Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters (28 page)

“Tell me slowly,” Miriam said, coaxingly holding out the open vial of lavender, and grateful that she had mixed it with chamomile to add its own soothing powers to the tranquil essence of the lavender. Luna came closer and got a breath of the scent. Her eyes stopped dilating, and she finally landed on the rail in front of Miriam, perching like a sparrow and taking in great breaths of the scented air.

“There is one who is not a boy, but not yet a man,” the sylph said. “His eyes are green, his hair is like yellowed kelp, and he has spots. He is clumsy in his speech, and slow in his movements. Most ignore him, some are scornful of him, and some make a mock of him.”

Miriam nodded, feeling darkness steal over her spirit. If ever there was a circumstance designed to bring out the worst in someone, it was to be the butt of jokes and bullying. “And this is the Water Mage?” she asked.

“Master, and new come into his power,” the sylph corrected. “Just as well, or he would be raising tempests and opening maelstroms rather than just making mischief. The cut net? That was his doing. The smashed traps his also. The first was because the fisherman told him he was to stop looking at the man’s daughter. The second was because the lobsterman told him
he
was to have that same daughter, because
he
could provide for her and the other could not.” Having emptied her store of information, Luna sat uncharacteristically still, and breathed in the flower-scent that was so rare at this time of year.

Miriam looked to Jacob, who shook his head. “I do not recognize the description of this lad,” he said. “But then, I doubt that anyone but the fishermen involved would. What do you think he is doing?”

“I think,” she said, “that he came into his power, perhaps when he was confronted by the first fisherman. I think that he is using the mermaids, coercing them, into taking revenge for him.”

“That much I can deduce for myself,” Jacob replied dryly. “But do you think he is doing so deliberately?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You are asking the wrong Element,” she pointed out. “And at any rate, it will be for you to discover who he is.
I
certainly cannot be seen talking to random fishermen at the docks.”

“No, no, of course not.” Jacob flushed with embarrassment. “Well, let us go pay our respects to Julia and have luncheon. This boy is not going anywhere, and as yet he has harmed no one other than a little property destruction. We can discuss our options after we dine.”

Miriam barely held herself back from giving Jacob a sharp rebuke.
Only
a “little property destruction?” Neither the lobsterman nor the fisherman would be able to ply their trade until their tools were repaired or replaced, and neither nets nor traps were cheap! But she held her tongue. Accidents happened. Presumably, the one young man’s brother would help him, and no doubt the fisherman had other nets.

*   *   *

In the end, since there was little that Miriam could do in person, Jacob left her at the coaching inn and went down to conduct the investigation himself. There had been no use in actually going to the docks themselves until the fishing boats were in for the evening, so Jacob had given her the run of his library to while away the time while he conducted his business. But the moment she closed the door to her room, she had an uneasy feeling. It was nothing so strong as a vision, which she was rarely vouchsafed anyway, but it was certainly strong enough to be called a premonition.

So she didn’t take off her hat or shawl, much less her gloves. She waited, instead, as the fog drifted in and the air darkened a little, and when the chambermaid tapped on her door she was not at all startled. She got up to answer it.

“Miss, the gentleman has sent a boy with his carriage and asks if you would meet him?” The maid clearly had no idea of Jacob’s name, but a respectable carriage had turned up with a message for her, and that was all
she
needed.

Miriam nodded, as if this was something she had expected. And of course, the maid, seeing her already prepared for going out, assumed it was. “Please ask the master of the inn to put back my dinner until eight, would you?” she replied, and sailed past the girl, doing her best to walk briskly and
not
run.

The carriage let her off at the docks, and Jacob was waiting for her. “Can you feel it?” he asked, worriedly. “Even I can feel it. His name is Samuel. Samuel Franks.”

She nodded; of course they both would feel the wild and dark strength out there at the farthest pier. Any Master or magician would, no matter what their affinity. This was a Master, with scarcely a shred of control, and he was angry. “And you think he would respond better to a woman than a man,” she replied—because this was one of the strategies they had discussed.

“In his state? I venture so . . . I fear that Angus Crocker put two and two together with my questions and came up with two hundred, and went to give the lad a dressing down. He might even have described me—and I am an old man.” Jacob didn’t have to say more. An untrained Master was powerful
and
unpredictable, and Jacob was likely to be overwhelmed by sheer, emotion-backed force.

“And if he can judge strength, he will know I am not only weak because I am a woman, I am no match for his magic.” She nodded, and settled her shawl around her shoulders. “I will see if I can speak sense to him. If nothing else, I can distract him before he calls a storm and tears this town apart.”

Without a backward glance, she set off briskly down the dock. It was getting dark now, and the boats that were tied up heaved uneasily at their moorings. She could feel the storm in the air. The boy was powerfully wrought up. There was no telling what he might do.

Her footsteps betrayed none of her unease, none of the chill of fear that went down her backbone. Her sylphs—her three particular, special friends, whirred around her in a protective circle.

She could see him, dark against the end of the pier. And she could hear the mermaids, see them in the water, thrashing their tails and keening with pain. “Sam?” she called out.

He whirled. She stopped a few feet away from him. His face was white, but with anger, not fear, and splotchy. He was not the answer to any maiden’s prayers, part of her noted dispassionately. “Are you Sam Franks?” she asked.

“Who ahr you?” he rasped, in the Maine drawl that was typical of this town. “What d’ye want?”

“My name is Miriam,” she replied, clasping her hands on the shawl at her throat. “And I think you know what I want. Please, Sam, you have to stop this. You are hurting them—” she gestured at the writhing mermaids below the water. “You hurt the fishermen whose tools you had them ruin. But most of all—”

She was going to say
most of all, you’re hurting yourself,
but he interrupted her, a wild look joining the rage on his face. “Ye mean—I
did
it? I smashed that bastahd Arson’s pots? I ruined Crockah’s net?” He threw his head back and laughed. “Ye mean, theyah
real?”
He threw his arms wide to indicate the mermaids. “I ain’t crazy? The powah—it’s real?”

“It’s real, and it’s dangerous, Sam,” she said, and made her expression as pleading as she could manage. “Now, set aside your anger. Let your wrongs go. Release those poor mermaids, and come with me. I shall bring you to a teach—”

“No!”
he bellowed, as the waves lifted and the boats began to pitch wildly. “No more
teachers.
No more
bosses.
I’ll be tha boss now!”

Miriam looked into his eyes and saw what she had feared most to see. Not the bullied, but the bully. Not the oppressed, but the oppressor. He had not greeted her words with joyful relief, but with gleeful rage.

He took a threatening step toward her and her sylphs bristled at him, hissing and showing claws. “And you won’t be stoppin’ me, Missy,” he snarled, and grabbed her wrist. “I’ll be wipin’ this stinkin’ town from the coast, and I’ll be havin’ all the wimmin and good things I want from now on, and there ain’t
nothin’
you can to do stop me!”

“No,” she sighed, and let out a single sob. “Only take your breath away.”

And she stole all the air from his lungs.

He made a strangling sound, and let go of her wrist to clutch at his throat. She stepped back out of reach, just in case he somehow got control of himself long enough to lunge at her, but instead he stumbled back another couple of paces—

And released from his coercion, the mermaids surged forward in a wave of white arms and gray tails. A dozen hands seized his ankles. Two dozen hands jerked his feet from under him. He could not even scream as they pulled him off the dock. The last Miriam saw of him was a glimpse of terrified, green eyes in a stark, white face.

And then he was gone.

The sea smoothed to glassy stillness.

She went to the edge of the dock and peered over in the dusk.

There was not even a trail of bubbles to show where he had gone.

*   *   *

“I’m sorry, Miriam,” Jacob said, unaccustomed humility in his tone.

“So am I,” she sighed. “I had hoped he was only troubled, and not evil.”

Jacob handed her case to the coach driver, who was paying no attention to anything either of them were saying—largely because he had been tipped generously by Jacob, more than enough to purchase a supreme lack of curiosity. The driver stowed her traveling case inside the coach for her and got up on the box.

“I must apologize. I was testing you,” he continued.

Now she gave him a look of annoyance. “I am not
dim,
Jacob. I realized that as soon as we got to the farmhouse. I also know you didn’t expect a renegade, newly awakened Water Master.”

“You dealt with him better than your father could have,” Jacob told her, flushing. “Even better than I. I hope you will consider joining the White Lodge. . . .”

Oho! So there
is
a White Lodge hereabouts!
She knew about the White Lodges and their Huntmasters, in theory, of course—and everyone with a touch of magic knew about the great Lodge headquartered in London—but this was her first confirmation that there was such a thing here, and that Jacob and probably her father had belonged to it.

She thought about leaving him hanging. Then thought better of it. The other members of the Lodge would go out of their way to make sure she was financially solvent, no matter what happened. And she would be
paying
for that with her magical service.

And she had certainly proved she was up to the job. . . .

“Thank you, Huntmaster,” she said, allowing the coachman’s assistant to help her into the carriage. “I accept.”

About the Authors

Ron Collins
has appeared in
Analog
,
Asimov’s
,
Nature
, and several other magazines and anthologies. His writing has received a
Writers of the Future
prize and a CompuServe HOMer Award. A collection of his science fiction,
Picasso’s Cat & Other Stories
, was published in 2010. A year later he published
See the PEBA on $25 a Day
, a baseball fantasy novel. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and has worked developing avionics systems, electronics, and information technology. He lives in Columbus, Indiana, with his wife, Lisa. The obligatory cat’s name is Keiko.

Samuel Conway
holds a doctorate in chemistry from Dartmouth and currently lives and works in the environs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he’s not doing research, he serves as the chairman of Anthrocon, the world’s largest anthropomorphics convention, which is held annually in Pittsburgh. Somewhere between the two he finds time to write. This is his second published work beyond the small-press circuit, his first having been a short story in Mercedes Lackey’s
Flights of Fantasy
.

Dayle A. Dermatis
’ short fantasy has been called “funny (and rather ingenious),” “something new and something fresh,” and “really, really good!” Under various pseudonyms (and sometimes with coauthors), she’s sold several novels and more than a hundred short stories in multiple genres. She lives and works in California within scent of the ocean, and in her spare time follows the rock band Styx around the country and travels the world, all of which inspires her writing. To find out where she is today, check out www.cyvarwydd.com.

Rosemary Edghill
’s first professional sales were to the black & white horror comics, so she can truthfully state on her resume that she once killed vampires for a living. She has worked as an SF editor for Avon Books, as a freelance book designer, as a typesetter, as an illustrator, as an anthologist, and as a professional book reviewer. She has written Regency Romances, historical novels, space opera, high fantasy, media tie-ins, and horror, and collaborated with authors such as Marion Zimmer Bradley, SF Grand Master Andre Norton, and Mercedes Lackey.
Mad Maudlin
, her third Bedlam’s Bard collaboration, was a 2002 Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA) selection as one of the best Horror and Fantasy novels of the year. You can find her on Facebook or Dreamwidth when she ought to be writing.

Tanya Huff
lives in rural Ontario, Canada with her wife, Fiona Patton, and, as of last count, eight cats. Her 27 novels and 73 short stories include horror, heroic fantasy, urban fantasy, comedy, and space opera. She’s written four essays for BenBella’s pop culture collections. Her Blood series was turned into the 22-episode
Blood Ties
television show, and writing episode nine allowed her to finally use her degree in Radio & Television Arts. Her latest novel is
The Silvered
and her next will be the third Gale girls book—untitled as yet. When not writing, she practices her guitar and spends too much time online.

Cedric Johnson
was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he began writing short stories and poetry at an early age. While attending Lincoln Southeast High School, Cedric was a top-placing contributor, layout editor, and senior year editor-in-chief of its multiple award-winning annual literary publication
From the Depths
. Cedric currently resides in Commerce City, Colorado, where he continues to write while working with other forms of digital media, including 3D modeling and virtual world communications.

Michele Lang
is the author of the
Lady Lazarus
historical fantasy series, set in a magical Budapest during World War II. Michele’s most recent book in the series,
Dark Victory
, was released in January, 2012. The next book,
Rebel Angels
, is coming in March, 2013. Please visit Michele at www.michelelang.com.

Jody Lynn Nye
lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.” She lives northwest of Chicago with one of the above and her husband, author and packager Bill Fawcett. She has written more than forty books, including
The Ship Who Won
with Anne McCaffrey,
Don’t Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear!,
a humorous anthology about mothers, and over a hundred short stories. Her latest books are
View From the Imperium
and
Myth-Quoted
.

Fiona Patton
was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and grew up in the United States. She now lives in rural Ontario with her partner, Tanya Huff, two glorious dogs, and a pride of very small lions. She has written seven fantasy novels for DAW Books, and is currently working on the first book of a new series entitled
The King’s Eagle
.

Diana L. Paxson
first worked with the four elements in the Chronicles of Westria, including
The Earthstone
,
The Sea Star
,
The Wind Crystal
, and
The Jewel of Fire
. She has written two dozen other fantasy novels, mostly with historical settings, such as the Avalon series, which she took over from Marion Zimmer Bradley. She is also the author of several nonfiction books, most recently
The Way of the Oracle
.

Gail Sanders
and
Michael Z. Williamson
are married veterans who live in Indianapolis, Indiana. Gail is a veteran combat photographer and contracts as a value-added paper pusher for the US Army. She graduated Basic Combat Training a week shy of her 36th birthday. Mike is retired from the military and is a full time writer, researcher, and consultant. In addition to writing, he tests and evaluates disaster preparedness gear and occasionally consults for TV shows and military exercises.

Kristin Schwengel
lives with her husband and the obligatory cat (named Gandalf, of course) near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work as a massage therapist affords her just enough time for writing and enjoying her hobbies of knitting and killing garden plantings. Her short stories have appeared in several of Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar anthologies, among others.

Elizabeth A. Vaughan
writes fantasy romance. Her first novel,
Warprize
, was rereleased in April, 2011. The Chronicles of the Warlands continues in
WarCry
, released in May, 2011. You can learn more about her books at www.eavwrites.com. Her story is dedicated to Moira Cameron, Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London.

Elisabeth Waters
sold her first short story in 1980 to Marion Zimmer Bradley for
The Keeper’s Price
, the first of the Darkover anthologies. She then went on to sell short stories to a variety of anthologies. Her first novel, a fantasy called
Changing Fate
, was awarded the 1989 Gryphon Award. She is now working on a sequel to it, in addition to her short story writing and anthology editing. She currently edits the
Sword And Sorceress
anthologies. She also worked as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera, where she appeared in
La Gioconda, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, Khovanschina, Das Rheingold, Werther
, and
Idomeneo
.