Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) (8 page)

“You seem distracted these days, young Apprentice. Even so, you’re very quick to learn.”

Myrn let the spray from the great fountain dampen and cool her face. It was winter on Waterand but the tropical heat was still intense at midday.

“I... I’m sorry, Magister! At the oddest times I have thoughts of...”

“Of Douglas Brightglade, I suppose,” chuckled the Water Adept. “Well, I don’t complain about that. Douglas is like a son to me, also. Think of him all you wish, but remember...the sooner you learn your basic Aquamancy, the sooner you can rejoin your young fire-eater.”

“I know,” said Myrn with a bright smile. “We’ll make some steam, I think, together!”

Augurian laughed outright. The girl was a delight to him, strong yet flexible, earthy yet innocent. Wise and yet ever eager to learn. She could make sail and steer, reef and tack with the best sailors. She knew Sea’s moods, sudden swings, and color changes better than any Mortal he knew, himself not excluded.

She had great courage, great self-confidence, yet she was gentle, polite, and pleasant to everyone. Even Grand Dragon, who now came often to visit and tended to be a bit haughty with everyone else, laughed with Myrn and played games with her he had forgotten ten thousand years before. Like water itself, she flowed to the occasion.

“Flarman will be here soon.” Augurian resumed his way down the marble steps. “Will you see to preparing his rooms? I’ll make plans for our dining. Flarman loves a good table better than I, but I enjoy having him enjoy our hospitality.”

Myrn took the last nine steps three at a time, waved her hand at the Water Adept, and disappeared in the direction of the Palace’s guest quarters.

“Makes me wish I had taken time to have a family,” Augurian said to his Familiar, the silently swift, patient Stormy Petrel, who just then swooped down to perch on the fountain curbing.

The seabird, as usual, said nothing, but Augurian thought he nodded his great head in agreement—and friendly amusement, too.

Chapter Six

The Savannah Horses

Marbleheart spent most of his time in the water swimming from boat to shore and shore to boat, finding all sorts of interesting things to investigate and delicious—he said—things to munch.

At first Douglas propelled the Summer Palace gondola by Myrn’s magic. Then, becoming bored with doing and seeing practically nothing—except blue sky, brown river, and yellow reeds all the same height on either side—he stood on the after-deck and fitted the long oar into its rest. Swinging it back and forth in the rowlock to push and pull the curved blade through the water, he found he could drive the gondola easily, breasting the slowly flowing river current. It was welcome exercise, once he got the hang of it, and something useful to be doing.

At Summer Palace the river had been broad and the current lazily looping right and left, syrup slow. As they moved upstream, however, its course became choked with densely tangled floating mats of hyacinths, water lilies, and low-lying mud aits built up around snags of branches and sometimes full trees, swept down by past floods.

Between the islets, the stream flowed so slowly that its direction was barely perceptible. Choosing the passages that appeared deepest and widest, Douglas rowed steadily on.

By late afternoon, open water had all but disappeared. Douglas navigated by the lowering sun, alone. Even this failed when he ran the gondola’s sharp prow against an unusually thick and tangled snag that blocked the stream course, disturbing a nest of newly hatched alligators, who swam quickly away, squeaking furiously.

Backing water to free the bow from the snag, he tried another channel, only to find their way impeded by a vast floating mass of sweet-smelling purple hyacinths. Even Myrn’s strong propulsion spell was unable to push them through the intertwined stems and bulbous leaves.

After retreating and trying several other paths, he realized he was becoming confused, especially as the sun was now below the horizon.

“Can you tell which way the current is flowing?” he called to the Otter, who was sitting on another hyacinth mat, fluffing his fur.

“Better turn back! We’ll never get the boat through here.”

Douglas shipped his oar and sat down to ponder the situation in Wizardly fashion. The Sea Otter jumped aboard from the hyacinths.

“Actually there are several dozen channels,” he said. “You just keep picking the wrong one, I guess.”

“You’re a big help,” Douglas sniffed sarcastically. “Got any better ideas?”

“Hoy! I’m a Sea Otter, not a riverine one,” Marbleheart protested. “I don’t know anything about rivers except that they get shallower and smaller as you go away from Sea. As I said at the beginning, if we could swim ...”

“I
could
change myself into a fish. No, not a fish! A certain Otter around here has too big an appetite,” mused Douglas. “Beside, shape changing is a very uncertain business. There’s always the danger of not being able to change back. If I changed into an Otter, I might have to stay an Otter forever!”

“Not what I’d call a fate worse than death,” chuckled the Sea Otter.

Douglas stared at the wall of reeds on all sides, each reed as thick as a man’s thumb and standing eight feet out of the water.

“I could fly out of here, but then I couldn’t take the boat—or the Otter, for that matter, over that distance. Too tiring. No. Instead, I’ll loft myself above the reeds with Flarman’s Levitation Spell,” he decided. “Maybe I can see our way to a clear channel.”

“Worth a try,” said Marbleheart, excited by the prospect of seeing more magic. “What should I do?”

“Stay put! Don’t wander off and don’t let the boat get in among the reeds where I can’t see it,” Douglas ordered.

He performed the appropriate incantation and gestured to lift himself gently into the air, slowly rising until he was looking down at the hundreds of square miles of marshland around them. From this vantage he could just see the broken towers of Summer Palace in the distance and a ragged line of mountains to the west, but little in between but the occasional glimpse of open stretches of water rapidly growing dark as the sun fell.

“We’ve twisted and turned so often,” he called in disgust to the Otter, “I can’t even see the way to backtrack. I’ll have to check all possible channels by sight, first, then move the boat. It’ll take days!”

He took a long time, sitting cross-legged atop nothing, much to the Otter’s amazed delight, turning slowly about clockwise to study the lay of the wetlands in all directions.

“That way, I think,” he decided, at last. He produced a brass pocket compass from his right sleeve and carefully noted the direction of the most promising channel. Once he dropped back into the boat there were no landmarks to tell which way to go.

“Please, Marbleheart, swim on ahead and check the depth of the way I chose, so the boat won’t get stuck in the mud. What are the tides hereabouts, anyway?”

“Not large,” said Marbleheart, splashing eagerly into the water. “That, a Sea Otter can tell you. It’s second nature to notice such things for us. The tide turned two hours ago and is ebbing now.”

“Which means it’ll get shallower and shallower around here unless we find a deep channel,” sighed Douglas. He checked his compass once more and pointed out to the Otter the way to go.

It went well but slowly for an hour while twilight stayed in the sky. At times the reeds, sand, and mud banks closed in on the narrow boat so that the Journeyman could touch the stalks at either side by spreading his arms wide. Then they would suddenly emerge from the narrows into wide, still lagoons, completely clear of vegetation. The next problem was choosing a suitable exit through the reeds on the far side of each pool.

The Sea Otter made sure they had enough water under the gondola’s keel to remain afloat and clear of subsurface obstructions, but seeing soon became difficult even for the Otter’s night-sharp eyes.

“It isn’t getting any deeper,” panted Marbleheart, pausing to rest a moment on a great green lily pad with upturned edges like an enormous pie plate. “On the other hand it isn’t getting any shallower, either. We can go on for another half hour or so, but could you see well enough to steer?”

“Not really,” admitted Douglas. He allowed the gondola to coast to a standstill in the middle of one of the open pools. “Better stop for the night.”

“There’ll be a moon later on. Maybe we can go on under moonlight,” the Otter told him.

He went off in search of his supper while Douglas contented himself with a meat pasty and a rather wilted salad taken from the Waiters’ luncheon at Summer Palace.

Wide Marsh came to life as full night fell. Choruses of chirps and croaks filled the air, punctuated by alligators booming, warning everyone away from their personal banks and ponds. The air hummed with the wings of hungry insects homing in on Douglas’s tender skin and warm blood.

After some thought, Douglas conjured an insect-repellant envelope about the gondola and listened to the angry comments of tens of thousands of mosquitoes until they gave up in disgust and went whining off to find their suppers elsewhere.

“I’ll take a short nap,” he decided when the Otter returned, smacking his lips over some undisclosed wetland delicacy.

“I’ll just snuggle close and benefit from your bug spell,” agreed the other, and in short time they were both sound asleep in the bottom of the gondola, gently rocked by tiny wavelets.

A thirty-foot alligator with a wickedly sharp grin glided silently into the lagoon. He nosed curiously against the mosquito shield, suspiciously eyed the frail-seeming gondola for a long moment, but moved off again, wary of the invisible blockade he had felt but couldn’t see.

The sleepers didn’t even wake when a fight broke out between several night birds over a fish carcass floating on the glassy surface at the other end of the lagoon.

“Pad Foot!” said a husky voice near Douglas’s right ear. “Pad Foot, come look at what I’ve found!”

The Journeyman awoke without starting, opening his eyes just a slit to see who had spoken. He felt the Otter stir ever so slightly, then lie very still as well.

The rising moon was silvery bright just above the tall reeds edging the pool; bright enough for one to see very well, Douglas discovered.

The gondola rocked slightly. Glancing over the side, he caught sight of a pair of gnarled and spindly arms and twisted, webbed fingers grasping the side of the boat.

A moment later a pair of huge, luminous yellow-green eyes peered cautiously into the boat. They blinked slowly.

“Gangoner, what are you going on about?” called a new voice from some distance away. “I’m coming...”

Slowly sitting up, Douglas saw a swift-moving chevron of ripples pointed in their direction on the glassy surface. The disturbance slapped softly at the side of the gondola and a second, even more grotesque pair of hands and two wide-set, gold-glowing eyes appeared over the side near where Douglas lay. The first impression Douglas had of the night visitors was that they were giant frogs, mottled green and black with wide, toothless mouths.

“Hello, there!” said the one called Gangoner cheerfully, if a bit hoarsely. “Welcome to Wide Marsh!”

“Thank you,” said Douglas. “I’m afraid I fell asleep!”

“For some, nighttime is for sleeping,” observed the creature. “But for us, it’s time to look to our tummies, you know.”

“Not fond of Otter, are you?” asked Marbleheart, also sitting up and watching the visitors warily.

“No, no! Fishes are best, oysters are even better, if we can find ‘em and clams. Then a salad of water-lily root and lotus buds for roughage. This night we’ve already dined, anyway.”

The frog-creature named Gangoner introduced himself and his companion, Pad Foot, quite politely. Whatever unease their appearance initially caused, Douglas quickly put aside. Despite their lumpy ugliness and guttural voices, they seemed gentle, friendly beasts.

He told the marsh dwellers his own name and Marbleheart’s and invited them to come aboard.

“We’re a bit lost here, not being able to find the main river course,” he explained. “Perhaps you could help?”

Pad Foot, the smaller and more talkative of the two, nodded his understanding as he climbed wetly aboard the gondola and perched on the forward thwart. He was, indeed, a huge amphibian, green with three yellow stripes down his flanks.

“We’re never quite sure of the currents here ourselves. I think the tide is just beginning to rise, but ‘tis too early to show.”

“If you’re heading upriver we probably can’t help,” considered Gangoner, scratching his belly as he joined his companion. “We’ve lived all our lives here in Backwater, you see. No desire to brave the turbulent currents and salty tides.”

“I’ve never seen creatures quite like you before,” said Douglas, offering them bits of waybread.

“Ummm, good!” cried Pad Foot. “We are of the race of Goblins—”

“Goblins!” exclaimed Marbleheart. “I expect Goblins to have no interest in strangers, except as dinners.”

“No! No! We are
Hobgoblins,
” Gangoner said quickly. “We’re only distantly related to those wicked flesh-eating Great Goblins you’ve heard about. We’re true water
Hobgoblins,
rather. Goblins are ever so much larger and ever so much nastier.”

“We’re hardly nasty, at all,” added Pad Foot, earnestly. “Not the least bit, in fact. No, no. We like the retired, quiet life, although it is nice to meet strangers from solid ground once in a while, you know. This bread is really quite delicious!”

Douglas gave them both a bit more of the fairy food. Waybread is very difficult to use up. It tends to run out only when you fail to share it with every hungry thing that comes along.

The froglike Hobgoblins chatted for a few moments longer about their reclusive lives in Backwater of Wide Marsh.

Douglas wasn’t surprised to find they knew little of World, beyond the reed beds and hyacinth rafts. They had only a hazy knowledge of the long-ago Last Battle of Kingdom, part of which had been fought not far inland.