The Wizard’s Promise

  “No,” I shouted back. “We can’t use magic here.”

  “She’s right,” Reynir shouted over the storm. “Any magic will just make things worse.”

  “I ain’t touching that,” said Harald.

  I looked at that globe of water floating a handswidth above the deck, a serene spot of calm in the midst of the storm raging around us. The denala’s eye. Except there were three eyes to this storm, all hovering around the boat.

  I didn’t want to touch it either, but Baltasar was right; the longer we kept it aboard, the more harm it could do. So I took a deep breath and raced forward and shoved it with my gloved hands. It only moved a little, the way the preservation spells will do. “Help me!” I screamed.

  Reynir and Harald hesitated. I shoved it again, and it edged closer to the side of the boat.

  “I’ll never get it off without your help.”

  The Annika tilted. Another wall of water crashed over us. I screamed at the cold and I was certain that my skin tingled, magic-sickness making its way through me.

  I shoved the globe again. It slammed up against the side of the boat, and the water exploded everywhere and the fish slammed down on the deck, flopping and gasping. I shrieked and stumbled backward, trying to whisk that enchanted water off me. It steamed on my clothes with a sweet medicinal scent, and my head was suddenly crowded with strange images, castles in the mist and women with gray eyes.

  I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed it overboard. My head cleared.

  “You okay?” Reynir asked.

  “No thanks to you.” I whirled away from him, back toward the interior of the deck.

  The Annika was in a shambles.

  The deck gleamed silver. The masts had grown knobby and twisted, like trees, and the sails were tattered silk dresses snapping and fluttering in the freezing, choking winds. All results of the magic-sickness, the way too much magic will change things.

  The crew stood in clumps, staring up at the sky. I followed their gaze.

  Clouds swirled overhead like a cyclone.

  “Down below!” Baltasar bellowed. “Everyone get down below!”

  There was a pause, as if we’d all forgotten how to move.

  And then the boat lifted up high on the crest of the wave, tall enough it seemed we’d be sucked into the spiral of clouds. Everyone erupted into movement. We raced to the hatch, shouting and shoving. I slid down the ladder and landed with a smack on the damp floor. Water dripped through the rafters. Seimur slid down and landed on top of me.

  “Get out of the way, Empire girl!” he shouted.

  I wormed out from under him.

  “Get to the hold,” someone shouted from the darkness. Seimur disappeared down the corridor. I followed, weaving back and forth to avoid the dripping water.

  A light appeared at the end of the corridor, flickering and orange. Candleflame. Good.

  The hold was crowded with crewmen. A handful of candles were dotted across the darkness. For all the shouting and cursing up on deck and in the corridor, the hold was hushed and silent. In the fluttering candlelight, I found Asbera sitting in the corner, next to a barrel of drinking water. Finnur leaned up against her, his face pale.

  “Hanna!” she whispered, as if she didn’t want to break the silence. “You’re all right.”

  I nodded and slid into place beside her. Finnur stirred. He looked worn out.

  “Where’s your coat?” Asbera asked.

  I shook my head. “Water got on it.” I drew my legs up close. For the first time since the storm had hit, I realized how cold I was. My teeth chattered and my bones vibrated. The candle guttering next to Asbera did not give off enough heat.

  The boat lifted, tilted. Everyone in the hold let out a long, terrified gasp. Hands snatched out to grab the candles–

  We slammed back down, hard.

  Voices filled up the darkness, whispered prayers and Tuljan lullabies. I squeezed myself tighter, trying to draw warmth out of myself. The walls rippled beneath my back and revulsion rose up in my throat but I fought it down, because our choices now were to stay aboard and face the magic-sickness, or jump into the ocean and freeze.

  I closed my eyes and told myself I wasn’t going to die.

  CHAPTER 13

  Sunlight.

  Pale and thin but certainly there, wavering through the cracks in the ceiling. The candles had burned out in the night and men were sleeping, sprawled out in piles on the floor of the hold. I sat up and stretched. Every muscle in my body ached. At least the boat was still a boat and the walls were still walls. And none of the sleeping crew seemed affected by the magic-sickness.

  I stood up, my legs wobbling, and braced myself against the wall. I realized the entire crew wasn’t down here – only about five men. Asbera and Finnur were gone.

  Panic seized me, cold and violent. But then I heard voices coming from up above.

  I picked my way over the sleeping crewmen and climbed up on deck. The sun was blinding; I hadn’t seen it that bright since we’d left Kjora. It bounced off the water’s surface, flinging light all over the boat. The air was calm and sharp with cold.

  The Annika might still be above water, but she’d been half destroyed in the denala last night. Her deck gleamed silver in places, and the sails-turned-silk-dresses had no doubt been thrown overboard. A group of crewmen stood near the helm of the ship, bundled up in cloaks and shabby furs. They spoke in low voices.

  “Hello,” I called out.

  They turned toward me. One of them was Asbera. My lingering panic dissipated.

  “Hanna!” She rushed across the deck to my side. “I tried waking you, but you wouldn’t stir. I was worried.”

  “I’m sore,” I said, as if that offered any kind of explanation. “Where are we?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Asbera looped her arm in mine and led me across the boat.

  “Finnur?” I asked. “Is he–”

  “He’s fine. Resting. See?” She pointed past the helm to the stern of the boat, where Finnur was stretched out on a hammock, covered in furs. “He wanted fresh air after spending the night down below.”

  We joined the rest of the crew. Baltasar was there, looking drawn and worn out, like he hadn’t slept at all, and Reynir and Harald. They ringed the navigation table, staring down at a map pinned with rocks.

  “Hanna,” Baltasar said. “Am I glad to see you’re all right.”

  “I’m glad to see it, too.” I smiled weakly at him, but he didn’t return the gesture.

  “Had to ditch the sails,” he said. “Tainted with the sickness. We’ve got some old ones down below. Need patching, but they should be enough to get us home. You well enough to call the winds?”

  I hesitated. “I’m – not sure,” I finally answered. “And I’m not certain it’s safe–”

  “Oh, it’s definitely not safe,” Reynir said. “We’ll have to wait at least a day before we do any sort of magic.”

  Baltasar grunted. “So we’re just sitting in the water till then? Air’s still as death.”

  “That’s what I told you.”

  “Boys,” Asbera said. “We shouldn’t fight. We have to wait until nightfall to find out where we are. Not unless someone passes us by.”

  The rest of the crew grumbled. She was right; without the stars or a strong spell, we’d no way of locating ourselves. Standing around the navigation map was just wishful thinking.

  “I hope we haven’t crossed over.”

  Everyone stopped talking. It was Finnur who had spoken, although he sounded gruff and unlike himself. Everyone turned to him. He’d sat up in the hammock, and he swayed side to side with the motion of the Annika.

  “We haven’t,” Baltasar said.

  I hoped he was right. In that maelstrom of magic, it was entirely possible that the Annika could have been dragged out of the true world and into the Mists. But the ocean sparkling around us didn’t seem like the Mists. This cold, sharp air didn’t seem like the Mists, either. It fe
lt like home.

  “Don’t mind him; he’s still recovering from the magic-sickness.” Asbera bustled over to him and pressed her hand to his forehead. He closed his eyes at her touch and leaned back in the hammock and murmured something I couldn’t hear.

  “Leave them.” Baltasar sidled up beside me. “They’ve still got the panic from last night. Come, let’s see about repairing those old sails. It’s something to do while we wait.”

  I nodded, feeling numb, but I still followed him down below.

  The rest of the day was spent largely in silence. Crewmen drifted up from down below in ones or twos, and Baltasar set them to work whenever they appeared on deck. By lunchtime, everyone was awake and accounted for, and to all our great relief, no human had been touched by the magic-sickness.

  Together, we repaired and hung the old sails. We cleaned up the wreckage from the storm as best we could – Zakaria was the only one brave enough to touch the shiny mirrored patches on the deck, and although he stayed unharmed, the rest of us left them alone, sweeping and mopping around them instead. Benedict, Finnur, and Asbera counted our food stores and reported back that they had largely survived the storm as well. We had about four days’ worth of food and water, more if we rationed.

  Baltasar nodded grimly. “Depends on where we are, doesn’t it?”

  And we all knew that no wages were waiting for us when we returned to Tulja, even if we did get back within a few days’ time. Nobody spoke about it much that first day, but it was heavy on my thoughts, and I imagined it was the same for the rest of the crew.

  Eventually, the sun sank into the horizon – the west, I hoped. We all gathered on deck to watch the stars come out.

  The day had been clear, but as night fell, clouds drifted across the sky, long dark streaks that blotted out the moonlight. I cursed beneath my breath, and for the thousandth time that day, I wondered why this had happened, and why it had happened to us. A denala on the same day that Kolur was to leave for the north?

  Fear gnawed at my insides.

  “It figures,” Finnur said as we crowded around the ship’s bow, “we’d get a cloudy night.”

  “It’s not so cloudy,” Asbera said, and she was right. Pricks of light appeared against the black sky. I held my breath as I tilted my head back, my body shaking, afraid of what I might see.

  Beside me, Asbera let out a long sigh.

  The Jolix Lion stretched out in the northeastern corner, languorous and bored as always. Nora’s Pot was in its usual place as well, cooking up that healing balm Nora used to save Petra. Although I couldn’t see all of the constellations in the patchy sky, I saw enough to know we were in our world.

  “We’re still here.” Asbera drew me up in an embrace. “We haven’t crossed over.”

  Relief rippled across the boat as the crewmen spotted the usual constellations. I dropped my head all the way back until I was able to see the Ice Star, burning bright and brilliant like a flame. It always rested near the top of the sky; I’d heard that if you looked at it from Jandanvar, it would lie directly overhead. It wasn’t directly overhead now. Another relief.

  Baltasar had already pulled out the sextant and was peering through it at the horizon. “At least two days’ north,” he barked. The crew muttered to itself. Then, “Reynir! Throw the damn bones.”

  “You sure?” Reynir asked.

  The Ice Star was enough to tell us how far north or south we’d gone, but it wasn’t enough to give our exact location. It was risky to throw the bones when the boat had been transformed with the magic-sickness only last night – maybe not dangerous in and of itself, it was such a weak magic, but the reading might not be accurate.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Baltasar tossed the sextant aside. “I want to know where the hell we are.”

  Reynir sighed and shuffled forward, pulling his sack of fish bones from around his neck. He glanced around the deck and then moved over to the stern, away from the silvered patches. Everyone followed him, and we moved into a circle around where he knelt on the deck.

  “Give me some room,” he said.

  We all shuffled back a pace or two. Reynir grunted. He dumped the bones in his palm and shook them like dice.

  Everyone held their breath again.

  “Stand back,” he said again, more harshly this time. We stumbled backward. Asbera clutched at Finnur’s hand, their knuckles turning white. I rubbed at my bracelet.

  The bones clattered across the deck.

  I stared at them, trying to read the symbols – it was nonsense, all nonsense. I didn’t recognize any of the configurations. I wanted to weep. But Reynir leaned back on his heels and made a hmm sound. The crew stirred, voices rising up out of the darkness.

  “It’s Anfinn’s Rocks!” Zakaria called out. “Look, it’s exactly like the map.”

  “I see it,” Reynir snapped, although I suspected he hadn’t.

  The crew jostled forward. I’d never heard of Anfinn’s Rocks, but the arrangement did look something like an archipelago, islands trailing off into the sea.

  Baltasar knelt beside the spray of bones. “Someone get me the damn map!” he shouted.

  A flurry of activity. The navigation map drifted down from overhead. Baltasar spread it out on the deck.

  “Give us some light,” Reynir said, and a candle was produced, the wax burned down low. Harald handed it to Baltasar, who set it between the map and the stones. I stood up on my tiptoes, trying to see. So did everyone else.

  Baltasar leaned forward. His eyes flicked back and forth between the map and the bones.

  “Identical.” He glanced at Reynir. “What do you think, fortuneer?”

  “It looks the same, but that doesn’t mean much.”

  Baltasar nodded and then clambered to his feet. “You heard him. Light up the ship, men! Look for signs of Anfinn’s Rocks. We’ve got to confirm.”

  “With what?” someone called out. “Ain’t gonna be able to see far enough with candles.”

  Reynir rubbed his forehead. “Magic-cast lanterns ought to be safe, after this long.”

  Baltasar looked at me. “What do you say, girl? Think it’s safe to cast the lanterns?”

  I fumbled for a moment, surprised that Baltasar was asking for my opinion. Reynir seemed surprised, too, and a little angry about it. “Yes, it should be safe. As long as we don’t light too many.”

  “You heard ’em. Light the lanterns!”

  Lanterns shimmered on across the boat. The sudden surge of magic made me dizzy, and I swooned for a moment. Maybe this had been a mistake.

  Finnur caught me. “Did the same thing to me,” he said. “It’ll pass.”

  “Do we want to be close to Anfinn’s Rocks?” I asked. My head was still fuzzy.

  “Oh, yes,” said Asbera. “It’ll only be two days’ sail from there to get back to Tulja, and it’s an easy voyage.”

  I nodded. Lanterns swung around us. Zakaria brought one over to Asbera, and she set it onto a nearby hook and slid it over the side of the boat. A circle of light appeared on the water, bobbing with the waves.

  Even with the lanterns lit, I couldn’t see much beyond the confines of the boat. But then Seimur shouted, “Land in the distance! Port side!”

  I turned around. Seimur hung over the railing with the lantern, pointing off in the distance. It took me a moment to see the outline of something jagged and dark against the stars, like a distant mountain.

  Baltasar stomped over to Seimur. “Too far away to tell,” he grunted. Then he turned around to speak to the crew.

  “We’ll wait till sunup,” he shouted. “We’ve waited this long; a few more hours won’t kill us.”

  Reynir ran over to him and whispered something in his ear. Baltasar nodded.

  “You gotta choose between the lanterns and the heat spheres,” he added. “We don’t want any surprises. Better to light a fire if you’re cold, anyway.”

  Asbera pulled in her lanterns and muttered the familiar incantation. The lantern’s glow faded into dark
ness. “Don’t want to make things worse for you,” she said to Finnur.

  “So that’s it, then?” He sighed. “We’ve got to hang around for another night?”

  “It’s not so bad,” Asbera said. “We should be home in a couple of days, like Baltasar said.”

  Finnur shrugged. I didn’t blame him for seeming doubtful. He was still weak, deep down inside him, from the Mists attack, and now he was trapped aboard a ship half transformed from the magic-sickness. There was no guarantee we were anywhere close to the Anfinn’s Rocks.

  Reynir and Zakaria dragged the brazier up on deck and broke up an empty water barrel for the firewood. The brazier was supposed to be for cooking, I was told, but no one ever used it anymore, since the Annika didn’t take the long voyages she used to. It was nice to have a spot of warmth to gather round, and nicer still to know that warmth wasn’t bringing even more magic aboard our boat.

  I sat with Asbera and Finnur as the crew took to telling stories, mostly old Tuljan folktales. A few of them I recognized, although they were different from the stories I knew in small ways – here a character was a yak herder, on Kjora he was a blacksmith. But the basic idea was the same. A story of the north. Mama’d told me this once, that all the island stories were the same when you got down to it, that to her Empire ears they were all northern and she couldn’t tell them apart. She was teasing, I think, but I thought of her now, hearing those similarities. And my heart about broke.

  No one noticed when I slipped away from the fire. I pressed against the boat’s railing and closed my eyes against the wind. We were moored without our sails, and the Annika bobbed up and down with the motion of the waves and didn’t do much else. I looked down at the dark water, sparkling with the reflection of stars.

  Something moved beneath the surface.

  I gasped and jerked back, although my first thought was of Isolfr, not the Mists. I’d seen him the same way, hadn’t I, all those months ago? A flash of movement beneath the waves.

  “Isolfr?” I kept my voice low, surprised by how hopeful I felt. It would have been a relief, in a strange way, to see him now. A bit like how the stars reminded me that we hadn’t crossed over.