WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  A torn pillowcase thieved from the housekeeper’s mending basket and stuffed with hay made an excellent target. Carin hung it on a wall of the long-deserted banquet hall, near the servants’ entrance where she could talk to the woodsprite and the creature could watch her practice from the safety of its rowan tree.

  Excited though the sprite had been at the prospect of making a new friend in Myra, the creature had never worked up the courage to approach the housekeeper. Myra was seldom outdoors alone, and the sprite had enough discretion not to speak to the woman when Jerold or Verek was present. Their hostility toward the sprite would have poisoned the woman against the creature. The one time, however, when the woodsprite found Myra out of her kitchen and alone in the outdoors, the gray-haired matron had been pulling up weeds with such a passionate zeal for their destruction that the creature’s nerve failed it.

  “The woman was ripping the soft little mites up by their roots!” the woodsprite told Carin, its distress obvious. “She threw the poor things onto a bonfire to burn while still green. The last juices of sap-filled life had not left their veins. It was foolish of me, I suppose, to be so horrified at the savaging of mere weeds; a weed isn’t a tree, after all. But a weed isn’t so very different from a sapling that I couldn’t be moved to pity for the woman’s victims.”

  Half sickened by the stench of burning foliage, the sprite had forfeited its opportunity to make the housekeeper’s acquaintance. And so Carin remained the creature’s only friend in Ladrehdin, and the sprite joined her each afternoon to encourage her attempts to master the bow.

  The two of them went sometimes to the enormous oak that breached the wall beyond the main wing of the house. Carin tried lofting her arrows into the tree’s steeple-high canopy. If she could put a shot over a limb, the arrow might be equipped to trail a string behind it; a dangling string might be used to hoist a rope over the limb; with a rope to climb into the oak’s crown, she might get over the wall and down the other side.

  But all her arrows fell back as though they struck a springy but impenetrable, invisible barrier. They didn’t carom from a hard surface but returned along graceful, not at all natural, arcs.

  The woodsprite noticed their odd trajectories. “Give me a moment,” the creature said to stop Carin’s shooting. It sparked up the tree’s trunk and disappeared among the branches high above her head.

  Presently the sprite was back on Carin’s level, and making a puzzled report.

  “I see nothing among the limbs that might send your arrows along such curious paths. But when I try to leap from limb to limb, I cannot advance any better than the arrows do. There seems to be a skin of sorts. It’s stretched between the branches like the wing-skin of a huge bat in unseen flight. It is not of the tree’s flesh, I’m certain, or I could enter it the same as I press myself within a leaf. Nothing more can I make of it, except that it’s very strong. There is something in the crown of this giant oak that I have not encountered in any other tree.”

  Carin was not terribly surprised. The oak that chinked the wall had been her best hope for making her escape. Of course Verek would know about the imperfection in his defenses, and he would secure it. Or maybe the magic was older than that—as old as the oak itself. The tree had breached the wall centuries ago. Maybe it was Verek’s ancestors who had webbed a spell like bat-wings through the oak’s branches. Whether it was new magic or old, it was effective.

  Wondering what the woodsprite would make of her own new “talent” as a conjurer, Carin eventually told the sprite how she’d summoned the Jabberwock to the wizards’ well. She spoke of her flight through a driving rain to reach the supposed safety of the stable, only to be greeted there by Lanse’s fist.

  The sprite was appalled, not by the bloodthirsty dragon Carin had conjured, but by Lanse.

  “I can’t bear it!” the creature shrilled. “The thought of that youth raising a hand to you has me quivering with rage.”

  It was true. Carin felt a tremble in the tree trunk under her fingers.

  “I promise you the boy’s crime will not go unpunished,” the sprite fumed. “I’ll put myself in a tree above his usual path through the woods, and as soon as my chance comes I’ll make a great bough fall and crack open his worthless head!”

  With effort, Carin persuaded the sprite to restrain itself—at least for now. She was encouraged, though, to think that the creature could be capable of killing. Though its range as a weapon was limited—the intended victim had to pass under the sprite’s tree—having it and her bow in reserve made Carin feel less powerless against Verek and the forces that swirled around him.

  After practicing with her bow, then helping Myra with the evening meal, Carin spent the close of each day in the library, reading the puzzle-book to Verek. To her surprise, the warlock didn’t seem at all disappointed when she reached the book’s twelfth and final chapter, which revealed the whole affair to have been only a child’s dream. Instead, Verek had her read again those snippets that he seemed especially to like, including the poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” from the fourth chapter.

  Carin wondered, as she reread the rhyme, why it appealed to Verek. Remembering the badge at his throat, she thought he must appreciate the verse about the sun shining in the night while the moon sulked:

  “Because she thought the sun

  Had got no business to be there

  After the day was done—”

  For herself, Carin liked the imagery of the sandy seashore where the poem was set. But why that should draw her, she couldn’t say. There were no sandy beaches in Verek’s woods, or on the southern plains that Carin had crossed to reach Ruain.

  One happy fact about “The Walrus and the Carpenter” was that she could translate it word for word. Every term in the otherworldly rhyme had a match in the language of Ladrehdin. In reading the poem to Verek, Carin never had to substitute a Ladrehdinian word that conveyed a meaning close to, but not exactly the same as, the sense of the puzzle-book term.

  She wasn’t so lucky with another of Verek’s favorites from the book: Alice’s provoking of Humpty Dumpty the egg-man, in the sixth chapter. When Carin reread those pages to the warlock, she couldn’t remember how she’d first translated the alien word “cravat.” This time, when she gave it the meaning “scarf,” Verek stopped her and complained that she’d said “neck ribbon” before.

  This led Carin to make a mumbled confession: that, lacking a perfect mastery of either the puzzle-book’s language or the tongue of Ladrehdin, she had given him only a rough translation of some passages from the book.

  Verek threw up his hands, stalked to the liquor cabinet, and poured himself a stiff drink of the ruby-red dhera. After throwing it down—and evidently swallowing some of his displeasure with it—he tersely bade Carin to begin again, from the beginning, and reread the entire book to him. This time through, she was to tell him whenever she came to a word that might have more than one meaning—or no meaning at all—in the Ladrehdinian tongue. They would discuss the sense variations, and together decide the true and proper translation.

  And while they were at it, Verek declared, they’d work out the moves of the “chess” problem that underlay the book’s action. He hadn’t recognized the game, at first, as having its parallel in an ancient pastime from the west called Tanod. When “pawn” Alice reached “the Eighth Square,” however, and found herself crowned, the warlock saw the similarities between Alice’s living game of chess and the nearly forgotten Ladrehdin variant.

  “It’s a very old game,” he told Carin, “not played here for centuries. Somewhere I have a game-board and a few pieces. They’re little more than broken fragments, but perhaps they will add to your second reading of the ‘chess’ problem.”

  Thus speaking, he strode into the library’s shadows and rummaged in a wooden chest, lit by one of his witchlight orbs. Verek’s conjuring of the useful lights no longer startled Carin. She’d come to expect an orb’s appearance whenever she or the warlock needed the illuminatio
n.

  When he returned to their seats at the hearth, Verek carried a small, flat box. Its top was decorated with alternating squares of white and red. He tipped out the box’s contents on the table between the benches, then set up the game-board. Consulting the puzzle-book, which had a drawing of a chessboard with eight pieces on it, he picked out tokens from the box’s meager contents that resembled, in color and shape, those of the drawing. These he placed on the red and white squares to match the illustration.

  Satisfied with his effort, Verek leaned back and gestured sharply at the book, indicating that Carin should take it up.

  “Read,” he ordered. “From the beginning. Omit nothing—except the incantation that calls the dragon. Invent nothing. Stop at any word that eludes your complete understanding.”

  Obeying this order kept Carin—and Verek—occupied for several evenings. They debated the Ladrehdinian translations of puzzle-book words from “telegraph” to “Macassar-Oil.”

  And although they talked much together, they did not grow more comfortable with each other. Verek often showed his temper, and he allowed no questions about any of the mysteries that bedeviled Carin: his plans for the puzzle-book dragon that only she could conjure … the identity of the “master wysard” who could send uncanny whirlpools spinning between worlds … why that blackheart had brought Carin here where she didn’t belong … what power kept winter’s grip away from Jerold’s garden and repelled the curse that deadened the woodland beyond … and the newest puzzle of all, the name of Lord Verek’s mother and what had become of that lady.

  Myra was no further help. The housekeeper hardly paused for breath whenever she had Carin’s company, but the woman never again touched on any of the subjects that Carin wanted her to talk about. In fact, Myra’s endless prattle seemed designed to keep her helper from slipping a question in edgewise.

  Jerold was even less cooperative. The old elf avoided Carin, although she tried to draw him out with a book of brightly painted flowers from Verek’s library—the pictures “done up in glorious colors,” as Myra had advised. One chilly but sunny afternoon, Carin took the book to the grassy lawn that edged Jerold’s garden and sat looking at it for an hour. But the onetime sorcerer’s apprentice didn’t rise to the bait. And no amount of Carin’s poking about the grounds could uncover the elf’s hiding place. Jerold seemed determined to deny her any opening to ask him more about the “magic of life” that held sway in his enchanted garden.

  On her twenty-first morning under Verek’s roof, as Carin mounted a ladder to pull dusty books from one of the library’s topmost shelves, she felt keenly vexed by her many unanswered questions.

  “Why won’t anyone in this house talk to me?” she muttered under her breath as she yanked an ironbound volume to the shelf’s edge, then slid it onto her head. “Really talk, I mean. It’s like everyone here is afraid of my questions. There’s something they don’t want me to find out.”

  Balancing the heavy volume with one hand while tensing neck muscles that were barely up to the task of supporting it, Carin descended with the book. When she had gained the floor and stood above the bench she called her own, she canted her head and let the volume fall.

  “Agh!” What hit the bench’s cushions wasn’t a book, but a coiled, writhing mass of snakes. Two of the serpents sank their fangs into Carin’s hand.

  Even as she jerked away and ran for the hall door, a corner of her mind added this new mystery to all the others that troubled her. How could a book transform itself into a nest of vipers?

  Chapter 19

  The Book of Archamon

  Her shrieks echoed down the passageway. Both Myra and Verek were on their feet when Carin burst into the kitchen.

  “Look!” she gasped, thrusting her palm at Verek. “I’m snakebitten! They were in a book. They were a book. I don’t know where they came from. But they bit me. Sweet mercy, it hurts! Can you do something? Drisha almighty, my hand’s on fire.”

  Verek stared. He took Carin’s proffered hand and studied it. He turned it over to examine the back as well as the palm. Then he held it out to Myra’s view.

  “Tell her,” he instructed his housekeeper. “Maybe she’ll listen to you. The girl doubts every word I say.”

  Myra bustled over, wide-eyed, briefly struck dumb by the commotion. She took Carin’s hand between her warm, pudgy palms, examined it as closely as Verek had, then raised wondering eyes to her master’s.

  “I think the lass has been struck out of her wits. Does she dream a waking dream? Or is it a vision she sees?”

  Carin jerked her hand from Myra’s grasp and cradled it against her body. The hot, throbbing pain was rapidly spreading up her arm. If Verek didn’t soon produce a remedy—whether natural or magical—she might lose a limb to the venom.

  “I can feel the poison in my blood!” she cried. “If either of you can make an antidote, then please hurry and do it. I need help!”

  Verek looked at Myra, one eyebrow raised. Then he grasped Carin’s shoulder on her uninjured side and steered her toward the passageway.

  “Come,” he said. “Show me these vipers that you’ve disturbed. I must know the species of venom if I am to prescribe a remedy.”

  Carin broke away from him and raced to the library. The warlock followed on her heels. She half expected the snakes to have slithered off the bench and scattered about the room, hiding themselves in dark corners. But the serpents writhed on the cushions exactly where she’d dumped them.

  Staying back near the desk, she pointed. “There! Right there.”

  Verek made straight for the bench. Before Carin could shout a warning, he had plunged his hands into the nest of snakes. He lifted the twisting coil.

  And as he did so, the serpents reformed themselves into an ironbound book.

  “The Book of Archamon!” Verek cried, alive with excitement. “You’ve found it! How? Where? Tell me!”

  The warlock lugged the heavy volume to the desk and set it down. Carin drew back, confused. She cradled an arm that throbbed hotly.

  “But—there were snakes! They bit me, and it hurts really bad.”

  Verek reached for her so quickly that Carin could not elude him. He caught her wounded hand and pulled her to the desk. Firmly he pried open the fingers that she clenched in pain. His hand felt cool as it pressed hers flat to the book, his palm covering her nails, his long fingers reaching to the back of her wrist.

  Her pain subsided. The fire no longer swept up her arm. When Verek lifted his hand from atop hers and Carin jerked her palm off the book, she found no trace of an injury. The angry redness had faded away.

  “Magic,” she muttered as understanding dawned.

  The warlock nodded. “A spell … laid on the book to ward off the touch of the unbidden.”

  Verek opened the top cover to reveal a brightly inked frontispiece of no definite design. At least, Carin could see no pattern in its random lines and colors. But as Verek paged through the volume, she began to suspect that more sorcery hid the book’s contents from her view. Frequently the warlock paused in his skimming and studied a few lines, one blunt-nailed forefinger ranging over the page as if to pin down what the text told him. Carin, however, could see only jumbled letters and meaningless marks.

  If she concentrated on any section, looking for characters to make sense, the indecipherable text seemed actually to move. Like a troupe of tiny stick-insects and long-legged water striders, the marks whirled and gyrated across the page until, dizzied by their acrobatics, Carin had to avert her gaze. When she looked back, the characters were still. Their motion—like the writhing of the spectral “snakes”—was a magical illusion.

  “Where did you find this book?” Verek asked again, looking up from it. “It’s not been seen in this house in twenty years.”

  “There, sir.” Carin pointed out the high shelf from which she had pulled it. And as she looked up at the empty ledge, she recoiled. Earlier, distracted by her thoughts of the morning, she hadn’t noticed how near to
the shadows she worked. Her ladder was leaning against a bookcase not an arm’s length from the gloom that lay like black smoke over the library’s recesses.

  While she stared, the edge of the darkness crept nearer the windows. Then it paused, and gradually drifted in the opposite direction, toward the hidden door to the cave of magic. As she watched the black pall undulate with funereal sluggishness over the shelves, Carin realized that the space from which she’d taken the enchanted volume could have been cloaked in shadows only a day—or an hour—earlier.

  Verek seemed to think the same thought.

  “A fortunate happenstance,” he said, “that you should choose to clear that shelf, when so many others await your labors. Tell me: was the book plain to view? Or did it have the aspect of something deliberately hidden?”

  “It was hidden,” Carin replied, nodding. “If the morning hadn’t been sunny, and if the light hadn’t hit the shelves just right, I probably wouldn’t have seen it. The book was lying flat, and it was pushed way back. It looked lost.”

  “It was lost,” Verek said. “Or mislaid, when my grandfather died. It’s a book more ancient than this house, and filled with the wisdom of generations of wysards. My grandfather taught me from this book. I lamented its disappearance. I now delight in its recovery.”

  Verek lifted the opened book with both hands, hefting it, and set it down quickly. “It weighs no less than I remember. How did you manage to get it down without breaking your neck or some part of the furnishings below?”

  Carin let a little pride show as she described her method, worked out over a fortnight of book-sorting, of sliding the heaviest volumes onto her head, then balancing the load with one hand while the other steadied her descent down the ladder.

  The warlock shook his head and placed both hands on his hips in an attitude of disapproval.

  “Such folly is hard to excuse,” he snapped. “Didn’t I tell you, a week ago or more, to call me to any task in this library that is beyond a young woman’s strength? I am better employed—I assure you—in shifting these books than in mending your bones.”