WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  Verek stared at her. Slowly, he shook his head.

  “I glanced at the sign but took no particular notice of it,” he admitted. “Had I been more in the habit of calling you by name, perhaps I would have seen a hint of a similarity.”

  The warlock drained his goblet and set it on the table. Then he leaned back and studied Carin, the expression on his face a mixture of faint annoyance and something unreadable.

  “You’ve known from that moment the truth of your origins,” he said. “You’ve known that the truth must be thus, and not otherwise. Why, then, have you seen fit to waste half the morning in pointless argument?”

  Because I cross barriers you don’t want crossed, Carin thought, meeting Verek’s gaze. I open doors you don’t want opened. And with the words of an alien tongue, I conjure a killer dragon. You must feel threatened by me. You do, don’t you? No matter what you say.

  But putting it so bluntly to Verek would only help to build the case against her. If Carin meant to run through the list of reasons Verek might have for wanting to be rid of her, she’d need to take care with her phrasing.

  She began with understatement. “I know you don’t like how I can walk through the spells that screen your woodland. I know it gets under your skin, me not even seeing them, or barely feeling them.”

  Gets under his skin? That is putting it mildly, Carin thought, remembering his fury and how exquisitely close he had come to handing her her head.

  Verek said nothing to this, but seemed to be waiting for her to go on.

  So Carin waded in deeper.

  “You tell me I shouldn’t be here,” she muttered, still eyeing the warlock. “You talk about threats to Ladrehdin and about using the puzzle-book dragon to … remove them. When I put one thing with another, I don’t like what I get.” She picked up the book and riffled its pages. “I’m not natural to this world. Does that make me dangerous to it? Could I do something, without meaning to do it, that would hurt people? The same way I called up the dragon without even knowing—the first time—that that’s what I was doing?”

  The sky Carin could see through the library’s windows was cloudless, a bright blue. She studied it for a moment, then turned back to Verek. He was watching her, his head slightly atilt, silent, letting her talk.

  Carin’s voice was getting softer as she went. “And about that dragon I’ve conjured from the wizards’ well … You must be wondering why a monster would come when I call it. Why in Drisha’s name would it come—unless I’ve got some kind of evil power over it?

  “—But I don’t.” Carin leaned toward Verek for emphasis. “Whatever spellcraft this is, I know nothing of it. I just read what’s written on the page. I don’t even understand the poem that conjures the Jabberwock.”

  She watched Verek, searching for a sign that he believed her. But the warlock only regarded her with a kind of detached interest, as though Carin were an insect of the summer forest that had scurried out of a snow-draped woodpile in the heart of winter.

  His coldness cut into her.

  What did I expect? Sympathy? From him? Carin bit the inside of her mouth. Not likely. What was it to Verek if Carin’s sense of self had been shattered piecemeal down in that cave? Her understanding of who she was had always had its blank spots, true. But she’d chosen to think of herself as a traveler—never suspecting that, in fact, she was an alien castaway in a world where she didn’t belong.

  And never dreaming that she could conjure dragons.

  Sighing, Carin leaned back and continued, speaking frankly now.

  “I’m sorry I ever came anywhere near you, Lord Verek. If I’d kept away, I never would have found out how really lost I am. Or how strange I am. I wouldn’t have known about that other world, where I guess I used to live. I wouldn’t be wondering who I was—or who I used to be. And I wouldn’t be feeling like such an outsider, here in this world.”

  Carin looked at her hand, the one that Verek’s spells had failed to burn off when she touched the hidden latch to his cave of magic. Right now, her own flesh seemed alien to her.

  “I’m sorry your sorcery didn’t stop me coming here,” she muttered. “If I’d gone on my way instead of hiking up into your trees, those filthy dogs might have torn out my throat before I got far. But I would have died still knowing myself, and still thinking I had a right to live in this world.”

  “You would have died uselessly,” the warlock retorted, rousing, “and with your questions all unanswered.”

  Verek looked impatiently at her. “Come!” he snapped. “Throw off this melancholy and spare me any more of your self-pity. This mood doesn’t become you. Vilify me if you will—scream at me, if you must—but don’t whine. It makes for poor company on one of the last bright mornings that we’ll see this autumn.”

  He stood, rounded the table between them, and reached across Carin’s lap to snatch the polished wand from the seat beside her. His move was so sudden that she barely had time to gasp. The artifact, as it left her, made a blur through the air.

  Then Verek was at the cabinet. He replaced the relic in its hiding spot, and with the slat he’d earlier removed, sealed the opening at the back of the cabinet. He returned the two clean goblets to their places within the nook and snapped the doors shut.

  Restlessly the warlock strode back to his bench, but he stepped behind it, to grasp the high seat-back with both hands and lean his stomach against it.

  Carin stayed where she was, watching him. His rebuke had stung. She sat up straighter and wordlessly vowed to never again let her captor see her so deeply unsure of herself.

  Verek leveled his gaze at her.

  “That you do not summon the dragon to the well through any wizardry of your own making, I believe,” he said. “The power lies within the words of the rhyme. Rare is the incantation that carries its magic utterly within the syllables themselves, and therefore needs no magician, only a native speaker to give it voice. But such magic does exist in the wizardry of this world. Hence, I am disposed to accept that the rhyme from the looking-glass book is magic of that sort. As you say, you merely read the words that lie upon the page. Such recitation doesn’t make you a worker of magic.”

  “Of course it doesn’t.” Carin tried to sound dismissive of the whole idea. Nevertheless, she felt some of the burden of responsibility lift from her shoulders, to know that being a conduit for otherworldly witchcraft did not implicate her in the working of it. She closed her eyes and swallowed, only now fully realizing how heavily that dragon weighed on her.

  Verek spoke again. Carin opened her eyes.

  “As for your impudent inattention to my spellwork: I believe the matter will not trouble either of us for much longer. Do you recall what I told you yesterday? That with each day you spend under my roof, you feel more acutely the magic within these walls? Plainly, you are susceptible to the wizardry. You hear a summons when I conjure visions in the chamber of wysards. Twice, you have succumbed to the spell of stone.”

  At this, Verek lifted two fingers of his right hand from the back of the bench he was leaning against.

  Carin grabbed the Looking-Glass book and held it to her like the breastplate of a suit of armor. She wasn’t sure why she did it. The book wouldn’t stop Verek from turning her to stone if he chose. But she had an idea that Verek might not want to risk any spell of his striking the book that held a potent specimen of alien magic. He had no way of knowing what might result.

  He seemed to appreciate that fact. Something flitted across Verek’s face that might have been a half-smile. Then, with a dip of his head—a nod to Carin’s small victory—he let his fingers drop to the seat-back.

  “Also, there’s the magic that healed your cheekbone,” the warlock went on, as if nothing had passed between them. “Were you invulnerable to my wizardry, the fracture would not have knit under its influence.

  “All of this leads me to suppose that you’re not as outlandish as you think you are,” he said. “To quiet you on the subject—for I wish to hear n
o more bemoaning of your lot—I will tell you my speculations. But take them only as such, for I do not claim to have a perfect understanding of the matter.”

  Verek quit leaning on his bench and came around it to take his seat. He laced the fingers of both hands behind his head and went on unhurriedly.

  “Perhaps you’ve known of a man who, bee-stung, suffered no ill effects beyond the momentary pain. Twice stung, he was little harmed. Thrice stung, however, the wretch swelled up and died. Repeated exposure to the venom of the bee’s sting had built in him such a sensitivity as to finally provoke a marked response.

  “I think it’s likely that oft-repeated experience with the wizardry within these walls has built in you a like susceptibility—though not with like results. Do not mistake me on that point. I use the example of the bee-sting for no other reason than it is an instance from nature that serves broadly to explain the quickening of your senses.

  “A week ago,” Verek went on, “you could not perceive the powerful wizardry that curtains my woods. Yet now, you surrender to the simplest of spells—the spell of stone. You hear the whisperings of magic in the chamber of enchantment, yet the spells that guard its portals do not touch you. Maybe you are like the patient whose injured eyes have been well wrapped to block the light and promote healing. As the wrappings are removed, layer by layer, you sense—at first—only the simplest patterns of light and shadow. But as the bindings come slowly away, you see more distinctly. You begin to discern shapes and colors. The time shall come when the last wrappings will be removed, and all wizardry, from the simple to the consummate, will be present to your senses with perfect clarity. And then perhaps you will know who you are, and where you belong.”

  Verek dropped his hands from his head and reached for the flagon on the table. It held just enough liquor to refill his goblet a final time.

  “I’ve talked until I’m hoarse,” he said between sips, “and in consequence I have drunk too much. You must take the blame for an idle morning given over to drink, for you’ve forced me to spend it dispelling doubts that you never harbored. As for your fears … perhaps there is less pretense in those, but no more substance. You’ve conjured them from a mind over-full of suspicions. It belongs, however, to your age and your nature to entertain such fancies.

  “Enough!” Verek put down his goblet and flung himself full-length on his bench. “Read! Take up the tale of Alice through the looking-glass, from the moment the incantation ends. I trust you’ll say nothing to call the monster back—if it’s not your intention to summon the dragon.”

  Slowly, Carin thumbed open the puzzle-book, mentally chewing on everything Verek had just said. His words had not eased her mind. Quite the contrary.

  She fumbled her way through the pages, found Alice’s thoughts on the “Jabberwocky” poem, and read them aloud:

  “‘It seems very pretty,’ Alice said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand! … Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!’”

  Feeling as if the passage had filled her own head with nameless notions, Carin lowered the book and looked at Verek.

  “Excuse me, sir,” she said. “But do you know the name of the master wizard who sent the whirlpool that snatched me away—and took the woodsprite, too—from the worlds where we used to live?”

  Verek raised onto his elbow and glared at her. A fierce frown darkened his face. “In time, your questions will be answered. Do not plague me with them. I bid you read.”

  He dropped back and lay looking up at the ceiling. “Or shall we see,” he growled, and raised his hand threateningly, “whether you are now subject to subtler spells that not every novice magician knows? Most especially I call to my mind the spells of sores and scabs.”

  Hastily, Carin read, picking up where she’d left off in Alice’s musings. “‘However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate—’”

  Verek rolled again to his elbow and looked at her. Carin kept her eyes glued to the book and read on without pause.

  The warlock, apparently satisfied that the talk of killing didn’t spring from Carin’s own thoughts, lay back and lowered his hand. With a sigh that sounded almost contented, he settled himself more comfortably on his cushions.

  When Myra bustled into the library to call them to the midday meal, Carin was reading the Red Queen’s directions to Alice as the girl became a pawn in the living game of chess. The sorcerer Verek was sound asleep, snoring gently.

  Chapter 17

  The Magic of Life

  Carin woke from a long nap. She threw open her bedroom curtains and found the sun hanging well past its zenith. She’d passed out after lunch, drugged by the single glass of liquor she had drunk with Verek in the library.

  The warlock, after four brimful goblets of the stuff, might still be sleeping. Carin and Myra had tiptoed away from the library, leaving Verek snoring on his bench. There was no sense waking him to feed him, the housekeeper had said. Her “good master” would call for his meal when he wanted it.

  Carin splashed her face with cold water, pulled on her boots, and went downstairs. Turning first to the kitchen and finding it unoccupied, she secured a sturdy broom and a knife that had a broad blade. She returned with these to the stair foyer, left them on the bottom step, then walked down the hall to the library.

  Cautiously she cracked the door and stuck her head in. Good. Verek no longer slept in front of the cold hearth. The room was empty. Carin crossed to the desk and retrieved the book on archery that she’d been reading when Verek brought in his bag of “unfortunates” fated for the Jabberwock’s jaws.

  With the book and the tools she’d gathered, she climbed again to the landing that fronted her bedroom. From there Carin took the upper passageway that led to the double doors separating this part of the house from the master wing beyond. As she reached the head of the wide, dark staircase that descended to the cave of magic, she did not look down.

  Quietly she lifted the doors’ latch and passed through. She strode down the dusty corridor beyond, then squeezed herself and the tools through the narrow opening at the corridor’s end. A few paces took her across the balcony to the head of the steps that descended into the long-abandoned great hall.

  Sweeping trash from each step before setting foot on it, Carin worked her way down the stairs to the equally dirty floor of the hall. There, she used the broom to clear dirt, dead leaves, and bird droppings from an aisle between two of the tables that ran the length of the room. Brooming the filth aside vigorously, she made no effort to clean the whole floor. All she needed was enough space to try her hand with a new weapon.

  Taking the knife and the archery book with her, Carin went outside, through the servants’ entrance and past the rowan tree that partly blocked the doorway.

  “Sprite!” she called. “Are you there?”

  A spark leaped from tree to tree, racing toward her from the direction of the outer wall where the huge oak breached it.

  “I—am—here—my—friend!” came the thin, disconnected voice of the traveling woodsprite.

  Carin walked to meet it. Her feet sank into a carpet of autumn leaves that was damp and springy after yesterday’s drenching. Almost together, she and the spark reached the same nondescript oak where they had talked two days before.

  “I hoped you’d come this afternoon,” piped the reedy voice from a mouth working in the tree trunk. “So fierce was yesterday’s storm that I did not venture from the coppice of sweet myrtle that gave me refuge, for fear that I’d roast in a lightning strike. I sorely doubted you’d be abroad on such a day.”

  Carin settled on the exposed root that had been her seat before. She cradled the book in her lap to keep it out of the moist leaf litter. A rich, rain-washed scent enveloped her, the earthy perfume of the wooded wilderness that had grown up on this side of the house.

  “Sprite, I need your help,” she said, impelled in the fast-waning day to speak and act quickly. “I�
��ve lost my sling, and it was the only weapon I knew how to use. Verek took it from me. He’s not likely to give it back. What I need now is to make myself another weapon—something better than my sling.”

  She opened the archery book to a page showing different types of bows. “See here?” Carin pointed to a picture of bowmen, some of them shooting from the ground, some from horseback. “I don’t think I could handle a longbow, but I’m sure I could learn to use a short bow. Like this one.” She pointed out a horsed archer who was drawing and shooting while spurring his mount to a gallop. “That’s the kind of bow Verek uses. He didn’t miss with it when he was wiping out the pack of dogs.”

  “That he didn’t,” the sprite agreed, attentive. “And I’ve seen him use it equally well at other times. The mage and that boy of his were in the habit, until not a very long while ago, of riding and shooting ofttimes of an afternoon. Many days I’ve watched them practice, but always from a safe distance. I confess myself unwilling to feel an arrow pierce any tree in which I dwell. But I digress. What were you saying?”

  “I was about to ask you to jump through the trees, the way you do, and find me a branch of yew or elm that’s the right length for a bow staff. In this book, it says that an unstrung bow for someone my height should reach from my neck to my knee.” Carin stood and demonstrated the length needed. “Can you look in the trees back here and find me a branch that long? The book says the wood should be limber, but strong.”

  “At once, my—friend!” the sprite cried, leaping enthusiastically to the task. “In—no—time—you—shall—have—your—limb!”

  While she waited, Carin studied the book. She pored over the method for thinning a bowstave from belly to back, leaving more width at the center than at the notched and tapered ends. She was weighing her grip options—leather-wrapped? a carved handle?—when the woodsprite came sparking back.

  “A young yew-tree grows nearer than an arrow’s flight from this spot,” the creature reported, sounding a shade breathless. “I’ve found among its lower limbs a branch that will serve you admirably, unless I’m much mistaken. Come! Let me lead the way.”