WATERSPELL Book 1:
The Warlock
Deborah J. Lightfoot
Copyright © 2011 by Deborah J. Lightfoot
All rights reserved. This book is protected under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state, and local laws.
Writing a multilayered, multivolume work of fiction is a big undertaking. By purchasing this book, you’re acknowledging the author’s hard work and years of dedication. Infringements of copyright deprive the author and publisher of their rightful royalties. Please pay for your copy and refrain from unauthorized copying or file-sharing. Thank you.
Seven Rivers Publishing
P.O. Box 682
Crowley, Texas 76036
www.waterspell.net
First Paperback Edition: October 2011
First Electronic Edition: November 2011
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Waterspell Book 1—The Warlock: A Fantasy
by Deborah J. Lightfoot
Summary: Drawn into the schemes of an angry wizard, Carin glimpses the place she once called home. It lies upon a shore that seems unreachable. To learn where she belongs, and how to get there, the teenage traveler must decipher the words of an alien book, follow the clues in a bewitched poem, conjure a dragon from a pool of magic—and tread carefully around a seductive but volatile, emotionally scarred sorcerer who can’t seem to decide whether to love her or kill her.
ISBN 978-0-9728768-3-4 (E-book)
ISBN 978-0-9728768-4-1 (Paperback)
This book is available in print at most online retailers.
For F.C.L., who told me, early on, “Don’t let them change it.”
With thanks to all my colleagues—writers, editors, and literary agents—who offered valuable advice that helped to improve this book (and its sequels) in ways great and small.
Special thanks to the members of the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington Four Star Critique Group who patiently sat through my endless readings and inspired me with your astute and incisive pointers. You helped me curb my excesses, clarify my thinking and my wording, dig deeper into the layers of my story (and my psyche), and more fully realize the potential of this long and complicated history of a Far Country.
Each of you must know how deeply grateful I am to you for your insights, ideas, expertise, questions, patience, and enthusiasm. Thank you for supporting me in my grand obsession, all these years.
—D.J.L.S.
CONTENTS
Prologue: The Path Ahead
1. The Swordsman
2. The Puzzle-Book
3. Secrets
4. Questions
5. The Riddle
6. The Mistake
7. Darkness
8. Two Horrors
9. The Note
10. The Mirror Pool
11. Oblivion
12. Suspicions
13. A Susceptibility
14. A Dragon
15. A Test
16. Promises
17. The Magic of Life
18. Visions
19. The Book of Archamon
20. The Truth
21. The Trap
22. One Dolphin
Not everyone immediately recognizes
a piece of flotsam as a possible
bridge to a shore that
seems unreachable …
—Theodore Zeldin
Prologue
The Path Ahead
The wisewoman never asked directly, never demanded of Carin: “Where do you come from, you strange, surprising child? Who are you?” But she breathed her questions in an undertone when she thought Carin couldn’t hear.
Time passed, and the woman watched with shrewd regard, ever wondering. What’s going on, girl, behind those cool green eyes that view the world with such detachment? You’ve borne up patiently these five years, with your gaze cast groundward to hide your thoughts from those who think you have none. Oh, you’re a self-contained little wight, as guarded in your speech as in your glances. You pretend to be indifferent to your past and resigned to your present. But I have seen you puzzling beside the millpond, gazing into its waters, wondering: ‘What brought me here? Where did this journey start, and where do I go now?’
The seasons turned, and at last the wisewoman drew Carin aside. “I have considered carefully. Indeed, child, I have thought of little else. Still I cannot fathom where your journey began. But I clearly see the path that lies before you now.”
The woman did not point. She would not risk drawing anyone’s eye to the pair standing apart. She merely tipped her head, keeping her hand hidden in the folds of her shawls, tightly gripping the amulet she had fashioned against this moment.
“Go north, girl,” she ordered, her gaze locked with Carin’s. “Run from here. You have no home in this village. Granger is much too hidebound and suspicious for the likes of you. Your place is in the North. If you belong anywhere, child, you belong there.”
Chapter 1
The Swordsman
Carin felt the hoofbeats before she heard them—a barely noticeable tremor underfoot, hardly enough to suggest the approach of a rider but enough to stop her mid-stride.
She turned and studied the leafless trees. Nothing moved. No breeze rattled the branches, no acorn fell to earth, no dead limb snapped. Nothing relieved the woodland’s emptiness.
But she was no longer alone under these oaks. A season on her own had taught her what solitude felt like, and it didn’t feel like this.
Every impulse that had brought her to this place screamed at her to get out of sight. Don’t get caught—not now, after all this time and all that way, those long miles that stretched behind. And not here in this high, pathless woodland that had seemed to hold no life.
The papery dry leaves under her boots barely rustled as Carin darted into a thicket. “Unh!” she gasped at the cold and darkness enveloping her. The pale autumn sun didn’t penetrate here. To a passing rider, she would surely be invisible.
She grew still and listened. But the woods stayed silent, with a hush like the calm while the storm-clouds build.
Carin tensed. A shiver ran through her.
There—
She caught them again, tremors in the earth: hoofbeats, now unmistakable. As she hid in the shadows, her breath suspended, she followed their rhythm, the cadence they struck at the threshold of hearing.
Nearer the hoofbeats came—ever nearer and more distinct. They broke to a gallop.
With a sudden sharp burst of noise, a great snapping and splintering of brittle limbs and underbrush, the horse came crashing into the thicket.
“Stop!” Carin shouted. She had no time to run. She couldn’t even straighten from her crouch before she was bowled over onto her back. Instinctively she put up a foot, struggling to boot the animal away. “Get off!” she yelled. “Get off me.” She aimed a kick at the animal’s foreleg but the horse sidestepped and she hit nothing.
A blur dropped from the horse’s back. Steel flashed. And Carin felt the point of a sword touch the hollow of her throat.
“Oh sweet Drrr—” She almost rolled out an oath. But it died on her tongue.
The swordsman was glaring down at her with the angriest, most frightening eyes she had ever glimpsed in a human face. They were as black as volcanic glass, but they burned like fiends’-fire. Their unnatural luster hinted of … insanity? Demonic possession? She couldn’t say what she saw in their depths, but they took her breath away.
The man leaned in slightly. His weapon nicked the skin of her throat.
�
��No!” Carin yelled. “Don’t.”
He pulled up, just a fraction. His eyes scorched her. And when he spoke, he sounded as furious as he looked.
“Can you show cause why I should not remove your head at once?” he snapped. “The boundaries of my land are clearly marked. Those who would dare to enter here know the offense they commit, and the penalty for it. Do you have a defense to offer? Or shall I execute you now and save you the trouble of arguing your case?”
“Wait! Let me explain!” Carin demanded, blustering a little, attempting a show of outraged innocence. It fizzled. Her voice quivered and muffed the effect.
The swordsman pulled back another fraction—not enough to let her up. But he allowed enough space, between his sword and her skin, that Carin could heave a breath without risking major blood loss.
He gave her a curt nod. “Whatever you have to say,” he growled, “say it quickly.”
Why’d I tell him I’d explain? she thought, aghast at herself. How do I explain what I don’t understand?
“I’m … not from around here,” Carin ventured, feeling her way with him. “I came up from the south—from the plains. And I’m only passing through. I’m not a poacher, I swear.” She wiped her sweating palms on her leggings and tried to sound convincing. “I haven’t even seen a game trail to follow. Not that I would—follow it, I mean. I didn’t come up here to hunt.”
She resisted the impulse to touch the sling that she wore concealed under her grubby shirt. With the weapon, she had killed enough prairie hens and rabbits to stay just shy of starvation. That was down on the plains, though. These high woods harbored no sign of game—no tracks, no droppings, no fresh scratches on a tree trunk.
The swordsman didn’t budge. “Poachers do not concern me,” he snapped. “I accuse you of trespassing. And your presence here, on my land, is all the proof I require. Your guilt is clear.”
He leaned in again, poised to stab the blade through her throat.
“Stop!” Carin shouted. She raised both hands, palms open. “I haven’t done anything. I just climbed up a hill.” Her hands shook uncontrollably, which made her mad. She clenched her fists and demanded: “How was I supposed to know this was private property? There’s no fence on that hillside where the grass ends and these trees start.”
The man’s eyes flickered. The sword in his hand wavered, very slightly, but enough to make Carin press on, talking fast.
“I swear I wouldn’t be here if I’d seen anything that said ‘Keep out.’ But the way I came, there’s nothing. Maybe the sign’s down. Or,” she hazarded a guess, “somebody stole it.” She gulped a breath and added, “Let me up and I’ll leave—right now. Just let me go and I’ll clear out of here.”
The swordsman was staring intently at her. Is he a bit thrown by my accent? Carin wondered. People often are.
She tried to look the man in the eye. But she caught a gleam so strange, like a flame deep in the darkness of his eyes, that she recoiled. Carin found herself studying his throat instead, where a burnished badge fastened his cloak of black wool. One half of the badge was a crescent moon worked in silver. The horns of the crescent locked around the red-enameled, golden-rayed sun on the design’s other half.
“Cock and bull,” the swordsman snapped, whipping Carin’s gaze back to his. He gave her a look that, like a cautery knife, burned as it cut. She flinched, but she didn’t cry out—
—Not until he flicked the point of his sword up to her eyes. The blade was so close, she couldn’t focus on it. She couldn’t see much of anything, nor hear much over the pounding of her heart in her ears. But still she caught every word the man said next.
“I had planned to show mercy and kill you quickly,” he growled. “But you deserve a slow and painful death for your poor attempts at lying. It is not possible for any mortal to ‘steal’ the warnings that protect these woods from interlopers. Nor is it conceivable that any living thing could fail to notice those warnings. Your own words condemn you.”
“I can prove it!” Carin yelled. By now she was breathing so hard and so fast, she could barely talk. “I’ll take you—show you. There’s nothing. You’ll see.”
The blade was too close. She couldn’t look. Her eyelids clenched shut in a spasm of terror. Her body went rigid and her senses threatened to desert. For a moment, there was nothing: no brambly undergrowth pricking her skin. No spicy scent from the autumn woods’ decay. No sound of her own ragged breathing.
Something prodded her leg. Carin screamed—a cry like a cornered animal’s. Her eyes flew open, and she was back in the moment.
“Get up,” the swordsman barked. Again he jabbed her calf with the toe of his boot. “Walk. Take me to the boundary. I wish to see this impossible thing. If you have the proof, show it to me.”
The instant the man stepped away from her, Carin was on her feet. But her legs didn’t hold her up. She stumbled and fell to one knee and had to scuttle aside as the man’s horse loomed over her again. The animal was a tall, charcoal-gray hunter. It didn’t snort fire from its nostrils, but its rider was surely possessed of the devil.
“Walk,” he repeated. His eyes glittered hotly. “Show me where you entered this land.”
Carin pried herself up, pushed the tangles of dirty hair off her face, and pointed unsteadily. “The hill’s this way,” she said in a strangled tone. “It’s about an hour by foot … my lord.” Carin added the honorific as the man’s natural due. She had no experience with the nobility of this region, but the title seemed to fit him. His good horse and riding gear, and his highlander sword, showed him to be wealthy if not highborn. And he was clearly accustomed to being obeyed.
She faced back the way she’d come and swung into the ground-eating stride that had already consumed many miles that day. Carin watched for the broken twigs and crushed leaves and boot prints in patches of bare dirt that confirmed she was retracing her steps.
In no time, her feet began to feel heavy. And the farther she backtracked, the heavier they got.
This is all wrong, warned a feeling deep inside.
This forced march was taking her in the wrong direction. To reverse course now was not an option, not with every instinct—every compulsion—pushing her northward. If this woodland wasn’t her ultimate destination, it had to be close. Up in this highland of oaks, here in the hard-won north, she might find the place where she belonged.
But not if she kept retreating like this.
Carin fingered the sling that hung around her neck, hidden and waiting. Palm the weapon, fit it with a pebble, whirl, knock the swordsman unconscious with a single precise throw: could she?
It’d be a risk. If her first shot missed, the man following her would be alerted to his danger. Then he would ride her down and either trample her or take her head off.
She threw a glance over her shoulder. The swordsman was not staring a hole in her back. Something else held his attention, at the eastern edge of the clearing they had just entered.
Carin followed the rider’s gaze and saw movement—a flickering in the branches, not the sun but something equally bright, sparking through the bare-limbed trees. It kept pace with her like a shadow made of light.
She watched the light and not her feet, until her left boot slipped sideways and sent her leg out from under her. “Mother of—!” Carin bit off the oath as she pitched forward and her right knee came down on a spur of stone that was as sharp as a knife.
It happened too fast to hurt at first. But, oh! the blood—lots of it, streaming from a gouge that crosscut her knee.
She hunched over the wound, her masses of unkempt hair tumbling around her face, strands of it trailing in the gore. Blindly Carin fumbled in her belt-pouch for something to stanch the bleeding. Her fingers met only flint and steel for fire-making, pebbles for arming her sling, and a length of twine that was useful for everything from tying back her shaggy auburn mane to rigging a brush shelter.
Abruptly a hand grasped the shank of her leg, and another shoved at her shou
lder. “Straighten up,” her captor snarled.
Carin threw back her head and flung the hair out of her eyes. “You!” she gasped. “But—” She hadn’t heard the swordsman’s approaching footsteps—a seeming impossibility through the crunchy carpet of autumn leaves. Yet here the man was, crouched beside her and brandishing a dagger. Carin’s hand flew to shield her throat, but it was her knee he put the blade to.
Stay away from me! she wanted to shout at him. She couldn’t get the words out—not in a way that made sense. As sometimes happened when she came unglued, Carin lapsed into a language of her own. The sounds that passed her lips weren’t gibberish, but no one ever understood a word she said when she got like this. Carin yelled at the man, in her own private language, and tried to wrench free of his grasp.
“Stop your noise,” he barked. He held her leg tighter and waved his dagger in her face. “If you can’t be quiet, I’ll cut out your tongue.”
“Unhh—” Her words choked in her throat. She pulled back and let him cut away the blood-soaked fabric of her legging. Rapidly now, the pain welled up with the blood.
Don’t faint, she told herself.
Carin gritted her teeth, and trembled only too visibly, but she didn’t faint. She didn’t take her eyes off the man’s hands. A nobleman he might be, but his hands knew work. They were muscular and lean. The fingers were long, almost elegant, and bore the scars of labor old and new. The blunt nails were well cared-for but stained at their edges. And from his left hand, he was missing his little finger.
When the swordsman had sliced away enough of Carin’s legging to lay the wound bare, he reached inside his coat and drew out a pair of small leather packets. One held a bronze-colored powder; the other, a matching amount of a green dust.
WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock Page 1
