Then, with a sudden movement of his left hand skyward, the wizard tilted the wand from the horizontal to the vertical. He grasped it right-handed like a club. Carin braced for the blow.
But he only tapped the wand’s tip against his lower lip. After a moment of that, Verek shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“I shouldn’t dignify your first accusation with an answer,” he snapped, his voice brittle. “When you agree to a task with ill-defined limits, you have no grounds for complaint when the work goes on. Did I tell you the task would span one night only? No, I didn’t. If you think it’s a poor bargain that you’ve struck, blame yourself. I will not alter the terms simply because you’ve decided they displease you.”
Verek punctuated his next words by loudly popping the wand into his left palm. “As for your second charge, that I’ve killed the sprite: it’s easily disproved. Come upstairs and discover for yourself that I have not played you false. The creature lives. But hear me when I speak this warning, for I will not repeat it: When you have seen the woodsprite, you will descend with me to the cavern of wysards, there to travel tonight as I decree, or your friend won’t know another daybreak”—
“May the villain roast on a bonfire of oak, alder, blackthorn, and russet aspen!” the sprite cried.
A curse so black coming from the normally mild woodsprite brought Carin up short, halting her tale. She put a cold hand to her face, a little dazed by her abrupt return to the present. She’d almost forgotten the fay’s presence and might have been sitting in a tree talking to herself, remembering that second night with Verek, back in Ruain.
“I tremble with anger to know how the brute has used our friendship as a weapon against you, dear girl,” the sprite went on. Indeed, the tree seemed to shake as the creature spoke—but it could have been just her own shivering that Carin felt. She tugged her hood over her half-frozen face.
“Abject apologies,” the creature added, “for my thickheadedness when you came to speak with me that night. As one accustomed to sleep in the wild woods and open air, I found that the closeness of a curtained room made me deeply languid after sunset.
“But tell me now, my friend: what happened next? The mage—dark villain!—spoke of your journeying that night from the cave of magic to a world beyond. Did you go? What did you see? Did your travels take you to the land of the bright wood? I burn with eagerness to hear of your adventures.”
Carin shifted on the branch under her. The discomfort of her perch and the frostiness of the night were getting hard to ignore. As she debated the wisdom of returning to bed and leaving the rest of her long and tangled story for another night, a voice cut through the air. She couldn’t make out the words, but she knew the inflection: Verek’s. It didn’t come from indoors. His voice shafted up from the lane between the inn and the stables.
“Shh!” Carin cautioned the sprite. “I hear the warlock. We can’t let him catch us out here. I’ve got to go in now, and tell you the rest of it later.”
“A moment,” the sprite begged. “I would know the business that has drawn the magician to the streets at this hour.”
From the treetop, the creature sparked to a shrub that grew in the corner of the innkeeper’s courtyard. Its next leap took the fay out of sight, but not for long. Before Carin had done more than unwind her cloak and begin to inch toward the window, the sprite was back, bearing news.
“The mage seeks the stables. There is, I think, some trouble with a horse. He casts no glance this way. I take it your absence has not been noted.
“But perhaps we would be wise to end this meeting while our secret is safe. I confess a need to sleep, and I suspect that you would prefer your bed to these branches. Such a chance as we’ve had tonight, to speak together through the midnight watch, may not soon come again. But I’ll be at your back day and night, my friend, and follow wherever your journey takes you.”
Carin hugged the tree and promised to finish her story at the next opportunity. As she reached for the shutters, a loose fold of her cloak tumbled down and fell against the planks. The shutters swung inward ever so slightly, but too far. With a soft click, the latch dropped into place. The window was sealed, and Carin was out in the cold with a disturbed wizard prowling the night.
Chapter 3
Possibilities
Her first thought was to coax one of the Mydrismas revelers below into coming upstairs to let her in. She considered sending the sprite to find out whether Lanse had joined his master in the stables, leaving the way clear for a rescuer to pass unchallenged through Verek’s rented rooms. Should the incident be mentioned in the morning, Carin could deny it all: “High in a tree, m’lord? Climbed through the window and locked myself out? What nonsense! Our host has been in his cups.”
But then she realized the futility of her scheme. Her bedroom door was barred from the inside. The wizard might have a means of lifting the bar from his side of the door, but no drunken mortal would manage it.
The sprite, however, had a plan of its own. “Higher in this tree is a dead branch, its wood dry and hard as stone,” the creature said. “A sliver of it should serve you to slip between the shutters and lift the latch. Were the wood alive, I wouldn’t dream of violating it. But I think this old giant will not begrudge you a splinter of its dead flesh.”
Sparking upward a short way, the sprite set to work. There was a ripping sound, similar to sailcloth tearing, then three sharp snaps like twigs breaking. When the creature called her to claim the tool, Carin only had to stand on a branch and work her hand up through a cluster of small limbs. The sprite’s eager sparking guided her until her fingers closed on a strip of wood the length of her hand and paper thin.
Only an ironsmith could have forged a stiffer blade. Amazed, Carin tried to bend it but couldn’t.
The sprite’s been keeping secrets, she thought. It can do more than talk and jump through trees.
Maybe this example of its talents shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. Weeks ago, the fay had broken off tree limbs and sent them crashing down on the wasteland dogs that had threatened to tear her apart. And then the creature had wanted to drop a branch on Lanse’s head. Carin had stopped the sprite when it first proposed cracking Lanse’s skull open. But as she slid this newest example of the creature’s handiwork between her fingers, she reconsidered. With the sprite on the loose again, maybe it could serve her as a weapon.
The slim crack between the shutters admitted the strip easily. Carin flicked the latch up, took her leave of the sprite, and climbed through into the welcome warmth of her quarters. She disrobed, crawled back into bed, and was asleep in seconds.
* * *
She woke to a sunlit room and a fire that had dwindled to embers. The light that streamed in through four diamond panes high up the wall was the clear light of day full broke. But the morning had brought no pounding at Carin’s door, no shouts ordering her to rise and make ready to ride. Why hadn’t Verek roused his party at dawn to continue their journey?
Carin slid out of bed and padded to the door that separated her from her captors. She pressed her ear to it and caught no sound from the adjoining room. She seemed to be alone.
How lucky can I get? she wondered. First a comfortable bedroom all to herself, then a long reunion with the woodsprite, and now the prospect of time for bathing and for washing out a fortnight’s worth of dirty clothes.
She built up the fire and found a cake of soap. Water by the pitcherful made for a better bath than Carin had had since leaving Verek’s manor. It was a delight to wash her hair—for the first time since its bobbing—and to slip her last set of clean clothes over scrubbed skin.
Carin reused her bathwater for her laundry. Linen shirts and smallclothes soon hung from the mantel and the furniture, making her quarters look like a scrubwoman’s shop.
The warmth of the fire and her exertions drove her to the window for a breath of air. She pushed open the shutters, admitting brittle cold but bright sunshine. It would have been a good day for tr
aveling. Why was Verek’s party still in Deroucey?
Curious as well as hungry, Carin returned to the door, this time not just to listen at it but to crack it open. The antechamber beyond was empty, but obviously not yet vacated. On the unmade beds were saddlebags and satchels that belonged to Verek and Lanse. The ashes on the hearth had not been raked up, nor a new fire laid, but the remains of breakfast on the table suggested that the innkeeper hadn’t wholly neglected his guests.
Carin closed the door on the sight of her dripping laundry and sat down to breakfast. The mutton was cold, the cheese and bread were beginning to dry out, but the food was much better than their host had served last night. She ate appreciatively and cleared the table of nearly every scrap that Verek and Lanse hadn’t consumed.
Clean, warm, and well fed, Carin sat relaxed and sipped at a mug of milk … and wondered again what had stopped a journey that had been dawn-to-dusk hard riding for two weeks.
Some trouble with a horse, I think.
The woodsprite’s words from last night popped into Carin’s head and dispelled the sense of ease—almost of well-being—that had crept over her.
“Not Emrys!” she whispered. Carin’s stomach twisted around her breakfast. “Merciful Drisha, don’t let it be the mare that’s gone down!”
She plunked her mug on the table so hard that the milk splattered out. Carin sprinted for the door to the stairs. She yanked it open, took a step toward the landing—
—And fell, grabbing for her ankle.
The ensorcelled band of iron had tightened like the garrote in an assassin’s hand. It sliced deep. Blood welled up, wetting Carin’s clean stocking. The sensation, in the first few seconds, was more a stinging than real pain. But quickly the wound began to throb. It sent pangs to her toes and all along her leg. By the time she pulled herself up the doorjamb, got her good leg under her, and hobbled back to a bench at the table, the pain in her ankle was agony.
Carin peeled off her bloodied stocking and clawed at the iron. It was embedded in her flesh, girdling her ankle. She couldn’t get it out.
She fumbled for a basin and knocked over the mug of milk, but she managed to get a bowl off the table and under her foot. With what little water remained in the only pitcher within reach, she bathed the wound. Carin gritted her teeth and tried to marshal her thoughts. She had to extract the iron, but how?
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. They climbed toward the landing where Verek’s instrument of torture had crippled her.
“Help me!” Carin shrieked through the open door. “I’m cut to the bone!”
The firm tread on the stairs reached the top. It was not the innkeeper or a servant who appeared in the doorway, but Verek, scowling.
As the wizard’s gaze slid from Carin’s face to her ankle, however, a look of shock replaced his frown. “Death of my life!” he swore.
He closed and locked the door, then rushed to the saddlebags on his bed, to take from them a linen bundle and a leather wallet. These he set on the bench beside Carin. Then he knelt at her feet and encircled her ankle with his right hand.
“When I release the chalse,” he said, looking up at her, “the pain will worsen. There’s no help for it—the ring must be loosened. I will remove the device from the wound, and you are to stanch the bleeding as best you can.” He jerked his chin at the bundle of linen.
Carin’s hands shook as she pulled out a length of cloth and held it ready. She gulped a shuddering breath and tried to prepare for what was to come. If the pain worsened much, she’d faint.
With his left hand, Verek gripped the calf of Carin’s leg. His other hand tightened around her ankle, then began slowly to open. She felt the iron mimic his slackening grip. It crept out of her flesh.
The pain was savage. “Agh!” Carin cried. Black spots danced before her eyes.
The wizard slid the loosened band up her shank. He kept it hidden under his right hand. Then he slipped it under his left, still out of Carin’s sight. For a moment his hands stayed still, both holding her leg well above the ankle, both concealing the cursed band. Did its form change so much, when the warlock subdued the magic in order to move the thing, that he didn’t want Carin to see it? What was the ensorcelled iron, in this other guise?
Carin twisted linen around her ankle and squeezed, trying to stop the bleeding. The pain was so bad, she could barely breathe. Deep in her throat, she whimpered.
Verek leaned aside, giving her room to work. While Carin soaked up an alarming amount of her life’s blood, the wizard slid the basin out from under her foot. The water in it was red with gore, but he rinsed his hands in it, then dried them on the corner of a bedsheet. When he reached around Carin for the wallet that he’d laid beside her, his face brushed hers as she bent double.
“How did this happen?” Verek murmured, looking straight into Carin’s eyes.
What an extraordinary question from the one who had inflicted this torture! Still bowed at the waist, Carin glared at him, clenched her teeth, and said nothing.
Verek seemed to take her meaning. He shifted his gaze to the wallet in his hands, undid the thongs that closed it, and rephrased his question.
“What I wish to know is, where were you when the chalse tightened?”
“Leaving!” Carin grated out.
Her reply made Verek frown again.
“Had you no warning? Didn’t the band contract by degrees as you neared the door?”
“No, it did not,” Carin snapped. “The damned thing was fairly loose until I stepped over the threshold. Then it clamped down like a bear trap, so hard I thought it’d break my ankle.”
The wizard shook his head but said nothing. From the wallet he removed two packets and opened them. One held bronze powder; the other, green.
Carin bit her lip. From previous experience with the bronze cyhnaith, she knew it would burn like damnation’s eternal fires when Verek dusted it into the wound. But it would also stop the bleeding and heal the cut. A deep gash on her knee—an injury Carin had suffered within an hour of first meeting Verek in Ruain—had closed overnight after a single treatment with his medicinal powders.
She didn’t resist, therefore, when the wizard unwrapped the blood-soaked linen and liberally dusted her ankle with the bronze powder. A shriek erupted from her as the compound seared her flesh. Verek did not look up. He poured more powder into his hand and cupped it around the back of her ankle so the medicine would reach the whole, encircling wound. Then he repeated the application with the green dust.
Carin cried out again—in sheer relief—as the green powder’s painkilling qualities took hold. Cyhnaith’s fire died. Her ankle went numb. Deadened nerves no longer screamed at the assault on her flesh.
She raised a shaky hand to her face and found her cheeks wet. At what point she’d surrendered to tears, Carin didn’t know.
Verek wiped at the blood that was congealing around the wound and on Carin’s bare foot. He dipped a clean end of an otherwise gory piece of linen into a little clear water, and with it removed the worst of the stickiness. With fresh linen, he bound her ankle.
When the dressing was done, Verek closed his right hand around the ensorcelled iron. The band had hung just below Carin’s knee throughout the tending of the injury it had made. Now Verek slid it back down to her ankle. He held his hand around the iron until it had shrunk nearly to its original size and rested on the bandage over the wound.
“For the love of Drisha,” Carin swore, but softly, almost under her breath.
Her tone seemed to get Verek’s attention more readily than angry, loud cursing would have. He jerked his gaze up to hers.
“Take that evil thing off me,” she whispered to him. “The next time, it could cut clear through. I’ll lose my foot.”
The wizard shook his head. “The next time you provoke the chalse to tighten, you will have warning. I was too hasty, it seems, in setting spells upon the threshold when I left this morning. I was distracted by last night’s business in the stables and didn
’t linger to be sure the spellcraft was properly done. I will make certain that the protections which must accompany this wizardry are well in place, if I must again leave you confined.”
Apparently unwilling to accept all of the blame, Verek added: “The ring would not have roused, however, if you hadn’t attempted to run away.”
“I wasn’t running!” Carin protested, her voice rising. “When my foot crossed that threshold I was on my way to the stables, to be sure Emrys—”
She stopped herself just in time. To be sure Emrys wasn’t hurt, she’d nearly said. But why should Carin have concerns about the mare being injured? How could she know anything of last night’s “trouble with a horse” unless someone had told her about it? It would have been exceedingly stupid of her, to let a slip of her tongue tip off Verek to her secret informant.
Carin quickly amended: “—to be sure Emrys was doing all right this morning. She was worn out when we got here last night, and I wanted to check on her.” Carin lifted her shoulders, stretching as she shrugged. “I hope she got to sleep late, like I did.”
“Late it is,” Verek muttered. “And getting later.”
He stood, gathered his supplies of curative powders and clean linen, and returned them to his saddlebags. Then he took off his coat and moved a bag aside so he could sit on his bed, with his back to the wall.
Carin twisted around on her bench to face him, working clear of the shambles on the table: the gory rag, basin of bloody water, and film of dried milk amongst the remains of an hours-old breakfast. She’d just wedged her elbow into a relatively clean spot when she looked up to see Verek studying her.
His eyes were hard, like two black crystals. And though his gaze was intimidating, it held none of the luster that had often made Carin doubt the wizard’s sanity. That gleam in his eyes, which had flickered like a candle’s flame from the depths of a cave, had been absent since Verek paused outside the borders of Ruain to settle a silver fillet on his brow. In the same way his party had kept the campfire turfed each night of this journey, to subdue the glow, the silver band seemed to bank the wizard’s magian fire.
The Wysard (Waterspell 2) Page 6
