“Yes, my lord.”
The boy swung down. Verek moved off a few paces to lean his bow and the quiver against a tree.
As Carin slid from the hunter’s back, her legs nearly gave way. She’d been so pleased to see the little mare again, she had, for a moment, forgotten her illness. But the pains in her head and stomach were becoming unbearable.
Steadied between the hunter and the mare that crowded close, Carin lifted the water skin from Verek’s saddle, unstoppered it, and drank deeply. Then she worked one tin out of her belt-pouch and opened it. Her hands shook so badly she spilled at least half the bronze powder, but she managed to pinch a bit between thumb and forefinger and place it on her tongue.
“Aaahhh!” Carin screamed, so piercingly that both horses skittered away, leaving her unpropped. She collapsed to the ground.
Her tongue was on fire. If she’d taken a mouthful of lamp oil followed by a flaming torch, the pain would not have been more consuming. Her shirt got soaked as she tipped up the water skin. But swallowing great gulps did nothing to quench the fire in her mouth.
Verek and Lanse reached her at almost the same moment. The warlock kneeled beside her, his eyes taking in the flat tin that lay open on the ground at Carin’s feet. The tin was empty now of all but a few specks of bronze dust, the rest scattered in the leaves. Verek slipped his hand inside his coat and brought out a small packet wrapped in tallow-soaked linen. He peeled away the wrapper and used his thumbnail to flake off a wafer of the packet’s contents.
“Lanse,” he ordered the youth who stood over them, “take the water from her.”
Carin had no voice with which to protest. The raging fire had burned her tongue to a cinder. As Lanse wrested the vessel away, Verek popped the wafer into her mouth.
It melted on her tongue like finely powdered sugar in a hot drink. Just as quickly, the fire died.
Carin scraped her tongue over her teeth, checking for charred flesh. There wasn’t any. She stuck her finger in her mouth and felt only soft, healthy tissue. Her tongue had not been burned from her head. The fire was gone, leaving no trace except a memory of pain so intense it made her puke.
She rolled over on hands and knees and vomited all the water she’d drunk. For a minute or more she remained that way, breathing heavily.
As the nausea passed, Carin took stock of her condition. Pain gripped her belly. A film clouded her sight. The pounding in her head was like a score of tiny imps hammering spikes into her skull. The powder that had set her tongue afire had failed to cure her ills.
She crawled away from the vomit and sat in a pile of dry leaves. Wordlessly, Lanse gave her back the water skin. Nodding her thanks, Carin rinsed her mouth and took a few cautious sips, careful not to start heaving again.
“Come here.” Verek’s clipped voice sounded near. “I wish to speak with you.”
Struggling to make her legs obey, Carin stood and looked around. A dark blur sat on the ground a few paces away, his back to a tree. Wobbly-kneed, she approached him. The blur gestured, but she couldn’t make it out.
“Sit,” Verek ordered, “before you fall over. You’re as unsteady on your feet as a new colt. Tell me: what ails you?”
Carin lowered herself to the ground about two arms’ lengths from him. In a strained voice, hoarsened by her retching, she described her various pains. She added, “I drank stumpwater up in that oak. It tasted terrible, but it was the only water I had. I guess maybe I poisoned myself.”
Verek stroked his close-cropped beard and regarded her. “And you thought to counter the poison,” he said, holding up the tin that had held the bronze powder, “with stolen medicine?”
Carin nodded weakly, waiting for his anger.
But the warlock threw back his head and laughed—a long, loud laugh that he seemed thoroughly to enjoy. It was the first time he’d even smiled in Carin’s presence.
She clamped her lips together, holding back indignation. Why should it surprise her that her suffering would amuse him?
“If I did not have the proof before me, I wouldn’t believe the tale,” Verek said, his stern manner returning. “To ease a sickness in head and belly, you took the powdered cyhnaith on your tongue. By Drisha! I who made the mixture would not be so bold. The pain must be exquisite.”
Through misted eyes, Carin saw the warlock shake his head. Then he began to pat his clothing as if he searched for something he wasn’t sure he carried. Finally, digging deep in an inside pocket, he produced a misshapen pellet about the size of a baneberry. Leaning forward from his tree, he handed her the corpsy-gray lump.
“Hold it in your mouth and let it melt.”
Uhh, Carin thought, it looks deadly. She sniffed it, then touched it to the tip of her tongue. But she could detect only a wax coating. When another paroxysm in her gut almost doubled her over, she closed her eyes, put the pellet in her mouth, and rolled it around. The coating melted, releasing a surprisingly pleasant minty flavor, and her stomach and head ceased to ache. In a few moments, when she reopened her eyes, she found her vision clearing.
She blinked. “Your medicines work fast.”
“My medicines are not to be trifled with by ignorant children,” Verek snapped. “Do not meddle further in things of which you know nothing. You’ve had more good fortune today than you deserve. Some poisons lack remedies. And in the hands of the unlearned, even a cure may kill.”
Carin made no reply. He was right. She’d been a fool.
Verek toyed with the tin that had held the powder. “I didn’t know you had taken this. What other thefts have you yet to confess? What are you concealing in that bag you’re wearing?” He pointed with a corner of the tin.
“Only the mate to the bronze medicine, sir—the green dust you used with the bronze on my knee,” Carin answered, too hastily. “Nothing else of value—just some stones for my sling.”
“Sling?”
She winced at her mistake. Until that moment, Verek had known nothing of the weapon she carried.
Sighing, Carin pulled the sling from under her shirt. She wrapped the cords loosely around the leather strap, then held the weapon up to Verek’s view. “I’ve only used it to take small game—rabbits and such.”
Verek put out his hand. Reluctantly, Carin laid the weapon on his palm.
“Did you steal this?” he asked, examining the workmanship.
“No! —sir. I made it. It’s mine.”
“You made it? Who taught you?”
“No one. I taught myself. My old master’s son killed birds with a sling, and I watched him practice. It’s such a simple weapon, I knew I could make one for myself. I used scrap leather and bits of cord that other people threw away. It’s mine. I didn’t steal it.”
Verek examined the sling for a few moments more. Dashing Carin’s hopes that he might return it to her, he slipped the weapon under the wide belt that circled his waist.
“You’ve taken many things from me,” he said. “I take this property of yours in partial payment of the debt. Now—empty your bag. I would see what hides there. Nothing of value, you say.”
Carin gave a half-nod, half-shrug, then lifted the pouch’s flap and dug for the stones that lay within. Her fingers touched soft cloth and she started. The kerchiefs: she’d forgotten them. Swallowing uncomfortably, she closed her fist on the squares and drew them out.
“Oh … these,” she muttered, opening her fingers. “I didn’t remember. I know they’re much too nice to use for bandages, but that’s what I took them for—just in case I needed bandages.”
Carin spread the wrinkled kerchiefs on her knee. With one blunt nail, she tried to scrape slivers of dry grass out of the delicate embroidery. The dirt off the stones in her pouch had smudged the linens. No longer were they a snowy white.
Verek was strangely silent as Carin finished her poor attempts to clean and smooth the kerchiefs. Shaking them out one by one, she gathered and folded them into a neat bundle. When he made no move to take them from her, Carin rose on her kne
es and hesitantly held them out to him.
He stared at the kerchiefs as if at a mystical vision. Reverently, reaching with both hands, Verek accepted the bundle from her in the manner of a village priest accepting the holy Drishanna.
Carin, still kneeling before him, watched in wonder as the warlock traced the stitches with his fingertips. He pressed the linen to his face. Then he shook himself, as if coming out of a trance, and slipped the kerchiefs inside his coat. Still he said nothing.
It seemed an ominous silence. Nervously, Carin cast about for something—anything—to fill the void. “The needlework is excellent, isn’t it,” she remarked. “Is it Myra’s?”
With the speed of a striking adder, Verek hurled himself away from the tree at his back, knocked her flat, and pinned her shoulder blades to the ground with a force that drove the air from her lungs.
Carin went rigid. In the face that loomed inches above hers, the warlock’s eyes blazed with a murderous rage. If he’d had a knife in his hand at that moment, her throat would be laid open.
“The needlework is my wife’s,” Verek breathed into Carin’s face. “It is the last work from her hands, done on the morning of the day that she died and I placed her body in the tomb, with the body of our only child lying in her arms. It is all I have left of her. And for befouling the work of her hands, you dirty little thief, you will pay.”
Chapter 7
Darkness
He had her inescapably pinned, his fingers clamped on her arms like iron traps. Under his weight and in his grip, Carin was crumpling. Her lungs felt like they’d folded up. Her heart, too, seemed on the verge of collapse, thudding wildly in the too-small space that was left to it.
Reality began to shrink away as Carin came close to blacking out. But two things wrested her back to full consciousness: the pain she was in, and a piercing awareness of Verek’s invisible borderland. She could feel it now, could feel how very near they were to it. The ground under her thrummed. The air felt charged, explosive.
Verek’s grip tightened. He was crushing her arms.
Mother of Drisha, they’re breaking! Carin tried to pray, or to swear, but she couldn’t get the words out. She was fighting for breath that came only in shallow, jerky spasms.
Sweet mercy, the pain—her bones must snap—
Just when she was certain of it, Verek released her arms. He straightened slightly, still with her pinned under him.
Through streaming eyes, Carin watched the warlock cup his right hand and repeatedly slap the back of it into his left palm, as though the hand were a self-willed thing that he must force into submission. His skin was flushed and his eyes smoldered.
His hands kept up the tattoo until he cut loose with a vicious oath that didn’t translate in any language Carin knew. Then he rolled off her, got to his feet and stalked away, grinding dead leaves under his boots, leaving her flat on her back and struggling still to draw air into her burning lungs.
Carin managed to twist her head to follow his departure as Verek walked out to join the horses. He stood among them with his back to her, adjusting some strap or buckle on his hunter’s tack.
After a long interval, when she could breathe properly again and force some useful movement from her quivering muscles, Carin pried herself up, dashed the tears from her eyes, and rubbed her arms. Her bones seemed intact, but the flesh of her upper arms was badly bruised. She stumbled to a tree, propped against it and tried to control her shaking hands, at least enough to brush off her clothes. The force of Verek’s attack had slammed her deep into the mold on the floor of the woodland.
Footsteps crunched boldly through the leaves. Carin gasped and jerked her head up. But it was no new threat approaching, only the mare renewing its greeting.
Carin stroked the sleek neck as the animal nuzzled her with velvety lips.
“I wish you could grow wings,” she murmured, “and carry me far from this evil place. But you wouldn’t want to, would you?” Carin buried her face in the mare’s mane. “What good are you to me, little horse, when you refuse to take me somewhere that warlock can’t hurt me?”
More steps crackled through the leaves. This time it was Lanse striding past. He did not glance at or speak to Carin, but headed for the tree where Verek had left his bow and quiver. The boy carried the weapons to his master, who still stood with the hunter. Verek gave Lanse a curt nod, then shouldered his weaponry, gathered his horse’s reins, and swung into the saddle.
Lanse caught up his gelding and rode to where Carin stood with the mare.
“We ride on,” he snapped. “Mount. Can you?”
“Of course I can.” Despite sounding a little short-winded, Carin edged her words with a brusqueness to match the boy’s. Though she still had the shakes, she managed to boost herself smoothly onto the mare’s bare back.
Lanse started to ride away, but he stopped when she spoke to him.
“My name is Carin.”
He stared at her and made no reply.
“You’re Lanse, aren’t you?” she persisted.
“Yes,” he growled, scowling.
Maybe, Carin thought, stableboys only talk about horses. So she tried again: “This little mare is a good horse. What’s her name?”
Lanse brightened like a child at Mydrismas. “She’s Emrys. And don’t be fooled by her size,” he added, pride in his voice. “Though she is small, for heart and courage Emrys is the equal of my master’s Brogar.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Carin said. “I’m glad to meet you, Lanse.”
His frown returned. “Come on.” He rode away without waiting to see that she obeyed.
The mare needed no urging. Emrys fell in behind Lanse’s gelding as though it were her accustomed place. Verek on Brogar followed at the rear, a dark, silent shadow.
With the warlock’s rage firebranded on her memory, Carin squirmed as she imagined his eyes watching her back. Her thoughts strayed to his bow, and to the quiver which still held several of the enchanted arrows that had charred the wasteland dogs to ashes. As they rode through the late afternoon, Carin listened for the twang of the bow. But no sound came from the rider behind her, not even a squeak of saddle leather.
And no sound came from the woodland around her. The birds and the squirrels that had chattered in the forest beyond were conspicuously absent on this side of the boundary, inside the barrier of thrumming, tingling energy that she had distinctly felt but not seen.
They reached the manor just before sundown. Approaching the stone wall that enclosed the grounds, Lanse did not ride to the narrow plank door through which Carin had escaped. He led them around to the main entrance where a pair of massive iron doors closed a wide opening.
Verek rode up and dismounted in front of the doors. Carin expected them to swing open magically at a word or a sign from him. The warlock, however, merely dug into one saddlebag, produced a large iron key, and turned it in a monstrous lock. Under pressure from his hands, the perfectly balanced doors wheeled inward, making no noise on their hinges.
He spoke to Brogar and the horse trotted through, into the courtyard. Lanse followed on his gelding. Emrys hurried to join them, without waiting for instructions from her rider.
It was good that she had a mind of her own, since Carin had been content to sit on the mare’s back like a sack of oats all afternoon and let Emrys do the thinking for them both. Weary wasn’t the word. Carin was tired to the point of numbness. Running from killer dogs, poisoning herself with stumpwater and stolen medicine, and getting the life half crushed out of her by a maddened sorcerer: each adventure had drained her of strength and resolve until she was nearly bereft of either. All she wanted was to fall into bed and sleep.
Please, warlock, she addressed Verek silently, hold off on punishing me until tomorrow. Whatever you have planned for me, can’t it wait?
They were at the stable, Emrys on the heels of Lanse’s horse. The boy dismounted and reached for the mare’s bridle as Carin slipped down. Her feet dragging, she stumbled to the
doorway that opened into Myra’s kitchen.
She found the housekeeper at the fireplace stirring a stewpot that steamed enticingly. Carin drank in the aroma. The bites of breakfast she had eaten at sunrise were now a distant memory.
“Oh my, dearie!” Myra exclaimed at the sight of her. “Here you are, and not dead upon some blood-soaked ground!”
The woman bustled over to take Carin’s hand. “How I did worry when I went to call you to supper last night and could find no trace of you, not in my master’s library nor in your bedchamber nor anywhere upon the grounds. What a fright you gave me, child! And when my lord came home and found you gone, and found the mare missing from the stable—what a state he was in! He flew into a rage, the like of which I seldom have seen. Furious, he was, and beside himself with worry.
“‘The fool’s gone north,’ he roared, ‘north to her death. The wasteland dogs will have her before morning.’
“Wasteland dogs!” Myra wailed. “Oh my, how I quail to think of them. A pair of those beasts can down a boar bear. A lamb like you couldn’t stand against them. But my master wouldn’t give you up for dead. He braced his bow and called for the boy to bring his horse. ‘Lanse,’ he said, ‘if she had sense enough to climb, we may find her alive. Else, we’ll find only blood and hair.’ Oh my, dearie. Whatever did possess you to leave this safe, snug house and take yourself into such mortal danger?”
Carin got no chance to reply. The door burst open behind her: She whirled to see Verek framed in the doorway. Myra made to greet him, but got no further than “Good master, I—”
“Silence, woman!” he thundered. Striding furiously into the room, the warlock slapped the flat of his hand on the trestle table with enough force to rattle the dishes that were set for supper. “Do not plague me with your empty talk, for I am much displeased with you. Didn’t I order you to keep a close watch on this chit and lock her in? So neglectful are you of your duties that you lie napping while this thief ransacks my house and steals from my stable the finest mare in Ladrehdin. And to your crimes of neglect—grave as they are—I now discover that you have added an affront far worse.”
WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock Page 9