The Wysard (Waterspell 2)

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

  “Perhaps I would want it back,” the woman answered Verek’s question, shrugging indifferently. “Perhaps not. I have caught some fish not worth keeping. What is this creature you speak of?”

  “If the wight has a name,” Verek replied, “I do not know it. It seems to be no more than a living spark, flitting through the trees like a firefly. For want of a better word, I call it a woodsprite.”

  Carin kept her relief to herself, not daring even a gratified sigh at remaining anonymous. She did not want to be revealed to this woman. In Carin’s head, reason and caution combined their voices in one loud whisper, warning that no good would come of earning the notice of this cold-eyed woman.

  The lady slowly nodded. “Yes, I remember. It was years ago—one of my earliest captures, as I recall. The creature was useless, merely a flash in the trees, no more to be bottled than sunlight. I was glad to be rid of it. Do you mean to make me a gift of the thing?” She sniffed. “Pray pardon me if I am not properly appreciative of your generosity.”

  Verek shook his head. “No, my lady, I do not bring you the woodsprite. The irksome creature beset me through many weeks of travel, but recently it has abandoned the journey.” He paused, as if in thought, then added: “It may be, however, that I will see the nuisance again, and I would fain ‘bottle it,’ as you say. Do you know a way that I may bring the creature to heel and rid myself of its presence once and for all?”

  Her son’s seeking her advice seemed to please the woman. She jumped up with less refinement than had marked her movements before, and glided over the pool’s sparkling surface.

  “Come,” she said, gesturing toward the end of the pool opposite the steps. “Perhaps there is something, in my trifling collection of charms, that may prove useful against the pest.”

  She led them to a tiered dais crowded with odd ornaments. On the top shelf was a single object, a ball midway in size between a plum and an apple, perfectly round and smooth, and so black it seemed to blot up sunlight. Carin couldn’t gaze at it. After a few seconds it grew enormous in her mind’s eye. She felt herself falling into the sphere. Hastily she shut her eyes, and she was careful to be looking elsewhere when she opened them again.

  The second tier held four objects. One was a beautifully enameled brooch in the form of a vine, its stem weaving through an elaborate spiral pattern, green leaves growing at close intervals from the stem, edged and veined with gold and amazingly lifelike. Complementing the vine brooch was a water-lily pin of exquisite craftsmanship, the delicate white flower also rivaling nature’s work.

  Beside the jewelry was a dull brown, rough strip of what appeared to be ordinary tree-bark. It looked as out of place in the collection as a woodsman wearing homespun in a crowd of bedizened ladies. For, lying next to the bark, was a neck-chain of silver, bearing two crystal pendants that were shaped like sleek, stylized dolphins.

  To keep herself quiet, Carin bit the insides of her cheeks. She knew those dolphins. They were perfect twins to the crystal trinket that Verek had bade her steal from a child’s bedroom on an unknown world. In fact, the neck-chain that bore these two had a place for a third. One silver mounting was empty.

  Carin’s gaze darted from the necklace to the woman who walked on water. The lady stood now in the edge of her pool, studying the dais with a thoughtful air. The part of Carin’s wit that was busily rethinking four months of conjecture and guesswork took a moment to note the obvious:

  Behold the master magician. Here is the one who brought me to Ladrehdin, and the woodsprite before me. Here stands the wysard who frightens Verek so badly that he won’t say her name.

  The sorceress seemed unaware of Carin’s scrutiny. She held out her hand, palm up, with her slender fingers forming a cup. Something flew into her palm from the third level of the dais. That tier held a jumble of twenty or more objects, some as mundane as the tree-bark, others magnificent, crusted with gemstones.

  The woman held up the item that she’d summoned to her hand. It was a small, bejeweled, ruby bottle.

  “This might contain the creature that plagues you.” She gave Verek a hopeful look. “The difficulty, however—as I have discovered by dint of much trouble—is that the charms may act in unexpected ways. One does not always get what one seeks. There’s nothing for it but to make the magic and observe the results.” She twiddled the bottle coquettishly. “Shall I open the void and see what takes the bait?”

  “Stay a moment, if you please, my lady,” Verek replied, his tone smooth now, and engaging. With the manner of one who was feeling more at ease in strange surroundings, he slipped his bow and quiver from his shoulder and laid them casually at the foot of the dais.

  “I am bedazzled by these charms of yours,” he went on, his voice more than conversational. He sounded almost teasing. “Pray favor me with a lesson in their natures and their uses. What is the meaning here, for instance, in this row of blackened, misshapen lumps?” Verek gestured at the bottom tier of the dais. It held nothing recognizable, only a multitude of fist-sized chunks that looked as if they’d been in a fire.

  Carin’s circumspect gaze shifted to the warlock. What was he doing? For the love of Drisha, he couldn’t be falling under the spell of this woman, could he? Such malevolence as Carin felt from the sorceress must beat at Verek’s magian sensibilities like a dark storm.

  But the witch proved as willing to show off her amulets as any mother would her children.

  “The many burnt ones are my failures,” she said cheerfully. “I keep them to remind me of how much remains unknown and lies beyond the craft of even the most skilled wysard. This next row holds the charms I have yet to test.” She gestured at the tier from which she had taken the ruby bottle. “You may judge for yourself, from their number, how great is the task that awaits me.”

  “I think it must be—and has been—considerable,” Verek murmured.

  “Quite so. Look to the second row,” the woman said, “and you will see those few with which I have tasted success, only to have it spoiled by bitter disappointment. You came here to condemn me, Theil Verek, though I perceive that your censure is turning swiftly to admiration. Well should your disposition soften toward me. I have been years at this task, searching in distant places for that which Ladrehdin now lacks. And little it’s gained me, save the virtue of patience.”

  Verek nodded. “I am moved to commend you, gracious lady, for the fortitude you have shown in the face of many setbacks.”

  He indicated the single item topping the sorceress’s collection, the weird black ball. “Perhaps I may guess the importance of this extraordinary object. It is the ‘bait,’ isn’t it, with which you caught your greatest prize?”

  “It is indeed.” The woman’s eyes shone with a cold sort of pleasure. “And if you displease me no more, with words of reproach, but continue to honor me as a son should honor his mother, then I will permit you a glimpse of that most valuable catch.”

  Verek made a courtly bow. “I am undeserving of your kind favor, my lady. If I may impose upon your patience a little longer, however, I crave to know the story of this pretty piece.” He pointed to the necklace of crystal dolphins. “Why it should catch my eye above the other jewels of your excellent treasury, I cannot say. Except I have never seen its equal,” he lied. “There is that about it which intrigues me.”

  The sorceress was looking ever more content with her wayward son.

  “You’ve a sharp eye,” she purred. “Yes—that little bauble held great promise. It found for me a world much like our own Ladrehdin. In that realm, I could sense an age-old magic. But the power had long been neglected. It slumbered in deep abeyance. My excitement was great when I opened the void and drew on that ancient force. ‘Here I will find an apprentice strong in the power,’ I thought, ‘to train up in the ways of wizardry. I may also discover a pool of new magic to mix with the ebbing waters of Ladrehdin and return this land to wysards’ rule. Far too long have the monks and the mortals held sway.’”

  “Long indeed,�
� Verek said, nodding. “But what did you find across the void?”

  “My hopes were blighted there.” The woman frowned. “Nothing appeared in the vortex but an artless girl-child, small and frightened, utterly without value. Didn’t I say that I have caught some fish not worth keeping?” She sniffed. “From a sea of sleeping magic, I hooked nothing but a fingerling!”

  Carin almost choked. Verek appeared to be holding himself together with some effort. When he spoke again, however, his voice betrayed nothing but polite interest.

  “And did you throw the fingerling back, my lady?”

  She scoffed. “Certainly not. In the beginning it could be the work of years to breach the void but once—though swifter have come my successes of late. I would not waste my strength or deplete the power of this place”—she gestured at the bubbling pool under her feet—“to return to its native waters a gasping fish that was more easily thrown away on Ladrehdin. The sprat fell out of the vortex far from here. What became of her, I’ve no idea. It’s of no consequence. What matters is the charm’s failure to net me something useful from such a promising world.

  “Perhaps,” the woman added with the suddenness of one to whom a thought had just occurred, “perhaps, my son, you and I may join our talents for another try.” She smiled at Verek in a way that made Carin’s skin crawl. “Together, we would be formidable, you and I.”

  The wizard inclined his head in a noncommittal nod. “I believe, madam, that such an alliance would not be wise. Assuredly, it is not the reason for my coming here.”

  He lifted his chin and continued, “You have been generous, in telling me what I needed to know about these things.” He indicated the dais with its ornaments. “The task will not prove as overwhelming as I feared it must be. You have destroyed the greater number already.” Verek pointed to the bottom row, the one covered in charred rubble. “Those remaining are a most manageable lot.”

  Striking with the speed of an adder, the wizard grabbed the black ball off the top of the dais. He dropped it down the front of his shirt, had one hand on the dolphin necklace, and was reaching for the strip of bark before the sorceress could react.

  “No!” she screamed. “Leave them!”

  She raised her hand. Yellow fire like a streak of sulphurous lightning leapt from her palm and hit Verek in the chest.

  He went sprawling. The necklace clattered from his grasp onto the flagstones. But he regained his feet like a practiced fighter, coming up in a crouch, ready to parry the next blow.

  None came. The sorceress lowered her hand.

  “Trickster!” She said it with a sneer while backing with undignified haste toward the center of the pool that supported her. “I have been beguiled by pretty manners and a handsome face I would fain love. But now I see your treacherous heart. No, Theil Verek, you will not have what you came for. Return to me my property and be gone! Your business here is done.”

  “Far from it, madam,” Verek said, straightening. Gingerly he rubbed his chest where her thunderbolt had hit him. “I mean to end these otherworldly trespasses of yours before the agents of ruin can pour through the gates that you have opened. There must be no further delay—

  “For years I did nothing,” he added, speaking quickly. “I refused to understand the danger. I denied there was any need to act. In the beginning, your transgressions were easy to ignore, they happened such long years apart. But your most recent offenses have been separated by only weeks. And with those, your scheme ends. I have come in all haste, through winter winds and snows, to stop these outrages before you have done irrevocable damage. You will relinquish to me the five talismans with which you have violated the sovereignty of other realms, and you will stand aside while I destroy those as yet untested.”

  “Certainly not!” the sorceress cried. “Go! Leave me at once, or—” She broke off, but the black fury in her eyes delivered the threat more convincingly than any words could.

  “Or what, madam?” Verek pressed her. “Or die? Do you intend to murder me—as you murdered my family?”

  Carin made a little strangling sound at the back of her throat. She could no more stop it than she could stop her heart. The two combatants were too intent on each other, however, to notice her.

  “Of what do you suspect me?” the sorceress murmured, her pale face flushing, but not with shame. The set of her head and the gleam in her eye spoke to Carin of excitement, not guilt.

  “I do not ‘suspect,’ madam,” Verek snapped. “I know. I know you killed my father. How you did the deed, I am not certain. A simple poisoning seems likely. Had you worked the black art against your husband, my grandfather would have known of it. And he did not know of your perfidy, madam, for ten long years.”

  The woman smiled, as if enjoying a private joke, but made no reply.

  “What gave you away?” Verek demanded. “An unguarded word … or a gloating look such as you now wear? I remember little of that night—only my grandsire storming through the house in search of you, shouting his rage, and you nowhere to be found. Your escape—by the barest of margins, it must have been—left him in a frenzy. He was in no fit state to offer solace or explanation to a boy who was suddenly bereft of his mother.”

  At this, the sorceress looked slightly surprised, perhaps startled to think that her son might have missed her. Verek, however, shook his head and rushed on:

  “I needed no comforting—maternal affection was never what I had from you, was it, madam? I soon put you out of my mind … except for a few dark recollections that filled me with terror. My grandfather never spoke of you again, but threw himself passionately into my training. It was only later that I realized how desperately he tried to counter your early—shall we call it ‘influence’?—upon me. He bent every effort to teach me the ways of Archamon.”

  “Archamon!” The sorceress spat the name. “The ancient magician you hold in such high regard was afraid of the power. He taught his followers to fear it. Legary could have been the greatest adept ever to practice the craft, had he not been too timid to use the vastness of his strength.”

  “Not too timid, madam,” Verek retorted, shaking his head again. “Too wise. It is a pity he lacked wisdom to see the danger you posed to his House and his honor.”

  “‘House’ and ‘honor’!” the woman sneered. “Spoken like a true squire of Ruain. Shall I tell you of Legary’s ‘honor’? Shall I tell you how he slighted his son when he realized that milksop, Hugh, had barely a trace of the gift? Legary scoured the countryside then, searching for a fit apprentice to take the boy’s place. He found no candidate but that peasant Jerold. Even so long ago as that, the gift had become rare in the children of Ladrehdin. He did his best with Jerold, but that ingenuous one could never hope to achieve Legary’s mastery.”

  “No,” Verek quietly agreed. “None could.”

  “But then the great wysard came to me with a proposal,” the sorceress said, smirking. Carin was hanging on her every word. A quick glance at Verek showed him equally attentive, but with a fierce frown on his face.

  “I remember that meeting as if it were yesterday,” the woman said. “Indeed, is it not whispered of yet, whenever wysards gather to lament their loss? Do they not speak in awe and disbelief of the only time a sage of Archamon trafficked with a necromancer of the West?

  “‘By the Powers!’ Legary swore to me. ‘If I cannot procure by natural means an adept worthy to follow me as master of Ruain, then I shall contrive a chimera. My inept son is now of an age to marry. Be a wife to him and give me a grandchild deserving of my name and both our lineages.’

  “I agreed at once,” the woman said. “We of the West had also remarked with much dismay the shrinking pool of candidates for apprenticeship. Something had to be done. I was eager, therefore, to mix my blood with a man of Ruain’s in hopes of reviving our dwindling power.”

  “And so I was born,” Verek commented dryly.

  “And so you were.” The sorceress nodded. “You were hardly more than an infant when w
e knew we’d succeeded. You possessed a gift such as none had boasted since Legary’s generation.”

  “By ‘we,’ I take it you mean yourself and my grandsire,” Verek interposed, his voice a rapier. “For my father did not survive my infancy, did he.”

  “Hugh was weak,” she snapped. “I had you. I did not need him.”

  “Only the issue survives,” Verek recited. “The issue of a union corrupt—and he with demon’s taint upon his gift.”

  “What?” the sorceress demanded, sounding puzzled.

  Carin eyed the wizard. What had it cost him to speak aloud his grandfather’s words of condemnation?

  Verek shook his head. “You would not know the verse, madam. My lord Legary wrote it after you had fled his house and lands. He was horror-stricken at what he had done—his House dishonored, his son murdered, his grandson corrupted. And all for arrogance and ambition.”

  “Ambition is no bad thing,” the sorceress said. “You would do well to show more of it. In your veins flows the blood of the two most powerful wysards Ladrehdin has produced in eight hundred years, and yet you do nothing with the gift but mix herbs and heal sick peasants.”

  Verek glared at her. “And how is it, madam, that you know how I spend my time?”

  The woman laughed, prickling Carin’s neck-hairs.

  “I have my ways—my spies, I should say. Perhaps you believe I have taken no part in your life for thirty years and more, but I had word of you and yours, whenever I cared to.”

  The wizard bared his teeth like a cornered animal. So contorted were his features, Carin could not bear to look at him.

  “Did your spies tell you,” he snarled, “how Legary rejoiced with a loud voice when my son was born, that the child carried no trace in his veins of your foul blood?”

  “They did,” the sorceress replied coolly.