Aeromancer

by Don Callander

  This yellow liquid dropped steadily from the end of the retort’s long spout into a small glass beaker. With each additional drop the matter in the beaker became darker and bluer, until it took on the hue of pure indigo.

  Douglas handed his Master a pair of thick gloves and, when the older Wizard had donned them, a burning spill of clean pinewood.

  “Watch your eyes!” warned Flarman as he reached for the beaker.

  He waited until they were ready, then touched the burning splinter to the deep blue liquid.

  There was a brilliant flash of light, and the entire workshop filled with an acrid, heavy gray smoke which felt bitterly cold on their hands and faces.

  Myrn gasped and Douglas threw his cloak about her shoulders, for the temperature in the workshop suddenly plunged close to freezing.

  Flarman, at a critical juncture, cried out three words of powerful magic.

  “Argamon! Freestatic! Grabbleo!”

  The smoke flinched, as if a fresh, warm breeze had blown through it, and retreated quickly to a far, dark corner, the dimmest part of the large workshop, where it hung thickly in the air, turning and twisting about—in the vague shape, suddenly, of a cloaked figure.

  Two burning points of light appeared when the figure’s head lifted to look at them. The “eyes” blinked three times, slowly.

  “A Spector!” murmured Douglas to Myrn, who was clinging tightly to his arm. “A Watcher... I think.”

  “Yes, a Watcher,” agreed Flarman, removing the heavy gloves. “We can ask it questions ... for a while. It must answer the truth. But stick to the matter at hand. Time is limited!”

  He turned to face the ghostly Spector.

  “Where is Serenit, First Citizen of New Land?” he demanded without preamble.

  The Watcher wavered for a moment before the answer came, in a thin, chilly voice from a great distance.

  “Do you mean the former Aeromancer known as Frigeon?” it asked.

  “Call me ‘sir,’ “ Flarman demanded sharply. “You know my rank!”

  “Sir!” said the apparition rather sullenly.

  “Serenit was Frigeon, of course,” Flarman said steadily. “Now he is Serenit. Where is he?

  Again the smoky figure paused, turning as if consulting unseen others behind him in the deepest darkness.

  “Serenit-that-was-Frigeon, if that is he of whom you inquire, sir, is beyond our ken,” the Spector said slowly. “I can’t help you except to say he went east, not north, south, or west... nor up nor down, for that matter. Seek him eastward ... sir!”

  “Good enough!” said Flarman with some satisfaction. “Tell me, did he leave of his own desire?”

  Again a long pause, but Flarman and his friends waited patiently.

  “No, Serenit was carried off against his will, sir!” said the smoke figure at last, precisely, coldly.

  Flarman paused, glanced at Augurian, then at Douglas, Myrn, and the others in turn.

  “You cannot say exactly where he is?” asked Augurian. “Just that he is in the east?”

  The dim figure turned to face his new questioner, bowing slightly to the Water Adept, recognizing his Powers.

  “He was taken against his will. He is somewhere in the Nearer East. He has no Powers of his own to project his location to you, sirs! Yet he needs assistance, and quickly”

  “Who holds him?” asked Douglas.

  The Spector considered the young Wizard for a moment before bowing.

  “I cannot say, young Pyromancer. If I could, I would... for you and your Masters are worthy of the Light and I am pledged to assist your cause, if and as well as I can, I and my ... sensors.”

  He paused, hooded head cocked sideways, as if listening again to someone behind him.

  “I add only that he’s held by a force I cannot comprehend at all. If I could, I would tell you, sirs.”

  There was a long silence following this statement.

  “Tell us,” Myrn Brightglade broke into the silence. “Is Serenit in danger? Does his capture bode ill for World?”

  The smoke figure shivered and began to thin. Only the burning eyes remained, regarding the pretty young Journeyman steadily, but not with hostility.

  If anything, with deep, deep sadness.

  “I can help you no further, Mistress. Except to say ...”

  His figure was all but invisible, like smoke dispersing in a gentle breeze.

  “... it bodes ill for World and the Light. Someone must go to this ... Serenit’s ... rescue ...”

  Myrn leaned forward to hear his last words.

  “... a long, dangerous Journey!”

  And the eyes blinked and the thinning smoke swirled and trailed out the open transom above the workshop door.

  The company sat in silence.

  “I had ... other questions to ask it,” said Myrn, unsteadily. “Can you call it back, Magister?”

  “I cannot,” said Flarman, looking quite weary.

  Augurian said, “Perhaps if I tried?”

  “It’s not your forte” said Flarman, flatly. “He has said Myrn is the best one to rescue poor Serenit. I just wish the apparition could have told us more of the nature of his captors.”

  “Is it necessary to rescue Serenit?” asked Marbleheart, speaking for the first time. “Maybe we should just... let him go?”

  “Nonsense!” cried Myrn. “He may have been the worst of wicked Magickers once but he’s been a good friend since he reformed.”

  “True,” Douglas said, nodding, “and I have a strong feeling that the danger is as much to the rest us as it is to Serenit of New Land.”

  “I have to agree,” said the Lady Geomancer. “Flarman? Myrn must go on this Journeying. Do you agree?”

  “Entirely.” Flarman sighed. “Little we can do to make it easier or safer, except the things we’ve tried to teach and show her. Not even Douglas can assist, I’m afraid, beyond love and good advice.”

  “It’s something must be done,” decided Douglas, taking Myrn’s hand in his own and looking into her Sea-green eyes. “Do you agree, companion?”

  “I agree, understand, and expect the restrictions, just as you did in the very dangerous matter of the Witches of Coven,” answered Myrn, sitting straighter on her stool. “I’ll prepare myself and leave at once!”

  Actually it was three days before she managed to get away.

  There were the twins to see to.

  And her husband to reassure.

  And spells to review and to discuss with her Master.

  And so many people to bespeak and arrangements to make, as well.

  When it came to the twins, she and her husband considered taking them to stay with her mother and father on distant Flowering Isle in the midst of Warm Sea. But they decided to leave them in the care of Douglas’s mother, Gloriana, and shipwright father, at nearby Perthside.

  “If it takes longer than a few weeks,” Myrn said to Douglas as he prepared to take the twins to his mother’s house overlooking Farango Waters, “you must arrange for my mother to share the care of our precious babes, Douglas.”

  “I’ll do that. Don’t worry, sweetheart! There are fifty or a hundred beings within call who’d move World to protect and care for our children.”

  “I know,” said the mother with a deep sigh. “But I still feel only you and I can do the job properly. I don’t want them to forget me!”

  “No fear of that,” said Douglas, kissing her on the forehead. “You’re quite unforgettable, believe me!”

  She spent a half-day alone with her Master, Augurian of Waterand. They reviewed the Aquamantic Arts the fisher-lass from Flowering Isle had learned in three years of his careful instruction, to make sure there were no voids in her water-lore.

  “The most useful spells you already know quite well and use almost every day,” Augurian said calmly. “Your best equipments will be a cool head and a large dose of common sense, my dear stepdaughter.”

  Yet, she could tell he was upset and worried... although that she’d
always expected of him, when the time came for her Journeying.

  “Magister... beloved teacher and great friend! Everything you’ve taught me is engraved on my heart and mind, believe me. I’ll be just fine!”

  “In my mind I know it.” Augurian sighed, then shed a tear, something she had never seen from him before. “It’s in my heart that I have fears.”

  Flarman sat her on a tall, three-legged stool in the underhill workshop. The day after their interview with the smoke Spector had turned hot and thundery, but here in the Wizard’s workrooms it remained cool, dry, and still.

  “I know you’ve the knowledge and skills to do even the most difficult jobs,” Flarman told her. “I can’t give you much magical help, under the rules, but I don’t need to. Here ...”

  He laid in her hand a round ivory box with a tight-fitted lid. Opening it, Myrn round that it was a simple magnetic compass. The needle was painted black on one end and was clear silver on the other. It jiggled nervously back and forth as she moved it.

  “It’ll tell you which way to turn,” Flarman explained solemnly. “And bring you safely home, no matter how far you wander.”

  “Magister... I...,” began the young lady.

  She exclaimed in surprised delight as he produced a scroll of fine, paper-thin parchment, rolled inside a silver tube tied with red silk tassels at either end.

  Her Journeyman’s certificate!

  “Don’t need to carry it with you,” Flarman told her. “Douglas always keeps his here, hidden in the stair newel-post. Even when he went to Old Kingdom to take on those wicked Witches of Coven. Actually it isn’t worth anything, except to apprise World of your schooling in the Powers.”

  “I’ll put mine in the newel-post, too,” decided Myrn. “With Douglas’s Certificate of Mastery.”

  Flarman laughed.

  “No one will ever doubt your Powers or good training, beautiful child! You know that we’ll be keeping as close an eye on you as Wizardry possible, within the rules?”

  “I expect that,” said Myrn with a pleased nod.

  “And we’ll try to catch you if you should trip. I only wish we knew what it is you’re facing. At least Douglas had a fairly good idea about the Witches of Coven before he tackled them.”

  “No reason to worry,” insisted Myrn. “I’m no grand heroine, Magister! If it becomes too much for me I’ll call for help, you can be sure.”

  “That’s the best thing you could have said to calm my fears,” cried Flarman. “Let’s go get hot chocolate and some of Blue’s special pecan cookies!”

  The moon was beginning to show signs of shrinking to half-full when Myrn and Douglas perched together on the curb of the Fairy Well on the sheep-cropped front lawn of the High.

  It was close upon midnight.

  Tomorrow Myrn would leave for the Nearer East. They said little, occasionally squeezed one another’s hand or gave a loving pat or a kiss.

  The twins were long asleep. In the morning Douglas would take them on horseback down along Crooked Brook, through Trunkety Town and on to Perthside and his father’s shipyards and his mother’s sunny home above busy Farango Waters.

  Gloriana and the older Douglas would be ecstatic. Their grandchildren would be absolutely delighted to have a large number of new playmates from the families of ship’s carpenters in their grandfather’s yards and among the busy nuns of Glothersome Abbey. They would run and shout, do easy chores, go to school, climb trees, and swim and boat in the long, narrow Waters.

  Douglas reminded her, “And I’ll see them every weekend, while I can. The change will be good for them, Myrn.”

  “I tell myself that, too. But it isn’t easy to leave one’s husband and one’s children, even in such good company and in such good cause.”

  Douglas nodded but had the good sense to say no more.

  “If you need me... forget the Journeying,” he added at last. “You’ve plenty of time for that. Call me and I’ll come by fastest means.”

  “Of course I will,” his wife said. “I’m no bedtime-book heroine, believe me.”

  “Well, you really are, if you look at yourself from outside,” said her young husband and dearest friend. “But that shouldn’t surprise anyone.”

  “You’ll write my mother and father?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Of course. And we’ll go and spend some time with them on Flowring Isle, after Midsummer’s Eve,” Douglas promised. “You should be finished in Nearer East long before then.”

  “I hope this Journeying doesn’t delay my Examination,” worried Myrn. “I so wanted to get it behind me.”

  “It’ll come anytime you’re ready, sweetheart. I promise you!”

  The gibbous moon reached its zenith and began to tumble down toward the western horizon.

  Douglas clasped his wife’s hands, looked at her beautiful face in the moonlight, and said, “I love you, Myrn Manstar!”

  “And I do so love you, Douglas Brightglade, husband and lover! I’m so very happy that we met and loved and married.”

  “You’ll be just fine,” he insisted, and this time he sounded as if he really meant it.

  The problem of exactly where to go (the Nearer East was a huge, rather underpopulated area on the far shore of Sea) was finally decided by the elder Wizards after much magical tracery and long computations.

  “Serenit did manage to leave a faint trail,” explained Flarman, speaking for himself, for Litholt, and for Augurian. “A person of his former powers always leaves traces, even when he doesn’t intend to.”

  “Do I leave traces, too?” asked Myrn, startled at the thought.

  “Of course! Like your perfume or the smell of vanilla when you’ve been baking a cake,” Litholt said. “I can always tell where you are, somehow. You have a special aura, and so do Flarman and Douglas and Augurian ... even Marbleheart. But you, especially.”

  “That’s comforting, anyway,” decided the new Journeyman Aquamancer. “But how do I get started?”

  “Fairly easy,” replied Augurian.

  He reached in his wide left sleeve and withdrew a single strand of pearls of graduated size, from a single large, perfectly round and pure white gem in the middle of the string down to tiny pinkish-gray seed-pearls at either end.

  “This I was saving for you when you’d gained Mastery, but now is a better time,” he explained, fastening the gold clasp about her neck. “These are Pearls of Passage. I collected them over the years... centuries, in fact. I intended to give them to my own bride, if I ever found one....”

  “Then you must keep them for her,” insisted Myrn, shaking her head. “You’re still young enough to marry, Magister! And someday you will, I’m sure.”

  “In that case, you can give them to my chosen bride,” said Augurian, chuckling and putting his hands behind his back. “You need them now. And if I ever meet the lady I wish to marry, I’ll have other gifts to present to her... one of which will be you, as a stepdaughter!”

  He steadfastly refused to take the pearls back, although Myrn continued to insist.

  “They’ll carry you to far places and bring you safely home,” Augurian explained after she’d at last agreed to accept his gift. “Unlike the Feather Pin Bryarmote’s mother gave you and which you gave to Douglas, this talisman will serve you, or anyone who knows how to use it, for as long as you wear it. You can give it away, and take it back again, and it will work for you the second time, too.”

  “It’s truly beautiful!” exclaimed Myrn. “How does it work?”

  “Much like the Feather Pin,” replied the Water Wizard. “Merely say, ‘Pearly, Pearly, Do!’ and make a travel wish ... and you’re on your way! Not instantaneous translation, mind you, but quicker than quick! Just tell it where you wish to go.”

  “And where do I wish to go?” Myrn asked, fingering the lustrous gems about her neck.

  “Port of Samarca,” Flarman advised. “That’s the last place with any trace of Serenit’s passing. We can’t give you much help beyond tha
t... at least not yet.”

  “Keep in touch!” advised her Master, giving her a tight embrace.

  “Write if you can,” begged Douglas. “Mother’ll take good care of our babies and won’t let them forget you for a minute!”

  “Douglas is going to be busy tracing these new enchantments Serenit recently remembered,” explained Flarman. “We’ll all be on call, if and when you need us.”

  “Wish I were going along.” Marbleheart sighed, then sniffled just a bit. “I yearn to travel again, to swim in new oceans and rivers.”

  “Sweet, silly Familiar!” Myrn laughed, and ruffled the soft fur behind his ears. “Your Master’ll be flying you off somewhere shortly, if I know my husband. And if I call him, I’ll need you too, dearest Rockhead.”

  They stood on the front stoop of Wizards’ High, always a good departure point for any trip.

  Myrn had said good-bye to Blue Teakettle and all the kitchen utensils, as well as the Ladies of the Byre and the High’s chickens, too, early that morning. Pert and Party came to see her off, leading their kittens to get a parting scratch on their backs, arching with pleasure. Black Flame stood proudly by and accepted a loving caress, also.

  “Well, I better get going,” said the Journeyman Aquamancer. She took a deep breath to say the Pearls’ magic words....

  She felt a warm, moist touch on her arm and, looking about, found the little gray horse had appeared beside her.

  “My dear little flier!” she exclaimed. “Do you come to say good-bye, too?”

  The horseling shook her head; definitely no!

  “Then what?’ Myrn wondered.

  The little horse pushed against Myrn’s left hip and tossed her head twice, pointing her pink nose eastward.

  “I think she wants you to take her along,” Douglas guessed.

  “Yes, indeed, that’s just what she wants,” agreed Flarman. “She’s heard you’re going toward her homeland.”

  “Good company!” Myrn laughed and then, seating herself gracefully on the little horse, sidesaddle, spoke the words that would propel them both into distant adventure.

  Chapter Three

  Port of Samarca

  A grizzled Wayness Seacaptain named Mallet strove to hold his hot temper in check.