Are you talking to me, warlock? Or are you talking to yourself now? Carin wondered.
She lifted her gaze and studied Verek’s face. For the first time since this exchange began, he had turned away from her. He was staring into the fire.
Have you done something that shames you in your own eyes? she asked him silently. Are you responsible for the death of your little boy? And years ago, when you were a child yourself, did the voice of conscience whisper to your grandfather Legary of his own dishonor?
“Did your grandfather kill your father?”
In the stillness that followed, the crackling of the fire was loud. Drisha take my tongue from my skull! Carin cursed herself. Her question had cut through the cold air. But she clung to the hope that she had only heard her thoughts inside her head.
The look on Verek’s face dispelled that delusion, however, the way a pouncing cat scatters the pigeons. His head snapped toward her, and his right hand shot out to close on a fold of her cloak so quickly that she barely had time to flinch.
“What?” Verek barked. He jerked Carin toward him until she was off her blanket and her face was less than a span from his. “What is this that you dare to ask me? What do you know of my grandfather or his son? And how does such an accusation come leaping off that tongue of yours, as though it has waited there, eager for the moment when it might be given voice?”
Carin heard these questions with her eyes tightly shut. It took nerve to look the wizard in the face even when he was calm. But now he was flushed and furious, and Carin’s courage failed. She swallowed, her mouth as dry as the winter grassland around them.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” she stammered out. “I didn’t m-mean to say that to you. I don’t know what m-m-made me say it aloud.”
Verek held her another moment in his ironhanded grip. Then he returned Carin to her blanket with a neck-popping shove.
“Small use running after the arrow once it’s loosed,” he growled. “Do not try me with your regrets for having uttered such a thought. Explain to me, rather, how such an abominable notion comes to be lodged in that brain of yours.”
And how was she to do that? Carin couldn’t tell him about the stolen pages from the Book of Archamon that held the verses from which she had drawn her clues—and her suspicions—regarding the death of Verek’s father.
But those narratives weren’t Carin’s only sources of information. She had others. And to admit to them might provoke Verek less than confessing to her desecration of his book.
“Myra—” she began, but was immediately silenced.
“Myra!” The warlock thumped his hand on the blanketed ground as though it were his housekeeper’s ear that he cuffed. “The woman has a weariless tongue, and she betrays precious little sense in wagging it. But even she cannot unbosom more than she knows. Tell me: what says the old gray goose of my father and my grandfather?”
“Please don’t be angry at Myra,” Carin pleaded. “She only told me that your father married young and died young. You were just a baby when he died, so your grandfather Legary helped your mother raise you. Myra said Lord Legary was a great wizard. She admired him. But I got the idea that your grandfather had a guilty conscience. Jerold seemed to think so, anyway.”
“Jerold? He said that to you?” Verek almost spluttered. He stared at Carin in open disbelief. “No! Jerold speaks rarely, and never to gossip with prying chits. You won’t persuade me that you’ve heard aught of my private affairs from that old conjurer.”
Carin ran her hand through her hair, which was somewhat grown out from the ear-length bob that Myra had given her four weeks ago.
“No, Jerold didn’t say anything to me—not directly,” she conceded. “But one time in the garden at your house, I overheard Jerold talking to you about your grandfather. He said that Lord Legary was to blame for the harm that’s been done to your family. I didn’t know what he meant, but I heard Jerold say that your grandfather had done something so wicked that your family still isn’t over it. Lord Legary carried his guilt to his grave, Jerold said.”
Carin locked her gaze onto Verek’s left shoulder and kept it there. No force existed that could have raised her eyes to his at that moment. She drew a steadying breath, and hurried to finish.
“With Jerold blaming your grandfather for some evil deed, and Myra telling me that your father died suddenly when he was only nineteen, I started to wonder. What you said just now, sir, about never forgiving yourself for doing what’s dishonorable—it made me think: what’s worse than killing your own flesh and blood? Is that what happened? Did your grandfather kill your father?”
And you, Theil Verek: do you have your own son’s death on your conscience? she added, taking care this time to keep the thought private.
In the hush that again descended, the sounds of the horses grazing the creekbank came clearly through the evening air. The twilight showed Lanse still moving among them, adjusting a buckle here, smoothing a saddle blanket there, working the snarls from untrimmed manes. Though the boy would never presume to question his master’s judgment, his concern for the horses on this long, hard trip was obvious. Even that great brute Brogar could not continue forever at the pace Verek set.
The stewed venison that the wizard and Carin had not eaten was beginning to congeal in its pan. With movements that were as small as she could make them, she stirred the fire and added another stick of wood, then put the pan in the revived flames to reheat. Hunger must drive Lanse from the horses in another few minutes.
Carin’s motions roused the warlock from his brown study. He arched his back as if working out the kinks. Then he drew in a long breath through his nose and let it out as slowly.
When he did not otherwise break the silence, Carin risked a sidelong look at his face. She found it to be an impassive mask. Her glance, however, stirred Verek to speech.
“Your talent for weaving elaborate tapestries from a few torn scraps is truly remarkable,” he said with a carelessness that sounded forced. “Perhaps this journey will lead you to your true vocation—that of the wandering wit and tale-giver. For it seems you can spin a yarn most bizarre from the slimmest threads of half-truths and hearsay.
“But until I release you to follow that trade, you will refrain from inventing slanders against the House of Verek.” He leaned slightly toward her. “You will, rather, train that restless mind of yours upon the matters which concern you—the matters I have set before you for the most careful consideration that you are capable of giving them. I will not ask it again. Widen your gaze. Occupy your thoughts with perceiving your purpose in this venture, and you’ll find me ready to aid your understanding of it. But waste your days spinning fantasies of evil sorcerers and murdered children, and I won’t fail to give you other things to think about.”
So quickly that Carin didn’t see it coming, Verek’s left hand shot out and plucked hers from the folds of her cloak. His other hand went for his knife. He crushed her palm in his three-fingered grip and bent her little finger back painfully far, pinning it with his thumb. Against the first joint of her finger, Verek laid his knife.
“The monks of Drisha have a ritual that concentrates the mind wonderfully.” The warlock’s voice was a low murmur, and as menacing as the roar of an avalanche. “Do you know of it? The rite is performed over twelve days—one for each of Drisha’s commandments. On the first, the monk cuts off his small finger at the first joint. He mustn’t let the pain intrude upon his thoughts, but must ponder the meaning of the First Commandment until the wound clots. On the second day, he severs the finger at the middle joint and contemplates the Second Commandment. The next day, he rids himself of the stump while meditating upon the Third. And so on, day by day, until his four fingers are removed piecemeal and he has shown himself so disciplined in mind that no agonies of the flesh will disturb his reflections upon the will of Drisha.”
Verek pressed the knife in place. On Carin’s taut, bloodless skin, the bend of the joint showed clearly as a thin red line that migh
t have been drawn on, so straight and distinct was it—an easy mark to follow for the first cut.
Her breath came in short bursts. The only part of her that wasn’t shaking was the hand that Verek gripped in his own. His fingers were surprisingly warm …
Carin’s free hand slid out of her cloak and shivered upward to close around the fingers that held hers. She watched her hand with a feeling of detachment, as though it moved with a will of its own, determined—despite its trembling—to mount a rescue of its opposite number.
For a long moment they stayed that way, Verek’s hand enfolding one of Carin’s and embraced in its turn by her other; his free hand holding the knife. Then Verek lowered the weapon. He released Carin’s little finger from its painful backward arch, but he did not pull free of her grasp. He only slipped his hemmed-in fingers between her two hands until they rested in her palms.
“Perhaps the fingers matter more to wysards than to monks,” he muttered, and studied the tangle of hers and his. “For I have not known any true adept of Ladrehdin to employ the monkish method to center a distracted apprentice. I trust that it shall not be necessary in your case.”
His hand twitched between hers. Carin let it go.
“Now,” Verek said and rose from his blanket to stand looking down at her, “go to bed. And sleep with something on your hands, or risk losing fingers to a hazard other than this knife.” He flashed the blade at her before he sheathed the weapon. “Your digits feel as frozen as this night air.”
The warlock tossed the last ration of wood on their dwindling fire. Then he walked down the creekbank toward Lanse and the horses.
Carin stayed on her blanket, her hands stuck in her armpits, concentrating her thoughts—not on the mysteries that Verek had commanded her to ponder—but on restraining her racing heart and pumping lungs. When both had slowed to a saner pace, she fished a clean stocking from her saddlebags and got her water costrel.
Through the owl-light Carin walked out onto the plain, away from her captor and the horses. Beyond the circle that the campfire lit, the tightening of her anklet warned that she was as far from Verek as his sorcery allowed. She backed slightly toward the fire to loosen the anklet’s grip, then drew the pine seedling from under her coat and splashed water on its linen-wrapped roots.
“Hew me!” the woodsprite swore in a thin, sleep-slurred voice. “Are we drowning?”
“I’m just soaking your roots, sprite,” Carin whispered. “Now do you mind if I cover you up, pine needles and all? If I slip a stocking over you, it may help keep your ‘feet’ damp longer. And it will stop the rest of you from shedding. I don’t think it’s good that you’re losing your needles in my clothes. Besides, they stick me. Would you smother, wrapped up in wool?”
“No … not smother. Be warm … so cozy … so sleepy …”
“Then go back to sleep,” Carin whispered. She slipped the seedling, bundled roots first, down into the stocking. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll get off this plain.”
* * *
The next day—and the next—brought nothing, however, but hours of riding across an unchanging landscape. On the third day, they came to a jumble of rocks that were piled on the grassland like the falling-down ruins of a temple. There Verek and Lanse stripped the saddles from the horses of the three slain ruffians. Under the rocks they buried the saddles and the dead men’s gear, so deeply that no passerby would catch a glimpse.
By the fourth day, Carin could get nothing out of the sprite except an occasional sigh. The sound was faint, and more like a breeze than a living breath.
On the morning of the fifth day, the enchantment left the horses that Verek had bespelled. Two of them suddenly wheeled, threw up their heads, and stared wide-eyed back the way they’d come. With nary a glance at those who had been their companions for the better part of a week, they trotted away with their ears pricked as though each heard its master’s voice.
The third horse watched the first two go. It bobbed its head and danced sideways, but it didn’t take off after its stablemates until Brogar rushed at it with his teeth bared. Evidently that showed the beast where its path lay. The horse galloped off to join the others.
In the late afternoon of that same day, Verek’s party, absent its camp followers, reached the western edge of the plain. The grassland ended at a wide, partly ice-choked stream, the opposite bank of which sloped upward.
Carin’s heart leaped. Dotting that slope were pines and firs.
The riders crossed the stream single file, Verek leading the way on Brogar, breaking the surface skim of ice. Carin had to lift the hem of her cloak and take her feet from the stirrups; the frigid water was deep enough to brush her mare’s belly. But Emrys crossed without mishap, only splashing the fringes of the mare’s thick saddle pad.
In the trees streamside, they stopped for the night. Carin heated a pot of water over their campfire and carried it downstream to have privacy for a wash-up.
As soon as she was out of sight, she pulled the seedling from under her coat. She stripped off its wool and linen wrappers. The withered little pine left most of its needles in the stocking. All but a few hairlike roots came away with the linen.
“Sprite!” Carin hissed. She pressed the seedling’s remains to the trunk of a green-needled fir. “Wake up. Here’s a fresh tree for you.” She gave the seedling a little shake and knocked off more dry needles. “Come on, sprite! Get moving.”
There was no answer. The only sigh in the forest was a cold wind through the treetops.
Chapter 7
Vermin in the Vortex
Carin flattened her hands against the seedling. She crushed it to the fir as though to force it inside the tree’s living heart. Still there was no sign of the sprite—no spark, no whimper, no faint quivering.
It’s dead, murmured her rational mind.
No! Her silent shout put to flight a possibility that she would not entertain. The sprite is only asleep—dormant, like an oak tree in winter. I have to find a way to wake it up.
Carin eyed the pot of water that she’d heated to wash with. It steamed on the ground beside the half-frozen stream.
Hot and cold—the sudden shock—
She kicked a rock onto the ice at the stream’s edge. It broke open a hole; Carin plunged the sprite’s seedling through.
Her hand burned in the icy water as though in the superheated air of a pottery kiln. She stood it as long as she could, then jerked the seedling out, shook it, and dunked it into the steaming pot. Again she held it there, long enough to let the heat seep in but not so long that the sprite would drown—Carin hoped.
She snatched up the dripping seedling and pressed it to the fir. “Sprite!” Carin whispered. “Come on! Wake up.” Her lips touched the few green needles that still clung to the dying pine.
Her wet hands were freezing, aching almost beyond endurance. But Carin jammed the seedling tight against the fir tree, willing the spark within to make the leap to safety. She rested her forehead on it, as if to entwine her thoughts with the sprite’s. But nothing came from the seedling—no reedy voice, no flicker of light.
Carin clenched her eyes shut. Tears squeezed out and beaded in her lashes.
Blinking the tears away, she sighted a stone on the ground at her feet. It was almond-shaped with a blunt end for gripping and a sharp, broken edge for cutting—a perfect hand ax.
Pain. What the dead can’t feel may save the living. She would hurt the sprite enough to rouse it—or kill it with the effort.
Carin flipped the seedling over and pressed its thicker root end against the fir’s trunk. Slowly but firmly, she sliced the seedling open, working from its roots toward the few remaining needles that dangled off the seedling like green icicles.
At first, the cut revealed only dead wood. But as Carin sliced toward the cluster of still-living needles, the wound oozed sap. A faint cry rose from it. A dull glow appeared in the needles. The light dripped into the fir tree as gradually as a pat of butter would melt on barely warm bread.
When the glow was entirely gone from the seedling, Carin dropped the dead husk. She put her lips to the light that splotched the fir’s bark.
“Sprite!” she breathed. “Are you all right? I haven’t hurt you? I didn’t know how else to get you moving.”
The creature glowed with a feeble and faintly yellow light. But it made no sound.
“Talk to me, sprite!” Carin pleaded. “Sweet mercy! What have I done? Did I cut you?” She turned her head and put her ear to the tree.
A snowflake falling to earth would have been only slightly less audible than the voice that reached her then. But Carin managed to pick out a few words from the sprite’s whisper:
“ … not cut … so weak … need rest.”
Carin leaned against the tree and closed her eyes. “Thank the stars above!” she murmured. “I thought I’d killed you.” She was shaking with relief, but also from the cold. Under the trees beside the stream, the air was frosty. Her hands felt numb.
“Sleep well, sprite,” Carin whispered. She opened her eyes and straightened. “I’ll check on you in the morning.”
The woodsprite made no reply. It oozed deeper into the tree until its glow was hidden, like a firefly in tall grass. Carin patted the fir.
In the twilight she made her way back to the campfire. Verek and Lanse were already wrapped in their bed-blankets, stretched on either side of a dying blaze. Both seemed asleep. The wizard drew deep, even breaths. The boy wheezed through a stuffy nose.
A house cat might have padded its way between them to lie by the embers, but Carin could not curl up small enough to fit. She tiptoed past, got her bedroll, and carried it to the opening in the trees where the four horses were picketed. Brogar, Lanse’s mount, and the pack animal only eyed her sleepily, but Emrys whickered at her approach.
The Wysard (Waterspell 2) Page 12
