Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) (34 page)

“Hey, Pargeot!” he shouted. “Wake up, man.”

“Let me,” said Caspar, squeezing past Douglas in the doorway. He cupped his hands to form a megaphone and yelled at the top of his voice, which was considerable, thanks to years of shouting orders above the sounds of storms and sails.

“All hands on deck! All hands on deck! Man your battle stations! Captain Pargeot to the quarterdeck!”

The dimly seen Pargeot, propped up to sleep against the far wall, sprang immediately to his feet, fully awake. He plowed across the cell, creating a respectable bow wave by his passage, and leaped up the three steps to the doorway, almost bowling Caspar over.

“Now, now!” soothed Douglas remembering to dispel the invisibility charm. “It’s Douglas Brightglade and Caspar Marlin and this is my friend, Marbleheart Sea Otter.”

Pargeot shook his head to clear the last of sleep and scrubbed his eyes with battered knuckles.

“What’s to do?” he asked at once.

“Run!” cried Marbleheart. “This way!”

He swam off down the corridor, pausing under the Bat family to say, “You Bats had better evacuate. No telling what might happen next.”

“We’re on our way, although it’s middle of day outside,” said Tuckett. “The whole mountain trembles. It bodes no good, I fear. Up and away, Missus! Come, girls, lad! Follow Mama and me!”

Marbleheart led his own companions past the stairway, through the open grille, and on into the passage.

They paused a moment in the domed room with the five exits, listening for sounds from the fiery interior of Blueye. Shouts and the scrambling of boots. Faintly came a woman’s voice, raised in shrill fury.

“Time to go,” said the Otter, urgently. They followed him once more to the spot where the passage became a shaft.

“Go to the ledge, above,” said Douglas to the others. “You’ll be out of harm’s way, there. I’m going after the Witch!”

“I don’t...,” began Marbleheart, but his feet were scrabbling in thin air. He, Caspar, and an amazed Pargeot shot up the shaft.

“...want to fly without you around!” came the Otter’s voice, fading into the distance.

Douglas returned to the domed chamber, arriving just as a band of Witchservers followed their panic stricken Warlock out of one of the other passageways, on their way back to the dungeon proper. They didn’t notice Douglas as they passed.

Douglas followed them as far as the grille, closed and relocked it after them, using a minor Freezing Spell to jam the lock mechanism, in case the officer had a key.

Then he dusted his hands together and walked calmly into the heart of the volcano.

****

On Waterand Flarman leafed through a thick, gilt-edged book chained to a heavy marble stand in Augurian’s tower workroom. He felt something rub against his calf and looked down.

“Back so soon, Black Flame? How goes the Journeyman’s journeying?”

The big, very black tom sat down, curled his tail around himself, licked his nose, and grinned at his Master. He swished his magnificent tail twice and blinked thrice, slowly, glancing to the right.

“Augurian!” called Flarman, closing the huge book with a bang. “Augurian?”

“I am here, Fire-eater,” said the Water Adept, coming in from the next room. He was holding two glass vials of smoky liquid, which he had been pouring back and forth to mix. “What is it?”

“Black Flame says Douglas’s adventure is drawing to a climax. Do you wish to be in at the end of it all? Purely as observers, of course.”

“I could use a break,” sighed the Aquamancer.

“Right as rain! I’ll just toss a couple of singlets and a change of drawers in my kit and meet you in fifteen minutes on the west battlements.”

“Give me a few minutes more,” said Augurian. “I’ll have to leave some orders for my absence.”

“Oh, the place will run very well without you while we’re gone,” scoffed Flarman Flowerstalk cheerfully, but the Water Adept had already disappeared down the stair.

****

Myrn, Cribblon, and Willow stood unseen near the front gate of Coven Castle for almost an hour when a flock of blue-and-white ducks landed with a splash in the castle’s green-scummed moat. A large and brilliantly colorful teal mallard swam to the near bank and, picking his way through the trash on the margin along the bank, waddled past them, pretending to peck at some imaginary bit of food between the cobbles. From the side he regarded Myrn with a steady, round eye.

“You’d be the Water Adept’s Apprentice?” he asked in a low quack.

“I am Myrn Manstar, Apprentice to Augurian of Waterand,” Myrn replied.

“Stopped to have a word with a couple of sailors and a Sea Otter perched on a ledge up there,” said the Drake, as if it were an everyday occurrence. “They say they are safe out of the Witch’s dungeon, and to tell you not to worry.”

“Just two sailors and an Otter?” asked Myrn, a worried frown clouding her pretty face.

“Only the three of them. That’s all, mistress.”

“Where is Douglas?” she wondered aloud. “But thank you for the message, Sir Drake...”

“Just call me Francis,” said the bird, turning to rejoin his flock in the moat. “We’re on our way north but we’ll visit Waterand next winter, for sure. Nice place, I understand, to spend a winter vacation. Come, ladies, let’s get out of this sickly mess of a moat. How can anyone let water become so fouled?”

And they were off in a sudden flurry, not attracting any attention at all. Before they turned to fly over the nearest ridge, Francis returned for a last word.

“I thought you ought to know,” he said hurriedly. “Blueye Lake boils and fumes threateningly, up there at the top!” And he was off.

“Now what do you make of that?” Myrn asked the others.

“What would make a tarn boil and fume but the fire beneath?” echoed Willow. “But, then, Blueye often acts that way.”

Cribblon looked rather worried, too. “Blueye is a volcano.”

“Go on.”

“I climbed all over this mountain when I was spying on Coven. She’s been dormant for centuries, but she is by no means dead! There are steam vents and gas fumaroles all over her. I suspect this castle is built over some of them. Hence the foul-smelling smokes all about it.”

“Ah, I see,” said Myrn, remembering past lessons. “The ducks believe Blueye is about to erupt!”

“I would guess rather sooner than later,” said Willow. “Birds and small animals seem to know well in advance of Men.”

“And we’re right on—
and in
—her at a very bad time!” Myrn gasped.

They all craned their necks to gaze up at the truncated peak of Blueye Mountain. Did they see a plume of steam rising, or was it only a rain cloud clinging there? In answer, the ground heaved under their feet.

“We can’t take the chance,” said Myrn, decisively. “Cribblon, we’ll fly up and take Pargeot, Marbleheart, and Caspar off to safety—as far away from the mountain as we can get! Willow, I’m going to make you visible. Run all over Coventown. Spread the warning! Create panic if you must! Tell everyone to run for their lives, that the volcano is about to erupt!”

“Will they listen to me?” the boy wondered.

“There’ll be plenty of evidence to back you up. The earth is starting to quake and the mountain to roar. Start as many off as will listen, but don’t hang about waiting for those who won’t. Don’t wait! Run with them, down to the pinelands!”

Cribblon said, “I can speak Flarman’s Levitation Spell, having heard Douglas use it. You must find him!”

“I’m going in to help Douglas then,” she agreed quickly.

Cribblon shot into the air without further ado. The first really strong tremors shook the ground. The lines of slaves carrying sacks of potatoes into the castle stopped dead in their tracks and dropped their burdens. With their Witchserver guards they stood frozen in fear, peering upward.

Willow, suddenly visible, stumbled on the first heave of the ground, dodged a stone that fell from the battlements above, and began to scream at the top of his considerable voice.

“Earthquake! Earthquake! The mountain is falling on us! Everybody run! Run! Run!”

The slaves and the guards in the foregate square immediately picked up the fearsome cry and took to their heels. A Witchserver guard at the gate, pelted with sharp chunks of granite fallen from the walls, let out a short, terrified scream and fell to the ground unconscious.

The nearby streets of Coventown immediately filled with scrambling and screaming slaves, shaken from their lethargy by a fear greater than they felt for Emaldar and her Coven.

Following the shouting ragamuffin they headed as one for the town gate and the path down the vale, away from the mountain.

“Best I can do for them,” decided Myrn. “Now, Douglas, where are you?”

She ran through the unguarded castle gate into the courtyard, dodging falling blocks of stone as she went. A stone-colored Griffin shrieked at her and flapped its heavy wings, but the building to which it clung slumped wearily into the courtyard with an awesome grumble and groan and a great cloud of acrid dust. The Griffin screamed once more as it disappeared into the rubble.

Seeing the fate of their fellow Watch Worm, the other Gargoyles and Stone Demons abandoned their dangerous perches. Some flew, others dropped to the ground and fled from the courtyard on awkward, clawed feet.

Myrn muttered an Umbrella Spell as she ran, and hoped it would work. She paid no further attention to rolling and flying stones, hurtling beams of oak and sheets of gray slate that slid from the roofs with a slithering shriek to smash into wickedly flying shrapnel on the cobbles.

She stopped coolly to look about for a path to follow. Where the castle workshop had collapsed she spotted an arched entrance into the rock of the cliff itself, exposed by the complete disintegration of the structure.

“Looks promising,” she said to herself and, whispering the Power Words to the Feather Pin, she flew swiftly to the opening and through it, into a blackness filled with choking dust and ear splitting roaring.

The air rushing out at her almost slammed her to the ground but she righted herself and flew on, more slowly now to keep from braining herself on the uneven ceiling.

Now the Feather Pin’s added virtue—guiding its owner underground—helped her along. Where there was a choice of passageways, she unerringly chose the best, and flew on without slowing. The heat of the air and the walls on either side was intense. The rumbling from inside the mountain grew louder by the minute.

“Douglas?” she called, but the twisting and breaking of solid stone drowned out her small voice, even in her own ears.

****

The first strong movement of the earth beneath him startled Douglas. He fell to his knees and stayed there until the quake subsided. It seemed like an hour, but was only a scant minute.

When he stood again, he was hit by a fiery blast of air from ahead. The Witch Queen had gone this way, searching for her escaped prisoner.

Rising, he walked steadily forward, entering another, low-ceilinged cavern. As he stepped out onto its floor it jerked wildly sideways and split across its middle, just in front of him.

The sudden chasm filled quickly with eye-searing molten rock, popping and bubbling up like white-hot oatmeal. The heat was unbearable. His eyebrows sizzled and his gown smoldered.

“Need a spell,” he gasped, falling back into the relative safety of the tunnel behind him. “Which one?”

He settled for a standard Fireproofing Spell, one of the earliest he had learned at Flarman’s knee.

“People who deal with fire must protect themselves from it, for it can turn savage when aroused,” the Fire Wizard had warned. “We Pyromancers command fire, but first you have to get its attention, and that isn’t always easy, my boy!”

With the coolness of the spell wrapped about him like a cloak, Douglas stepped again into the room before him. He thought of turning back but, Witch or not, Emaldar was somewhere within this quaking, fiery mountain. She would need help to escape.

Or she might prove powerful enough to use the quakes to cover her escape.

He leaped carefully across the wide crack. The lava was no longer boiling, cooling rapidly on contact with the air. Beyond, he paused to decide which way to go.

Far ahead he heard a sudden shriek of alarm; a woman’s voice. Emaldar no longer screaming in fury but in fear. Emaldar had at last realized that there were things other than an escaped victim to concern her.

“Emaldar!” shouted Douglas, magnifying his voice as loud as he could. “Stay where you are! I’m coming to help you get out of here!”

And I am,
he realized as he dashed forward.
Doesn’t a wicked Witch deserve to die in her own caldron?

“No,” he said aloud. “I’ll help her...if I can.”

The passageway twisted and turned but ran on, fairly level, except for blocks of stone shaken from the walls and ripped from overhead by the force of another series of tremendous shocks. The heat increased, but Douglas’s spell held.

Then there were no more quakes, but a continuous, rolling rumble and a mighty, brain-rattling groan as rock moved against rock along ancient faults, slowly but inexorably at first, then in violent jerks. The mountain shivered as if it were cold, and cried out in a sort of insane fear of its own.

“Emaldar! Hang on!” shouted Douglas, dodging a rain of half-molten boulders from above. “I’m almost there.”

A faint cry came from behind him. “Don’t give your life for Emaldar, my love! She deserves to die!”

Myrn!

“I have to try,” shouted Douglas, plunging through a screen of hot steam.

Then he saw the Witch.

That she was Emaldar, the Black Witch of Coven, the Beautiful Queen of Witches, he never doubted. Her cloak was aflame from the heat of a rapidly advancing wall of white-hot lava beyond her, and as he watched, her tall, black hat was swept from her smoking hair and whipped into the approaching molten river of stone. It simply exploded like a firecracker, sending its large metal buckle flying to embed itself in the wall beside Douglas’s head.

And between the Witch and the Wizard had opened a much wider crack. It plunged down, down as far as the eye could see, and at its bottom was a molten lake. Falling into its abyss were chunks of the mountain as large as Emaldar’s whole castle!