The Wysard (Waterspell 2)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  The wizard answered with a short nod, then led Lanse into the fog. It swallowed them completely but marked their passage with a fast-moving swirl that spiraled in their wake like a whirlpool. The vapor eddied around Carin, confusing her senses until she seemed to float in the stuff, with no notion of what was “up” or “down.” Reeling, she grabbed a tree, trusting it to know its roots from its crown.

  Voices seeped through the fog, muffled and indistinct. Carin understood nothing that was said, but she marveled at the length of the conversation. So well did those two seem to know each other, master and servant, that a very few words usually sufficed for one to catch the other’s intent. What made this discussion stretch on?

  A voice—Lanse’s—rose for a moment in sharp dispute, then subsided again to a murmur. If Verek was issuing orders, then it seemed his servant dared to question or even oppose them.

  The fog swirled again. Wizard and groom emerged, the boy looking discontented, verging on rebellious.

  Verek made for the sled, threw back the tent-tarp, and chose from the gear a single item: Carin’s indigo bow. He started toward her, but as he came up to Lanse again, he stopped and held out his hand.

  The boy took it. They stood eye to eye, shaking hands like equals. Then Verek drew Lanse to him and gave him as tight a hug as two men who were held apart by snowshoes could manage. When they separated, Lanse’s eyes were moist. The wizard’s were not, but the faint aura of excitement with which he had begun the day had given way to a stony resolve.

  Verek strode past Carin without a glance. “Come,” he snapped. “Follow me. We have a task to complete.”

  She stood riveted, stopped by a quick movement from Lanse. The one-armed groom couldn’t draw a bow. But even in his weakened condition he could throw a knife. He had his dirk in his raised hand, and his anguished stare was fixed on Carin.

  “Lanse—no,” she breathed. Then: “Lord Verek!” she cried over her shoulder, not taking her eyes from her obviously undecided executioner.

  “Hold, boy!” came Verek’s clipped voice through the fog. “I told you—I need her alive. Slay her, and you assure my death. Do as I have commanded and wait here patiently.”

  Lanse’s gaze flicked from Carin’s face into the vapor over her left shoulder, then back again. He neither nodded nor spoke in acknowledgment of his master’s words, but he lowered the knife.

  Carin turned and hurried after Verek, but she felt the boy’s stare searing a hole in her back long after the fog must have hidden her from his view.

  Slip away! cried a frightened little voice over the pounding of her heart. Without that damned shackle of sorcery on my ankle, the warlock will never find me in this ghost cloud.

  Two thoughts checked Carin’s desperation, one coming hard upon the other. First spoke reason: Lose yourself in this stuff and it’s lost you’ll truly be, lying dead at the bottom of a gully with a broken neck, like as not.

  The other argument for remaining with the wizard came from a source that was slower to identify itself. Uneasily, Carin recognized a close cousin of duty and conscience. It whispered to her in Verek’s voice: “Lives turn on your decision.”

  The chaos in her head and heart had no power to alter her course. Carin trudged after the wizard, keeping her eyes on the trailing frames of his bearpaws, finally banishing the din and installing in its place a mind as blank as the fog. As a consequence, she lost all track of time. Whether they walked for an hour or an afternoon, she couldn’t guess. Nothing got through to her until a sensation penetrated—the feel of air both lighter and warmer.

  She jerked her head up.

  The fog was lifting. It was no more now than a thin mist. And the touch of that mist was not colder than death, but pleasantly cool, like sea spray.

  The mist cleared completely. Carin could again see the mountaintops rising above them in snow-capped grandeur. What stretched before them, however, was not a winter snowscape, but a summer meadow. Yellow and purple flowers bobbed in a gentle breeze. Butterflies darted over the blooms. The sun was warm. Sweat began to trickle under Carin’s layers of winter wool.

  Verek halted a few steps into the meadow and started peeling off clothes. Carin followed his example. Cloaks, coats, and quilted underjackets hit the grass. They unstrapped now-useless snowshoes.

  Carin sank into the grass to undo the thongs of her knee-boots and roll the soft leather uppers down to her ankles. On second thought, she shed the boots entirely and also stripped off her wool stockings.

  Too late, she remembered her bare right ankle. Carin shot the wizard a look and found his gaze on her fetterless skin. His eyes showed no surprise, only a little bemusement.

  “Come,” he said, his gaze shifting to meet hers. “Pleasant as this meadow seems, our business is urgent. We cannot linger here.”

  Verek strode away, heading for a grove at the meadow’s far edge. The trees at that meeting of grass and grove were unremarkable, but at a distance beyond them giants towered, their yellow limbs gleaming in the sun as if made of gold.

  Carin grabbed her boots and her shucked backpack and ran after Verek. She’d willingly leave her heavy clothes behind, but not her pack. Over the rustling of the breeze through the grass, another gentle murmur had reached her: it was the burble of running water.

  A creek cut through the grove in a series of tree-shaded pools that were made for bathing. Carin dropped her boots and her pack on the bank and had her filthy shirt off before she even thought. Covered, but barely, in an equally grimy chemise, she stared across at Verek. The wizard had jumped the creek and stood gazing at her from its other bank, his expression impenetrable.

  Carin gave no ground. “I’ll be a few minutes.” It wasn’t a request, but a declaration. “Turn your back, please.”

  “Make haste,” Verek ordered. “We’re wasting time.” He spun on the ball of his foot and stepped along the far bank, disappearing into a thicket. But a moment before he left Carin’s sight, his shirt came over his head. She wasn’t the only one making for a bath.

  The water was warm and clear. Carin had no soap; in a determined bid to feel clean again she scoured her skin with the fine, white sand that lined the creekbed. She scrubbed her scalp with it and let the briskly flowing current flush the grit from her hair.

  In minutes she was back on the bank, fishing in her pack for her last clean underclothes. Carin dressed quickly, pulling on the same dirty trousers and shirt because she had no others. Her clean feet went into a pair of almost-clean stockings from her pack. She put on her boots, too, to avoid bruised feet. The floor of the grove was strewn with a variety of bone-hard, white-shelled nuts she couldn’t name.

  She shouldered her pack and looked downstream for the wizard. There was no sign of him.

  Carin crossed the creek where Verek had, and ambled toward the thicket into which he’d disappeared. “My lord?” she called. “Are you there?”

  The silence lasted long enough for a touch of anxiety to flit up her backbone. Then Verek reappeared, emerging from the thicket, dressed as before—he had no other clothes with him, either—but with his face clean and his hair wet.

  Not only wet, but unevenly hacked off. It was roughly shoulder-length on his left side, but a long hank straggled down his right sleeve. The dagger that did the damage was still in that hand. In his other, Verek carried her bow and his. The one quiver between them was slung over his shoulder.

  Carin stared, then shook her head. “You’ve botched it,” she greeted him. “If you’ll sit down and hand me that knife, I’ll give you something closer to a proper haircut.”

  Verek stopped where he was, took a seat on a convenient boulder, and saying no word, presented her the dagger’s hilt.

  She stepped behind him, to comb her fingers through his long, wet hair and work out the snarls. Starting with the shortened side, Carin remedied the mess he’d made, then worked around to the uncut length over his right shoulder. The dagger’s keen edge sliced neatly through Verek’s hair, and could have s
evered his jugular before he knew what was happening. So distant was that memory now—of a murderous fantasy Carin had concocted before they’d even reached Deroucey—it seemed like a daydream from someone else’s brain.

  When she’d finished cutting his hair, Carin faced the wizard and offered him his knife back. Verek shook his head.

  “Keep it. You may need it.” He separated their two bows and handed her the blue one. “Take this also. I will carry the quiver for a time yet … for appearances’ sake.”

  Carin, weaponed with a suddenness that widened her eyes, slipped the dagger through her belt, retrieved her dropped pack, and following Verek’s example, shouldered her bow. Evidently he did not expect to use his soon.

  He led the way through the grove and on toward the towering trees beyond. Like high hills seen at a distance, those giants were farther away than they looked. To reach them took close to an hour of walking. The sun that gleamed brilliantly off the sleek limbs was well along in the sky when they arrived, putting the time at late afternoon.

  Beneath the golden-yellow giants, they walked through the ruins of innumerable stone buildings that might once have been palaces or temples. Vestiges of ancient beauty lingered in broken archways and weathered sculptures. A few splashes of bright color led Carin’s wondering gaze to the shattered remains of enameled tiles and painted columns. No marvel, that the path through the mountains which led to this place was vanishingly faint, or that no trace remained of a bridge across the canyon. No travelers could have had a reason to visit this ruined city for ages beyond reckoning.

  They turned a corner and found a wide, steep flight of steps, still intact amid the crumbling buildings, seemingly cut from a single enormous block of yellow quartz. The steps climbed high over their heads. From the ground, nothing could be seen of what waited at the top.

  Carin snapped a glance at the wizard. He had eyes for only those steps. His gaze followed them upward and lingered long on the unseeable summit. Tautened by his upturned face, Verek’s throat convulsed as he swallowed. His right hand reached for Carin’s shoulder and found it with only edgewise help from his vision. He squeezed her shoulder briefly, then started the ascent.

  She followed a step behind and a little to one side, craning her neck to see what might lie above. There were only the steps, semi-translucent like topaz, and over them a cluster of great golden limbs glittering against the sky.

  Higher and higher above the ruined city they climbed. Eventually the steps topped out on a wide pavilion that was paved with flagstones of the same yellowish mineral. Centered below the spreading boughs of four golden-blond trees was a large pool of water that fizzed like sparkling, straw-colored wine.

  From the surface of the pool a throne rose, shaped from the effervescing water as if from hardened foam. But the throne was liquid and changeable. It flowed back into the pool slowly, without splashing, as its occupant stood and glided toward them on feet that made no more impression upon the pool’s surface than a water-strider’s would.

  Carin gaped. Approaching them was a slim and graceful woman who bore a striking resemblance to Verek. She had his long, glossy, raven hair, his obsidian eyes, his straight, patrician nose, his air of authority.

  “Welcome!” the woman exclaimed in a voice that chimed off the trees above with a cold, metallic ring. “I’ve been expecting you. For weeks I have followed your travels with the greatest interest.”

  Verek, standing on the jaundiced flagstones a little ahead of Carin, made a deep, formal bow. Taking her lead from him, Carin started to curtsy, but decided it would be a preposterous gesture from one who was dressed like a boy. So she bowed, awkwardly, with little of Verek’s supple grace.

  The wizard addressed the woman in measured, coolly polite tones. “I had not thought to be welcomed here. Your greeting astonishes me, madam.”

  “Madam!” the woman exclaimed. “Is that how a son addresses the mother he hasn’t seen in thirty-odd years?”

  Chapter 18

  The Master Magician

  Verek’s mother! The ‘grieving widow’ who had ‘played her role,’ had suckled an infant heir at her breast and then disappeared from the boy’s life—

  Everything Carin had heard, read, or guessed about Verek’s missing mother came crashing into her thoughts as she stared at the woman who faced them. The lady wore a sleeveless gown of midnight purple in which green hues shimmered, the colors ever shifting as she moved. With her smooth, bone-white skin and silky black hair, she appeared to be no more than twenty-five. But what was age to a wysard? Carin understood perfectly well that, to a true adept, mortal years meant nothing. Even so, it was a bit disorienting to look from Verek to his mother and not be able to tell which of them should have the role of parent.

  Like the voice to Carin’s dilemma, Verek spoke.

  “I pray you will pardon me. It is difficult to call you ‘mother’ when you seem young enough to be my daughter.”

  The woman smiled. Rather, her pouty lips twitched in what was clearly meant for a smile. The expression did not extend to her eyes: two hard, dark crystals that were very like the warlock’s but as cold as his were fiery.

  “I will accept that as a compliment,” she said. “Allow me to return it. Time has favored you, Theil Verek. I would take you for a man younger than you are, did I not retain such distinct memories of bringing you into this world, a squalling, red-faced babe.”

  The lady in purple had halted her approach well away from the pool’s edge. Never did her feet touch the flagstones of her pavilion. Now, with a saucy flip of her hair, she turned and glided over the water to a point near the pool’s center. As she faced them again, a pale throne more elaborate than the first one rose from the water, sculpted of the gently bubbling liquid upon which she walked. Regally she seated herself. The woman did not conjure chairs for her visitors.

  “I do not think you have come all this way, however,” she added when she was comfortably settled, “for flattery or to hear a woman complain of her ordeal in childbed.” She leveled at Verek the same sort of unnervingly direct gaze that the warlock used often, and to great effect.

  He shook his head. “No, madam, I have not. I am here to beg that you will break the bonds you have built to other worlds. I come to hear you swear by the wisdom of Archamon that you will never again commit such outrages against nature.”

  She stared at him, her thin black brows arched in surprise.

  “Much amusement it has given me these past weeks,” she said, “to imagine what your reasons might be for coming here. From the several possibilities that presented themselves for my entertainment, never dared the one you name to raise its head. Pray tell me: How do my quiet pastimes, here in my private eyrie, concern the Lord of Ruain?”

  “‘Quiet pastimes,’ madam?” Verek’s restrained civility was showing cracks. His voice cut like glass. “The evil you have wrought endangers the whole of Ladrehdin. You open the gates to unfathomable perils. You invite plagues and pestilences to overrun this world, perhaps to lay millions in their graves, if not the entire populace. Nor is it to be taken lightly, the threat your ‘pastimes’ pose to those distant worlds now compromised by the bridges you have built. Who is to say that some small creature or wild thing which does no harm here, in its natural home, should not prove ruinous to an exotic world that can raise no defense against it?”

  “Ridiculous!” The woman waved her hand dismissively. “You speak nonsense. If some venomous insect should crawl through a gate that I have opened, they who discover it need merely crush it.”

  “But what is the damage, madam, if some common beetle should blunder across an unnatural bridge and find itself in a world of beings no bigger than it is? Who would crush it then?” Verek asked. “Who would stop it terrorizing that realm, like a wolf among the lambs?”

  She shook her head. “Your fancy runs rampant—though I do not say that such as you describe is beyond the realm of the possible. I have seen things that could not be imagined by the most inve
ntive wit.” She shrugged. “Let the tiny beings of your fantasy world look to themselves. I hunt bigger game … and when I find what I seek, it will not escape me.”

  “Won’t it?” Verek questioned her sharply. “Will you hold it in your power, madam, as you held the giant, white-furred mountain cat?”

  The woman laughed cruelly, and Carin’s hackles rose.

  “So you met with my cat, did you?” the woman asked with hollow mirth. “Cats are such insolent creatures—too prideful to stay where you put them. Yes, you have the right of it there. The beast escaped me. I’ve known nothing of its whereabouts for weeks. Pray favor me with an account of its wanderings, as you seem to have knowledge which I lack.”

  Verek widened his stance. “It was necessary, madam, to destroy the beast—by craft, not force. The cat, alien to this world, could not be bested here by traps or weapons of steel. Many shepherds and goatherds lost valuable animals before the creature fell to magic.”

  “A pity,” she commented.

  “A pity, madam, that those small holders lost their livelihoods?”

  “Certainly not.” Again the woman’s laugh made Carin’s spine tingle. “What do I care for peasants and farmers? It’s a pity the beast was destroyed. I would have wished to have it back.”

  “Would you desire the return of another creature that escaped you?”

  Carin started, her eyes darting from the lady to Verek. Then she became as still as the yellow flagstones under her feet. She moved nothing but her gaze, returning it by cautious degrees to the woman on the water.

  The seated figure hadn’t noticed Carin’s reaction. But those piercing eyes might turn to the wizard’s “footboy” with a great deal of interest, were Verek to reveal Carin’s otherworldly origins.

  Will I still pass for a boy? wondered the eccentrically calm corner of Carin’s mind. My hair has grown out, and it must appear wildly unkempt to that elegant enchantress in the pool. Carin saw, with a sense of satisfaction that should have no claim on her attention just now, that Verek’s freshly trimmed hair had dried straight and glossy. Though his beard and mustache needed clipping, he did not stand before this violator of worlds looking like a vagabond.