Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) Read online

  The footsteps paused at the barrow doorway, as if listening—or sniffing. Douglas reached out to pull the Otter’s left front foot. Marbleheart shook the foot irritably and opened his eyes to glare at his friend in the flickering light of the orange jack-o’-lantern.

  “Come on! Get up, Marbleheart. If you ever want to swim again in Sea, or chase a tasty trout for your dinner, or crack a clam on your marble disk, now you must arise and follow!”

  The sound of Douglas’s voice—and the words he chose as well—roused the groggy Otter. Marbleheart rolled over the edge of the altar stone and landed on his feet.

  “W-what is this place?” he asked in sudden horror, fully awake.

  “A Goblin brought you to this barrow to take your life.”

  “G-g-g-goblin?” asked Marbleheart, shuddering. “Let’s g-g-g-go!”

  Before they could reach the tunnel ramp, it was filled with a vast, misshapen hulk of a black-furred beast with saucer-huge eyes and a gore-stained, knobby club in one fist. It stopped in the room’s entrance and threw up its other hand to protect its large eyes from the lantern’s bright rays.

  “Who s-s-s-s-sneaks into our unholy place?” hissed the Goblin in a rasping, barrel-deep, echoing voice. “Who dares to waken the new King of Barrow Wights?”

  But it hesitated to rush forward, bothered by the lantern’s now-steady gleam, which appeared to burn his eyes painfully.

  “Is that it?” Marbleheart whispered hoarsely. “If I stayed, I’d be their King?”

  “You want the job?” snapped Douglas, facing the monster in the doorway. “Stay behind if it beckons to you, but I’m leaving.”

  “I’m with you! I don’t want to be King of anything, anywhere, especially if it doesn’t have deep running water. What do we do?”

  “Follow me! Stay out of my way but stay close!” ordered the Journeyman Wizard. He stared the Goblin in the eye.

  “I entered your stolen barrow mound, and I rescued the innocent creature you would enslave to be King of the Undead,” he announced boldly.

  “And who, in the name of the ever-hating, blazing-eyed beasts of blackest Hades, are you?” the Goblin bellowed, amplifying his voice several times over so that it would be even more daunting.

  “I am called Douglas Brightglade,” began Douglas. The Goblin roared with hysteric, maniacal laughter.

  “Ha-ha-ho! A name like that! How can you bear it?”

  “It’s my true and natural name,” insisted Douglas calmly. “And my title is Journeyman Wizard.”

  “Oh, I am so impressed,” sneered the beast. “I’ve eaten a few Wizards in my time, and you are the puniest of them all. Most of them were at least a hundred years old and tough as old crows.”

  “I greatly doubt that you could handle even an Apprentice,” scoffed Douglas, maneuvering himself into a position for a dash through the arch and up the ramp.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” screamed the Goblin, gnashing long, shark-sharp teeth and pushing his bloodstained club forward to block the way. “We aim to make the slippery little one Goblin King Underhill. We intend to make of you a foggy dawn breakfast! Hark! My beautiful, dutiful, flesh-hungry, bloodthirsty fellow fiends are coming for the rites and the meal!”

  There was the sound of mumbling and harsh, derisive laughter from a distance outside the barrow.

  “Oh, very well,” said Douglas, “if you don’t choose to behave properly, I’ll have to take drastic action!”

  The black Goblin threw back his head and laughed even more loudly at this, but Douglas set down the lantern and reached into his sleeve for what he had picked in the grass near the river.

  He held it aloft between forefinger and thumb for the Goblin to plainly see. The jack-o’-lantern’s light fell full upon it.

  “F-f-f-f-four-leafed clover!” screeched the filthy beast in sudden falsetto, flinging his overlong arms about his head. “Put it away, put it away, put it—”

  “No, too late for that,” Douglas shouted, so that the Goblins above could hear every word. “I call upon you all to return to your former haunts! Go at once! By the power of this sweet clover with four leaves, I demand your obedience! Away! Away!”

  The Goblin in the doorway squealed like ten pigs caught in a fence, and the shouts from above stopped abruptly and changed to cries of terror. Footsteps rapidly retreated. The Goblin before him swung his mace high, intending to strike at the Wizard blindly.

  “No you don’t!” yelled Douglas, waving the clover. “Time for you all to depart this World!”

  With a gesture of revulsion he hurled the four-leaf clover full in his adversary’s ugly face. It burst on the creature’s forehead in a great bloom of terrible flame, which in seconds consumed the entire wailing Goblin. Where it had stood only a small pile of dry, evil-smelling ordure remained. Then even that burst into flame when Douglas pointed his finger at it, and burned to a fine wisp of gray ash.

  “You’ve killed him!” gulped the Otter, peering fearfully under Douglas’s left arm.

  “No, just sent him where he can’t harm anyone, alive or dead, for a couple of eons, at least. “The rest of you begone, too!” he shouted at the retreating footsteps outside. There was a lesser flash of brilliant white light, and the unseen Barrow Wights cried out one more time in panic and fear.

  And then complete silence.

  “Let’s go,” said Douglas to the Otter. “It’s safe now. I doubt they’ll care to return here even if they found the power.”

  “I don’t think my knees will hold me up yet, if you don’t mind waiting a minute or so,” said Marbleheart. “What a foolish thing I did! Thank you Douglas! I promise I won’t wander off again, ever and never.”

  “I somehow doubt that,” chuckled Douglas, stooping to stroke the Otter’s back fur soothingly. “Phew! Goblins certainly do stink up a place. Come on!”

  He led the Otter quickly from the mound, through the mist to the tiny rill, where the Sea animal rushed to drink from the first tiny pool.

  “What kind of a place is this, anyway?” he gasped.

  “Come on!” repeated the Wizard, beginning to feel his own exhaustion. “Better to talk about that around a nice, friendly fire.”

  “What... what would have happened, tell me?” insisted Marbleheart. He shook like an aspen.

  “They would have made you one of the Undead. They would have bowed down to you and called you ‘King’ but all the time they would be mocking your spirit because they had bested a Mortal.”

  “Never to swim again? Never to see the sun again? I would have died.”

  “That’s the worst part,” said Douglas grimly. “Once you’d been gowned and crowned as King Underhill, you’d have become a Near Immortal. Unless you were lucky enough to be killed by a Wizard or a Faerie with a magic arrow or a powerful specific like the four-leafed clover, you would have lived a totally miserable non-life for almost ever and ever!”

  “Whew!” shuttered the Otter, but his spirit revived as they settled down side by side in front of their campfire. “These adventures of ours can get pretty scary, you know?”

  “You can always turn back,” Douglas reminded him gravely.

  “No, no! I was scared out of my whiskers, at least, and to tell the truth, I still am—but I want to go with you, Douglas. I at least owe that to you—if you still want me.”

  “Well,” warned the Journeyman, “be careful where you walk and when, and look before you leap. Best thing to do is carry one of these.”

  He searched for a moment in the wet grass, plucked another four-leafed clover, and handed it to the Otter, who sniffed its pleasantly fresh aroma and relaxed for the first time since his wakening.

  “I don’t have any pockets,” he wailed. “Will you carry it for me?”

  “Certainly, Marbleheart, good friend! As soon as we get anywhere where they have such things, I’ll have a goldsmith make you a locket to wear around your neck, to keep this clover in. In the meantime, stick close and move with care. We’re alone in a land where
evil is all too common, I fear.”

  And they sat before the cheery little fire until dawn touched pink to the snowfields atop the distant Tiger’s Teeth Mountains.

  Part Two

  Wizard in Transit

  Chapter Nine

  Very Impatient Lady

  “Now in this next syllabus,” droned Augurian, “we’ll study water as related to living bodies...”

  “I’m a woman, a sailor, a pearl diver!” snapped Myrn irritably. “Don’t you think I know about the bodies and water?”

  The Aquamancer slowly lowered the book he had picked up, preparatory to beginning the lesson. He was silent for so long that Myrn glanced up at him and flushed in chagrin.

  “I... I... I’m really very sorry, Magister!” she cried, laying her hand on his arm. “I guess I’m out of sorts today. Please continue.”

  “It isn’t at all like you, Myrn,” said Augurian, “to be so short and snappy!”

  “I know, but I... well, Magister, I’m frustrated and worried and impatient and distracted and—”

  “And in love,” came Flarman’s voice from the door.

  “And making absolutely splendid progress in your studies, despite all that,” added Augurian. “Really, Myrn! Even Douglas Brightglade grew more slowly in the craft than you have in less than two years of apprenticeship!”

  “But...,” she began, wringing her hands together.

  “I’ll leave you two to talk about it, if you wish,” apologized the Fire Wizard, still standing in the doorway. “Perhaps this should be a matter between Master and Apprentice.”

  “No, no, no! Of course not!” cried Myrn, jumping up to throw her arms about the plump Pyromancer. “I need you both! Stay, please!”

  “It occurs to me,” said Flarman, seating himself on a wide window ledge, “that we are pushing you along much too fast, my dear. Under the circumstances, I mean.”

  “What would you say,” he turned to his colleague, the Water Adept, “to a short hiatus? A vacation for the lass. Give her time to sort out what she’s learned and unwind?”

  Augurian scowled and didn’t reply for so long that Myrn rose and seated herself by his side, taking his hands in hers, looking at him pleadingly but silently.

  “I mean,” said Flarman.

  “Yes, you mean?” asked the other Wizard.

  “Well, let’s be frank. You and I never married. Never had children of our own.”

  “True,” observed Augurian.

  “Well! I at least had some hard experience with the young, bringing up Douglas at Wizard’s High.”

  Augurian nodded silently.

  “Well, think of... think of my cats. Pert and Party have raised a dozen healthy litters between them. Despite the great differences in their personalities, both are wonderful mothers. Oh, Black Flame is a good father, too. Don’t get me wrong, but he isn’t really involved in the basic training of the kittens. He teaches them how to hunt and how to take care of themselves in the fields and barns—things kittens must learn before they go out on their own.”

  “Will you be making a point?” asked Augurian, but he softened his words with a smile.

  “The point is,” replied Flarman, “that there are things a child must learn from her father, but there are things a child must learn from her mother, too. How to cope with living. How to make certain decisions. I, for one, am not certain those things are any less important than what the father imparts. Or the Wizard Magister.”

  He paused, pulled his battered old briar pipe from his right sleeve, and took time to light it with a snap of his fingers. He blew a cloud of fragrant tobacco smoke out the tower window. The others watched him and waited.

  “My goodness! I’m sounding so trite and stuffy, am I not?” Flarman chuckled. “Dear hearts, what I am trying to say is that perhaps this child needs to spend some time with her own good mother back on Flowring Island!”

  Augurian’s Apprentice laid her head on his shoulder and hugged him tightly.

  “Oh, Magister! It’s not that I don’t love and admire and respect you of all men, as much as my own father, but...”

  “But sometimes, I imagine,” Augurian said, returning the embrace warmly, “a lassy needs her mother. I am not so old I cannot recall my own mother, bless her! The things I learned at her knee!”

  “Do you agree that you need a mother’s touch for a while?” Flarman asked Myrn.

  “I really hadn’t thought of it at all, honestly, before you said that about Pert and Party,” said the Apprentice softly. “I’m entirely delighted and enthralled with my studies here, Magisters, and I look forward eagerly to a long time yet of learning and practicing Aquamancy. But there are things my mother alone can understand and point out and suggest and recommend to me ... and comfort me for.”

  “Then go home, sweet lass! You couldn’t be in better hands than those of Tomasina Manstar!” cried the Aquamancer. “Have I been so hard a taskmaster? I am so very sorry, Myrn my dear!”

  “No need of that,” said Myrn. “No need to feel bad, Magister! I really have loved every moment of it, wet or dry. But Flarman Flowerstalk, bless his soul, is right. There comes a time when a girl needs to talk to her mother about... things.”

  “Things?” asked Augurian, but she saw the crinkling of the corners of his eyes that meant he was teasing. “Things?”

  “Don’t be any more dense than you have to be, to be a Water Adept,” laughed Flarman. “Weddings and marriage, love and homemaking, career and caring for us poor menfolk. Let the girl go home for a while. It’ll give us all the time we need to tackle these blasted spells. And soak up some sun. I came here expecting to get a healthy tan, and here I am, pale as the underside of a Porpoise!”

  The quickest way to Flowring was to ask the Asrai, the Cold Fire Being, to carry Myrn with it under the waves. Asrai’s way was always exciting and interesting, and the Phosphorescence itself was a good traveling companion for a student Aquamancer. It had wide and deep knowledge of all the depths and shallows of Sea a student of Aquamancy could learn nowhere else.

  The journey was pleasantly short between Waterand and Flowring Isle, Myrn’s home. She stepped into the Asrai’s cool presence late that evening and early the next morning she hopped ashore near Flowring Town Square.

  Her mother was sweeping the front stoop with a twig broom, humming cheerfully to herself. When the front gate gave its customary ker-thump as its counterbalancing stone pulled it shut, Tomasina Manstar looked up expectantly and at once shouted with surprise, threw aside the broom, and rushed down the flower-bordered path to sweep her daughter into her arms.

  “Welcome home!” she cried, and the two of them stood crying for joy, clucking and laughing for several minutes until Mistress Manstar broke away and waved her daughter into her neat cottage.

  “You came over by Cold Fire? You’ll want a hot cup of tea, I think. Come inside! Tell me everything you’ve done and thought for the past ten months! Why are you come home? Lord Augurian hasn’t thrown you out for being too pert, has he? No? Good!”

  “I just needed to see you and Dad, to talk to you, smell your flowers, eat some of your cooking, walk on the beach, and swim among the blue coral heads, once again. Do you understand that, Mama?”

  “Of course, child! It’s called ‘checking to see if your roots are still firmly attached,’ or words to that effect. No one understands it better than an islander. It’s because our world is rather small and well outlined. We can go far over Sea but we have to know home is still there when we need it.”

  “Home, and you, Mama! I’m so glad to be home! My only wish is that Douglas were here, too.”

  “Ah, my future son-in-law, the Fire Wizard! And how is handsome, young Douglas? Burning as only a Fire Wizard fiancé can, I guess. Never have a cold bed with that lad to husband, I say again.”

  They talked and talked, sitting in the cozy front parlor and later working side by side to prepare dinner for the Manstar men when they returned from their fishing. There was all the
news of Waterand and the rest of World to tell, and all the news of Flowring, too—from who had wicked Frigeon enchanted and Flarman and Augurian rescued, to who was newly wed and newly with child, in the island’s tiny world.

  Myrn explained Douglas’s mission to investigate the Witches’ Coven in Kingdom.

  “You be worried about your man?” asked Tomasina. “He can take care of his own self, I know from experience, but I know what it is to worry about an absent loved one. Haven’t been a sailor’s wife for close on forty years without knowing loneliness and worries, lass.”

  “I know in my mind that Douglas will be just fine,” Myrn continued, “but what my heart wants most is to be with him. Whether I could help or not.”

  “It’s dangerous, messing about with Witches of any kind. If you were with him, could you be a help? Or would you distract? It’s a bit like the old sailors’ notions about women aboard ship, I guess. Your father made sure I could pull my full weight, sail and tack and reef and furl before he’d let me sail very far with him when we were young and thinking of marrying.”

  “I know what you’re saying, Mama. Yes, I suppose in a storm I might be a burden to Douglas yet. But still...”

  “You could be a comfort and a help, and that’s what marriage is often all about, for both a women and her man, Myrn.”

  The menfolk arrived, greeting their daughter and sister with boisterous surprise and evident pleasure, asking many of the same questions Tomasina had already asked. The evening and far into the night was filled with their rapt attention, until Myrn fell into her old, familiar childhood bed and went to sleep with a smile.

  Somehow her worries felt smaller here.

  “Do you remember how to fish up pearls?” her father Nick teased.

  They had sailed just after dawn, out to the oyster beds recently marked by the great Sea Worms as ready to harvest.

  “Some things one never forgets,” claimed Myrn.

  She poised on the gunwale of her father’s smack, a vision of grace and beauty in a brief but sensible swim costume. Nick handed her a heavy, oval stone tightly bent to ten fathoms of hempen rope. She cradled it in her arms and, giving him a nod, leaped feet first into the sparkling water.