Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) (32 page)

A cool blue flame consumed the mixture and its residue coalesced into a round pool of milky liquid. It spread under them, right to the circle’s edge, where it suddenly congealed into a pearly, hard-surfaced disk.

Douglas spoke a short word of command, and the disk at once detached itself from the rock floor with a ripping sound and rose into the air, carrying them all upon it. Douglas directed its flight with hand signals.

“Elevator Spell,” he explained.

“That’s one I never learned from Frigeon,” said Cribblon in admiration.

“Beats climbing the walls,” said Marbleheart, grinning. As the other two discussed professional details of the spell, he watched the shaft roll down toward them and pass out of sight beneath the rising disk.

There were great clumps of pinkish crystal flowers growing from cracks in the shaft walls. As they passed one large bunch, the Otter stretched out his neck and sniffed at it. It smelled the same as the air and water of Coven. He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

Their flight lasted perhaps ten minutes, until Douglas estimated they were considerably higher than outside ground level, although perhaps not so high as the tallest tower of the castle. He stopped the pearly disk when they reached a promising horizontal tunnel leading off to the left. When they stepped off, the disk crumbled to powder and floated slowly up the shaft, sparkling like snow.

“Air’s fresh,” announced Marbleheart, greatly encouraged by the fact. “We must be near an outlet.”

They emerged suddenly upon a rock ledge high on the Coventown canyon’s north rim, surprised to see that night had already fallen. Douglas and Marbleheart had been inside the castle and its dungeon since just before noon.

“From here we’d better walk—or climb,” said Marbleheart, not at all sorry to say it. “We’d be like a bandaged ear, flying over the canyon on another bit of milk glass.”

“We’ll stay here for tonight, rather,” decided Douglas. “Too easy to miss our step without enough light for the way. And I want to see what happens next, if I can, in the castle. There’s the other prisoner to consider, you recall.”

“When Emaldar came to me after midnight,” Cribblon told him, “she spoke of
another
Douglas Brightglade who had been captured.”

“I suspected it was something like that,” said Douglas, thoughtfully. “Someone else has taken a hand in the game, I can see. Who it is, I haven’t the slightest idea. Unless it’s Myrn? But I would sense her close presence, if it were, I believe. I know she is not far away, but not as close as the castle.”

Finding a sheltering bit of overhang at the far end of their ledge, they crowded under. Douglas built a tiny but comfortably hot fire against the night’s chill, and sent out to Wizards’ High for supper—roast beef and mashed potatoes, savory brown gravy, and a greens salad, all downed with cups of Precious’s best cider.

“It’s been a long, long time since I ate this well,” sighed Cribblon. “A mightily long time! Old Frigeon’s housekeeper had trouble boiling water, let alone an egg! I often thought if Frigeon had had a decent cook, he might have turned out differently.”

“He’s luckier now. He has a very good cook in New Land,” said Douglas, pausing with his fork half-raised. “His steward at Ice Palace, as it turns out. A frustrated chef. A couple of marvelous cooks taught him all about cooking, after the Fall.”

Marbleheart ate until his tummy was a round, furry ball, then, excusing himself, curled happily about himself and fell asleep at once. Douglas and Cribblon talked Wizardry and nibbled at the remains of the meal until nearly midnight, and tried in vain to penetrate the spells that low surrounded the castle. Belatedly, Emaldar was taking precautions.

Then they, too, fell asleep.

****

Myrn, Willow, and Caspar dined on pinecones and fresh birch flowers—converted into roasted, spicy redfish and a crisp lettuce-and-pine nut salad. For dessert Myrn created a delicious mousse from the froth of a tiny waterfall nearby. Then the three gathered up their stout walking sticks and struck out once more on the trail of the Witchservers carrying Pargeot to Coventown.

“An hour since midnight,” Myrn said wearily, “and perhaps we’d better try to get some rest.”

“I can make it,” said Caspar, puffing up a steeper-than-usual rise. “It would be nice if ye’d learned a Flying Spell, however.”

Myrn stopped in her tracks and threw up her hands.

“What am I thinking of! Of course we can fly! What am I thinking of?”

She gathered them near her and, touching Finesgold’s Feather Pin, spoke the words
“Cumulo Nimbus!”

She spread her arms and led mem into the air like a trio of gray doves.

“Beats walking,” said Caspar, in unknowing imitation of Marbleheart. After a few jerky minutes getting the feel of flying, he and Willow settled down to enjoying the flight.

“By a pinelands mile!” enthused Willow. “Look sharp, mistress. I see the Witchservers ahead, crossing that ridge!”

“Keep ‘em in sight,” advised Caspar, “and fly as high as ye can without losing ‘em. Men hardly ever look up, even when keeping the most careful watch.”

“Those people are in a real hurry!” observed Myrn after a few minutes of trailing the Witchservers. They were close enough now to see Pargeot, who was being led on a heavy chain, not carted as Cribblon had been. “How long will it be before they reach Coventown, Willow, can you guess?”

“By all accounts,” said the lad, trying a gentle up-and-down swoop for himself, “they’re just now coming into Coventown Vale. See there, mistress? The valley runs between those two great ridges looking like a wolf’s outspread claws!”

“We’ll stay with them until they’re in sight of Coventown itself,” decided Myrn. “It may take a while to find Douglas after that. I don’t think Emaldar will harm Pargeot until she realizes that he is not, after all, Douglas. He will be a mystery to her.”

The flyers ranged back and forth so as not to get ahead of the slower-moving Witchserver band. Within two hours they first sighted the red gloaming and black smokes of Coven Castle and then the town beneath it.

“We’ll look for my Douglas, now,” cried Myrn in growing excitement. “Hang on, fellows!”

She increased their speed to that of a swift, darting forward through the stinking smokes, reciting a Finding Spell under her breath as she led the way.

Chapter Nineteen

The Six Sisters

Emaldar, scowling impatiently from her sitting-room window on the path up the vale, spotted her Witchserver band when it came around a last curve.

She shouted orders for the captive to be brought at once to her apartment. The sight of the approaching band restored—more or less—her temper to merely bad. It had been particularly foul since she had been told that the first prisoner had somehow managed to blow the door off his cell and escape.

Perhaps,
she thought,
the first one really is Brightglade, the Fire Wizard. It smells like Fire Magic to me.

“No word, yet?” she snarled at the Warlock officer who entered just then.

“N-n-no, Most Graciously Gentle, Bounteously Beautiful Queen,” he stammered, falling to his knees. “He ... he ... we think he escaped into the fiery heart of the mountain somehow. Those tunnels are ... well... an endless maze, you might say.”

“You’ve got plenty of men to follow him right into the Furnace, if need be,” snarled the Witch. “See to it! Either
he
is Brightglade, or this new prisoner is. I want them both under lock, key, and Binding Spell until I discover which is which.”

“Yes, O Great Black Witch, Queen of Dreadful Darkness!” whined the officer. He crawled on hands and knees backward, out the chamber door.

“Sisters!” called the Witch Queen. “Attend me! I require your expert assistance and advice. Now!”

The air before her chair warped, as if suddenly overheated, turned dark gray and coalesced into the figures of six black-clad women wearing peaked Witches’ hats.

They all appeared elderly and much uglier than necessary, even for Witches—and thus posed no competition for Emaldar—being haggard, deeply lined, wrinkled, waited, and generally looking like death reheated. Which, in a sense, was what they wished to look like.

The other Witches of the Coven greeted Emaldar respectfully but with none of the groveling subservience of the Witchservers and the other Coven slaves.

Emaldar kept the six near her and content because at least five-sixths of her enhanced Witchly Powers were borrowed from them. They allowed her to tap them in exchange for luxurious castle living, no onerous duties required, a share of all loot taken, and frequent opportunities to watch innocents suffer horribly at the Coven’s black rites.

“Stay by me now,” invited the Witch Queen, after she made sure they understood all that had happened. “We must find out which prisoner is Douglas Brightglade and when we do, ensorcel him, so that his goody-goody Wizard Master and his friends cannot recover him or bother us. This is most important.”

The oldest and ugliest of the Six Sisters sat in Emaldar’s chair and whined, “I was sound asleep, Sister Witch! Need you call us at this hour? Dawn is no more than an hour away, I see.”

“When I call, it’s because I
need
you, Sister,” said Emaldar, firmly but gently. “This is the sort of thing you promised to help me with.”

“Oh, right! Sure,” murmured all the Sisters, nodding. They found places to sit about the room.

“Where are the Warlocks?” the youngest Witch asked, leering about, nearsightedly. “Not much of a party without menfolk, is it?”

“This is
not
a party, Grayelder!” ground out Emaldar, striving to keep her temper.

The Warlock officer returned. He flinched at the sight of all seven Witches where he expected only one. Swallowing mightily, he announced that the new prisoner was without.

“Without what?” chortled Eldest Sister. “Without his trousers?”

“Now, Eldest,” began Emaldar, but her admonition was cut off by the appearance of Pargeot, dusty, dead tired, and draped in heavy bronze chains.

“Comely youngster, that!” crooned Eldest Sister, leaning forward. “If you don’t want him, Emaldar, when you’re finished with his body, I’d like it for a while.”

Emaldar ignored her comment and stood stock still, looking at Pargeot for a very long time, her eyes locked with those of the Westongue Captain. She quickly sat down on a stool, not breaking eye contact.

“I do
not
believe you are Douglas Brightglade,” she said at last, with a slight sigh.

“I’m not,” admitted Pargeot. “I’m a friend of his, however, and a Seafarer of some repute in the service of Thornwood Duke of Dukedom.”

The gathered Sisters expected Emaldar to detonate in one of her famous furies, but she sat calmly studying the young man. “Your name? It isn’t important, really. I’ll destroy you shortly, anyway, but it’s convenient to call you something other than ‘prisoner.’”

“You are too kind,” murmured Pargeot, and with a weary smile he gave his name and rank.

“I’ve always been partial to sailor boys,” cackled Grayelder, rubbing her arthritic knees.

“We don’t need comedy, Sister!” Emaldar snarled. “Our other prisoner is Douglas, obviously.”

“Not necessarily,” said Pargeot. “I don’t know where the real Douglas is, but I don’t think he’s ever been anyone’s prisoner.”

His directness disconcerted the Witch Queen. It was a moment before she understood what he had said.

“Brightglade is free and somewhere about!”

“I imagine so,” replied the Seacaptain. “Do you mind if I collapse on the floor? I’ve just walked the better part of a day and two nights at top speed, and I’m a bit pooped, as we sailors say.”

“Sit,” commanded Emaldar, surprising even herself. “Tell me who my first prisoner is—or was.”

“I can’t really say for sure,” said Pargeot with an enormous sigh of relief as he sank to the floor. “I don’t remember hearing his name. Some other friend of the Journeyman Wizard’s, I should imagine.”

With that his head fell forward on his chest and he began to snore softly.

“The silly little man is exhausted, I see,” observed one of the Witches. “You won’t get much more out of him tonight, dear Emaldar. A little excruciating pain, judiciously administered, later...”

“I need no more from him,” agreed Emaldar. “Guards! Take him and drop him in the dungeon. Keep a
close
eye on him this time! He may not be a Wizard but he is strong, resourceful, and dangerous.”

The Sisters turned to each other, exchanging bemused comments. Their murmurs reminded the Witch Queen of their presence and she frowned.

“I’m
most
sorry to have inconvenienced you, Sisters all. You may go about your own pleasures. I will call you if I need you again.”

“Yes, do let us know before our pretty Coven is overthrown,” sneered Eldest Sister. “We’d like to pick the bones of your Queendom, after you’re done botching it.”

Emaldar wasn’t listening, it seemed, so the Six snuffed themselves out, leaving a smell like burned wool after them.

The Warlock officer looked up in fear as storm clouds gathered about the Witch’s brow.

“I’ll go myself to find the escaped Brightglade,” she declared coldly, reaching for her black cloak and peaked hat. “You incompetents probably fear to go where he has fled!”

The first rays of the rising sun struck through the rank smog blanketing Coventown and its castle. The clear light showed how really worn and dirty the furnishings of the Queen’s apartments were, the dusty taffeta and the badly scuffed velvet. But there was no one to see, except a large black tom sleepily licking his paws in the warming sun on a window seat.

But then, Coven was filled with cats, most of them black.

****

“Ho! Something’s coming,” whispered Marbleheart. “Make us invisible again!”

Douglas rolled out of his handkerchief-blanket, robbing his eyes sleepily.