The Wizard Hunters (30 page)

Wearing the same baffled expression that was beginning to appear on everyone’s face, Ander said, “I understood that. How ...” He looked helplessly at Gerard. “I’m speaking . . .”

“Syrnaic,” Tremaine supplied.

“I know.” He turned to her impatiently, then stopped as he realized what he had said.

Gerard shook his head wonderingly. “I don’t. . . Am I speaking ... ? My God.”

Tremaine decided they couldn’t do worse than to start with the most basic piece of information. She turned back to Ilias and said, “It’s magic. I think. I mean, I know it was magic, but... You see, Gerard’s a sorcerer and ...” She let the sentence trail, unnerved by the reaction.

Ilias’s expression said he badly wanted to unhear what he had just heard. Giliead’s face had gone as still as if she had struck him. Halian looked at her as if he couldn’t understand her, as if she were speaking gibberish again. Ilias looked up at Giliead in appeal, obviously hoping he would respond. Seeing an answer wasn’t forthcoming, he turned back to her and said, “But he ... can’t be.”

Uh oh
, Tremaine thought. She glanced at Gerard, who had an expression of dawning apprehension that didn’t inspire confidence. He nodded for her to go on. She asked Ilias carefully, “Why not?”

Ilias threw another helpless look at Giliead, whose face had darkened with some strong emotion. Halian was hanging on every word, his brows drawn together in consternation. Ilias took a sharp breath. “Because wizards are evil.”

“Oh, that’s all we need,” Ander muttered, throwing a worried look at Gerard.

That’s not good
, Tremaine thought. If the only sorcerers they had had any experience with were Gardier, they couldn’t have a good opinion of magic. Somebody else definitely needed to handle diplomatic relations right now before she messed things up even worse. She leaned over to Florian. “All right, you talk now because I don’t think I’m doing a very good job.”

“All right, I’ll try.” Florian took a deep breath and pointed toward the burning remains of the dirigible. “Those wizards are evil. We’re not.”

Ilias looked at her, aghast. “You’re a wizard too?”

Florian hesitated. “No, but I’m studying to be one.”

Halian looked a little sick. Ilias covered his eyes for a moment, apparently trying to get a grip on himself.

Trying to help, Tremaine said, “I’m not a wizard.”

“Tremaine!” Gerard said sharply.

“Well, I’m not!” she protested, turning to him. “This is not my fault.”

Gerard took a calming breath, rubbed his brow and turned to the three men. “Where we come from, sorcerers help people,” he explained carefully. “They protect people from things like that.” He nodded toward the surf and the growing cloud of smoke above the airship.

Halian’s frown deepened and Ilias stared at Gerard as if he couldn’t quite get his mind around this idea, though his expression said he was trying. He looked up at Giliead for help again and, frustrated at the lack of response, thumped him in the shoulder.

Giliead twitched. His voice tight with tension, he asked, “Why are you here?”

Deliberately, Gerard said, “We came here from our home, by magic, to fight those wizards. That island is only one of their bases, the places they use to attack the land we come from, which is called Ile-Rien.”

“There’s more of them?” Halian glanced sharply at Giliead. “More than on the island already?”

“Thousands more,” Ander put in, eyeing them warily.

Halian swore softly, exchanging an appalled look with Ilias. Giliead looked out at the column of smoke rising from the sea. The breeze off the water carried the stink of burning oil, mingling with the woodsmoke from the smoldering wrecks of the boats on the beach and the huts under the trees.

“We’re not like them,” Gerard repeated, watching him intently. “Where we come from sorcerers are healers, scholars ...”

“Healers ... ?” Ilias repeated blankly.

“We fixed your shoulder,” Florian admitted with a wince. “In the caves, when we were hiding, you had that big gash in it and I did a charm to make it heal faster. We didn’t think you’d mind. Nobody would, where we come from.”

Ilias stared at her, startled. Giliead grabbed his arm and turned him, yanking down his tattered shirt to look at the wound. Ilias craned his neck to see, telling him, “It doesn’t hurt.”

Ander swore under his breath and shook his head. Tremaine knew he thought Florian shouldn’t have said anything, but even she realized this was a time when nothing but the truth would do; leaving anything out would just look like deliberate deception. She folded her arms and waited, her shoulders tight with tension. They had all gotten along fine when they couldn’t talk to each other; it seemed absurd that they couldn’t manage it now.

Giliead shook his head slightly. “This looks more than a week old.” He fingered the bloody rip in Ilias’s shirt. Ilias pulled free, trying to reach back to probe at the wound. His eyes met Giliead’s and they just looked at each other. Ilias’s face was serious and determined and Giliead’s deeply troubled. They were making a decision.

The moment seemed to stretch, then Giliead let out his breath and turned to them. His expression was still wary but had lost some of that high color and unnerving intensity. He said, “Those other wizards will be back.”

“Yes.” Gerard nodded, his expression grave. “They know where this village is now; you should evacuate it immediately.”

“How will they know?” Halian demanded. He jerked his head toward the wreck. “No one survived that.”

“Before they began their attack, they would have used wireless—” Gerard hesitated. He had spoken the word “wireless” in Rienish; it didn’t exist in Syrnaic. “They would have communicated with their base and described their position. Another airship or a boat will come searching for them.”

Halian nodded slowly, seeing the sense of this. “I’ll tell Agis.” He looked at Giliead and Ilias. “You two . . . sort this out.”

He walked away, calling to the villagers poking through the smoking ruins of the burned huts. Giliead stared after him incredulously, muttering, “Thanks, Halian, we’ll get right on that.”

Ilias rolled his eyes in annoyance and gave Giliead another thump. “Talk.”

“All right, all right.” Giliead turned to Gerard again and asked carefully, “There’s just the four of you? And you came here to fight them?”

“Yes, and we need your help,” Gerard told him.

“Those maps you have—” Ander added, “they show details of the Gardier’s operations, the locations of their other bases.”

Ilias’s brows lifted. “You need our help?”

“Badly,” Tremaine said. Florian nodded in earnest agreement.

Gerard began, “We came here to help our people get information—”

“Gerard!” Ander interrupted sharply.

Florian finished, “But the Gardier wrecked our boat and now we can’t get back to tell them how to attack the island.” She saw Ander staring incredulously at her and demanded, “What? It’s not a secret. Is it?”

Giliead hesitated, turning all this over thoughtfully. “Why can we understand you now?”

Another good basic starting point
, Tremaine thought. Feeling on safer ground and wanting back into the conversation, she answered, “We don’t know.”

Gerard ignored her, saying, “I don’t know. The Gardier—that’s what we call those sorcerers—don’t speak our language either. They had a magical translator device, but I wasn’t aware . . .”

Tremaine fished in her pocket for the medallion, drawing it out. Surely it had something to do with this. “Here it is. Maybe it’s decided to work.”

“It didn’t work this well for the Gardier.” Florian took it and examined it with a worried frown. “The crystal’s cracked and the color’s gone funny, all yellow and dull.” She glanced at Tremaine, frowning. “Did the sphere do that?”

Glad someone was still speaking to her, Tremaine leaned over to look at it. “Maybe when it was in the bucket with it. Those other things I took off the Gardier were in pieces— I thought they self-destructed or something, but maybe the sphere—”

Gerard stared at them. “You put that in the bucket of water with the sphere?” he demanded.

Tremaine shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”

Gerard swore. “Water conducts electricity and etheric potency!”

She glared at him. “I know that!”

“But it’s a barrier to magic,” Florian protested. “We thought the Gardier would follow it if we didn’t block it off from them somehow.”

“What she said!”

Gerard looked upward as if trying to gather the strength not to shout, then managed, “The water is a barrier between the sphere and the air, but if a second magical object is in contact with the water—”

“Oh.” Tremaine looked at Florian for help. “Um.”

Florian took a breath to speak, bit her lip as she reconsidered, and finished, “Oh.”

“What does that mean?” Giliead asked, cutting in before Gerard could add any further recriminations. He nodded to the sphere. “What is that thing?”

Tremaine turned to him. “Our magical thing killed the Gardier’s magical things, and now ours knows everything theirs used to know. But we didn’t know that was going to happen. Well, Gerard would have, but he was unconscious.”

“God.” Gerard rubbed his brow and winced. “It must have, but I don’t see how. The original spheres were defensive, reactive only. They couldn’t initiate spells without some human guidance, let alone create an entirely new one.”

“That thing”—Giliead pointed at the sphere, his expression dubious—“killed something that belonged to the wizards— The other wizards, like it killed the flying whale?”

“What? Oh, the airship. Yes.” Tremaine nodded rapidly.

“But without the fire,” Florian added.

“But that translator wouldn’t work with their language,” Ander pointed out, exasperated. “You tried it before. How is it doing this?”

Tremaine shook her head, wishing he hadn’t brought that up. “When I was holding the sphere earlier I just wished we knew how to talk to each other, it would make this so much easier....” She trailed off as she realized they were all looking at her again. “I’m still not a wizard.”

“Tremaine!” Gerard stared at her.

Someone shouted and she turned to see a party of horsemen emerging from the trees above the village. They rode down the main path between the houses, the horses’ hooves sending up a cloud of dust. Some of the men were dressed in dyed leather jerkins, all of them armed with swords or long spears with a curved blade on the end. The horses were unusual too, with rough, dun-colored coats with patterns of small spots along their backs and down their hindquarters.

“This is like something out of a book,” Florian murmured.

Tremaine nodded. The villagers waved and called and pointed, greeting the new arrivals with relief. She noticed Ilias didn’t seem so glad and that Giliead appeared positively grim.

“Who is that?” Gerard asked, turning worriedly to the other men.

Giliead pressed his lips together, then said, “It’s Nicanor, Halian’s son.” He exchanged a troubled look with Ilias, then his eyes met Tremaine’s. He said, “It’ll be all right.”

Tremaine found herself nodding. She looked away, suddenly selfconscious, but she believed him.

Halian strode back down the beach to stand with them as the man in the lead reined in nearby. As the other men pointed and exclaimed at the burning remains of the airship, he swung down off his horse and came toward them, staring off toward it in consternation. Tremaine saw he did look like Halian, though he wasn’t quite as tall. He had long dark hair and the family resemblance showed in his eyes and the shape of his face. He looked around at everyone, frowning as he noticed the strangers and their odd attire. “What happened?” he demanded.

Ilias shifted uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck, looking like someone who badly wanted to answer “nothing” but didn’t think he could get away with it. Giliead started to speak, then just stopped, taking a sharp breath.

“We’re not sure quite yet.” Halian stepped in smoothly. “Our new friends here were helping us defend against a wizard attack and uh . . .” He scratched his chin and shrugged, smiling. “Something happened, and we haven’t quite sorted it out yet.” He spoke easily, reassuringly, and Tremaine thought he was doing a damn good job of pretending he knew that everything was all right and would soon be settled by being reasonable. He added, “We need to talk in private.”

Nicanor shook his head, obviously unconvinced. “What do you mean, ‘defend against an attack’? I saw fire shoot up from the ground all the way up on the road.” He stared at the four of them, his dark brows drawing together, a variety of expressions crossing his face, alarm, suspicion, bewilderment. Tremaine sympathized. Then he said, “Are those .. . wizards?”

“No,” Ilias said immediately. “Not like that.”

“Not like what?” Nicanor said, looking at him in growing incredulity. “Are they wizards?”

Tremaine felt Florian stir anxiously beside her.

Giliead said, “They were on the island. They’re fighting the wizards there. They can tell us about them—”

“They
are
wizards.” His eyes went to Tremaine and Florian and flicked away again. “You should have killed them already.”

Tremaine stopped sympathizing. Ander tensed and Gerard caught his arm, silently cautioning him not to interrupt.

“They saved my life,” Ilias said. “It’s my fault they’re here—”

“They saved this village,” Giliead interrupted. “We owe them guest-right.”

“We?” Nicanor stared at him, his face darkening with anger. “You were taking them home? Once wasn’t enough, you had to do this to your family again?”

Ilias looked away, his jaw tightening. Watching Nicanor grimly, Giliead said, “It’s none of your concern.”

“Stop that,” Halian interrupted sharply. “Nicanor, they saved everyone in the village. You don’t think that thing”—he pointed at the airship—“wouldn’t have slaughtered all of us? You owe them more than guest-right, you owe them family-right.”

Nicanor stared at him, his jaw locked against an angry reply.

Halian stepped up to put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Let’s sit down and talk about it,” he said again.

T
hey were going to use Gyan’s home to talk, Dyani hurrying in first to warn the old woman who kept the house. As Halian and Nicanor went inside, Giliead stopped Ilias on the porch. Gyan’s house was up under the trees, near the center of the village. The breeze carried the acrid scent of the flying whale’s pyre and people scattered out along the paths, helping the wounded away from the beach, rounding up livestock and children. “Are you sure?” Giliead demanded, keeping his voice low.