Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) (16 page)

“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.

“The 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.

In ten minutes he was knocking at Augurian’s laboratory door.

Myrn answered his knock, soaking wet from head to toe and looking as if she could bite the head off a dragon were the dragon foolish enough to comment on her appearance.

“Ah, the joys of Aquamancy!” chuckled Flarman.

“Watch yourself, Firemaster!” the petite Apprentice growled, a dangerous glint in her eye. “Remember, Water can quench Fire!”

Flarman ducked into the room, glancing up to make sure no black thunderclouds were gathering to pour a tropical shower upon his head. “Call it a draw!” he pleaded.

“Aptly punned.” The girl from Flowring Isle grinned. “Draw water and draw fire! I’m sorry, Magister! Things haven’t gone aright today at all.”

“Here’s a certain word I guarantee will bring a smile to your lips and lightness to your heart, my dear,” said Flarman, presenting the folded note. “It just arrived.”

“From Douglas!” the lass exclaimed gleefully. She snatched the fold of parchment and hastily opened it.

“I’ll be on my way, then,” said Flarman, but Myrn was already engrossed in her letter and didn’t even notice him leave.

Chapter Eleven

Cribblon Found

Grim, glum, and preoccupied Pfantasians showed no curiosity about the unusual pair when they walked about the next morning. Clambered about might be a better description, for most of the streets of Pfantas were actually steep stairways, slippery with scum and malodorous with piles of rotting garbage.

“What this place needs is a solid week of good, hard rain,” observed the Journeyman.

“What it needs,” Marbleheart sniffed in disgust, “is a good, old-fashioned Briney tidal wave.”

“I suppose one gets used to it,” said Douglas, trying not to breathe too deeply.

“Easier for you to say,” grunted the other. “Your nose is a lot further away from this mess than mine!”

They had spent the night in the town’s only inn and resolved before the first hour had passed to find a nice, quiet pine glade somewhere away from the town to camp during the rest of their stay. That was their first order of business this morning, which had dawned hot, humid, windless, noisy, and extremely overripe.

Circling the base of the conical hill, they passed through a postern gate on the side opposite the lake and dipped down into a trash-strewn valley through which rushed a muddy burn. They crossed a rickety two-plank bridge, which swayed and bucked under their weight, and climbed the opposite hill, upwind of the town. The way here was soft and fragrant with pine needles, through dense stands of dark pine accented here and there by white birch.

“This is far better!” exclaimed Marblehead, who had decided not to take a dip in the poor creek’s filthy waters. “How about this nice level clearing? It looks just what we need.”

Douglas pitched camp. He not only enlarged his best handkerchief into a colorful, roomy pavilion, but added a smooth bit of lawn, a small garden filled with the most fragrant flowers he could think of, and decorated the tent poles with cheerful red and orange banners emblazoned with his own “DB” monogram under the ancient flame symbol of Pyromancy.

“It pays to advertise, if you want someone to know who, what, and where you are,” said he. Marbleheart shook his head in doubt but said nothing.

“Where does one begin to look for an ex-Apprentice?” he asked instead.

“With any luck, Cribblon will find us,” replied Douglas. “It seems best. We don’t know where to look for him, nor even what he looks like. If he has eyes or ears, he can learn about us from just about anywhere on this side of Pfantas.”

They settled down in front of the comfortable pavilion to await results. To pass the time, Douglas taught the Sea Otter certain simple magic spells, as he had promised.

“First, a very useful spell to warm and dry yourself quickly after a wetting.”

“I’ve never had trouble drying
without
a spell,” objected the Otter. “My fur dries in a matter of minutes.”

“Hours,” corrected the Journeyman. He wrinkled his nose. “Besides, you don’t smell too good when you’re damp. This’ll be handy when you want to be dry in mere seconds because you have to meet important people who might not be used to wet Otter. And, of course, you can use it on other things if you wish them to dry quickly.”

Marbleheart grumbled but learned his first spell quickly, then tackled a few more difficult spells with growing eagerness.

Douglas avoided spells that called for complicated hand gestures, as these would prove difficult for a Sea Otter of short legs and webbed toes. He included the first Firemaking Spell Flarman had ever taught to his Apprentice so long ago—for lighting campfires, lamps, lanterns, braziers, sconces, flares, pipes, and candles.

“To be used with caution, of course,” warned the Journeyman, unconsciously mimicking Flarman’s words and best teaching manner. “It’s simple but powerful. You could set a whole town on fire if you aren’t careful.”

“Say, not a bad idea!” exclaimed Marbleheart, nodding his head toward Pfantas. “Well, perhaps not; at least not yet.”

The morning passed quickly but nobody approached them. No Pfantasian even looked up from daily tasks on the hillside opposite. The travelers ate a good lunch (pinecones and pine needles transformed into ham and sharp cheese sandwiches on rich, brown rye bread with cold potato salad). They bathed in a small pooling of the burn that ran below their camp—well upstream from Pfantas, where the water was clean, fresh, and cold. Afterward they basked in the warm spring afternoon sun on their square of lush greensward.

Marbleheart had practiced his first learned spell, alternately diving into the burn and coming out to dry himself by uttering the Drying Spell. Repeated soaking and drying made his coat rather too fluffy, and he then had to lick it back into shape.

“I’m going over to look at that castle at the top of town,” decided Douglas in midafternoon. “Just out of curiosity.”

“Remember what you told me about curiosity,” warned Marbleheart. “Better take me along.”

“You stay here in case Cribblon comes along while I’m gone. If he does and can’t wait for me, tell him to come back at suppertime. Anyone eating Pfantas’s food should jump at the chance to dine on pinecones and needles.”

Douglas crossed the creek, passed through the unguarded postern gate, and climbed the stair-step streets to the broken-down
old structure
at the very
crown of
the hill.

It was neither entirely ruined nor uninhabited. Dozens of ragged, half-clad men and women huddled in the hazy afternoon sun, under broken arches and in blind doorways, sullenly ignoring the young Wizard as he passed.

“Good fellow,” Douglas asked a young man with his arm in a dirty sling, “do you know anything of a person named Cribblon?”

“Do ye want to get me beaten or worse, asking me stupid questions?” snapped the young man. “Only Witchservers are allowed to question! Or maybe you
are
a Witchserver, eh? In which case I’m dead already, curse my bad temper!”

“You’re still alive,” said Douglas, not unkindly. “Does that prove I’m not a Witchserver?”

“It
might,”
stressed the other. “No, I’ve never heard of anyone named Cribblon.”