Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) (19 page)

“I intend to go up that mountain, and I’ll come back unchanged. In the meantime, I must do something about the Witchservers. If you’ve clover growing in these parts, quietly tell your friends and neighbors about its charm. It would help confound these servants of Emaldar.”

“I’ll begin at once,” said Featherstone eagerly. “In a few days, you’ll see them become confused, anyway, when I distract their attention to their stronghold. Watch your chance, then overpower them. Without the constant, close attention of their Queen, the Witchservers will become powerless. Ordinary Men again.”

“I see. Yes, I’ll pass the word.”

“I have to go. I’ve put a Warming Spell on your clothes, such as they are. That should keep you comfortable until the weather improves. It’s a small thing I can do for you, Featherstone.”

“You’ve done more than enough! You’ve given me some hope!” whispered the leather merchant’s son.

Douglas waved good-bye and retreated unseen down the hill to the postern in heavy rain—which hid the sound of his footsteps. He paused within two yards of a pair of slovenly Witchserver guards at the postern and heard them talking.

“What news, brother?” one asked.

His fellow glanced around with care before answering. “The night watch captured a powerful Wizard on this very spot just last night! They’ve taken him off to Coven Castle.”

He blew his running nose noisily between dirty fingers.

“Who? A powerful Wizard? Wish I’d been there!”

“You lie in your teeth,” the other sneered. “You and I were lucky to be off watch when the orders came. Wizards like this here Brighteyes are not to be trifled with! I’m just surprised that he didn’t tear down half the town fighting them night dogs off.”

They moved away. Douglas slipped behind them through the postern gate and escaped over the plank bridge without being challenged.

“They think Cribblon is
you,”
said Marbleheart when Douglas told him of his adventure. “How nice for us but how terrible for Cribblon! I was beginning to like him.”

“If Cribblon told them he’s me,” said Douglas, starting to dismantle the campsite, “and they believed him, he’s fairly safe. They’ll fear him mightily, I would think. At least until Emaldar examines him more closely. I hope Cribblon will have the wits to remain silent as long as he can. This Witch Queen will want to know what the Fellowship knows of her, so perhaps she won’t do anything too drastic until she realizes that she has caught Cribblon, not me.”

“Where are we headed, then?”

“For Coven, of course!”

Marbleheart chuckled. “I suspected that would be the case. Well, let’s hope the mountain streams are filled with trout. I’ve heard they’re great eating.”

“You’re not afraid of going near the Witches?” asked Douglas.

“Not yet!” The Sea Otter checked to see if his marble disk was safe in Douglas’s pack. “But I undoubtedly will be, very soon.”

****

Stormy Petrel, on midday patrol over Waterand, spied the black speck while it was still miles away to Sea. He beat his long, strong wings to gain altitude, circling the peak of Watch Hill.

The speck slowly resolved itself into a waving black line with a dot in the middle. The Petrel’s sharp bird vision soon recognized the stranger as a large Crow, coal black with a wickedly sharp yellow beak and ragged tail feathers. Although his body weight was about the same as the Petrel’s, his wingspread was less than half. He flopped, flapped, and labored to stay aloft in the turbulent updrafts and downdrafts along the northwest shore of Waterand.

The Petrel silently glided between the rising sun and the approaching bird. Then, with a hoarse and terrifying battle scream, he shot almost straight down on the intruder as the Crow crossed the line between rocky beach and trees.

“Aaaaa-eeee! Hold off! Hold off!” screamed the Crow, flipping completely over on its back and dropping like a stone to the shingle. “A message! I carry a message!”

At the last possible moment Stormy Petrel veered to the right, his razor-sharp talons just missing the cowering Crow. A few dull, black tail feathers fluttered off as a warning.

“Messenger?” hissed the fierce seabird. “Message to whom, craven Crow?”

“To one called Flarman Flowerstalk,” sobbed the bird, flattening himself to the rocks in abject submission, wings spread out on either side of him. “Flarman the Fire Wizard, I was told, was here.”

“Stay where you are. Don’t wiggle a pinion!” ordered Stormy, still gliding back and forth over the grounded intruder. “I’ll speak to someone about this.
Do not move!”

“I shall remain as one dead,” promised the Crow, quaking in terror.

Stormy found Augurian and Flarman in the Water Adept’s tower workroom, poring over lists and catalogs just arrived from the former Ice King, his reconstructed accounts of enchanted victims.

“Message from whom?” Flarman asked Stormy.

Stormy merely shook his head.

“Didn’t ask? No matter,” said Augurian. “We’ll have to hear him out, anyway.”

“A big, black Crow a year ago would only have been a spy for Frigeon or maybe Eunicet,” mused Flarman, taking up his conical Wizard’s cap and setting it square on his sunburned, balding head. “But now? Witchery, I would guess.”

“A good working theory,” agreed Augurian. “I’ll have Stormy bring this Crow up here, shall I?”

“Please,” agreed Flarman. “It can only be bad news. Send for your Apprentice, also. She should hear it with us, if it concerns a certain young Witch hunter.”

Stormy Petrel was back in ten minutes with the sandy, shivering Crow, flopping ungracefully in the Petrel’s silent wake.

Myrn had arrived sooner than that and stood beside Augurian, trying not to look worried. She clasped her hands together behind her back so no one would see that she was white knuckled.

“You are?” inquired Flarman sharply, with evident distaste. He had never cared much for Crows.

“Eboneser, Sir Wizard. You are the Firemaster Flarman to whom I am sent?”

“Right you are, Eboneser! And what is your tribe?”

The Crow hesitated for a heartbeat. He was familiar enough with magickers to sense the aura of power these three carried about themselves.

“Of Battlesky,” he muttered. “My ancestor was...”

“Beakert the Brash,” finished Augurian, nodding. “The Black Force standard flyer at Last Battle of Kingdom, you recall, Flarman.”

“I recall Beakert. Last time I saw him he was Beakert the Bashed, however. I didn’t know any of his tribe survived the carnage.”

The Crow, Eboneser, shivered even more and squawked bitterly.

“Our tribal memories are most unpleasant, unkind sirs! Can we get to the business at hand, if you please?”

“Very well, Crow messenger! Our interest is not in you but in those you serve.”

“Serve only as messenger!” insisted Eboneser. “None of us has entered into the doings of the Seven Sisters.”

“You come, then, from Coven?” asked Augurian.

“Aye, Sir Wizard. With a message for Flarman Firemaster.”

“You can speak it aloud in this company,” said Flarman. Crows tended to follow evildoers, were often thieves and always braggarts, cruel mischief makers and cowards.

“This is my message, from the lips of Emaldar Queen, as fast as black wings could cover the distance: ‘To Flarman the Firemaster, also called Flowerstalk....

“‘We have found a sniveling little pest of a Journeyman Wizard, so young he has hardly yet put razor to beard. We hold him securely so he cannot be hurt in this wild land. If you wish to see him alive and whole after this moon, swear to turn your eyes elsewhere, Wizard of Fire!

“‘Leave us to our own devices or we will recruit him to our Service. I speak with Power, for I am ... Emaldar, Witch Queen of Coven.’”

The messenger stood uneasily with head bowed, expecting storms to break and punishments to be meted out on an innocent messenger, but the three Wizards before him stood silent for a while before the Fire Wizard spoke.

“You would be well advised to return not to Tiger’s Teeth or anywhere in Old Kingdom, Eboneser.” His voice was almost kindly now.

“I...must return with your answer, Magister!”

“I repeat, you would be wiser to go elsewhere, as fast and far as possible. There is to be retribution and destruction to follow this deed in Old Kay’s mountains. Those who adhere to—those who willingly serve—this Emaldar Witch are sure to be consumed in the conflagration I see ahead.”

“I may go, then?” said the bird, crouching low, as if expecting a blow.

“Go, and quickly!” cried Augurian angrily. “My islands are not for your likes, carrion eater!”

The window was open to Sea and the black bird wasted no more breath but hurled himself ungracefully through it and was gone.

“See that he goes, and where,” ordered Augurian. Stormy Petrel was already following the crow into the warm air over Waterand.

Flarman stepped quickly to a nearby workbench and began fiddling with a spirit lamp under a clay crucible. Flame sprang up and in a moment he gestured over the pot. It began to smoke and sizzle industriously.

“You ...,” began Myrn, looking very worried.

“Wait!” softly cautioned Augurian, laying his hand on her arm. “He’s looking for some answers.”

The Pyromancer perched heavily on a stool and the other two magickers stood silently by as he studied the smoke and listened to the crackling of the crucible. After two minutes—it seemed much longer to Myrn—he waved his hand downward and the flame died, the smoke drifting out the window.

“Well, maybe this Emaldar is pulling some sort of a bluff,” he told them, dusting his hands together. “It’s just possible that she
believes
she had Douglas in her hands, but her prisoner is really someone else.”

“Cribblon?” guessed Augurian.

“Not the Sea Otter, certainly,” said Myrn.

“I don’t think she would dare claim to hold Douglas if she didn’t believe it was true,” mused Flarman. “It’s possible, also, that this is part of Douglas’s own plan to confront Emaldar, with her thinking she has him safely under lock and key.”

“And Douglas has not said he needs our help, which he should be able to do even if he is captive. No Witch has the power to shut a Wizard up,” declared the Water Adept. He sank down onto another stool and waved Myrn to a seat also.

“We’re making some large assumptions,” said the Apprentice Aquamancer. “It is entirely possible Douglas is not able to communicate with us just now. We could ask Deka to seek Douglas out.”

“Yes, but there’s not sufficient evidence to show it’s necessary to intervene. Besides, Black Witches are bad medicine for Wraiths like Deka. She would go, of course, but Emaldar might harm her.”

Myrn fell silent but listened carefully to the ensuing discussion between the Masters. In the end they agreed to await word from Douglas himself. It was a measure of their confidence in the Journeyman’s ability that they refused to take a direct hand at this point.

“But, Magisters,” objected Myrn, “I feel in my heart Douglas needs and deserves
some
assistance.”

“You’re not only a woman but a Wizard in training,” said Flarman, nodding his head. “Your intuitions can’t be ignored. But please recall, Douglas is
Journeying
as is required by the bylaws and regulations of the Fellowship of Wizards in order to earn his Mastery. Assistance from another Wizard might—would certainly—disqualify him from advancement based on this Journey. He’d have to await another opportunity and it might not come for years, decades!”

Myrn considered his words as they went to lunch in Augurian’s private apartments. Her elders spoke of many things, but she was preoccupied and took little part, although she knew much of what they said was part of her own education.

At last, when they were rising to return to their work, she held up her hand for attention and said: “I
will
go to Douglas’s assistance.”

“We’ve already discussed that,” said Augurian with some impatience. “You’ve just begun your training, Mistress, and need to devote all your time and attention to your studies. They become more important and more difficult each day, as you know.

“Besides,” he added after a pause, “you’ve heard Flarman. Even if Douglas is in serious trouble and we interfere, we’ll have set him back years, maybe decades, professionally.”

“I understand that, Magister,” insisted Myrn. “But what if the assistance came not from a Master Wizard, but someone of lower rank?”

The Water Adept turned to the Firemaster, raising his eyebrows in question.

“The regulation says simply that ‘a
Wizard
may not interfere or assist in any way,’” Flarman quoted. “It obviously means a full Master Wizard, or it did so when I wrote it. These things tend to take on a life of their own, as you know, Augurian.”

He drew his bushy brows together in deep thought. “I have known of cases where two or more Journeymen cooperated in fulfilling their requirement to Journey in their art. In addition, there are many cases where a Journeyman was ably assisted by a Familiar.”

“Then, honestly,” said Myrn, reasonably, “assistance from a mere Apprentice ...?”

The older Wizards looked at each other again and eventually Augurian shrugged mightily, deferring to Flarman.

“Yes, I would have to support your contention,” said Flarman. “How about you, Fellow Wizard?”

“I - I - I suppose,” sighed Augurian. “Although, I must admit...Sweet Fanny Adams! You’ve got me in a corner, lass!”

“I’m most sorry, Magister, but—”

“I agree that assistance from a ‘mere Apprentice,’ as you put it, would not constitute intervention under the regulations of the Fellowship. However,” he added quickly, before she could comment, “I must ask whether you would be of real help to Douglas?”

“That’s for you to estimate, as her Master,” pointed out Flarman.

“Myrn is a remarkable young woman. She’s learned a great deal in the year since she began her studies with me. She’d be useful to anyone, especially a Journeyman. She is highly useful to me, I must admit...”

“Then I may go?” asked Myrn.

“I would rather it were two years hence,” sighed the Water Adept, slowly. “But, yes, you have my permission.”