Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) Page 12

  “I had a great-uncle, now long departed, who was a Wizard’s pet,” he said. “Nobody much believed him, although I will say he was good at setting fires when the weather got too chilly to move about.”

  “It could have been Flarman,” said Douglas, yawning. “He never mentioned having a Salamander as a pet. But then, there’s a lot about Flarman I haven’t found out yet.”

  “I don’t recall the name,” said the Salamander. “If you want to sleep, be my guest. I hope you don’t mind if I enjoy your dying embers for a while yet?”

  “Not at all! Glad you enjoy them,” said the Journeyman, rolling into his blanket for the air was cold and damp. “Remember to speak to the Swallows in the morning, please.”

  “I’ll do just that!” promised the Salamander. Douglas fell at once into a deep sleep, wearied by the hard work of fighting the swift river’s currents.

  The waterfall’s roar proved a lullaby for them both, and as the sun didn’t reach into the canyon depths until late morning, they both slept quite late.

  Opening his eyes, Douglas found himself being regarded solemnly by four pairs of wide blue eyes.

  They were set under fair brows and fluffy, tumbled, yellow hair about regular, oval faces atop small, graceful bodies, like those of deeply tanned young children.

  Water Sprites, Douglas decided. They were slight, slim, completely naked, and had tiny gossamer wings between their shoulder blades.

  “Oh, Wizard!” one of them called softly. “Have we awakened you?”

  “Yes, but it’s time I was up and about,” Douglas replied. “Hello! I’m Douglas Brightglade.”

  “So the Swallows told us that the Salamander told them,” said the speaker, smiling shyly. “We’ve heard of Wizards from Mother, and the telling was good. We seldom talk to Men, but Mother said we should help Wizards if we can.”

  “That’s most kind of her and of you. I know you Undines are among the shyest of Sprites. I appreciate your coming to visit us.”

  “Undines? I thought they only lived in Sea waves,” said Marbleheart, awake by then.

  “Our distant cousins the Sea Undines, you mean? Yes, they live in ocean waves. We, however, prefer to live near waterfalls, the higher the better.”

  “The wider the better!” said the second Undine.

  “The louder the better!” added a third. He was slightly more boyishly bold than the others. “My name is Niagara. This is my sister Victoria, and that is Rainbow. My eldest sister, who bespoke you first, is Angel.”

  “Pleased to meet you all,” said Douglas, nodding politely. “May I present my friend, Marbleheart the Sea Otter? Join us at breakfast.”

  “We’ve broken our fast on sunlit spray and rainbow mists,” said the Undine named Angel, blushing prettily. “It’s all we require. But you must go ahead and eat as we talk,” she added, seating herself on a clean, flat stone near Douglas’s knee. The tallest of the four, she was no more than ten inches from toe to upswept topknot.

  The others came and sat, but not too close to the fire, which Douglas had stoked up to warm water for his morning tea.

  “Sally Ann told the Swallows of us, I gather,” said Marbleheart, warming to these delicate creatures who lived by the waterfall. He appreciated the environment they chose, being a water creature himself.

  “Yes. And the birds stopped by to speak to us. We understand you wish to pass above the falls with your vessel,” said Angel. “And we think we know a way ... if you’re able to perform one bit of magic beforehand.”

  “Tell me about it,” urged Douglas. He poured tea into tiny acorn-cap cups that he had picked up on the edge of the Forest of Remembrance. The Sprites were delighted with the bracing brew.

  “Sir Wizard, our most favorite sport is riding over the falls from above and diving into the pool below,” began Angel.

  “I can see that would be fun, yes,” said Douglas, although he had doubts about it secretly. Marbleheart, however, nodded with enthusiasm. It sounded to him like a great lark, as long as there were no hidden rocks below.

  “You may wonder, then, how we return to the top to do it all over again, dozens of times each day?” asked Niagara, interrupting his older sister.

  “Clamber up the cliffs, like Salamanders?” guessed Marble-heart.

  “Fly?” asked Douglas. “I notice you have wings.”

  “No, no, sir! Our wings are just for show, unfortunately,” said the boy Sprite.

  “We’ve found a much better and quicker way. One less exposed to the drying wind and hot sun.” Angel explained patiently, giving Niagara a big-sister sort of smile to show she didn’t mind the interruption. “We slip through the fall itself. Behind the water curtain is a cave, and from that a natural stair takes us up to the top!”

  “Simple and elegant!” cried Douglas. “Many falls have such caverns behind them. I learned that from an Apprentice Aquamancer I know.”

  “But what of the magic required?” the Otter asked.

  “Our stair is very narrow. A mere crack. At your size, you couldn’t possibly squeeze through. If you could make yourselves much smaller, more like us, you’d fit. Mother says Wizards can do such wonderful things, easily.”

  “I see!” nodded Douglas. “I can manage a reducing spell, when it comes to that. I wonder, however, if it’s worth carrying the boat with us? What is the river like above these falls?”

  “Oh, we’ve been there often!” put in Rainbow, eagerly. “For miles the river runs between sheer walls. It’s swift and shallow but there are no reefs nor rocks in its bed. It might be a very hard row, but in time you’ll reach a place where the river curves away to the north. A long, very deep lake begins there. On the north shore of the lake is a town called Pfantas.”

  Little Victoria added, “Beyond the lake the stream narrows and becomes a series of cataracts climbing halfway up between Blueye and Rumbler Mountain.”

  “Blueye? That’s a mountain?” asked Marbleheart.

  “Yes, sir! She has a perfectly round, blue lake in a crater in her peak. The Swallows, who told us about her, call her ‘Blueye’ because that’s what it looks like, I guess,” Niagara explained.

  “I see. Well, Pfantas is our immediate destination. Your cave under the falls may be the solution to our problem. I’ll shrink the gondola and carry it along, too. Will you guide us, Undines?”

  “Of course!” cried all four at once. “Willingly!”

  Although Douglas had long used enlarging spells to provide blankets and tents from handkerchiefs when traveling, this would be the first time he had used one in reverse, and on living creatures.

  For practice, first, he reduced the twenty-foot gondola to a mere six inches. The spell worked on the boat without a hitch. Douglas carefully wrapped it in his spare handkerchief and slipped the miniaturized gondola into his left sleeve.

  He then took a deep breath and wove the enchantment again, for himself and his companion. It was quickly done, for the spelling was quite simple, designed by Flarman Flowerstalk for everyday use. Douglas—and the Otter—breathed sighs of relief. Douglas was now as small as Angel, although somewhat bulkier, and Marbleheart, even smaller, in a proper proportion.

  Douglas shed his clothes, packed them away in his knapsack and joined the water babies and the Otter, who were already joyfully spluttering and splashing in the swirling pool.

  Getting to the base of the falls was just a matter of allowing the circular current to carry them around to the far side of the basin. Near the base of the fall, the Undines led their new friends carefully up through a tremendous boil of mist. An up-angled ledge was just wide enough to tread, if they were careful.

  Here at the very edge of the curtain, the falling water was only as thick as a windowpane. Ducking through proved easy for them all, even the slightly built Rainbow.

  They scrambled over spray-slippery rocks beyond, deafened by the thunder of the falling water. Buffeting winds filled the cavity carved from the solid rock by ages of water splashing back from the impa
ct zone.

  In green dimness they clambered up a series of narrow stone ledges. Beyond the ledges, they reached the relatively dry and smoothly polished floor of a high, shallow cave. At the back a wide crack slanted from the floor almost to the ceiling. Into this the Sprites led the travelers.

  Wind blew down the crevice from above and soon dried Douglas enough to allow himself to redress, although the naked Undines were not as happy with the drying as he. Marbleheart galumped ahead, happy either wet or dry, up the steep, natural stair within the crack.

  “Not far,” said Niagara, leading the way. “See? There’s light ahead.”

  They emerged from the crevice some distance to one side of the stream, above where it leaped over the precipice.

  The Journeyman quickly undid the shrinking spell and Marbleheart, accompanied by the Sprites, tumbled gleefully into the river again to investigate the riverbed. The young Wizard selected a quiet backwater further upstream to resize and launch the Summer Palace gondola.

  “No problems,” reported Marbleheart, surfacing from his swim. “Current’s fast and very strong, but you drove the boat through much worse and dodged rocks, too, all day yesterday.”

  “Then we’re ready to shove off,” agreed Douglas. “Would you Undines care to go along a ways for the ride?”

  “We’d be delighted!” cried Victoria and Niagara, and their enthusiasm convinced their shy sisters to agree.

  “No farther than the beginning of the lake, however,” warned Angel. “Morgen live in the lake. They’re much too rough and unfriendly.”

  “Morgen? Oh, I remember—Merpeople.” Douglas recalled Bronze Owl’s long-ago lessons on all the kinds and sorts of Little People.

  “I bet they can’t dive over crashing waterfalls like you do,” comforted Marbleheart, but Angel insisted on returning before the gondola entered Pfantas Lake.

  “Learn something every day, almost every hour,” said Marbleheart, once they were aboard and under way. “I’ve known Morgen ever since I was a kit in the Briney. Mermaids were our baby-sitters and taught us to sing and swim and catch the finest anchovies. I never knew their race inhabited lakes.”

  “Only very large and deep freshwater lakes. Hardly ever flowing rivers, though,” Douglas told him. “I was taught the Lake Mermen were once the same as Sea Mermen, but they had a falling out, ages ago, and a few left salt to live in fresh water. That probably explains why they’re not very friendly. They must still feel like exiles, driven from their homes to be surrounded entirely by unfamiliar dry land.”

  “Oh, I can see that,” said Rainbow. “Some Falls Undines feel that way—sort of second-rated compared to our Sea-living cousins. Personally, I think we, with our exciting, loud-voiced waters and quiet, cool pools are much luckier.”

  This started a lively discussion between the Undines and the Sea Otter, who argued the benefits of curling surf and storm surges. The voyage on the upper brook was otherwise uneventful—in fact, quite pleasant. The Undine youngsters chatted endlessly, swam happily with Marbleheart when they felt too dry, and twice begged Douglas to stop so they could scramble up and plunge headlong over tributary falls that plummeted a hundred feet from the rimrock into the river.

  “Like rain from a downspout,” mused Douglas, watching them from the gondola.

  Late in the afternoon they reached the widening and slowing of the current, which indicated, Niagara said regretfully, that they were about to enter Pfantas Lake. The Sprites said good-bye, thank you so very much for the boat ride, and please come again, splashed over the side, and disappeared downstream.

  “Wonderful little people,” sighed Marbleheart. “Almost as good as Otters in the water.”

  “I’m glad we met them. They may just be the last nice people we see for some time,” said Douglas, pointing the boat out into the lake.

  Upon the tallest of a range of steep, cone-shaped hills on the north shore of Pfantas Lake was plastered a glaringly ugly town of narrow, winding, garbage-cluttered streets and chipped-paint, lop-roofed houses. The town and its hill were crowned by broken, tumbledown, gap-toothed ruins of a large building. Everything, everywhere was streaked gray-white, as if drenched with centuries of smelly bird droppings.

  “Such a horrid-looking town to be in such beautiful countryside!” exclaimed Douglas. “That, if I am not mistaken and the Summer Palace maps not totally wrong, is Pfantas!”

  “Pfantas? Why is it so unnecessarily ugly, I wonder?”

  “I can’t imagine! According to what I read, Pfantas was very nice, quite famous as a vacation spa, renowned for its matchless setting and clear, clean mountain air, and the lake for fishing and boating.”

  “Something happened to turn it this sour and slovenly,” exclaimed the Otter, his nose a-twitch as he caught a whiff of Pfantas’s airs.

  “I believe this is the work of the Witches—in which case, Cribblon’s warning was not sent too soon. Things in Pfantas have gone downhill, and Witches are renowned for such mischief.”

  “Everything goes downhill, over there,” chuckled the irrepressible Otter. “Drop a dried pea atop the town and it’d roll all the way down into the lake!”

  “We’ll tie up to the dock there and make no secret of our coming,” Douglas decided. “I want this man Cribblon to see or hear about our arrival as soon as can be.”

  “Common sense, I suppose,” agreed the Otter, a bit sarcastically. ‘Tie her up where that nasty-looking old man is waving at us to go away.”

  “What we do not need to say,” Douglas cautioned Marbleheart as they climbed a steep stair to the town’s first level, “is anything about a Witches’ Coven or Cribblon.”

  “How do we find what’s-his-name if we can’t ask for him?”

  “Carefully,” answered Douglas. “We are what we seem—a Wizard and his Familiar.”

  “I? A Familiar? I thought Familiars had to know lots and lots of magical stuff. A Familiar? Like the black cat you’ve told me of?”

  “Yes, but no, too. Black Flame just... helps, I suppose. By being around, you see? Anyway, it won’t hurt for these people to think of you as some kind of magicker. Otherwise they might well think of you as a potential stew or a warm fur jacket!”

  “Great Greebs! I should have stayed at Sea! No, I’m not sorry I came along, Douglas. I agree. To seem to have some magic is better than to be seen as a fur coat.”

  “In exchange,” Douglas promised him, “I’ll teach you some quick and easy spells. To impress strangers. I should have thought of that before.”

  “I can hardly wait,” said the Otter unenthusiastically.

  ****

  Flarman, dressed in striped red-and-white trunks that left his torso a vast expanse of pale, pink skin and grizzled white hair, basked in the afternoon Waterand sun on the terrace outside the Reception Hall.

  A scribe from Augurian’s staff sat at a table under a large canvas parasol, also striped red and white—Wateranders had sense enough to stay in the shade on sunny days—reading to the Wizard from a great stack of letters.

  “A letter from one Cycleon of Garenth,” he intoned.

  “‘Dear Sirs: I beg to call to your attention the facts of my father’s enchantment by the late King Frigeon of Eternal Ice... .’”

  When he had finished reading, Flarman rolled over on his stomach and nodded without opening his eyes.

  “Send him the immediate action will be taken’ letter.”

  “I believe his father was among the people the Wizard Douglas Brightglade and you found frozen alive in Frigeon’s workshop,” the scribe said, calmly consulting a notebook near his hand.

  “Ah, yes, I recall him now! His son must have written that letter before Daddy reached home. He should be back in Garenth by now. Better have someone check it out, in case he got lost. Garenth is a long way from Eternal Ice.”

  “Yes, Sir Wizard!” responded the scribe. He made a note on the letter and laid it aside on a pile separate from those the Wizard had already dealt with.

  “Th
e next is directed to you, personally,” the scribe continued. “It says: ‘Dear Magister: I have arrived in the town called Pfantas

  “That’s from Douglas!” cried Flarman, sitting up quickly. “Go on, please!”

  “The letter continues,” said the scribe: “‘I am joined in my travels by a Sea Otter of considerable warmth, wit, and intelligence named Marbleheart. We have managed to come this far—200 miles from the coast as the crow flies—all by water, which explains our good speed to date. From here on our progress depends, of course, on finding the ex-Apprentice Cribblon. We will begin that search tomorrow morning. Pfantas may once have been a garden spot, but its present state is a midden on a mountain, as far as we can see.

  “‘I append a note to my loved fiancée and fellow Wizard (She must have been passed to Journeyman by now if only on her good looks alone!), whom I miss terribly.

  “‘To you and Augurian and all, my love and Marbleheart sends his respectful greeting—but then, he doesn’t know you yet, does he?

  “‘More when we find Cribblon. May it be soon, as we don’t enjoy this smelly old place at all! From... Douglas Brightglade.’”

  “Wonderful!” cried Flarman, jumping up and beginning to pace excitedly back and forth along the terrace. ‘Take it to your Master at once, please. I’ll take the note to Mistress Myrn myself.”

  “Better don some clothes first,” suggested Bronze Owl, clattering over the palace wall. “‘Tis not proper etiquette to enter a palace in such a scanty costume.”

  “Right! Of course! One must follow one’s host’s conventions, I suppose, while one is visiting.”

  “One never knows whom one might meet,” Owl pontificated sarcastically. As a solid-metal creature, he saw no reason to remove one’s clothing just because it was hot. “Would you care to meet, say, Queen Marget of Faerie, of a sudden, you being all but in the buff, so to speak?”

  “Of course not! You’re right,” agreed the Fire Wizard again. “Besides, it might frighten Marget into too-early childbirth to see me thus!” he muttered as he retired to his apartment to change.