On the Isle of Sound and Wonder (31 page)

Corvina could hardly believe it, but his words moved her. She took a few steps closer to the tree, but Aurael’s rough face remained somber and humbled.
Perhaps we’ve both been cursed after all,
she thought, and sighed. She had expected him to cheat her somehow, back on the ship, but she had never expected him to be cheated as well. Corvina reached out a hand and gently placed it on the bark of the tree, just to the left of the puckered, sad face of the spirit.

Aurael sighed, too, and the branches swayed feebly in the rain. “Thank you,” he whispered, very demurely. “I never intended us to be trapped here. If he hadn’t caught me—well, you’d be free, too. Everyone would have won.”

“I know,” Corvina murmured. “We can’t change it now.” She moved her hand along the tree trunk a little. “Can you feel that?”

“Sort of,” Aurael replied, and shifted his face toward her hand as a plant turns toward the sun. “There . . . that’s a little better.”

“I should go back. Karaburan will be hungry when he wakes.”

“Thank you,” the spirit mumbled, in the most piteous voice Corvina had ever heard. “I’m sorry I woke you. Good night.”

Corvina hesitated for a moment, then leaned over to plant a kiss on the rough bark of Aurael’s cheek.

Aurael turned his face as she did and their lips—hers soft and cool from the rain and his hard and roughly hewn from bark—connected in a sudden kiss. Corvina’s eyes flew wide open and she jerked away, only to find that she couldn’t move. She was paralyzed, and felt something being wrenched from deep within her, like weeds from a garden. Her heart leapt into her throat and panic spread through her veins, but she was held fast by whatever trick he had used. Thunder rolled again overhead, and sudden lightning nearby blinded her. The rain began to fall harder, and Corvina strained against the spell to break free, but Aurael held her fast, their lips touching, something deep inside her being sucked away.

Stop, stop it!
she begged him in her mind, and remembered saying the same thing to another three years ago in the cell on that ship.

Relax,
said Aurael’s voice in her head, and the bark twisted into a smirk even as he held her still with the kiss.
It’s just a little loan. I’m just borrowing a little until I’m free. Then you’ll get it back.

No,
Corvina thought,
no, don’t! I told you there’s nothing left—I’m . . . I can’t . . .

I’m almost done,
scolded the spirit, but Corvina felt her knees begin to buckle. He reached not just for the last strains of her magic, but the very force of life itself.

You’ll kill me,
she realized, darkness creeping into the corners of her vision.

Aurael stared back at her unfeelingly.
So be it.

Thunder cracked hard, directly above them, and lightning lashed out at a tree several yards away. The light faded, and Corvina crumpled to the ground in a heap, her spear rolling away into the underbrush.

Karaburan will die without me,
thought Corvina, dimly, as her heartbeat slowed.

“Damn you!” cried Aurael, the branches of his tree thrashing in anger. “You couldn’t hold on for just one more minute! I almost had it! I was almost free!”

Karaburan,
Corvina called with her mind, knowing he probably couldn’t hear her.
Be good, my son. I’m sorry.

“Damn you, Corvina!” raged Aurael in his tree. “Psychorrax! Psychorrax! Witch!”

But she was already gone.

* * *

“No!” Mira’s own voice startled her out of the vision. She recoiled sharply, tearing her mind away from the tiger’s memory, and a roaring sound like the sea filled her ears. Her sight began to adjust to her actual surroundings again, and her whole body shook from the release of emotion.

The tiger pressed close to her, purring softly. Mira crumpled against the warm fur, her body racked with sobs. Tears streamed down her cheeks as the images dissolved, and she put her arms around the cat’s neck. She wept, and, as her tears fell, her limbs became her own once more, her confusion and panic beginning to subside.

When at last she could speak, she drew a shaking breath. “You were my midwife,” she whispered, “and Karaburan’s mother.” A swell of sorrow grew in her chest. “And my father . . . betrayed you, as Aurael did.”

The tiger nodded again, and Mira felt a wave of satisfaction and relief emanating from the beast.

“I’m so sorry,” Mira cried. “None of that should have happened to you. If you hadn’t been my mother’s midwife, or if my father hadn’t found out about your power. . . if my mother hadn’t died.”

The tiger turned her big head around to look at Mira. Then she pressed her broad face against Mira’s still-trembling body.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Mira murmured, wiping at her face with her hands. “My father’s got them in the caves somewhere. My father’s magic is more powerful than I thought, and I don’t know how to stop him.”

The tiger purred louder as Mira’s hand stroked the thick orange fur. Mira saw in her mind’s eye the glowing staff that she held, the staff which had once been the midwife’s own. Then she saw her father’s book, the huge tome worn by time and weather.

Mira furrowed her brow. “My father’s staff—your staff—and his book? I’ve got one of those already. He mistook my spear for his staff by accident. But the book never leaves his side, he protects it with his life. I can’t get to it without help. And Aurael! He betrayed you, and he said he’d betray my father—how do I know he won’t betray me, too?”

The tiger’s eyes shone paler, and Mira could see Karaburan in her mind.

“No,” said Mira, shortly. “He . . . I can’t.”

The tiger stopped purring, and Mira felt as though she were being cradled in a woman’s arms, a powerful sense of comfort and reassurance passing from the cat into her own body. She saw dark shadows that looked like herself and Karaburan, playing as friends and lying down to sleep, and Aurael above, high in a tree, boiling with jealousy.

He transformed into a mist, soaring down and slipping into Karaburan’s head. After a few moments the mist seeped out of one of Karaburan’s ears, and the patch-skinned monster rolled over on top of her younger self. Mira jerked her hands away from the tiger’s fur and pressed them against her eyes to block it out.

“It was Aurael? Aurael made him do that?” Her insides churned at the memory, knowing now that Aurael hadn’t just been a bystander, but the architect of the assault.
He’ll pay for that
. “What do I do?” she asked the tiger, her voice hard. “I can’t trust him now.”

The tiger’s pale eyes met hers, and she licked her whiskers thoughtfully. Then she stood up and stretched regally.

“I can’t trust him, but perhaps I can use him. . .” Mira stared back at the tiger for a moment, her brow still furrowed. She picked up the staff again and got to her feet. “I need Karaburan to get to my father’s book. And I shouldn’t trust Aurael. Can you help me?”

The tiger gazed back at her in silence. Mira opened her mouth to ask another question when a gust of cold wind blew at her back, and Aurael’s voice announced, “Sweet mistress, your father has the shipwrecked men in hand, and soon his spell will reach its highest peak. The moon is rising now, and when it reaches the skylight of his cave, Dante will drain them and use their blood.”

The tiger had growled low and vanished like smoke at the sound of Aurael’s voice, and Mira swung the staff around to face him, her expression hardening. The runes began to glow brightly.

“Be not concerned, Mira,” Aurael went on eagerly, “Together we can stop him. I will show you where within the caves—”

Mira swung the staff at him, violently, and Aurael split himself in two to avoid the blow. He looked shocked, and stumbled backward.

“My love!” Aurael protested. “What’s this? I have begun what you bade me!”

“You are a twisted, shameful, deceitful spirit,” Mira spat, her frustration coming to a head. The staff hummed in her hands. She felt the memory of the tiger’s anger and hurt mingling with her own, and her breath came short and fast.

Aurael recoiled in fear. “Mira!” He squeaked. “Please!”

“You have betrayed my father, you have betrayed Karaburan, and you have betrayed me. You lie and cheat and shift the world around you as though there are no consequences for your actions. But there are.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You will do exactly as I say, or by this staff, I will destroy you for what you’ve done to me, and what you did to Karaburan and his mother.”

Several different reactions flitted hurriedly across Aurael’s face. “I have done nothing that was not deserved,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Did I, a child still, deserve to bear such an assault from a creature too simple to know what he’d done?” Mira glared. The veneer of anger cracked, and Aurael flinched. “You made that happen, Aurael. You. You are no fairy, no dainty spirit of the old folk tales. You are a devil in your own right, and by all the gods, I pity your empty, shriveled heart.”

Aurael’s eyes shone with what might have been tears. “It was a mistake,” he confessed in a whisper. “When you have lived in bleak, unfettered disappointment for as long as I have, it is much harder to remember how human psyches work. It was an accident, I swear. I only wanted to get him out of the way so that you and I would have each other!”

Mira lifted her hand. “Enough,” she growled, and felt the staff warm in her hands as though readying itself. “I will break these curses and set things right again. Bring Karaburan to me unharmed. You will both help me retrieve my father’s book.”

Somewhere distant from the island, thunder rolled softly. A storm was coming.

Mira crouched, the soft but steady rain drumming down on her thatched cloak. She kept her eyes on the dark opening in the rock several yards away. When they had arrived on the island, the cave had only been one chamber, with one wide-mouthed entrance facing south. As time went on, her father had found ways to reshape the rock and carve out new chambers and rooms in the darkness. He had still been in the process of doing so when she left to build her treehouse several years ago.

A whole labyrinth, probably. There’s no telling what the inside looks like,
she thought
. Without Karaburan and Aurael to guide me, I might wander in the dark forever. Aurael said something about a skylight . . .
She peered up through the trees, trying to follow what must be the roof of the cave. The moss and misty rain were illusory, though, and she found herself blinking rapidly to clear her blurry vision of its distractions.

She heard the soft purring of the tiger somewhere in the bushes nearby and glanced over her shoulder, but did not see the beast.

“How will I know what to do?” she muttered nervously. “I’m not a wizard.”

The tiger only purred louder, and Mira shook her head. There was a glimmer of blue ahead, and Aurael half-materialized in the rain. He beckoned Mira closer to the narrow opening in the rock, and, after a moment, she sprinted to him and pressed her back to the rock face beside the passageway.

“The book is just lying on the floor,” said Aurael, “he isn’t using it at all. If we can get in there, one of us can surely get to it.”

“Where’s Karaburan?” Mira looked back the way she’d come. “You said he was here.”

Aurael’s face flickered, and he made his mouth a thin line. “He was. Maybe that curse isn’t broken.”

“So break the curse,” she commanded, but Aurael laughed snidely at her and crossed his arms.

“You’re the one with the staff, dear girl,” he replied loftily. “Maybe you ought to try harder.”

Frustrated, Mira closed her eyes and shifted her grip on the staff, feeling it buzz in response. She reached out into the rainy forest with her mind, hearing the patter of drops on leaves and listening for the breathy, uneven presence of the monster.

Karaburan isn’t a monster,
Mira reminded herself as she searched blindly for something, anything that felt like him.
He was manipulated. He was forced. He deserves a chance at peace without curses and without magic.

She paused, hearing a quivering sob.
That feels like him
 . . . 
Why is he crying?
She wondered, and with her mind, she reached toward him and gave a gentle tug on Karaburan’s mind, beckoning him to where they were. Just a simple little pull, and she felt as though a single thread had snapped. Mira felt him startle, his blubbering growing quiet. She pulled at him again, carefully, and he began to move toward her.

Mira opened her eyes, and the patch-skinned Karaburan came loping miserably out of the trees, a quizzical look on his face. He stopped when he saw Mira by the cave’s entrance, and his jaw went slack with disbelief.

“No,” he murmured. “No, no, not again, not again!” He started to retreat back into the forest.

“No, wait!” Mira threw out a hand to stop him, and he froze. She drew a shaky breath, the staff’s energy pulsing through her. Her heart beat erratically; it had been years since she’d seen him, and now that she knew the truth about what had happened that night, she wasn’t sure how to feel or act. She dropped her hand, and saw his posture release and relax. “Please don’t go. I need your help.”