Adjourning to the great hall at the far end of the house, Carin took weapon in hand and shot holes in the hay-stuffed pillowcase. The woodsprite, as was its habit, lodged in the rowan at the doorway and called encouragement while she practiced. Between rounds—they were short: she only had six arrows for her bow—Carin told the sprite how she’d found the book, and she described Verek’s anguish upon reading its last pages.
She pulled out her copy of Legary’s final entry, read it to the sprite, and gave the creature her thoughts on the text’s meaning. Now, too, seemed the right time to tell the sprite what Verek had said about the “master wysard” who had brought them both to Ladrehdin.
The sprite hung on her every word. Though eager to find in Legary’s narrative some clue to the identity of the blackheart who awed Verek, the sprite had to agree with Carin, after lengthy discussion, that nothing in the poem pointed definitely to their elusive quarry.
“But you’ll keep looking, won’t you, my friend?” the woodsprite pleaded. “With each bit of news you bring me, my hope grows that you may yet discover the power that will send me homeward. You won’t let me down, my friend. I know you won’t.”
“I … right,” Carin murmured, trying to be kind but noncommittal. Even if she did learn the name of the power, would it be possible—or wise—to seek an audience with a wizard who out-magicked Verek?
At the table that evening, it was again only Carin and Myra. The housekeeper, now thoroughly worried about her absent master, tried to pry details from Carin about the written passages that had sent Verek into seclusion. She feigned ignorance, uncertain how much she could or should tell.
“I’ll ask this of you, then,” Myra said when Carin gave her no satisfaction. “Will you sleep lightly tonight? Your bedchamber being so close to my master’s private rooms, you can hear better than I can when I’m tucked away in my cozy chamber aft the kitchen. Will you come for me at once if you hear the lightest footstep on the stair, or the faintest creaking of a door, or any sound of my master abroad in the night? For I’m sorely troubled, dearie, that my good master doesn’t take up the dishes that I leave at his door, or answer me when I tap and call his name. I fear some ill has befallen him.”
Quaffing her ale to quiet a fit of nerves, Carin composed herself. Then she asked the one question that she’d never wanted answered in all her weeks under the warlock’s roof.
“Uh, Myra, where are Lord Verek’s private rooms? You said my bedroom is close to his, but I’ve never seen his door.”
Myra lifted her bulk from the kitchen table with more agility than Carin would have credited her with.
“Oh my, dearie!” the woman exclaimed as she lit a candle. “I quite forgot. To be sure, you wouldn’t know. ’Tis no wonder that you’ve never seen the doors to the master’s rooms. Those who do not know where to look can hardly make shift to see. Come, child, and I’ll show you the secret.” She beckoned for Carin to follow her. “And then I’ll be wanting you to give a little tap and call out the master’s name. Maybe he’ll answer to the one who makes his evenings pass so pleasantly with her reading from the puzzle-book.”
On legs unwilling, Carin followed the woman into the dark ground-floor hallway. Halfway along it, Myra stopped and pointed to the interior wall. In the smooth stonework, Carin could see nothing that resembled a door. But the housekeeper, with one plump finger, silently traced out a width of wall. Then she stretched her arm over her head, and by candlelight swept out a half circle as though indicating the arch of a doorway.
As reluctantly as if the wall were made of human skulls, Carin stepped closer and felt the stones where Myra had outlined the shape of a door. Her hands detected what her eyes could not. There was indeed a break in the stonework. And filling that break were what felt like the planks of a timber door.
Even the walls of this wizards’ lair are bewitched, Carin thought, running her fingers over the planks.
“There, dearie!” Myra exclaimed. “You’ve found it. ’Tis the lower door to my master’s chambers. Give it a good knock, won’t you? And speak his name. Drisha willing, he’ll answer you.”
Carin rapped at the invisible door as firmly as she dared, and called out for Verek. She got no answer, only an echoing silence which the thudding of her heart seemed to fill.
Myra, fussing like a mother goose with a lost gosling, led the way back to the foyer, then upstairs to the landing that fronted Carin’s bedroom. As Carin had feared she would, the woman turned down the corridor that led to the double doors between the minor and master wings of the house. But only a few steps down the passageway from Carin’s bedroom, Myra halted and pointed at a section of wall opposite one of the hallway’s high windows.
Here, in fact, there was no need for the housekeeper to point out an invisible portal. Though Carin could no more see it than she could see the lower door to Verek’s apartments, an untouched tray of food on the floor announced the door’s location.
Myra clucked over her master’s refusal to eat. She picked up the tray, then urged Carin to rap at this door as well. Carin did so and called out the warlock’s name. He didn’t answer.
Returning with Myra to the kitchen, Carin spent the rest of the evening trying to convince the woman that her “good master” was unlikely to come to harm in his own house. Myra went to her bed still worried.
And secretly, Carin didn’t blame her. How dangerous this house could be, with its serpent-fanged books and its dragon-spawning pool of magic, she had seen and experienced for herself.
She crept silent as a moonbeam up the stairs to her room, and there lay awake for some time. For reasons unrelated to Myra’s request, Carin listened intently for any sound from the direction of Verek’s rooms. She couldn’t stop thinking about the dozens of times that she had slunk past Verek’s invisible doors, all unawares. Every walk down the lower hallway to the library, to steal an hour reading when she should be working, and every skulking along the upper corridor to reach the great hall for her private archery practice, had been done practically under the warlock’s nose. How she’d avoided getting caught, only Drisha knew.
Slipping into Carin’s thoughts, just before sleep came, was the realization that Verek’s rooms must have at least one more secret door. How many times had she known him to exit through the library’s creaky portal to the cave of magic, when what he sought was the privacy of his apartments? He wouldn’t descend all the way to the cave, cross its considerable expanse, then climb three long flights to reach the upper corridor and his upstairs door. It was more likely, Carin supposed, that the library’s shadowed portal opened not only upon the spiraling stairwell to the cave, but also to a bespelled doorway by which Verek could gain his private rooms.
This house, she thought sleepily, suits its master perfectly. The one has as many twists, and dark and secret places, as the other.
* * *
Sunrise did not bring the warlock down to breakfast. An anxious Myra took trays to both of his hidden hall-doors, trusting to the aromas of fried bacon, poached eggs, and fresh-baked bread to draw her master from his retreat. The sight of food piled at each unseen entrance to Verek’s den made Carin think of baited traps at mouse holes.
In the library she neglected to sort books, but instead pricked holes in the spell that cloaked Legary’s account of “the adept” and the “ungifted.” It was a risk. If Verek chose to end his seclusion at just that moment and caught her trying to read the Book of Archamon, Carin might feel his wrath as never before.
But the warlock did not appear. His absence, and what might account for it, was the sole topic of Myra’s monologue—Carin could not call it conversation—when the women ate together at midday.
After lunch, she volunteered to take a fresh offering to Verek’s upstairs door to save the housekeeper the climb. Carin found the invisible entryway by feel, and rapped briskly. She waited awhile for an answer. Getting none, she continued along to the unused wing. She retrieved her bow and handful of arrows from their hiding plac
e in an alcove of the balcony and descended to the floor of the great hall.
There, Carin shot her six arrows as quickly as she could put them to the string and let fly. Sighting down each shaft kept her from seeing, in her mind’s eye, the pain that had contorted Verek’s face as he’d fled the library and the Book. Concentrating on the target, Carin couldn’t think about the manic excitement that had gleamed in Verek’s eyes when the Jabberwock proved itself to be a killer. Roughly she yanked her arrows out of the hay-packed pillowcase, then stalked back to the shooting line and squared her stance.
As she raised the bow and took more careful aim for the next round, a clipped voice called down from the balcony at her back:
“Hold firm! Don’t let the arrow creep.”
Carin convulsively released the arrow and jerked her head toward the voice at one and the same moment. The shot went wild. The missile sped to the rowan that grew in the servants’ entrance. The sound of it thudding into the bark was lost in the woodsprite’s scream.
Chapter 20
The Truth
She dropped her bow and sprinted for the doorway. The rowan stood like a sentry with her arrow protruding from its silvery-gray livery. Carin put her fingers to the wound and called frantically for the woodsprite. Had she killed the creature?
She had not. The sprite answered her, not from the rowan but from the nearby oak that was their frequent meeting place.
“Carin!” the creature exclaimed in a voice shriller than usual. “What a fright you gave me! I was shaken to the roots when the arrow hit my dwelling-tree. But the rowan had hardly roused to the first inklings of its pain before I sought the comfort of this familiar bole.”
“You’re all right?” Carin demanded as she joined the creature at their tree. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”
“Be easy, my friend. I’ve suffered no damage,” the sprite assured her. “And look who comes in your wake. The mage himself trails you out the door.”
In her worry for the sprite, Carin had temporarily forgotten the sharp voice of instruction that had startled her into shooting wild. Turning now, she discovered Verek standing in the servants’ entrance. He was inspecting the arrow she’d embedded in the thin-barked rowan. In one hand, he held her homemade bow. From his trousers’ pocket protruded the five shafts that Carin had left on a table in the great hall.
Verek pulled her arrow from the tree. He nocked it and made a few experimental draws, with the missile pointed groundward, testing the stiffness of her greenwood bow. Then he raised the weapon and sent the arrow flying into the wooded wilderness behind the hall.
Carin, feeling as if a beloved caged lark had been lost to the open skies, dug her fingernails into her palms. She would never find the precious thing in the undergrowth.
The warlock took another of her arrows from his pocket and fitted it to the bowstring, but kept it pointing at the ground as he walked to the oak where she stood. Carin steadied herself with a hand on the sprite’s tree.
Unlike his wild-man’s reappearance after he nearly drowned in the wizards’ well, this time when Verek rejoined his world he was neatly groomed and dressed. His long hair was combed; his beard and mustache trimmed. He wore a fresh white shirt under a russet-red woolen vest that Carin coveted for its warmth. The chill of the late-autumn afternoon was quickly banking the fire that restlessness and brief exercise had built in her muscles.
Traces of yesterday’s anguish showed in Verek’s face. Under puffy, red-rimmed eyes, his mouth was tight. The pain of his reading from the Book of Archamon might be duller today, but the words had made a wound that still gaped.
“Good day to you, mage!” the sprite called heartily at Verek’s approach, startling Carin. The creature might have been welcoming a dear friend. “How does this crisp, bright, fall day find you? In good health and spirits, I trust?”
“I’m well enough,” Verek snapped. “How is it, sprite, that you dare to trespass so brazenly on my private grounds? By whose leave do you come here?”
“By your own,” the sprite said. Its reedy voice sounded unconcerned. “Have you forgotten? On the morning when I led you to the ancient oak that gave sanctuary to my friend Carin, I exacted a promise from you. In return for my help, you gave me your word that you wouldn’t hinder my speaking to her, once you’d returned her safely to your house. And so it is that I come here to visit my friend and offer her what comfort I can. For it seems that this traveler from a far country regards you with a sentiment akin to horror.”
“And well she should,” Verek growled. “For I threaten her daily with bread and meat and featherbeds, and order her to take such care in her duties as to do herself no injury.” He flexed the bow again, still pointing its nocked arrow downwards. “Against these mortal threats, she arms herself, I see. From whence came this rough-made bow and these sticks that serve it for arrows?”
Carin’s face burned, and she was glad when the sprite replied as though the question were meant for it alone. She didn’t mind the woodsprite talking about her as if she weren’t standing there, if it saved her answering the warlock’s gibes.
“Isn’t her bow a pretty thing?” the sprite exclaimed, with more enthusiasm than Carin’s inexpert effort merited. “Our traveler made it herself … with my help. I found the yew-tree that gave up a limb to the purpose. Carin has practiced diligently with it,” the creature added. “Rare now are her misses—if no voice comes from above to surprise her off the target.”
Verek shot Carin an annoyed look.
“If you still possess the power of speech,” he snapped, eyeing her with a directness that silenced the sprite, “oblige me, pray, with the name of the one from whom you learned to shape a bowstave. A wheelwright’s bondmaid could have had no need of such training.”
Carin shook her head. “No one taught me,” she snapped back at him. “I learned it from a book.” She named the dog-eared volume that had been her sole source of archery lore, and was surprised to see a look resembling pleasure cross the warlock’s face.
“An excellent text,” he muttered. “In my youth I consulted it daily as I learned the song of the bow.”
Verek questioned her no further, but raised the weapon and sent the second of her arrows to lose itself in the wilderness. With a frown, he shortened the string—Carin’s light bow obviously lacked the power he required in his own—and then shot her remaining armory into the overgrowth. To complete her disarmament, he took her bow with him as he returned to the rowan-guarded doorway and disappeared through it. Not another word did the warlock say to either Carin or the sprite.
Leaning against the oak, Carin swore vehemently. “I hate him! I wish he had strangled in the wizards’ well, or starved himself to death.”
“Do not speak so!” the woodsprite shrilled in her ear. “Without the mage’s help, my friend, how do we find the master wizard? Without the one to lead us to the other, how shall we make our passage home?”
Carin pushed away from the tree and took her leave of the single-minded creature. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. “And if you’ll find me a limb that’s as good and strong as the first one was, I’ll make another bow. Verek won’t stop me, not as long as there’s a tree left standing around here.”
When the sprite had promised to help, Carin told it good-bye and stepped inside the servants’ entrance. She waited in the great hall until the creature had sparked away, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She wished to nurse her disappointments privately.
And she wanted no more meetings with Verek this afternoon. Since he’d returned to the occupied wing through the upper corridor, she might hope to avoid him by way of the remnant path through the wilds, which would take her to Jerold’s garden. From there, both the stable and the door to the kitchen would be within reach.
First, however, Carin meant to search for her armory. Finding six arrows in the verdant snarl would be like combing a haystack for toothpicks. Making replacements would be much easier than locating the originals. But
Verek had thrown away her work with such contempt, he’d forced her to at least try to find her arrows.
Heedless of damage done to her breeches and Verek’s borrowed shirt, Carin pushed her way through the tangle behind the house, in the direction of the warlock’s last four shots. The arrows, if they hit no trees, would have traveled far. Verek’s expert shooting had coaxed more distance from her bow than Carin had thought it could give.
With only guesswork to guide her, she pressed on into the wooded wilderness until she’d gone a distance roughly equal, if luck were with her, to the arrows’ flight. Then she began a careful search, ignoring the voice of reason that declared it hopeless.
What Carin soon glimpsed through a screen of knotty vines was no arrow, but moss-covered stonework. She had found—what? A back part of the kitchen facilities that had once served the great hall?
Among her earliest discoveries at Verek’s house, during her free afternoons of roaming the grounds, Carin had stumbled across the ruins of the main kitchens—crumbling, roofless, overgrown, their gaping windows staring past the foliage like blind eyes. Those kitchens—way larger than Myra’s domain at the opposite end of the house—adjoined the great hall, however. The stonework Carin could just make out now, through the vines, seemed much too distant from the house to have served any purpose in the family’s long-ago festivities. Perhaps she was seeing the back wall of the fortifications that enclosed the manor grounds.
But no—
As Carin drew nearer, she found no high wall stretching away in both directions. The mossy stones that peeked from the greenery formed one corner of a low building. The face of the building that she could see through the undergrowth had no windows. Its one wide door was secured with a massive padlock. Wrought of black iron, the door curved along its top edge to fit the arch of the portal that it sealed. And upon the keystone of the arch was cut the name Verek.
WATERSPELL Book 1: The Warlock Page 30