The Voyage to Magical North Page 20

  Another door opened. Cassie O’Pia came out of it and waved at him. Peter blinked. A pair of Ewan Hugheses took up position on either side of her, then three identical Trudis, another Tim Burre, and, last of all, Brine, who for some reason was completely bald.

  “Peter, meet the crew,” said Marfak West. “I call them my pirate copies. Attention!”

  The last word was snapped to the pirate copies, who stamped to attention and saluted. Some of them hit their neighbors in the face. Some of them hit themselves in the face.

  “They’re not particularly bright,” said Marfak West, “but they make up for it in numbers. Now, I’d like you out of the way for the next hour. Pirates, take the boy to the brig.”

  Twenty Cassies advanced across the deck. Peter screamed. The circumstances seemed to require it.

  CHAPTER 31

  Rules are a statement of how the world usually works, and this is their problem—they deal with the usual. When faced with the extraordinary, rules fail us.

  (From ALDEBRAN BOSWELL’S BOOK OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE)

  “Ready?” asked Brine.

  Tom nodded, cradling his trembling messenger gull against his chest. With his long hair blowing in the wind and his library robe tucked up into his belt, he looked like a warrior from a story, about to go into battle.

  Imagine the stories if we succeed, Cassie had said once. Brine bet that even Cassie had never anticipated this happening. And now, if they didn’t succeed, all the stories of Barnard’s Reach would be lost.

  Tom released the gull. The pirates all watched her fly to the top of the mainmast, perch there for twenty seconds or so, and then, as if finally realizing she was free, spread her wings and take off into the sky.

  “You think she’ll really be able to find her way to Barnard’s Reach?” asked Brine. Every direction looked the same to her.

  Tom nodded. “Messenger gulls always find the way home. Mum will know we’re coming.”

  He kept staring up into the sky, his face creased with worry. Cassie nudged him. “I can’t wait to see the look on your mother’s face when we turn up at the last minute to rescue her.”

  Tom smiled, but the worry didn’t leave his eyes. “If you don’t mind, I’d like us to turn up before the last minute. Just so we have a bit more time to do the actual rescuing.”

  The crew went back to work, and as the Onion sped on, Brine stood beside Tom, both of them watching the horizon. The gull had already vanished into the clouds, and there was no sign of anything ahead, just a big, blue, empty sea.

  The Onion picked up speed. Brine listened to the familiar sound of the wind in the sails and the slap of water on the hull. The creaks and thuds settled in a rhythm and she seemed to hear another sound beneath them—a quiet and steady thud-thud, thud-thud, as if someone was beating a drum very gently just below her feet. She tapped her fingers on her leg in time with it, counting the seconds go by. The new Onion traveled fast, but Barnard’s Reach was still over an hour away and Marfak West might be at the island already.

  “We’ll get there in time,” said Brine, but it sounded very much like she was trying to convince herself.

  * * *

  Ursula had been on hourglass duty when she heard the cries. She abandoned the glass without a thought and ran.

  Outside, one Book Sister was clutching an empty robe. Another was holding a pink worm in her cupped hands. Others were in tears. Ursula couldn’t think properly. A gaping hole had opened up where all her thoughts should have been, and a single word echoed in the emptiness: Tom. Something terrible had happened to Tom. She didn’t know how she knew it; she just did. She seized the nearest Sister. “What’s happening?”

  “Marfak West,” the Sister said.

  Of all the answers Ursula was expecting, that didn’t even come close.

  The Sister pointed across the grass toward the sea. “Marfak West is alive.” Her voice was flat with shock. “He turned the Mother Keeper into a worm, and if we don’t surrender within an hour, he’ll destroy the island.”

  Ursula’s hand slid from the Sister’s robe. She couldn’t feel her fingers. Marfak West was dead; she’d helped send out the news herself. This had to be a trick, someone using his name to frighten them.

  Or, a quiet voice said in her mind, maybe evil like Marfak West doesn’t die that easily. And now he’d done what everyone had expected: He’d come back.

  She waited for someone to tell her what to do next, but nobody did. Nobody was going to, she realized. The Mother Keeper was the only person who gave orders; everyone else just followed them. There were no extra rules to tell you what to do if the library was attacked by an evil magician.

  No rules, maybe, she thought, but they had something better—they had stories. Rules were the opposite of stories. Rules only allowed you to do one thing, but stories opened up a thousand possibilities.

  Ursula stepped forward.

  “Everyone, go back inside and start packing up the books. Seal them in boxes and make sure they’re watertight. We’ll throw them into the sea if we must, but we’re not going to let Marfak West have them.”

  The Sisters stared at her. For a moment, Ursula thought they weren’t going to do it, but then one of them nodded and started back inside. Another followed her, and another, until they were all hurrying back through the door.

  They worked furiously, carrying heavy boxes up the stairs. On her fourth trip back out, Ursula noticed a bright patch in the Mirrormist. She stopped. One by one, the Book Sisters joined her and they all stood and watched in terrified silence. The patch in the mist was growing. The dense white fog that protected the island from intruders was slowly giving way to the pale blue of defenseless sky.

  One of the Book Sisters began to moan softly. Ursula’s heart thumped in her throat. Mirrormist was gathered from all the magic that flowed north. The sea fogs caught it and the movement of the tides through the caves that riddled the island drew the fog around it like a shield. Over the centuries, the Book Sisters had carefully chipped away at the stone passages to direct the sea and keep the Mirrormist constant around the shores of Barnard’s Reach. Ursula couldn’t begin to imagine the power it would take to cut through it like this.

  “Get back inside,” she ordered. “We’ll keep working as long as we can, and after that…” After that, she didn’t know, but she’d think of something.

  The Book Sisters obeyed. Ursula stayed outside, watching the sky and the ever-expanding patch of amber light. She almost didn’t see the gull that swooped out of the fading Mirrormist straight at her. It fell into her hands with a shudder of exhaustion, and Ursula saw the canister on its leg.

  Two minutes later, she was running into the library and down the stairs, waving a slip of paper and not caring how much noise she was making. Book Sisters stopped as she burst into the science library.

  “We’re saved,” Ursula gasped. “The Onion is coming. They’re coming back.” Tom was coming back: that was what she meant. He was alive, and nothing else mattered compared with that.

  The room shook as she spoke. Bookcases trembled, spilling their contents. The Book Sisters stood frozen for a moment, then raced to gather them up.

  Ursula’s euphoria faded. She left the Sisters to their task and headed on down the stairs. The Onion had better come soon, she thought, or there won’t be a library to come back to.

  CHAPTER 32

  Even magic cannot create something out of nothing. It is possible to change matter from one form into another, but you can’t hold things in the wrong shape for long. Physics doesn’t like it.

  (From ALDEBRAN BOSWELL’S BIG BOOK OF MAGIC)

  Brine stood with Cassie’s telescope to her eye and turned slowly. She ought to be able to see something by now, but save for a bright patch in the sky up ahead, every direction looked the same.

  Tom was reading Boswell’s journal again. Brine wondered at his ability to shut out all the noise on the ship and lose himself between the pages. She put the telescope down but kept w
atching the sea. You can’t plan ahead when you’re floating about on the ocean, she remembered Cassie saying—and Cassie, as usual, was three-quarters right. You could make plans, but you had to be ready to change them all. You got to choose your starting point and a general direction, but a lot of the time, you just had to go with the waves and see where they took you. Like a child in a rowing boat.

  She looked back at Tom. He was lucky, she thought—his upbringing was beyond weird, but he knew exactly where he came from. Still, at least Brine knew where she was going now. That made a difference. She didn’t feel so adrift anymore.

  She kept watching until, after what seemed like hours, Tim Burre shouted from the top of the mast. “Ship ahoy!”

  If it was a ship, it was the least ship-shaped one Brine had ever seen. It didn’t float; it loomed. It squatted on the sea with wooden legs, and everywhere Brine looked, she saw spikes and sharp angles.

  And even that was nothing compared with the light that came off it. It blazed in pulses from between the ship’s front legs, and each new burst looked like a miniature shooting star. Pulse after pulse smashed through the tattered remains of the Mirrormist and into the cliffs of Barnard’s Reach with a fury that made the sea tremble.

  Cassie took the telescope from Brine, whistled softly, and then fell silent, watching intently. Ewan Hughes took a look and nodded, his face grim. “I guess we’re going to fight that thing, then.”

  Cassie shrugged. “I suppose we might as well. It’d be a shame to come all this way for nothing.”

  * * *

  Peter sat in a cage in the dark and scratched at the bump in the palm of his hand. One tiny fleck of starshell against all of Marfak West’s magic. He might as well give up now, he thought miserably.

  But he didn’t. Cassie would never decide she was beaten, no matter how bad things became. He looked again at his hand. One tiny speck of starshell, but it was warmed by his flesh, fed by his blood—and, all of a sudden, his blood felt ready to boil over.

  He reached through the bars of the cage and felt the lock. As far as he could tell, it was an ordinary, nonmagical one, much like the one Marfak West had taught him to open on the Onion. Of course, when he’d done it last time, he’d had Marfak West’s starshell to work with, not this useless splinter in his hand.

  You can draw magic straight from the air if there’s enough around. Marfak West had said so, and Peter had already done it once before. The Antares was held together with magic—it could spare a little. Peter held out his hand and concentrated. He had no imagination, Tallis Magus used to say, but Peter knew what it felt like to hold pure, raw magic in his hands. He imagined that, imagined magic leaking slowly out of the ship and filling the starshell splinter in his palm.

  “‘A great magician is like a skilled artist,’” he said aloud, quoting Boswell. “‘With the tiniest amount of magic, he can perform wonders.’”

  He wasn’t sure if what followed counted as a wonder. There was a lot of prodding and pushing, trying to feel the hidden pieces of the lock and move them into the right position so they would turn and open. His palm burned with the effort. But just when he thought he couldn’t do it, something gave way inside the lock and it dropped softly off the cage into his hand. The door swung wide.

  Peter suppressed a shout of triumph. He contented himself with a quick and silent grin and stepped out into the room. All right, so he was still on a ship powered by magic, crewed by an army of pirate copies, and captained by a madman who wanted to destroy the whole history of the world, but at least he wasn’t in a cage anymore. As Cassie would say, it could be worse.

  It soon was. The door opened. Peter scarpered back into the shadows just in time as two Cassies came marching in.

  They saw the empty cage and stopped. And Peter did the first thing that came into his head. He sang.

  Oh, she’s strong and she’s swift, and if you get my drift,

  She is all that your heart could desire.

  For one chance to see her, fair Cassie O’Pia,

  A man would walk naked through fire.

  The song made him think of the Onion, and that thought gave him courage. He stepped out into the room, gathering a slender thread of magic from the starshell in his hand as he moved. He didn’t bother forming it into a shape. As he sang “fire,” he squeezed it into a ball and threw it. An amber streak hit the first Cassie between the eyes. The second one managed to draw its cutlass before another burst of flame set it on fire from head to foot. It staggered, arms waving, then collapsed in on itself. A few last flames flickered. The air stank like charred fish.

  Peter’s new courage evaporated. His knees shook and almost gave way. He’d just killed two … two somethings. What if they’d been real people? He couldn’t afford to think about it. He clenched his teeth and sidled past the mess on the floor, then crept out the door.

  Small patches of amber light lit the corridor at intervals. The walls looked like they were made of copper and buzzed softly. Peter ran his hand over one. The surface might have looked like metal, but it felt like wood, and each piece trembled as if it was on the point of bursting apart. The various parts of the Antares were being held together against their will.

  He reached a place where the corridor forked in two, and he paused. One of the corridors felt much colder than the other, and when Peter turned in that direction, he could see his breath on the air. He could also see a group of Ewan Hugheses waiting for him. He threw a handful of magic, driving them back, and with that, the starshell in his hand ran dry.

  For a moment, he just stood there, hand still raised, trying to think of an appropriate swearword. The Ewans stared back with unblinking eyes. Peter looked around for a weapon and counted several swords and cutlasses—unfortunately all in the hands of the Ewans.

  The first Ewan ran at him. Peter sidestepped, and the pirate copy smacked into the corridor wall, a cutlass sliding from its hand. Peter grabbed the weapon and backed away. The cutlass felt far too light for its size, and the hilt was slippery.

  Ewan Number Two swung at him. Peter ducked under the blade in a reflex action that was pure luck. He slid and almost fell as he turned, but managed to head-butt the Ewan in the back. His hands felt clammy. No, worse than that—cold, wet, slimy. He looked down. Instead of a cutlass, he was holding a large and very dead haddock.

  Even magic cannot create something out of nothing. Boswell had said that somewhere. The pirate copies must have started their lives as something else. Now that Peter knew what he was looking for, he could see the magic coiled around them in a shape that reminded him of the spell Marfak West had used to turn the Mother Keeper of Barnard’s Reach into a worm.

  “You’re fish,” he said in surprise. “You’re all fish.” He slapped the nearest Ewan with the haddock. “This is what you ought to look like, remember?”

  The spell that had held the Ewan together began to unravel. The pirate slid to the floor, legs—no, tail—flapping. Seconds later, an oversized flounder was gasping its last breath at Peter’s feet. He snatched it up and, with a fish in each hand, advanced on the remaining Ewans. One of them managed to skewer Peter through the arm before turning into a crab and scuttling away. Peter gasped but kept moving. He was hurting and covered in fish, yet strangely elated. Marfak West must surely have heard the commotion by now, but Peter didn’t care. Let him come. The last Ewan fell. Tucking a spare fish into his belt, Peter ran until he saw a doorway filled with amber light, and he knew he’d found the starshell.

  * * *

  Five minutes. Brine’s stomach churned. She wished she hadn’t eaten Trudi’s seafood pancakes for breakfast. Or any breakfast at all, for that matter. Five minutes, and they’d be within range. She forgot for a moment that she was Brine, planning officer on board the Onion, and she went back to being Brine the servant, hiding in the kitchen while Tallis Magus shouted outside.

  She put a hand on her cutlass hilt to steady it. Tallis Magus was half an ocean away, she told herself firmly. She didn’t eve
n need to be thinking about him. And while the Antares looked like something she might dream about on a bad night, it was only a ship. Cassie had defeated it once before, and they’d do it again now.

  Brine heard the clink of metal behind her and turned. Tom was walking across the deck, clutching a sword and shield. His face was the color of damp clay. “Don’t try and stop me,” he said. His glare was fierce but his voice trembled. “This is my home, and I’m coming with you.” He brandished his sword awkwardly.

  Brine smothered a smile. She and Tom together had to be the least fearsome warriors ever.

  “You can’t come,” she said. “You have to stay on board—it’s part of the plan.”

  “What plan?” Tom’s mouth grew tight. “You’re making this up, aren’t you?”

  Then Cassie was behind him, plucking the sword from his hand. “You said that the pen is mightier than the sword. It’s true. A sword can only destroy. A pen creates. Anybody can wave a sword around and hit someone. But to put words on paper in just the right order, to take the dull truth and gild it with the first layer of legend, that takes real talent.” Her gaze traveled from Tom’s sword to his face. “There are three kinds of people in the world—those who listen to stories, those who tell them, and those who make them. Think what would be lost if we fought the greatest battle in the world and no one could put it into words.”

  Slowly, Tom began to smile and Brine could almost sense the words of a new story forming behind his eyes.

  Cassie slid Tom’s sword through her belt and Brine slowly released her grip on her own cutlass. Cassie beamed at them both. “That’s settled, then. You’ll stay on board the Onion. Both of you.”

  Brine gave a squawk of protest, echoed by the circling gulls.

  “You’re my planning officer,” said Cassie. “You don’t plan a battle from the middle of it.” She turned to Tom. “And while Brine is planning, somebody has to captain the Onion, and I’d be a whole lot happier knowing it was someone with a shred of common sense.”