Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 2 - With a Single Spell

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WITH A SINGLE SPELL
by LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS (1987)
[VERSION 1.1 (Oct 06 03). If you find and correct errors in the text, please
update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute.]
Dedicated to my mother, Doletha Watt-Evans
CHAPTER 1
The little cottage at the edge of the swamp wherein old Roggit had lived
out his life was not, strictly speaking, a part of the village of Telven.
However, located as it was just over a hill from the edge of town, it was near
enough that Roggit had been accepted as a Telvener; no one had protested when
his apprentice, Tobas, had called on the villagers to attend his master's
funeral.
Of course, quite aside from any fine distinctions about the village
boundaries, it was never wise to anger a wizard, or even a wizard's
apprentices, not even one as untrained as Tobas surely was after merely a year
or two of study under a man who had been in his dotage and on the verge of
senility for as long as anyone remembered.
As a result of these considerations, in addition to the usual morbid
curiosity natural upon the cremation of one of the area's older and more
eccentric inhabitants, the ceremonies drew a good crowd, with more than half
the townspeople in attendance. As Tobas saw them all silently departing after
the fire died, he realized glumly that he could not say a single one -- old,
young, or in between -- had come out of honest friendship or sympathy for
either the dead wizard or for himself, the surviving apprentice.
He had had friends in his younger years, he told himself, but they all
seemed to have drifted away when his luck went bad. Since his father's death
he had been considered a creature of ill omen, not a fitting friend for
anyone.
He watched the villagers wander away in pairs, trios, or family groups
and then set out alone, back over the hill toward the cottage. The sun was
still high in the sky. The pyre had burned quickly, as the weather had been
dry of late.
As he topped the rise he tried to decide whether he, himself, actually
grieved over Roggit's death and found himself unsure whether his distress was
on Roggit's behalf or simply a reflection of his worries about his own
position.
His own position was still, to some extent, in doubt. As Roggit's
apprentice at the time of his death, Tobas was heir to everything the old man
had owned that had not previously been settled on others; and as far as anyone
knew, Roggit had had no children or relatives or even former apprentices to
leave anything to. What little there was all went to Tobas.
That, however, was not necessarily a great comfort. Roggit had not been
wealthy. He had owned a small piece of land, too swampy to be of much use, and
the cottage, together with its contents, and that was all.
At least, Tobas thought, he hadn't been left homeless this time, as he
had been when his father died. And the house still held old Roggit's magical
supplies and paraphernalia, including, most importantly of all, his Book of
Spells.
Tobas would need that. It was all he had left to depend on.
When he had first convinced the old wizard to take him on as an
apprentice, despite the fact that anyone not half-blind and half-senile could
have seen he was at least fifteen, rather than the maximum apprenticeable age
of thirteen, Tobas had thought his place was secure. He had expected to live
out his life quietly, earning his bread as a small-town wizard, selling love
potions and removing curses, as Roggit had done. It had seemed easy enough. He
had been initiated into the primary mystery of the Wizards' Guild -- he
unconsciously touched the hilt of the dagger on his belt as he thought of it
-- and had learned his first spell without difficulty when, after months of
delay and apparently unnecessary preparation, Roggit had finally seen fit to
teach him one.
Tobas had thoroughly and beyond all question mastered his first spell and
practiced it until he could do it perfectly with no thought at all; when
Roggit had at last admitted that the lad had mastered it, he had promised to
teach Tobas a second within the month. The apprentice had been looking forward
eagerly to this next step in his education when, just two nights ago, the old
man had died quietly in his sleep, leaving Tobas with his house and his Book
of Spells and his jars and his boxes and his mysterious objects of every
description, but with only a single spell learned, and that nothing but the
knack of lighting fires.
The old man had called it Thrindle's Combustion, and Tobas had to admit
that it was very useful to be able to light a fire anywhere, at any time,
under any conditions, regardless of how wet the fuel was or how fiercely the
wind blew, so long as he had his athame, as Roggit had called the enchanted
dagger that was the key to a wizard's power, and a few grains of brimstone and
something that it was theoretically possible to burn. Since learning it Tobas
had made it a point never to be without the knife and a supply of brimstone
and had impressed people occasionally by setting fire to this or that. He had
used the spell to light Roggit's pyre, and that had added a nice touch to the
cremation ceremonies, an appropriate farewell; the villagers had murmured
approvingly.
Of course, not every use of the spell had gone so well, he remembered
wryly; he had once embarrassed himself by trying to ignite a black rock he had
mistaken for coal. The only result had been a shower of ineffectual sparks.
Fortunately, the girl he had been showing off for had not realized any more
was intended and had been appropriately amazed.
Useful as it might be, Thrindle's Combustion was not the sort of spell a
lad could build an entire career on. It would not earn his bread, nor convince
anyone to marry him, most of the village girls had been noticeably cool of
late, though he was not sure why. He had never expected to wed for love, of
course, hardly anyone did, but he doubted, under the circumstances, whether
any of the available females would even consider a marriage of convenience.
He needed to learn more spells, quickly, and establish himself as the
town's new wizard. If he failed to secure his position as soon as possible,
someone might well invite in a foreign magician of some sort, leaving him out
of work. The cottage garden, with its handful of herbs, would not be enough to
keep him alive if that happened.
Fortunately, he did have Roggit's Book of Spells. But as he picked up his
pace, hurrying down the slope to the cottage, he found himself unwillingly
imagining reasons why he might not be able to use it. Had Roggit written it in
some esoteric wizardly tongue? Would the spells he needed call for ingredients
he could not obtain? The Book was old; might the pages have faded to
illegibility, leaving just enough to remind Roggit of what he already knew?
Was there some important secret he did not know?
He intended to waste no time. If he lost even a single day in mourning
poor old Roggit, something might go wrong. He would open the Book of Spells as
soon as he got home.
He crossed the dooryard impatiently, lifted the latch, and stepped into
the cottage that was no longer Roggit's. This was his now.
He looked around, reacquainting himself with the place. His own little
bed -- a pallet, really -- which he would no longer be using, lay in one
corner; Roggit's narrow bed, where he intended to sleep henceforth, stood in
another. A fireplace yawned at each end, both empty and cold; the weather had
been mild, and he had not bothered to do any cooking since Roggit's death. The
lone table, used for cooking, dining, and as the wizard's workplace, stood in
the center. The long walls on both sides were jammed with shelves, cabinets,
and cupboards, all packed with the necessities of the wizard's simple life and
arcane trade. The ceiling overhead was the underside of the thatched roof, and
the floor beneath his feet was packed dirt. The Book of Spells lay in solitary
splendor atop its reading stand.
The cottage wasn't much, he thought critically, but it was dry and, when
the fires were lit, warm. It was not at its best at present, the mattress on
the bed was bare, as the only blankets had been wrapped around Roggit's
remains atop the pyre, and the woodbin and water bucket were empty, as Tobas
had not paid much attention to the details of everyday life since the
catastrophe of Roggit's demise. A few spells that Roggit had cast might still
be going here and there, and a few potions or philtres might be tucked away
somewhere in the clutter, but no sign of anything magical showed. It looked
much like any drab, ordinary cottage.
Still, it was his.
His gaze fell on the Book of Spells and fixed there. That, too, was his.
Alone of all Roggit's possessions, that was the one he had never been allowed
to touch. The old wizard's sorry handful of semiprecious stones was hidden
somewhere in the cottage, hidden even from his own apprentice, but Tobas had
been permitted to handle them freely on the occasions when, for one reason or
another, they had been brought out. Only the Book had been forbidden.
He stepped over to the reading stand and studied it.
It was a large volume, and thick, bound in hinged tin plates of a dull,
dark blue-gray; a single large black rune that Tobas could not identify
decorated the front. He knew most of the pages were blank, but Roggit had
boasted that it held more than thirty different spells, and Tobas had glimpsed
several. This book, he was sure, would be the key to his future.
He hesitated, the force of the old man's prohibition still lingering, but
then reached out for the dented metal cover. He was well within his rights, he
assured himself, and acting in a perfectly reasonable manner in reading the
Book of Spells he had inherited, so that he might teach himself more magic and
make a living. It was his now.
He stroked the book gently, as if expecting to feel its magic, but it
felt no different from the side of the water bucket. He smiled at his own
folly in thinking he might be able to feel the Book's magic, if it even had
any of its own. At last, more excited than he cared to admit even to himself,
he grasped the worn edge and pried at the heavy tin-coated cover.
Without warning, the black rune on the front exploded loudly and
violently in his face, throwing hissing gobbets of orange flame in all
directions; none struck him, though one seared away a stray hair as it passed.
Astonished, Tobas simply stepped back at first, staring at the
smoldering, blackened face of the Book of Spells. Roggit had, it seemed, put a
protective spell of some sort on it to frighten away thieves. Then the scent
of smoke reached him, and he realized that the fireballs had not been pure
illusion.
Puzzled and dismayed, he looked about; scattered sparks were dying on the
hard-packed floor, and one had singed the table top, but seemed to be expiring
without doing much damage.
Where, then, was the smell of smoke coming from?
He sniffed again, then looked up at a faint crackling-sound, and saw that
one of the fiery projectiles had set the roof afire, right up near the
ridgepole. The dry thatch was already burning vigorously.
On the verge of panic, he spun his head about, looking for some way of
extinguishing the blaze before it spread. He had not bothered to fetch water;
that meant that he had none on hand to douse the fire, and, by the time he
could make a trip to the well, or even the swamp, half the roof might be gone.
He snatched up Roggit's old spare tunic from a nearby shelf, but could not
reach high enough to beat at the fire with it. The large blanket, which might
have reached, had been on the old man's pyre.
He clambered atop the table, the tunic wrapped about his forearm; as he
reached upward, one of the legs snapped beneath his weight, dumping him
roughly back to the floor. He rolled aside, unhurt, then got to his knees,
looking for something else he could stand on.
There was nothing. The chairs, he saw instantly, would not be tall enough
to help.
He had to do something; the cottage was almost all he had. He was a
wizard, more or less, yet he felt utterly helpless as he watched the flames, a
few feet out of reach, licking at the age-blackened ridgepole.
The sight of the spreading fire spurred him to frantic desperation, and a
thought occurred to him. He was a wizard; he knew a spell, just a single
spell, and it was a fire spell. Didn't the proverbs say to fight fire with
fire?
Quickly, he snatched the dagger from his belt, fumbled in his pouch for
brimstone, and flung his spell at the burning thatch.
The resulting explosion dwarfed the first; half the roof vanished in
flaming shreds, and the force of the blast knocked Tobas to the floor hard
enough to daze him.
When he recovered his wits the whole cottage was ablaze, dripping bits of
burning debris on all sides. Panicking, he forgot all concern for his
inheritance and for anything except saving his skin; he ran out the door,
calling wildly for help.
CHAPTER 2
He watched disconsolately as the cottage burned. The entire structure was
going up in smoke, its complete contents with it, and he could do nothing but
sit and watch.
This, he thought sorrowfully, beyond any possible doubt, beyond any
chance of recovery or hope of salvage, marked the end of his apprenticeship,
any sort of apprenticeship. As if his master's death had not been bad enough,
taking away the last person in all the World who cared a whit for him, now,
just a few hours after the funeral, he had accidentally destroyed everything
the old man had left him. His home and all his worldly possessions, save the
clothes he wore and the few precious items on his belt, were vanishing before
his eyes, being reduced to smoke and ash.
Roggit's Book of Spells was certainly gone, and just as certainly no
other wizard would take him on as an apprentice. He was seventeen, what sort
of a wizard would take on a lad of seventeen under any conditions, let alone
one who had as yet learned so little of the arcane arts? He had learned the
basic secret of wizardry, true -- that secret was the nature of the athame,
the ritual dagger that each wizard prepared and that held a part of its
master's soul. Beyond that, though, he knew only his single spell. What could
a wizard do with a single spell?
He had little chance of finding any other employment in Telven or the
surrounding area; even an advantageous marriage was more than he could hope
for, since he had no favors to call in, no close relatives who would help in
arranging a betrothal, and no prospects for a love match. He was quite sure
that nobody who knew anything of his past would want anything to do with him,
especially after this latest disaster, for fear his bad luck might be
contagious.
He sighed. He hadn't always been unlucky, or at least he hadn't thought
so, but now, as he mentally reviewed his life, he wasn't so sure. Certainly it
had been a bad sign when his mother died bearing him; that was hardly an
auspicious start for any child.
Other than that, however, he had done well enough until he was fifteen.
He had been happy with his father's cousin Indamara and her husband, the two
of whom had raised him in his parents' absence, and he had gotten on well with
their children, his second cousins. He had had no more than the usual number
of childhood mishaps -- falls from trees every so often, almost drowning in a
farmer's pond once, nothing out of the ordinary. He had missed the plague that
killed a few of the neighbors when he was eight and had come through a bout of
pox unscarred. Life had been good to him throughout those years; he had played
in the fields with the other children, taken long walks with his father
whenever the ship was in port, and generally lived the normal, happy life of
the son of a successful pirate.
Privateer, he corrected himself; his father had been a privateer,
defending the Free Lands of the Coasts from the tyranny of the Ethsharites.
That was what all the neighbors said.
He had never quite understood how robbing merchant vessels kept the
overlords of the Hegemony of Ethshar from reconquering the Free Lands and
ruling harshly over them, as they had ruled long ago, but everybody said that
it worked, so he had long ago stopped questioning it.
His father had never worried about polite names, never bothered with
excuses; to the neighbors' dismay he had insisted on calling himself Dabran
the Pirate, rather than Dabran the Privateer, and had told anyone who asked
that he was in business to make money, not for the sake of patriotism.
Dabran had been careful with his money, too. That was a major reason his
son Tobas was now penniless. The pirate's entire fortune had been aboard his
ship, Retribution, when he tried to board the wrong vessel and got sent to the
bottom of the Southern Sea, along with his whole crew.
From that stroke of monumental bad luck had descended all the rest of
Tobas' misfortune. Who would have expected an ordinary Ethsharitic merchant
vessel to be carrying a demonologist capable of summoning such a thing? The
witnesses on the shore had agreed on very little in their descriptions, save
that the thing that pulled Dabran's ship under had been huge, black, and
tentacular.
Tobas signed again. He missed his father. He had never seen much of the
old man, even in the best of times, but at least he had known that Dabran was
alive, out there somewhere plundering, until the demonologist had brought that
thing up out of nowhere.
He tried to cheer himself up by telling himself that it could have been
worse. At least he hadn't been on board Retribution when she went down. If he
had accepted his father's offer of an apprenticeship, in addition to the
eventual inheritance of the ship and money, he would have been with Dabran
right now, moldering on the bottom of the ocean. His own laziness had saved
him there, he had intended to use his inheritance to set himself up in some
comfortable business, which he would let employees run, rather than carrying
on in his father's rather strenuous trade. He had had no interest in going to
sea.
He remembered that awful day when the news of his father's death had
arrived. The weather had been horribly inappropriate, a beautiful sunny spring
day, the fields warm and green, the sky a perfect blue strewn with fluffy
white clouds. He had been lying on the hill behind the house, doing nothing in
particular, just lying there enjoying the weather, when his second cousin
Peretta had come trudging up looking for him, her hair tangled and her face
serious. He had known right away that something was wrong; Peretta was never
serious and would leave her hair unbrushed only for the direst of emergencies.
She had wasted no time, but simply announced, "There's bad news from
Shan. Your father's dead; a demon got his ship and pulled it under. There were
no survivors, and no salvage has been found; it's all gone."
He had stared at her, he recalled, just stared at her; her words hadn't
seemed real. Not until her parents packed up his meager belongings for him and
told him to be out by sundown did he really believe that his father was dead
and his old life gone. No one would have dared to offend Dabran while he was
alive, but when he was gone and no more support money was to come, they were
all too eager to be rid of his lazy, worthless son. Family ties don't count
for much, compared to silver.
That had hurt. One disaster had come right after another.
Well, he told himself as the flames roared loudly up among the
overhanging branches of the swamp trees, at least this would be the last
disaster. He had nothing more to lose.
Times had been bad at first after the ship went down, after his cousins
threw him out, very bad indeed; he had slept in a few doorways and cornfields
and gone without several meals. Old friends had quietly ignored him. He had
thought it a great stroke of luck when, just sort of resigning himself to a
lifetime career of theft or beggary, he had convinced old Roggit to take him
on as an apprentice, despite his age.
Tobas was not quite so certain, as he watched the cottage burn and in its
burning destroy his second inheritance, that the apprenticeship had been good
luck, after all. He was homeless again, older and with fewer prospects than
before.
A particularly bright flame rose up for a moment with an intense
crackling, followed by a muffled explosion; Tobas caught an odd smell, one he
could not place. The flames must have reached more of old Roggit's combustible
supplies, the special sealed boxes he had carefully kept well away from the
more ordinary wizardly necessities, such as powdered spider and tannis root.
Tobas frowned slightly. Trivial as such a detail might be in the face of
catastrophe, he was irked to realize that now he would never know what all
those things had been for.
He heard shouts and rattlings and turned to see the fire brigade from the
village finally arriving, far too late to do any good, at least half an hour
after he had sent his nearest neighbor calling for help. He recognized most of
them: old Clurim, who, with his two wives, was the subject of most of the
bawdy jokes told in Telven; Faran, the village's only blacksmith and expert on
fires of all sorts; and Vengar and Zarek, who had been his companions as
children but had avoided him since his father's death. Tobas sighed; they had
come too late to do much good. He had long since given up any hope of saving
anything beyond the foundation and perhaps the outer walls, and even as he
watched the brigade arriving, he could see that the walls were going.
After he had come shouting out the door, had gathered his wits somewhat,
and had found that helpful neighbor and sent him puffing off over the hill
toward the village, he had struggled briefly with the thoughts of a heroic
dash into the inferno. His common sense had quickly prevailed over his daring,
however. After all, he told himself, what would he have saved? The Book of
Spells would have been almost the first thing to go, since it had been
directly beneath where the fire had started, and the only other items whose
value he really knew were the athame that hung on his belt and the vial of
brimstone in his pouch. Roggit's semiprecious stones would perhaps have been
worth retrieving had Tobas known where they were, but the old man had hidden
them well.
It occurred to him now, far too late, that a change of clothing and a
pair of boots might have been a good idea. The water pail, too, might have
been of service in fighting the blaze.
Tobas had to admit that, once they had arrived, the people of Telven had
set to willingly enough, filling their buckets from the swamp and flinging the
water onto the flames, where it hissed and sizzled with little visible effect.
Those who had no buckets, like himself, stood by and watched, admiring the
pretty colors that erupted here and there as the old wizard's arcane powders,
one by one, fell from their heat-shattered jars and burned away, filling the
air with a variety of perfumes and stenches.
For the most part the villagers avoided the old man's unfortunate
apprentice, quietly ignoring him. Tobas was not so insensitive as to miss
this, or misinterpret it, and he accepted it as the final proof that the time
had come to do what he had been resisting for years. The time had come to
leave Telven, leave his native village behind forever, and go out into the
wide World to seek his fortune.
He shuddered. What an awful thought!
He had never wanted to leave. He was a homebody, happy with the people
and places he knew, with no particular desire to see any others. Telven had
been his home. He had always chosen to stay in Telven when his father went off
to sea, though time after time, before every voyage from infancy on, Dabran
had invited Tobas along. He had stayed in Telven when his father had died,
lingering in the village even while homeless, struggling to find a way to
remain in the only place he really knew. He had had no career, no steady
girlfriend or prospects for marriage, and no close friends, but Telven had
still been home. He had succeeded in staying by convincing Roggit that he was
still young enough to qualify for apprenticeship.
When he had accomplished that bit of deceit, Tobas had thought that his
place was secure and that he would live out his life in his native land. Right
up until he had opened the Book of Spells, he had thought he would stay.
Who could have known that the old man had put such powerful protective
spells on the thing?
He shook his head in dismay. He still didn't know exactly what he had
done wrong or how the protective spell had worked; he had never noticed Roggit
speaking any countercharms or doing anything special when he consulted the
book. The old man would simply reach over and open it, as he would any other
book. Tobas had just tried to do the same.
But the protective spell had obviously been there, and here he was,
watching the fire destroy his last link to the village.
All he had ever wanted was a home and a quiet, comfortable life; was that
too much to ask of the gods?
The front wall of the house sagged, bent, then crumbled inward with a
grinding crash, and Tobas turned away. He had nothing left here, nothing and
no one to keep him in Telven, and no way to live if he stayed. It was home no
longer. He saw no point in drawing out the ordeal; he trudged off into the
gathering twilight, away from the heat and light and sound of the fire, with
tears in his eyes that, he told himself firmly, were caused by the smoke.
CHAPTER 3
The sun was well up the eastern sky when he awoke. His first waking
thought was surprise at finding himself curled up in a field of tall grass
rather than in his own bed in Roggit's cottage, but he quickly remembered the
events of the previous day and night.
After leaving the swamp, he had wandered aimlessly in the dark with no
thought to where he was going, until at last he had collapsed and gone to
sleep. Now he was awake again, stiff from sleeping awkwardly, utterly dejected
over his loss, and still with no idea where to go.
He sat up, the grass rustling beneath him, and rubbed the sleep from his
eyes. He tried to think. Where could he go? He had no skills that would earn
him a living; he was not particularly strong or fast or even handsome. A
little thin, just over average height, with ordinary features and dull brown
hair and eyes, there was nothing unusual about him at all physically, nothing
that would suggest a career. As far as his education was concerned, he had
learned the usual basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic and had heard the
stories that made up Freelander history and religion; but except for his
apprenticeship to Roggit, his learning and experience were nothing in any way
special. He had never been more than three leagues from Telven in his life,
save for one short voyage his father had taken him on out of Shan on the Sea,
along the coast for a few leagues and then back. He knew what little geography
every boy in the Free Lands learned, but no more. To the west and south was
the ocean, to the north and east was the Hegemony of Ethshar. If one went far
enough to the southeast, along the Ethsharitic coast, one reached the
semimythical Small Kingdoms that had once been Old Ethshar. If one went far
enough north, one reached the barbarian nations. Beyond those, the northern
edge of the world was sealed in ice, the eastern edge was burning desert, the
west was wrapped in fog, and to the south the ocean went on forever, so far as
anyone knew. He had heard descriptions of mountains and forests but had no
idea where such things might lie; all he had ever seen were the familiar
rolling green hills, graveled beaches, and villages of the Free Lands and the
vast empty ocean to the south.
Shan on the Sea, the only real town he knew at all, was less than a day's
walk to the southwest. But if he went there, what would he do? A dozen people
in Shan knew him as his father's son and would undoubtedly spread the word
about his bad luck, or, worse, try and collect on his father's old debts, both
real and imaginary. They would know his history, know that he had nothing to
offer. He was now far too old to fool anyone into offering him an
apprenticeship; even poor, half-blind, sometimes-senile old Roggit had been
suspicious about his age. He couldn't go to sea any more than he could take an
apprenticeship; he had heard that among Ethsharites a sailor might start as
late as age sixteen, and he might have passed for that, but in the Free Lands
the captains preferred to start their people young, at twelve or thirteen.
He needed to go somewhere no one would know him, that was obvious.
Anywhere in the Free Lands someone might eventually recognize him.
That meant he would have to go to Ethshar. The Hegemony of Ethshar was
the only nation sharing borders with the Free Lands.
But how could he do that? The border was dozens of leagues up the coast,
he was sure, and such a journey would mean days of walking, days in which he
would have to beg for his food or starve. And once across the border, where
would he be? In an enemy land! In the wilderness! He knew little of Ethshar
but was fairly certain that nothing of importance lay anywhere near the Free
Lands.
A league to the south lay the ocean, and every ship sailing the coast of
Ethshar passed by here, the survival of Shan and the rest of the Free Lands
depended on that fact, since, without the plunder brought home by the
privateers, the town would starve. No Ethsharitic ship ever put in at Shan
willingly, and no ship sailed from Shan bound for Ethshar, so he could not
board a ship in town. But what if he were to intercept one while at sea? He
would need a boat of some kind, swimming out to a ship was not practical.
Could he build a boat? He asked himself that question and immediately
knew the answer.
No, he could not. He had always intended to live a fat and lazy life on
his inheritance, whether his father's gold or his master's spells; he was
forced to admit to himself that he barely knew how to hold a hammer.
In that case, he told himself, he would obviously have to find a boat
that had already been built and acquire the use of it somehow.
Well, he thought, that sounded simple enough and shouldn't be too
difficult. He got to his feet and turned southward, thinking he could already
smell the salt of the sea on the gentle breeze that ruffled the grass.
The sun was almost straight overhead when he finally topped the last
little rise, a row of dunes, and staggered down onto the beach. A league had
never seemed like very much when he had been sitting at home talking or
dreaming, three miles, a mere six thousand yards, nothing much, but walking it
in the hot sun, with no breakfast, wearing shoddy house sandals rather than
boots, had proved to be an exhausting enterprise for one so out of shape as
himself. His tunic was soaked with sweat, and he wished that some other
garments, in addition to what he wore, had survived the fire. He sat down
heavily on the pebbles and stared south, squinting at the blazing midday glare
on the waves, his stomach growling. The breeze had died, and the damp, still
air did little to cool or dry him.
When he had caught his breath and his eyes had adjusted to the
brilliance, he turned and looked first east, then west.
He saw no sign of a boat and sighed heavily. More walking would be
needed.
He got slowly to his feet, brushing off his breeches, then paused to
choose a direction.
Either way, if he walked far enough, he would eventually reach Ethshar;
the Free Lands bordered on nothing but the ocean and the Hegemony. To the
west, however, he suspected it would be a good deal farther, and Shan was in
the way. Besides, the richest Ethsharitic cities were said to lie to the east.
He turned east and started walking.
He had gone less than a mile when he suddenly stopped again to
reconsider. He didn't want to walk to the border, he wanted a boat. Shan's
docks were full of boats. For all he knew, though, there wasn't a boat to be
had between where he now stood and the nearest Ethsharitic city. He glanced
back.
The beach back that way, with his footprints drawing a lonely line across
the sandy patches, was too familiar. He couldn't face it. No more looking
back, he told himself; face forward! If he had to walk all the way to Ethshar,
he would walk, but surely, if he didn't starve first, he would find a boat
eventually. He glanced out to sea.
A sail was visible on the horizon, far to the southwest, but working its
way east; apparently a little wind was still moving out on the water, as it
was not ashore. An Ethsharitic trader, he guessed, already safely past Shan
and its privateers; if he could only reach it, he would be well on his way,
but he had no boat as yet. He trudged onward.
Scarcely a hundred yards farther along, as he rounded a dune, he spotted
a boat pulled up on the sand some distance ahead. He stopped, astounded by his
good fortune.
It was a small boat, without sails or deck so far as he could tell; it
was either a rowboat or one intended for magical propulsion. It was the right
way up, which was encouraging.
No one was in it, and he could see no one anywhere nearby; a gull cried
overhead, startling him, but he saw no people.
He wondered why the boat had been left where it was, untended. He saw no
house on the shore above it. Probably, he thought, it was an old wreck, and he
had neither the means nor the knowledge to repair it.
Or maybe, it occurred to him, it was propelled and protected by magic, so
that its owner could leave it anywhere without needing to worry about it.
Why here, though? He could see nothing that anyone would want on this
stretch of sand.
No, it was probably a wreck, or a ship's boat washed overboard in a storm
and cast up here.
It was certainly worth investigating. He tried to work up some
enthusiasm, breaking into an awkward trot -- awkward because his feet hurt
from their unaccustomed efforts, and because the battered sandals were not
meant for such use.
As he neared the boat, his hopes rose steadily; by the time he reached
it, he was actually cheerful. His luck had obviously changed. The little craft
looked quite intact indeed, more than adequate to get him out to sea, where he
might still catch that trader he had spotted. The boat was even partially
equipped; a sound pair of oars was neatly tucked under the thwarts, and a
canvas sack of some sort was wedged into the stern. He could still see no one
around who might be the owner. If there were any magical protections on it, of
course, he might not be able to use it. In that case, he might need to rely on
his status as a fellow wizard to avoid trouble, assuming the owner was a
wizard, and not a witch or a priest or a demonologist or one of the mysterious
new warlocks or some other sort of magician.
His heart suddenly plunged into the pit of his belly. The owner, no,
owners, had not vanished without a trace and left him their boat, after all.
The lines of footprints wound their way across the beach and up the nearest
dune.
Something looked odd about those footprints, however. He stared at them,
puzzling.
One set was large and deep, the other smaller and shallower. They were
very close together; not on top of each other, as they would be had one person
followed the other, but very close to each other and exactly parallel. Not
straight, by any means; they wove back and forth like a snake's spine. In two
spots the lines were broken by a small trampled area.
Tobas stared, and realization came to him, accompanied by a slow smile.
He knew why these two people had pulled up on this lonely stretch of sandy
beach, so far from anywhere, in the middle of the day, and why they had walked
up over the dune, leaving the boat unguarded. People in love did foolish
things, that well-known fact was why most people avoided romance and married
for comfort and money. These two had probably had their arms about each other,
accounting for how close their steps were to each other's, and the trampled
areas were undoubtedly where they had paused to kiss, an appetizer to the main
course that was surely under way somewhere in the dunes, inaudible over the
hiss of the surf. An open boat, he imagined, would be too crowded and too
unsteady a place.
They might return at any moment, though. Hurriedly, he shoved the boat
down into the water. The keel scraped heavily over the sand, then floated free
on an incoming wave. Tobas pushed it out until he stood knee-deep in the surf,
then grabbed the gunwale and steadied it.
He was just clambering in when a bearded, black-haired head appeared
above the dune where the footprints had led.
"Hey!" the man called, plainly upset by what he saw.
The woman's head appeared beside him.
Tobas ignored them both and yanked the oars from their stowage. "Hey,
that's our boat!" the man called. He was clambering up the dune now, tugging
his sandy tunic into place.
Tobas got the oars into the oarlocks, splashed their blades into the
water, leaned forward, and pulled, refusing to worry about any damage he might
do if the oar blades caught on rocks hidden in the sand.
The boat slewed out into the water, and Tobas pulled harder on one side,
turning the bow out to sea. Each stroke moved him visibly farther from shore;
the bottom dropped off quickly, so that, by the third or fourth pull, the oars
were no longer in danger of striking sand.
"Come back!" the woman cried, running down the beach toward him. "Come
back with our boat!"
Tobas found himself facing her as the boat swung around. He smiled at her
as she stopped at the water's edge, already several yards away; she was very
young, surely not yet eighteen, perhaps younger than himself, and handsome
despite her rumpled brown hair and sandy, disheveled skirt and tunic.
"I'm sorry," he called out. "But it's an emergency. I'll bring it back if
I can!" A twinge of guilt struck him. Teasing young lovers was a long-standing
tradition in Telven, but stealing their boat might have serious consequences.
"Listen," he called. "If you go a mile west, then a league due north, you'll
reach the village of Telven; they'll help you there! Tell them T--" He
stopped, hesitant to give his right name, but then shrugged and went on. "Tell
them Tobas the apprentice wizard sent you!"
"But... our boat!" the woman cried, ankle-deep in the foaming water. The
man stood beside her, knuckles on his hips, glaring silently at Tobas'
receding figure.
"I'm sorry," Tobas repeated, "but I need it more than you do!" That said,
he devoted his entire attention to rowing and paid no more attention to the
boat's rightful owners. He had a ship to catch.
CHAPTER 4
What little wind there was came from the northeast, helping Tobas along
and hindering the ship he sought to intercept. He quickly found himself well
out at sea, the coastline a vague blur in the distance. He glanced back over
his shoulder and caught sight of the sail, far off his starboard bow; the ship
was still hull-down on the horizon.
He looked back at the fading land again, and his nerve failed him. If the
wind shifted, or if the ship decided to gain more sea room by running south,
摘要：

WITHASINGLESPELLbyLAWRENCEWATT-EVANS(1987)[VERSION1.1(Oct0603).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.]Dedicatedtomymother,DolethaWatt-EvansCHAPTER1ThelittlecottageattheedgeoftheswampwhereinoldRoggithadlivedouthislifewasnot,strictlyspeaking,apartofthevill...

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