WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  It was finished in seconds. The macabre images sculpted from water were gone. Like quicksilver, the waters of the enchanted pool flowed into the basin and stilled, not sloshing or splashing but coming to rest as if suddenly made glass. The pool’s unrippled surface was flawless, a perfect mirror.

  Verek had vanished.

  Chapter 12

  Suspicions

  Carin tried to call his name and found she couldn’t speak. She made to run to the pool, and found she couldn’t move. Her body was one with the stone of the cave’s walls and the glass of the pool’s surface: fixed, immobile.

  This wasn’t terror that held her. She’d been frozen with fear often enough in a week’s acquaintance with a warlock to know the sensation of it. This was something else. Her muscles didn’t merely refuse to obey. She might as well command the stone of the cavern to melt as to order her rock-rigid limbs to move. They were cold and lifeless fossils.

  Only her eyes remained under her control. Carin fixed them on the magic pool, searching for some sign of life. Behind her wild stare, wilder thoughts raced.

  Was Verek dead? In destroying the reflections of his drowned wife and child, had he caused his own death by drowning? Or had he angered some demon or spirit that dwelled in the magic pool? He’d called out a name—“Amangêda”—as though he addressed a sentient being. Had his words, or his destruction of the water-sculpted images, so enraged the demon-spirit that it had killed its servant?

  Without Verek to release Carin from whatever spell now held her, she might remain in the cave’s doorway through eternity, as unmoving as the walls of rock. Was this how the pool dealt with intruders—by turning them to stone? Neither of the entrances that Verek had shown her had been locked or barred. Both the door from the library and the door in which Carin now stood were hidden, but once their locations were known, it required only the lifting of a latch to pass through either. Did the force that ruled this place choose not to exclude intruders, but rather to admit them just this far … then punish them in ways worse than death?

  Carin’s imagination fed on itself until thought collapsed into panic. But she couldn’t scream. She could only stand and stare at the pool—

  —Where bubbles had appeared under its glassy surface like air pockets beneath the ice of a pond in winter. Joining the bubbles were two hands, palms pressed upward. The surface lost its brittle sheen and became liquid. Through it burst Verek, gasping for breath. His black hair shed glittering droplets that shivered away like crystals of ice and chimed with a faint ring when they hit the pool’s surface.

  He swam strongly, throwing up fans of the uncanny liquid. Though the well might once have held drinkable water, the properties of the fluid were now so altered that he seemed to swim not through water, but through liquid glass. It rolled off him—quite literally like water off a duck’s back—leaving him dry as he reached the pool’s top steps, crawled up them on his hands and knees, and heaved himself onto the rim. Collapsing on his side, he sucked air deep into tortured lungs.

  The moment Verek escaped the pool, the spell released Carin. She again had command of her limbs. They tensed instinctively to flee, and it took all of her self-control to remain where she was, only shifting her weight slightly and craning her neck for a better view of the pool’s rim and of the warlock who had barely avoided drowning.

  Except for the rush of his breath, Verek lay unmoving. His face was turned to the bench of the sun, away from the doorway and away from Carin. She watched him for a few moments more. Then the door closed silently upon her retreat.

  * * *

  Carin slept late. Dawn was long past when she rolled out of bed, splashed her face, and pulled on clothes.

  As she raced downstairs to the kitchen, she breathed a plea to both Verek and his housekeeper: “Please be somewhere else.” Myra’s patter would only further delay her. And the warlock’s temper—after what he’d gone through last night—was bound to be raw this morning. If he caught Carin coming down at this hour, she would pay a price. Verek had warned her to be at her task in the library at cockcrow today—or suffer his wrath.

  Luck seemed to favor her: no one waited in the kitchen. Carin poured a mug of thin ale, grabbed two cheese and raisin pastries that were left over from last night’s meal, and carried her makeshift breakfast to the library. It too was empty.

  She set to work sorting and stacking books, determined to make up for the morning’s lost hours. As she worked, Carin kept a wary eye on that section of the library, opposite the windows, which lay perpetually in shadow. She listened for the creak of a door that would warn her of Verek crossing the shrouded threshold.

  But no noise reached her from anywhere in the house—no thudding door, no voice, no rattled pot in the kitchen. No one came to check on her. When her stacks of books towered high enough to prove that she’d been working, Carin propped open the library door—meaning it for an invitation to any passerby to stop in and review her progress. But none did.

  Past midday, she quit the library and went in search of Myra and a meal. The kitchen was exactly as Carin had left it, the jug of weak ale on the table, the platter of stale pastries beside it. Looking further, under a cloth on the cutting block she discovered a loaf of good wheat bread, a round of goat’s cheese, and several ripe apples. Had the housekeeper meant this for her? Or for someone else? Shrugging, Carin cut thick slices of bread and cheese and took them with two apples out to the stable. She’d share her lunch with Emrys.

  The mare whinnied a welcome—eager, but not frantic as it had been at Carin’s approach yesterday. Neither Lanse’s gelding nor Verek’s hunter was in the stable.

  “That accounts for the absence of the sorcerer and his apprentice, doesn’t it, Emrys?” Carin said as she fed the mare an apple. “It looks like your dark master wanted some time away after what happened last night. I wonder where he’s ridden off to.”

  Emrys munched noisily but didn’t so much as bob her head in reply.

  “I’ve been around Myra too much,” Carin muttered. “I want to talk to somebody, and no one’s here.”

  Company might be found, however. The woodsprite was a great talker, as Jerold had complained, and Carin had promised to meet the creature this afternoon at the great oak behind the main wing of the house. She could walk Emrys around the grounds and still meet the sprite at the appointed time.

  “If you are quite finished, horse”—the mare had polished off her apple and claimed the better part of Carin’s as well—“we’ll go walk in the yard. But you mustn’t eat Jerold’s flowers.”

  This time, Carin avoided the flowerbeds in favor of an unexplored section of the property. Behind the stable the tall hedgerow curved into the yard instead of hugging the wall that enclosed the grounds. The hedge rejoined the outer wall behind the kitchen, near where the back of the house blended into the cliff face. The greenery cut the corner in such a way that a triangular space must lie hidden behind it.

  “Let’s poke into that corner,” Carin said as the mare walked alertly at her side. “Maybe it hides a treasure house. Or a maze. Or a temple … if not to Drisha, then to the spirit of the magic pool that your master calls Amangêda.” She watched for any reaction, even a flick of the mare’s ears, but Emrys seemed not to know the name.

  As they rounded the end of the stable and approached the curve where the hedge took leave of the wall, an opening appeared, easily visible in the greenery. The place was unguarded and proved to be a disappointment. It concealed nothing more interesting than a grape arbor and an orchard that was thick with apple, hazelnut, and plum trees. Sound asleep under one heavily laden apple tree lay the old gardener, his wispy white hair teased by a gentle breeze.

  So peaceful was the expression on Jerold’s formerly scowling face that Carin found it far easier to think of him as an elf than as a sorcerer. But she had seen the old man paralyze Emrys—as she herself had been made a statue on the doorstep of Verek’s cave of magic.

  “We won’t risk waking Jerold,�
� she whispered in Emrys’ ear. “I’ve had enough of turning into stone. And I bet you don’t want to go through that again, either. We’ll raid the apple orchard another time.”

  Departing quietly, Carin led the mare toward the cliff that backed this section of the house. More of the rock face showed from this angle, and a closer examination supported the ideas she had formed on the day of her escape attempt. The back of the house joined the cliff so seamlessly that it was impossible to tell where the stonework of the building became the solid rock of the cliff. The stone face reared behind the house in an imposing mass, its upper reaches broad and steep, towering above the wall that encircled the grounds.

  “How much magic is buried in that mountain of rock, Emrys? My bathing room is there”—Carin pointed at the union of house and cliff, as if the mare could have any interest in such matters. “Your master says the cavern with my springwater pool holds power, ages old, for those who know how to use it.”

  But much deeper, inestimably farther under the ground than Carin’s lofty pool rose above it, lay the cave of magic where she had glimpsed another world. Picturing the layout of Verek’s mansion, with its subterranean dungeon and its caves penetrating deeply like roots, gave Carin a slight chill, despite the warmth of the late-autumn sun on this beautiful afternoon. On their next pass by the cliff, she studied the house through narrowed eyes. Maybe it stood upon this spot for no other reason than to give generations of sorcerers ready access to the forces that flowed in rock and water here.

  Sometimes sharing her thoughts with the mare, sometimes keeping them to herself, Carin walked Emrys in a circle seven times from stable to hedge to kitchen door to the green turf of the garden, and around again to the stable. At each pass by the garden, the mare eyed Jerold’s flowers but made no effort to escape Carin’s grasp.

  Stabling Emrys after their exercise, Carin groomed the mare with a wisp of straw, then took her leave with a promise to walk again tomorrow. She slipped back through the orchard entrance and verified that Jerold still slept. Good. She could cross the old elf’s garden unobserved.

  Retracing her steps of yesterday afternoon, in short order Carin was down the graveled path and along the remnant track to stand at the great oak that breached the wall.

  “Woodsprite!” she called. “Are you here?”

  “Indeed I am,” replied a reedy voice. “And no happier sight than you have I ever seen. Are those new clothes you’re wearing, my fair friend?”

  Carin glanced down at the red kirtle, then looked at the oak and frowned.

  “Yes, I’m afraid they are. I completely forgot to put on my old rags before I came outside. Myra—she’s Verek’s housekeeper, have you met her? She made these for me. They’re the best clothes I’ve ever had. I hope I haven’t torn them on the brambles out here.”

  “Come a little closer and turn around slowly,” the sprite said, “and I’ll look for rips.”

  Carin raised her arms and did as she was bid.

  “Be easy,” the creature chirped. “I see no damage. And by returning to the house through a doorway that is quite near here, you may avoid the dangers of thorns and brambles.”

  “A door here?” Carin asked. “Will you show me?”

  “Gladly. I need not merely point it out, but can lead you over its threshold. When I leap to the rowan that grows just before the portal, I may spread with the tree’s roots over the doorstep and into the house. It’s the only place I have found where I may enter the mage’s home. Come! Fol—low—the—flash—of—my—pas—sage,” it said, leaping away.

  The sprite sparked like a purposeful firefly as it jumped from tree to tree. It led Carin to the end of the house farthest from the kitchen doorway. The garden here, though not groomed as in the V-shaped tract between the house’s two wings, was more open and freer of brambles than the tangle that grew near the big oak at the wall.

  “This is the door I spoke of,” said the sprite, its muffled but unbroken voice signaling that it had come to rest. “When I follow the tree’s roots over the threshold, I look up and see on the door’s inner side a thing that might be a hasp. But there is much rust. Maybe the lock is weak. Can you try the door, and force it with a little effort?”

  Carin studied the portal to which the creature had brought her. That the door hadn’t been used in a score of years or more was evident from the mature rowan that grew directly in front of it. The silvery-gray trunk made a thick post centered in the doorway. Some of autumn’s red berries still clustered at the branch ends. The tree’s roots, as the woodsprite had said, had grown under the door into the room beyond, splintering the threshold boards and the door’s bottom rail. What was left was weather-beaten and as fragile-looking as a sheet of birch bark.

  Slipping between the tree trunk and the jamb, Carin leaned her shoulder against the door. Its rotted hasp and the top hinge broke instantly. It tottered inward, kept from toppling by only a scrap of a lower hinge. She caught the door and held it, and stood staring into the space beyond.

  The room was huge: three stories high, open to the rafters, well lit by arched windows at each gable end and eight pairs facing across the immense central space. A balcony, reached by a stone stairway, looked down from the long wall opposite the doorway Carin had opened. Five long tables, each fronted by a bench of equal measure, were aligned lengthwise with the room.

  At the far end, under the gable windows, was a raised platform on which stood a table—the high table, obviously. There was no mistaking this room for any other than the manor’s great hall, a place for banqueting and entertaining visiting nobility. In the wall to Carin’s right, across the open space from the high table, were elaborate gates through which guests would once have entered.

  But no guests had dined in this hall for many years. A thick layer of dust coated the tables and benches. Beetles and mice rustled the dry leaves and catkins that had blown in through broken windowpanes. Much of the balcony’s railing was missing or dangled precariously. Spiders spun fantastic creations in the highest corners. The room smelled of dry rot. Carin wrinkled her nose and coughed.

  “The place reeks, doesn’t it?” The woodsprite spoke from just in front of Carin’s feet, where the tree’s roots had cracked the floor tiles. “The wood in here is decaying. With a great leap I can reach that first table, but its lumber is so old and dry I cannot bear to linger within it. I’ve explored no farther. Even from here, though, the weakness of that railing yonder is clear to see. If you go that way, you must take care. I know the treachery of rotted wood. It cannot be trusted.

  “Come,” the voice piped. “Let’s retreat to fresh air and to sound and healthy timber.” The creature leapt from the rowan to the trunk of a good-sized oak a few feet away.

  Carin propped the door closed as best she could. Then she joined the woodsprite and sat on an exposed root.

  “That door is a good find,” she said. “Thank you for telling me about it.” She leaned to touch the sprite’s tree. “I’ve got something for you, too. I’m sure you’ll want to know where I went last night, and what I saw, deep in a cave with Verek.”

  “In the depths with the mage?” the sprite said, its voice lifting. “Tell me everything!”

  Not everything, Carin thought. She wouldn’t talk about Verek’s anguish or her glimpses of his dead wife and child. That was neither the sprite’s business nor her own.

  But every other detail from last night, Carin related fully: The cavern with the redly glowing walls. The mists rising from the enchanted pool, forming images. The child appearing at the millpond. The vapors whirling them away to another world—the child’s world—where toys took the shapes of exotic animals, and books might be written in a language incomprehensible to the sorcerer Verek but familiar to Carin.

  “You saw your homeworld!” the sprite broke in, sparking brightly. “This is tremendous news. It gives me hope that a return journey to my own world is possible. I have been stranded here for a long time. I want to go home. I don’t belong here. An
d neither do you. That other place with the books and the toys is where you should be.”

  “Do you think so?” Carin tilted her head, struggling with the idea. “But I don’t remember that place. For all I know, it doesn’t exist. Everything I saw may have been a fraud—a magic trick. And even if it was real, it might not be there anymore. Verek said we were looking back in time, seeing things as they used to be.” She sighed. “I don’t know where that place is or how to get there. I’m not drawn there.” Not in the way she’d been drawn north to Ruain. She had had to come here; she felt no similar compulsion, however, to go there.

  “The fact is,” Carin muttered, mostly to herself, “I don’t have a home. If I don’t belong in Ruain, I don’t belong anywhere.”

  And that’s just the trouble. I am well and truly lost. Carin had been sent packing by a southern wisewoman, and now she had a northern warlock telling her just as bluntly: “You shouldn’t be here.” So where to next? Stumbling around in search of a place she could truly call home, could she end up in the void between the worlds? That was a place of oblivion, Verek said. Carin stared into the distance, imagining herself emptied of being, without thought, dissolved away into nothingness.

  “I’m counting on you, my friend,” the woodsprite was chirping, reclaiming her attention. “I don’t know how I can ever go home without your help. The mage speaks to me hardly at all, and never as openly as he spoke with you last night. You can learn from him. Has he given you a sign that he knows what force or power brought us here, or why? Though I think we come from very different worlds, Carin, I suspect the same agent may have spirited us to this one. We must discover what or who that agent is, and—most importantly—whether it can send us back the way we came. Does the mage know, do you think?”

  Carin shook her head. “When he took me down to the pool of magic, Verek said it might show not only how I got to the millpond, but also what brought me there. He said that was the main thing.” She lifted both shoulders in a don’t-ask-me shrug. “All I know is what I saw. And even then, I’m not sure how much of it to believe. As real as those images seemed, Verek admitted they were illusions.”