“How did it go?” Carin mumbled, struggling to remember. “Something about seeing …”
With her brow furrowed in concentration, she pictured the woman named Megella swathed in layers of shawls, her calloused hands braiding into a ringlet “three hairs from the heads of three witches.” Just where those hairs had come from, Carin couldn’t guess. At the time, she’d thought that Meg spoke figuratively—or flippantly. Now she wasn’t sure.
In any event, when the braided circlet was finished, Megella said the charm. And by looking through the ring of hair, the woman could see that which had been hidden—or so she claimed.
The words of the chant came to Carin in a rush. She spoke them without thinking:
“Peering-eyed woman, seeing all;
Keen-eyed man, seeing all;
Virile sons, nubile daughters,
Dark-eyed fey ones, seeing all.”
On the paper in Carin’s hand, the jumbled characters leaped into motion like a disorganized troupe of dancers fighting for position. Some letters raced to the top of the page, some wriggled to the bottom; others circled the middle. Though Legary’s narrative remained as unreadable as ever, the charm of “seeing” had definitely disturbed the old wizard’s spellwork.
Too intrigued by what she’d done to fear it, Carin watched the figures’ pirouettes. “What you need, don’t you know,” she mumbled, mimicking Welwyn’s catchphrase, “are three hairs from the heads of three witches.” With a braided circlet to peer through, she just might make the wisewoman’s charm do the trick.
But where would the necessary hairs be found? Carin ran her fingers through her own mane. From the gillie’s bob of weeks ago, her hair had grown out nearly to her shoulders. Lanse calls you a witch—and so you will be, for the sake of a little spellwork. Three of the needed strands would come from her own auburn locks, three from Welwyn’s salt-and-pepper ponytail, and the final three from Verek’s head of long, crow-black hair.
The monk’s plans for the twilight hours fit perfectly with Carin’s. “Baths for all!” Welwyn declared when the evening meal was done and the animals were tended. “You’ll not be having a long soak in a hot tub for a stretch after this, don’t you know, so you might as well enjoy it while you can. You first, Lady Carin. As sure as dirt makes mud, you’ll not be wanting to follow these mucky fellows.”
She leaped at his offer. Armed with a bundle of clean clothes and a bar of elderflower soap, she trailed the monk into the bedchamber that had been Lanse’s sickroom. It was more austere in most respects than Carin’s borrowed bedroom. It had narrow pallet-beds instead of the curtained expanse of goose-down that Welwyn had ceded to her. This room, however, boasted one outstanding fixture: a brass tub, ornately worked with a rolled and filigreed lip, showy enough for a noblewoman’s bower.
Carin stared at it, then at the monk. He grinned sheepishly.
“I’ll never tell a soul,” she whispered to him.
Welwyn only chuckled. He helped her fill the tub to the brim with steaming water. Then he left her to luxuriate in privacy.
Carin lingered as long as she thought acceptable, given that two others would want a soak as well. When she’d toweled off and got dressed, she searched for hairs from Welwyn’s head. On a table between the pallet-beds lay a comb. Tangled in its teeth were two long, white hairs. On a bed pillow, one iron-gray hair waited to be collected. Carefully she folded the salt-and-pepper strands inside the papers in her pocket, remade the bed, and gathered up her dirty clothes. Smiling, Carin opened the door and stepped into the front room.
No one was there but Verek. The wizard sat on the couch, reading by the light of an oil lamp. He didn’t look up when Carin entered the room. But he spoke to her, inattentively, as though too absorbed in his book to be bothered.
“Master Welwyn begs the use of his old room for an hour or so. For two days he’s neglected his prayers and those offices that a man of Drisha should perform nightly. He hopes you will not be put out while he secludes himself in there”—Verek tipped his head, indicating her borrowed bedroom—“to discharge his pious duty.”
“Of course. I’ll stay out here,” Carin replied.
None but the walls heard.
She set down her bundle of dirty clothes and put water to heat for washing them. While she waited for the pot to boil, she followed Verek’s example and scanned the bookshelves, searching for a slim volume that she could read tonight. It wouldn’t do to start a story that she might never have the chance to finish.
Carin spotted a familiar title: Ladra. Verek’s own library held a copy of the same short text. She hadn’t read it there, preferring practical works like archery manuals and travelers’ guides to collections of poetry. But if Welwyn and Verek both thought enough of the work to own it, she ought to take a look. Maybe it was required reading for wizards.
With the little book Carin settled at the table, near the cooking hearth to catch the firelight on her reading. As she took her seat, across the way Verek left his. He scooped up his saddlebags and retired to the back room for his bath. The door closed behind him just as Carin opened to the first poem.
Before she’d finished a stanza of it, she was trapped in the book like a fish in a weir. It’s bewitched! cried the only corner of her mind that managed to disentangle itself.
Knowing she was under the book’s spell was not the same as breaking it. Carin tried repeating the charm of “seeing” that had made a dent in Legary’s spellwork. She struggled to build her proven countermeasure against Verek’s spell of stone—her quickly imagined vision of dried clay flaking off soft flesh. Against Ladra’s enchantments, however, none of it worked. Carin fought to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. She could only keep reading.
And what strange reading it was. Every lovers’ kiss recounted in verse, Carin tasted. Every blushing rose given to fair maiden wafted its perfume at her. She heard the lilting songs of the serenaders and felt the caresses of lovemaking … gentle, the touch of silk on naked skin, and passionate, two bodies twined, glistening with sweat.
Her face was hot, her breathing rapid and shallow. The book melted to her fingers. She couldn’t put it down, and she couldn’t stop turning the pages. Her blood, her marrow—every part of her being—devoured the erotic poetry with an exquisite hunger.
Carin did not hear the door to the bathing room open. She did not notice a scrubbed, neatly groomed Verek approach the table. But she became acutely aware of his presence when his long fingers closed over the volume and drew it out of her grasp. As Verek took it away, Carin clutched for it, desperate not to lose it.
The wizard snapped the book shut. He glanced at the title on the spine. Leveling his gaze at her, he smiled.
Carin studied his face as though she’d never seen it before. A smiling Verek was a rarity on the order of an exploding star.
“So our good Welwyn appreciates Ladra’s passions, does he? No marvel—the old reprobate,” Verek said. One eyebrow arched quizzically. “And you’ve stumbled upon them, have you? All innocent and unsuspecting, not guessing what this writer will demand of you. By the look on your face, I perceive that you are well under this wysard’s spell. The enchantment is a potent one.” He toyed with the closed book.
Then Verek laughed—a mixture of amusement and sympathy. “Would that Welwyn had been the first to walk into this room! Ladra’s dictates might have taken years off him. But the enchantress moves unwary readers to take the first upon whom their eyes shall light. You must act, therefore, as the poetess compels—distasteful though you may find it. Her magic holds her captives helpless until they’ve done her bidding.”
Carin stared at the wizard, not sure whether to be relieved at his understanding of her predicament, or embarrassed by his unhesitating acceptance of it. Didn’t he find it disconcerting that words on paper—even enchanted words—should stir in her such an overpowering compulsion?
“You’ll let me?” she asked, breathless.
“Let you!” the warlock exclaimed. “
What possible objection could I raise? Lanse is the only one among us who is both blind and stonyhearted. From neither of those failings do I suffer. When a pretty girl finds herself obliged to kiss me, I won’t hinder it.”
Verek walked around the table to the hearth. He watched her with an expression that was half beguiled and half unreadable, as he raised his arms shoulder high and rested his elbows on the mantelpiece at his back. He leaned against the stonework, casual in his shirtsleeves, his white linen tunic open at the throat.
Carin hesitated, in an agony of conflicting desires.
“Come,” the wizard said. The smile played on his lips. “Do as you must—as Ladra commands—and be done with it. I won’t bite you.”
Carin pushed back her chair and got up from the table. Uncertainly, she stepped to the fireplace to stand facing the dark-haired, well-built warlock. Within her was a curious mix of emotions—dismay at what she was about to do, resentment of the sorceress Ladra for usurping her free will … and something that Carin wasn’t prepared to put a name to, for it would require a conscious admission that what she felt for Theil Verek was not altogether a sense of loathing.
Make it light and quick! cried the only corner of her mind that could still think for itself. Stay in control, get free of this enchantment, and don’t lose what’s left of your dignity.
But when Carin had slipped her hands along Verek’s freshly trimmed beard and pulled his face down to hers, what she planted on his parted lips wasn’t a peck. She kissed him with all the passion that lived in Ladra’s poems.
For a moment that was not measured in time, both of the wizard’s hands stayed where they were. He seemed to be gripping the mantelshelf. Then his right hand let go. He cupped it around the back of Carin’s head and pulled her to him, forcing her lips more firmly against his as he responded to her.
Then with a suddenness that left her gasping, he broke it off. His hands moved to her shoulders. He pushed her away and held her at arm’s length.
“No,” he whispered. His dark eyes filled Carin’s universe. “There is much of folly in this course, and little of wisdom. I’ll thank you to retire from the field before I forget that you are still more girl than woman, and this is Ladra’s hunger on your lips and none of your own.”
The heat that spread through Carin rose high, wave upon wave of it, a blaze that burned her everywhere—she was blushing like a panicked callet-fish. She slipped from Verek’s grasp and retreated toward the door to her borrowed bedroom. In her confusion, she forgot that Welwyn still occupied the room.
The monk, in fact, was just leaving it. The door stood ajar, and the little man leaned against the jamb, grinning wickedly.
“My life for you, Theil Verek!” Welwyn swore. His bright gaze slid off Carin and fastened on the wizard behind her. “Don’t I wish I had a pretty partridge to despise me the way this one so clearly despises you! Now it’s clear, don’t you know, why you claim that the girl is not your—ahem—apprentice.”
Chapter 12
White Death
They were a week in the high mountains before Carin’s legs stopped hurting. Snowshoeing uphill and down—mostly up—was a painful slog, even with five surefooted Trosdan deer, a sled, and two fellow hikers going in front to pack the trail.
Welwyn’s deer were what made this march up the mountains possible, Carin had realized before they were a day gone from the monk’s glen. Not only did the stout little beasts haul a storehouse-worth of supplies while breaking trail over snow that horses would have floundered in up to their girths, the deer had an uncanny knack for knowing where the trail was.
“The path is faint, at best,” Welwyn had warned them. “In winter it vanishes under the snow. Trust the deer to find the way, or be lost in two days’ time.”
And so the hardy beasts led them, as they might lead adventurers in a droll-teller’s tale, on long traverses up steep slopes. Gaining the crests, they kept to the ridgetops as much as possible, where the wind compacted the snow and made walking easier.
The two deer directly in front of the sled—the heaviest, most muscular of the team—bore the brunt of the pulling, while the three lighter animals in the traces ahead of them took turns at the lead. Their harness was ingeniously designed so that, with a quick interchange of iron rings and catches, the lead animal could be put in the middle of the string to rest, while those which had followed second and third moved up to take their turns at trail-breaking.
Lanse proved as sure a hand with deer as with horses. He walked behind the sled, holding a snubbing line for downhill braking. A long rein in his other hand gave him a modicum of control over the lead animal. By twitching it this way and that, and yelling “Dey!” or “Doy!” he could alter the team’s course just enough—most of the time—to keep the sled from hanging up in trees or on rocks that protruded from the snow.
For all their willing work and their sure skills as pathfinders, the beasts seemed endlessly surprised by the sled that they pulled. Each time it lodged against some obstacle they’d pranced over or skirted too near, the five would strain in their harnesses, struggling to walk on, their confusion showing in their eyes when they could not progress. Then it became Carin’s job to trudge to the head of the train, take the lead deer by its noseband, and force it and thus all of the bewildered creatures to back up, to slacken the ropes between the team and the sled.
By the time Lanse and Verek had the sleigh free of whatever held it, the deer would be frantic to get going again. When the wizard signaled her to release them and Carin stood aside, the team would take off at a trot, the three snowshoers hard-pressed to keep up. No amount of Lanse’s shouting or hauling back on the lines would slow them until they’d made up for the delay.
The beasts had a well-developed—tyrannical, in fact—sense of time and distance and how far they ought to travel in a single day. When the miles that the deer prescribed for themselves had passed under their hooves, they stopped, no matter how early or late or how unsuitable that place for making camp.
It was then that the woodsprite proved itself to be a useful addition to Verek’s party. Sparking enticingly, the creature went ahead to coax the deer into a grotto or a stand of trees, under a rock overhang, or simply around a slope to its lee side, if that was all the shelter to be found within a reasonable distance of the team’s stopping.
The first few times that a clearly dubious Verek allowed the sprite to tempt the deer off the track and into cover, he carefully marked the end of that day’s travel to be sure they could take up the trail again at dawn. Such precautions, however, proved unnecessary. Unerringly when they broke camp, the deer trotted back to the spot they’d reached the day before, no matter how far the sprite had led them off to an acceptable campsite. From there, the team resumed the journey, the Trosdans stepping confidently over the snow as if they harbored no doubts about the wisdom of this winter trek.
Their owner, however, had not been able to hide his misgivings. On the morning of their departure from Brother Welwyn’s glen, the monk’s sad looks had mirrored Carin’s gloomy mood. It was the only time in their brief friendship that the little man hadn’t smiled at her. He’d squeezed her breathless with his hug and whispered in her ear:
“Take care, my dear. You’ve won my heart. Though you must trust in Theil Verek to see you safely through this venture, if it were any man but him taking you into these mountains—not to mention stealing you from me—I’d kill him, don’t you know.”
From Welwyn’s embrace, Carin had extricated herself before she fainted from lack of air. She’d looked into the monk’s face, expecting to see his usual impish grin. But his lips were tight, and his brown eyes were as hard as granite. What she’d taken for a bad joke, the monk had meant in deadly earnest.
And so it had been a subdued party that climbed away and left Welwyn standing alone in his sheltered glen. Carin had knots in her stomach. Verek and Lanse seemed lost in thought. Both were silent except for the necessary commands to the deer and brief exc
hanges between themselves where the terrain demanded it. Neither of them spoke to Carin. They left her to trail along, as much their unwilling follower as she had been since Ruain.
The ensorcelled fetter on her ankle kept her near. The greater range that Verek had allowed, while Carin learned snowshoeing in the glen and he mastered deer handling on the slopes, was again restricted. Now she could barely step out of his sight behind a tree or around a bend before her anklet tightened threateningly.
The only one among them who looked the least bit pleased was the woodsprite. It flitted through the trees behind Carin and hid from no one now—except the deer. One glimpse of that spark out of the corner of an eye, and the Trosdans’ heads would turn. Their bright gazes would search the trees for the creature they fancied. If they hadn’t made their allotment of miles for the day, the deer would keep moving down the trail while they looked for their darling, but with such inattention that the sled’s chances of snagging were greatly multiplied.
Only twice did the sprite distract the team before Verek’s fury cowed the creature into finding its place at the very end of the caravan. The sprite’s newfound confidence, Carin observed, was not so great that the fay would risk fully unleashing the wizard’s anger—not simply to prove that it could risk it.
Undeniably, the woodsprite now had—so to speak—the upper hand. As Verek had predicted, the creature was quick to tell Carin of their “gentlemen’s agreement,” as the sprite called the treaty between itself and the warlock.
“Had I thought before I leaped,” the sprite confessed, its reedy voice shrill with its high spirits, “my courage might have failed me. But I was so angry at the mage’s threats against you, my fair friend, that I jumped into the middle of that serpent and his detestable boy. The sap rose in me. Quickly I made my point: the mage is powerless against me unless he contrives again to catch me in a twig, as when you sneaked me indoors in Ruain. And it’s a witless seedling I’d be, to fall again into such a trap.
The Wysard (Waterspell 2) Page 21
