Hag in the Water

  Hag in the Water

  By

  Barbara Hambly

  Published by Barbara Hambly at Smashwords

  Copyright 2017 Barbara Hambly

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  Table of Contents

  Hag in the Water

  About the Author

  Hag in the Water

  When so be that through excessive and promiscuous smelling of rue a man should develop a scorpion in his brain, such that the can not sleep for grief of it, let his friends fill a platter with mole’s blood and, lulling the man to dulness with diuerse songs, enter into his chamber in silence and place the blood beneath his bed. So be it that in the night whilst he lieth wakeful the scorpion will be drawn out through his ear unknowing, and will be found drowned in the blood upon the morrow.

  Did Dotys ever actually TRY this? wondered John Aversin, examining, enthralled, the elaborate scene depicted amidst the capital letter’s foliage: helpful friends and dripping platters and entomologically unlikely arthropods (That thing’s the size of a dog, how’d it fit in the poor bastard’s head?).

  And does it work on scorpions generated in the brain by means other than sniffin’ excessive rue?

  John turned the page over hopefully, but the five pages of the long-missing second volume of Dotys’ Sover Medicia had been bound into a miscellany with what looked like a gnomish translation of Uralius’ Art of Poetry and a series of sermons praising the god Sarmendes, and there was no further discussion to be found on the treatment of cranial infestations. From the garden beyond the wide windows of the chamber in which he lay, John could hear the songs of children, sweet-voiced page-boys in the gold-and-crimson livery of the royal House of Uwanë, rehearsing their part in the masque to be presented tonight to celebrate the wedding of the King.

  The final night of celebration, reflected John, sitting up on the window-seat’s plush cushions and propping his battered spectacles on the bridge of his nose. He smiled, torn between his affection for the stooped, scholarly young monarch – not to speak of the month he’d spent bingeing his way through the books in the royal library – and his awareness that summer was fleeting. Winters came on earlier than they had in his boyhood, and even twenty-five years ago they’d come early enough. Scholar though he was, he was warrior enough to be aware of the cloud-patterns in these soft southern skies, and to calculate how many days he and his beautiful witch-wife Jenny would be on the road back to the north, once she returned from her botanical excursion to the Petty Islands a day’s sail south of Bel.

  It was time, and past time, to go.

  He and Jenny had shared their joy at King Gareth’s marriage, after the death two years before of his first wife Trey. They both loved quiet Danae, the new queen, and her bright-eyed impudent little daughter who was now step-sister to Princess Millença. Jenny had laid magics of health and well-being on both children, on the young King and his bride.

  But the road to the Winterlands would be deep in snow, by the time they returned home.

  John was calculating how many books he could get through – and make notes on – before Jenny’s return, when he heard voices in the garden above those of the choir.

  “…’twill beget trouble,” pronounced the gravelly but oddly childlike tones which John recognized at once as those of Sevacandrozani, Lord of the Gnomes of Ylferdun Deep, the great gnome kingdom whose gates lay half a day’s ride from the walls of Gareth’s royal city of Bel. “Zarbochedronn Blue-Hair, greatest of the Wise Ones of the Deep, hath long said that the secrets of the Deep are no business of they who dwell above the ground. He’ll not welcome the lady Jenny, no matter your opinion of her, my lord, nor all she hath done for our people.”

  “And I’ll not welcome,” retorted the light, rather scratchy tenor of the young King Gareth himself, “having this thing get out of your mines and make its way to this city. And if in five days your Mages’ Council hasn’t been able to do anything about it, I should say it’s high time they asked for advice—”

  The voices had reached the door of the guest-chamber by this time and John opened it to reveal Gareth II of the House of Uwanë, King of Bel and Lord of the Islands, his lumpy, ink-stained knuckles upraised and his soft gray eyes blinking in startlement behind spectacle-lenses as thick as John’s own.

  The Gnome King – who was known to those that lived above the ground as Balgub – executed a profound Boughs of Seven Oak-Trees salaam, befitting his own status as the Lord of Ylferdun Deep but honoring John’s as the man who had rid the Deep of both a dragon and a malevolent sorceress*, worthy of the gratitude of every gnome of the Seven Deeps for life. It was a salutation seldom used and by all rights John should have been much more impressed by it than he was.

  Gareth only stood uncertain for a moment, then hastily (and rather clumsily) dropped into a Sable Heron salaam, not appropriate for the occasion (except that any salaam executed by the King was technically appropriate), which would have had the Court gossips whispering What exactly did he MEAN by that choice of greeting? for several years. Rebellions had been started over less.

  Fortunately, like Gareth, John couldn’t tell one salaam from another and didn’t care. He executed the all-purpose Winterlands bow and asked, “So what’s this thing you got comin’ up out of the Deep, you’re talkin’ of? An’ what in the name of the Moon-Scribe’s little white dog d’you mean, not speakin’ of it for five days? Back home, a lich-slug comin’ out of the Wraithmire’ll destroy three farmsteads ‘twixt moon-set an’ mornin’, mice an’ all, an’ in the Liever Umbraeorum there’s accounts of waste-wights that’ll turn twenty miles of territory to whisperin’ dust in three nights an’ be damned to all the spells that wizards lay against ‘em. I’ve wine here,” he added, stepping aside to wave man and gnome into the airy, octagonal chamber that overlooked the King’s garden. “An’ gie decent beer.”

  He scooped two volumes of Gantering Pellus’ Encyclopedia of Everything in the Material World and the second volume of Juronal’s Commentaries off the chair nearest the window, and a pile of pale-brown southern paper and seven or eight wax writing-tablets off another beside the wall, then dragged the chair close to the window-seat where he’d been reading a few moments ago. Sevacandrozani – Balgub – was looking around the book-littered apartment with disapproval (It ain’t THAT bad! reflected John protestingly) but Gareth, whose private quarters generally were far less tidy, seemed not even to notice.

  “The Council of the Wise Ones,” responded Balgub, “deemed it advisable for the safety of the Deep—”

  “Gaah,” said John, who had encountered gnomish secrecy on previous occasions. “An’ how many have been killed, for the safety of the Deep, then?”

  The Lord of the Deep did not reply. Gareth said, quietly, “Seven that we know about. And Miss Mab – the Lady Taseldwyn—” He named the powerful gnome-witch who was Jenny’s friend, “—struck down, and lies unconscious. If nothing else, we hope the Lady Jenny will at least be able to revive her, as well as advise us about this… this thing.”

  John resumed his seat on the window-bench, a sturdy unprepossessing figure in the faded black robe of a scholar, his long, russet hair straggling loose from the thong that tied it. With his thick spectacles, long nose and secretive, rather sensitive mouth, he looked like nobody’s idea of a warrior, let alone a Dragonsbane – the one person in the west of the world
who actually had the first-hand experience of killing a dragon. “Jen’s gone to the Petty Isles,” he said. “She left yesterday, with Brâk Shipsward—”

  Gareth nodded; he knew the tattooed trader well.

  “I was that tempted to go with ‘em, for there’s herbs grows there I’ve never heard tell on nor read neither, but I just couldn’t—” John’s gesture took in the books now stacked on the floor where the chairs had been. “It went to me heart, but I had to make the choice. Just as well for you, then,” he added quietly. “If there’s a way for me to help your Wise Ones speak to her in a scryin’-stone – them never havin’ laid eyes on her but for a nod in passin’ at the weddin’ t’other day – I’ll do what I can. But you—” He turned back to the young King, “—may want to send along a feller with a letter, just the same. What’s happened?” He flung himself down onto the window-seat again and propped his boots on the lower rungs of the King’s chair.

  “Anathagantes, eldest daughter of Krastochilliam, Lord of the Second Deep and Steward of the Northern Mines,” pronounced the Gnome King slowly, “was found dead in her father’s garden on the night of the new moon. She had been most savagely hewn, by what seemed an animal’s claws. Enquiries were made as to who might have hated the lady, for the Steward her father hath not long past wed a widow of the House of Gnebmyalla, and there was no love between the Steward’s daughters and the new Lady Nezbardina. But no sign of a beast was seen, and the Lady Taseldwyn swore the thing smacked of the daemonic.”

  “New moon was the night before the weddin’,” pointed out John. “You came down here that day. Did you know there might be a demon loose?”

  Balgub turned his silver wine-cup in short, bejeweled fingers for a time, and his pale eyes smouldered. “Zarbochedronn Blue-Hair, Lord of the Mages’ Council, straitly forbade the Lady to speak of her concerns to any save the Council. The gold of the Deep draws men, and a man with knowledge of the Deep may find himself in a position to sell such knowledge. That being said—”

  He drew a deep breath.

  “That bein’ said,” continued John drily, “you decided to hush the matter up? For the best of all possible reasons?” John dealt well with the gnomes on the whole, and wasn’t one of those men who held them in contempt for their strange speech and alien appearance. On the other hand, the gnomes of Tralchet Deep, far north in the Winterlands, had been known to use human slaves to work the deepest and most dangerous portions of their diggings, and his relations with them had not always been amicable.

  By the glance Balgub gave him, he’d clearly heard the Tralchet side of those encounters.

  In time he said, “The following night a foreman of the North Mines, and two of his work-crew were slain in the same fashion, near torn to pieces. That same night, a widow who lived in the First Deep, and her children, were killed in their home as they slept.”

  “That was when Miss Mab – the Lady Taseldwyn—” Gareth corrected himself, his big, clumsy hand twisting nervously at the little golden Half-Emperor beard he’d grown upon his accession to the throne, “—went down into the North Mines after this thing. I only found that out today—”

  “She was found unconscious,” said Balgub. “She lay within the protective circle she had drawn about herself, raked as if with an animal’s claws. That same night a servant of the Lord Krastochilliam was killed in the Steward’s own halls. Zarbochedronn himself wrote runes of protection on all the doors of the Steward’s dwelling, and in a circle about his bed. On the following night, Krastochilliam woke to hear the splintering of the door-bolts of his chamber, and the scrape and whisper of the thing as it circled his bed in the darkness. Zarbochedronn was in the house, and came at once to the bed-chamber. The thing was gone when he reached the place, and the Steward unharmed. But the power of the spell-circles had been dissolved, and the Blue-Haired One’s own power was drained away; he lies ill now. Cold, he says, and his power wasted almost to nothing.”

  “An’ if this thing can eat spells an’ draw out the magic of the spell-caster through ‘em,” surmised John grimly, “I bet there’s a bit of a strike amongst the other members of the Council about who gets to re-draw those runes tonight.”

  Again Balgub didn’t contradict John’s guess, though his face reddened a little under the thick waves of his beard.

  “So they want Jen to go draw ‘em?”

  “They want her counsel,” said the Gnome King after a moment. “It may be that this is a matter known to the magic of humankind, of which only the Lady Taseldwyn, among all the Wise Ones of the Deep, hath made study.” He looked down for a time at his huge hands, thick with jeweled rings and glittering with long nail-guards wrought of enamel and gold. “Others besides the Lady Taseldwyn have whispered of demons.”

  “Was there a smell?” John’s eyes narrowed behind his spectacles. “Like blood poured on red-hot iron?”

  “There was no such when I saw the places where these things befell. You have knowledge…” He coughed discreetly, since it was considered good manners not to mention John’s run-ins with the Demon Queen a few years before**.

  “If it is a demon,” said Gareth hesitantly, “they… they don’t stay put. And if someone has… has opened a demon-gate, somewhere in the mines—”

  “If someone’s opened a demon-gate in the mazes of the Deep, me hero,” said John, getting to his feet and reaching for his sword, “we’re all of us well an’ truly buggered.”

  *

  They reached the gates of the Deep of Ylferdun just after sunset that evening.

  Earthquake, winter, and the passage of the great river Wildspae in some ancient fury had carved a great black cliff on the southernmost end of the mountains that men called Nast Wall, and even their height could not seem to dwarf the power of those iron-girdled doors. In a curved bay against the mountain’s steep flank the town of Deeping had been built, to traffic with the lords of the Deep for gold and coal and gems. This town, six years before, the black dragon Morkeleb had reduced to rubble, and John was interested to see, as the Gnome King’s little cavalcade topped the hill called Tanner’s Rise, how little mark remained of the ruin the dragon had wrought.

  Lights of re-built houses dotted the footslopes beneath the cliffs. Even in the blue of early evening, fires glowed beneath the refining-furnaces and forges; the mountain-slopes were denuded for miles of trees. The pale trace of a road led down to the landing on the river Clae, that came from the east to meet the Wildspae at Bel, and John guessed from the smell of the smoke that in daylight it was crowded with traffic from the coal-boats. John shivered a little at the sight of the place.

  At the memory of the dragon?

  Or the thought that it might be a demon, stirring in the darkness of the Deep.

  He sorely wished Jenny was at his side. Facing a demon alone was not something he wanted to do, under any circumstances, no matter what was at stake.

  Yet few knew better than he, that this was a matter which couldn’t wait.

  Gareth had sent a messenger running to the harbor of Claekith, to take ship for the Petty Islands. Beyond that, nobody knew precisely where Jenny and her hosts were likely to be. John’s previous encounters with demons still gave him nightmares, but the thought of them coming into the human world – slipping out into Deeping, and so down-river to Bel – was worse.

  The Wise Ones of the gnomes were already assembled in that portion of the Deep known as the Yellow Halls. This lay above and behind the vast cavern of the Great Market, the only area of the Deep where the sons and daughters of humankind were suffered to enter, and because even in the face of the dragon’s invasion the gnomes had given him deliberately inaccurate maps of the Deep John wasn’t terribly surprised – once they’d left their horses in the vast stables outside the gates themselves and crossed through the Market halls – to be blindfolded as he was led up the gold-and-malachite Great Stair. He’d learned that arguing the point with gnomes never got anyone anywhere.

  His eyes were uncovered in a handsome vest
ibule, paved with patterned wood and walled with tapestries against the constant, clammy cold of underground, and he counted a dozen guards around him as the black-bearded captain of the company struck twice on the bronze door to the hall beyond. A gnome who unmistakably had to be Zarbochedronn Blue-Hair rose from his chair as the King’s company entered the inner hall, and in truth his thick, seamed face looked ashen and haggard. His expression of weariness changed to annoyance when he realized that the guards brought him not a mage-woman who understood the spells of both dragons and demons, but by a bespectacled amateur scholar who gawped like a bumpkin at the delicate arches, the glittering pale traceries of the ceiling and asked the nearest guard in a whisper, “What do they spend on candles, d’you know?”

  The Wise One gave the most minimal of salaams (The Lion in Triumph) that would acknowledge that his disappointing guest had done him a great service (getting rid of the dragon that had killed hundreds of gnomes, had nearly destroyed the Deep, and had cost the merchants of Ylferdun and Bel hundreds of thousands of gold pieces in property damage). “Wilt thou allow of it, for the mages to scry into thy heart, in the hopes that we can bridge from there to the mind of your Lady Jenny?”

  And when John looked askance at the short, skinny figure whose pale-blue beard flowed down nearly to his knees (How much time does he spend combin’ it every mornin’, then?), Zarbochedronn added, “None among us – save Taseldwyn only – hath acquaintance of the Lady.”

  That’s ‘cause you wouldn’t give her but a glance in passin’, John managed to keep himself from saying. The possibility of a demon-gate was too terrible, and too frightening, for his usual foolery, and he knew it.

  Instead he asked, “Will that work, then? You bein’ gnomes, an’ all?”