WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  Carin’s flurry of words bought her time to reach the mare’s side. She seized the trailing rope and came to the end of her overlong apology at almost the same instant. Just as she slipped an arm under the mare’s neck and twined her fingers through the mane, Jerold ceased his midair tracings and dropped his hand.

  Released from the spell, Emrys started back. She snorted her alarm but didn’t break away. Neither the rope nor the arm hugging her would have held her, had she been determined to run. But Carin’s nearness calmed the mare enough to stop her bolting.

  “Good girl,” Carin whispered, stroking Emrys’ neck with the hand that held the rope, the fingers of her other still knotted in the mane. “Easy. Let’s get you back to your stall.” She glanced at the lawn where the gardener had set the air aglow, but the old man was no longer in sight.

  The stable was as welcoming as a temple’s inner sanctum. Brogar and Lanse’s gelding dozed in their stalls; Lanse himself was absent. Emrys skittered down to her own enclosure, a horse clearly glad to be back on familiar ground.

  Carin latched the stall door, then lingered in the comfortably dim stable to consider the significance of the afternoon’s events. Her troubles multiplied with every day she spent under Verek’s roof. Living in close winter quarters with one hot-tempered warlock would be tricky enough. But now she’d turned up a second sorcerer on the premises, and she had managed to antagonize him in a space of minutes.

  Jerold, at least, might be easier to avoid than Verek. The silent, unsociable old man seemed never to leave his garden.

  That it was an enchanted garden, Carin couldn’t doubt. How else to explain the riot of flowers, the green grass and leafy trees this late in the year, with the days growing short and a chill in the air signaling the coming of winter?

  And how else to explain the luxuriant growth of Jerold’s garden in the midst of Verek’s blighted woodland? It was as if the magic of the garden called up vigorous new life to battle the spells that desolated the woods.

  The thought gave Carin pause. Could the magic garden be a sign that Jerold and Verek were adversaries? She considered the evidence. Jerold “answers to no master but himself,” Verek had told the woodsprite. “Deal with him as best you can.”

  Myra, too, had suggested a rift when she said that Jerold—“the old goat,” she’d called him—wouldn’t let her cook for him. Myra was Verek’s loyal servant. If Jerold would not eat food that Myra prepared, maybe he didn’t trust the woman. Maybe he feared the housekeeper would scheme with her master to harm him.

  If ill will existed between Jerold and Verek—the one championing life, and the other calling on the forces of destruction—could Carin turn it to her advantage?

  If you want the old man to be your ally, you’ve made a bad start with him, she chided herself. He probably won’t let you back in his garden—with or without Emrys—after you chattered away and asked too many questions and upset him over the woodsprite.

  But to set things right with Jerold seemed worth the attempt. At worst, it might gain her the freedom of his enchanted garden this winter. At best, it might aid her against Verek.

  Carin left the stable, strode purposefully across the courtyard, and stepped through the side door into the kitchen. She found Myra busy with early preparations for the evening meal.

  “Here you are, dearie!” the housekeeper greeted her, cheerfully waving her to a seat at the table with the knife she wielded. “Sit awhile. ’Tis a long visit you’ve had with the black mare. How fares the coddled beast? Did you raise her spirits, as my master wished? The affection of a trusting animal is a fine thing. The master’s Brogar would leap from the roof of the world, he would, if the master asked it of him. Aye, I’ve always thought it the surest test of anyone’s character—how kindly he treats the dumb brutes and the loyalty they give in return. People can be fooled … och, people can be, and often are, but not the dumb brutes. They’ll soon know a man for what he is.”

  “Um, Myra?” Carin spoke up when the housekeeper paused to dab at her eyes, which were tearing over the onion she chopped. “While I was out with Emrys, I accidentally upset Jerold. I took the mare for a walk in his garden. Mister Jerold didn’t like her being there. He drew bright lines in the air, like this”—Carin imitated his tracings as nearly as she could—“and Emrys turned to stone. She was scared but she couldn’t run. She just stood like a statue, rolling her eyes. It was the weirdest thing.”

  Myra quite forgot the onion in her hand. She stared at Carin and said nothing for the space of several heartbeats—a rare silence that she seemed to reserve for extraordinary news or events. Then she laughed and dropped her bulk onto the bench opposite.

  “Oh my, dearie! I didn’t think the old goat had any tricks left in him.” She chuckled again, a sound like the simmering of cabbages in the pot. “Bless me, child! What a change there’s been in this household since you arrived, poor lamb, all rags and tatters on our doorstep. Jerold hasn’t practiced the craft for lo these many years, but has been content to putter in his garden.

  “Did the old goat banish you?” Myra continued in the same breath. “If I had a copper for every time Jerold threw me out, I’d have riches enough for my own garden, indeed I would. But mine wouldn’t be such a pretty place to walk in winter. ’Twould be only a common garden, where flowers wilt and grass dies. Nay, I’ll not be wanting my own as long as there’s such a garden in all of Ruain as Jerold keeps, where the green things grow through the cold months and flowers bloom in the snow.” Myra sighed. “There’s magic in that garden still.”

  Carin hung on the housekeeper’s every word but made no reply. Until she knew what might unite or divide the members of this small, strange household, she’d keep her own counsel.

  Myra heaved herself back to her chopping block, and talked on. “Don’t trouble yourself about Jerold, dearie. He’s an easy one to tame. Only go to the master’s books and find one with pictures of flowers in it. Not pictures drawn dully, but sketches done up in glorious colors, and the biggest you can find. Take the book to the greensward and sit out there to read it. Mind, now, that you open it to a picture of the brightest, grandest flower. Keep your eyes on it as though you wished with all your heart for a real flower to burst from the page.

  “You won’t sit there long, child, ere you’ll have Jerold peering over your shoulder and telling you all about the care and keeping of that flower—whether it likes mulching or wants the soil bare round its roots, how to tease from it the biggest flowers and the best, what seeds it makes and how deep to plant them for a sturdy crop of seedlings. Talk to him of flowers, and you’ll soon have the old goat eating out of your hand.”

  It sounded like a plan worth trying, but not today, Carin thought. Better to let the gardener’s annoyance fade first.

  While Myra chattered, Carin spread pastries with curd cheese and raisins to make a dessert for the evening’s meal. When the pot-herbs were chopped and a well-seasoned pork loin was roasting, filling the kitchen with the aromas of garlic and pepper, Myra settled her wide frame at the table and closed her eyes.

  “Run along now, dearie, and give me peace. Methinks I’ll rest these old bones a bit, while the dinner’s cooking. You know I feel it in my bones … Winter’s coming … and … and other things …”

  The housekeeper’s gentle snoring followed Carin down the passageway. At the foot of the bedroom stairs she paused, considering. A good hour of daylight remained. How best to spend it? By probing deeper into the great house in Verek’s absence?

  But was the warlock absent? She had seen nothing of him since midday, when he bade her visit Emrys—never suspecting, Carin felt sure, that she would also manage a private talk with the woodsprite, or provoke old Jerold into displaying his powers.

  No, she wouldn’t nose around now. Verek might be secretly about the house, mixing magical elixirs or conjuring up nightmares. The thought of interrupting the warlock in some arcane ritual sent a shiver through her flesh.

  Her best course wou
ld be to return to the puzzle-book that was lying half unread in her bedchamber. Carin climbed to the blue room and stood there clasping the book in her arms, looking for a good spot to take up her reading. The bathing room was adequately bright, especially when she added lamplight to its own mysterious glow. But for curling up with a book, its stone surfaces were not the most comfortable. The bed and the corner chair were both too far from the window to catch the late-afternoon sun, and too heavy to move. Undeniably the best place she’d found for reading, in her limited explorations of the house so far, was the big desk under the windows in Verek’s library.

  She took a moment to change out of her smelly old clothes before padding downstairs. As she approached the library, Carin whispered to the unseen warlock, “Please don’t be in there.”

  He wasn’t. The library, warmed by a fire on the hearth and hospitable in its untidy stacks of books, harbored no sorcerer behind its door. Carin settled at the desk and opened the puzzle-book to the page she’d reached before sleep claimed her last night.

  The light through the windows was noticeably dimmed when she looked up again, two chapters later. Myra would soon be putting supper on the table. Carin closed the book, using Verek’s elegantly lettered note as a marker. She rose to return to the kitchen.

  But as she pushed back her chair, a creaking came from the lightless depths of the library opposite the windows. It was the sound of a door opening on dry hinges.

  Verek emerged from the darkness, his white shirt aglow in the failing daylight, his shoulder-length black hair swinging with the rhythm of his stride. Discovering Carin at his desk, he stopped short. Both stared.

  For a moment, silence reigned, broken only by the crackling fire. The warlock crossed his arms, seeming to distance himself. But then he stepped forward and greeted Carin as casually as if finding her in his library at sundown was normal household routine.

  “I see you are well along in your reading.” His unquiet eyes took in the puzzle-book that was lying closed on the desk. The elaborately worked initial “V” was clearly visible where his note to her protruded from the volume. “Is it to your liking?”

  He made the question sound offhand. But Carin doubted that the warlock’s interest in the alien book had cooled as much as his manner suggested.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered him as serenely as possible, given that her mouth had gone dry. She slid the book off the desk. “I do like it. It’s a little hard to follow, though. I don’t understand all of it. Maybe by the time I get to the end, the confusing parts will make more sense to me than they do now.” Carin glanced at the closed library door, wishing fervently that Myra would appear and save her from this conversation. “Myra hit the mark, I’d say, when she named it the puzzle-book.”

  Stop talking, Carin warned herself. For pity’s sake. When I’m not tongue-tied, I’m babbling.

  But it was too late. Verek’s curiosity, though he might have held it at bay to that point, was now fully aroused. He crossed to the benches that were paired before the fireplace, took one, and waved her to the other.

  “I will await a full account of the book until you’ve read it through,” he said, “but give me now a puzzle from its pages, or read me some part that frustrates you. I might have knowledge that will aid your understanding.” He wouldn’t be denied; his balefire eyes flashed with interest.

  Carin riffled the book’s pages to give herself time to think. Of all the puzzles in the story, which one to pose him? It would be simplest to begin at the beginning, she decided, with the title and the impossible act it described: Through the Looking-Glass. She opened the book to the first chapter and to a drawing of a child who was pushing her way through a mirror.

  “If you’ll look at this, sir,” she said, and handed him the open book across the table between their benches. “The little girl in the picture is named Alice. When the story begins, Alice is playing with a kitten and prattling about this and that, the way children do. She tells the kitten that she’d like to go through the looking-glass that’s hanging above the mantel. She wants to get into the strange house that she’s convinced must lie on the other side. And that’s what she does. As soon as Alice names her wish, the glass gives way, and she goes through. On the other side she finds a house that isn’t like hers.

  “I don’t know how that would work.” Carin glanced at Verek and was glad to see him studying the book, not her. “To get through a looking-glass, anybody would have to break it first. Alice doesn’t break it. But all the same: even if a person could do it, what would be the point? If a mirror hangs on a wall, there’s nothing behind it but the wall. If it hangs above a mantel, there’s only a chimney at its back. But in the story, Alice finds a new world beyond the mirror. Its a bizarre world, full of odd creatures.” Carin shrugged. “Like I said, I haven’t read the whole book yet. Maybe everything will be explained in the end.”

  She heard skepticism in her voice, and was proud of it. Not long ago, Verek had called her a rattlebrained fool. Whatever he might think of her mental powers, though, she was smart enough to recognize nonsense when she read it.

  Verek studied the drawing a moment longer, then handed the book back.

  “You are thinking of only one kind of mirror—the kind that’s hard and impenetrable.” He leaned back against the cushions of his bench, his fingers laced together and slipped behind his head. His eyes fixed on her. “Haven’t you ever gazed into still water and seen your reflection, the same as if you’d looked into a glass? Isn’t the surface of a reflecting pool a barrier between two different worlds? If you were to pass through that definite but yielding surface and enter the pool below, you’d find a strange realm—where finned creatures fly through water as winged ones through air, where objects float upward instead of falling downward, where beasts may have eight legs or no legs, but seldom walk on two or four as is common in the domain of men. Perhaps Alice’s looking-glass is like a reflecting pool. Another world waits beneath its smooth surface.”

  Carin opened her mouth to reply, but shut it again without speaking. Verek had thrown a new light on the matter. He seemed to find substance in the tale. As she considered his analogy, other aspects of the story began to lose their absurdity.

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” she said finally, “but I see what you’re saying. The surface of a pool of water is strong enough for insects to skate on. A leaf that falls on a still pond will float on the water. But anyone Alice’s size would easily pass through that surface. And once she’s through, she might find creatures that are not common to her own world … not just fish and crabs, but others that are stranger … living chessmen and talking flowers, and a big egg with a human face, and a queen who becomes a sheep, and …” Carin’s voice trailed off as she recalled the curious beings that Alice had met in the looking-glass realm.

  “Good.” Verek’s clipped voice interrupted her thoughts. “You begin to see that the surfaces of things may hide their deeper meanings.”

  He dropped his hands and leaned toward her. “I will be pleased to hear the rest of the tale of Alice through the looking-glass when you have read it all and wish to tell it to me. There is, however, another tale I also desire to know the ending of—or rather, its beginning. And that is the story of your unexplained appearance on the shores of the lake where the wheelwright found you, years ago.”

  Carin’s heart quickened at this sudden return to a subject she had thought closed. “I swear, sir, I’ve told you everything I know—”

  The warlock raised one hand, cutting off further protest. “That you remember nothing more than you’ve told me, I believe. But there may be means of going deeper, beneath the surface of your memory—to find the other world that waits there, as Alice finds a realm of marvels waiting beyond her looking-glass.”

  Carin’s alarm must have shown in her face, for Verek added: “This delving that I propose, to discover what may lie hidden in your memory, poses no danger to you. You will not be harmed. You won’t feel pain. If I am
correct in believing that your buried memories can be brought to the surface, they will reveal themselves as other memories do: as images only, with no substance, no solid form to shape a threat.”

  “But—”

  A knock sounded at the library door. Myra bustled in, cutting off Carin’s objection.

  “Here you are, my lord!” the housekeeper said. “And my fair helper too, whose hands made the pastries that fain would flutter from the dish, so light they are. If it please you, master: the meal is ready now and needs eating while ’tis hot. There’s pork peppered and roasted, and broad beans fried with onion. Will you wish to eat at table tonight, my lord, or in your rooms as ofttimes is your habit?”

  “In my quarters, Myra, if you please,” Verek replied. “I have preparations to make.”

  He fixed Carin with an unsympathetic gaze, clearly not interested in hearing how she felt about him poking around in her mind. “When you have eaten, meet me here,” he ordered. “We will proceed as I have said.”

  With furrowed brow, Carin trailed Myra to the kitchen. After helping to prepare a tray for Verek and seeing the housekeeper out with it, she sat down to her own meal but ate sparingly on account of the butterflies in her stomach. Myra hurried back, all a-chatter about nothing much, and relieved Carin from any obligation to keep up her end of the conversation.

  Supper finished and table cleared, Carin drifted from the kitchen down the dim hallway, obeying Verek’s summons as slowly as she dared. She found him standing at the fireplace, waiting for her. The fire cast the only light in the night-darkened library. It illuminated features sharp with impatience.

  “At last!” Verek beckoned Carin into the room as she hesitated one step inside the threshold. “Come.” Turning from the fire, he disappeared into the library’s shadowed recesses. A door creaked—the same door, by the sound of it, through which he had entered the room earlier and caught her at his desk. A rectangle of soft reddish light appeared; the door led to some chamber that was better lit than the library.