The Wysard (Waterspell 2)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  Carin sat up amid her borrowed blankets and looked around groggily. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. Then her head cleared at the sight of the frozen stream, the plain beyond it stretching to the horizon—the plain that had nearly killed the woodsprite.

  And by the look of their rapidly disappearing camp, she had only a few minutes to discover whether the sprite would accompany them this morning. Lanse’s blankets and gear were gone from their places opposite, across the rekindled fire. Verek was pouring the last of the hot tea into Carin’s mug. He waved the empty pan over her mug and over a crust of bread beside it.

  “Eat, and get on your horse,” he ordered. “Or eat while you ride. However you choose, look alive. We tarry here no longer.”

  She sprang up from the wizard’s blankets, shook them out, folded and rolled them into a tight bundle. Then she grabbed her tea and bread and rushed into the trees downstream.

  “Quickly!” Verek’s shout followed her.

  Once out of the wizard’s sight, Carin hurried to the fir that the half-dead woodsprite had crept into.

  “Wake up, sprite!” she whispered. Her lips brushed the tree trunk. “How do you feel?”

  Where the bark, last night, had absorbed a yellowish mass resembling butter melting, there now appeared a flicker more like the sprite’s old self. The spark was duller, however, than the fay’s usual sparkle, and it moved with less vitality.

  “My friend!” the creature said in a barely audible trill. “Once more I am in your debt. Had you not delivered me to this wholesome tree, I wouldn’t have lived to see the sunrise. How am I to repay you?”

  “Just follow me, sprite,” Carin mumbled around the bread she wolfed down. “Get your strength back and come on. Can you catch up with us again? You know what direction we’re going—west, toward the mountains.”

  “Indeed, I know it. I shan’t be likely to lose you now, after so many weeks of traveling with the sun. I’ll find you, be assured.”

  “I hate to leave you, sprite.” Carin put her hand on the tree. “But Verek won’t wait. So long, for now.”

  She heard the sprite’s good-bye—a faint but spirited piping—as she gulped the last of her tea. Carin ran back to the campfire and found it gone, its ashes scattered over the streambank. Verek and Lanse were on their horses and riding upstream. They pulled away so rapidly that Carin’s ensorcelled anklet began to tighten, even as she mounted to chase them. She urged Emrys into a trot until the iron relaxed. Then she settled into the saddle to pass dreary hours that grew into days.

  They followed the stream up into the foothills, winding through a succession of slopes ever steeper and more thickly wooded. Three days above the plain, the stream was only a slice at the bottom of a high-walled, heavily forested canyon. From the canyon floor, it was impossible to glimpse either the wide grassland they’d left behind them to the east, or the towering, snow-capped mountains that loomed ahead to the west.

  Six days into the foothills, the weather lost patience and gave up waiting for Verek of Ruain to come to his senses. Before that sixth day was well begun, a fierce wind sprang up. The canyon walls funneled it straight at them. A few hours after sunrise, clouds built and began to spit ice. The wind drove the sleet into their faces.

  Carin pulled her hood over her eyes, but she couldn’t avoid the stinging pellets. She bent low over Emrys’ neck, making herself a smaller target for wind and ice to pummel. The gale whipped away any words of encouragement that she tried to speak to the mare. From time to time she forced her head up, her eyes seeking the riders ahead but tearing so fiercely that she couldn’t always make them out.

  The wind howled in her ears and drowned all other sounds. Nothing of the world remained except the icy blast that beat at her. It drove pins into her skin and seemed to pack her brain in a freezing slush.

  Then another sensation arose, a feeling that gradually intensified until it rivaled her other miseries. Carin’s ankle iron was tightening. Second by second its grip grew more painful, until the ache cut through her cold-induced stupor like a hot wire through frost.

  Ride up! cried the corner of her mind that wasn’t lost in the storm. You’re falling behind—too far! Close the gap.

  But Carin’s body wouldn’t straighten from its slump across Emrys’ neck. Her unfeeling hands refused to twitch the reins. Her knees gave no little squeeze that was all the mare required to know Carin’s wishes. Was Emrys still under her? She couldn’t feel the little mare struggling onward, into the teeth of the gale. There was only shrieking wind, needles of ice … frozen ground rising to meet her.

  The tempest stilled. All that remained was a deep, silent cold.

  Chapter 8

  A Water-Sylph

  Lanse was shouting: “… unnatural creature! Kill the witch, my lord! She is dangerous. She intends harm to us. Look how she puts her power upon knives and sends the fire leaping, from this trance into which she betakes herself.”

  “A ‘trance’ you call it, boy?” Verek’s voice was harsh. “We find her blue with cold, dripping blood on the ice, and you reckon it a trance? I think your wits stand shakier than hers, and with slighter cause. You speak like a superstitious rattlebrain who never saw spell cast or conjury done. I’ll hear no more of this nonsense. Go search in the snow for your courage—and cool your head while you’re out there, or I’ll show you what it is to fall into such a ‘trance’ as has made off with this one’s senses!”

  A warm hand touched Carin’s forehead.

  “Myra,” she heard herself mutter. She reached up, expecting to find the pudgy fingers of the housekeeper who had tended her through past injuries. But instead she felt the lean, powerful hand of the woman’s master.

  Carin jerked her fingers away as if from a live coal.

  “Wish for Myra if you will,” said Verek’s clipped voice. “I, however, am content to be spared the lashing by that woman’s strong tongue, which she would deal me at the sight of a fresh bruise on you. It’s enough to have the boy crying murder.”

  The wizard’s hand left Carin’s brow and slid under her neck. “Raise up,” he ordered, “and take this draught. It will clear the fog.”

  Struggling, Carin lifted a head that ached dully. She put her chapped lips to the rim of a cup. The potion it held was warm, aromatic, and awful tasting. She drank it all.

  The hand that supported her made a pretense of easing her down, but it did not so much lower her head as let her fall. No matter. Carin flopped back onto a thick cushion that smelled of calendula; these, no doubt, were the wizard’s blankets that were folded under her.

  “Hyweldda,” Carin muttered, grimacing. Her attempted scowl met resistance at her eyebrows. Again venturing her fingers to investigate, she identified the impediment: strips of linen bandages, tight across her forehead.

  “So you remember the brew from the last time you needed it,” Verek said. “A single draught should suffice on this occasion. You did not take such a blow to your head today as you got from the cellar floor.”

  Carin’s eyes slowly focused on a smooth surface overhead where firelight and shadow chased each other like dancers on a stage. The blaze that lit the scene was somewhere in the vicinity of her feet. She rolled her head, seeking the fire, but found the wizard.

  He sat cross-legged near Carin’s left hand, coatless, with his back to the flames. The top of Verek’s head nearly brushed the surface that caught the prancing firelight. Behind him was darkness, but with bright things flitting across it so swiftly that Carin couldn’t make them out, only see the lightness of them in the fire’s gleam.

  “Where am I?” she mumbled, thick-tongued.

  Verek took a water bottle from the gear that was piled beside him. He held it to Carin’s lips, and with his other hand he again helped her to rise. Only when she’d taken a long sip and her head was back on its cushion did he answer.

  “You are sheltered—comfortably enough, I trust—under a canvas that Lanse and I were put to some trouble to stretch over
your head after the storm felled you. Barely were you down before the ice changed to a driving snow. But the worst of the gale now passes us by, here in this cleft in the rocks.”

  Carin’s gaze shifted from the wizard’s face to peer again at the bright stuff flashing in the darkness. She knew it now: Snow fell thickly in the night, large flakes that caught the light from a fire which blazed just beyond the opening of their tent. The dappled surface over her head and Verek’s was the canvas that kept the blizzard off them.

  She returned her gaze to his. “I fell off Emrys?” she asked, trying to remember.

  Verek shrugged. “The mare did her part to ground you. She balked at more ice in her face and took cover in a stand of balsams. Evidently you were less than attentive, and so you left the saddle when she pushed in among the trees. Their branches gentled your fall. You have bruises and a few cuts, but you will mend soon enough.”

  Carin made a move to touch the ensorcelled band on her ankle, but she ended up only pointing at it when her muscles refused to fully make good on her thought.

  “The ring closed,” she muttered. “I tried … couldn’t reach you … too cold …”

  Verek nodded. If he spoke again, Carin didn’t hear. Her eyes closed.

  She drifted between sleep and wakefulness. There was movement in the tent beside her, but she didn’t rouse to discover who or what. It did not touch her. After a time, all was calm. At the edge of Carin’s consciousness, nothing remained but warmth, softness, the reassuring scent of healers’ herbs, and the hiss of snowflakes expiring on the fire. She slept.

  Some unknown hours later, Carin woke to a darkened tent. The fire had dwindled. Snow swept softly against the tent’s sides. Distantly the wind roared, a noise like ocean surf pounding a far-off, rocky coast.

  Much nearer, a gentle snore rose practically at Carin’s ear. She rolled her head and discovered the wizard asleep not half an arm’s length from her. Across his face lay a coat-sleeve, covering all but his mouth. It was a sleeve of Carin’s coat. The rest of the garment was spread over Verek’s shoulders and chest. Her cloak covered his legs.

  We traded? I got the better of the deal, Carin thought, and slipped her hand between the blankets—Verek’s—that pillowed her head.

  Testing her strength and finding it much restored, she raised on her elbow to peer past the wizard. To his left lay Lanse. The boy slept so deeply that he seemed not to breathe. He wasn’t making the wheezing noises that disturbed his companions most nights. Lanse slept as though drugged … or bespelled?

  Stealthily Carin pushed her blankets off, raised onto her hands and knees, and crept toward the tent opening. She was at Verek’s knees when one of them flexed. It nearly hit her in the face. A hand grabbed the calf of her leg and clamped down hard. She jerked her head around to see a knife coming at her, its eight-inch blade reflecting the dull fire-glow.

  “Stop!” she hissed. “It’s me.”

  The hand on her leg relaxed its grip but stayed where it was. The blade ceased its forward jab. For a moment, it seemed to hang in midair, only the steel catching the light, darkness enveloping the hilt and the fist that held it. Then the weapon withdrew.

  Taking its place in the dim light from the tent opening was Verek’s face. The coat-sleeve slid away as the wizard propped on his elbow. A few strands of black hair escaped the silver band on his brow and fell in his eyes. An impatient sweep with the back of his knife hand drew them off his face. The waning fire glinted in Verek’s eyes as coldly as from steel. Chillier was his silent scrutiny of Carin.

  “I’m sorry I woke you,” she whispered. She cast a look at Lanse. The last thing she needed was to rouse the boy too. But Lanse slept on, oblivious.

  “I have to go out,” Carin said, looking back at the wizard.

  Verek’s sigh was part groan. He let go of her leg and sat up, sending Carin’s coat falling into his lap. He buried the fingers of one hand in the heavy garment and thrust it at her.

  “Then you’ll need this,” he growled. “Stay close and make haste. Give me no cause to chase after you in the dark and the cold.”

  Muttering something unintelligible, Verek lay back and rolled over on his side. His hand quested in Carin’s general direction for any cover it could reach. It closed on the hood of the cloak—her cloak—that he was using for a blanket. He drew the garment up to his chin, leaving his feet and lower legs exposed.

  “While you’re about it, throw some wood on the fire,” he mumbled as Carin turned away.

  She crawled over his feet to dive through the tent’s low opening. In loose snow up to her boot-tops Carin stood, and hastily pulled on the coat that Verek had relinquished to her. Soft flakes fell, swirling in weak imitation of the blizzard that scoured the canyon not half a league away, to judge by the moan of the wind that swept past this sheltered chink in the rocks.

  Beside the tent was a modest woodpile, mostly buried. Carin drew out two thick branches, knocked off the snow, and fed them to the fire. The replenished flames licked upward. Their light brushed the walls of the ravine that gave Verek’s party refuge.

  At the base of one of those walls, where the opaque night swallowed the fire’s flash, lay a jumble of broken rocks that would suit Carin’s purposes.

  With her needs attended to, she hitched up her trousers and started back toward the tent. But then Carin veered through deepening snow to investigate a dark shape that proved to be a horse. Emrys and the other three were well out of the weather under a rock overhang. The mare greeted her sleepily, seeming none the worse for their struggle through the ice storm.

  “Did you think you were rid of me, horse?” Carin asked with mock severity. “No such luck. If you wanted to kill me, then you shouldn’t have picked such a cushy spot to knock me out of the saddle.” She stroked Emrys’ neck. “Or were you just trying to tell me that you’ve had enough of following along behind a lunatic? If you don’t like it, then you’ll have to take it up with the warlock who’s got us into this mess. I’m as stuck with him as you are.”

  Emrys only blinked. Her lids closed over large, liquid eyes.

  Carin left the mare to rest. Jamming her cold hands into her pockets, she trudged back in the direction of the tent.

  But partway there, she paused again. This fissure in the rocks that kept the storm off was too narrow and stony to sustain many trees. A few slender pines had, however, taken root. They grew skyward as straight as churn-shafts. The woodsprite might more easily find Carin in a maze than ferret out this hidden camp … but in the wind that wailed through the treetops, was that the creature’s voice she heard?

  “Sprite!” Carin called in a hoarse whisper.

  Nothing answered but the wind, sounding far away.

  Nearer at hand the fire crackled, reminding her that the night was raw and she didn’t have to be out in it. Carin brushed snow off her coat and boots, dropped to her knees, and crawled back inside the tent more carefully than she’d left it.

  This time, she could avoid Verek’s feet. The wizard, still on his side, had his knees drawn up as though trying to get all his lean length under the warmth of Carin’s cloak. She crept past him into the mounded blankets. They seemed unfairly apportioned in her favor, now that she had her wits back and her bruised head no longer ached. By feel, she pulled out one blanket and eased it over the sleeping sorcerer. Verek straightened, muttered darkly, and rolled onto his back, but he did not wake.

  Carin snuggled into her remaining covers and lay sleepless, her mind on the missing woodsprite. Six days without a peep. Six days since she’d left the creature, frail and all but helpless, in the trees this side of the plain.

  Had the sprite rallied? Had it been catching up with them when the storm forced it into cover? Or did the creature remain where Carin had left it, languishing in the fir beside the stream? The woodsprite would have no company there—only the owls … or maybe those monsters from another world that had arrived by dark magic in this one.

  * * *

  A hand
grabbed Carin’s boot and shook it roughly.

  “Wake up,” Verek barked. “Get out of the tent, or we’ll fold you up in it.”

  Carin kicked the hand away and sat up. What passed for a roof over her head began to jiggle. In the corner behind her, the tent left its moorings entirely.

  She lunged out from under the collapsing canvas with a suddenness that made Lanse drop his corner of the tent and jump back. He stared at her as if she wore the shadow of death.

  Carin tossed her hair out of her eyes and watched the boy. Lanse appeared wholly unnerved. Why? Had he been so sure she’d breathed her last, victim of her injuries, that her liveliness this morning had given him a shock?

  Even if I’d hit my head hard enough to end up as a ghost, I wouldn’t waste the afterlife haunting the likes of you, Carin silently promised the boy.

  With a shrug she turned away, to breakfast on leftover meat and bread and then pack up the cooking gear. While Verek and Lanse went on with the business of striking camp, neither said a word—to her or to each other. But the boy cast many sidelong glances at Carin, as if making sure she’d keep her distance.

  The crevasse that had sheltered them was wide enough here to accommodate horses and riders without crowding. To leave the ravine, however, required threading their way through a crack that would barely admit a riderless horse. Verek, leading Brogar, began slogging through the snow toward the fissure. But he stopped at an outcry from Lanse.

  “Wait, my lord! By your leave—I would be first.” The boy’s voice trailed off to a mutter. He didn’t look at Carin, but he jerked his head at her.

  She stared at him, baffled. Verek, however, seemed to know what troubled his groom. He nodded and drew his horse aside, allowing Lanse to precede him into the crack. The boy’s gelding and the packhorse strung out behind. The wizard followed with Brogar. Carin, leading Emrys, brought up the rear.

  In the tunnel-like fissure, great mounds of snow were heaped at intervals, resembling cones of sifted flour. Most of it was kicked aside or beaten down by all the hooves and the booted feet going ahead of Carin. But enough remained to say what a struggle Lanse must be having at the head of this train, floundering through the stuff.