The Voyage to Magical North (2 page)

“I'm not marrying Bladder-Face's daughter,” announced Peter, marching in on her some time later. His left cheek was scarlet, as if he'd been slapped.

Brine turned a fish over and stabbed it hard with a fork. “What are you going to do, then? Run away and join the pirates?”

Peter's other cheek reddened to match the slapped one. Brine didn't care. As far as she was concerned, he'd gotten the better part of the deal. She'd spent three years working for Tallis Magus. She had cleaned his house, cooked his food, washed his clothes until her hands were raw, and in return, he was swapping her as if she was an old robe he'd grown tired of.

“At least I won't have to live with you anymore,” she said. “And Penn Turbill is rich. Have you seen his house? It's huge.”

“Ten times the house, ten times the cleaning,” Peter said.

“Yes, well, I don't have to get married. Your children are going to be
so
ugly.”

Peter scowled at her and sat on the table. Brine watched the fish smolder. The nearest one looked a bit like Penn Turbill—it certainly had the same glazed expression.

Ten times the house, ten times the cleaning.

“I've heard,” said Peter, breaking into her thoughts, “that Bladder-Face can't read. There's not a single book in his house.”

Brine turned cold inside. Peter flashed her a triumphant grin. “Magus might not have noticed you sneaking into the library all the time, but I have. I was planning to blackmail you one day.” He tapped the side of his nose. “You know what they say—knowledge is money.”

“No it's not, it's power.”

Actually, it was neither. It was freedom, the chance to escape, even if only for an hour or two. In Penn Turbill's house, there would be no escape. Brine turned the fish again, watching the juices spit as they hit the fire. A dull weight settled over her.

“Why don't you try talking to Magus again?” she said. “Tell him it would be bad for your studies to have a wife.”

Peter pointed to his reddened cheek. “Why don't you talk to him if you're so clever?”

Because Magus definitely wouldn't listen to her, Brine thought, and Peter knew it. She sighed.

The smell of burning fish wafted between them. Brine sneaked a glance at Peter and caught him looking back at her. They both jerked their gazes away.

“Well,” said Brine at last, “if Magus won't change his mind, we'll have to make Turbill change his.”

“Yes, brilliant idea. How?”

One of the fish ignited. Brine snatched it off the rack by the tail. “You're a magician, aren't you? I'm no expert, but how about you cast a spell on him?”

 

C
HAPTER
2

Magic is the art of making shapes. The magician takes a quantity of magic, forms it into the correct spellshape, and releases it. The process appears mysterious because most people cannot see magic. All they see is the magician's hand moving and the flash of light as the spell is released.

(
From
ALDEBRAN
BOSWELL
'
S
BIG
BOOK
OF
MAGIC)

The library was a different world at night. Shadows crawled together, piling up against the door that led to Tallis Magus's private study. Brine could feel the door behind her, a heap of dark at her back, even while she tried to read by candlelight.

In the daylight, her plan had seemed easy: get what they needed here and row to Turbill's island, where Peter would cast the mind-change spell—then back and into bed while Magus was still snoring. Now, with shadows yawning around her, she could think of a hundred things that would almost certainly go wrong.

She opened another one of Boswell's books at random.

The island cluster of Minutes lies in the northwest of the Atlas Ocean. It consists of more than twenty islands, many of which are so close together that you may sail between them in a matter of minutes. Beware, however …

The library door opened. Brine bit back a scream.

“Scared you,” said Peter. He held up a key.

Brine stood up, trying not to show that her heart was hammering and her hands had begun to shake. “Where's Magus?”

“Snoring like a blunt-nosed whale.”

They both paused, watching each other in the candlelight. Peter looked back over his shoulder. The night was getting to him, too, it seemed.

“What if we cast the spell on Magus instead?” Brine asked. At least that way, they wouldn't have to row across the sea at night.

“Don't be stupid. The spell would wake him, and he'd know exactly what we were doing.”

Whereas Turbill was as blind as a sea slug when it came to magic. Whether the spell worked or not, he'd never know Peter had cast it.

“I could try talking to Tallis again,” said Peter. “Maybe he'll—”

Brine snatched the key from his hand. If they thought any more about this, they wouldn't go through with it, and then she'd be stuck with Penn Turbill for the rest of her life.

She opened the door to Magus's study and coughed as the stink of sweat and old magic wafted out. The dryness in her mouth spread straight down her throat, and her nose began to prickle. She'd never set foot in this room before, not even to clean it: Tallis had never allowed it. Shelves covered every wall, and books, boxes, and bottles covered every shelf. A table leaned against the only clear space, below the window.

“Magus is going to kill us,” muttered Peter. The candle shook in his hand.

“Only if he catches us. Hurry up.”

He nodded, his lips tight. He passed Brine the candle, wiped his hands on his trousers, and went to the shelves.

Brine walked to the table. It was full of sheets of paper with the same few spellshapes drawn on them, over and over again in neat rows. Some of them bore notes in Magus's handwriting—mainly comments such as “rubbish” and “must try harder.” So this was what Peter did in his evenings, hunched over the table in his bedroom. Somehow, Brine had thought that practicing magic would be more exciting.

“Watch out,” said Peter. He dumped a leather-bound book on the table, scattering papers everywhere.

“Now you decide you want to read,” said Brine.

“I'm looking up the spellshape, stupid.” He started turning pages. Brine looked over his shoulder. Boswell said there were thousands of different spellshapes, and the best magicians might have memorized five or six hundred, while the worst ones would know twenty or thirty at most. Some of them were so simple a child could draw them. Others twisted on the page and made Brine's eyes hurt to look at them. But every single one could be drawn in a single line without taking your pen off the page. Casting them was different, of course—you drew the shape in the air with your fingers, and instead of ink, you used magic.

“There,” said Peter, stopping at a shape that looked like a lopsided spiral. Brine pinched her nose hard, willing herself not to sneeze while he copied the shape onto a scrap of clean paper and slid the book back into its slot on the shelf.

Brine hopped impatiently from foot to foot. “Can't you hurry?”

“Can't you shut up? We're nearly done.” He reached up again, moving books out of the way to get to a set of wooden boxes. He hesitated over them, then took down the biggest one. Brine held her breath as he lifted the lid. She'd expected it to be locked.

Carefully, Peter slid his fingers into the box and lifted out …

Another box.

In that box was another box. Inside that one, a tiny casket made of gold-plated wood.

And inside that, nestled between twenty layers of wool that were already fraying under the corrosive onslaught of pure magic, lay a narrow sliver of amber shell. It was no longer than Brine's little finger, and it was the most precious thing in the whole world.

*   *   *

According to Aldebran Boswell, starshell fell to earth in the wake of a shooting star, hence its name. According to everyone else, this was nonsense. Starshell was the fossilized remains of the silver jellyfish tree that grew everywhere before the Great Flood and the reason it was called starshell was because people like Boswell didn't know any better. Either that or it was the claw of the tentacled lurk-weed that once crowded the ocean bed. Or oysters made it when they wanted a change from pearls. In some parts of the world, people still risked their lives for it, diving hundreds of feet through the coldest parts of the ocean and sometimes, only sometimes, emerging half-drowned with a glistening shard in their hands. Even they couldn't agree on what it was.

But whatever it was made of, one thing was known for sure: Starshell was the only thing in the whole world that held magic. Somehow—how and why was a mystery—it drew magical energy out of the air and stored it ready to be used. Without starshell, there would be no spells, no magicians, no Tallis Magus.

For half a minute, Brine forgot the urge to hurry and gazed down at the glowing piece of shell. All starshell was precious, but this one was special to her. It had been found on a gold chain around her neck when she herself had been found adrift in a rowing boat. A shivering, sneezing child with skin as dark as hazel-wood, half-dead from sickness and thirst, and wearing the price of the island as jewelry.

Magus had been quick to lay claim to the starshell to add to his stock. The islanders had insisted he couldn't have the shell without the child, so he'd taken Brine in and kept her as a servant. If it weren't for that piece of starshell, she might have been a fisherman's daughter by now. And yet, the one time Tallis Magus had let her hold it, she'd sneezed so hard she'd almost dropped it.

Peter didn't look at her as he lifted the starshell out of the box and folded the layers of wool over it. “I thought you wanted to hurry,” he said.

Brine shook herself out of her daze and nodded. It wasn't her starshell anymore; it belonged to Magus—and they were about to steal it. Gripping the candle like a weapon, she led the way back through the library and down the stairs.

The front door stood before them, a faint crack of moonlight showing along the top where the wood had warped. Brine's heart quickened fearfully. They were really doing this. They were going to steal Magus's starshell, steal his boat, and cast a spell on the richest man in the whole island cluster. She paused a moment to steady herself. It was fine. Magus was asleep, the rowing boat was waiting for them down on the beach, and nothing bad was going to happen.

She opened the door and blinked in the flood of moonlight. The grass looked silver, crisscrossed with the long shadows of the trees, and the path to the beach curved away between them. Brine glanced at Peter. His face was set in a grin of mad terror.

“Are you sure you can cast the spell once we get there?” asked Brine.

He jerked his head in a nod. “Of course I'm sure. I'm a magician, aren't I?”

An apprentice magician, which wasn't exactly the same thing. Brine didn't say it. She started along the path as quickly as her trembling legs would allow. They could do this. Get to the boat, row to Turbill's island, Peter would cast the spell, and then—

The sound of the door banging back stopped her dead. Peter turned and let out a low cry of dismay.

Tallis Magus burst through the doorway. He was wearing his dressing gown and slippers, and his hair swung loose about his face. Brine might have laughed, except for his eyes. They glittered with a light that went beyond mere rage. They were twin shards of ice, full of vengeance and the promise of long and painful punishment. Brine felt a whimper rise in her throat and clamped her lips together to stop it from escaping.

Magus advanced upon them with steps that made the grass tremble. “Thieves!” He pointed at them with a long, shaking finger. “I take you into my house. I treat you as my own children. Ingrates!
Give me back my starshell.
”

Brine tensed. Peter put his hands behind his back. “What starshell?”

Magus's eyes flashed. “Did you really think I'd leave it unprotected in an ordinary box? The moment you put your thieving hand on it, I knew. Give it to me.”

Brine felt the air thicken. Peter tossed the starshell back at her. She sneezed. The wool-wrapped packet missed her hands and hit the grass.

Magus curled his fist and drew his arm back.

“It was Brine's idea!” shouted Peter. “She took it, not me.”

Brine's cheeks flooded with heat. “Liar!”

“Thief!” Magus roared and took a step forward.

Peter stumbled away from him.

Crunch.

The sound froze them all where they stood.

Slowly, reluctantly, Brine looked down. Down at the imprint of Peter's shoe on the grass, and the flattened square of wool, and the starshell that lay in the middle of it. Her mouth turned dry with pure, cold horror and the certain knowledge that now Magus really was going to kill them.

Magus let out a wordless bellow. Peter yelped, scooped up the broken starshell, and bolted down the hill. Brine hesitated a moment, then ran after him. Magus, cursing loudly, was just behind, but she was a lot younger and much faster. And, at this moment, a lot more desperate.

She sprinted past Peter and felt the path give way to loose sand beneath her feet. Dark against the shoreline, the rowing boat bobbed as if it were waving to her. With a final burst of speed, Brine flung herself inside. Peter landed beside her with a crash.

“Come back here!” shouted Magus.

Brine threw off the mooring rope and heaved on the oars. The boat shot away from shore. Magus ran onto the beach, shouting threats and waving his fists, but he was too late. A wave caught them and swept them out of his reach.

*   *   *

Brine kept rowing until the shore was swallowed up in the night and Magus's angry shouts were faraway squawks that could have been the sound of a gull. Finally, she paused and leaned on the oars, trembling. Peter's face was white, his hair standing up in sweaty clumps. He gave Brine a wobbly smile. “Well, at least we got away.” He unwrapped the starshell, and his face fell.