Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) (29 page)

They found Myrn still seated on the bench in front of the building marked Onstabula, speaking to a very scruffy teenaged boy in torn, dirty, and ill-fitting clothes. He looked very much out of place in newly scrubbed Pfantas.

When she saw Caspar she excused herself and flung herself into the old Seaman’s arms, shouting his name joyfully.

“I can’t think of anyone short of Flarman and Augurian I’d rather have with us at this juncture,” she told him after the kissing and hugging was satisfactorily completed. “We’ve all sorts of problems and troubles.”

“Of course,” said Caspar. “Where Wizards are, there is almost always trouble for someone. I’ve brought more assistance, too. Meet Magician Wong Tscha San of Choin, my dear.”

Caspar began to tell how they came to be there, but Myrn held up her hand in apology. Turning to the waiting youth, she said, “Now, Willow, run back and keep a close eye on the Witchservers, please. Let us know where they are and how fast they approach.”

The ragamuffin saluted jauntily, gave the others a broad grin and a wink, and dashed off around the level.

“There’s a small band of young Pfantas rebels hiding in the pine forests,” explained Myrn. “Willow is their leader and he came to warn Featherstone of the approach of a party of Witchservers—they are the willing servants of Emaldar, you must understand—a half-day’s march off, coming toward us from Coventown where the witches have their stronghold.”

“What’s to be done?” asked Pargeot.

“Coming straight on, marching all night, they can’t be here until tomorrow morning at the earliest, Willow says. We shall wait for them and persuade them to take us to Coventown. The way is hidden by a Witch’s hex of confusing. Unless, Sir Magician,” she turned to Wong, “
you
can wipe out the spell. It’s beyond me.”

“I understand,” said Wong, thoughtfully. “Let me see...”

He sat upright on the Onstabula bench with his eyes closed, humming softly to himself for a long moment. Then he frowned and looked once more at Myrn.

He said, “It is not a terribly difficult spell to weave, nor to unravel, even for my poor skill. However, I must warn that when one tampers with such a spelling, the magicker responsible will at once become aware of it. Would you wish to warn this Witch of our presence before it is absolutely necessary?”

“I hadn’t even thought of that!” exclaimed Myrn, making a wry face. “We’d be better advised to wait for the Witchservers to come to us and capture them. They can be made to show us the way, I should think.”

“I see no problem with that plan,” agreed the Choinese. “It will be no great problem to secure the cooperation of these poor, deluded men. Their allegiance surely cannot be overly strong.”

“Nor their intelligence, if those I’ve met are any measure,” agreed the Apprentice. “Thank you, Magister. I feel much more confident, having you here to advise me. You will have to be careful of what you do, however, or it may hamper my Douglas’s efforts to achieve his Mastery.”

“I shall keep that in mind,” said Wong, nodding his understanding.

“I’m not particularly worried about Douglas’s handling of this problem,” said Pargeot, expansively, “especially with Mistress Myrn and myself to assist.”

Featherstone arrived to ask Myrn to address the town meeting, which had convened outside their city hall, the ruin at the top of the hill.

“Ten good and true men and women have agreed to serve as interim town council,” he explained, proudly. “There’s a new spirit in Pfantas, already. A week ago, none would even have spoken to me about such a move!”

“I’ll be happy to consult with them,” said Myrn. “Master Wong Tscha San, will you add your wisdom to an Apprentice’s advice? And, Featherstone, perhaps you’d better hear what young Willow just told me of the approaching Witchservers.”

Myrn and Wong went off, talking earnestly with Featherstone, while Pargeot and Caspar went to the town’s inn to arrange accommodation for the night. Pargeot asked a boy who had followed them to retrieve their kits from across the burn. The lad rushed off, eager to oblige.

“It seems a small thing,” Pargeot said with an apologetic laugh, “but as it happens, I am now the only man in Pfantas who badly needs a shave!”

When they were settled at the inn, Pargeot and Caspar sat down to await the return of Myrn and the Choinese Wizard. They were approached by a messenger from the youth Willow, who sent news of the Witchserver band.

“The scum have stopped three hours’ march away. Camped for the night,” the scout reported. “We’ll watch them still, but it seems they’ll not enter the town until tomorrow sometime.”

“Hmmmm!” said Pargeot. “I’m a fifth wheel here at the moment. Perhaps I’ll return with this man to help his people on their watch.”

“A good idea,” agreed Caspar, who understood the impatience of youth, even when that youth was a full-ranked Seacaptain. “I’ll stay and tell the others.”

Willow’s messenger looked skeptical until he noticed Pargeot’s heavy cutlass and wicked-looking sailor’s dirk.

“Come and welcome, sir,” he said. “We might need your help, if they get an idea to move in dark of night, after all.”

Myrn and the Choinese Sage came to the inn after dark, tired and hungry.

“Good for him!” Myrn sighed when she learned of Pargeot’s departure. “He’s been able to give only small help so far, and I feel sorry for him. Such matters as these are outside his experience.”

“A good man, however,” noted Caspar. “He has the reputation of being an excellent Seacaptain with a cool head in emergencies.”

“The trouble is, we haven’t had any real emergency, yet,” said Myrn. “I’m afraid he believes he owes me some sort of knightly service.”

“There is more to it than that,” put in Wong, softly.

“Yes, I’m aware of his feelings toward me. He’s hopelessly infatuated, I fear. Does it give him some sort of pleasure to beat his head against my devotion to Douglas, and to my profession?”

“He will grow out of it,” promised the Sage, “if it is truly just an infatuation.”

“I may have a stern word with him,” said Caspar. “I know his father and served under his grandfather as well. Perhaps he’ll listen to me.”

“And what would you tell him? To forsake the lady’s presence, forever and forever?” asked Wong, shaking his white head. “No, my good friend! Such opposition, however well intended and sensible, would only serve to harden his resolve to suffer in a hopeless cause.”

“A misty-minded romantic!” snorted Caspar. Then he sighed. “Well and well-a-day! I was that way meself once.

Being at Sea gave young Caspar Marlin a dose of common sense and reality that’s cured him of such foolishness, I guess.”

“It’s not too late,” chuckled Wong, laying a sympathetic hand on his friend’s arm. “Love has a way of striking when least expected—even the most mature of us.”

“Personally, I think we should be planning about tomorrow. It’s full night, already,” said Caspar. “How’s the table in this inn?”

When they had dined—quite well, as it turned out—they retired to the inn’s common room and after three hours of discussion around the coal grate they all went off to their beds.

There had been no further word from the scouts or Pargeot.

****

Douglas and the Sea Otter had spent the whole of that day clambering about on the rugged mountainside, taking as many close looks at Coventown and its castle as the barren rock landscape allowed. They returned to their cave at dark, tired but little satisfied with their small gains in information.

“Cribblon is well and unhurt, as yet. He’s uncomfortable, cold, and wet,” declared Douglas after studying the embers of the fire for a while. “He’s in a rock cavern beneath the castle. A dungeon, rather. I feel locked doors, heavy chains, and bars. But at least until this moment Emaldar hasn’t harmed him. Maybe...”

“She’s softening him up for later?” yawned Marbleheart. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound flippant. Do you foresee any action in the next four hours or so, Wizard?”

“No, none. Even Emaldar is asleep just now.”

“
Then I’ll bathe my poor, rock-ravaged paw pads in the stream for a while, then get some sleep.”

“I’ll be before you,” said Douglas, yawning in turn. “However, I’ll sleep with an ear to the ground, in case the Witch takes it into her head to question Cribblon under cover of night.”

He awoke to listen with Wizard-sharp senses several times during the chill night but it was not until false dawn that he sensed a commotion in the castle in the deep canyon.

“Something’s afoot,” he said to himself and, so as not to disturb the sleeping Otter, crept silently from the cave and made his way to the top of the ridge, where he might have line-of-sight contact with Emaldar’s stronghold.

“We’ve captured
another
man who says he’s Brightglade!” reported the breathless Warlock officer to Emaldar. He’d ridden a rawboned nightmare since before midnight to bring the news. “He came to us out of the night, demanding that we bring him to you, Your Magnificence!”

“Describe this man who claims to be Douglas the Fire Wizard,” demanded Emaldar, pulling her thin dressing gown closer about her.

“My Queen, he is not yet in his middle years...I’d say, maybe twenty and eight or so. He carries himself easily and with grave authority. He is sandy of hair and blue of eye. He stands just under six feet tall.”

“That could be a third of all Men in World,” snapped the Witch Queen. “Now, why should he say he is Douglas Brightglade, in the circumstances, if he is not? In which case...where is this newly taken prisoner now?”

“My men bring him to you as fast as they can, Most Foul, Most Wise Witch. They will be here later today.”

Emaldar sent her breathless and painfully saddle-sore minion away and hurriedly dressed, not neglecting to arm herself with certain Witches’ amulets and dire charms. She went down by secret, dim, and winding stairways, below the cellars of her castle to the deepest and wettest of her dungeons.

“Waken the prisoner!” she barked at Cribblon’s guards. They hastened to do her bidding, cruelly yanking on his chains to disturb the first slumber Cribblon had gained in more than three days.

“Waken, lowest of the low!” She herself prodded him with a sharp heel until he groaned in his misery and turned his head to look up at her, eyes still muzzy with exhaustion.

“Who in the name of Lady Beelzebub herself are you, really?” she asked at once.

“Why ... why ... you said I was Douglas Brightglade,” answered the other.

Witches school themselves in reading the outer signs of men’s inner thoughts, of course. A look of surprised concern had crossed Cribblon’s sleep-loosened face for just a second. It told her the truth more surely than any words he might utter.

“No,
you’re
not Brightglade!” she shrilled at the top of her voice. “The
real
Brightglade has now been captured. You’re only a stinking flunky of some sort, even if you do know a smidgen of magic. He’s being brought to me, even now. And you, my lad, are in deep, deep trouble!”

She turned abruptly and stalked off down the wet dungeon corridor almost at a run, forgetting, in her anger, to order the prisoner slain at once, as she had intended.

Cribblon was grateful for small blessings.

“Oh my, Douglas!” he murmured almost silently in the blackness of his cell, “I trust you know just what you’re doing. What
was
that spell for rusting chains? I almost had it when I fell asleep.”

Emaldar, returning to her quarters, sent for the weary Warlock officer and ordered him to ride back at once to his Witchserver constables. They were to keep their prisoner very carefully and rush him to Coven Castle as fast as possible, stopping neither to rest nor eat on the road.

“Not too gently, this time,” she snapped at him. “I’m tired of these people playing games with me! When he gets here, it’s the Chamber of Pain for him, at once! What are you standing around for, vile varlet! Be off with you at once. Fetch me my enemy!”

On his ridgetop Douglas couldn’t hear or see these events, but he sensed them in ways learned from Flarman after long, hard study and practice. Emaldar now knew her first prisoner was not Douglas Brightglade. Someone else, unknown, had been taken by the Witchservers.

“Who can this one be, I wonder?”

He slid down the gravelly grade to the hidden cave mouth. “Certainly not Flarman. I would be able to sense his nearness. I’ve given him no reason to come to my aid, and he knows I must do this on my own.”

“What’ll we do?” asked Marbleheart when Douglas awakened him and told him of his discoveries.

“Emaldar’s attention is diverted from Cribblon to this new captive,” said the Journeyman. “We’ve got to get inside the castle and get Cribblon out, first of all. We’ll rescue the other when he gets here. Only then can I confront Emaldar, when she has no hostage to hold against me.”

He sat staring into the fire, reading what the flames had to say.

“Could it be...” He hesitated, examining this new intuition again. “Could it be Myrn? I sense her presence at a distance and in that direction, too.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” said Marbleheart calmly. “She would seem, from all you’ve said, the kind to come to your side in trouble.”

“Not too hard to believe she would come after me,” agreed Douglas. “And I can believe she would allow herself to be captured, just to reach Coven, as Cribblon did, intentionally or otherwise.”

He continued to gaze into the embers and the Otter watched in silence.

“It can’t make any difference in our plans. If we go off to rescue this new prisoner, whoever he or she is, the Witch will be warned of us, making it extremely difficult to rescue Cribblon.”

“Nice lady, that!” snorted the Otter. He rolled over on his back and stuck his short legs in the air. “Are we going to go or not?”

“Not, although it galls me to say stay put.” Douglas sighed, reaching for his blanket. “Try to get some more sleep. It’s still too dark and the castle people are astir now with the bringing of news. While Emaldar’s distracted, perhaps I
could
use a spell of invisibility...”