Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters (6 page)

They did not have long to wait. As the moon rose in the sky, they felt the air grow hot.

“I see them!” Nalunani cried and, clapping her hands together, began to sing a song of power to the sea.

The air cooled, grew hot again, became wind, became gale. Explosions rocked the ground as Makana, watching from his hiding place, saw each fireball, wreathed in steam, flung toward Keahi’s net by a slap from an ocean wave, caught and slammed against the cliff wall in a shower of sparks. Minute blue-green creatures, finned like fish, spilled from the steam to quench the thousand tiny fires left behind while the salamanders scrambled to repair the net before the next assault. Finally, Keahi wrestled away control of the
akualele
and sent them flying back toward their master.

The wind began to howl as a spinning mass of half-translucent winged creatures tore through the surrounding trees, slashing at their leaves and branches. Makana felt the trees’ struggle radiating up through his feet and legs and into his chest as they battled to keep their roots tightly anchored in the ground. As the one nearest the altar shuddered, cracked, and was ripped away, he shrieked in pain and made to scramble from the shrine, but then it was as if a great hand held him in place and a voice—much as he remembered his foster mother’s when he’d been a small child—ordered him to stay.

He fought the voice with all his strength, screaming out his denial and rebellion, then fell back, panting, as Lonlani’s
alala
birds rushed the creatures in a great flock, rending and devouring them.

The battle raged until the sun turned the sky a radiant pink, and finally the sorcerer himself appeared above the trees. Riding a great vortex of power, he hurled a swarm of glowing white insects from his fingers.

Lolani rose on his own crest of power, steadied by the
elepaio
. He shouted and the
nene
geese dove into the swarms. But the insects were too many and the sorcerer too powerful, and one by one, Lolani’s allies were engulfed and destroyed. The sorcerer brought his hands together in a great thunderclap that sent a current of air pulsing out to knock Lolani from his perch and send him spinning out of control. Makana heard Nalunani cry out as her intended hit the ground, and then a great force jerked him from the shrine and the voice commanded:

“RUN!”

Makana ran. Racing down the path toward the
leina
, he heard Lolani shout a warning, heard a new voice shriek in rage, and then the sorcerer was streaking toward him, riding the wind like a surfer. His face was horribly disfigured by fire, and, even as he stretched out hands to snatch Makana up, one of his own
akualele
exploded by his head. The sorcerer dodged the hail of sparks but still came at him, his face suffused with hatred.

Swirls of brown power shot out before Makana’s feet, clearing the path of rocks and vines. The sorcerer gained height as the trees whipped about, trying to slap him away, and they burst into the open together.

The
leina
was close, so close, and then Makana was hurtling through the air and down toward the sea. He heard a howl of triumph as his feet left the Earth’s domain and entered Air’s. The sorcerer streaked in close, and Makana could feel his breath on the back of his neck, but then he heard Nalunani shout out a single word of power and a great wave launched itself into the sky. The last thing he saw was the silvery body of a mighty shark, tattooed markings standing out along its flanks, and then he hit the water hard.

*   *   *

He smelled seaweed, tasted salt, felt the waves move him back and forth, and breathed a sigh of relief. Kawai Point. He was home. He struggled to open his eyes and knew a moment of panic as he was unable to, then calmed as he heard voices.

“I see him! There, clinging to the rocks!”

“I’ve got him.”

“Careful now.”

The waves continued to tug at him, but he held on tightly, and finally he felt strong arms wrap about his chest.

“Come, little
opihi
; you’re safe now. Let go.”

Safe? Somehow he managed to release his grip and felt himself borne away into darkness.

The next time he woke, he was lying on a grass mat before the village altar, the others looking down at him with concerned expressions. Licking lips chapped by salt water, he tried to form words and finally managed to croak out: “Did we . . .”

Keahi grinned at him. “We did. The sorcerer’s dead. Kamaka’okaha’i took him for His supper and good riddance.”

Deep within him, he felt Hina’s rumbling approval and sighed.

*   *   *

The wedding festivities for Lolani and Nalunani lasted for days. Makana had a place of honor beside the chief himself who, now that the sorcerer’s
akualele
were no longer plaguing him, had made an almost full recovery.

When he was finally able to get away by himself, he returned to the shrine and, after laying out an offering of fish, sea urchins, and coral, saw ’Ilio watching him from a stand of
’ohia
trees.

Sitting together on the
leina
overlooking the place where the sorcerer had died, Makana thought he could see a faint phosphorescent glow just below the waves. He shivered.

“What do you feel?” ’Ilio asked.

He closed his eyes and smiled as his abilities passed over the spot without a ripple. “Dolphins,” he answered.

“Hungry dolphins?”

He smiled in puzzlement. “No, playful dolphins.”

“And farther?”

“Whales guarding their young.”

“And farther.”

“Hina and Her love for her people.”

“And still farther?”

He frowned. “’Ilio, I can’t . . .”

“And still farther?” she repeated.

He was silent for a long time, then drew in a sudden breath. “I feel . . . a people and their . . . hunger . . .” He shivered again.

“For?”

“For . . . power, for land, our land.”

“Are they coming? You are
kaula
as well as
kahuna
,” ’Ilio insisted as he raised his hands helplessly. “Prophet as well as Earth Mage. Are they coming?”

His brow furrowed as he bent all his concentration to the faint sense he’d detected far out on the waves to the east.

“Not . . . for many years yet,” he said finally, “but yes, they’re coming.” His eyes opened. “Their hunger is like the sorcerer’s, but there’re so many more of them. They’re coming like a great swell, swamping everything in their path. We have to prepare.”

“Yes,” ’Ilio agreed. “And for that we need the strength of
ohana
, each generation taking strength from the ones who came before and giving stability to the ones who come after.” She stood. “Hina has a gift for you,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

She pointed and, far below, Makana saw his foster parents coming along the beach. He stood, his heart pounding with excitement, and then he saw the two people who accompanied them.

“What do you feel?” ’Ilio asked with a laugh as he began to run.

“Joy,” he shouted back.

War to The Knife

Rosemary Edghill

Captain Sir Beverly St. John St. Andrew Laoghaire Darwen, a distant cousin of the Duke of Coldmeece, owed to that distinction his present position: He was a galloper attached to Wellesley’s General Staff. His friends, of whom he had many, knew him as Learie, and it was said of him that even his enemies liked him. From his mother he had received his fair coloring, his engaging temperament, a thousand pounds a year, and his commission with the 11th Hussars. From his father, John James Peveril Darwen, Baron Noctorum, he had something more valuable than gold and rarer than membership in The Upper Ten Thousand.

He had magic.

Learie had Mastery of the Element of Air. He could summon a storm or dispel one, predict the weather days in advance—and summon the Creatures of Air to aid him.

It was a useful selection of talents for one of His Majesty’s Exploring Officers, the brave and sometimes reckless scouts who rode far in advance of their own lines, deep into enemy territory, to observe the enemy’s numbers and disposition—and return with that information to their own commanders.

Learie had joined the Army upon his sixteenth birthday, his mother being lately dead and his father having far more interest in books than in people, and had followed his regiment to Portugal that very year. As matters stood, he was likely to see his thirtieth birthday in the same place he had celebrated the previous four: the Iberian Peninsula.

“The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain . . .” The devil it does. The rain in Spain is like the rain in Portugal: cold, constant, and universal,
he thought darkly. It was true that his affinity spared him much of the suffering endured by General Sir Arthur Wellesley’s Peninsular Army, but while he could drive off the worst of winter’s cold and call cooling breezes in summer’s heat, he could not use his gift to shield the whole of the troops, and the suffering they endured (particularly the infantry regiments) tore at his heart. It had been something of a relief to be detached from his regiment and secunded to the General Staff, for its members traveled in as much comfort as one might gain while on campaign, and were assured of the pick of lodgings when the army was quartered in a city or town.

He knew it was a want of feeling on his part, perhaps, to be able to dismiss the suffering he could not cure simply because it was no longer in his sight, but from the day his father had first opened the door to the mysteries of Elemental Magic, he had drummed into the head of his son and only child the fact that this power was not without price.

“You will command your Element and its creatures, my child, but your Element will also command you: Air is changeable and inconsistent, just as Water is subtle, Fire is passionate, and Earth is slow. You must guard against those tendencies in your nature.”

As a child of eight, Learie had thought it unreasonable that something you had no say in could influence your entire life. Now, at twenty, he simply thought it unfair, but something that must be endured.

In four long years of battle, General Wellesley’s forces had at last swept the French from Portugal. Napoleon’s turning his attentions toward Russia had made it easier, for he withdrew thousands of French troops from the Peninsula to fling at the northern bear. Now, only one last obstacle stood in the way of victory: the citadel at Ciudad Rodrigo.

And so, in December of 1811, Learie went riding . . .

*   *   *

It was cold, and the autumnal rains had given way, a few weeks before, to winter’s deadly cold. Both Marmont and Dorsenne—formidable enemies both—were in the field, and the British had to reach the citadel before either army, or it would be impossible to take. In order to do that, General Wellesley required accurate information about the two enemy armies, for there would be no success without it.

There were others who could have gone. Gambling was a mania among the officers and men, who were just as liable to stake—and gamble away—favors as gold sovereigns. He could easily have called in a favor or two and sent someone in his place. The mission meant being away from the camp over Christmas—and New Year’s, if he was unlucky—and he would miss all the celebrations. Moreover, since he had (without consulting his superiors) left behind, in the care of his batman, every item identifying him as a British officer, if he was captured he would not be offered an honorable parole: he would be hanged as a spy.

But besides his duty, Learie had other pressing reasons to take this mission for his own.

He was hunting.

His father was an Earth Master, who had not left his remote estate on the Scottish border in all of Learie’s memory, but he had told him more of his fellow Masters than Learie’s tutor in the art, an Oxford don and fellow Air Master, had seen fit to. Dr. Aloysius Shipmeadow had concentrated on the art itself, his instruction brisk, dry, and wholly without context. If he had been left wholly to the good doctor’s instruction, Learie would never have known that there were four Schools, that women as well as men possessed these gifts, that their members gathered together in Lodges to share information and do advanced work . . .

. . . or that many such Lodges possessed an officer whose title was Master of the Hunt.

Any ability that was used could be misused, and the Elemental Gifts were no exception. To use them for personal gain, for power, or to do harm meant one’s power would turn on its possessor. The best one might hope for was for the power to simply vanish. Though that was bad enough, worse was possible, for an Elemental Mage who misused his powers might do untold damage to those around him before finding the death he so ardently courted. And even that was not the worst, for to bring the fact that magic—true magic—was alive in the world today—and was a birthright that could be neither bought nor sold—would be a disaster more terrible than that of the
Garde Imperiale
marching unopposed through the streets of London. And so, what aid the mages rendered their army was small and circumspect, even though Learie suspected that, did the Elemental Masters of Britain all choose to work together, Boney might have been routed utterly between sunrise and sunset.

And somewhere in all this vast, unfriendly wilderness, someone had decided to do just that.

He hadn’t been certain at first. Fire was a constant danger to any army. Cooking was done over open fires, drunkenness was common, and the supply trains carried hundreds of barrels of gunpowder, not to mention fodder for the animals. But in the past several months, there’d been a rash of suspicious incidents. Fires in the French camps. The detonation of stores of gunpowder—also French—that had been safely stored. Grass fires that rendered the countryside a blackened and barren landscape in which the French
forrageurs
could find no supplies for their troops.

Fires that were the work of a Fire Master.

Each Element had its kinship and its opposite. Fire and Air were natural allies, as were Water and Earth. Fire’s opposite was Water, as Air’s was Earth. Learie couldn’t sense the workings of an Earth Master, while someone working Air was as obvious to him as a brass band marching by. And Fire . . . well . . . he’d never met a Fire Master. But somehow he’d known from the very first that this was what he was hunting.

He’d been worried enough to risk a minor summoning, but the sylph who came to his call could tell him little beyond confirming his guess that another magician was using his power to overtly influence the tide of battle. It didn’t matter, Learie realized, whether that work aided the British or harmed them. The person responsible must be found.

And stopped.

Somehow.

His father had spoken in passing of Wizard’s Duels, where two mages tried their powers against one another in a Challenge Circle. But when Learie eagerly asked for more information—for dueling had sounded far more interesting than the tedious work of Shielding that Lord Noctorum had drilled him in before permitting him to attend Eton—his father would not be drawn to expand further. When pressed, he said irritably that such things were well out of fashion, and Learie should be grateful they were. Nor had Dr. Shipmeadow been any more forthcoming.

I just wish,
Learie thought,
that both my tutors had been less interested in curbing my supposedly frivolous nature and more interested in telling me things!

He left his own lines in the darkest part of the night, slipping past both sentries and picket riders with what he considered unfortunate ease. Dawn found him warmly nestled in a hayrick many miles away.

He spent the next several days in a fashion similar to his boyhood, when he escaped the schoolroom on every possible occasion to follow his father’s gamekeeper about the estate. That MacGregor was also the wiliest poacher in the county, teaching the master’s young son a thousand ways to set traps and snares (as well as how to tickle trout out of the streams), had been something he’d thought then was unknown to his father. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Surely nothing could take place on his estate that an Earth Master did not know about. But whether it was forbearance or indifference, Learie had reason to bless MacGregor’s teachings, for he had brought with him no supplies save a little grain for his mount.

If only I had been born with an Earth Gift, instead of being a flighty ne’er-do-well Air Mage! I’d be able to sense disturbances to the land, for heaven above knows I have ridden over it for long enough to develop a sympathy with it!

If only. Though, of course, Learie reflected philosophically, if he had been born with the Earth affinity, he would probably never have left home at all, for he would have been as firmly bound to the good English earth over which he’d roamed as his father was.

Talking pays no toll,
he told himself.
Nor does crying for the moon in a silver cup. I must make do with what I have.

He just wished he felt more confident about it.

The French armies were essentially where Lord Wellesley expected them to be, and Learie made careful notes of everything he saw. Both of them together comprised a larger force than his own; in total, the French had 350,000 soldiers in Spain, but thanks to the efforts of the Spanish
guerilleros
—and the British Army, of course—most of
L’Armée de l’Espagne
was occupied in guarding its supply lines, rather than in fighting. He wasn’t privy to General Wellesley’s plans, of course, but it looked as if he’d have sufficient time to reach the citadel before the French could reinforce it.

Learie was on a ridge overlooking the camp—from the ensigns, he thought it was part of General Marmot’s force, traveling detached in order to supply itself. It was just before dawn (it was raining, of course), and if he was going to travel any distance today, he had to be on his way before the camp roused for the day. Even if the French stayed put for another day or so—and they might, if they didn’t know General Wellesley’s plans—there’d be cavalry and infantry drills,
forageurs
scavenging the countryside, and scouting parties.

He was debating between heading directly back—he had what he’d come for, or at least what he’d been sent for—and spending a day or two trying to find the Fire Master before turning back. His magic had allowed him to make extremely good time on his way here, and it would do him the same service upon his return. He knew what both Doctor Shipmeadow and his father would say:
“Leave the matters of wizards to experienced wizards. You’re young yet. And Air, you know, is a flighty Element . . .”

Learie was
very
tired of hearing that he was scatterbrained, but he realized that he really
didn’t
know what to do now. And General Wellesley needed the intelligence he’d been sent to gather.

Then the supply train blew up.

The wagons carrying an army’s supplies were always at the center of the camp, both to guard them from theft and so that a unit’s quartermaster could easily disburse supplies. He’d noted the gun platforms, covered in canvas against the damp and transported on flatbed caissons, and near them, the kegs and crates of black powder. Harmless until it was poured down the barrel of a canon or a musket. Loose gunpowder burned, but didn’t explode; to make the barrels explode you’d have to toss them into a bonfire or insert a length of fuse cord into the barrel and light it.

Or have a Fire Master set it off.

The explosion filled the predawn darkness. It deafened him and made the ground shake. Flaming debris fountained into the sky, starting small fires everywhere it landed.

Learie barely had enough warning to duck down behind the ridge, and what warned him wasn’t anything he saw or heard.

It was the sense that someone was using magic. Fire Magic.

As the explosion’s echoes began to die, he cautiously raised his head. There! In the stand of cottonwood off to his left. Movement. A lone rider.

He scrambled down the slope of the ridge to where he’d left his mount. Storm was a seasoned veteran of the Peninsula; he’d been startled by the sudden noise, but he hadn’t bolted. Learie flung himself into the saddle and touched his spurs to Storm’s flanks. The gelding sprang forward as if his tail were on fire, and Learie settled to the chase.

The Fire Master had a head start, but he was riding a beast little better than a pony, one of the half-starved scrubs the peasants (the
rich
peasants) rode, unsuitable as remounts even when the cavalry units were desperate. And Storm was a big Irish Thoroughbred, with power and speed in every line of him.

The wind whipped away the screams and shouts from the burning camp. In the brightening day, Learie had eyes for only one thing: the rider fleeing before him. The Fire Master was dressed in rough peasant clothing, a battered slouch hat pulled low over his face. He rode bareback, over grass gray with hoarfrost, hugging his pony’s ribs with his knees. As the thunder of Storm’s hoofbeats grew louder, the other rider glanced back once. Learie got a quick glimpse of a pale face and shadowed eyes before the rider turned his attention to coaxing the pony to greater speed.