The Voyage to Magical North (25 page)

Marfak West took hold of his collar. “Stay close.”

He drew a circle in the air. For a second or two, Peter thought the magician was casting a finding spell, but then magic appeared all around them, enclosing them both in a shining bubble.

A deep groan ran through the whale's belly, then a noise like thunder. The whale's stomach shrank rapidly as a dark wall rushed toward them. By the time Peter realized he was seeing water and opened his mouth to scream, the flood had swallowed him. But instead of drowning him where he stood, it flowed up and over his head, beating at the edges of the magical light but not breaking through.

Peter drew in a cautious breath and found he was still breathing air.

“What—” he began.

Water surged, carrying him with it. His feet broke through the protective magic and plunged into freezing sea. Peter snatched them back. Marfak West laughed, apparently enjoying the whole thing.

With a final, agonized belch, the whale opened its mouth, and they tumbled out into the huge, black depths of the ocean.

Silence. Sudden, deep silence. All Peter could hear was his own breathing, slowing as fear gave way to a strange sort of wonder. The whale watched them with mournful eyes that could have been human apart from their size, then it swung slowly around and swam away.

Marfak West floated gently in the air bubble, smiling broadly.

“Are you going to turn us into fish now?” asked Peter, half hoping that the answer would be yes.

“You're wasting air.” The magician gathered a handful of magic and cast a light down.

The wreck of the
Antares
—it had to be the
Antares
—spread out like a gigantic, half-finished puzzle directly below them. As the light glided over it, Peter saw the crushed timbers, shells, and seaweed heaped over the shattered masts. Remnants of sail tugged and drifted in the water. A fish flitted past Peter's face and landed inside the air bubble. Marfak West caught it and flicked it back into the sea with surprising gentleness and began drawing spellshapes, too fast for Peter to follow.

The
Antares
stirred. Shells flew off in flurries as if the hull were shaking itself awake. Broken pieces of wood crawled together and levered themselves upright to become masts.

Peter realized, too, as his legs suddenly became wet and cold, that the air bubble was shrinking. He was outside it from the knees down. He shot a glance at Marfak West, hoping the magician hadn't noticed. If he had, he might decide he needed the air more than he needed an unwilling apprentice.

Marfak West's head turned, and his eyes narrowed as if he'd guessed exactly what Peter was thinking. Peter gulped in a lungful of air. In the same moment, the air bubble shrank so it barely covered his head and shoulders, and Marfak West gave him a push that sent him spinning out of the bubble altogether and into the sea.

Oddly, Peter found he didn't care. He'd almost drowned once already, and it hadn't been too bad. There were fates worse than death, and at least he hadn't had to marry Penn Turbill's bladder-faced daughter. And he'd seen the world—not many people could boast about that. Not that he'd be able to boast about it, either, because you had to be alive to boast and he was just about to be disqualified. He wondered if his body would even float to the surface from this depth. He wondered …

His last thought faded away.

*   *   *

Brine stood at the prow of the new
Onion
—Ewan Hughes had repainted her name as they sailed. The ship was still changing, the deck planks shifting from pale ash to a dirty bronze and back, but the changes were happening more gradually now, and the color shifts were less extreme, as if the ship was settling on some halfway stage between legend and reality.

“Boswell said the universe is indecisive,” said Tom, joining her. “It generally doesn't make up its mind about what it wants to be until somebody stares at it for a while.”

At that moment, Brine couldn't have cared less what Boswell thought of the universe, but at least it stopped her from wondering how long someone could survive inside a giant fish, especially with Marfak West for company.

Tom frowned at her. “I read a story once about a man who was swallowed alive by a giant squid. He had to eat his way out. It took him a week, and forever after, the smell of fish sent him screaming inland.”

Brine sighed. Tom blushed and took off his glasses to clean them. “I mean … you never know what might happen, that's all. I bet Marfak West could live inside a whale for a year if he wanted. What with him being the world's most powerful magician.”

“Just as well he's so powerful, then, isn't it?” agreed Brine. She didn't want to be cheered up. She left Tom and wandered away to the back of the ship, where she leaned on the deck rail and watched the sea foam behind them. The sky was back to normal, and the wind was in their favor. Even the storms were staying away. Once or twice Brine heard a rumble of thunder in the distance, but that was all. She felt that she should be glad, but instead a weight the size of a whale settled on her shoulders. She couldn't get the image of Peter, crying, out of her head. Peter never cried. Even when Tallis Magus used to hit him, he'd pretend that it hadn't happened or that he didn't really care. To have witnessed him crying made Brine feel that the world was broken.

She didn't even smile when Zen pounced at her feet and missed, and when she spotted Cassie O'Pia making her way over, she groaned inwardly. Now Cassie was going to try to cheer her as well.

Brine stood up. “Don't try and tell me everything's going to be all right. You can't know that.”

To her surprise, Cassie didn't argue. “True,” she said. “Pirates have many abilities, but seeing the future is not one of them. I have no idea how this is going to turn out. But that's half the fun, isn't it? Would you really want to start a story knowing how everything will end?”

Brine shrugged. Cassie watched her for a while, twisting and untwisting the emerald around her neck.

“Don't you care?” Brine burst out. “We found Magical North, and Marfak West has stolen the world's biggest piece of starshell. Some of your crew are dead! Peter is kidnapped, and you lost the
Onion
, but you're all carrying on as if none of it matters.”

Cassie dropped her gaze to the deck. Her fingers slipped from the emerald. “Things change,” she said slowly. “That's the only thing you can rely on. The souls that have gone, let them rest in peace. As for the
Onion
, a ship is only a piece of floating wood. Anyone who goes seeking revenge because a large piece of floating wood gets sunk turns into … well, turns into Marfak West.”

Brine bit her lip and said nothing. She hated that Cassie was right.

Cassie turned away from her to watch the flag that flew almost straight out from the mainmast. “We have to carry on. It's either that or give up, and the
Onion
never gives up. Otherwise everything and everyone we've lost will be for nothing.” She laid a hand on Brine's shoulder. “We'll get Peter back. Don't worry.”

“Who says I want him back?” grumbled Brine. Peter was a pain in the backside, and half the time she was with him, she felt like strangling him. And yet she'd grown so used to him being around that, without him, she almost felt she'd lost part of herself. In other words, Peter was the closest thing to a brother she was ever likely to have.

“Thanks,” she said, and she found that she meant it.

Cassie flashed her a smile. “I was going to give you these,” she said, taking out the box that held Marfak West's starshell. “But given your allergy, it's probably best if I hold on to them until we rescue Peter.”

Brine nodded, although, strangely, her nose wasn't itching. At Magical North, she'd felt that her head was going to explode, but since then there'd been nothing, not a single sniffle. Something had changed inside her. She wasn't the child who'd once huddled in a rowing boat, terrified and sneezing. She straightened up and drew in a deep breath. “So what are we going to do?” she asked. “Charge in without a plan?”

“Certainly not,” said Cassie. “We have a chief planner now, remember? This time we're going to charge in
with
a plan.”

*   *   *

First came the feeling that he was flying, and then Peter felt a gentle warmth enfold him, as if the sun had somehow broken through a mile of sea to shine on him in his last second of life. And now a figure loomed over him, silhouetted in the light. The spirit of a long-departed ancestor, most probably. Whoever it was, Peter wished it would stop trying to talk to him. He was
tired
.

“If you're going to lie there all day,” said Marfak West irritably, “you can at least move over a bit so you're not quite as in the way.”

Peter opened his eyes with a start. He was lying on rough boards with the sky above him. Wind—real, fresh, nonfishy wind—ruffled his hair. Marfak West stood a few feet away, holding the giant starshell in both hands and grinning like a wide-mouthed shark.

It took Peter a full minute to sit up. After another minute, he managed to look around without feeling as if his head were about to fall off.

“Why didn't you let me drown?” he asked.

“You're my apprentice. Why should I let you drown? I knew I had enough air left to get you back to the surface—I just didn't want you wasting any of it. Say hello to your new home.”

The thing Peter was sitting on was moving through the water, so it had to be a ship, but it was unlike any ship he'd ever seen before. The deck was a wide oval, roughly the color of old blood. Around it, eight legs spread out, crablike, into the sea. Little flecks of pure magic floated everywhere. Peter's eyes burned with staring. He staggered to his feet. “This is the
Antares
?”

“With one or two modifications.” The tips of the magician's fingers were pure white from holding the starshell. “I'll have to rebuild her properly later, when there's time. For now, the magic is holding her together.” He turned away from Peter and stamped on the deck. A hatch slid open, and a slender gold column rose out of it. Marfak West set the starshell on top. “I think you should start calling me Master West now.”

Peter thought he should start calling him Stinkhead, but he didn't dare say so. He glared at the magician, tight-lipped. The world felt unreal, probably because they were plowing through the waves on a ship that looked like a giant spider. He watched as the glowing column sank back through the deck, taking the starshell with it.

“A ship like this needs a power source,” Marfak West said, seeing Peter's curious gaze. He started peeling pieces of loose skin from his fingers.

“But you're not touching it. How are you still controlling it?”

“With magic,” said Marfak West irritably. Peter noticed the way his chest puffed up. He liked to be asked things. He liked to show he was cleverer than everyone else.

“I thought I was supposed to be your apprentice,” said Peter. “I need you to teach me.”

“You need a good slap round the head,” grumbled Marfak West, but Peter could see he was trying not to smile. “There are many ways of using magic. Most people know only one—hold on to some starshell, pull the magic out, make the right spellshape, and let the magic go. It's the way they were taught, and they never imagined there could be anything else. But you can, for example, learn to draw magic from a piece of starshell without needing to touch it. Or even straight from the air if there's enough magic around. Or you can write spellshapes straight onto a piece of starshell so that it will continue casting those spells, over and over, until the starshell runs out of magic. For example, my starshell is currently holding the
Antares
together and moving it through the water, and I'll be adding a lot more to that by the time I'm finished.”

Peter only half listened.
Drawing magic from the air.
In the cavern at Magical North, he'd used magic, without thinking about it, without any starshell. Had he really done that?

“Can you become allergic to magic?” he asked, thinking of Brine. He had to swallow the lump that rose into his throat. Brine was as irritating as sunburn; she'd gotten him into trouble more times than he could remember, and yet he missed her.

Fortunately, Marfak West didn't seem to notice. “An allergy is possible, I suppose. Overexposure might do it. Why do you want to know?”

“No reason,” said Peter quickly. He made a show of looking around. The ship was traveling far faster than should be possible, its giant legs moving back and forth like oars. “Where exactly are we going?”

Marfak West's grin broadened. “You mean you haven't guessed?”

 

C
HAPTER
30

Nine out of ten emergencies are caused by failing to follow procedures correctly. But a true emergency may arise, such as:

1. Fire

2. Flood

3. Attack by pirates

In the rare case of a true emergency, every Book Sister should follow the orders of the Mother Keeper.

(
From
THE
RULES
AND
REGULATIONS
OF
BARNARD
'
S
REACH,
VOLUME
16:
IN
CASE
OF
EMERGENCY)

“This is it?” asked Brine.

The
Onion
sat in a patch of ocean that was several shades darker than the waters around it. Cassie drew up a bucketful, and when Brine put her hand in, it felt warmer than it should. Warm with magic, maybe. Brine wished she would start sneezing to confirm it, but her allergy appeared to have deserted her just when it might have been useful.