The Wand & the Sea (21 page)

“What is it, Your Ladyship?” Ranulf asked in a low voice. His sword was drawn, and Holly took out her wand.

“Don't you hear it?” she asked, and everyone was still.

“The birds,” Jade said after a moment. “There are none.”

“No birds, no anything,” said Holly. The silence weighed on them like a heavy blanket. She strained to hear the chittering of a squirrel or the rustling of a snake or rabbit, but even the brown grasses waved in the wind without making a sound.

“It's like . . . it's just dead,” Everett said softly. “All of it.”

Holly knelt and parted the grass. There was not an ant, not a beetle. The soil had great, yawning cracks in it. She waved her wand, stirring the dust, but still nothing skittered out of the holes. “I don't understand.” She looked up at Ranulf.

“Something is very wrong here.” The centaur moved in a circle, twitching his tail, though no horseflies plagued him. “We must go back and find the others. Sail at once if we can.”

“But we need to find water. A lot of our casks were washed overboard.”

“There can be no water here,” said Jade. “Even these trees should be dead.”

It was then that Holly caught something on the breeze. The faintest of sounds. “There! Did you hear something?”

The others froze for a moment, then shook their heads.

“It came from . . .” Holly peered across the meadow, at another stand of near-dead trees. “Over there. It was like . . .” She heard it again. “Like a trickle. A stream.”

She saw the look Jade gave Ranulf, and she stood up. “Well, I'm going to see what it is, anyway.”

“I advise against it,” Ranulf said sharply.

Holly walked into the meadow. “I know. But I've got my wand. And Áedán.” Although she noted that, despite the arid place, the Salamander felt sluggish and not as warm as usual on her shoulder.

“You shall not go alone.” The centaur started forward, and the others followed.

But then a curious thing happened. The others were only a few paces behind Holly, and she heard the grasses rustling as they walked, but a moment later they had fallen at least twenty yards behind her. It was as if the meadow had grown, stretching behind her a good ways, although the grassland before her looked the same.

Holly frowned. “Hurry up, if you're coming,” she called, but her voice sounded oddly flat, as if she were inside a closet instead of the open air. She turned around. Everett and the others kept moving their legs, but they weren't making any headway.

“Ranulf!” Holly called. “Are you guys okay?”

She started back, but no matter how far she walked, she never got any closer to them. Her feet flattened the tall grasses in front of her, but the path behind her hadn't lengthened at all; and the others looked to be walking on a treadmill.

Jade tried to leap over the tall grass, and Ranulf slashed at the meadow with his sword. Everett cupped his hands and seemed to be calling to her; but it was like they were behind glass. Once again the world had gone silent.

She peered again at the copse of trees on the far side of the meadow, then back at the others. Holly raised her wand at the tall grasses and whispered:

Clear the way.

At once the shaft warmed in her hand, and the familiar current zoomed up her arm to her heart and back again. A jolt of power shot from the wand, but almost at once a backblast knocked her off her feet, as if the spell had rebounded off a stone wall. She stood up, unharmed, and scrabbled around to find Áedán, who crawled onto her palm and then up to her shoulder.

Holly picked up the wand, which trembled, hummed, and bent like a divining rod. It pulled her toward the copse of trees.

There was nothing for it. She couldn't go back, and the wand was calling her on. “It looks like it's just the two of us, Áedán,” she whispered to the Salamander. She pointed the wand in front of her, much as Ranulf wielded his sword, and turned her back on the others.

Áedán and a steady, cooling breeze were Holly's only companions. Not even a grasshopper crossed her path. Within twenty steps, she reached the copse of trees and stepped between them.

She stood at the foot of a rocky mountain, which had somehow not been visible before. It rose straight up, but there were plenty of handholds and a clear path. She started to climb.

The wind stilled. The incline was steep, sometimes obliging her to crawl on all fours. The wind had carved juttings of sparkling granite into the slope and polished them like a rock tumbler. After about ten minutes Holly reached the broad peak. But it was not at all what she'd expected.

She had arrived on a plateau that stretched for miles. She stepped onto a carpet of deep green grass. Riots of flowers spread at her feet—corn cockles and oxeye daisies and buttercups and red campion. She waded through them until she reached a semicircle of hazel trees clustered around a well.

Its blocks of roughly hewn limestone formed a low arched wall affixed to a dry basin. A carved dolphin leaped over the top of it. Holly ran her fingers along the wall's sharp edges and peered into the basin drain. How deep did it go? Feeling around in the dirt for a pebble, she found instead a brass coin. Etched onto its face was a tiny profile of a lady with long hair and a pensive expression. Holly wanted to keep it, but before she could stop herself, she tossed the coin into the basin and listened. Several seconds later, a soft
plop
echoed from the bottom.

At once a stream of water gurgled out of the stone dolphin's mouth. Holly skipped back as it overflowed the well basin. In a moment it had become a brook that cascaded over the mountainside.

A dragonfly flitted above the well, then settled on its dusty edge. “My, what a nice job you've done!” it said brightly, and then with a loud
pop
, it changed into a hare and hopped off the basin's rim.

Holly's mouth fell open. “I know you,” she said. “The changeling! Do you remember me? Holly—I met you last year.”

The hare looked up at her and chewed a few blades of grass. “Oh, I remember! Of course I do. The Adept. You nearly got us all killed.” Despite the accusation, the changeling sounded quite cheerful.

“I'm . . . yeah. Sorry about that.”

“No worries.” The hare sat up on its considerable haunches and cocked one shiny brown eye at her. “As you can see, I'm perfectly fine. I turned into a beetle and scurried out of the way when things got dodgy.”

Holly had a sudden vision of the mayhem on that day—the tournament pitch erupting in dust and smoke, Ranulf and the other centaurs besieging the king's knights, the Dvergar falling . . .

“But where did you go?” Holly asked. “Almaric has been looking for you. Everyone's so scattered, the Dvergar, Fleetwing, the Mounted—”

“Can you blame us?” The hare nibbled on a clump of clover. “It's all very well for you, to anger the king and send the Sorcerer into a rage, and then nip off to some other world. I went back to my colony, told them it all looked a bit pointless. How were we to know you'd come back?”

“I didn't know you had a colony.”

“Hmph.” The hare sniffed, then morphed into a bobcat, which turned its back to her. “Not that you asked, either.”

A gnawing guilt rose in Holly's stomach. “I really am sorry. But I came back to help. We're sailing to find the Island of the Adepts—Almaric and Ranulf and Jade, and Ben and Everett and me. When we bring them back, we'll have a real chance of defeating Raethius.”

The bobcat stalked toward her. Its shoulders rolled under its skin. A flicker of fear passed through Holly's belly, but the bobcat settled nearby. “What makes you think you can bring them back?”

“Well, I . . . because I'm one too. I can navigate the ship and all. . . . I saw them here, on this island. I know the king exiled them, but—”

“But you know nothing.” The bobcat bared its teeth. “They can't be
found
. They aren't
lost
.”

Holly's heart sputtered. “What . . . what do you mean? Sure they are. The king sent them away.”

“Don't speak of things you are ignorant of. I was there.” The bobcat shrank before her eyes and sprouted wings, becoming a sparrow. “The night of the massacre, I was in the trees. I saw it all. The knights stole over the cliffs into the initiates' caves. They rode the silent steeds, rendering themselves invisible, undetectable. Even the guardians couldn't see them. They took the children first, before their teachers even woke.” The sparrow bowed its head, then with a crackle, it became a skunk. “Sorry. I can't always control it.”

Holly reached out a tentative hand and stroked the silky black fur. “And . . . what happened then?”

“What do you think? A slaughter.”

“But . . . they weren't
all
killed?”

“No. They had plans ready. Some were left to hold the knights at bay while the rest sailed into the night. No one's heard of them since. Well, almost no one.”

The skunk snuffled in the dirt. Holly thought it might be crying. Then it shuddered along its white-striped spine and turned into a red-tailed hawk.

“Almost no one? Do you know where they went?”

“I followed them,” said the changeling. “I hid on the boats as a ladybug, then swam alongside as a porpoise. But they discovered me once we reached the island. They could have killed me, but instead they sent me back to spread the king's tale, that they'd been bested by his knights and exiled by his decree. But they weren't exiled, Lady. They
escaped
.” The hawk cocked an eye at her. “Unless they're ready to return, until they
want
to be found, you'll never locate them. They have abandoned this land for good.”

“That can't be right,” Holly said. “Don't they want to see Raethius defeated?”

“Of course. But they left in the first place because things looked so hopeless. The Good Folk retreated to their Realm; the Mounted battled in the forest; the beasts squabbled among themselves. Without a united force, the Adepts could see which way the tide had turned.”

“So that's it, then?” A swell of anger bubbled up in Holly's chest. Why had she bothered coming to Anglielle at all? Everyone cowered in their corners while Raethius eliminated them one by one. “The Adepts are just fine with Raethius terrorizing the whole kingdom? What kind of heroes are they?”

“They're not heroes,” the changeling said. Its feathers smoothed into fur, and it became the hare again. “They never have been. When they lived in Anglielle, they kept to themselves and studied their magic. Why do you think the magicfolk were so happy to see you? You were different—an Adept who rallied them, who wanted to harness magic to defeat the king. Or at least, to rescue your brother.”

Holly gazed at the bubbling well. “What if things were different? If I
was
able to rally everyone, bring them together? Do you think the Adepts would come back?”

“It's possible.” The hare nibbled a daisy, then gave her a sidelong look. “I can't say for certain.”

The wildflowers waved in the breeze. Beyond them, below the plateau, Holly recalled the dead meadow and the girl she had seen. “I did see them—or one of them—on this island. Were they here?”

“They move constantly. But yes. They were here, only days ago.”

Holly looked at him very hard for a moment. “You're in contact with them. You know where they are right now, don't you?”

“Don't be silly. Of course not. They cover their tracks very well, but . . .” The hare hesitated, and scratched a flea.

“But
what
?”

“They do leave traces. Can't you sense that magic has been done here? Can't you smell it?”

It was what she had been sensing ever since their landing, Holly realized. Magic
had
been done here, and then the place was abandoned. That was the loneliness she felt. If only the
Sea Witch
had been quicker. They had come so close. . . .

“This well is a sacred place,” the hare went on. “Do you recognize it, Lady Adept?”

Of course she didn't. She didn't know much of anything about this world.

“It's a shrine to Coventina, the water goddess.” The hare sat up on its hind legs, leaped into the basin of water, and transformed into a golden carp. Its head poked out of the water. “Coventina never comes to land, but she does grant boons. That's why the Adepts came here—to alter the time stones.”

“Time stones?”

The carp leaped from the water, grew legs, and became a golden frog. It splayed its sticky fingers over the stone wall behind the basin. “Raise your wand; you'll see them.”

Holly did as the changeling asked, and then she did see them—three small, hazelnut-shaped stones embedded in the wall above the basin. “What are they for?”

“Oooh, they're quite powerful. They grant the owner magic to tear the veil of time.”

Tear the veil of time.
“Can I use them, changeling?” Holly asked, breathless.

The frog bobbed his head. “Only an Adept can extract them from the well. And only for a price.”

“What is it?”

“It is steep,” the frog cautioned.

“Yes, okay, but what is it?”
How bad could it be?
Holly thought. Anything would be worth mastering time. She could travel to the past, change things if she wanted. . . .

“As I understand it,” the frog said carefully, “you must give three days of your life as payment—one for each stone.”

“That's all?” But that was easy. Three days was nothing.

“I don't think you quite understand. You don't choose the days. The stones choose them. The day taken from your past, for instance, might be a very happy one. Or a day you learnt something important.”