The Voyage to Magical North (28 page)

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.”

She paused, waiting for Tom to understand what she'd just said. It took him a couple of seconds. His mouth fell open. “Me?
Captain?
”

“I can't think of anyone better. I hereby appoint you Acting Captain in Case of Emergency, and in my book, this is the exact definition of an emergency. What do you say?”

She held out her hand. Tom studied it as if he'd forgotten what hands were for. Eventually, he reached out and took it. A grin spread across his face, so wide it made his glasses wobble.

“I say get to it, you scurvy knaves!”

*   *   *

Peter skidded to a halt. He was in a room lit by burning torches. The starshell sat on its pedestal in the center, streaming magic. A million colors appeared and disappeared across the amber shell, pulsing as if something inside it were breathing. Peter stood transfixed, watching. This was starshell—true, real starshell as it ought to be. All these years, he'd called himself a magician when he'd just been messing about with tiny, broken scraps. Now Peter understood what had driven Marfak West to the top of the world. If Peter had known this existed, he'd have gone anywhere, done anything to lay his hands on it.

Then the starshell flared with light, and a bolt of magic shot out, fast as a spear. The floor shook, and a few seconds later, Peter heard a rumble as if rocks were being torn apart. Marfak West was attacking Barnard's Reach already, Peter thought. He started forward. However beautiful the starshell was, he had to destroy it. It was the only way to save the island.

“Sorry,” he said. He didn't know who he was apologizing to—the starshell couldn't hear him. A couple of Ewan Hughes copies came running through the door. Peter turned them back into herrings and slapped his hands flat onto the starshell.

It was like being hit over the head with a storm. Peter let go with a yell. His hands felt as if they were on fire. He didn't know how Marfak West could stand it, not even for a second.

A passable imitation of Marfak West came through the door. Peter hit it in the face with a fish.

Nothing happened.

“Nice try,” said Marfak West. His voice was like acid.

Peter tried to run, but his muscles locked rigid. It was all he could do to twist his face into a scowl. The euphoria that had filled him turned cold. It was a lot easier to believe he could beat Marfak West when he wasn't actually standing nose to nose with him. He watched the starshell flicker. It was absorbing magic, drawing it in from the air as fast as it could—so fast that it was taking the heat out of the air along with it. That was why it was so cold in here.

Peter suddenly found that he could move again. He sagged. “Why don't you just stop? You don't need Barnard's Reach. You can have any island you like.”

Marfak West stared at him. “Stop the attack? Why would I do that? Their stories turned me into a villain: They've got only themselves to blame when I act like one. Soon we will build new stories together, on the ruins of the old ones. But first we're going to put our hands on the starshell, draw out every last bit of magic, and drown Barnard's Reach in a tidal wave so great they'll feel it on Morning.”

Peter swayed. He bit his lip and concentrated on staying upright. The sharp taste of blood in his mouth told him he'd bitten a little too hard. Marfak West was mad. Peter had known it before, but now he saw it with horrible certainty. Maybe magic had corroded away his sanity or maybe he'd been born that way, but the result was the same.

A bell clanged overhead. Marfak West glanced up. “Enough of this. I can control you through the starshell in your hand, remember. Either you will do as I say or I'll make you.” He jerked his head at the remaining pirate clones that were lurking by the door. “Bring him,” he ordered them.

The bell stopped ringing as they emerged onto deck. Barnard's Reach was on fire—everywhere. Instead of Mirrormist, all Peter could see was thick, black smoke. But then he saw what else was out there.

It was the
Onion
, but not the
Onion
. It cut through the waves toward them, like a ship through butter. Gulls circled its masts, and Peter was sure he could see people on the deck waving. His heart leaped.

“Cassie's dead, is she?” he said.

Marfak West slapped him across the back of the head, but the magician was smiling. He'd hoped this would happen, Peter thought, and a thrill of surprise ran through him. Now he understood why the magician had saved him from drowning at Magical North, why he'd kept him alive, and why he was so determined to turn him into his apprentice. For all his talk of revenge and rewriting the past, there was something he wanted more than anything else: an audience. In the absence of Cassie O'Pia, he'd made do with Peter, but now Cassie had arrived, and she'd done it just in time to see Marfak West tear Barnard's Reach apart.

 

C
HAPTER
33

All you villains dismay, for she's coming your way,

And soon you will villain no more.

You'll die with a cheer, because Cassie O'Pia

Is a sight that is worth dying for.

(
From
THE
BALLAD
OF
CASSIE
O
'
PIA,
Verse 210, Author Unknown)

Deep underground in the book cellars, Ursula could barely see for the dust that filled the air. Most of the Sisters were coughing as they emptied the bookcases and packed manuscripts into boxes. The floor trembled almost constantly, each new quake more violent than the one before. Pieces of bookcases littered the floor, several Book Sisters were nursing injuries, and one unlucky Sister hadn't been quick enough to move when a set of shelves fell; she lay frighteningly still.

The case Ursula was emptying shuddered and toppled forward. Ursula jumped aside as books and manuscripts crashed down around her. She felt cold water soaking through her shoes, and she looked down to see water bubbling through a crack in the floor.

“Everyone, get out,” she ordered. She snatched a pair of manuscripts out of the water. Their edges were wet, but the writing was still readable. “Take what you can carry. We've lost this room.”

“But the books,” protested a Sister, pale with shock.

“We can't save them.” Ursula choked on the words. Some of these books were older than the library. Centuries' worth of stories about to be lost forever.

There was no time. She hurried the Sisters to the stairs. The crack in the floor suddenly opened wide, and the sea flooded in behind her.

She locked the door and ran up the stairs. While the Sisters ran to the next set of books, Ursula headed for the gull room.

The birds were all huddled fearfully in their cages. The moment Ursula entered the room, they sent up a shrieking that made her ears ring. She unlatched the windows and pushed them wide, then she started opening cages. It took the first gulls a few moments to decide they were free. The others caught on quickly. They surged through the open windows, calling out as they beat their way up into the sky.

Very soon, Ursula was standing in an empty room, surrounded by feathers. She wiped a splodge of white droppings off her shoulder. The Mother Keeper would be furious, she thought, before she remembered the Mother Keeper was a worm and probably beyond caring about anything.

*   *   *

From a distance, Brine had thought the
Antares
looked like a floating nightmare. Close up, it was worse than a nightmare: a mass of splintered wood and sharp bits of metal that bent in the wrong places. It looked like a spider that had been trodden on and put back together by someone who'd never seen one. But then she saw Peter standing next to Marfak West, and her heart leaped. He was alive.

“Surrender!” shouted Cassie. “Hello, Peter.”

Peter waved. Marfak West slapped his arm down. “The
Antares
refuses to surrender.”

“Does it refuse to sink?” asked Cassie. The
Onion
swung around so it was sideways to the monstrosity. Cassie caught hold of a rope, preparing to swing across.

“Do that, and I'll make you regret it,” warned Marfak West.

“Oh, yes? You and whose army?”

A spiteful grin split the magician's face. “Funny you should say that.”

Doors snapped open all around the deck of the
Antares
, and Ewan Hugheses marched out. They came in formation, ten at a time, each row pausing to salute Marfak West before marching on to take up position around him. Within a minute, they filled the entire deck, and still they kept coming, until every doorway was crammed full of sword-waving Ewan Hugheses.

“Meet my Ewan Hughes army,” said Marfak West.

Brine rubbed her eyes. She had to be dreaming.

For half a second, Cassie stood, immobilized by astonishment—but only for half a second. Her sword rang free.

“Charge!” she cried.

“Repel boarders!” shouted Marfak West. He took hold of Peter, and the two of them sank through the deck of the
Antares
, vanishing from sight. And with a yell that made the ocean tremble, every pirate attacked.

*   *   *

Ewan Hughes—the real Ewan Hughes—paused next to Tom with his foot on the deck rail. “If this goes wrong,” he said, “I don't want you to waste time trying to rescue us. Your job is to keep the
Onion
safe. If it looks like we're losing, don't wait. Turn around and get out of here. It doesn't matter where you go, just go. Sail like you've never sailed before.”

“I never
have
sailed before,” said Tom with a worried frown.

Ewan clapped him on the shoulder. “Great—then you'll be good at it.” He winked at Brine.

“How are they going to know you're the real Ewan Hughes over there?” she asked too late. Ewan had already gone. They all had—only Bill Lightning and a few of the crew remained behind. Brine's hand ached with the effort of keeping it away from her cutlass. She should be over there with the others, not standing here uselessly with Tom. Besides, if she didn't get to rescue Peter, how was she going to gloat about it forever afterward?

“I guess there's nothing to do for a while,” she sighed.

Tom nodded and sat down with Boswell's book. Brine paced the deck restlessly. New fires sprang up on Barnard's Reach. The sky above the island was black with smoke, and the sea was littered with pieces of the shattered cliff. Wooden boxes bobbed past. Brine watched one of them sink. Another one had split open, and she saw books inside. She didn't know what was happening inside the library, but she guessed it wasn't good.

“Brine,” said Tom, “you should read this.”

Brine wanted to be fighting, not reading. She snatched the book out of his hand impatiently. The faded writing made no sense for a couple of seconds, then, slowly, the trailing curls of ink resolved themselves into letters, and the letters sorted themselves out into words. And the words …

The story of these creatures is interesting. When the time comes for one to die, they say, it flies far away to the top of the world. There, it builds its own funeral pyre from wood and gold, and with one last, fiery breath, it lights the pyre, and thus it dies. And so, say the stories, the life cycle is renewed, for out of the ashes comes a new egg. As the parent died in fire, the egg will one day hatch in fire. It is only a story, but if it were true, it would explain a great deal.

Beneath was a drawing of an egg, complete with measurements that seemed impossibly large. Brine handed the book back to Tom. “What has this got to do with us?”

“Didn't you think,” he asked, “that the starshell Marfak West found looked a bit like a giant egg?”

Had it? Brine really couldn't remember. There'd been so much happening at the time—Marfak West trapping them all with magic and leaving them to die, for example—that she hadn't taken proper notice of anything else. “But if the starshell is an egg, what is it supposed to hatch into?”

Tom turned back a page. Brine's eyes opened wide. “Oh,” she said. “But that's just a story. Like Orion.”

“And like Boswell and Marfak West and Magical North?”

Another ball of amber magic burst from the front of the
Antares
and flew into Barnard's Reach. Brine felt the shockwave as it hit. Marfak West was doing this, she thought. He was going to drain the starshell completely of magic, and he wouldn't stop until it was dead and Barnard's Reach was in pieces.

Without a word, Tom caught one of the hanging ropes and held it out. Brine gave it back. “Cassie's right this time. I should stay here.”

“No. You should go,” said Tom. He straightened his glasses. “I'm the captain, and I am giving you an order.”

Brine hesitated one moment more and then, with a quick nod, she launched herself off the
Onion
and into battle.

 

C
HAPTER
34

Why does magic exist at all? I somehow feel it is not solely for the benefit of magicians, although many magicians seem to believe it is.

(
From
ALDEBRAN
BOSWELL
'
S
BIG
BOOK
OF
MAGIC)