“Are you mad?” he breathed into her ear. “Without the crystals, you’ll be lost.”
“I count two between us, sir.” Carin closed her fist around one dolphin and yanked, hard. The silver chain bit into Verek’s neck. He flinched as the pendant came away loose in Carin’s hand. “One to guide my journey home,” she said, stuffing the unchained dolphin deep into her pocket, “and the other to take you there. Think of that crumbling mansion in Ruain and be still while I do the same.”
Carin slipped her hand between Verek’s bandaged chest and the lone crystal that now hung around his neck. With fingers that did not shake, she raised the trinket to her eyes. In a mind that was as clear as daylight she pictured the wizard’s cave of magic, the bench that bore the carved shape of a fish—and the twin to this dolphin, which Verek had said rested beside that symbol.
The air above Morann’s pavilion was utterly still. Through it cut the dark, muttering voices that approached from all sides. The speakers were below them yet, emerging from the rubble of the ruined city. But soon they would make the climb up the steps to this high, stone-paved altar.
Carin ignored the voices. Her mind’s eye sought the absent dolphin. Her head cleared of everything except the search for that talisman. It was out there, waiting to form—with its twin that she held—a bridge to take Theil Verek home.
There—
A red-tinted rectangle rose from the ensorcelled waters of Morann’s pool. It resembled the cover of a book.
No, it’s got to be the doorway, Carin told herself. It’s the door from the library that leads down to the cave. That red is the glow of the cave walls shining up the stairwell.
Nothing else appeared, neither the stone bench upon which the crystal rested nor the crystal itself. The illusion was not nearly as detailed as the image Carin had twice summoned of the child’s bedroom that had originally housed the trinket.
But perhaps it would have to do—given that incandescent eyes without bodies were appearing over the pavilion’s edge. Carin viewed them through the red rectangle as if through a sheet of diaphanous paper.
Verek seemed to reach the same conclusion about the adequacy of her vaguely drawn doorway. His unkempt mustache tickled her ear as he whispered into it: “Come back to me, Carin.” His lips brushed her cheek.
Then he was twisting out of her grasp, grabbing the bundle of untried amulets that waited on the rim beside him, falling with it through the doorway. The dolphin necklace went with him, pulled from Carin’s fingers, leaving her holding only the honeywood wand. Her conjured red rectangle closed behind Verek like a book slamming shut.
He was gone. There was no splash, not so much as a ripple in the pool. In that, at least, she had succeeded. Her injured warlock had not plunged into deadly wizards’ waters.
Carin blinked. She was alone on the pavilion with the woodsprite and a swarm of stares. The eyes glowered hotly at her as they neared, watching her maliciously … hungrily.
“Now, sprite!” she yelled. “Put yourself into my hand, or stay behind. I’m going.”
From above came the sound of timber snapping. Carin braced for what might prove to be a fatal blow. But better to have her brains splattered across Morann’s flagstones than to fall to the bodiless horde that approached.
What hit the paving, however, exactly where Verek had stood a moment ago, was a spindle of golden-blond wood no longer or heavier than a pipestem. Carin crouched and picked it up. In her other hand, she held the honey-colored wand steady before her gaze. She gave the wand her absolute attention, barring from her consciousness the muttering voices and the glaring eyes.
A tree. Almost instantly the image of a tree rose from the ensorcelled waters at Carin’s feet. Never mind that it had limbs like the arms of a misshapen ogre, or that the sky behind it was not blue, but a coppery orange. The apparition was clearly a tree, and welcoming in its familiarity.
From her crouch on the pool’s rim, Carin sprang for the tree. She kept her gaze fixed on a bent but sturdy-looking branch that resembled a crooked elbow—a promising place to land, compared to what she was fleeing.
As her boots left the flagstones, something brushed Carin’s heel. The touch sent cold shudders up her spine. She smelled decay, fetid and old and sallow. If an odor could have a color, this stink would be a sickly yellow. Over Morann’s pavilion spread something ancient, age-ambered, and rotting.
Carin did not take her eyes from the tree that waited to receive her. She saw nonetheless, at the edge of her vision, that all the stares which glowered at her did indeed arise from shapes. The shapes might, if one were generous, be called bodies. Her fleeting glimpse of Morann’s vassals, even more than their stench, made Carin want to vomit.
Chapter 20
A Quickening of Magic
The journey to the ogreish tree took ten forevers. The tree grew no closer or larger, though Carin had the distinct sense of moving toward it. What flowed past her was not water, was nowhere near as heavy as water, yet she had the impression of streaming through some fluid medium. She seemed to hear the ocean, as if she were holding a seashell to her ear.
The sound of it, distant and rhythmic, bore no resemblance to the shrieking of the whirlpools that Carin had witnessed in Verek’s cave of magic. It was a great relief to not be spinning furiously in such a vortex as those. She was making this passage between worlds with magic that, unlike Morann’s contortions of power, flowed smooth and straight.
Out of the corners of Carin’s eyes, all was blackness. It wasn’t a night sky; there were no stars. It wasn’t a thick, stifling darkness such as she had endured in Verek’s cellar-dungeon. This was a blank—an absence—a void. She could not look down to see what, if anything, passed under her feet. She couldn’t move her hand to her pocket for reassurance that the unchained crystal dolphin—her safe-conduct back to Ruain—still nestled within. None of her muscles answered her. Carin could verify only that the honeywood wand was still in her grasp. It appeared in her outstretched hand, between her eyes and the tree.
She could not feel the woodsprite’s slim spindle. Whether it made this journey at her side, gripped in her other hand, was open to question.
Questions … Carin mused in a mind that was dragging behind, ratcheting down to become as unresponsive as her body. Answers have come to many. Are there others I should be asking?
She meditated with slow deliberation but could not order her thinking. After a time, her brain slid into a state neither awake nor asleep. Cotton wool packed her skull.
But occasionally a thought penetrated like a needle sticking a pincushion. Then, for an instant, Carin had the wit to worry. What was she doing out here—wherever “out here” was—on this mad errand for a moody magician who had long plotted her murder? And why should it please her to imagine Verek at home now, back in his manor of magic, being clucked over by a beaming Myra?
Drifting gradually, cloudily into Carin’s field of vision, and wisping its way strand by strand into her consciousness, too, came a patchy blanket of mist. It threatened to obscure her target tree.
Carin was straining to see through it when the mist suddenly lit up, as if aflame with the orange light of what seemed to be a rising sun. As the sunlight rapidly strengthened, the mist thinned, then broke away, drawing back under a coppery sky.
The sunrise revealed an alien landscape that was stirring to life. Carin watched rock after rock roll down to a creek to drink, like a flock of gray sheep that gathered on the brook’s banks. A forest of trees stretched their limbs in the orangey morning light and yawned sleepily.
In Carin’s hand, the honey-colored wand lifted delicate wings, twitched its antennae, raised itself on threadlike legs … and flew away, making straight for the twisted tree that she had intended landing in.
The wand—
Better call it a fly, advised Carin’s reengaging brain, which took in the scene as though she found it all perfectly natural. What once was wooden suddenly looks quite like a long, slender fly that o
ught to be swatted, doesn’t it?
The fly flitted into the tree just ahead of Carin. It lit in the crook of the elbow that she’d wanted to settle in.
Another gnarled limb of the tree came swinging round to slap at the pest, but it missed. The limb caught Carin a clout that sprawled her facedown in the damp soil of the creekbank. She barely missed the flock of rocks.
“Humph!” came the tree’s startled exclamation.
“Ooh!” cried the rocks in chorus, scattering like the sturdy sheep they resembled.
The rocks rolled off a ways, then stopped to stare at Carin. At least, they seemed to be looking at her. Nothing that hinted of eyes appeared in their mossy—woolly?—surfaces. But at a safe distance the flock regrouped, murmuring in a dialect that seemed to consist mainly of astonished “ohs” and “oohs.” Gently they rolled into each other like incredulous spectators nudging one another with their elbows.
Carin sat up slowly, to avoid alarming the …
“What are they, sprite?” she whispered to the spindle that had indeed made the journey through the void, gripped nerveless in her other hand. “This is your land. Tell me if I should call them rocks, sheep, or the people of this country.”
The sprite flickered in the splinter of wood that it had stolen from Morann’s giant trees. “My land, Carin?” the creature shrilled. “I cannot claim this place. Nothing here is familiar.”
“What? What do you mean?” she almost shrieked, eyeing the spindle sharply. “This is the homeworld of the wand that you risked your freedom to touch. See?” Carin pointed at the long, slim fly buzzing past. “There it goes—just a stick, we thought. But in this world, it can fly. Here, the trees have got arms and the rocks jump around like spring lambs. What an upside-down place!”
She looked around, marveling not only at the wonders of this world but at how calmly she accepted them. It was as though, having committed herself to cross the void and walk on this ground, she was immune to the shocks that should attend such a journey.
The woodsprite whimpered.
“Maybe you’ve just forgotten,” Carin murmured. “You were stranded a long time on Ladrehdin. Wouldn’t it be wise to roam through these trees? Maybe they’ll jog your memory.”
“I don’t wish to do it,” the sprite said, a quaver in its voice. “I will, but only to please you. This place frightens me. Promise me, my friend, that you will not abandon me here. Let me take a quick leap to the tree that overgrows the creek, and then I will return at once to my splinter. Do not move a handsbreadth until I am safely back in your care, I beg you.”
“I won’t go anywhere.” Carin gripped the spindle tightly, trying to reassure the creature. “Take as long as you like to explore this place. I’ll wait.”
The wood in her hand trembled. There was a spark so intense, Carin felt the warmth of it. Away the sprite flashed, into the tree that had tried to swat a fly but had cuffed instead its otherworldly visitor.
The woodsprite screamed. Quick as it touched the twisted tree, it sprinted away to another, and then another. It disappeared into the alien forest in a series of panicked twinklings. The sprite’s screams died on a vaguely malodorous breeze.
“Come back!” Carin yelled.
Some of the lively rocks had rolled hesitantly after the sprite, but they didn’t follow it far. They murmured among themselves and shifted as if craning their nonexistent necks for a better view. Nearby, every tree that the sprite had touched slapped frantically at its trunk in the manner of men knocking ants off their exposed skin.
Carin waited only a moment, holding the spindle high, scanning the forest for the flash of the creature’s return. Then she was on her feet, dodging the blow that one annoyed tree aimed at her, scattering alarmed rocks in all directions as she plowed through the flock.
“Sprite!” she cried, running after the creature. “Come back!”
She swerved to avoid another agitated tree that waved its limbs menacingly. And as she swerved she collided with something soft and fleshy. It emitted a muffled “Umph!” Carin sprang back, then stopped to stare at the thing that blocked her way.
It was, to all appearances, a mushroom. No, not to ‘all’ appearances, she corrected her first impression. This mushroom stood taller than she did. And it had teeth. The thing snarled at her, showing canines that would have looked more at home in the mouth of a wild boar.
Carin whipped out her dagger and backed away. The mushroom came after her, snarling loudly. She lunged at it but barely nicked its smooth, colorless stem.
The thing screeched like a hell-wain. From the gills on the underside of its cap, spores showered down. They engulfed Carin in a cloud that stank of sulphur.
She fell sideways to the spongy ground, her limbs leaden.
The mushroom toppled over backward. It disappeared at once under a swarm of rat-sized creatures that resembled bouncy, round-bodied spiders. The scavengers tore the mushroom to bits, swallowing chunks of it and carrying off neat slices of its gilled cap.
Desperately Carin tried the counter-charm that Verek had taught her to break the spell of stone. It didn’t work. Her petrified limbs ignored her frantic commands to stand and flee. This was no magic that afflicted her, but an unearthly case of mushroom poisoning. She could do nothing but lie on her side on the evil-smelling loam and watch the spiders consume every scrap of the fungus.
In a little while the spiders finished their feast and scurried away. Carin breathed a prayer of thanks to Drisha or whatever gods ruled this place. Evidently she was not to the spiders’ taste.
But her relief was short-lived. Padding toward her now was the soft, unmistakable slap of bare feet.
Carin couldn’t roll over to see what came. The footsteps stopped behind her. Something squeezed her thigh. A wheezy voice chortled gleefully, emitting satisfied little sounds that, in human speech, might have been “Ah!” and “Mmhh!”
A net settled over her from head to toe. It tightened painfully, its strings cutting into her skin, as her captor dragged her away, over the humus, up a hill, into a little cranny ringed with rocks. Carin eyed the stones closely—with her face jammed against them, she could hardly help it—and again she offered up thanks. These appeared to be rocks of the usual sort, not given to rolling around or elbowing each other.
New sounds arose at Carin’s back: the crackle and sputter of burning wood, the rattle of a pot against its hanger, a sluicing sound as someone or something poured water into a kettle.
Carin went cold. Evidently she was to this creature’s taste.
She clenched her eyes shut and tested her hands, willing them to move. She could feel them both, one still gripping the dagger, the other holding the woodsprite’s spindle. But neither betrayed the slightest inclination to do as she commanded them.
“Carin!”
Her eyes jerked open and she beheld a familiar spark racing up the hillside—but through the stones? She stared. What kind of topsy-turvy world was this, that could turn a sprite-of-the-wood into a rock-troll?
“My friend!” the spark wailed as it darted into a stone inches from Carin’s face. A shape like a blubbery mouth worked in the rough surface. “My dear girl! What a disgusting place this is. The trees are meat. From one to the next I leapt in horror before I fell to the ground, sick and exhausted. There I made the astonishing discovery that saved me. These things which seem rocky”—the spark fluttered in its stone—“are in fact woody knobs, with their roots stretching deep in the dirt. My dear friend! I cannot think that woody stones littering the soil under fleshy trees make a fit abode for such a one as I. Won’t you rise, and take me up in my splinter of Ladrehdin, and quit this place at once?”
“I would if I could,” Carin mumbled with tongue and lips that were not wholly stopped by her paralysis. “The trouble is, I can’t move. Sprite, peek over my shoulder and tell me what kind of a creature has me in its net.”
The sprite flicked over Carin’s head, then returned, sparking in a state of deepened agitation.
“It’s a furry thing half your height,” the fay reported in a frightened whisper. “And it is sharpening a fearsome-looking blade and humming quite happily to itself as it works. I do not like the look of this.”
Carin strained to hear the activity at her back. Faintly came the hum of her captor’s song and a sandy swish-swish like steel on slipstone. Her stomach turned over.
“Listen to me, sprite,” she hissed. “You’ve got to distract that thing. If it comes over here waving its knife, then you must draw it away and keep it busy until I can get back on my feet.”
“But how—? Oh!” the sprite interrupted itself. “It comes. Oh, my! What a dreadful grin the thing unveils through all that hair.”
The sprite leaped over Carin again, taking the fight to the hummer. “Stay back!” shrieked the fay. “Leave her alone.”
A startled “Yah?” burst from Carin’s captor. Bare feet went slapping down the hillside. The sprite’s piping voice followed, fading with distance.
“Thank you, you brave little wood-goblin,” Carin whispered to the vacated hilltop. All was silence for a time except for the bubbling of a pot on a crackling fire.
Now that she was in no imminent danger of going bodily into that pot, the sounds of cooking made Carin’s mouth water. Her last meal had been consumed at midday—how long ago? It seemed only yesterday, but vague memories of a journey stretching to infinity hinted that Carin might now be more than a day’s travel from Ladrehdin, even by a magical path.
She tried her fingers again. Those gripping the dagger twitched. The mushroom’s poison was wearing off—and quickly, now that the ebbing had begun. The first signs of returning mobility spread through her as warmly as dhera. A few minutes later, the sprite flicked up the hillside to find Carin sitting up, her captor’s net thrown off, the spindle of Morann’s wood close by her left hand, and the dagger ready in her right.
“Alders and ironbarks!” the sprite cried triumphantly. “That thing with the big knife is a bigger coward than I am. It fled to the next hill over and hides there now, peeking out from under the rocks like a great furry mouse.”
The Wysard (Waterspell 2) Page 36
