Below the Wizards' Tower (The Royal Wizard of Yurt Book 8) Read Online Free PDF

shouted mentally.   “Come back!   What are you doing?   Do you want me to drown?”
    If he heard he made no
response.   The sound of his
splashing footsteps quickly receded.   It was very quiet and dim now in the cave, back from the sunlit
entrance.   The only sound was the
lapping of the waves, slowly, inexorably, coming in.
    Those waves had carved out the
sea-caves in the first place.   In
the winter, I tried to reassure myself.   At a time of particularly high tides and storm.   Not on a summer day.   I was not reassured.
    Would a paralysis spell wear off
after a while?   Maybe.   I tried to think, worried that this
particular one seemed to be growing stronger.   Paralysis was not a branch of magic I
had studied very much myself.
    I could breathe and move my eyes and
not much else.   The waves were
entering the cave now, rippling in across the muddy floor and then shyly
retreating, before coming in even further the next time.
    Who could the wizard be who had left me here to drown?   Probably not Elerius after all, I concluded
reluctantly.   I had only thought of
him because I always distrusted him.   He was bound by the same enormously powerful oaths as the rest of the
school’s graduates, to help and not harm humanity, and he had no motive for
killing me.   Just last night he had
been friendly—even if patronizing.
    Would anyone from the school come
looking for me?   It must be well
past the time I was supposed to meet the Master.   He would be annoyed, make some comment
about how I was just as irresponsible as I’d been as a student, and go back to
whatever else he was doing.
    And even if someone tried to find
me, where would they look for me?   Certainly not out here.   I gave a great mental shout in case
there was a wizard within range but got no answer.   The water below my rock was now half a
foot deep.
    Time passed.   The water grew deeper.   But the rock on which I lay was dry, I told myself, suggesting the last high tide had not come all the way up.   If I had known about these sea-caves as
a boy, I thought irrelevantly, I would have come and played pirates in them.
    I listened in case I heard the sound
of oars, of pirates bringing their ill-gotten gold to hide in the mud at the
back of the cave.   But they would
not be coming in broad daylight.   They would wait until darkness, then come to find the prisoner their
renegade wizard had captured for them, the one they intended to hold for
ransom….
    I hoped no one imagined the kingdom
of Yurt had great wealth to spend on ransoming its Royal Wizard.   But then I thought—of course!   Whoever had captured me had not intended
to capture Daimbert of Yurt.   He had
intended to capture Marcus.
    For several minutes I pondered all
the enemies Marcus must have, from affronted lovers to people to whom he owed
money, but at last I had to give up the idea.   Whoever had put the paralysis spell on
me might be only half-trained, might be anyone from a wizardry student
concocting a prank, to a magician who had flunked out of the school, to someone
whose magic was learned in a long-ago apprenticeship up in the mountains, to
some dark mage whose enmity I had earned on our trip to the East, but he would
certainly have recognized me as a wizard.
    Did it look as though the water had
stopped growing deeper?   From where
I was lying it was hard to tell, and I didn’t dare hope.   I tried another mental shout, on the off-chance someone, anyone, with magical training might be
nearby and might have pity.
    Still there was no answer.   Staring at the water did not make it
recede.   I tried closing my eyes,
counting slowly to a hundred, and looking again.   I could see no change, but then it did
not seem to be rising anymore.
    More time passed.   Outside the cave the light was becoming
the gold of late afternoon, and the tide was certainly going out.   Every now and then I tried another mental
shout.
    And finally someone answered, faint,
distant,