Chapter 14 #3
He reached out to steady himself, and put his hand down in a puddle of rainwater. He did not mind this either—until claws sank into his hand.
Zacharias screamed. The pain was excruciating, and when he tried to tear his hand away it felt as though his arm would sooner be pulled out of its joint. The puddle grew and transformed.
Zacharias saw a gaping maw made of brown water, with translucent fangs, and leaves swirling down its throat. He took a deep breath despite the prickling of magic in his nostrils, knowing that one inhalation would need to last him a while, and then the monster gulped him down.
Prunella, turning reluctantly around, saw a mass of water consume Zacharias’s person. She shrieked.
“What is it?” cried Mak Genggang.
“Mr. Wythe is being murdered!” said Prunella. She thought of the fire at the Blue Boar, and clenched her fists. “Oh, the villain! What shall we do?”
Mak Genggang peered over the side of the basket. Zacharias was fumbling blindly at his coat, perhaps seeking his staff, but he seemed to be fighting against a great force to move at all. His eyes and mouth were screwed shut, and his face wore a look of grim resolve.
“If the water does not hold him long enough to suffocate him, it will poison him first,” said Mak Genggang, in the judicious manner of an expert. “Look at how his face twitches—the water is acid, and eats at his skin. It is a clever hex. Must we save him?”
“Mak Genggang! He persuaded his wicked magicians to preserve your life.”
“And threw me into gaol!” said Mak Genggang. “Very well, child, I will do it, so you need not make faces at me. He is a well-bred young man, after all. I like a young man who shows a proper respect to his elders.”
She held out her arms, and now it could be seen that Mak Genggang was not merely a tiny replica of her former self, for there was a singular new addition: a pair of wings growing out of her back.
Mak Genggang had invented these to ease her escape.
They were of thin, leathery skin, spread over delicate cartilage, and looked nearly translucent as Mak Genggang took to the air.
She hovered for a moment above the devouring mass of water, then dived into it, alighting upon Zacharias’s shoulder.
Zacharias felt a tiny weight settle upon him.
He moved his shoulder to try to dislodge it, but then for the first time since he had been devoured, there was an intermission of pain.
A cooling protection flowed down his arm, shielding his flesh from the acid sting of the water—extraordinary blessing!
There was a buzzing at his ear, blurred by the water, and Zacharias heard indistinctly the words:
“Listen to the spell, Sorcerer. I am too small to cover you entirely, but you may do it yourself if you attend.”
The relief of the pain seemed to return to Zacharias some of his own mind.
He focused on Mak Genggang’s voice, and though all noise was blunted underwater he discerned the syllables of an enchantment, repeated over and over again.
The words were foreign, of course, but one did not always need to understand the words of a charm to cast it: as a youth Zacharias had amused himself by casting spells in Sanskrit to tolerable effect, though he had made only a brief study of the language.
It required an effort of will to open his mouth to speak, for he knew he must swallow the burning water in consequence—but he did it.
As he murmured the enchantment, speaking slowly despite the fiery agony from the water sliding down his throat, the relief began to envelop him.
It spread from his arm down his left side, along his leg, and then the effect of the spell began to communicate itself across to the right side of his person.
Provided he kept repeating the spell he could preserve himself from this distracting pain, but how would he get himself out of this fix?
No exertion of mere physical strength would extricate him from the grasp of the water.
Besides, he was beginning to feel faint from lack of air.
“Mak Genggang,” he said, or thought—he was not sure which—“if you can but make a hole through the water, and if Miss Gentleman will assist—”
Mak Genggang did not reply, but a gap opened in the water, and Zacharias thrust out a wet hand. Prunella grasped it at once, though she winced at the sting of the poisoned water.
“What can I do?” she said.
“Give me your magic,” gasped Zacharias. That meant a gulp of too much water. He coughed, struggling for air, but Prunella’s small hand was solid and warm in his. He cast out his drowning consciousness like a net, and drew in magic through her.
Prunella had never experienced such a peculiar sensation.
The world was brilliant with colour and light, and everything looked strange, but truer than it had ever been.
The monstrous bulk of water turned into a furious woman, with trailing green hair, a lashing serpent’s tail and long-nailed fingers throttling Zacharias.
Zacharias himself was a silvery salmon thrashing in her coils.
Mak Genggang, hovering above the fray, looked exactly the same.
She saw all this in a flash. Then there was no more Prunella: she was one with all the fleeting imps of the air. Magic rushed through her, like water through a pipe, into Zacharias’s hand.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the salmon wriggle out of the woman’s grasp. All at once Prunella’s bones and muscles seemed to turn to jelly. She collapsed, and Zacharias fell on his knees beside her, brown water showering down on them. He was free.
“A spell for untangling,” he gasped. “The water had me in a binding charm. The counter-formula is no more difficult than untying a knot, but it requires force. I could not have done it without your aid.”
“I feel very odd indeed,” said Prunella.
She no longer saw salmon or water-women, but the world had acquired an ugly patina. The trees stood too close, their branches raised like a threat, and the water upon the road shone like oil.
“It is the reaction to the spell,” said Zacharias, looking at her anxiously. “The absorption and release of so much magic is unpleasant for any mortal who is not accustomed to working with a familiar. The ill effects ought not to be lasting, however—”
“I am going to be sick,” announced Prunella.
Whereupon she was, at length. When she was done she rolled away from the result and gazed up at the sky, feeling that life was too grim to be borne. Voices spoke above her, but they did not trouble her.
“Don’t stand there staring, man,” snapped Mak Genggang. “Help the girl up and get her home! Prunella, I am sorry to abandon you when you are so ill, poor child! But my women need me, and you have Mr. Wythe, whereas they have only a poor old woman to rely upon. Remember what I have told you.”
Prunella’s thoughts were hazy, but she remembered the core of what Mak Genggang had taught her. It was so simple as to be impossible to forget.
“It comes down to blood,” she whispered.
“Did you speak, Miss Gentleman?” said Zacharias.
His worried countenance hove into view. “Mak Genggang has flown, I am afraid. If she stayed she would have been caught, for the Fellows will be arriving soon. However, I have sent a zephyr for a hackney coach, and we shall be gone before anyone sees us. I should have arranged for transport by magic, save that you ought not to have too much to do with magic till you have recovered. How do you feel?”
“It stings a little,” said Prunella. This was an understatement, hardly capturing the overwhelming sense of disillusionment that had swamped her the moment the magic was gone. “Are you hurt?”
Zacharias smiled. “You need not worry about me.”
As she lay upon the street, furious, impotent and distressingly inelegant, Prunella discovered two things about herself.
She liked Zacharias very, very much—perhaps better than she had ever liked anyone in her life.
She loathed being weak with a passion. She had always known that she could not endure a fool, but it was not till this moment that Prunella realised how much less she liked weakness in herself.
It could not be just, she thought, that Zacharias should be so good, and so persecuted. And that she should be exposed to such peril and discomfort was not to be borne. But why should a possessor of seven familiars’ eggs have any anxiety about defending herself, and those she . . . liked very much?
The situation could not continue. Something must be done. And who better than Prunella Gentleman to do it?