Aquamancer (mancer series Book 2) (7 page)

Over breakfast he realized that he had to do something about the enchantment he knew surrounded the ruined city and its inhabitants. Perhaps these people were happy the way they were, but he doubted it. It was unhealthy, to say the least. They were doing barely enough to keep alive, no more.

“Delond?”

“Sir, er...Douglas?”

“Better! Come around in front of me, Delond, and let me look at your face for a change.”

“It is hardly fitting,” the other objected, but he obeyed a direct order and stood at stiff attention before Douglas across the long table, his eyes unfocused, staring straight ahead.

“No, that’s not good enough!” cried Douglas, thumping the table for emphasis. He kicked the nearest chair, spinning it about to face his.

“Sit down!” he commanded sharply.

Delond moved as if sleepwalking, around the long table to the chair. Douglas waited until he had perched stiffly on its edge, still looking straight ahead over the Journeyman’s shoulder.

“I suppose that’s as good as I’ll get for the moment,” Douglas sighed. “Look at me when I talk to you, Delond!”

The servant turned his head as if it were on gimbals and stared directly at and through Douglas. The scene made the young Wizard chuckle, and his soft laugh disturbed the man servant so that he dropped his eyes to the tabletop for a brief moment. Douglas gestured slowly with both his hands.

“Do you have something you wish to tell me?”

Delond looked suddenly pale and frightened, opened his mouth, closed it, dropped his eyes again, then looked for the first time directly at the young Wizard.

“What do you want to tell me?” encouraged the Journeyman, as though the man had answered his first question.

“The ... the ...”

“Yes, Delond? Come, you can tell me. I am a friend and pupil of a powerful Wizard, and a Wizard in my own right. I can help you.”

“The King ...,” began Delond, and Douglas was almost surprised, but not quite, to see drops of perspiration forming on the Man’s pale brow.

“We are...Waiters,” Delond ground out, at last. He had an expression of miserable pleading in his eyes. Douglas saw the maidservant enter the room with his breakfast, but halt uncertainly when she saw the Majordomo actually seated at the table.

“Come here, miss,” ordered Douglas. “Be seated here, on my other side. Put the tray down, please.”

The girl, for she seemed hardly older than Douglas, obeyed, as silently as ever.

“You are Waiters?” prompted Douglas, turning to Delond again. “Waiting for what? No, waiting ... ah, I see! ... For King Grummist to return?”

“Yes, that’s it,” gasped Delond, sighing raggedly in relief. “We were ... ordered ... to await the return of His Majesty the King.”

“The King has not come in a long time, but you are loyal servants, so you wait, eh?”

“Exactly, sir!” Delond said.

The maid nodded, solemnly, her eyes huge in her ashen face.

Douglas thought about this for the time it took to eat his dry toast and tasteless jam and sip half his coffee (heavy with slightly sour cream, over sweetened and weak). He turned to the maid.

“Your name is?”

“Antia, sir, if it pleases you, sir.”

“And if it did not, you’d change it?” chided Douglas, gently.

“Of course, Sir Wizard!”

“Great Greasy Goblins!” swore Douglas. “This is the sort of nonsense that went on at Frigeon’s court! Not even under Eunicet was it known in Dukedom!”

The two servants looked extremely ill at ease and, moreover, baffled.

“Now, Delond, who told you to wait for the King?”

There was another long, queasy silence. Douglas calmly finished his breakfast. He thought,
Two hundred years will have weakened the third-class spell I sense, which makes these people behave so utterly irrational.

At last, when Douglas glanced up at the Majordomo again, Delond cleared his throat and gulped.

“’Twas the Magister, really, who spoke
for
the King,” spoke up Antia, suddenly. “I wasn’t there, but I heard of it.”

“Yes,” blurted Delond, leaning forward. “I
was
there. The Magister...”

“Did this Magister have a name?”

“His name is ... was ... Farlance,” recalled Delond, and the maid Antia nodded.

“Farlance? Seems to me I’ve heard of him,” said Douglas, and indeed he had. The Wizard Farlance had once been a member of the Fellowship of Wizards, a colleague of Flarman’s and Augurian’s, long ago. “I believe Farlance perished in Last Battle,” Douglas mused aloud.

“Perished!” shrieked the girl, biting her knuckles, eyes wide in horror.

“Someone will have to tell you this eventually or you will live and die with no choices of your own,” Douglas said firmly. “Delond, do you want to know why King Grummist has not returned?”

“No, Sir Wizard, I mean ... Douglas.”

“Listen to my words and watch my hands...” He made a flowing, convoluted gesture where neither could avoid seeing it clearly.

“The King will
never
return!” he said loudly, for he sensed others were listening. The air took on a sulfurous and lightning-like smell, moving fitfully about them and stirring the drapes that closed the windows to the morning light.

Delond screamed softly, like a sorely wounded bird. The maid Antia began to weep great wracking sobs, burying her face in her apron. From beyond the curtained door of Delond’s house came cries and shrieks of grief and disbelief and then the sounds of many feet rushing toward the house.

The Waiters were learning they need no longer wait.

It took several hours to calm them down and tell them, as best Douglas knew, the truth about Grummist’s tragic end and the story of the Last Battle of Kingdom. He kindly avoided dwelling on the King’s foolish, last-minute attempts to bargain with the Dark Powers for his own life. It had led only to greater disaster and a more agonized death ... and the breakup of Flarman’s beloved Fellowship as well, despite a hard-won victory.

At last the fifty remaining Waiters stopped weeping and gathered around Douglas in Delond’s dining hall to listen to the unheard news of the last two centuries, silently but slowly recovering their wits and common sense.

An elderly footman asked, “We exist to serve the King! Without the King, what are we?”

“Free men, for one thing,” replied Douglas. “Responsible men and women, who can take care of themselves.”

“But who can we serve? We are trained to serve!” came fearful cries from all sides.

Douglas shook his head. He was unsure how much help he should give these poor, forlorn souls. Too much would be as fatal as too little, he suspected.

“But we
must
serve!” wailed a laundress. “Or we are nothing!”

“Nonsense,” Douglas said angrily. “You’re free men. Who should you serve? I’ll tell you.
Serve each other.”

“Each other?”
they cried out, some in abject fear... but others repeated the words in wonder. They fell at once into a furious discussion of this novel idea.

“How can this be? Who will rule? Make the decisions? Give the orders?”

“Figure it out for yourselves!” said Douglas, shaking his head.

They were positively dumbfounded. At last young Antia spoke up.

“It is
sensible
that we
serve
each other, isn’t it? And if we
serve
each other, why can’t we also
rule
each other!”

Their logjam was at last broken. Douglas saw it would take them weeks, months, perhaps years to reason it out, feel out the details, but they were on the right track at last.

“Rule and serve!” cried an excited Delond. “Serve and rule! Sir... Douglas ... Wizard?”

“Yes, Delond?”

“We owe you an extremely deep debt of gratitude.”

“I don’t think so. I just told you the plain harsh truth.”

“The truth, to show us the way,” said Antia. “We will long remember you, Douglas Brightglade!”

“Douglas Brightglade!” they shouted. “Make a speech, Wizard!”

The Journeyman Wizard stood and bowed to the assemblage.

“It’s close to noontime. I must be getting on my way and you have a lot of things to decide and do,” he told them. “It isn’t going to be easy, you know. I can’t help you any more than I have. You must clean out and fix up your ruined city, mend your ruined houses, and rebuild your neglected lives. Learn how to be served rather than just to serve, how to rule justly and mercifully, and be ruled in turn by common sense and humane, open minds.”

The Waiters listened, their faces aglow, yet very serious.

“Now, let’s all have a good, sustaining lunch, with lots of pepper and salt, marjoram and rosemary, and...well, all the things you’ve neglected to use for too long. Ale and cakes, if you like. Together!”

A sturdy old table was enthusiastically hauled from the dust of a long-empty house, wiped clean, and spread with age-yellowed linen. In a few minutes it was loaded with porcelain dishes and gold-ware fit for any king. The serving dishes were heaped to overflowing with all manner of good, spicy, savory things to eat. Glasses were filled with truly well aged and heady wines.

“Are you going to stay here forever?” asked a voice at Douglas’s elbow. Marbleheart was daintily sampling a spiced wing of chicken from a vast platter on the table.

“No, no!” whispered Douglas. “They might want to make me king, and Wizards make the very worst sort of kings! Let’s leave while they’re still arguing. They’ll be just fine! People get exactly the government they deserve, Flarman Flowerstalk says.”

“I’ve decided to go with you,” announced the Sea Otter, licking his paws appreciatively. “Say, the food here has vastly improved all of a sudden!”

He selected a drumstick from the platter. Douglas laughed aloud.

“Well, I’ve gotten quite curious about what’s to be seen beyond Wide Marsh. Beside that, you might need me. If you’ll take me with you, that is.”

“Curiosity is a very useful quality,” said Douglas, remembering the day he first encountered the Fire Wizard who advertised for an Apprentice with a Large Bump of Curiosity. “Very necessary for anyone, even an Otter.”

“Otters have the most curiosity of anyone,” claimed Marbleheart, stoutly. “I wonder where we’ll sleep tonight?”

“Let’s find out,” said Douglas, and after they’d retrieved his knapsack and topped it off with some choice foods from the Waiters’ gala table, the new-made friends slipped quietly away, down a cracked and sand-clogged boulevard to the river.

“It wouldn’t be such a hard trip if we both could swim,” observed the Otter, dabbling his forepaws impatiently in Bloody Brook. “But I guess we’ll just have to walk, unless Wizards can become fishes.”

Douglas was examining one of the long, narrow, high-prowed gondolas tied to Summer Palace’s crumbling stone pier. The Waiters had been using them for fishing, he decided, for they were worn, smudged, and smelled strongly of fish. They’d once been graceful, heavily gilded vessels for carrying noblemen and their ladies up and down the river.

“How do you think these things are propelled?” he asked. “Ah, here’s an oar.”

“That’s disappointing. I thought it might go by magic,” said Marbleheart, poking his inquisitive nose into the nearest boat.

“No, servants rowed them.”

Battered and stained as it had become, something about the slim grace of the gondola reminded him of a pearl fisher he knew. Myrn, island born and bred to ships and sailing, would have appreciated the beautiful craft, if she could see it. A memory returned to him as he thought of her.

“There’s something a friend of mine told me, not long ago. ‘What good is being a Wizard if you can’t make a boat go without sail or oars?” she asked me, and she taught me just the Propelling Spell we need.”

“I was wondering when you were going to do some magic,” cried Marbleheart eagerly. “Let’s go!”

He leaped nimbly into the gondola, followed more carefully by the Journeyman. When Douglas spoke Myrn’s spell and made a pushing motion with his left hand, the gondola slid gently backward into the river… but came to a stop with a sharp jerk that tumbled the Otter to the floorboards in a furry heap.

“Some sailors we are!” he chortled. “Wait, I’ll untie the mooring rope!”

Once freed, the beautifully proportioned craft slid with increasing speed into the slowly moving current. Douglas described a tight circle with his left hand and the boat turned sharply, pointing upstream. The Wizard gestured away upstream and the boat reversed itself and accelerated smoothly in that direction.

“Better than swimming, almost,” laughed the Otter in pure delight. He trailed a paw in the water over the side and watched the V-shaped ripple it made. “We should make Pfantas by tomorrow, at this rate!”

Douglas doubted it. “Lots of things might happen on an adventure like this,” he warned his new companion. “And probably will.”

****

“Water is the most powerful element, by far,” Augurian was saying. They were seated on the battlements above crashing surf stirred by a Sea storm so far away they weren’t aware of it otherwise. The tall walls of this wing of Augurian’s Palace stood with their stone feet right in the surf.

Below them, cadet Porpoises played excitedly in the foaming breakers, gliding swiftly down the wave-fronts and darting off to the side or leaping joyously into the air just before the crests curled over and hurled themselves onto the black and green rocks.

“There’s certainly a lot of it,” said the Apprentice Aquamancer.

“It’s not just a matter of
quantity.
It’s also
quality,”
said her Master sternly, sensing that her mind was not entirely on his lecture.

“Let’s see; water is solvent, mover, life giver, mountain breaker, pathway ...”

She went on at some length, mollifying her dignified Magister with what she remembered of earlier lessons. He sat back, his eyes half-closed, as if listening to poetry in the wind. When she fell silent at last, he shook himself slightly and rose. Myrn followed him toward the broad stair down to the Palace forecourt, with its enormous, four-story-tall fountain. Augurian paused.