Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) Page 4

  “Something happened!” gasped Myrn, regaining her composure quickly. “This is terrible—knowing something has happened, but not knowing what!”

  She shrugged into a light robe and went to look from her window, then walked barefoot to the door, stopping to listen once more. Hearing nothing, she opened the door.

  Turning right, she went to knock softly on Augurian’s study door, knowing somehow the Water Adept was yet there, not in his bed.

  “Myrn!” said Augurian when he saw her. “Come in, please! What has wakened you?”

  She explained as best she could. The Water Wizard nodded in understanding and led her to a seat beside his broad worktable, piled high with papers, scrolls, and books.

  “You’ve formed an unusually strong bond with young Brightglade, I see,” he said.

  “Do you think something has happened to Douglas?” she cried in increased concern.

  “Probably, Apprentice. Probably. Not unusual at all, I believe. Wait a short while.”

  He went to another, smaller table on which rested a tangle of glass tubing, flasks, beakers, retorts, and all the paraphernalia of his craft. He mixed three colorless liquids from stoppered bottles and swirled them in a bulbous flask. The liquid turned deep indigo almost at once.

  Augurian placed the graduate on the windowsill and gazed at it for several minutes while his Apprentice waited, holding her breath.

  “Well, my dear, do you still feel that Douglas is in great danger?” he asked at last.

  Myrn took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her shoulders relaxed in relief.

  “No, Magister. I feel he is, if not safe, at least not in the great peril that awakened me.”

  “In sudden and dire straits,” said the Water Adept, gesturing at the graduate where the liquid was now clear again, “a heart in danger cries out, involuntarily, and his close loved ones hear the cry. Your training here for the past year has sharpened your awareness of these phenomena, you see.”

  He emptied the glass cylinder into a sink and washed it carefully while she watched in silence.

  “In time you may even be able to speak to Douglas over long distances, when you most need to. Not at all unusual. Happens all the time.”

  “I wish I could now,” said Myrn, smiling weakly.

  “You probably could if you tried hard enough. But I advise against it, as it might distract him at what he is doing to save himself. And it would be extremely tiring to you, and you have lessons to learn and tasks to do tomorrow, young Apprentice. Best that you get back to bed! I am about to retire myself.”

  As the young lady rose to leave, he smiled warmly and patted her hand reassuringly.

  “Try not to let it concern you, Myrn, although I know it probably will. The rapport you felt is, if nothing else, a sign of your rapid progress in Wizardry.”

  She thanked him and left. The Water Adept watched her go, saying to himself, “Remarkably rapid progress!”

  ****

  Douglas regained his wits when he hit the foaming surface of Sea beyond the ship’s stern. He opened his mouth to shout for help, and a gallon of salt water hit him in the face. He spent several moments coughing and retching to rid himself of it, struggling to keep his head above the surging waves.

  Riding the top of an upsweeping wave, Douglas saw no sign of Pitchfork in that fleeting moment, only towering, hurtling ranks upon ranks of dark green waves all about him.

  Unlike his previous involuntary swim in the middle of Warm Seas, these waters were winter cold. The wind whipped with maniacal fury about and over him. Sharp, painful raindrops needled his face and neck, churning the waves about him into amber froth.

  The wind suddenly fell off as he slid down into the trough between waves. A new, hard-driving rain torrent beat down the chop, slowly calming even the great breakers.

  He trod water, hampered greatly by his waterlogged clothing and boots. His hand struck and clutched at a thick piece of timber, the very rudder post that had stunned him a moment before, torn from its bolts. He clung to it with both hands and found that, if he relaxed a bit, it was enough to keep him afloat.

  How long could he hang on, thus? Already his reserves of strength were being sorely tried. Douglas clung to the wallowing sternpost, concentrating on breathing regularly and keeping his grip with cold-numbed fingers. He had lost all track of time. The low sun was blinding him. The waves, while much less steep, were still too high for him to see far as he vainly searched for Pitchfork or for her lifeboats—or her sailors, like himself, cast adrift.

  The wind that remained drove him onward. He wasn’t aware of it, too bemused from the sharp blow on the head and the suddenness of the catastrophe to do more than breathe and cling.

  It didn’t at first occur to him to call again on the Asrai, for his own sake, although the Phosphorescence, the Cold Sea Fire, had saved him once before from drowning.

  “The sun’s too bright now. If I don’t get some help by nightfall,” he promised himself aloud, “I’ll call Asrai, then.”

  He drifted down the wind, now in almost a dreamlike state.

  Douglas came to himself in sudden panic when his feet hit something underwater and he lost his grip on the timber.

  Is it Oval once again rescuing me? he wondered, fuzzily. But a moment later his feet hit the shifting sand bottom again and a lesser breaker pushed him to his hands and knees.

  Blinded by salt foam, he crawled gratefully up the slope of the beach, then stopped to rest and get his bearings against a towering black rock. The sun was setting behind it. After a few moments he half rose and staggered around into the lee of the pinnacle, to sit with the last of the storm tide washing about his legs, allowing the level rays to warm him and begin to dry his clothing. He still wore his heavy seaboots. He’d forgotten to drop them.

  The sun plunged behind a distant, flat horizon and evening cold came at once with a brisk offshore breeze. The waves had retreated with the falling wind—or perhaps the tide had turned, he thought. The sodden Journeyman Wizard stood, a bit more sure of his quaking legs now, garnering an armload of driftwood as he walked away from the surge.

  With deft touches of his fingers and short, magic words, he set the damp wood afire. Its light would be a beacon to others, as well as warming himself. Other survivors were out there, perhaps, struggling to make the beach.

  Fire made him feel master of his fate, once more. He pushed up handfuls of damp sand as a backstop and gathered more wood to feed the fire through the rest of the night, eventually he fell into exhausted sleep, against his will.

  This is the dawn of the fifth day and Pargeot was right, it took four days’ sailing to make landfall, he thought as he woke the next morning. Poor Pargeot! I do hope Asrai reached him in time. Well, maybe if I survived, he did, too.

  He felt rather fine, despite the knot on his forehead and aching muscles everywhere, but ravenously hungry all at once. Nothing was broken; he still had on his heavy Westongue pea jacket, with its high collar and anchor buttons. And damp but serviceable seaboots. The winter air was bitingly cold but the rising sun was pleasantly warming.

  He patrolled up and down the broad beach for several miles in each direction to warm himself further, and to search for stranded shipmates, or at least their bodies, or anything washed ashore that might be useful.

  He found a heavy wooden cask of dried beef from Pitchfork’s galley stores, and pried it open to feast on good, although very salty, Valley beef. He shoved several handfuls of the wood-hard meat into his wide Wizard’s sleeves against future need.

  About to turn back from his beachcombing, he sighted a huddled lump, half-covered with sand, just above the high-water mark. A half-buried body, he thought, from its shape. When he investigated, it was his knapsack, its contents still safe and dry!

  “Myrn’s Waterproofing Spell really works!” Douglas laughed, his first since before the storm. In the knapsack he found his supply of Fairy Waybread and munched hungrily on a bit of it as he retraced his steps to his
fire. The magically baked traveling food had saved him many hungry miles before and saved him from a diet solely of salted beef now.

  His spirits rose and his sense of adventure came to the fore, as it always did when old troubles were behind him and new problems challenged him from ahead.

  Chapter Four

  Marbleheart

  Douglas’s investigations showed that he’d been cast up on a narrow, along-shore sandy barrier island separated from the mainland by a mile-wide shallow lagoon.

  Nothing for it but to swim, Douglas decided, although he didn’t relish the idea of getting wet all over again. He stripped off his clothes and his seaboots and stuffed them into his watertight knapsack, then waded out into the water until he was forced to swim, pushing the sealed knapsack before him, and using it as a float.

  “I’m getting pretty good at this,” he said to himself. “For a Fire Adept, I seem to be spending a lot of time in water. Myrn would be more at ease here, I would think!”

  He chuckled to himself fondly, remembering the pretty Apprentice. “Well, I can hear her now. Fire Wizard! Why didn’t you levitate over the water as Flarman taught you, long ago?’”

  The water was warm, compared to the Broad, however, and he shortly found, to his surprise, that it was almost fresh, with only a slightly brackish taste. It served to wash the dried salt from his body and hair, making him much more comfortable.

  “A river’s mouth?” he wondered, aloud. Talking to himself was another habit he had acquired from Flarman, who kept up running conversations with himself while he worked. “And, if so, is the river nearby?”

  “Not far away,” said a cheerful voice, startling him by its nearness. He missed a stroke and submerged completely for a moment. He hadn’t seen the long, brown, sleek-bodied animal floating on its back in the water ahead of him, forelegs folded on its chest.

  “Sorry!” said the animal, waving one forepaw. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Douglas trod water and examined the creature apprehensively. It had a narrow, streamlined body covered with luxuriant fur. Including tail and whiskers, it stretched at least five feet long in the water. Its narrow, pointed face was pleasantly rodent, with a pert and upturned black nose and wide-set, intelligent eyes above flaring gray whiskers and sharp, white teeth.

  Its front paws grasped a cracked and battered mollusk shell. It balanced a round, smooth, flat stone precariously on its furry chest.

  “Good morning, Otter,” spluttered the Journeyman, regaining his grip on the floating knapsack. “I recognize your kind. I’ve met your species before, but not so large!”

  “Why, actually, I’m of the Sea Otter family. I call myself Marbleheart—after this beautiful pounding rock I found, you see.”

  The Sea Otter indicated the disk of stone on his chest.

  “It’s for breaking things open,” Marbleheart explained when Douglas showed cautious curiosity. “Otters are among the few animals who use tools, you know.”

  “I seem to have read that, yes. The Otters I knew in Crooked Brook didn’t, but they are considerably smaller than you, as I said.”

  “Us Sea Otters grow pretty big. I think it’s due to a vastly better diet. Do you mind if I finish off this clam? I like my breakfast fresh.”

  Douglas shook his head.

  “I’m swimming to the mainland shore, over there. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  The Otter nodded politely. “Maybe I’ll join you. I sense there’s more to you than just an ordinary shipwrecked sailor.”

  “Come if you wish,” said Douglas, striking out once more for the mainland. Twenty minutes later he waded out of the lagoon and found a grassy spot at the top of a sand dune to dry himself with a blast of hot air—a handy bit of Fire Wizardry.

  He’d pulled on his clothes and was munching a bit of dried beef when the Sea Otter came out of the water a short way away, shaking his long, thin body as a dog would do, to rid himself of excess water. He trotted close and sniffed at the food, more curious than hungry.

  Better to be polite, thought the Journeyman. He’s big enough and has teeth sharp enough to be dangerous if he wants to be.

  “Here, try some,” he invited, handing the Otter a chunk of the beef. “My name, by the bye, is Douglas Brightglade.”

  The aquatic mammal sniffed the morsel suspiciously, then gulped it down in one bite.

  “Not bad! I could learn to like it, although I much prefer the taste of fresh seafood,” decided Marbleheart.

  “Where I’m headed, fish may be hard to find,” said Douglas.

  “That,” said Marbleheart, beginning to groom his drying fur, “prompts me to ask, where are you headed, Douglas Brightglade?”

  Douglas hesitated. There was no reason why he shouldn’t tell a stranger of his journey, he decided.

  “I am going west to the far border of Old Kingdom, looking for a man named Cribblon in a town called Pfantas.”

  “I’ve heard of it. Never been there, though.”

  “Do you know the geography of Old Kingdom, then?” asked the Journeyman, hoping for more information on his destination.

  “Oh, no,” replied the Otter. He stretched on his stomach in the warm sand and began to sun himself. “No, I know the shore here quite well, but I admit I’ve got only curiosity about the hinterlands.”

  “And what is this place called?”

  “Men call it Summer Palace,” said the animal, sleepily. “Why? I don’t really know. It always seemed a curious name for such a forlorn, lonely marsh. There’s a pretty fair-sized human burrow, what you’d call a city, not far that way. It’s on the main river channel.”

  “I suppose I can reach this city by going inland for a while and looking for the river?”

  “Sure. But the way is pretty swampy for a dry-land person like you. It’s easy to get lost among the bayous, lagoons, and creeks and such, if you don’t swim too well. There’s a dry pathway, however, now that I think of it,” the Sea Otter said, sitting up.

  “Where can I find it?”

  “Be easier to show you.”

  “I don’t want to take you away from home.”

  “Nonsense! Home is anywhere there’s water...and food. And where there is water there is almost always food.”

  Marbleheart evidently had made up his mind to be Douglas’s guide so the young man accepted his assistance, despite his misgivings about strangers in this strange land. When he rose to resume his journey, Marbleheart asked him politely to carry his marble disk—he didn’t want to leave it behind, he said, and it slowed him down to walk on only three legs—then fell into step beside the Wizard, showing the way.

  The Otter walked with a curious gallumping stride, arching his long back high and then running out from under it on his short, web-footed legs. The effect was more than a little comic and Douglas could be forgiven for laughing at the sight. Marbleheart didn’t seem to mind.

  Whenever their way lay beside water, the Otter chose to swim instead of walking, and that was at least half of the time. In the water he reminded Douglas of the Porpoises of Warm Seas, swift, streamlined, and graceful.

  As they went they chatted in a friendly manner. Douglas told the Sea Otter of Flarman and their adventures defeating the evil Ice King. Then he explained his interest in the Witches’ Coven in the west.

  By the time they passed through a dense screen of ten-foot reeds with feathery tops and found themselves on the bank of a broad, slow river, he had learned the Otter’s history, also.

  “I was born in a cozy burrow on the south shore of the Briney,” Marbleheart told him. “It was a hard life, but a good one. The Briney is full of tasty cod and scrumptious sole. Mama and Papa taught us to swim fast and fish well and have a marvelous time, in the water and out. By the time I was old enough to strike out on my own, I was larger and stronger than any of the other kits of my litter. I was the first to leave home.”

  “How large a litter?” asked Douglas, thinking of Pert and Party, the cats of Wizards’ H
igh, who regularly bore four or five kittens to Black Flame.

  “Only seven in all. We were a pawful. Mama always said! I made my way south over the sand spit to the Broad, wanting to see World on my own. Since then I’ve wandered almost everywhere there is to be, along the coast of Dukedom, even to the top of your Farango Waters. Delightful place, if a bit too noisy with shipbuilding and dangerous with net fishing. The fishermen were rather unfriendly. They were jealous that I caught the biggest and best Sea Trout that swam the Waters.”

  The fishermen had chased him away from their nets, throwing stones and sometimes shooting arrows, but Marbleheart considered it all a great lark.

  “Oh, I knew they were trying to kill me at times, but I understood. Life isn’t all games, even for a Sea Otter. Fishermen have a living to make, too.”

  Douglas found himself warming to the animal. Marbleheart was jolly, self-confident, and a bit of a clown at times.

  “I swam all the way across the Broad on a wager,” the Otter boasted, “with a disreputable old cormorant I met. More or less settled down here. It’s much quieter, no shipyards or fish nets. Loads of loud, muddy-footed birds, however. They always think I’m after their eggs or chicks. I’d have to be nearly starved to eat a loon’s egg, let alone a chick. Ugh! All feathers and bones!”

  They came in late afternoon to a shallow harbor in a graceful river bend. Breasting a last dune, they stopped to look down on a strange sight.

  As far as eye could see, the flat sandy land was covered with the ruins of a vast city. Walls, columns, pavements, broken towers, and weed-grown plazas reached to the horizon, all laid out in straight lines and graceful curves, colonnaded squares and ornamental oval patches that once had been gardens, Douglas decided.

  Most of the walls were broken down, stones and brick lay scattered everywhere, columns lay where they had fallen ages before, and the paving was cracked or tilted or buried in drifting sand.

  Few of the buildings had upper stories or even roofs, and only a huddled handful had doors or windows covered with sun-bleached cloth. And yet, faint threads of smoke from supper tires showed that someone lived, still, in Summer Palace.