If you want to know what Legary wrote, Carin’s thoughts whispered, you’ve got to break his spell. So get what you need and work a little magic.
* * *
She awoke with a plan to do precisely that. And they hadn’t been two hours on the trail in the brittle morning when Carin made her move.
The deer, skipping over a tumble of rocks in wind-scoured snow, managed to hook the sled as solidly as it could be hooked. Carin trudged to the front of the train, removing her mittens as she went. She got the leader by its nose strap and pushed firmly until the entire team fell back a step. When slack formed in the traces, Verek and Lanse manhandled the sled out of the rocks and onto better going. At the wizard’s signal, Carin edged aside.
Away the deer trotted, huffing noisily, anxious to make up for lost time. Behind them ran Lanse, his bearpaws swishing over the snow in a fast shuffle.
At nearly as quick a pace, Verek followed. Carin timed things perfectly. She stepped around as though to point the toes of her snowshoes back toward the west, but pinned the tail of one under an edge of the other. She flailed her arms, lost her balance, and fell, straight into the wizard. With one bare hand, she grabbed for his head. Her fingers tangled in his hair.
Verek half turned, trying to break Carin’s fall—trying to keep them both from toppling off the ridge.
He failed. Together they went over the edge. The wizard clasped her as tightly as she held on to him. Verek landed on his back, down the snowy slope below the ridge crest. Carin sprawled across him.
The snow slumped under them with a loud whoompf. Cracks shot out in all directions. A fracture broke the whiteness across the top of the slope. Snow rushed down, engulfing them in a cold, colorless maelstrom.
The force of it tore Carin from the wizard’s grasp. She started down in a headfirst slide, but immediately the churning snow flipped her over onto her back. Her head popped to the surface; she gasped for air but got a mouthful of frost. Icy pain shot along the roots of her teeth.
Then her face was buried. She was rolling, tumbling down the slope. She couldn’t breathe. The avalanche dragged her under.
Frantically Carin beat at the white death, thrusting upward toward the open sky—toward air—to life. She kicked with both feet, swimming as if the cascade were a great flume of water and she was a drowning diver desperate to gain the surface.
And then the snowslide crunched to a halt, as suddenly as it had begun.
Carin gulped air down a throat so frost-burned that each breath was torture. She blinked snow from her eyes and found herself gazing up at the clouds, lumpy as milk-curds, beading the sky above a pine forest. She’d come to rest with her head in the clear, and one arm free.
She jerked her other arm out of the snow and struggled to sit up. It took several tries, but finally she managed to bend her left knee, and her foot gained a purchase on firmly settled avalanche debris. But her right leg wouldn’t move. It was buried deep, caught in the snowpack’s vise-like grip.
Carin rested awkwardly on one buttock, propping herself with the hand that had grabbed for the wizard’s head. Not a single strand of his hair twined through her bare, cold-reddened fingers. Her prize was lost in the snow, along with her mittens and at least one of her snowshoes. Its rawhide straps remained lashed to her boot, but the bearpaw’s wooden frame had been ripped away.
Up the slope from Carin, there was nothing to see but the rubble of the snowslide. Verek was gone.
Chapter 13
A Watcher
“Sprite!” she shouted. “Help me!”
With fingers that ached from the cold, Carin scraped snow from around her trapped leg. She leaned back on both hands and struggled to wrench the limb free. It would not move. Snow that had been a roiling cloud of powder only moments before had set up hard and solid.
“I—am—here—my—friend!” piped the woodsprite. It jumped through the trees and lit in a snag directly overhead. “What a frightful scene! Snow spilling down the slope and sweeping you with it as if you were no more than a seedpod. Dear girl, are you harmed?”
“My leg’s caught,” she cried. “Give me a stick to dig with. Hurry! I think the wizard is buried.”
From above came a sharp snap. A bare limb, split down its length, landed on the snow beside Carin. The wood was hard, and its splintered edge bit into the snowpack like a spade. Six good jabs, and her leg was free. No trace of a snowshoe emerged from the hole, however, when she pulled her foot out. She’d lost both her Brigas.
“Over here!” the sprite shrilled. “I see a glove.”
Carin scrambled toward the creature’s voice. It led her to a deerskin mitten that was lying on the snow upslope from where the slide had deposited her. She dropped to her knees, grabbed the mitten, and felt fingers within.
With a long edge of the split wood Carin scraped at the snow, removing a handbreadth at each bite. The third pass hit something. She dropped the wood and dug into the snow with fingers that felt pierced by white-hot needles. She cried out with the pain but she kept digging until she had uncovered Verek’s face.
It was ashen. The wizard lay unconscious. Carin leaned down, touched her lips to his ice-coated mustache, and felt no breath.
She tore at her clothes, loosening the layers—coat and doublet, and under them an old wool vest that Welwyn had insisted she wear—to get at her water flask. With cut and bleeding fingers Carin fumbled it out, unstoppered it, and splashed a cupful of the flask’s body-warmed contents into the wizard’s face.
Verek’s eyes flew open. There came a blinding red flash, and a clap that might have been thunder except it wasn’t a noise but a sensation like a hard blow, delivered in all directions at once. Carin took it like a fist in the pit of her stomach. The trees behind her groaned as if a heavy blast had struck them. The snow under her knees crumbled. A great glittering cloud of rime flew in her face and swirled around her like a blizzard.
The powder slowly settled, revealing a cavity in the packed snow, a cavity left by the wizard’s sudden—and altogether unnatural—escape.
He sat at the hole’s edge, coughing and gasping. The look on Verek’s face mixed alarm, astonishment, and confusion. He stared at Carin. Then he twisted around to gaze at the slope down which they had tumbled.
Carin raised her flask in a hand that shook. She took a swig of warm water and wished for something stronger. Traveling for weeks with a sorcerer who made scant use of his powers, she sometimes let herself forget that he could turn nature on its head with only a muttered word or a dark thought. The avalanched mass had set up around her leg like rock. But Verek had burst from the snowpack as if from feathers.
He hacked again, in a throat that must burn like Carin’s did from gulping cold air and ice crystals. Unsteadily, she offered him her flask.
The wizard accepted it and choked down a mouthful. It quieted his cough. With his eyes closed he took another sip, tilted his head back, and let it trickle down. Presently he handed the water back to Carin, drew off his mitten, and went hunting through his clothes for the flask that he carried next to his skin. His did not contain water.
Carin was too out of breath from the invisible blow to her stomach to speak, but Verek shouted hoarsely at the spark that flickered in the trees over their heads. “Sprite! Heed me.”
“Wha—?” The creature sounded as winded as Carin felt. It had been close enough to be knocked around by Verek’s magic. It couldn’t have avoided that force that slammed into the trees.
Verek hawked and spat. “Hasten ahead,” he rasped. “Distract the deer. Constrain them. Have Lanse leave tea, a loaf, and Brigas—two pair—by the trailside.” The wizard’s voice was gravelly, the rawness of his throat audible in every word. “The deer must race onward … tell Lanse we will follow. Go!” Verek grated. “Carry my message.”
“Carin?” The sprite flickered just above her head. “Dare I leave you alone with him?”
“Blights upon you!” Verek growled. “Do as I say.”
Ca
rin studied the warlock, then looked up at the woodsprite and nodded. “Go on.” She sounded as hoarse as Verek, but her breath was coming easier now. “Hot tea for my throat … it’d be wonderful.”
“Then I do your bidding, magician—but at Carin’s behest, not yours.” In a flash the sprite sparked away, racing through the trees up the slope, apparently recovered from the buffeting by Verek’s sorcery. Or perhaps, Carin thought, the creature could hardly wait to escape the affected trees and any traces of the magic that might remain in the pines.
She had another thought. “Mittens, sprite!” she cried after it. “Tell Lanse to leave me mittens!”
But she was too late. The creature had already disappeared over the ridge.
Verek took a long drink from the flask he’d pulled out of his clothes. Then he offered the dhera to Carin. As she accepted it, he studied her bare hands and the bloodied fingers that were missing patches of skin from scraping at the snow.
He dug back through his garments. This time the wizard pulled out a soft leather pouch that contained small, waxed-paper packets. He bit the corner off one, then held out his mittened hand, palm up.
“To lose your gloves up here,” he growled, “is to risk your fingers to frostbite. Be so careless again and you may find there’s no remedy for it.”
Impatiently Verek crooked his waiting hand, and Carin rested her fingers in his palm. They were too numb now to feel pain, but she felt how tightly he gripped her hand.
The wizard rubbed a salve from the waxed packet into Carin’s torn fingertips and over each abraded knuckle. It stung. But then it felt warm, as though she’d dipped her frozen fingers into heated oil and camphor.
Verek treated both her hands, put the medicine away, and started to pull on his other mitten. Then he stopped, frowning. With an irritated sigh, he removed the one that he wore and thrust both of them at Carin.
“Here,” he snapped in a dhera-strengthened voice. “Keep these close. If they are not returned to me, know that you will make other restitution.”
He stood up. As he knocked the snow off his hair and clothes, Carin saw that the wizard had lost more than his snowshoes in the avalanche. His silver headband was gone.
Verek looked up toward the ridgetop, studying the slope. It was neither very tall nor seriously steep. If it had been either, the slide would not have slowed as it encountered the trees. It wouldn’t have deposited them where they now stood. On a steep slope, the avalanche would have roared down into the forest, ripping out trees and carrying away timber, rocks—and their crushed bodies.
Despite its relative gentleness, however, the slope did not offer an easy means of climbing out. Straight up toward the ridge crest, they might climb over snow so hard-packed by the slide that it should be stable underfoot. But hanging precariously at the top was a huge cornice that hadn’t come down. Even if the overhanging snow stayed in place until they reached it—and there was no reason to suppose it would—they would never get over the suspended mass without breaking it loose.
The alternative was to climb the edge of the avalanche’s path. But without snowshoes, they would plunge in up to their thighs.
Verek set off, up the packed snow. He didn’t look back to see that Carin followed. The wizard worked his way at an angle toward the loose stuff beyond. When he reached the powder, he sank a boot out of sight, then punched in with his other foot.
Carin stayed on the packed surface, watching Verek wallow laboriously up the slope. Every few steps, he paused to rest. The strain of his effort showed in his heaving shoulders. It was no longer morning, but midday when Verek finally gained the ridgetop and disappeared over it.
His hard-won passage had left a path that Carin could follow. She worked her way up it, staying carefully in the track Verek had made to avoid triggering another snow-break.
When she got to the top, she found the wizard flat on his back, breathing hard. He lay with his eyes closed, and the folds of his cloak covered his bare hands.
Carin crunched past him without speaking. She walked over to pick up her hiking staff; it waited in the track of the sled where she’d dropped it. She squatted on her heels, slipped her hand out of her borrowed mitten—the glove was big for her, but warm—and studied her cuts and scrapes. Already the wizard’s ointment was mending Carin’s torn flesh.
She looked up to see the woodsprite returning. The creature sparked through the trees beside the trail, approaching from the west, as bright as a speck of the sun. It called to her, breathless with the speed of its travel.
“How pleased I am to see you out of the valley,” it said as it came to rest. “Those provisions which the mage requested await you, not so very far down the trail. The deer were keen to push on, but I kept them in check until the boy could unload a few parcels.”
“Good work,” Carin murmured. “I’d love a little tea and something to eat.” She kept her voice down as she eyed the prostrate figure nearby.
Verek’s fur-trimmed hood was up, but a few strands of his hair straggled out of it. Carin stood and took a step toward the wizard, her fingers tingling to lay claim to the “witch hair” she still needed.
But at that moment Verek opened his eyes. He flashed her a look that could freeze stone, and Carin stopped where she was.
“Go softly, mistress,” he growled. “In future, if you contrive again to throw us off a mountain, it will be you slogging back up through eighty spades of snow, with myself following at my leisure.”
Carin shrugged. She backed off and dropped her gaze.
As the wizard heaved himself to his feet and started down the trail, Carin fell in behind. Even without snowshoes, the walking was good in the tracks the sled had laid down. The sun was not two hours past its zenith when they reached the supplies Lanse had left for them. The boy had even thought to drop off a pan and mugs.
The wizard scooped the pan full of snow. He set it on a flat rock out of the wind and snapped his fingers at it: they had water, boiling hot. He tossed in a generous measure of tea as Carin unwrapped a loaf of Welwyn’s dense, filling cake. Made with raisins and nuts in a batter rich with eggs and milk, the cake was a meal in itself. Verek used his dagger to slice the frozen loaf. He laid the slices on the rock beside the pot of tea. Another snap of his fingers and the slices were hot, as if fresh from Welwyn’s oven.
Carin poured the tea. They hunkered beside the rock to eat.
The hush that hung over the meal was the uneasy silence of two people who weren’t saying what they were thinking. The sprite, lodged in a tree overhead, seemed bent on lightening the mood.
“I once saw two bear cubs slide down a snowy slope,” the creature began conversationally. “They seemed to rather enjoy themselves. But then, they didn’t bring the whole mountainside down upon them. What is good sport for young bears is not, perhaps, the best thing for you two-legged creatures who go over the snow with baskets on your feet.”
By way of reply, Verek reached for the smaller of the two sets of Briga bearpaws that Lanse had left for them. He tested the rawhide lacings and shook his head.
“The girl won’t get far over the snow on these,” he said. “Oblige us, sprite, with more of your swift message-running and go tell the boy to drop off a bundle of hide thongs from among those he packed for repairs. These”—Verek fingered the strips that crisscrossed the snowshoe’s frame—“are weak and must be replaced.”
“Shall I also tell him,” the sprite inquired as if warming to its messenger’s job—“that you are safely back on the trail and will make haste to rejoin him?”
Verek nodded. “Yes. Give him what tidings you will. But now, pray begone. The miles between us lengthen with each moment you delay.”
The creature sparked away. Three flashes and it had vanished into the snow-frosted treetops.
“Good riddance,” the wizard muttered. He put down the snowshoe, reached for his tea and sipped it … and studied Carin over the mug’s rim.
She tensed. The uneasy silence between them was e
nding. She was about to hear what Verek had on his mind.
He arched an eyebrow at her. “If I thought you would speak the truth, I’d ask my questions bluntly: Did you inflict upon us the events of this morning through sheer clumsiness? Or did you have a reason for tumbling us down the slope and nearly killing us both?” He shook his head. “That I can get no trustworthy answer from you leaves me to wonder at those two possibilities, the one more improbable than the other.”
Verek gestured at the snowshoes. “For a fortnight I have watched you glide easily on those, handling yourself like one mountain-bred. Am I now to suppose that you lost your footing on a flat ridgetop, at precisely the moment which would take me over the edge with you?” He scowled at Carin. “That your foolishness was deliberately done, I can little doubt. For what purpose, however, I cannot guess. If you meant to send me to my death, why dash water in my face to rouse me to life? You only had to leave me as I lay, and the elements would have done the killing for you, cleanly and quietly.”
Carin said nothing. When the mood to talk came upon Verek, silence was generally her best response.
“I wonder,” he went on in a thoughtful voice. “Did you find your plan upset, when it was not myself alone who slid down with the snow? Had you meant to keep yourself back? But failing in that, you feared to let me die. Perhaps you doubted that you could manage a reascent without my help.” He sipped his tea. “That would seem the likeliest case … if you hadn’t grabbed me to you and held on fast, over the ridge and down, as unshakeable as a snapping turtle until the rush of the snow tore you away.”
The Wysard (Waterspell 2) Page 23
