replied. “I lost a stand of fine big cedars. They got covered up with some kind of devil’s-weed that I never saw out this way before. That weed killed mature trees faster than if their trunks had been girdled. It just seemed to suck the life out of them. So I felled the dead ones, cut ’em up for firewood, and hauled it to Glimmerdon. Found a fellow there who had apples and wanted wood.”
“From what I have seen,” Verek said, shooting a glance at Carin and Megella before returning his attention to Shen, “you may have been lucky to lose only the one stand. That weed has laid waste to large tracts of valuable land.”
Shen nodded. “I know it, sir. In Glimmerdon the people spoke of little else. Hardly a single farm or forest escaped an infestation. The apple trader told me, and others confirmed his account, that the weed was first seen in the vicinity of Penfield. It choked out a large stand of maple—leaving the fletchers bereft of their favorite shaft-wood. From there, it spread quickly and far.”
“Penfield!” Verek exclaimed. “The Penfield maples yield a fine, straight-grained wood for arrow shafts. I get my own arrows from the fletchers there.”
Carin caught her breath with an audible gasp.
“Your arrows, my lord?” she asked softly. “Those with the jasper tips that, uh, got stolen?”
Verek met the girl’s gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. It is particularly irksome that those thieves of Angwid made off with shafts crafted from the finest of Ruain’s hardwoods. First I suffer the loss of my arrows, and now I am told that the woods from which they were crafted are also lost.”
“Replanting has commenced, sir,” Shen put in. “While the bindweed remained green, no one dared venture into the dead groves for fear of getting tangled up in the stuff. I, too, held off harvesting my cedars until the weed had withered. You may find it hard to credit, my lord, but that stuff could toss its tendrils at a body as fast as a snake may strike. Any who came close risked strangulation.”
“I do not doubt you, Shen,” Verek replied. “I saw goats throttled to death when they ventured near clumps of the stuff.”
Shen visibly relaxed. “It is good, my lord, that you have witnessed for yourself the weed’s destructive power. Many in Glimmerdon were anxious, fearing that you might hold them to account for failing to protect your lands from the green invader.”
“You may tell them for me,” Verek said in deliberate, measured tones, leaning toward Shen for emphasis, “that Theil Verek holds the people of Ruain entirely blameless in this matter. I have seen much of the strangleweed, and I am persuaded that the bane has its origins in a strange, far country. No one here could have anticipated the arrival of such a virulent parasite, or done aught to combat it once it got a foothold in the Penfield maple groves or any field or wood.”
Verek looked again at Carin. Megella noticed the girl seemed agitated: she was nervously rolling something in her hand. Meg glimpsed an object like a wooden bead. Verek reached to put his hand on Carin’s—a gesture that seemed to calm the girl’s fidgets.
“But tell me, Shen,” Verek said, turning back to their host, “of the replanting you mentioned. The strangleweed left behind such blight, I wonder whether the affected tracts can be made productive again.”
“For a time after the weed yellowed and shriveled,” Shen replied, “many farmers and foresters still feared to walk where the infestation had been. Reports came from all ’round of men dying quickly, in great pain, their lungs as like to
have been torn from them, after they set foot on the blighted lands.”
“How many?” Verek sharply demanded. “How many dead?”
Shen shook his head.
“I cannot say, my lord. If you are bound for Glimmerdon, then I think you may receive from the sheriff there a more exact count than I could offer you. I heard only that it was not safe to breathe the air where the weed had died.” Shen wrinkled his nose. “Some said the rotting weed poisoned the air and the soil; others insisted the danger lay in inhaling its spores. At all events, those who suffered an affliction died so very quickly, and in such agony, that others were forewarned. Everyone I spoke with in Glimmerdon had given the blighted places a wide berth—until it rained, that is.”
“It rained?” Carin echoed, the girl’s eyes bright in the candlelight as she looked at Shen. “A big storm, brilliant lightning, buckets of rain?”
The steward nodded. “Yes, my lady. Veritable buckets came down, as you say. And great bolts of lightning, threatening to set my cedars ablaze. And such a din of thundering that I thought the sky must shatter. When the storm had passed and the dawn broke clear, the air had the freshness of spring. The world felt cleansed.”
Shen flared his nostrils, as if he wished to breathe again that rain-washed air. And again Carin and Verek exchanged glances.
“After the storm moved on,” the steward added, “I walked into the grove of cedars the weed had killed, and discovered that the tallest among them had indeed been blackened by a bolt. But at the feet of the dead I spied a young wood-rat nibbling a seedling. The ground was greening with new sprouts. That rain, my lady, washed away the poison. The storm made it safe to enter the blighted places.” Shen nodded, as if with satisfaction, then turned back to Verek.
The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3) Page 26
