Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2)

by Don Callander

  “Give me a few minutes more,” said Augurian. “I’ll have to leave some orders for my absence.”

  “Oh, the place will run very well without you while we’re gone,” scoffed Flarman Flowerstalk cheerfully, but the Water Adept had already disappeared down the stair.

  ****

  Myrn, Cribblon, and Willow stood unseen near the front gate of Coven Castle for almost an hour when a flock of blue-and-white ducks landed with a splash in the castle’s green-scummed moat. A large and brilliantly colorful teal mallard swam to the near bank and, picking his way through the trash on the margin along the bank, waddled past them, pretending to peck at some imaginary bit of food between the cobbles. From the side he regarded Myrn with a steady, round eye.

  “You’d be the Water Adept’s Apprentice?” he asked in a low quack.

  “I am Myrn Manstar, Apprentice to Augurian of Waterand,” Myrn replied.

  “Stopped to have a word with a couple of sailors and a Sea Otter perched on a ledge up there,” said the Drake, as if it were an everyday occurrence. “They say they are safe out of the Witch’s dungeon, and to tell you not to worry.”

  “Just two sailors and an Otter?” asked Myrn, a worried frown clouding her pretty face.

  “Only the three of them. That’s all, mistress.”

  “Where is Douglas?” she wondered aloud. “But thank you for the message, Sir Drake...”

  “Just call me Francis,” said the bird, turning to rejoin his flock in the moat. “We’re on our way north but we’ll visit Waterand next winter, for sure. Nice place, I understand, to spend a winter vacation. Come, ladies, let’s get out of this sickly mess of a moat. How can anyone let water become so fouled?”

  And they were off in a sudden flurry, not attracting any attention at all. Before they turned to fly over the nearest ridge, Francis returned for a last word.

  “I thought you ought to know,” he said hurriedly. “Blueye Lake boils and fumes threateningly, up there at the top!” And he was off.

  “Now what do you make of that?” Myrn asked the others.

  “What would make a tarn boil and fume but the fire beneath?” echoed Willow. “But, then, Blueye often acts that way.”

  Cribblon looked rather worried, too. “Blueye is a volcano.”

  “Go on.”

  “I climbed all over this mountain when I was spying on Coven. She’s been dormant for centuries, but she is by no means dead! There are steam vents and gas fumaroles all over her. I suspect this castle is built over some of them. Hence the foul-smelling smokes all about it.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Myrn, remembering past lessons. “The ducks believe Blueye is about to erupt!”

  “I would guess rather sooner than later,” said Willow. “Birds and small animals seem to know well in advance of Men.”

  “And we’re right on—and in—her at a very bad time!” Myrn gasped.

  They all craned their necks to gaze up at the truncated peak of Blueye Mountain. Did they see a plume of steam rising, or was it only a rain cloud clinging there? In answer, the ground heaved under their feet.

  “We can’t take the chance,” said Myrn, decisively. “Cribblon, we’ll fly up and take Pargeot, Marbleheart, and Caspar off to safety—as far away from the mountain as we can get! Willow, I’m going to make you visible. Run all over Coventown. Spread the warning! Create panic if you must! Tell everyone to run for their lives, that the volcano is about to erupt!”

  “Will they listen to me?” the boy wondered.

  “There’ll be plenty of evidence to back you up. The earth is starting to quake and the mountain to roar. Start as many off as will listen, but don’t hang about waiting for those who won’t. Don’t wait! Run with them, down to the pinelands!”

  Cribblon said, “I can speak Flarman’s Levitation Spell, having heard Douglas use it. You must find him!”

  “I’m going in to help Douglas then,” she agreed quickly.

  Cribblon shot into the air without further ado. The first really strong tremors shook the ground. The lines of slaves carrying sacks of potatoes into the castle stopped dead in their tracks and dropped their burdens. With their Witchserver guards they stood frozen in fear, peering upward.

  Willow, suddenly visible, stumbled on the first heave of the ground, dodged a stone that fell from the battlements above, and began to scream at the top of his considerable voice.

  “Earthquake! Earthquake! The mountain is falling on us! Everybody run! Run! Run!”

  The slaves and the guards in the foregate square immediately picked up the fearsome cry and took to their heels. A Witchserver guard at the gate, pelted with sharp chunks of granite fallen from the walls, let out a short, terrified scream and fell to the ground unconscious.

  The nearby streets of Coventown immediately filled with scrambling and screaming slaves, shaken from their lethargy by a fear greater than they felt for Emaldar and her Coven.

  Following the shouting ragamuffin they headed as one for the town gate and the path down the vale, away from the mountain.

  “Best I can do for them,” decided Myrn. “Now, Douglas, where are you?”

  She ran through the unguarded castle gate into the courtyard, dodging falling blocks of stone as she went. A stone-colored Griffin shrieked at her and flapped its heavy wings, but the building to which it clung slumped wearily into the courtyard with an awesome grumble and groan and a great cloud of acrid dust. The Griffin screamed once more as it disappeared into the rubble.

  Seeing the fate of their fellow Watch Worm, the other Gargoyles and Stone Demons abandoned their dangerous perches. Some flew, others dropped to the ground and fled from the courtyard on awkward, clawed feet.

  Myrn muttered an Umbrella Spell as she ran, and hoped it would work. She paid no further attention to rolling and flying stones, hurtling beams of oak and sheets of gray slate that slid from the roofs with a slithering shriek to smash into wickedly flying shrapnel on the cobbles.

  She stopped coolly to look about for a path to follow. Where the castle workshop had collapsed she spotted an arched entrance into the rock of the cliff itself, exposed by the complete disintegration of the structure.

  “Looks promising,” she said to herself and, whispering the Power Words to the Feather Pin, she flew swiftly to the opening and through it, into a blackness filled with choking dust and ear splitting roaring.

  The air rushing out at her almost slammed her to the ground but she righted herself and flew on, more slowly now to keep from braining herself on the uneven ceiling.

  Now the Feather Pin’s added virtue—guiding its owner underground—helped her along. Where there was a choice of passageways, she unerringly chose the best, and flew on without slowing. The heat of the air and the walls on either side was intense. The rumbling from inside the mountain grew louder by the minute.

  “Douglas?” she called, but the twisting and breaking of solid stone drowned out her small voice, even in her own ears.

  ****

  The first strong movement of the earth beneath him startled Douglas. He fell to his knees and stayed there until the quake subsided. It seemed like an hour, but was only a scant minute.

  When he stood again, he was hit by a fiery blast of air from ahead. The Witch Queen had gone this way, searching for her escaped prisoner.

  Rising, he walked steadily forward, entering another, low-ceilinged cavern. As he stepped out onto its floor it jerked wildly sideways and split across its middle, just in front of him.

  The sudden chasm filled quickly with eye-searing molten rock, popping and bubbling up like white-hot oatmeal. The heat was unbearable. His eyebrows sizzled and his gown smoldered.

  “Need a spell,” he gasped, falling back into the relative safety of the tunnel behind him. “Which one?”

  He settled for a standard Fireproofing Spell, one of the earliest he had learned at Flarman’s knee.

  “People who deal with fire must protect themselves from it, for it can turn savage when aroused,” the Fire W
izard had warned. “We Pyromancers command fire, but first you have to get its attention, and that isn’t always easy, my boy!”

  With the coolness of the spell wrapped about him like a cloak, Douglas stepped again into the room before him. He thought of turning back but, Witch or not, Emaldar was somewhere within this quaking, fiery mountain. She would need help to escape.

  Or she might prove powerful enough to use the quakes to cover her escape.

  He leaped carefully across the wide crack. The lava was no longer boiling, cooling rapidly on contact with the air. Beyond, he paused to decide which way to go.

  Far ahead he heard a sudden shriek of alarm; a woman’s voice. Emaldar no longer screaming in fury but in fear. Emaldar had at last realized that there were things other than an escaped victim to concern her.

  “Emaldar!” shouted Douglas, magnifying his voice as loud as he could. “Stay where you are! I’m coming to help you get out of here!”

  And I am, he realized as he dashed forward. Doesn’t a wicked Witch deserve to die in her own caldron?

  “No,” he said aloud. “I’ll help her...if I can.”

  The passageway twisted and turned but ran on, fairly level, except for blocks of stone shaken from the walls and ripped from overhead by the force of another series of tremendous shocks. The heat increased, but Douglas’s spell held.

  Then there were no more quakes, but a continuous, rolling rumble and a mighty, brain-rattling groan as rock moved against rock along ancient faults, slowly but inexorably at first, then in violent jerks. The mountain shivered as if it were cold, and cried out in a sort of insane fear of its own.

  “Emaldar! Hang on!” shouted Douglas, dodging a rain of half-molten boulders from above. “I’m almost there.”

  A faint cry came from behind him. “Don’t give your life for Emaldar, my love! She deserves to die!”

  Myrn!

  “I have to try,” shouted Douglas, plunging through a screen of hot steam.

  Then he saw the Witch.

  That she was Emaldar, the Black Witch of Coven, the Beautiful Queen of Witches, he never doubted. Her cloak was aflame from the heat of a rapidly advancing wall of white-hot lava beyond her, and as he watched, her tall, black hat was swept from her smoking hair and whipped into the approaching molten river of stone. It simply exploded like a firecracker, sending its large metal buckle flying to embed itself in the wall beside Douglas’s head.

  And between the Witch and the Wizard had opened a much wider crack. It plunged down, down as far as the eye could see, and at its bottom was a molten lake. Falling into its abyss were chunks of the mountain as large as Emaldar’s whole castle!

  Without conscious thought the Journeyman Wizard turned to the relatively cool stone wall beside the passage from which he had just emerged. He made a scooping and hurling gesture with both hands and muttered a chain of powerful words.

  As if a giant hand had plucked it out of the cavern wall, a great mass of solid, unmelted stone hurled itself into the abyss, half filling it with debris. The mountain roared in fury but before it could tear away the cooler stone, Douglas flung a second and a third handful after the first.

  The last filled the burning abyss to the level of the floor on which he—and Emaldar—stood.

  “Come this way!” he shouted. “Hurry, Emaldar!”

  She couldn’t see or hear! He dashed across the bridge he had made, protected by the Fireproofing Spell from the blast-furnace heat of the volcano’s interior. Reaching her side, he flung part of his spell about her, quenching the flames that were about to destroy her beautiful face.

  Grasping her firmly, he shouted in her ear to follow him back across the temporary bridge, but she shook her head.

  “I cannot see!” she screamed in agony. “I am blinded!”

  “Come, anyway,” insisted Douglas. He set their feet on the bridge just as the whole chasm filled with an intense and gleeful flash—the volcano sensing victory.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” cried the Wizard. “I am a Pyromancer and you must serve me! Down, down and back to your place, Mountain Fire!”

  He added a few choice, desperate magical words of the strongest sort he knew, and for a brief moment the fire halted and retreated into the abyss as if in startled dismay. No one told Fire what to do, and yet...

  In that moment promising safety for them both, the Witch Emaldar wrenched herself free of Douglas’s grasp and dashed ahead of him onto the crumbling bridge.

  Out of the Journeyman’s protecting spell, she screamed with her last breath, burst entirely into flame, and turned to black ash, which was swept away by the volcano’s blasts of burning gases into the abyss, gone forever!

  Part Three

  Coven Destroyed

  Chapter Twenty

  The Eruption of Blueye!

  Myrn, moving in a cloud of steam from her own spell of protection, would have missed her way had she not heard his dismayed shout. Turning swiftly toward the sound, she dashed down the wildly tossing tunnel, calling his name aloud. She stopped only in time to avoid crashing into Douglas, who had sprung from his temporary bridge before it collapsed, its thunder drowned in the greater shriek of the mountain in agony.

  “Come! I know the way,” Myrn screamed at the top of her voice, clutching Douglas’s arm.

  “She’s gone! Dead!” cried Douglas into a sudden and frightening silence.

  “You’re burned! You can’t do more than you have,” said Myrn, holding him tightly in her own arms, letting her protective magic flow over them both as Douglas’s spell threatened to weaken. “Let’s get out of here, Douglas!”

  “Which way?” asked Douglas, regaining his common senses. “The way I came is blocked.”

  “Follow me,” said Myrn firmly, pulling him along by the hand. ‘The Feather Pin will lead us out.”

  Twist and turn, climb up and slide down, the pin would not let them take a wrong step. The two Wizards trotted as fast as the rolling, bucking floor allowed them to go. Behind them, the mountain renewed its self-destructive fury, but they managed to outrush the swelling inferno until, at last, they caught a breath of intensely cold outside air.

  They burst from a crack in the mountain wall onto a broad, flat shoulder of rock overlooking the entire Coven Vale.

  “Take a breather,” panted Douglas, either a command or a request, or both. “The Witch is burned. I tried to save her, but she ran away from me!”

  “Let me take a look at your hurts,” said Myrn. But first she kissed him. Their lips were badly scorched, blistered, and in great pain, but neither minded at all.

  With the Water Adept’s assistance he stripped the burned and smoldering tatters of his clothing from his shaking, pain-wracked body. The cold air of the mountaintop burned like new flame, making him cry aloud for a moment. His Wizard’s gown was a total loss, but his inner clothing was unburned and had protected his skin. It steamed with his body’s escaping moisture in the cold air.

  Myrn made a rapid pass with her hands. A cool, sweet shower fell from the sky, quenching the last of the fires in their clothing and hair, moistening their lips and eyes. Douglas moaned in relief, but arched in renewed pain as his poor body realized it was terribly hurt.

  “I’ve got to get us off this mountain,” cried Myrn. “Oh, if I only had one good healing spell! Can you remember one?”

  Douglas, clear headed despite his burns, held up his hand. “Wait a minute. I think...”

  Remembering, he reached for the sodden ruin of his gown and found what was left of the left sleeve. Fumbling within its depths, he produced a tiny swirl of green leaves.

  “A four-leafed clover!” cried Myrn, clapping her hands. “How marvelous! Just what we need!”

  Douglas, drained by the effort, slumped to the hard ground. The sound of his breathing grew ragged and rapid.

  “Hurry, or you’ll lose him!” Myrn cried to herself.

  She fell at once to massaging gently the Journeyman’s ravaged face and neck, then his arms and feet an
d above his heart with the tiny but powerful plant. He cried out, then groaned and tried to pull away, but Myrn held him tightly with one arm, continuing to apply the healing herb.

  Finally, the young man on the ground heaved a tremulous sigh and relaxed, appearing to fall into a deep slumber, breathing steadily and easily.

  Myrn then touched the clover to her own eyebrows and other crisped parts of her body, hands, ears, and ankles. She finished and looked carefully at her fiancé to see if she had missed any bums.

  They were all completely healed and disappeared without scars. Douglas awakened with a start and reached out for her.

  “Let me have the clover. I’ll treat you,” he said, in a strong although hoarse voice.

  “I’m fine,” said Myrn, holding out her arms to show him. “You got the worst of it.”

  “I’m afraid the worst is yet to come,” coughed Douglas. The mountain was now swaying like a flagpole in a hurricane, threatening to shake them off their high perch. “Let’s fly for Pfantas. We’ll be safe there.”

  Myrn nodded and, taking Douglas firmly by one hand, she whispered the Feather Pin’s Power Words once more. They rocketed into the air just as the whole mountain peak beneath them gave a tremendous lurch and slid into Coven Vale, falling in slow motion to block the course of the stream above the town itself.

  Above it all they then heard a high, earsplitting shriek, as if Blue Teakettle were boiling over, magnified a thousand times.

  “The lake,” gasped Myrn, glancing back. “Its rim has burst!”

  The boiling waters of the crater lake cascaded down the volcano’s side, exploding into live steam as it overtook streams of molten rock from side fissures.

  “Come on!” shouted Douglas, tugging at her sleeve.

  “But it will destroy the road below Coventown,” said Myrn. “All those people fleeing down the mountainside before it...”

  She stopped still in midair, screaming a spell at the top of her voice. At first the rushing, falling, boiling waters of Blueye Lake didn’t seem to hear. Then suddenly they seemed to back up and turned in their course, flowing as swiftly to the north as it had a moment before flowed toward Coven Vale.