Verek’s level gaze discouraged further questions. So did a renewed curtness in his voice. “Enough of this. You promised me a reading from the book. I hold you to it. The skies grow ever darker and this room with them. Will you accept the light I offer, and take up that infernal book and read?”
The library had indeed grown dimmer. Rain slashed at the windows. The storm’s black clouds turned the day beyond the sweating glass to night. Carin glanced at the cover of the book in her lap. Even the large letters of its title were indistinct. She couldn’t argue the point: to read in this gloom, she needed the warlock’s eerily glowing orb.
Not quite returning Verek’s gaze, Carin said, “Please show me the light again … only this time put it in your hair—not in mine.”
Something that looked almost like a smile flitted across Verek’s face for the briefest instant and was gone before Carin could be sure it had ever been. He didn’t oblige her by calling the light to the top of his head or to the ends of his shoulder-sweeping hair. Instead, the hand that rested on his propped ankle rolled palm up, and instantly a ball of clear white light shone in it. Glancing at Carin—perhaps for assurance that she wouldn’t lunge across the table and try to kill the light—the warlock held the orb for a moment. Then he rolled it along his resting leg from ankle to knee. Catching it in his left hand, Verek turned the orb a few times between thumb and three fingers, then lifted it to his shoulder and there let it rest.
“Cool to the touch, without flame—harmless,” he said. He plucked the light from his shoulder and held it out to her. “Will you take it?”
Hesitating only briefly, Carin reached for it. The orb rolled from Verek’s fingers to hers. It filled her hand with a tingle no more distinct than the tickle of a feather. Yet its glow had a surface of sorts—Carin could roll it in her hand as the warlock had done and feel its shell, a bit clingy and crinkly and more fragile than a casque-bug’s. Slight pressure between thumb and forefinger would crush it to … what? Sparks? Razor-sharp, gleaming slivers?
She did not try the experiment. Pushing her hair back, Carin rested the orb on her shoulder. Then she opened the puzzle-book. Verek was right about the quality of the orb’s light. Clear and white, yet soft and easy on the eyes, it lit the words as steadily as sunlight but without the sun’s harsh glare.
From the title page, she read aloud: “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.”
“Good!” Verek exclaimed. “At last—we proceed.” He stretched himself full-length on the cushions of his bench.
Should she, Carin wondered, tell him her low opinion of the story? That it was nothing, just a silly dream?
No. Verek wouldn’t tolerate any more delays. Now she must read, and let the warlock discover for himself that the most intriguing book in his collection was nonsense.
In a strong voice, Carin began. “‘One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it—it was the black kitten’s fault entirely.’” She read with good animation that conveyed none of her disappointment in the tale, giving Verek as faithful a translation as she could. The rain battering the library’s windows and the fire crackling on the hearth were fitting backdrops for the wintry tale of Alice and the kitten.
Verek asked no questions as the story unfolded, following Alice from her comfortable drawing-room through the mirror into Looking-glass House, where living chess pieces walked among the cinders on the hearth. Carin read effortlessly, translating without much trouble until she reached the incomprehensible poem, “Jabberwocky.” Here, she paused.
“Sir,” she said, lowering the book, “I don’t know the right words, in the language of Ladrehdin, to substitute for the foreign words in the poem that Alice reads. If I knew what the poem meant, I’d just tell you and skip to the next page. But even Alice, after she’s gotten through it, admits that she can’t make sense of it. So I’ll just read it to you in its native language. The words sound good together, anyway.”
The warlock said nothing. A lazy wave of his hand was the only proof that he heard her and was not dozing on his bench.
Taking Verek’s hand-wave for assent, Carin read aloud, in the puzzle-book’s alien tongue, the opening stanza of the poem:
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
The reclining warlock sprang to his feet with a speed and vigor that quite took Carin’s breath. For the briefest moment, Verek stared at her wild-eyed. Then he sprinted for the dark depths of the library and yanked open the door that was hidden there.
“Come!” he shouted. “Quickly! Bring the book.” His voice echoed up from the winding stone stairs; he was already well down them to the cave of magic.
Carin reacted to his command as would a wild deer to a snort of alarm from the herd’s stag. Reflex subduing reason, she rushed after Verek and was a good way down the stairs before it occurred to her to doubt the wisdom of following him. Not an hour ago, he’d warned her to keep away from the waters of the wizards—“until such time as I may summon you,” he’d said, “by means you will find unmistakable.” Clearly he had just summoned her, and urgently. But why? Toward what was she rushing? What had there been in her reading from the puzzle-book to send the warlock careering down to a cavern that held great danger even for him?
As she slowed her descent, Carin realized she was clutching the puzzle-book tightly in both hands. She’d lost the shining orb, however. The only light in the stairwell was the fixed reddish glow that came up from the cave below.
Also rising from that vault of writhing forces, Verek’s voice welled up. “Quickly!” it boomed.
His authority acted on her. Carin could resist it as little as a feather the gale. Down the winding stairs she plunged.
At their foot, as she emerged into the cave, she barely avoided colliding with the warlock. Verek stood motionless, gazing at the enchanted pool.
Rising from the pool’s shape-shifting mists were the watery images of the strangest creatures Carin had ever seen. In the foreground was a colony of animals about the size and shape of badgers, but they had white hair, hind feet tipped in claws like lizards’, and snouts that twisted as tightly as corkscrews. The “badgers” were busily scratching, and with their coiled snouts, boring holes in a hillside that was sculpted from the magical waters.
Above the creatures, topping the hill, were rows of sundials on pedestals. Huddled nearby, crouched over their nestlings, were thin, wingless, miserable-looking birds with untidy feathers. The birds, which looked like flightless parrots, squawked unhappily at the burrowing badgers.
Bursting quick as hares out of the watery hill were smooth-skinned beasts that resembled piglets with long ears. The pig creatures also scolded the badgers, squeaking at them solemnly.
As Carin studied the scene, she became convinced that the piglets and parrots were fighting to defend their nests. With only squeaks and squawks as weapons, they were trying to chase off the badgers before those burrowing corkscrew snouts could destroy the smaller creatures’ homes in the hillside.
Beside her, Verek roused as if from a trance. He leaned to place his mouth near Carin’s ear, and said in a whisper: “Quietly … slowly … read the rhyme again, pausing as you end each line. Let us see which words conjure up which creatures.”
Carin obeyed, in a soft voice but one which seemed to echo round the vault. “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves …” she read. Out of the mists rising from the pool, the “badgers” doubled their numbers.
Seeking something only half-remembered, Carin thumbed forward to chapter six: “Humpty Dumpty.” There it was—the egg-man telling Alice that “toves” were a bit like badgers, and they nested under sundials. Carin, reading late at night by the glow of the bathing-room walls, had been half asleep her first time through Alice’s talk with the egg. She had thought little of it—then. But now Carin looked at the book in her hands with
new respect. Maybe the story wasn’t nonsense. If it recounted only a child’s dream, why would the waters of the wizards’ pool respond so vividly—and literally, it appeared—to the alien language of the “Jabberwocky”?
She flipped back to the poem and continued aloud with the next line: “Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” The “toves” vigorously scratched and bored holes in the hillside. “All mimsy were the borogoves,” she recited, and the shabby-looking parrot-birds squawked miserably at the “toves.” The final line, “And the mome raths outgrabe,” provoked from the piglets more solemn squeaks, and also noises that seemed to mix bellowing, whistling, and sneezing, just as Humpty Dumpty had described to Alice the sound of “outgribing.”
But there the egg-man’s explanation of the verse ended. He did not tell Alice what a “Jabberwock” was.
Carin raised the book to the eyes of the sorcerer at her side. She pointed at the next stanza. “Should I keep going?” she whispered. “There’s more to the poem.”
Verek nodded. “But say only a single line, then pause,” he whispered back. “I would see more, but this thing must be done carefully.”
In a voice no louder than before, but which again seemed to reverberate in the cave of magic, Carin read the next line. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!”
The illusion of the badger-infested hillside collapsed in a torrent of falling water. But barely had the rush of liquid struck the pool’s surface when it reformed itself into a long-necked, dragon-winged monster that rose howling from the mists.
The creature’s tail churned the pool’s crystalline waters to foam. In a head made hideous by a bony crest that protruded between eyes of flame, jaws bristled with fangs. From its gaping mouth exhaled a hot, putrid breath. The dragon reared on scaly, muscular hind legs to tower above Carin’s head and Verek’s. It slashed at them with hooked claws as long and sharp as scimitars.
Sorceress or not, Carin had just conjured up the instrument of what promised to be a bloody and brutal death—for both of them.
Chapter 15
A Test
She screamed, and the sound mingled in her ears with the dragon’s roar. The puzzle-book slipped from Carin’s fingers.
Verek grabbed it, thrust it back into her hands, and with the same motion shoved her into the stairwell behind them.
“Run!” he yelled above the Jabberwock’s heart-stopping howl. “Take the book from this house!”
She ran. Up the steps Carin spiraled, to burst into the library like a wayward gust from the storm that raged outside. The only light in the room came from a few glowing embers on the hearth. All of her lamps had burned themselves out, and the neglected fire had dwindled to coals. Carin fought her way through the gloom, stumbling over stacks of books, tripping, falling against the hall door.
She yanked it open and raced down the hallway to the kitchen. There she met no curious Myra to delay her. But as she flung open the door to the courtyard, rain slanted into the kitchen with such stinging force that Carin stumbled back, momentarily repelled.
More intent on protecting the puzzle-book than keeping herself dry, she wrapped the book in a snatched-up piece of sacking and hugged the bundle to her chest. Bent almost double to shield it from the rain, she dove into the storm.
In moments, she was drenched to the skin and slogging through mud up to her ankles. Carin leaned into the wind-driven rain and struggled across the yard to the stable door. Lurching inside, she nearly fell on her face as the abrupt cessation of wind left her overbalanced. She panted for air, half strangled. Water streamed from her hair. Her saturated clothes hung heavy, and under them she shivered.
The stable was full of shadows and the musty smell of damp hay and horse dung. Carin headed instinctively for the familiar comfort of Emrys’ stall. But the moment she reached it, welcomed by the mare’s soft whickering, she knew she must turn around and go back.
Though Verek might already be dead. Carin felt covered in frost, crystals of it piercing her skin and chilling her heart, as she imagined the Jabberwock’s teeth and claws buried in the warlock’s flesh. If he’d been slaughtered, and if the dragon escaped from the cave of magic, forcing its way to the surface, this entire household might end in just the same carnage.
Carin whirled so quickly that she startled Emrys. She lunged into the empty stall across from the mare’s and shoved the puzzle-book under a pile of hay.
With the refrain, What have I done? What evil have I done? running through her mind, she turned for the stable door. She must get Myra out of the house. And when she had Myra, Jerold, and Lanse all together in the relative safety of the stable—the two men were probably nearby already, chased indoors by the storm—Carin could tell them of the dragon she had raised from the pages of an alien book. Would they believe so improbable a tale? The new housemaid conjuring a dragon from words and water? She had no explanation for what she had done, only a sickening sense of responsibility for the consequences thereof—
Carin’s darting thoughts ended as if they’d hit a wall. She had barely taken a step toward the stable door when a hand grabbed her shoulder and wrenched her around.
Lanse stood glaring into her face, his eyes bright with anger. “Thief!” he shouted. He drew back the hand that had seized her, fisted it, and smashed it into her face.
The blow knocked her to the hay-strewn floor. Carin fell heavily and lay still. She only hazily became aware of her lips throbbing. She tried to bring her fingers to them and found her arm slow to answer the command. In her mouth was the taste of blood.
Her dimmed vision picked out Lanse leaning over her. He caught her arm and jerked it, yanking her shoulder off the floor.
By a supreme effort, Carin raised her head and focused her eyes, in time to see Lanse fisting his other hand and drawing it back, preparing to deliver a blow more vicious than the first.
“Hold, boy!” Verek’s clipped voice reached Carin through her fog of pain. “Drisha’s teeth! What are you about here?”
“She’s a thief, my lord.” Lanse released Carin’s arm, dropping her jarringly to the floor. “I watched her sneak into the stable and hide a parcel. A moment pray, my lord, and I will return your property to you.”
Carin struggled to pull her dazed senses out of the fog and her body upright. She had only partly succeeded with either effort when strong hands caught her arms from behind and lifted her to a sitting position. Verek crouched at her back, supporting her with his arm around her shoulders.
“Ice, if you please, Jerold,” he muttered. He pointed at a water trough. “Already the swelling is pronounced.”
From the direction of Emrys’ stall, the old gardener approached. Wordlessly Jerold plunged his hands into the water, closed his eyes as though in deep concentration, and pulled out a chunk of ice, cradled in his palms. He balanced the chunk on the trough’s rim, then dug into a pocket of his shabby coat and withdrew a handkerchief that was as startlingly white in the stable’s gloom as his wispy hair. Jerold wrapped the ice in the linen and handed it to Verek. Then he backed away half a step and hunkered down, bringing his wizened face to their level.
Verek pressed the ice to Carin’s throbbing lips. “Take this,” he said. “Can you?”
The hand that Carin raised to his was shaking. Her muscles felt like putty, but she managed to grip the ice and hold it to her mouth. The cold began to numb the pain.
Verek stood, leaving her on the floor with Jerold crouched nearby like a grumpy elf who’d rather not be bothered. The warlock stalked toward Emrys’ stall, his stride so quick that his black oilskin rain-cloak billowed out behind.
He met Lanse emerging from the empty enclosure opposite, the sack-wrapped puzzle-book in the boy’s hands. The look of triumph on the stableboy’s face turned to confusion as Verek grabbed him by his jacket collar and slammed him into the boards of the stall, sending a frightened Emrys skittering to the far side of her enclosure.
Lanse, though his master’s equal in height, was a willow to Verek’s oak. Y
et the boy showed no fear. Watching them from her sprawl on the floor, Carin read only anger and defiance in the boy’s bright eyes and set jaw.
“The girl is a thief, my lord!” Lanse cried, waving the sacking bundle. “This is the parcel I saw her hide. I found it just now, buried in the hay. She thought to be clever and do her thieving in a storm that would hide her acts from watchful eyes. But I wasn’t fooled. I saw her enter with this bundle, then I watched her turn to leave without it. Her acts were patently those of a thief who hides the goods to return for them later.”
Verek, his fingers knotted in the boy’s collar, yanked Lanse away from the stall, then shoved him back against the boards so violently that Carin heard the wood splinter.
“Her acts were in answer to my commands,” the warlock said, his growl directed to the boy alone and barely reaching Carin above the noise of the storm. “I bade her take the bundle from the house, and I am well pleased with her swift obedience. Even in the face of this storm, she did not hesitate.”
Keeping his grip on Lanse’s jacket, Verek continued in a voice loud enough now to carry throughout the stable. “But with you, boy, I am gravely displeased. Do you presume to take upon yourself those privileges which are mine alone? Do you think to raise yourself by usurping my rights? Oh, no! It will not do. I tell you distinctly, boy: this matter wears a serious cast.”
He stepped very close to Lanse. The boy looked pale, but he didn’t flinch.
“So grave is your transgression,” Verek went on, “that I declare before these witnesses”—he tipped his head back to indicate Carin and Jerold behind him—“that I will tolerate no further affronts of this kind. Dare you to raise a hand again to any member of this household except by my express orders, and I’ll do worse than strip you of privilege and dismiss you from my service. I’ll invoke my right as High Judge of Ruain to order you flayed for your crime.
WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock Page 21