The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  Megella jumped back. The strings disintegrated, leaving ridges and ripples of sand at the edge of the pond. Loose grains trickled into the water.

  Carin held her pose, held on to the magic, making certain that nothing redeveloped, that nothing came out of the water. She was vaguely aware of Verek and Megella standing dead still, watching her, waiting for her to give the all-clear.

  In a few moments, Carin did.

  “It’s gone,” she murmured. “For good, I think.”

  “Excellent!” Verek exclaimed.

  “What in the name of mischief was that abomination?” Megella demanded. “In all my years of growing and gathering plants, I have never seen the likes of it.”

  “It isn’t native to this world,” Carin said, still studying the banks of the pond, searching for more clumps of the stuff. “It’s a kind of strangleweed. I saw it growing wild in a place called Angwid. That whole planet—or at least all of it that I saw—had gotten buried in the stuff. Beggar it!” she swore. “I didn’t want it coming here.”

  “How did it make the crossing?” Verek asked.

  You mean, how did I let this happen? Carin mentally rephrased Theil’s question. What horrible, disastrous mistake did I make out there beyond the void?

  She sighed. “Let’s go back to camp. I think you’ll want to be sitting down when I tell you this.”

  As they turned and headed for the cooking fire, Carin noticed Megella stooping to gather up her dropped bunches of parsnips and slim green shoots. Silently, she lent a hand. In camp then, no one spoke as she and the wisewoman cleaned the roots and threw them sliced into a pot of boiling water. Verek turned the meat on its spit and made tea to replace the pot that Carin had overturned.

  When they had settled themselves around the fire, watching the meal cook, Carin took a deep breath and confessed, looking straight at Verek.

  “I’d been really careful,” she said. “I didn’t slip until I got to the woodsprite’s world.”

  At this mention of the sprite, Verek narrowed his eyes. But he said nothing, only let Carin go on spilling out her secret.

  “The first place we stopped,” she said, determined to tell him everything, “we spent a little time there. The woodsprite had run off in a panic and I chased after the creature. I had to kill one of the natives—a thing that looked like a giant mushroom with teeth. I cut it with the dagger you’d lent me”—Carin gestured at the blade that had hung from Verek’s belt since she’d returned it to him—“and the mushroom fell dead. A swarm of spidery animals rushed in then and ate it.”

  “Where was this?” Megella interjected, looking baffled.

  Carin shook her head. “I have no idea. Out there somewhere.” She waved vaguely at the stars in the indigo sky above them, a gesture that appeared to give Megella no satisfaction. The woman’s look of mystification only deepened.

  “Anyway,” Carin went on, “the mushroom had spewed out a poison that paralyzed me. Another creature—I never got a good look at it, but I called it a ‘hairy hummer’ because I could hear it humming, and the woodsprite said it had fur—that creature threw a net over me and dragged me into its lair, where it was going to fillet and cook me.”

  “By the blood of Abraxas!” Verek swore, staring at her.

  Oh, I’ve really got his attention, Carin thought. I haven’t heard him swear like that in a long while.

  She nodded. “Things were looking grim. But before the hummer could get me into its kettle, the woodsprite came tearing up the hill and scared the thing away. And in a few minutes, when the numbness wore off, I checked to be sure I still had everything—my weapons especially, because they had all been made on Ladrehdin and I didn’t want to leave behind anything solid that could be used to build a bridge.”

  “Good,” Verek murmured. “You kept your head despite the strangeness of it all, and despite the danger you were in.”

  “I tried to think of everything,” Carin said, meeting his gaze. “I’d lost some skin off my arm where the hairy hummer dragged me over the ground. But I thought my shed patches of skin could only feed some scavenger. And even if a shred or scrape of my flesh could somehow become a link to another world, that link would be with Earth, not Ladrehdin. Right?”

  Slowly, Verek nodded. “I believe you are correct, fìleen. Before you came to me, you first belonged to that world of your birth.”

  Sweet mother of mercy—thank you! Carin offered up silent gratitude. He’s still calling me his ‘fìleen.’ But when I tell him the rest of it, he may curse me instead.

  She sucked down another breath and went on. “I’d done what I’d set out to do … part of it, anyway. That world was not the woodsprite’s home, and I still had other talismans to return to their native lands. So when I was back on my feet, the woodsprite and I headed off again.”

  Carin paused, trying to remember what it had felt like to travel through the void, jumping from one world to the next across distances that could not be measured. She could recall lapsing into a slowed-down, cotton-woolly mental state. During her travels, the concept of “time” had lost its meaning. Her only fixed point of reference had been Theil Verek and her desire to return to him.

  He was looking at her now, waiting. Carin had never before given him a detailed account of her travels but had allowed him to assume that she had made a quick series of mostly uneventful hops from world to world. Now Theil was frowning, realizing for the first time that she had been keeping the truth from him.

  “Go on,” he breathed. “A story so boldly begun must be told to its finish.”

  Carin flinched. The last time Verek had said that to her—in exactly those words—he had ended up believing, after he had heard her tale, that he would have to kill her eventually.

  She shifted on the blanket under her and adjusted the dolphin amulet that was tucked deep in her pocket. The crystal jabbed her uncomfortably.

  A bit shakily then, Carin went on. “Well, you remember that one of the talismans was only a scrap of tree bark. We tried it next, thinking it might lead us to the woodsprite’s world. But we found a land of trees and snow and huge, white-furred cats that had a habit of sharpening their claws on the tree trunks and shredding the bark.”

  “The mountain cat’s world,” Verek muttered. “The creature that escaped Morann and nearly took Lanse’s arm off before you killed the beast.”

  Carin nodded. “When I arrived in their world, a pair of the cats stalked me like I was fair game. I was up a tree and I still had my bow, but I didn’t take the shot. I had brought the scrap of bark back where it belonged, and I wasn’t going to risk undoing my work by burying a Ladrehdinian weapon in the flesh of an otherworldly cat. I could imagine the, um, consequences.”

  “Yes.” Verek seemed almost to have forgotten the meat on the spit. Only half attending to what he was doing, he turned it now. But he barely took his eyes from Carin’s. “An arrow left behind on that world might build a bridge to Ladrehdin. Your task was to tear down the bridges, not build new connections.”

  “And by then, I was halfway done. So I jumped again, out into the void, and plop”—Carin slapped her hands together, imitating the sound of hitting the water—“right into an ocean of strangleweed like the stuff that grabbed Megella.” She gestured toward the nearby pond. “We had found the woodsprite’s world. The things were shrieking and screaming, wanting to kill me. They circled my neck and choked me until I blacked out.”

  “Drisha blind me!” Verek swore.

  “Hush,” his aunt reprimanded him. “Do not take in vain the name of the Divine.”

  “Beggar that!” Verek shot back. “I ought to be blinded, or tormented forever in farsinchia, for sending Carin into such danger.”

  “Well,” Megella retorted, “she seems to have managed it all right. The girl is here and whole, is she not? Go on, widgeon,” Meg added, turning to Carin. “This tale you are laying out for us puts Granger’s droll-tellers to shame.”

  Hesitantly, Carin continued, pressing on to
ward the heart of the matter, the reason she was telling this tale at all.

  “I don’t know how long I was unconscious, and I don’t know everything that happened while I was out of my senses. But when I came to, I was lying on a boulder with water all around, and the woodsprite was protecting me from the strangleweed. The creature looked like one of them now. It wasn’t a woodsprite anymore, it was just a spindly green plant piping away in the sprite’s voice. It had its leaves and stems wrapped around my boulder, keeping the other plants from throttling me.”

  Carin closed her eyes, picturing the scene. “The sprite told me the weeds had robbed me while I lay unconscious. They took everything that had once been a living plant. They made off with my shirt—”

  “Your shirt!” Verek exclaimed. “They stripped you?”

  Carin shrugged and reopened her eyes. The missing shirt was the least of it. “Partly. I still wore my trousers and boots, and I had my pack and your quiver—they’d left me everything that was made of wool or leather … or mineral,” she added, remembering the crystal dolphin, her safe-conduct back to Ruain. Her travels might have ended with her permanently adrift in the void, if the weeds had confiscated the crystal.

  “They left animal and mineral,” Verek repeated slowly, “but they took vegetable. Linen … and wood?” He looked at her sharply.

  Carin bit her lip.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “They took my bow and all your arrows.”

  “For what purpose?” Verek demanded. “What did the weeds do with them?”

  “I didn’t see. I was out cold when all of this happened. But the woodsprite said they buried them like they would bury their dead. Like a funeral. Not just my weapons … also those papers I had in my pocket. Those pages I took from the Book of Archamon.”

  Carin thought she had finally rendered Verek speechless. For a long moment, he only stared at her. But then he erupted with another blistering “Drisha blind me!” as though he truly wanted the Divinity to do it.

  Megella did not reproach him. The wisewoman was eyeing Carin with great consternation.

  “Oh, surely not!” she exclaimed. “Are you telling me, widgeon, that you tore pages from the Book”—Carin was certain she heard a capital letter in the way Meg said it—“the Book that Legary valued above all others? And you did not die doing it?”

  Carin started to nod, then to shake her head, and almost made herself dizzy.

  “Just one,” she said, sounding like a child who had been caught stealing from the cookie jar. “Just one page, I mean. I’d already read one of the poems that Lord Legary wrote in the book. I’d made a copy of it to keep with me. But I hadn’t been able to read the other poem.”

  “Tah! I should think not!” Megella exclaimed.

  Verek only snorted, his typical response to manifest understatement.

  “Well, yes, that was the problem,” Carin mumbled, and went on with the details for Meg’s benefit. Verek already knew about the stolen page. “Legary’s spell of concealment was on that poem. But I’d been making progress, poking a few holes in his secrets. I didn’t want to give up just when we were leaving Ruain to head west to Morann’s mountains. So I tore the page out of the book, folded it small and put it in my pocket, and took it with me.”

  “You folded … pocketed …” Megella’s mouth moved, but for a moment the wisewoman could not seem to ask her question. “What happened?” she finally got out, faintly.

  Carin shrugged. “Not much. Except the book made a new page to replace the one I took. Like a lizard regrowing its tail, only much faster.” She smiled a little, remembering her fascination with it. “I was relieved, of course, when I didn’t drop dead on the spot. Or burst into flames. I couldn’t guess what kind of horrible supernatural punishment I might be in for. But the book just repaired itself and hid the evidence of what I’d done.”

  Verek stirred. “And when I eventually found out,” he muttered, “I took the page away from you. But then I gave it back, didn’t I.” His voice was flat.

  Carin nodded, and allowed herself a little hope. He’s taking part of the blame, she thought. He’s not going to hold me responsible for all of this.

  “I was daft to put it back in my pocket and haul it off to distant worlds,” she admitted. “I should have handed it right back to you. In your hands, your grandfather’s words would have been safe.”

  Verek tilted his head questioningly. “You have no notion what the weeds did with the page?”

  “Just what the sprite said, about them burying my belongings like they were burying bodies. But I didn’t see anything resembling a cemetery. In every direction, that place was a solid carpet of weeds. Close around my boulder, there was a band of open water like I was in a lagoon. And I could make out lumps, away in the distance like dry land that was trying to push itself up out of the greenery. Those lumps were buried under weeds, too. Except for the boulder I was sitting on, Angwid was just a thick, endless mat of plants.”

  “Angwid?” Megella asked. “That is the name of the place?”

  Carin nodded. “That’s what the woodsprite called it. By the time I came awake, the creature had seen enough—and felt enough, I think, through its roots—to recognize its home world. But it seemed confused to find the place so completely choked with weeds. It said there should be trees, whole groves of them like temples.” Carin shut her eyes again, attempting but failing to picture a stately stand of trees rising above that weed clogged ocean.

  “Anyway,” she went on, refocusing on her companions, “the strangleweed made another rush at me. The weeds were practically on top of me, with only the woodsprite holding them back.” She shook her head. “Meg, you’ve felt how strong those stems and tendrils are. If they get their wires around a person’s throat …”

  Carin let the sentence hang, hoping it was enough of an excuse. She pointed at the pot full of boiled roots and shoots. “Seeing them this way, no one would ever think plants could be so sinister.”

  “Wheesht!” Megella exclaimed. “I have been so caught up in your story, widgeon, I completely forgot them. They will have cooked to mush. And that meat has shriveled to nothing, Theil,” the woman added, gesturing at the roasted tenderloins that Verek had also neglected. “Let us eat, if any of the meal remains edible.”

  They spread the overcooked parsnip mush on slices of the bakery bread. And after scraping off the burnt surface of the meat, they found enough left in its center to at least give them a taste of things to come. They’d eat more of the pork tomorrow.

  Carin’s companions did not seem to mind, however, that their feast for tonight had been reduced to little more than bites. All three of them had apparently lost their appetites.

  As they sat around the fire, and Carin and Megella sipped their tea, Verek broke out the bottle of homebrew that he had first uncorked at the stock pond after hearing Carin read her letter from home. Since then, he had mostly left the liquor untouched. Tonight, however, he practically slid down the bottle.

  “Mud,” he murmured after a while, so softly that Carin barely heard him.

  “Mud—under all that water. That’s what you’re thinking?” she asked, equally softly.

  He nodded. “If they buried your linen, weapons, and papers in the mud, then perhaps those things will quickly rot … and destroy every last link to Ladrehdin.”

  Carin started to take Verek’s hand, but stopped herself. If he was angry at her for leaving behind a trail of artifacts that some world-destroying invader could follow back to Ladrehdin, if he blamed her for endangering his planet, then he would jerk his hand away. And she would not be able to bear that.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I couldn’t see any way to get those things back, not against such a mob. If I’d slid off my boulder and swum for it, if I’d tried to go looking for what they took, the weeds would have strangled the life from me.”

  Verek reached for her. Not to hold Carin’s hand, but to enfold her in his arms.

  “Of course you could no
t retrieve those things, fìleen,” he whispered in her ear. “That you got out alive is nothing short of miraculous. That is what matters. Together now, you and I … we will deal with the rest.”

  For a long moment, Carin stayed where she was, hardly breathing, just listening to the beat of Verek’s heart, smelling him, feeling his arms around her. Gently then, she pulled away. She brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes and told him what she had never admitted before.

  “I betrayed the woodsprite. The creature did not want to stay on Angwid. After I’d brought it there, the sprite begged me not to leave it on that world. It wanted to come back to Ruain. It said the weeds of Angwid did not live long. It would die if I left it there. But if it returned to Ruain, it might live for centuries. In the forests of this world, it could endure like the old oaks do, for season after season.”

  Carin shuddered. “It scared me. And it half sickened me. The woodsprite had wrapped its tendrils around me, exactly like that strangleweed grabbed Megella. After everything I had done to return the creature to its home, it was hurting me, threatening me. When I looked at it, all I could see was a clump of ‘devil’s-guts’—to call it by the name people use for strangleweed, in the south.”

  Verek nodded. “I have run across the term—in a book, I suppose. And I can think of no better name for the woodsprite. In light of all you tell me, I must believe that Master Jerold sensed the wood-goblin’s kinship with ‘devil’s-guts.’ Perhaps he recognized that the creature shared an ancestor in common with strangleweed—which is a parasite of plants that no gardener can abide. Jerold truly loathed the woodsprite. And you know I never trusted the creature.”

  “But I did,” Carin whispered. “The sprite was my friend. I owed it my life, many times over. And to repay it, I was determined to take the creature home. That’s what it had begged me to do. But then, when we reached its world, it said the place was disgusting. It wanted trees, not weeds.

  “And seeing the creature like that, wrapped around me like a mess of devil’s-guts, and its tendrils like wires cutting into my skin … I just wanted to get away from it. I jumped into the void and left the sprite there to die!”