“Come,” Verek repeated from out of the darkness.
Carin forced her unwilling legs to obey. She crossed the room to stand in the shadows and look through the doorway. It opened onto a narrow landing and a flight of stone steps. The stairway curved as it descended, hiding what lay at its foot. The steps were very like those she had climbed down into the black horror of the dungeon—smooth, seamless, well-worn. The only clear difference was that these steps led from a dark room above to a brighter chamber below. Where they were lost to view around the curve, their edges cast firm shadows in the stairwell, suggesting a light-source steadier than candles at their foot.
The unseen illuminator was not enough to tempt her to descend. “No,” Carin said in a tone that revealed none of her dread, only her determination. She would not follow these winding stone steps to another nightmare like the dungeon.
From that one word Verek seemed to grasp her reasons for refusing the stairs, and even to understand them.
“No dark cellar awaits you,” he said. He stood off a ways, this side of the doorway, and was cloaked in the library’s dimness. “Do you recall your words to me, on your first day under my roof, when you said that you had never seen the like of the springwater pool in the room with the glowing walls? And do you remember my reply? I told you there were two pools of similar design in this house.”
He pointed, only his hand emerging from the gloom to indicate the stairwell. “At the foot of these steps, you will find the second pool. It’s larger than the spring in which you bathe; its waters are deep and still, but it is recognizably a sister to the pool that comforts you with its warmth. The light coming up from below is cast by the walls that enclose the pool. They glow as do the walls in your bathing room, with a light older than the sun’s. I know you don’t fear that light, for I have seen you use it to ward off the darkness that distresses you. Therefore, put aside your fears and come with me. In the chamber at the foot of these steps, you do not risk the terrors of the cellar.”
When Carin didn’t reply, Verek left the shadows, brushed past her, and descended the steps to the point where they curved from view. Pausing there, he looked up and waited, his stance relaxed—as if prepared to wait for her all night, if need be.
Carin drew a deep breath, stepped haltingly through the doorway, and took the stairs stiff-legged, puffing out her held breath with each downward step until she reached Verek. Neither of them spoke as he continued around the curve and down, with Carin following close behind.
After a winding descent that seemed to plunge to the world’s core, the stairwell opened to a huge stone vault. It was many times the size of Carin’s bathing room and less brightly lit. The dimness was not merely because the walls had a larger space to illuminate. These walls glowed with a duller light, faintly red, while the light in her bathing room was a strong yellow-white like sunlight through panes of polished horn. One would be hard put to read a book by the glow of these walls, but the illumination was adequate for Carin to make out details of the chamber—
—Not that there were many to see. The floor was stone, as level as a tabletop and polished like a marble slab. Centered in the smooth expanse was the pool Verek had described. A perfect circle, it could have held seven or eight pools the size of the one in Carin’s quarters. Verek had called its waters deep and still, but he hadn’t mentioned its mirror sheen. A lustrous reflection of the chamber’s ceiling of rough stone—the roof of an enormous cave—glinted from the pool’s glassy surface.
Without waiting for permission, Carin left the stairwell and stepped deeper into the cavern. She paused behind the nearest of four stone benches that were arrayed around the pool. The backless benches were spaced equally, like the four cardinal points of a compass. The nearest one appeared to have been hewn from a single block of stone, and was undecorated except for a crescent moon carved into its surface.
The crescent drew Carin’s fingertips as a lodestone pulls a needle. As she traced the smooth curve, she knew where she’d seen the design before. The same crescent moon, worked in silver, formed half the badge that Verek had worn at his throat on the day he caught her trespassing. The other half of the badge had been a sun, resplendent in gold and red.
Avoiding the edge of the pool, Carin circled slowly to the next bench. It was identical to the first except the shape chiseled into it was that of a key. The third stone seat—which faced the bench of the moon across the pool—bore the symbol she expected to find on it: the sun, radiating flames. Cut into the final bench—the one paired with the key—was the outline of a fish.
What meaning did the symbols hold for the sorcerer who stood quietly near the foot of the steps, watching her circle the pool? Carin could only guess at their significance: the sun symbolizing day, fire, light and wisdom; the moon representing night, water, darkness and mystery; the key, with its power to open—to unlock secrets?—and the fish, perhaps symbolizing the depths of knowledge or the unearthliness of other realms. Seeing this pool and the fish carved into stone, Carin easily understood why the sorcerer, when posed the puzzle of Alice’s looking-glass, had thought at once of a reflecting pool and the strange creatures one might discover below its surface.
Completing her circuit of the pool and its four benches, Carin approached the water’s edge and looked down at her reflection. The pool cast up a perfect image, unmarred by the slightest ripple. In the eerie reddish light of the cave, she could see individual hairs in the auburn mane that fell around her face. If Verek hadn’t said the surface was water, Carin would have sworn on the holy Drishanna that it was glass, a flawless sheet of it, impossible to penetrate without destroying.
A sudden urge had her crouching on the pool’s rim, her fingers stretching to dabble in the water and disturb its mirror-stillness. But a half-formed apprehension of danger closed over her as fast as the impulse, and stopped her. To meddle with the forces that emanated from the walls and writhed just below the pool’s perfect surface—she couldn’t see them, but every fiber of Carin’s being said they were there—such meddling would be to invite disaster …
For this was a place of power. Magic was palpable here. Tendrils of it brushed Carin’s arms, urging restraint, warning against recklessness. Any mortal who would ask audience of the forces that ruled this place must leave willfulness at the door—and it wasn’t fear of Verek that inspired Carin’s caution. Even that warlock had grown quiet in the presence of the pool. He now moved toward her with the hushed demeanor of an acolyte in a temple.
Carin hastily retreated from the pool’s rim. As Verek joined her, she asked him in a whisper, “Has that water always been so still and so smooth? Or did this used to be a flowing spring? Did it have a current stirring it like the pool upstairs does?”
Verek looked almost pleased, the way a teacher might beam if a dull student suddenly posed an insightful question. “Far back in the night of time … yes, these waters flowed,” he murmured.
“Did these walls cast more light back then?” Carin persisted. “Did they glow as brightly as the walls in my bathing room do?”
Verek seated himself on the bench of the crescent moon, with his back to the mirror pool. Though there was room beside him, he did not wave her to the seat. No matter—Carin was disinclined to sit so close to either the sorcerer or the pool.
“Your speculations come near the mark,” he said. “So shall I put an end to your conjecturing, and tell you why this wellspring daunts while the smaller one delights? Isn’t that what you wish to understand?”
Verek looked searchingly at her. Carin nodded.
“Very well,” he said. “This place was once as bright and animate as the chamber you call a bathing room. In an age so distant from ours that the mists of time have long hidden it, the first of countless generations of wysards began to work magic in this cavern. They drew power from the depths, using the forces that flow in stone and water—shaping them, directing and refining them, and over time, subtly changing them. The power is here, undiminished from t
he dawn of time, flowing through this rock and water as unfailingly as when the world was new. But the magic that springs from it has also tempered it, subduing the glow of the walls and stilling the waters of the well.
“These forces also flow in the walls and water of your bathing room. There, the power is untapped and unaltered. No magic has touched it. In its primordial state, the chamber soothes and comforts you. The walls glow and the water moves with forces akin to sunlight and the ocean’s tides. A flower turns its face to the sun; fish swim in on the tide. You feel as naturally as they the forces in that chamber. You find them pleasing and benign.
“Because magic has been worked, however, with the power that dwells in this cavern, you feel the forces here as altered. You feel a sense of awe. Though you haven’t the mastery to see the forces clearly, still you sense what flows through rock and water here. You sense the power that is both the raw power of the world and the creative potency of magic, and it unnerves you.”
Getting no comment from Carin, Verek went on: “Much of this you have, I think, guessed already, though perhaps you haven’t formed your thoughts clearly. What you have not suspected, I’ll wager, is that the chamber you call a bathing room was given to you as a test.”
“A test, sir?” Carin blinked at him. She stirred out of the stillness that had fallen over her. “What do you mean?”
Verek shifted on the bench, and looked past her as if the words he wanted were to be found on the red stone behind her.
“You should not be here,” he said at last, in a tone that expressed perplexity more than resentment. “The spells that wall off my woodland should have turned you away, as they turn away all others who would venture there. But you not only defied the magic, you proved insensible to it. No mortal creature that is natural to this world could have lingered on the hillside at the edge of my woodland, in full view and sway of the wizardry, and yet claim to neither see nor feel the spells. A man trapped in a burning building could as easily feign unawareness of the flames. Pretense would turn to horror as the fire seared him, and in blind terror he would claw his way toward safety. Yet I saw you resting quietly on the hillside as the spells twined about you, and I knew it was no pretense. I knew you must be oblivious to the magic’s very existence. Else, you would have run screaming, or fainted dead away.
“Only two explanations are possible,” Verek went on. “The first is that you are a sorceress powerful enough to break a spell I believed unbreakable.”
“Me? A sorceress?” Carin exclaimed, appalled. “You can’t believe that!”
“Now … no. I am convinced that you have no mastery of the art. But when I saw you defy the magic of the woodland, I believed you answered spell with spell.
“Therefore, I made no strong objection when Myra proposed lodging you in the blue bedchamber. The barn, I thought at the time, would have served more suitably”—Verek ignored Carin’s sniff of indignation—“but the blue room upstairs offered what no other quarters could: access to the springwater pool. So I allowed Myra to install you in the finest bedchamber in this wing of the house … and I waited.
“Were you a sorceress, you would know the pool for a place of power, and you couldn’t help but work magic there, drawing on its potent life-force. Such a great, untapped pool of gê energy”—Carin didn’t know the word, but she could guess at its meaning—“would be a treasure beyond price to a worker of wizardry. And when you tapped the force, when you turned it to your own ends, I would know.”
Verek sighed, then went on mildly: “But as a sorceress, you proved a disappointment. You used the pool for no purpose but to bathe and splash about like a child at play.”
“That was the test?” Carin interjected. “To let the pool show you whether I was magian or mortal?”
Verek nodded. His eyes, which for a time had focused on the wall behind her, shifted suddenly and locked onto Carin’s. Only a quick tensing of muscles stopped her backing away a step, so forceful was his gaze.
“By such means, I was well satisfied that you are a mortal creature,” Verek said, his glittering eyes holding hers. Neither of them moved as he awaited Carin’s reply.
What could she say to him? They were agreed that she certainly was no magician. What was the point of repeating the obvious?
But as Verek continued to look at her with dismaying intensity, a phrase from his lips popped into Carin’s mind:
No mortal creature that is natural to this world …
“There are only two possible explanations—that’s what you said, isn’t it?” she addressed him finally. “The first one can’t be right, because I am a mortal. I don’t have powers like you have. That leaves only the other thing: You believe I’m not natural to this world.”
“Yes.”
In the silence that followed, the forces alive in the cavern seemed to whisper to Carin as the music of the stars plays in a person’s fancy on a still, moonless night. Wrenching her eyes from his, Carin looked past Verek to the pool.
“In the library before Myra came in,” she whispered, “you talked about another world … one you think I’ve forgotten.” She stared at the water, trying without success to see below its surface. “Is it really possible to look into my memory and search for it? Is the pool the way?”
Verek nodded. “With the power of this place, we may learn your origins, how you arrived on the shore where the wright found you, and—of utmost importance—what brought you here.” Rising, he offered her his bench. “Take a seat, and we’ll begin.”
Carin pointed one bench over, to the image of a fish. “May I sit there instead?”
The sorcerer looked puzzled but nodded assent. “Yes, all are equal. Why do you choose that one?”
Why, indeed? As they walked over, Carin groped for words of explanation but found them as slippery as minnows. “I don’t know. The fish … it just fits somehow. It’s free to go anywhere in the water, so maybe it can go where I can’t—in my mind.”
His head tilted thoughtfully, Verek nodded. “Yes. The fish swims in the depths. Perhaps it will be a guide to fathoming this mystery.” He gestured at the chosen bench. As Carin settled onto it, facing the pool, the sorcerer stepped behind her. He brushed aside a hank of her hair and put his hand on her shoulder. This time, she did not flinch away from him.
“Look into the pool,” Verek instructed. “Breathe deeply and slowly; clear your mind of all thoughts except for the village of the wheelwright. Picture it: its cottages, shops, streets. Think of it not as you last saw it, when your mind was full of plans for escape, but as you remember it from your years in the wright’s household.”
Staring at the pool’s glassy surface, Carin called the village to mind in as much detail as she could remember. Well down from the wheelwright’s work-yard was the mill; up the street in the other direction were a shoemaker’s shop and a tailor’s, a weaver, a candlemaker, a baker and a barber. The lane was narrow and gloomy. The living quarters above the shops, jutting out above the ground floors, turned the street almost into a tunnel.
As the village took shape behind her eyes, the pool in front of her lost its mirror sheen and became transparent. Carin saw steps leading down from the rim, wider and with a greater rise than the steps of the springwater pool in her bathing room. They descended endlessly, through crystal-clear water.
But as her gaze followed the steps downward, the water fogged in the depths, and the pool’s surface grew misty. Out of the mist, as Carin watched open-mouthed, rose a perfect image of the village called Granger, matching the picture in her mind in every detail.
“Good,” breathed the warlock behind her. “Now we search for the other world that waits beyond this one.”
Chapter 11
Oblivion
The hand on Carin’s shoulder tightened as Verek leaned to place his mouth near her ear.
“Think now of the pond where your master fished,” he whispered, “the pond where you were found, a frightened child lying cold and wet upon its shores. Make a pic
ture of it in your mind and take us there.”
Many times Carin had walked from the wheelwright’s shop down to the millpond. The way came easily to mind as she pictured the mill with its great waterwheel and the dam that created a head of water for driving it. In summer the pond above the dam was a pleasant place, its banks thick with willows, lilies, and red poppies.
As she thought of it, the village scene dissolved in the mists that played over the enchanted pool, to be replaced by an image of the millpond. But this was not the pond in summer. The whiplike branches of the willows were stripped of leaves; the banks were bare of flowers. The air around Carin, which had been comfortably warm to that point, suddenly chilled. Though Verek had said this delving into buried memories would call up only images—nothing with substance or solidity—Carin could feel the wintry scene as well as see it. She smelled it, too, a dampish odor rising from frost-killed foliage.
Something moved at the edge of her vision. Carin turned her head to view it more clearly. Verek followed her gaze, his head nearly on a level with hers as he leaned over her shoulder. A spot of color on the pond’s far bank held steady for a moment; it might have been a scrap of cloth washed up from the water. But then it moved again, revealing arms and a bare, golden-brown head. It was a child, dressed in bright blue and green. Its hands clutched at bare willow limbs. Its legs, partially submerged, struggled to push itself higher onto the bank, out of the cold water and the mud.
“Fix your eyes on the child,” Verek breathed into Carin’s ear—as if any power existed that could have torn her gaze from the image of the half-drowned foundling trying to pull itself to safety. “Go back with that child, back to the moment which brought it to this juncture.”
WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock Page 15