Verek took a step toward the pool. “Did they tell you how my wife and son delighted in daily strolls to the lake of the lilies?” His voice was a low rumble like an approaching firestorm.
The sorceress shrugged. “Those two were not worthy of you. The woman you took to wife had nothing of the gift in her family for generations. Your child was utterly artless. How could such a son be heir to the legacy of Legary and Theil Verek? They were in the way. It was my hope that, once they were dead, you would marry a canny woman and sire a child I could proudly claim as a scion of my own blood.”
She shook her head and stood for a long moment looking disdainfully at Verek, her eyes growing harder than glacier ice.
“How you disappointed me!” she cried. “For one brief moment, when you summoned horrors from the depths of your craft to ravage the woodland where I drowned them, I exulted. ‘His grandfather has lost him!’ I thought. ‘Theil is mine again. I shall give him all the knowledge Legary has denied him, teach him to use the power, not fear it, and together we will wrest from other worlds potent magic and invincible weapons.’”
She scoffed. “But your show of force left you cowering in the face of your own strength. In terror that you might come to know all the evil that you are capable of, you crawled back into your apothecary’s workshop. There you have remained for twenty years, as bloodless as your father and no fit ruler of Ruain.”
She spat into the fizzy pool. What hit the water was hard and as yellow as citrine.
“I renounced you then, Theil Verek, and I have not concerned myself with your affairs since that time—not until I realized it was you, my weakling son, blundering through these mountains toward me.”
Carin could no more look at Verek’s face than she could stare into the sun. He burned with unearthly ferocity. Every line of his body was tensed to spring. Surely he must attack this murderess.
But it was the witch who pressed the assault.
“Who guards your property and your interests now, in your absence?” she demanded. “Jerold?” Her laugh was short and malicious. “Only a fool would leave undefended a place of power that is unrivaled in this world. Do you think other wysards do not know what a vastness of gê force flows in Ruain’s waters and caverns? Do you think none would take that stronghold from you, given their chance?
“The thought grows strong within me that I shall take it, Lord Verek.” She spoke his title scornfully. “I shall be mistress of Ruain, and with the power of that place I will summon to my service an army of fiends like these.”
The sorceress waved her hand peremptorily. A moment later, over the western rim of the pavilion clattered the venomous pair whose arrival in Ladrehdin Carin had witnessed from the safety of Verek’s enchanted cave. Long, low, scaled bodies, each with eight muscular legs, the forelegs bearing massive, serrated pincers … the powerful tails ending in stingers that arched over the backs.
Mantikhora, came the name into Carin’s thoughts, the only name she could find for creatures that were part crocodile, part scorpion. The Ladrehdinian fable that supplied it to her was gory with details of the monsters’ feeding habits.
Their mistress waved her hand again. The mantikhora stopped in their tracks halfway to the pool. The sorceress laughed her wicked laugh.
“It seems you are right, my tender son, to fear the beasts that creep upon other worlds. For who on Ladrehdin has shoes big enough to squash these vermin? With twenty more like them, I will overrun king’s soldiers and Drisha’s priests alike. I will lead the adept in a new Wizards War—and this time we shall prevail. We will come out of the West and out of the North, down from the mountains and down from our eyries. And those of the Power will rule this world again, as wysards once reigned—as I reigned!—before the magic faded and those fools among the adept gave heed to Archamon and his creed.”
She looked at Verek with open contempt. “Prepare to join your milksop father, your feckless wife, and that artless whelp of yours. You have made a deadly error in coming here. I will yield neither these waters nor, from this day forward, those incomparable depths in Ruain to such a jellyfish as you.”
The sorceress flung up her hand. The fire that shot from her palm was not sulphur yellow this time, but a smoky flame, dark as burnt ocher.
Verek’s reflexes were lightning. The flame hit the flagstones just behind him, gouging out a chunk of the quartz. As he dodged aside, his right hand stretched toward the murderess, his fingers stiff and extended.
What flew from them was invisible to Carin, but not, apparently, to the sorceress. Instantly a wall of water boiled up before her, a liquid shield. Sparks from Verek’s counterattack scattered harmlessly off its furiously bubbling surface.
The woman threw another ocherous bolt through the shield. This time the flame caught Verek a glancing blow to his side. He collapsed to the flagstones, howling in agony.
He is powerless against her. With sickening force, the realization hit Carin in the pit of her stomach. The witch stands invincible in wysards’ waters, drawing strength from their depths. But the power of the warlock’s enchanted pool is far beyond his reach, a months-long journey to the east. All the care Verek had taken to hoard his energy for this meeting had been pointless—and he must have known it would be.
The sorceress raised her hand to deliver the deathblow. Her eyes were cold as a snake’s.
“Touch him not, Morann!” Carin screamed.
Her words rang from the mountains above them like an echo, but in a voice that was not Carin’s. The echo repeated her command in the deep, stern timbres of a man: “Touch him not, Morann!”
“Legary!” the sorceress cried, looking wild-eyed over her head, spinning on her pool’s surface like a leaf in a foaming eddy. “How … ?”
The woman called Morann abruptly ceased her search of the cliffs and leveled her gaze at Carin. The look from those eyes dropped Verek’s “footboy” to her knees.
“You!” the sorceress spat, her entire body quivering with rage.
“Now, Carin!” Verek shouted, his voice etched with pain.
Came the majestic echo from the mountain: “Now!”
Carin’s prior practice of the incantation from the Looking-Glass book, learning to say it in the space of four rushed heartbeats—in hopes of catching Verek unawares—saved her life. As Morann’s hand came up to slay her, Carin rattled off the rhyme in a single outrush of breath:
“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”
A hill rose steeply from the liquid under Morann’s feet and tumbled the sorceress into the pool. She came up spluttering, staring in disbelief at the uncanny hillside.
Attacking the slope with their corkscrew snouts was a colony of “toves,” those otherworldly badger-beasts. Squawking miserably down at the “toves” from their nests atop the hill were thin parrots with messy feathers. Squeaking at the entire assembly in sharp, shrill voices were creatures like piglets.
Carin paused only to gulp a breath. Her heart was thudding against her ribs as she delivered the potent line of the incantation:
“Beware the Jabberwock—!”
The odd but harmless heralds flowed back into the bubbly water of Morann’s pool. Rising in their place came a bat-winged dragon fiercer than Ladrehdin’s worst firedrake of legend. The dragon’s talons were swords; rows of knife-edged teeth lined its gaping jaws. The roar of the Jabberwock shook the limbs of the blond trees that grew over the pavilion.
Morann screamed. Her hand came out of the water, shedding fizzy droplets, to flutter urgently at the vermin that waited on the flagstones west of the pool.
The creatures roused. They advanced upon the pool, their claws clacking like bones rattling, their stingers probing over their backs.
But huge as they were, the mantikhora were no match for the Looking-Glass dragon. One swipe of a taloned forearm snapped the nearest of the pa
ir in two. The Jabberwock dragged the broken creature into the pool, snipped off the stinger, then swallowed the body, head first. It downed the pincer claws the way a visitor to the seaside might enjoy a meal of lobster.
Carin heard labored, half-demented laughter. She tore her gaze from the Jabberwock to discover Verek struggling to sit up, grimacing with pain but watching the scene in the pool with deliriously bright eyes.
“Behold, Morann!” he shouted. “Here is the novice who is strong in the Power, the ‘sprat’ you stole from a sleepy sea of magic. You did not know what a gift your net had drawn up from that world. This is one fish, madam, that you should have thrown back!”
Morann’s answer was another shake of a trembling hand. The second mantikhora swerved away from the pool, avoiding the fate of the first. With mindless tenacity it crawled over the flagstones, making for the injured Verek.
“No!” Carin yelled.
She scrambled to her feet, unshouldering her bow as she did so, and sprinted to the dais where Verek had laid his weapons. The fingers that plucked a jasper-tipped arrow from his quiver were as steady as a surgeon’s. There was no fumbling as Carin set the arrow on the string. She drew and let fly, sending the arrow off with a mad howl of “Burn!”
The missile pierced the mantikhora between two of its scales. Fire spouted, engulfing the body. It made a hissing crackle like a hibernating beetle cooking in a firelog. In two seconds, nothing marred the flagstones but a heap of ash.
Carin nocked another arrow and whirled to face the pool. Her conjured dragon needed no help, however. The Jabberwock had eaten all of its mantikhora except for a few bits of scaly hide. Now it lunged for the only other being within its reach.
Morann had not recovered her footing on the waters of her wizards’ well but struggled in the foam, a panicked swimmer. Her purple gown and her long black hair floated around her like seaweed. Smoke wisped from her clothing and her hair, as if they were slowly being burned off her by the liquid—was it acid?—in which she floated. She seemed on the verge of drowning in it, but she managed to hit the dragon with a dark flame snapped from her palm—
—A flame that only strengthened the creature. Where, before, the dragon had been pale as straw—the color of the magical waters from which it rose—it now took on the deep, burnt shades of a thing forged in fire. Where it had been fizzy, same as the liquid in the pool, it became sleek, or glazed-over, as if hardened by the witch’s touch.
The Jabberwock struck. Morann screamed in inhuman terror as the dragon’s foreclaw swept her out of the water and into its maw.
“Stop!” shrilled the woodsprite’s unmistakable pipe of a voice from a golden-blond tree above the pool. An enormous branch plummeted down, bludgeoning the Jabberwock on the side of its head. The dragon roared—displaying between its fangs a shimmering strip of Morann’s gown.
Carin looked for blood in the water. She saw none.
Drisha is merciful even to the wicked, ventured the imperturbable part of her wit. The witch died quickly, not torn to bits and swallowed piecemeal.
Now the dragon was beginning to fade, its form becoming as liquid as the unnatural stuff of which it was fashioned. The creature could not reach Verek or Carin out on the pavilion’s dry flagstones. It was confined to the waters that gave it shape, and brief in its existence on a world not its own.
It waned, but it did not weaken. An instant before the Jabberwock vanished, it hooked a claw into the huge branch, now floating in the pool, that had struck it from above. With a howl the dragon flung the branch on a long, arcing flight that ended with the limb slamming like a battering ram into Verek’s outstretched ankle.
When Carin reached him, the wizard was curled on his side, groaning between clenched teeth, gripping his ankle with one hand and pressing his other to his side where Morann’s thunderbolt had ripped into him. His eyes were tight shut, his face twisted with pain.
As Carin brushed his sweat-soaked hair off his forehead, Verek opened his eyes and gazed up at her. The magian flame was scarcely there, heavily veiled, no more menacing than candleglow.
Weakly he shut his eyes again, rested his cheek on the flagstones, and unclenched his teeth. What rolled off his tongue was a mostly unintelligible string of oaths, followed by a muttered: “Didn’t I tell you that deuced woodsprite was not to be trusted?”
Chapter 19
Ruptures in the Void
Verek twisted his head a little to look up at Carin again. “You have my thanks for my life,” he whispered.
She shook her head. “Don’t thank me yet. We’re not exactly out of the woods. You’re hurt, I don’t see how you can walk, and we have a long journey back through the snow to reach Ruain. What do I do now? Should I go get Lanse?”
“No!” Verek exclaimed. His hand left his side to grab for her. “No. There’s no time. It will soon be dark; you would lose your way. And I have no wish to be alone and helpless in this place when the witching hour comes. The death of its powerful mistress will not pass unnoticed.”
Or unavenged?
Carin glanced at the sky. The sun was behind the mountains but its glow would light this high, pale pavilion for an hour yet. Whatever the night might bring them, she had time, before it fell, to prepare.
She shrugged out of her pack and dug around in it for the grimy chemise that she’d changed for fresh at the creek in the grove. She cut the garment into strips with her—Verek’s—dagger and laced the strips into one long bandage. Not bothering to ask his leave, she pried his fingers off his ankle and wrapped the bandage tightly around it, over the soft-tanned leather of his boot, snugging it up to counter the swelling.
Verek groaned anew but did not protest. “Yes,” he murmured when Carin had finished. Experimentally he straightened the leg. “That makes the agony rather more bearable.”
He tried to roll onto his back, but the injury to his side fetched him up short. Carefully he pulled up his shirt to reveal a purplish bruise that covered half his abdomen and extended over his ribs into his armpit. Revealed also were a folded sheet of paper and a ball of abysmal black. Both fell to the flagstones as Verek pulled his shirttail loose.
“Damned uncomfortable place to keep things,” he muttered. With his elbow he rolled the ball toward Carin. “Put that in your pack, if you please. It falls now to your charge.”
“It’s horrible,” she said, but she picked it up and thrust it deep into her pack. She took care not to look directly into it.
“Yes, it is. It’s the talisman of those vermin that fell before you and your dragon like wheat before the scythe.”
“The dragon isn’t ‘mine’,” Carin grumbled, settling down cross-legged on the flagstones beside Verek. “I may use the Jabberwock, but I didn’t create it.”
She picked up and twiddled the folded paper.
“I guess I don’t need to read this now, to have my questions answered. Why didn’t you tell me long ago what I wanted to know? Why wouldn’t you admit that they were all one blackheart? The ‘master wysard’ who wielded the power of passage between worlds, the victim you meant for the dragon to take, the ‘watcher’ in these mountains, the murderer of your family”—not to mention, the cold-eyed snake who was your mother … Carin would have swallowed her tongue before she’d mention that aspect of Morann’s multiple identities—“they’re all the same.” She jerked her head toward the pool where the sorceress had disappeared down the Jabberwock’s gullet. “Why wouldn’t you just say it? If you only knew how my brain has struggled to make sense of it!”
Verek gazed at her with pain-clouded eyes, his hand again pressed to his side.
“Had I told you all of it, fìleen,” he murmured, “wouldn’t you have thought I was dragging you into a blood feud? Could I have persuaded you that my cause was nobler than common revenge?”
Carin heaved a sigh.
“If you’d told me all of it, my lord, I would have understood. What you’ve said about otherworldly ‘bridges’ and ‘opening the gates,’ inviting
alien plagues and pestilences into the world—that all sounds quite menacing, and I can see why the gates have to be shut and the bridges torn down.” Carin glanced at the ash heap where her flaming arrow had destroyed the vermin from another realm. “Things like those horrible mantikhora should never be allowed to cross from their world into another one. It’s taken me a while, but now I get it. I get why you’ve been so determined to come here … and, um, pull up the drawbridge.” Again she jerked her head at the pool.
“But if I had thought you were out to avenge the deaths of your family, if you’d said that the ‘master wysard’ was a murderess, if I’d known that’s why you needed me here …”
Carin paused, suddenly shy about saying more. She went on in a lowered voice. “Before I came to you in Ruain, I felt lost. Just knowing that you wanted—you needed—my help … that would have given me a place to be and a reason for being there. Don’t you see? If I had known the whole story …” She flicked the folded paper between her fingers, then shrugged one shoulder, powerless to make herself any clearer.
Verek managed for a moment to look thoughtful before grimacing again in pain.
“When I last saw Myra,” he grated through his teeth, “she told me I had a poor understanding of the fair sex.” His words came easier as the spasm passed. “I believe she may have been right. I have, perhaps, lacked perception.” He hesitated, then tried to smile. “Why, for instance, a woman would pack along her flimsies under such circumstances as these, would have eluded me—before now. If you’ve any more to spare, I could wish for a bit of your linen to bind this other wound.” Verek pressed both hands to his side. “It has me in misery.”
He still needs you, badly. The thought whispered to her, half comforting and half terrifying. Carin ducked her head, fishing in her pack, avoiding the touch of the smooth ball that rolled among her smallclothes and woolen stockings. She came up with the chemise that served her for a face towel.
“This is all the linen I’ve got left, and it won’t be enough.”
The Wysard (Waterspell 2) Page 34
