The Wizard’s Promise

  He nodded.

  “It comes from the north wind, doesn’t it?”

  He sat very still. I didn’t think he was going to answer. But then he nodded again.

  “So it was you,” I said. “The night the Mists attacked in the form of the Nalendan. You saved me.”

  “No.” Isolfr gave a weak laugh. “No, I helped you. You were holding your own quite well, but human magic–” He shrugged. “You have a talent.”

  I shrugged, but I looked away from him, my cheeks burning.

  “Thank you,” I said, speaking to the air. The ocean glittered around us. “Thank you for everything.” Everything was such a simple, meaningless word, but I didn’t know how else to say it.

  He seemed to understand.

  “It was my pleasure,” Isolfr said.

  Two days later, we held a funeral for Harald. I thought it would be at sea, because he died in the water, but Tuljans honor their dead with fire and smoke.

  There was a procession from the Annika, the whole crew draped in garlands made of dried flowers and summer moss. Harald’s family was there, too. They were yak herders, land people. His younger brother was only ten or so, and he ran to the edge of the docks and stared out over the sparkling water.

  “The first time he’s ever seen the ocean, probably,” Asbera said softly. “It’s rare for us to come so close to the edge of the land.”

  Because Harald’s body had been lost to the Mists, his friends carved an effigy of him instead. They scraped his features into a post of soft pine and painted in his skin and eyes and hair. The effigy was laid down on a cloth of woven yak fur and scattered with the same white flowers the Tuljans tossed at the Nalendan. Protection, Asbera explained. To draw his soul out of the underworld of the Mists.

  Finnur was quiet in that time before the procession started. He hung back, sipping a cup of mulled wine to stay warm. Asbera and I helped in the preparations, me following Asbera’s directions for how to drape the garlands and how to scatter the flowers. But Finnur just watched us.

  “He’s been like that since he woke up,” Asbera said. We were lighting the candles for the procession, one after another, with natural fire and not a bit of enchantment. “He saw things, you know, while he was under.” Her voice hitched. “He was in a prison, he said, wrapped up in cold gray mist. He couldn’t move, but they showed him things, showed him terrible things happening to me, to our children – we don’t even have children.” Her hands were shaking. Gently, I took the lighting candle away from her.

  “He’s back now,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll take some time, but he’ll get better.”

  Asbera looked up at me.

  “He’s got you,” I said. “He’ll be fine.”

  She smiled, wavering and thin. But then she asked, “Why did this happen to us?”

  I paused for a moment, thinking. Then I set the candles aside and hugged her. “Bad luck,” I whispered. “But Kolur will be gone soon. He’ll take the Mists’ interest away with him.”

  Asbera wiped at her eyes. “I hope so.”

  I hoped so, too. But at the same time, the thought of Kolur leaving almost made me sad.

  The procession started. Musicians led the way, playing the clanging, droning song I associated with the costumed men, although no one wore costumes. Harald’s effigy followed, carried on its pallet by three of the crewmen and Baltasar. Then his family. Then the rest of us. We carried our candles close to our chests and stayed silent as the music led the way, winding us through the village. People stepped out of their shops and threw white flowers as if we were the Nalendan. They watched us with solemn faces.

  Eventually, we came to the open fields. Here, villagers stood outside their tents, all of them holding their own candles. By now, it was almost dusk and the candles glowed like stars in the purple twilight. I had never seen anything like it, all those licks of flame gathering toward us as we moved deeper into the fields.

  Our procession grew as we twisted through the tents. The music never stopped, but it still wasn’t enough to cover up the occasional bursts of throaty sobs.

  We walked, and walked, and walked, until we came to a clearing paved over with smooth flat stones that were blackened and charred.

  The music stopped.

  For a long time, nothing happened. We stood in a ring around the stones, me and Asbera and Finnur all side by side. The only sounds were the wind through the grass and the muffled hush of weeping.

  Then Baltasar and the crewmen set Harald’s effigy on the stones. They stepped back, and Harald’s mother took their place. Her whole body trembled as she knelt beside the effigy and anointed it with oil. She had covered her face with a scrap of tattered old lace, and in the flickering candlelight, she looked like a ghost.

  She was the first to touch her candle to the effigy. The flame caught and trembled, and she blew out her candle and then stumbled back, into her husband’s arms. Baltasar went next, and then Harald’s father and brother. Then the rest of us. One at a time, villagers touched their candles to the effigy, even as it was already consumed by flames. By the time it was my turn, I could only see the fire. But Asbera whispered in my ear, “Just hold your candle to it,” and I did, grazing its tiny flame against the fire’s huge one.

  I felt something, a tremor of magic inside me. The release of a small part of Harald’s soul, from the Mists back to our world.

  I stepped back into the cold night air, my face stinging with the fire’s heat. I blew out my candle. That was a sort of magic, wasn’t it? That transfer of a small light into a large one.

  We watched the fire burn. It rose higher against the starry sky, letting off flares of sparks and a great tail of dark smoke that, to my surprise, smelled sweet, like incense. Finnur stared into the fire, the light staining his skin orange. His eyes seemed to glow. Looking at him gave me a hollow feeling, but then he reached over and took Asbera by the hand.

  I knew, looking at them, that it was enough.

  That night, the Crocus was hung with dozens of tiny floating lanterns, the deck covered in dried sea lavender. Seimur played Tuljan songs on a carved guitar while Benedict sang along, both of them perched on the empty helm so their voices carried across the deck. All of the moored boats were lit up that night. A funeral in the evening and a celebration at night. It was the Tuljan way, Asbera told me.

  I sat in one of the chairs that we’d dragged up from down below and sipped a glass of honeyed mead, watching as Asbera and Finnur spun each other around in an elaborate Tuljan dance. All of the Annika crew was there, and most of the folk from the docks and the people who lived in their tents out on the tundra. Almost all of them were clapping and stomping time to the music as Asbera and Finnur danced. It was reassuring to watch: Finnur’s skin was full of color, and he moved with a liquid grace that didn’t suit someone who had, two days ago, been trapped in an eternal sleep.

  Finnur tossed Asbera up in the air and caught her at the waist. Everyone erupted into cheers, and Asbera laughed and covered Finnur with kisses. The music jangled on.

  Cold whispered against the back of my neck, just for a moment, and then it was gone. I glanced up and saw Frida crawling up the ladder, her hair twisted into a dark, knotted braid.

  Isolfr was with her.

  No one else had seen them yet. I stood, mead sloshing over the side of my cup. Frida lifted her hand in greeting. Another cheer went up and rippled into the night.

  “You still haven’t left,” I said when Frida and Isolfr walked over to join me.

  “No,” Frida said. Isolfr didn’t look at me, only watched the dancing, the lights shining in his eyes. “Kolur hasn’t recovered.” She smiled. “He can at least come out of the water for a bit at a time now. So it should be soon.”

  Isolfr looked over at her when she said soon, and then over at me. His expression was grave. “Yes,” he said. “Soon.”

  “Don’t look so sad,” I told him. “You’re at a party.”

  “I’m not sad.” He smiled. “But I d
on’t go to many parties.”

  Frida shifted her weight. “I’d like something to drink.”

  “Talk to old Muni there.” I pointed up at the bow of the ship, where Muni was perched with a great towering barrel. “He’s got the mead.”

  Frida thanked me and slipped off into the crush of people. Finnur and Asbera were still dancing, both of them spinning wildly in tandem, although now their crowd of onlookers was dancing, too. For a moment, Isolfr and I watched them in silence.

  “Finnur and Asbera haven’t noticed you’re here yet,” I said.

  “I haven’t let them.”

  I looked over at him. He looked like Pjetur, more or less, but the light of the lanterns seemed to strip his disguise away, revealing the imprint of his real features.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “I don’t want to steal the attention away from them.” Isolfr nodded. “It’s their party.”

  I wasn’t certain if I believed him, but I decided to accept his answer. After a pause, I walked back over to my chair and sat down. Isolfr followed and crouched down beside me, one hand on the armrest.

  “Why aren’t you dancing?” he asked.

  “I don’t know any of these songs.” I took a drink of my mead. It had cooled in the chilly night air. “And I don’t know any Tuljan dances.”

  “So if you were on Kjora, you’d be dancing?”

  I smiled a little. “I guess.”

  Isolfr was looking hard at me. He squeezed the armrest. “How much longer until you’re able to go home?”

  Silence. The music played on, Seimur’s singing growing louder and more riotous. In the flash of dancers, I spotted Frida spinning around with Reynir. She held her drink high over her head, and her mouth was open in a continuous laugh.

  “What did you tell her and Kolur?” I said. “About being able to heal Finnur?”

  He stared off into the darkness beyond the boat.

  “Isolfr!”

  He sighed. “I made them forget.” He looked down at the floor. “I–I actually made all of them forget. Asbera and Finnur and everyone else in the village.”

  “You what?” I sat up, knocking my drink over. It spilled across the floorboards in a gleaming amber strip. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “It’s easier.” He kept looking down. “They think the priests healed Finnur. What does it matter?”

  “You didn’t make me forget.”

  “No.” He looked up and his face was nothing like Pjetur’s. I was transfixed by it, caught in a spell. I couldn’t look away.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Holding me in place like that. Whenever I see the real you–”

  “I can’t help it,” he sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t take your memory away because – because I need you, Hanna.”

  I closed my eyes. The music flowed around us, and so did some vague, unfamiliar magic. His magic. I wondered if he’d made us invisible to the party. If we were shades now, or spirits. Ghosts.

  “Not this again,” I said.

  He put his hand on my arm, and I was shocked at how cold it was. Like ice water. I looked over at him.

  “I’m not here because I want Kolur to win back the Jandanvari queen,” Isolfr said. “I’m here because we can’t let the Mists through to our world–”

  “This isn’t your world.” I snatched my arm away from him.

  “Yes, it is.”

  The party twinkled on without us.

  “You aren’t human,” I said softly. “That’s all I meant–”

  “I’m not human, but this is still my world. My home. And I won’t see it destroyed by Lord Foxfollow.” Isolfr stared at me. “That’s what he wants, you know. The queen of Jandanvar will bring him here, and then he can hurt everyone the way he hurt Finnur.”

  I trembled, remembering the horrors of the prison where Foxfollow held Finnur. I thought of Asbera weeping at Finnur’s side as he screamed in silent anguish.

  I thought of that happening to everyone, north and south, east and west.

  “You know that I’m right.”

  “Why me?” I was shaking – I was cold, despite the heat globes drifting around the party. But I knew I wasn’t at the party anymore. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to keep warm. “What do you need me for? I’m no one special–”

  “You have ties to the south wind,” Isolfr said. “And you have a talent for magic. You’re exactly who I need.”

  “But I’m not even a proper witch. Just a fisherman’s apprentice.” I glared at him. “And you wanted Frida in the first place–”

  “And I was too much of a coward to work with her, yes. Is that what you want to hear? That every time I look at her, I remember what she did to my brother?” Isolfr’s eyes shimmered, and for a moment, I was afraid he was going to cry. “I am a coward. That’s why I need you. Because you’re brave.”

  I stared at him. “I don’t think you’re a coward,” I said.

  “He’s tried to do it before, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Lord Foxfollow. He’s tried to come into our world before. And he was stopped. Twice.” Isolfr straightened his shoulders. His Pjetur disguise was melting away. “You’re named after one of the people who stopped him.”

  I realized then that I couldn’t hear the music anymore. The party had receded into the darkness. Isolfr and I sat on an island of shadow, and the Crocus and all my friends were a dot of light far in the distance. But I didn’t care.

  “What are you saying?” I said.

  “Your mother served aboard the Nadir, didn’t she? Surely she told you the story about how Ananna stopped the Mists from crossing over into our world.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard the stories.” I felt very cold. “Are you saying that was Lord Foxfollow? The lord she defeated?”

  Isolfr nodded.

  “So you want me to help you because Ananna and I have the same name?”

  Isolfr scowled. “No. I want you to help me because you’re talented and brave. I already told you that.”

  “Fine. But I’m not Ananna. She was a pirate queen when all that happened.”

  Isolfr leaned close in close. He smelled of honey and ice-flowers. “How well do you know the stories?”

  “I know them fine.”

  “Then you should know she wasn’t a pirate queen when she defeated Lord Foxfollow. She was your age.” Isolfr leaned back.

  I stared at him. “What? Are you sure about that?”

  “Of course. The problem is that story usually gets entangled with her later adventures. But she was your age when she sent Lord Foxfollow back to the Mists. Now it’s your turn to do the same.”

  I looked away from him. All around was a thick inky blackness, darker than night, and the faint glow of the party.

  “All I want,” I said, staring at that glow, “is to go home.”

  Isolfr grabbed my hand. This time, I let him. His sharp inhuman features gleamed like a star.

  “I swear to you,” he said, in a voice like ice and snowfall, “that I’ll see you safely returned to your family. All I ask is that you sail to the north and stop Lord Foxfollow from permanently entering our world.”

  For a moment, I was struck dumb. Isolfr squeezed my hand tighter.

  “Make sail with us,” he said, and this time his voice was normal, musical, the voice I knew. “Make sail with us and join your magic with mine. It’s the only way.”

  The only way. I looked at the party again, shrunken and bathed in light. It seemed like a wizard’s trick, a toy to enchant children. I thought about the jar of stones sitting aboard the Cornflower. Half empty. Nowhere close to enough to buy a ship and a crew.

  I thought about the chill of speaking with Lord Foxfollow in the in-between world. I thought of the torment he had visited upon Finnur.

  I’d never thought of myself as brave.

  I looked at Isolfr. My heartbeat rushed in my ears.

  “You can’t guaran
tee my safety,” I said. “But I’ll go with you anyway.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, I would like to thank my parents and Ross Andrews for their love and support. Special thanks goes out to all my friends-who-write: Amanda Cole, Bobby Mathews, Alexandre Maki, Laura Lam, and the members of the Northwest Houston SFF Writer’s Group. Writing is such a solitary activity that it’s a joy to find others willing to discuss the highs and lows in intricate detail.

  Furthermore, I would like to thank my agent, Stacia Decker, for reading The Wizard’s Promise and offering excellent suggestions for improvement, as well as for her constant hard work regarding my books and my career. Thank you to my editor Amanda Rutter for agreeing to take a chance on another set of stories set in this little fantasy world I made up all those years ago. And thank you to the rest of the Angry Robot staff —Mike Underwood, Lee Harris, Marc Gascoigne, and Caroline Lambe —for the wonderful support they give their authors. And I would be remiss if I did not mention the hardworking Angry Robot interns who have been wonderful about helping with marketing connections: Leah, Vicky, and Jamie.

  Finally, I would like to thank the readers, reviewers, and bloggers who helped make The Assassin’s Curse series such a success. Thank you all!

  Cassandra Clarke is a speculative fiction writer and occasional teacher living amongst the beige stucco of Houston, Texas.

  She graduated in 2006 from The University of St. Thomas with a bachelor’s degree in English, and in 2008 she completed her master’s degree in creative writing from The University of Texas at Austin. Both of these degrees have served her surprisingly well.

  During the summer of 2010, she attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle, where she enjoyed sixty-degree summer days. Having been born and raised in Texas, this was something of a big deal. She was also a recipient of the 2010 Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.

  Unlike many authors, Cassandra does not have a resume of peculiar careers. She worked at a Barnes and Noble once – that’s about as exciting as it gets. In her spare time she enjoys drawing, painting, crocheting, cooking, and quilting, because she is secretly an old lady. She will see literally any movie as long as it’s in a theatre. She watches television. She doesn’t play many video games, though.