“So numerous as that, eh?” the monk replied, chuckling again. “Then I’ll trouble you to name me one or two. An empty sack won’t stand, don’t you know.”
Verek’s sigh was long and irritated.
“You would hear my objections, you old cadger? Very well. First is her age. Even you—famous wencher that you are—must concede that a man of my years is too old for the fìleen.”
Welwyn’s laughter rumbled out through the window with a noise like turnips toppling into a root cellar.
“Too old!” he exclaimed. “Don’t flatter yourself, Theil. You’re a pup,” Welwyn harrumphed. “This is what comes of seeing too much death, too young. Legary’s early end forced you into the role of family patriarch while you were still wet behind the ears. You’ve never trained under a really old adept. I have. And I can tell you, son, that to any living wysard of this world, you’re just a boy.” Welwyn snorted. “‘Too old for the fìleen.’ What nonsense! You and that young lady are nearly of an age. You can’t plead antiquity to an ancient like myself. Give me better goods than that, or leave me with a sack still empty.”
Carin, leaning bemused against the cabin wall, bit the back of her hand to stifle the outburst that bubbled up from within. It felt rather like a giggle. But exactly what might erupt if she let it, she didn’t want to discover.
Through the window came the clink of earthenware vessels. There was a pause. Then Verek’s voice cleaved the silence:
“What do you say then, old lurcher, to this impediment, which exceeds in weight all others? The girl despises me. She holds me to blame for these events and this duty that she wants no part of. I tell you distinctly, Welwyn: the minx will be my death, but never my—”
The rest of it escaped Carin as she spotted movement from the corner of her eye. She snapped her head around.
Lanse was standing in the trees at the edge of the glen, his bow raised, an arrow on the string. It would be a long shot, but the boy was—as Verek had remarked—an archer of rare skill.
Even as Carin sprang sideways off the porch like a panicked grasshopper, she commended her last breath to Drisha. How fortunate, to die on the front steps of a merry monk who could see her murdered remains laid properly to rest.
Chapter 9
A Talisman
Like a stone cast from the heavens, a large branch plummeted out of the tree above Lanse. It knocked him to the ground. He lay motionless, pinned under the bough, a crumpled form. His spoiled shot tore harmlessly between the cabin and the shed.
Flitting away through the trees, up the mountainside, was a spark like steel on flint.
“Sprite!” Carin whispered. She scrambled to her feet. Her eyes, as she flew off the porch, had not left her would-be assassin. Now her gaze followed the spark up the wooded slope, but she lost it in the brightness of the afternoon sun that slanted into the glen.
Carin took the porch steps in one leap, threw open the cabin door, and stuck her head in.
“Excuse me, gentlemen. I must tell you: Lanse tried to put an arrow in me.” The two at the table under the window stared at her. “But a tree limb fell on him before he managed it. He’s flat on the ground out here. Hurt, I think. You’d better come.”
Both men sprang up and rushed to the door. Neither paused to don coat or cloak as they hurried past Carin. She stepped out of their way, staying on the porch while they ran to the boy.
They each grabbed an end of the big limb and heaved it off him. The wizard crouched beside the sprite’s victim, his fingers probing for broken bones in Lanse’s neck and along his spine. The monk stood over them, wringing his hands.
Verek rose. “Get his feet, Welwyn,” he said, gesturing at the patient’s boots. “I believe he’ll live, but we’d best get him inside.”
Between them they hauled the boy to the cabin, up the steps, and through the large front room into a bedchamber that opened off the back. Carin lingered on the outer threshold to see Lanse’s unconscious body borne within and the bedroom door closed behind the boy and his caretakers. Then she was off the porch like a gust of wind, racing for the shed and for the oak grove that grew behind it, hidden from the cabin.
“Sprite!” she called through cupped hands, sending her voice up the slope, not so loudly that those in the cabin would hear. “Where are you?”
A spark came flashing through the pines, tumbling down the mountainside. “I—am—here—my—friend!” piped the fractured voice of the sprite as it leaped from tree to tree. With breathtaking speed it darted into the grove and lit in the oak nearest Carin.
“You astonishing creature!” she greeted it, hugging the tree. “I don’t know what makes me happier—seeing you strong and sparky, or watching you whack that horseboy over his empty head. Thank you, sprite. You saved me again.”
“My dear girl,” the creature said. The woodsprite’s reedy voice sounded uncharacteristically subdued. “It is my pleasure to repay in small part the debt that I owe you for my own life. But do forgive me if I confess myself troubled by what I’ve done. Not for all the world’s timber would I see you harmed—that, you must believe. I find, however, that murder proposed is a simple matter; murder done, a bitter task.”
The creature flickered in the tree bark. “For months I had thought myself ready to break open the skulls of your enemies, whenever you bade me do it or I had cause and chance to act. But now that I’ve struck the blow, the sap chills within me. Have I killed the boy?”
Carin patted the oak. “No, I don’t think Lanse is hurt that bad. Verek said he’d likely live. More’s the pity!” She stepped back and moved a little around the tree to stay well out of sight of the cabin. “You probably just gave him a sore head. He deserves worse. Lanse really did intend to kill me—I’m sure of it.”
“Yes,” the sprite said, flickering hotly. “I read it in his eyes.”
Carin drummed her fingers on the tree trunk. “You and I are not very good at murder, are we? I couldn’t finish off Verek when I had the chance. And now you’re having second thoughts about breaking tree limbs over people’s heads.” She sighed. “We may have to get tougher. I overheard Verek talking about ‘bridges’ that need to be ‘dismantled.’” Carin looked up at the mountains towering overhead. “Whatever he’s got in mind, he wants me to help him. If I get into serious trouble, sprite, I can’t afford for either of us to be too squeamish.”
“I shall rise to the occasion,” the sprite declared. “You may count on me. This weakness of mine is a passing fault. I regret it already. Should that knave of a horseboy threaten you again, I’ll lay him low.” The creature flashed in the bark under Carin’s fingers.
She pressed against the tree. “I’m glad you’re back, sprite. I think better when you’re around. You help me work things out.”
Her stomach rumbled then, so loudly that she almost jumped.
“My dear girl,” the sprite trilled. “Go indoors, get warm, and eat. Your hand on this oak is like a patch of ice, and I can hear your hunger pangs. We’ll talk again. I’ll stay close. Meet me tomorrow in this grove and we’ll continue to buck up our courage.”
The woodsprite retreated up the mountainside. Carin sauntered back to the cabin. If anyone watched, they might be less suspicious of a stroll than of another mad dash.
But the front room, when Carin cracked the door to peer inside, was empty. She retrieved her bags from the porch, went in, and stood for a moment studying the monk’s book-filled home.
Welwyn’s cabin boasted far fewer volumes than Verek’s library in Ruain, but his collection was impressive nonetheless. Shelves covered most of three walls, crammed with books to the rafters. The room had a fireplace in each corner, each hearth angled to throw its heat toward the center of the space. A couch with lumpy cushions and an overstuffed chair faced the fire in the front corner. Draped over the back of the couch were Verek’s black coat and his cloak. Its red and silver clasp sparkled in the mingled firelight and sunshine that brightened the room. On a table between the couch and
the chair was a squat oil lamp, poised to throw its more modest light on any book that a reader might curl up with.
The remaining wall held no books, but a great many cooking pots and bunches of dried herbs. Ranged along it was a table that could comfortably seat twelve. Abandoned mugs and a bowl showed that Welwyn had settled his guest at this end, directly under the window through which their outrageous conversation had drifted.
Carin dropped her bags beside the couch and ventured into the kitchen portion of the space. The two hearths on this side of the cabin, like those in the opposite corners, were cheerfully ablaze. A pot of stew simmered on the front fire.
She glanced at the door to the back room—one of the back rooms, actually. Lanse’s sickroom opened off the library side of the common space. The cabin had another side chamber, accessed from this kitchen area. The doors to both rooms were closed. No murmuring voices reached her above the crackling of the four fires that seemed gleefully intent on making Carin’s sweat run.
She shed cloak, coat, and even the quilted doublet that seldom came off. Comfortably warm in her shirtsleeves in Welwyn’s toasty cottage, Carin helped herself to a bowlful of stew and a mug of the monk’s stout-smelling ale. She sat down to eat, well along the table from the wizard’s unfinished meal.
But her fourth spoonful of stew never reached her mouth. It was arrested in transit by the opening of the door to Lanse’s sickroom. Welwyn stepped out, followed by the wizard. The little brown monk was speaking:
“—and that’s the only time, eh?” Welwyn asked, holding the door for his guest. “The talent’s not manifested itself—so openly, that is—on any other occasion?”
“Not so potently … no,” Verek answered. The moment the wizard entered the common room, his dark eyes found Carin at the table.
Welwyn shut the door behind him. Then he turned to grin at her.
Slowly, Carin lowered her spoon. She looked from the smiling monk to the frowning warlock and tensed, anticipating at least a tongue-lashing from the latter—for her purloined meal, for Lanse’s upset, or for whatever else she’d done to rouse his temper.
But it wasn’t Verek who spoke next.
“Then perhaps what we need,” Welwyn said, his grin almost splitting his face, “is the element of surprise.”
Where there had been nothing a moment before, a knife appeared in the monk’s hand. He raised the weapon and flung it straight at Carin’s eyes.
“Unhh!” She toppled off her chair and rolled under the table. Above the sudden pounding of her pulse in her ears, she did not hear any knife hit the wall behind her. Coming up on hands and knees, Carin crawled between her chair and the seat beside it, searching for the weapon. But she found no sign of a knife, either lying on the floor or stuck in the kitchen wall.
Illusion, she realized. This wizardly monk is playing tricks.
With a heart divided betwixt fright, bewilderment, and anger, Carin raised up to peer over the tabletop. Verek looked back at her, impassive, one hand stroking his untrimmed beard, the other cupped to support his bent elbow.
Beside him, Welwyn’s face wore none of the warlock’s habitual guardedness. The monk beamed. With one stout hand, he motioned for her to stand.
“Excellent reflexes, Lady Carin. But not quite what we were looking for.” He chuckled.
“Master Welwyn.” Carin grated out his name through clenched teeth. “I’m sorry if I’m not playing the game right. I don’t know the rules. And it’s really not fun, anyway, to see a knife coming at me.”
“Begging your pardon, my dear,” Welwyn said, looking anything but contrite. “But don’t you know we both should find our little game more diverting than did poor Lanse, when you were throwing the real steel at him.”
“What?” Carin exclaimed, staring at the monk. “Sir, I don’t know what Lanse—or Lord Verek—may have been telling you, but I haven’t done any such thing. I swear on my conscience, the worst I’ve done to Lanse is throw a rock at him in self-defense. It didn’t even hit him. If that cretin says I took a knife to him, then he’s lying.”
“Hold your tongue,” Verek snapped. He planted his hands on his hips and glared at Carin. “You speak from ignorance and a stubborn wish to see matters as you would have them, not as they are. What Master Welwyn tells you is true. The evening of the ice storm that saw you witless with the cold and bruised in the head also found you flinging knives and flaming brands at Lanse’s face—though you lay insensible of it, your mind dark to the magic that you worked. What the boy has long suspected, and dreaded, has been proved: you have the power.
“Isn’t this a fine mess in which I find myself?” Verek added, grumbling as much to Welwyn or the walls as to Carin. “I ride to battle with a frightened cub for a shield-bearer, and at my back an untrained adept so determined to disavow her duty that she’d deny even her own nature.”
Welwyn’s fat fist gave the warlock a jab in the shoulder that would have earned any other person who dared such a familiarity an immediate decapitation. Verek only turned his frown upon the monk and rubbed his bruised arm.
“And don’t you know it takes tinder to start a fire? Hot air won’t do it,” Welwyn admonished the warlock, grinning at him. “Black clouds above, Theil Verek! This young lady will catch on quick enough, if the thing’s a bit of fun and not all gloom and doom.”
The wizard’s frown deepened. But it could no more quell Welwyn’s good humor than the black waters of a tarn could steal the blue from the skies above them.
“Allow me to demonstrate,” the monk went on. He turned back to Carin. “Indulge me, won’t you, my dear, and pick up that table-knife in front of you.” He pointed to the place at the table where, five minutes ago, Carin had been spooning up his tasty goat stew.
Hesitantly, she did as he asked.
“Now,” Welwyn said, “be so good as to throw it at me. Make it an earnest cast, as if you fain would send me to my maker.”
Verek abandoned his friend then. Briskly he stepped to the front fireplace on their side—the library side—of the room, where he would be well out of the way of any but the wildest throw.
Carin shot him a pleading look. Wouldn’t the warlock put an end to this madness? But Verek only fingered his chin and tipped his head, sanctioning her to do as Welwyn requested.
She looked back at the monk.
“Sir, I want to be sure I understand.” Carin’s voice was calmer than her thoughts. “You’re asking me to try my best to kill you?”
“Yes, yes!” Welwyn cried, clapping his hands and grinning. “That’s the spirit, don’t you know. Hurl away! You’ll see what a merry time we’ll have.”
Carin drew a deep breath and held it. She pinched the blade between her thumb and first finger, raised the knife above her shoulder, and threw it, strongly, at Welwyn’s chest. It flew straight.
But an instant before the blade reached its target, it became a ball of light. It did not glow steadily, the way Verek’s witchlight orbs shone. It shed sparks that twinkled like a thousand bright stars. Welwyn caught the ball two-handed, sending a shower of sparks down the front of his brown habit.
“Well done, Lady Carin!” he cried. “Look into these winking, inconstant lights”—he held the ball up and twirled it in his fingers—“and it’s the marrow of me that you’ll see in them. Now I’ll toss the talisman to you, and we’ll behold what you shall make of it.”
Carin shook her head.
“You’re not deceiving me, Master Welwyn. I’ve learned enough from Lord Verek to know magic when I see it.” She glanced at the warlock, then back at the monk. “You’ve created an illusion. The knife I threw at you was real. If you toss it back to me, it’ll be a knife again—and I’d rather not get cut.” She held up her hand, hoping to discourage Welwyn. “Please, sir. You don’t want me bleeding all over your kitchen table.”
“Now, now, my dear,” the monk scolded her playfully. “You’re much too young, don’t you know, to be tiring so quickly of our little game of catch. I swe
ar by the light of learning that it will be no knife that reaches your hands. Come! Humor a fat old man who has no one else to sport with. Catch it!”
Before Carin could refuse him again, Welwyn had lobbed his twinkling orb. It floated above the couch, sprinkling Verek’s doffed cloak with flecks of light. Then it glided over the table, raining sparks into Carin’s now-cold stew.
Don’t touch it! screamed a little voice far back in her mind.
Carin’s hands ignored the warning. They rose, and closed around the orb. At the moment they did so, a sense of elation shot through her … a subtle thrill, akin to the pleasure of watching waves crest in whitecaps on a turquoise ocean.
The orb no longer sparkled. It—prickled. Carin opened her hands. There, resting in her cupped palms, was a spiny sea urchin.
“Drisha!” she cried, and dropped the thing onto the table. It rolled past her bowl of stew. With a little clink, it came to rest against her mug. Now it was the knife that she’d thrown at Welwyn. The change seemed to happen outside time, its reversion was so instantaneous.
The monk laughed—another great belly-shaker that threatened to pull him to pieces. He barreled over to Verek at the fireplace and thumped his friend on the back with such force that the normally undauntable wizard winced.
“A water devilkin!” Welwyn cried, almost strangling on his guffaws. “And don’t you know it would be a sharp-spined water devilkin. Your sylph doesn’t deny her true nature, Theil Verek. She shows it to you in all its prickliness!”
The Wysard (Waterspell 2) Page 16
