Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters

by Mercedes Lackey

  One of the strangers up on the beams fluttered her wings impatiently. “There are troubles out to sea, to sea, but they do not come to shore,” she said, with a shrug that said without words that nothing that happened on the sea was of any importance to her.

  “But do you know what the troubles are?” Miriam persisted.

  Again, the impatient shrug. “We do not fly so far. Ask the mermaids who sing of pain, or the zephyr or even the boreals of the North Wind. Maybe they know. We only hear the echo of the song, deep in the night, and it is no trouble of ours.”

  The sylphs could be remarkably selfish—and short-sighted. Well, Miriam had expected this. As much as she enjoyed the sight, the company, and the antics of these creatures of her Element, they were not very reliable.

  Nevertheless, they deserved their reward. She went to the wardrobe in which she had hung up her gowns and stowed her belongings, and got out a small carpetbag, much worn, its pattern so faded as to be nearly invisible. She set a small brazier on the table, fetched a single coal from the hearth with tongs, and sprinkled powdered incense on it. The delicious fumes of sandalwood wafted to the ceiling and the sylphs were near-drunk on them, circling the slender stalk of smoke, twirling and twining with it, until the last lingering memory of incense was gone. Then, with a flutter of wings for thanks, they flitted out the window again. Miriam closed it against the chill and the fog that was already coming in.

  She lit candles, for it was already darker here than it would be at the same hour at home, took a cloth-bound book and pen from the bag, and sat down at the little secretary to write. As she had anticipated, since this was a first-class guest room, there was fresh ink in the inkwell and sand in the jar waiting for her use. There was also an uncut goose quill, but she far preferred her delicate glass pen.

  She noted everything that Jacob had told her, and the little she had learned from the sylphs. Then she tapped the cool end of the pen against her lips and thought.

  Jacob was not inclined to overreact. And he was a Master. So why bring her here on what almost seemed like pretense?

  Because the mermaids were singing pain.

  Now, mermaids were not like naiads and nereids, essentially harmless creatures who could be readily coerced, and easily coaxed, into doing what a Master wanted. Or at least, not all of them were. When one was, like Miriam, a magician and not a Master, knowledge could be as much or more use than sheer strength of power. Miriam had put in a great deal of study, not only of the creatures of her own Element, but, since she could speak with all of them, of the other three as well. It seemed there were many tribes of merfolk out there, and they varied as widely as human tribes. Some were sweet-natured creatures of the warm and calmer waters, easily frightened, and entranced by human men; men only came to harm at their hands because they didn’t know that mere mortals couldn’t breathe the water that they could; they lured beautiful young men to them with their songs, drew them under to take them home, and drowned them. And being Elementals, mourned them a few days or a week until they forgot them.

  Some, however, knew exactly what they were doing.

  And some, particularly the mermaids of the North Atlantic, were the cruelest of all. They not only lured men to drown, they shared their natures with the sharks whose tails they wore. They hunted men.

  Or had. Not so much, anymore. Their ploys only worked when there were no other sounds on the water to drown their songs, and they shared the antipathy to iron and steel that a few other supernatural entities did. Now that men made their boats with iron nails and fittings, had iron gaffes and spears, and often had iron motors in the larger vessels, the mermaids were forced to leave their favorite prey alone.

  The question was, then, why were their songs full of pain?

  It could simply be that the mass of iron about them had built up to the point that it was causing them distress. If that were the case . . . perhaps they could not muster the power to open a path to that half-and-half world of the Elementals where they would be free of it again. This would be at the cost of never being able to hunt a human again, which might be why they had put it off until it was too late, but at this point they would probably be more than willing to go.

  It might be one of their kind was trapped. And little as Miriam liked the creatures, it was her duty to free it.

  It might be that this was all a ruse; having found that songs of entrancement no longer worked, they might be trying another trick. And it might work on a man, but never on a woman. Miriam would know, and Jacob could administer a rebuke in the form of a Water Master brought over from England if need be.

  Or it might be none of these things.

  Nevertheless, she made notes in her book; by the time she was at an impasse, one of the inn servants tapped on her door with a tray full of dinner. She put her things away, enjoyed the food and the tolerable canary that came with it, and when she was done, set the tray herself on a stand outside the door for that purpose.

  Then she closed the door, threw the window open again, and listened.

  But she was too far inland. Or else the mermaids were not singing tonight. As fog drifted in through the window, though she strained her ears, she could hear nothing over the sound of men in the bar and common-room: conversations, a fiddler scraping away, singing. This far from Bangor, customs were still very much what they had been before the war between North and South.

  She closed the window again, changed into her nightdress, and got into the enormous bed. The curtained bed frame itself was probably well over a hundred years old; in fact, it probably dated back to the time the inn had been built. Back then, it would have served as many people as could be crammed into it at night. Whole families, at least. “Decent” people nowadays would shudder at the thought of an entire family in the same bed, but the poor still slept that way. Now, however, furbished with the finest featherbed and goose down pillows, it held pride of place in this best chamber, and was meant for two at the most. Miriam felt like a child in it, and it was tempting to give in to her playful side and wallow in it.

  But she had work to do, and Jacob was an early riser.

  * * *

  The chambermaid arriving with her breakfast woke her. “Shall I mend the fire, miss?” the girl asked, as she put down a tray loaded with ham and johnnycake, maple syrup, butter, and a pot of coffee. “It’s cold this morning.”

  “Please,” she said, not getting up until the maid had gone, though the smell coming from that tray was heavenly. When breakfast was a memory, and she had washed and tidied herself at the basin—the pitcher held warm water, so the maid must have delivered that even before she delivered the breakfast—she made sure she had everything she needed in her reticule, and went downstairs, fully expecting to find Jacob.

  She was not disappointed. He entered the front door of the inn as she was about to take a seat in the salon next to it. Without a word he offered his arm; she took it, and they went out to his waiting carriage. Evidently automobiles were thin on the ground here; she hadn’t seen a single one since she arrived.

  He drove himself, which she expected. It was a carriage large enough to hold almost a dozen, which she also expected—she had not been inventing his large family. Like himself, Jacob’s wife was an Earth Magician—much weaker even than Miriam, but she had the blood—and Earth magicians tended to be fertile.

  “Where are we going, Jacob?” she asked, when she was sure they would not be overheard. The little town was as bustling as such a small town could be, and everything neat, clean, and in good repair. Whatever else was going on here, the town of Solace was prospering.

  “I thought we’d look at the well first,” he said diffidently. “It’s the farthest out.”

  She nodded. It seemed reasonable. “At a farm, I presume?”

  “Orchard,” he said. “Miriam, how are you getting on since your father died?”

 
Well, that was an abrupt change of subject. “You know that father and I were never close. If I were to say I still mourn him after two years, I would be telling lies.”

  Never close was a typical New England understatement. Miriam and her father had lived like cordial neighbors after her mother died. There was no rancor, but they simply had very little in common other than her mother. Her father, like Jacob, was an Earth magician who had shared his peculiar gift of speaking with all Elementals with her. Her mother had been Fire and also merely a magician. Air fed Fire, Earth supported Fire, and so her mother had been the bond in the household. When pneumonia had taken her, there had been nothing much to hold them together. Miriam had already been well aware that there was little her father, a fine carpenter, could leave to her other than the house, so she had long been apprenticed to a haberdasher, who had allowed Miriam to buy her out with the small inheritance she had gotten. By selling his tools and the contents of his woodshop, she had put enough in savings that she was doing no worse than when he had been alive. Of course, being able to fashion her own wardrobe had certainly aided that considerably.

  “I was sorry when father died, of course,” she added. “But you are aware that he and I had very little to talk about outside of magic. And under ordinary circumstances, there is little enough need of that hereabouts.”

  Jacob nodded. “I was more concerned with your financial well-being,” he said.

  She smiled. “Well, you can stop. Granted, my purse does not easily stretch to unscheduled jaunts into the hinterlands, but my shop continues to bring in what it did when Madame Alouette was behind the counter, and my needs are few. I enjoy my work, and it is the rare man or woman who is permitted the luxury of doing what they enjoy for a living. Please, do not concern yourself.”

  She could see that Jacob was bursting to say more—probably about not having a man to care for her and protect her, or perhaps asking her where she thought she would ever meet such a man when she was never out from behind that hat counter, but he didn’t. Not that she would have given him a set-down, of course; he was her elder, his oldest son was almost her age in fact, and it would not have been proper for her to speak to him with impertinence.

  It did rankle a little to know that had she not been an Elemental magician, he probably would not have hesitated in speaking those unspoken words. Those with the power were inclined to treat the women with it more like equals—probably because there was no “weaker sex” in a magician’s duel.

  Well, she was not going to be able to end that in a single afternoon, although the ghost of an idea began to float through the back of her mind, and she set it aside to ripen.

  She was still getting the impression that there was far more going on here than just Jacob’s fear there was a renegade Water Magician about. Nevertheless, something told her to remain silent about that, and observe. Air Mages were nothing if not highly intuitive. Not terribly empathic, but intuitive.

  The road began to pass through what was obviously an apple orchard, and it was just as obvious that every hand was out getting in the harvest. Miriam was glad she’d had that good breakfast; otherwise the mouth-watering aroma of ripe apples and the sharp, sweet smell from the cider-presses would have made her stomach growl in a most unladylike manner.

  Jacob stopped the horse once to get out and speak with a man up a ladder—the farmer, she presumed—then came back and set the horse in motion again. It didn’t take a genius to guess he’d probably gotten permission to go look at the well. Very wise, as well as polite. You never knew which men were likely to meet you with a rifle and which with a cup of coffee and a slice of pie.

  “I told him you were a water-witcher,” Jacob said. “He’s been asking me to find him one so he can dig a new well.”

  She nodded; that was a good excuse and not even much of a fib, much less a lie. It wouldn’t take her long to find a water source if it had to come to that.

  He pulled the carriage into a neat farmyard, and waved to the red-faced and exasperated-looking woman who was carrying water to the house with an old-fashioned yoke and two buckets. “I hope that’s the watah-witch yah’ve brought, Jacob!” she called, without altering her course in the least.

  “It is, Martha!” he called back, and the woman lost a great deal of the exasperation from her expression.

  “Then welcome, and theyah’ll be pie,” she replied, and without another word, proceeded into her kitchen.

  The people of Maine, especially in the country, tended not to waste words.

  Jacob helped Miriam down out of the carriage. The well head was obvious; and the farmer was prosperous enough that it was not an old-style chain-and-bucket, but a fine pneumatic pump. There was probably its double in the kitchen. No wonder the farmwife looked annoyed.

  That the well was dry was obvious to her; not a sight nor a sign of a Water Elemental anywhere about, and they generally tended to brood about wells, even closed ones like this. Luna had kept pace with them this entire time, and she flitted about, examining everything, showing no signs whatsoever that there was any inimical magic in the area.

  In Miriam’s experience, you could not possibly dry up a well with magic unless it was dark. The lives of too many people depended on wells . . . and often you had to disperse the Water Elemental that guarded it.

  Well, then. . . .

  She might not have had much in common with her father, but that didn’t mean they didn’t speak, and generally when they did, it was about magic. One of the things she had brought with her was part of her breakfast. A johnnycake soaked in butter ought to tempt just about any Earth Elemental.

  Even the best garden generally has a spot that for one reason or another has been left to go wild, and this one was no exception. It looked as if the blackberry vines had been a little more enthusiastic than this Martha had been prepared for this year; she’d probably prune them back after the first hard frost, but for now, they were a bit of a jungle.

  She stepped over to it, broke off a bit of the johnnycake, and placed it on a rock.

  And waited.

  Earth Elementals hereabouts, if they hadn’t come along with some immigrant Elemental family or other, tended to still be the native creatures. So Miriam was not at all surprised to see a huge toad hop out of the tangle of vines and scoop up the johnnycake with its fat tongue. The toad looked up at her.

  “Well, sister-of-power,” it croaked softly. “I see you have more of that tasty man-food. May I have it?”

  “Will you answer me some simple questions, brother-in-power?” she asked politely. “If you will, I shall give you all. If not, I must save it for one who will.”

  The toad croaked a chuckle. “Ask, she who is both polite and cautious.”

  “Has one-of-power dried up the planting-folk’s well?” she asked, in a straightforward manner. Earth Elementals liked things simple and direct.

  “Ai-ha! You ask me something easy! No, no one of power has done it. Not long ago, there was a man with strange sticks up above in the hill. He planted them in the earth and ran, and the earth spoke and rocks rained. He did not find what he was looking for after that violation, and went away. But the spring at the bottom of the well was sealed.”

  Miriam glanced aside at Jacob, who wouldn’t look at her. “And can it be reopened again?” she asked the toad.

  “Easily. Dig a little farther down. It has found a new channel.” Miriam bent and put the rest of the cake on the rock, and the toad went to breaking off bits and licking them up with obvious glee.

  “Thank you, brother-in-power,” she said as she straightened. “For your straight answers and your courtesy. May you sleep safely while the breath of the cold one freezes the world.”

  The toad grunted his reply, since his mouth was full of cake. Miriam pointedly ignored Jacob and marched up to the farmhouse door to give Martha the welcome news.

 
It was only when they were in the carriage, with two fine pies wrapped in flour-sack towels for safety and cooling under the seat behind them, that she turned on him.

  “You knew that!” she accused.

  “I guessed it,” he corrected. “I couldn’t get the Earth Elementals to talk to me without forcing them.” He rubbed the back of his head with a rueful expression. “I didn’t know that trick with the johnnycake. Your father teach that to you?”

  “Yes. And the cellar that flooded is downhill of that well, isn’t it?” She pinned him with her glare. “The increased pressure when the spring was stopped up is what caused the water to seep into the cellar, isn’t it?”

  “Very likely,” he agreed, “since the cellar is where you suggested. But before you storm at me, come look over the lobster situa—”

  But she was already waving Luna over to the carriage. The little sylph happily flitted over when she brought out a stoppered vial of lavender oil, her favorite. “Luna, go down to the docks and talk to the sylphs there, would you please? I want to know if there are two fishermen who have a quarrel with each other. And find out if one went out secretly and broke the lobster pots of the other.”

  Sylphs might not be empathic, but they were wildly curious about anything that would make humans act in interesting ways. If there was a quarrel going on, they’d know about it, and they were probably sitting around it like children at a circus.

  She had not specified that the two fishermen were brothers, because if she did that, the sylphs were likely to take her literally and not look for anything but brothers. It was always possible that someone outside the family had a quarrel with one of the men, but not the other.

  Luna came flying back with the speed of a falcon, in a great deal of excitement. “Oh!” she exclaimed, so entranced with drama that she flew alongside in little circles rather than alighting on the carriage rail, “Such anger! Such hate! If he were Fire, he would scorch the sea itself!”