“Do you mark me well, Lanse? The girl enjoys the same protections under my roof as do you and Myra. If you suspect her of stealing, then bring your suspicions to me. But on no account presume again to ‘punish’ her. I will not stand for it.”
The warlock released the boy’s collar, snatched the bundled book from Lanse’s hand, and turned so sharply from him that the hem of Verek’s rain-cloak snapped at the boy’s knees. Verek neither awaited nor, obviously, expected an answer to his reprimand. Slipping the bundle inside the coat he wore under his oilskin, he walked to Carin and Jerold on the floor.
She tried to rise to meet him, but lost her balance, nearly dropped the chunk of ice, and in her struggles to right herself discovered that her lips were bleeding freely. The ice’s linen wrapper was soaked.
Verek took Carin by the arms and lifted her onto her feet. He rewrapped the ice in an unstained corner of the cloth and gave it back to her. Her lips felt swollen to hideous proportions but, despite the bleeding, there was little pain now. Jerold’s conjuration had numbed them to any sensation but pressure.
“Can you walk?” Verek asked, his dark eyes examining her face.
Carin nodded. She didn’t lower the ice and she didn’t try to speak, being fairly certain that she couldn’t, just yet.
“The wound needs tending,” Verek said, “and for that I want you inside.” He reached for the clasp of his oilskin. “You should have a cloak for your return—though another drenching could hardly leave you wetter than you are.”
“No point you taking a soaking, Theil,” Jerold said, and rose from his haunches. “She’ll have mine. ’Tis a better fit anyhow.”
The old man led the way to the stable door, beside which hung the promised rain-cloak. The gardener’s was made of an oiled cloth less lustrous and supple than Verek’s, but its length, as Jerold said, suited Carin better. The hem reached only to her calves, whereas she would have dragged Verek’s cloak through the mud.
She pulled up the hood and slogged into the storm on legs she barely trusted. The yard was a quagmire, and the wind threatened to knock her down. But she splashed across to push open the side door and step into the kitchen, admitting buckets of rain.
Verek entered on her heels. For a moment the warlock struggled with the door, his muddy boots slipping as he forced it shut against the gale and shot the bolt home.
“Oh my! Oh my!” Myra exclaimed from across the kitchen. “Whatever has possessed you both, to be out in such a storm!” She hurried to them, staring at Carin’s face as she helped her shrug out of the dripping cloak. “Dearie? What has happened? You’ve been kicked by one of those brainless horses! That’s the trouble, isn’t it.”
Carin put down the stained cloth with its partly melted lump of magical ice and tried to shape a denial. She wouldn’t have Emrys or any of the animals blamed for the injury that Lanse had done her. But she could force no intelligible sounds past her numbed and swollen lips. Her mumblings might have been in an alien language, so incomprehensible were they.
With a speed that startled her, Verek grabbed the ice and pressed it back to Carin’s lips, silencing the noises she was making. His reaction was so emphatic and firm, she couldn’t help but read a warning in it.
He’s taking no chances, Carin realized. He doesn’t understand what I’m mumbling about, any more than he knew the words in the puzzle-book rhyme that called up the Jabberwock. He just knows he doesn’t want me gibbering away in what sounds like a foreign tongue. For all he can tell right now, I could be muttering another magic spell. I’ve scared him, haven’t I? Maybe as much as I’ve scared myself.
Carin accepted the ice from him, and with a little nod to say that she’d gotten his message, she held it tightly to her mouth.
Verek stepped away, and still watching her, doffed his cloak.
“No horse is at fault,” he said, directing the comment to Myra but keeping his gaze relentlessly on Carin. “The girl has only herself to blame. Nothing would serve her but that she see the black mare, even on such a day when wiser heads keep covered. She hazarded the storm, slipped on wet hay in the stable, and fell on her face. A bloodied lip is small penalty for such foolishness. She’s lucky she didn’t break her nose.”
Throughout the telling of this lie, the warlock’s eyes bored into Carin’s. She could make no protest beyond a sharp intake of breath, but at the sound of it Verek raised one eyebrow and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Again, his meaning was clear. She was not to contradict him, either now or when she regained the power of intelligible speech. Myra wasn’t to know the true cause of Carin’s injury.
Myra dabbed a wet cloth at the blood on Carin’s mouth. “What’s to be done first, my lord?” she asked. “A poultice for this wound, or a hot bath and dry clothes for the rest of her?”
Verek had bent to remove one muddy boot. Before he pulled off the other, he straightened and looked Carin up and down.
“Attend first to the matter of drying her out,” he said, “for truly she looks half drowned. Make her warm, for a cold in the head won’t improve on a split lip. Lastly, send her to me for the poultice. I’ll be in the library, warming at the fire.”
The warlock kicked off his other boot, then headed that way, striding past Carin in his stocking feet.
But just before he disappeared into the passageway, Carin hooked her fingers like talons and clawed the air, mimicking the Jabberwock. Then she opened her hand, palm up, and shot him a questioning look.
Verek paused, his head atilt. Slowly, he nodded.
“You’re asking about that story you were reading to me,” he said with a casualness that sounded forced. “Be assured—you’ve gone far enough with it for now. Before proceeding, I will wish to consider all that I have learned.”
He put his finger to his lips, then added, pointedly: “In any event, you’re in no condition to continue the reading. Keep silent … so that you do not aggravate the damage.”
With that final admonition, he left her with Myra.
The housekeeper—launching into a complaint about the caprices of weather and of young people—managed with difficulty to loosen the sodden leather laces of Carin’s kirtle and strip her of the hay-flecked wool. Carin let herself be led to a bench at the table so Myra could remove her mud-covered boots and soggy stockings. She retained her last garment, however—the shift that clung damply—to cover her retreat upstairs to the privacy of her bathing room.
There in the hot-spring pool, Carin scrubbed the blood from her face. The water stung her lips, but its warmth eased a pain that had settled in her left cheekbone. By the time she’d washed the hay out of her hair, the soreness was leaving muscles that felt as if Lanse had nearly wrenched them off her bones.
Lanse can go to the devil, she thought with a huff of contempt as she climbed out and twisted her hair up in a towel. He was a minor problem compared to the conjuring of a dragon. What had become of the Jabberwock? What had gone on between it and Verek? Had both survived, or only the warlock?
In her bedroom, Carin found that the always-diligent Myra had been there before her. Dry clothes—gray breeches and a white shirt—lay on the bed. The breeches had a drawstring waist, deep pockets, and legs tapered to tuck into boots. The housekeeper had tailored them to her perfectly.
Carin pulled the towel from her hair, then drew on the shirt. It did not fit, because it was one of Verek’s. The garment hung loosely from her shoulders, its hem fell below her hips, and the sleeves were so long that she had to roll them up in wide cuffs to uncover her hands. But the quality of the cloth was unmistakable. In the glow from the bathing room, the pure-white linen had a sheen like a pearl’s. It was the finest that gold could buy in Ladrehdin.
When she had dressed, Carin stood at the mirror and studied her lips. They were split top and bottom, but the cuts no longer bled. Her lips didn’t look as swollen as they felt. A worse sight was the bruise that spread from the corner of her mouth to circle her left eye. Lanse’s fist had blackened half her f
ace.
A tap sounded at the door. Myra bustled in, as was her habit, not waiting for an answer.
“I put the last threads in those breeches only this morning, dearie—never knowing that you’d be needing them before the day was out. Whatever did possess you to go out in such a storm? Never mind, child.” The woman waved a hand and rattled on before Carin could attempt a reply. “What’s done is done. There’s naught for it now but to keep you warm and ease your hurts.”
Myra gestured at the stool. “Sit yourself down. Let me work a comb through that mane of yours, and then you must stay by a fire until every hair is dry to its roots. The master’s medicines can chase ’most any chill, but ’tis better not to catch a chill at all.
“Oh my, dearie!” the woman exclaimed in the same breath as she studied Carin’s face in the mirror. “Such a big bruise. I’ve seen a horse’s hoof do less damage, and a fisted hand as much.” She shook her head and pursed her lips, and kept silent for one full, leisurely stroke of the comb through Carin’s thick hair.
Carin, watching the housekeeper in the mirror, read the woman’s doubts as easily as if they were written on the glass. Myra didn’t believe her master’s story about Carin falling on her face. But whether the housekeeper believed she’d been kicked, or—knowing of Lanse’s bitterness—Myra had guessed the truth, Carin couldn’t tell.
Whatever her thoughts, the woman withheld them. Clucking like a hen with chicks, Myra put the comb down and began digging through the pockets of her housedress.
“The master’s shirt swathes you like a sack,” she said. “I’ve no time now to take it up. But stand, dearie, and let’s see what can be done without a needle.” She produced a bright red scarf and made a sash of it around Carin’s waist. This shaped the folds of the oversized shirt into the respectable likeness of a woman’s overblouse. “That’s better, child,” Myra said.
“But bless me!” she exclaimed then. “What am I about? Dawdling with trifles while the master waits with a remedy for your poor bruised face. Didn’t he say to send you for the poultice when we had you toasty? Be off with you now. You know the power of the master’s medicines. Go to him. Go!” She shooed Carin toward the door.
Carin went, her bare feet softly slapping the stairs.
I only read a poem, she thought, feeling as if she were practicing an excuse, or preparing her defense, as she walked through the quiet house. I didn’t set out to summon a dragon. Still, as Carin approached the library, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something inside her had changed. She’d unsealed doors—first to the cave of magic, and now to a place deep in herself that she hadn’t known was there.
The library door was closed. Carin let herself in without knocking.
She found the room far brighter than when she’d stumbled through it in terror of the dragon. The storm raged on, darkening the world outside. But during Carin’s absence, her six work lamps had been refilled and relit. The embers on the hearth had been stirred to new life, and the fire fueled with an armload of wood; it now burned brightly. Verek stood before it in his shirtsleeves, having shed both his black coat and the plum-colored vest he’d worn earlier in the day.
“Come to the fire,” he ordered brusquely. “I would see by a good light what damage that fool boy has done.”
Filled with her thoughts, but still making no effort to speak, Carin threaded her way through the stacks of books and joined him at the fireplace. Verek cupped his three-fingered left hand around the back of her head and tilted her face up to his.
Carin—swallowing hard in a tight throat—locked her gaze onto the mantelpiece behind him, willing herself to submit to the examination but not letting her eyes meet his. Standing this close to the warlock, she couldn’t fail to see that indescribable quality in the depths of his eyes: less than a flame, it was a flicker … elusive … something more—or less—than human.
As he cradled Carin’s head, his palm warm against her damp hair, Verek raised his other hand to the mantel behind him and flipped open a small jar. He dabbed his fingertip into the glistening, brownish contents, brought it to her lips, and rubbed the ointment into her cuts.
The mixture tasted of fennel. Its aroma blended with the warlock’s own. Carin breathed in the scents of the healing herbs that he carried on his clothes and skin.
Verek reached for a second jar on the mantel, this time using all four fingers to scoop out a dollop of a salve that was lighter in color than the first. This he spread over the bruised half of Carin’s face, massaging it with a circular motion that, despite her knotted nerves, she found entrancing. Her lids drooped over unfocused eyes—until the warlock’s fingertips prodded a little too firmly against Carin’s left cheekbone.
“Ouch!”
She started back, wide-eyed, and jerked away from him.
“What troubles you?” Verek demanded.
“It hurts,” Carin mumbled. Slurring her words slightly, she added, “It’s ’sworst right here,” and pointed to the pain that pierced the bone.
“No marvel, that.” Verek cupped his hand around the base of Carin’s skull and drew her back to him.
Still partly under the spell of his healer’s touch, Carin didn’t resist but resumed her place, close enough to smell him but staring past him.
The warlock stroked her cheekbone lightly. “Speak out if the pain returns,” he said, then pressed more firmly.
“Ow!” Carin flinched, but Verek was ready for her and didn’t let her leave his grasp.
“The bone is cracked,” he said. “Left to itself, it will knit, in time. But you may forever carry a lump upon the spot—a disfiguring reminder of the strange course that events have taken today. A week ago, I would have given you no other choice. Then, I believed no true wizardry of mine could touch you. But that was before you answered a vague summons in the night, or showed yourself vulnerable to the spell of stone, or conjured a dragon from the waters of the wysards.
“I begin to think,” Verek said, “that with each day under my roof you grow more aware … more alive to the forces that are assembled here. I propose, therefore, a test. With your consent, I’ll attempt to heal the bone. You, in turn, will tell me all that you feel, every sensation of which you are conscious as the healing progresses. Perhaps this will bring to light some new detail that will help us to understand what can and cannot touch you in this world that is not your natural home.”
The sorcerer’s proposal gave Carin her opening.
“If you can help the pain, please do,” she said, her voice sounding thin and cracking a little, then steadying as she got used to speaking again. “But first, I’ve got to know: What happened to the Jabberwock?”
“Silence!” Verek thundered.
His command threw such a hush over the room that no sound remained but the crackling of the fire and the sluicing of rain against the windows. Carin hardly dared to breathe for fear of breaking the sorcerer’s immediate and profound state of concentration. He stared into the library’s gloomy recesses where the upper door to the cave of magic lay hidden.
Presently, he shook himself and returned his gaze to Carin.
“From afar, the name alone is insufficient, so it would seem, to summon the dragon,” Verek said. “Perhaps your presence in the chamber is required. Perhaps a conjuring needs the rhyme spoken in its entirety. Or maybe the final line of the incantation is the key. For now, I am pleased to discover that you do not call the creature with a single word.”
So am I, Carin thought, her mouth dry. She’d spoken the name without thinking.
“As to the monster’s fate,” Verek went on, “I cannot tell you what became of it, for I do not know. Soon after you took yourself and the book from the chamber, the creature began to lose its solidity of form. I don’t mean to say that it weakened, for it remained as ferocious as when it first appeared. But gradually its shape became less distinct, as patterns sculpted in ice lose their sharpness when they begin to melt. The creature flung itself from the pool to its full length
, but it could not entirely break its bonds to the waters that gave it substance. The very tips of its hindmost claws remained hooked round the pool’s rim. So great was its reach, however, that it could, from that position, hack at the cave’s walls with its foreclaws. I retreated to the foot of the steps, within the stairwell, and there it could not reach me.
“As I watched it fade from view,” he continued, “the thought came to me to test its corporeal nature. Was it illusion, or did it have substance? Was it spectral, or tangible? Moments before it vanished—still howling its rage and clawing the air—I removed my vest and threw it to the dragon. The creature’s attack lasted hardly longer than the flicker of an eyelid. But when the image was gone and the waters of the well had regained their customary stillness, I ventured into the chamber and found nothing of my garment but this.”
Verek reached into his trousers pocket and pulled out a scrap of plum-dyed wool. Carin took it from his hand, held it in her palm, and stared. The scrap had not been torn from the vest, but cut—as cleanly as by the sharpest blade any metalsmith could fashion. What would those claws do to living things?
The warlock, in his unnerving way, seemed to read Carin’s mind. “Such a monster, if ever it were loosed from the bonds that tie it to the pool, might wreak such bloody havoc on mortal flesh as to make our wasteland dogs seem tame. But I am satisfied that it cannot so defy its nature as to leave the waters that give it form.”
Verek retrieved the scrap from Carin and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“Now: an end to this tale,” he said. “Other matters await. When the dragon was gone—not vanquished, but returned to whatever realm it sprang from—I sought you. A lake of rainwater on the kitchen floor told me you’d heeded my words and taken the book from the house. I followed, expecting to find you in the stable but unprepared for the sorry scene that greeted me there. A moment earlier, and I might have prevented the blow that did this damage.” He touched Carin’s cheek.
WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock Page 22