Yverne wrinkled her nose. "Phew! What is this fluid, Milord de la Luce?"
" 'Tis the rock oil, milady—oil seeped from the rocks themselves. 'Tis as light as any lamp oil, but I would not set a wick to burning here."
Too right he wouldn't! If he tried, they'd probably all go up in a bang that would knock the huge old stone pile above them into pebbles. "Stegoman," Matt called, "don't come in."
"I cannot," the dragon's voice called from outside the tunnel. "The cave mouth is too small."
"That's just fine." Matt turned to the don. "Seepage, you say?"
"Aye. There is no spring—it seems to rise from a thousand cracks in the stone."
"All light stuff, then—kerosene, gasoline, light oil." Matt turned away. "It's an awe-inspiring sight, your lordship—but if you don't mind, I'd rather do my admiring from a distance. I'm already feeling a little light-headed."
"Aye—'tis not good to breathe in the presence of the pool for overlong." The old don ushered them out of the chamber.
As they came out, Sir Guy asked, "You channel this stuff to the land about your castle, then?"
"Aye. There is a pipe let into the wall of the pool, below its surface." De la Luce turned away down even more stairs. "Its own weight makes it sink down into the tube."
"But what brings it up?" Matt asked, following.
"Hark!" The old don held up a hand. "Do you hear?"
They were quiet,. and heard, afar off, a hissing sound that rose and fell.
"The sea!" Fadecourt breathed.
"Aye. It moves my oil for me. Will you come?" De la Luce led the way down, and down again, and again.
Finally, the stairwell brightened with daylight. A few more steps, and they came into a low sea cave, perhaps ten feet high. Its floor was only a narrow ledge, alongside a twenty-foot-wide channel of seawater, five feet below them. "The tide is flowing," de la Luce observed. "At its height, it will be scant inches below this track."
But Matt was looking at something else. "How on earth did you get the idea for that?"
It was a huge paddle wheel, almost as high as the roof, its lower arc already immersed in the seawater. With each surge of the tide, the wheel turned, but the ebb didn't turn it back. The old man had rigged an escapement, in a world that hadn't invented anything more elaborate than the water clock.
"From a mill wheel, naught but a mill wheel." The old man smiled, obviously pleased by the praise. "Though I did need long hours of pondering upon it, ere I seized upon a means of holding the wheel against the backwash of the tide's surge, yes, and longer hours yet to dream of a means by which that device could be reversed, so that the wheel could give me power at both ebb and flow."
Matt shivered, more certain than ever that he was in the presence of a genius. To make clockwork is no big deal, when someone else has shown you how—but to invent it yourself is quite another matter. "How do you harness the power of the wheel, so that it raises the oil to the soil?"
"By a thickened disk of metal, pushing the fluid up through a pipe. There are holes at top and bottom, the one to let the oil in, the other to let it out. 'Tis simple enough, once 'tis seen."
Simple, sure—but he hadn't seen it. Except in his mind's eye...
The old man stepped closer to the paddle wheel, frowning and reaching out to touch a slab of wood. " 'Tis cracked; I must replace it soon." He turned to Matt. "For it turns, day and night, to keep it fit, even though I've no need of its power, no, not more than a dozen times these fifty years. But I make it work once each year at least, yes, to be sure it will bring the oil when I want it."
"Wise precaution." Matt swallowed. "And still you're going to tell me that you're not a wizard."
"Certes! For surely, I am not!" the old man said in surprise, then smiled gently. "Be not deceived, Lord Wizard—there's naught of magic in this."
"Only in your mind," Matt muttered. He had a brief vision of an attack on the castle—enemy troops charging forward with scaling ladders, as the pump pushed hundreds of gallons of inflammable fluid into the ground around the castle, now charred as porous as pumice. Then a fire-arrow would come arcing up from the battlements, stabbing down into the earth—and a wall of flame would explode all about the assault troops. Matt winced at the imagined sound of their screams, and mentally cheered them on as they charged back into their own lines. Then he remembered what their officer-sorcerers would probably do to them, and forced the vision away. "No wonder it's been awhile since you had an assault."
"Aye." The old man nodded with a sad smile. "Why waste troops, when the king has simply to wait? For I have no heirs, no, nor anyone else dwelling with me here, save the well-wists—and the sorcerer could deal with them quickly enough had I not bade them flee when I die. Nay, they think I am alone here, all alone, though I thank Heaven I am not. There is a lovely lass who visits me, bless her—aye, and not once a year, but once a day and more!" He gave Matt a keen look with a knowing smile. "You shall think her to be but a vision of my fancy, and myself but a crazed old fool." The sorrow evaporated from his smile. "None will believe that she is real, as real as I myself—so mine enemies think that I must die the sooner for want of company. Well, let them learn their folly! I shall endure, thanks to her friendship—and, God willing, I will survive them all, to see the deliverance of Ibile, and the destruction of its sorcerers!"
"Amen to that," Fadecourt said fervently, and Sir Guy and Yverne echoed, "Amen."
For his own part, Matt agreed with the sentiments, but wasn't too sure about the means. He didn't doubt for a second that the "lovely lass" was every bit as imaginary as the old man's enemies doubtless said. Loneliness could do that to a person.
Yverne, however, took him at his word. "A lass who visits you? When all other folk have fled this island? Nay, whence could she come?"
"From the sea," the old don explained, "from the sea itself. Betimes she does in truth come up out of the sea, to converse awhile with me—but nothing more." The sad smile returned. "Nay, surely nothing more, though I had some hope of that when I was younger, a lad of forty or so—yet I aged, and she did not. She is my friend still, and anon takes me with her down under the waves to visit with her father, where they dwell forgotten in their watery palace. Ah, 'tis sad! 'Tis sad!"
Yverne looked up at Matt in alarm, but he shook his head. There was nothing he could do; the poor don was sunk in illusion. Sure, Matt might be able to banish the delusion with the appropriate spell—in fact, one was nudging at his mind right now-but would he really be doing the old man a favor? None of his business, for sure.
But Yverne looked so forlorn.
Then she mustered a brave smile as she turned back to the old man. "Is she a beauty, then, this lass of yours?"
"The queen of beauty to me," he said, then surprised Matt by adding, "though I doubt if others would find her fair, for her skin shimmers with scales ever so delicately wrought, and her hair is green, as are her eyes. Yet she is no mermaid, no, for she walks upon feet as delicate as shells, and her lips are coral."
Matt made one try at dispelling the illusion, though it earned him a glare from Yverne. "How could she come in, milord? She can't very well come knock on your raised drawbridge."
"Heaven forfend! Nay, she comes in yonder." He pointed back to the cavern they had just left. "Where the seawater rises, so rises she, riding upon the waves, then comes from the water and comes up to warm herself at my hearth, and warm my old heart with gladsome talk. Merry is she, and ever full of cheer, and her laugh is the chiming of silver bells."
"Through the sea door?" Matt stared. "And she climbs all those stairs, once a day?!"