The Voyage to Magical North (30 page)

Marfak West's eyes narrowed to slits. “That starshell is mine. Give it to me.”

Peter shook his head. “You're not the only magician in this room, you know.”

“Are you challenging me?”

His attention was wholly on Peter.
Move
, Brine told herself. She scraped her feet backward over the icy floor. Outside, Cassie dropped to one knee and barely fended off a blow that came straight at her head.

Marfak West spread his fingers, and Peter suddenly left the ground and slammed into the ceiling. Peter's face twisted in pain.

One more step.
Brine felt the wall behind her. She reached up, unhooked a torch from above her head, and threw it.

As the parent died in fire
, Boswell had written,
the egg will one day hatch in fire.

The torch cartwheeled across the room in slow motion, end over end, trailing fire. Marfak West let out an angry cry, but he was too late to stop it. The torch struck the starshell egg and burst into flame so bright that Brine had to close her eyes, and even then, she could still see it.

Fire and smoke boiled up together, engulfing the egg in a storm of red and black. It rocked back and forth, cracking the ice that held it steady. The ice everywhere started to melt; the room filled with rain and then steam.

Ewan and Cassie burst through the ice in the doorway. They were both bleeding, and Cassie had a fish in her hair. Peter dropped from the ceiling and landed on them. They all picked themselves up quickly.

“You've lost, Marfak West,” said Cassie. “Surrender.”

The fire went out.

They all stared at the egg, which lay still, a few coils of steam rising, but the heat was already fading out of it. Brine's eyes stung with tears. She'd failed. The knowledge emptied her of feeling. She hadn't thrown the torch hard enough, or the fire hadn't been hot enough, or maybe the egg was already dead and no amount of fire would make it hatch.

Marfak West laughed. “What exactly did you think would happen?”

Every single torch flared toward the center of the room and then died. Brine blinked in the darkness. What was Marfak West doing now?

A light appeared in the middle of the room, egg-shaped and scarlet. Brine thought the magician was taking the last of the power out of the egg, but then the egg began to move again. A shrill humming made Brine's ears ache. The ice began to fall, and it didn't even have time to melt: It just broke away in chunks and turned to steam before it hit the floor.

Brine felt like singing. The egg rocked from side to side. Alive. A single egg, sitting alone at Magical North for centuries, patiently waiting—until now.

“It's taking the magic back.” Peter's voice was raw as he staggered to his feet. “All the magic.”

“The magic is mine!” snapped Marfak West. He seized the egg in both hands and shook it.

“Is that a good idea?” asked Cassie.

Apparently, it was not.

The egg burst back into flame. Marfak West's shouts turned to screams. He tried to hurl the egg away, but his hands stuck to it once more, and he couldn't let go. Black smoke poured out of his clothes. The walls trembled. The ceiling creaked, and bits of it started to fall in.

Peter drew a shape in the air. “Everyone get close to me.”

Brine squeezed in between Cassie and Ewan. A magical shield sprang up around them. She had half a second to wonder where Peter had learned that spell before the starshell exploded.

It happened with a crack like thunder, echoed by a deeper tearing right down in the heart of the
Antares
. White light burst through the room and blew the ceiling apart. Brine ducked as a lump of wood bounced off the shield by her head. Her hands and face stung.

Slowly, the room settled around them. The magical shield wavered and collapsed, and Peter slumped to the floor, gasping. Brine sat up, blinking in the sudden rush of sunlight from the hole above her. Her hands were speckled with a rash of tiny burn marks.

Marfak West was gone. Pieces of starshell smoked gently around a wide, charred hole in the floor. Brine crawled over and looked into it. In the deck below was another hole. In the deck below that, another one, and so on all the way down to the sea.

Peter stirred. “Uh, Brine.”

Something rustled right next to her. Cassie and Ewan limped across to join them, and all four of them stared openmouthed at the tiny dragon that rustled its silver wings, raised its head, and stared back with a look that suggested it didn't know what was going on but it didn't approve of any of it. Who could blame it? It had, after all, been asleep for more than eight hundred years.

 

C
HAPTER
36

Running away is sometimes the best thing you can do. Walk into trouble but run out of it.

(
From
BRINE
SEABORNE
'
S
BOOK
OF
PLANS)

Tom saw the whole wall of water tremble. Foam started to slide down from the top. “Get back,” he shouted. “Retreat!”

This time Bill didn't argue. The giant wave came tumbling down, and the
Onion
fled. They bounced over the waves as if they were flying, shooting up into the air, then slamming back down with jolt after jolt that jarred every bone in Tom's body. He wrapped his arms around the mast and clung on, half-drowned and blinded by seawater. Seagulls still shrieked around him, and fish fell across the deck, dropped by the fleeing birds. Tom felt every meal he'd eaten for the last day clamoring to get out. He wasn't sure how much longer he could hold on, or even if he wanted to, because a swift death in the sea might be preferable to this agony of crashing and flying.

Then it was all over. Tom peeled himself from the mast cautiously and wiped his hair out of his eyes. Looking out to Barnard's Reach, he saw that it was still in one piece. The giant wave, rather than engulfing the land, had collapsed back in on itself, filling the hole in the sea. All they'd felt on board the
Onion
was the aftershock.

Tom stumbled across to join Bill and the others.

Bill seemed as surprised as Tom to find they were still in one piece. “Well, that was interesting,” he said. He walked unsteadily past Tom to the side of the ship. “With your permission, Captain,” he said, “I think we should start picking up survivors.”

The
Onion
might have survived intact, but the
Antares
hadn't been so lucky. Dragged unnaturally from the seabed, shaken, prodded, pulled this way and that, the ancient timbers had reached the point where they couldn't take any more. As Tom watched, they started to come apart. The
Antares
bobbed helplessly. Water spurted through its deck and showered down on the surviving pirates. Two of the ship's legs snapped off and slid away into the sea.

“I can't see Brine,” said Tom worriedly.

Bill turned the
Onion
back toward the sinking wreck. “Don't worry. She's with Cassie. They'll be fine.”

*   *   *

Cassie stood up, one hand pressed to a sword wound in her side. “Well,” she said, “that could have been—” She caught Brine's gaze and stopped.

Brine felt a grin break out over her face. “It could have been worse,” she agreed. She bent to pick up the baby dragon. It hopped sideways out of reach and shot a stream of yellow flame at her.

“I hate to mention it,” said Cassie, “but the ship is on fire.”

“But that's all right,” said Ewan, “because we're sinking.”

The rest of the ceiling caved in as he spoke. The dragon retreated, hissing steam. Brine squatted down. “It's all right,” she said softly. “My parents left me, too. We're both on our own.”

Any hope she harbored that she might prove to be the world's first natural dragon tamer died as the dragon snarled and scrabbled back from her.

Peter dropped to his knees and began gathering up the pieces of broken dragon shell. “Leave it,” ordered Cassie. “There's no time.”

A crash and a roar from outside made them all jump. The dragon wailed in fright and flung itself into Brine's arms. Its scales felt warmer than she'd imagined and perfectly dry. When it burrowed its head into her shoulder, it left little trails of warmth that seemed to sink inward until they filled her completely. She knew at that moment that she wouldn't let anything happen to this small creature. She'd protect it with her life, if necessary.

Cassie tried to pick Peter up. He struggled and kicked her. “Peter,” she shouted, “we found a magic ship, we crossed the Gemini Seas in three days, and we fought an army of pirate fish to get you back. We're not leaving you here now.”

Some of her words seemed to penetrate. Peter went limp, then stood up and nodded, his face set.

“Let's get out of here,” said Ewan.

They ran. Peter's hands were full of dragon shell, and Brine's hands were full of dragon. The little creature clawed its way up Brine's front and clung around her neck as they raced along the corridors: a savage, silver necklace with eyes of flame. She scratched it behind the ears with one hand. She was on a sinking, burning ship with a dragon around her neck—she wondered why she wasn't afraid. The ship was falling apart around them, and yet the whole world felt completely right, as if a final missing piece had been put into place.

The ladder to the deck was smoking but still intact. Brine pounded up it behind Cassie and Ewan and stopped when they did, gasping in the sunlight. The deck was covered in fish, and seagulls wheeled above in screeching circles. Here and there, people were still fighting, but the last of the pirate copies were turning back to their proper forms and slithering into the sea.

Rob Grosse hit a Bill Lightning copy in the face with a fish. The copy sprouted tentacles and grew to the size of a house. Grosse groaned, then grinned and attacked. Cassie grabbed him as they ran past.

The
Onion
drew alongside them. “Ahoy!” shouted Tom.

Ropes slapped down on what remained of the deck of the
Antares
. Peter grabbed one and offered it to Brine. Pausing only to tuck her scaly passenger firmly into her shirt, she launched herself out over empty space.

 

C
HAPTER
37

Magic corrodes everything. Wool, leather, iron, and steel all waste away and turn to dust. Only gold and a few precious stones survive. Maybe this explains why dragons are known to collect vast hoards of treasure. They are, in fact, building nests.

(
From
THOMAS
GIRLING
'
S
NEW
BOOK
OF
SCIENTIFIC
KNOWLEDGE)

“And that's it,” finished Brine. “The end of the extraordinary story of the voyage of the
Onion
.”

She sat with Tom and Ursula in the science library of Barnard's Reach. Racks of books lay drying around them and Book Sisters crept about, carefully turning and smoothing the pages so they wouldn't dry wrinkled. Though Brine guessed that most of the Sisters were using the books as an excuse and really were staying around to hear the end of the story.

Two days had passed since the battle of the
Antares
. Two days with no storms, no birds or bears trying to eat them, no evil magicians trying to kill them. It had almost been too quiet. Of course there'd been the usual arguments with Peter and the excitement of learning how much food a baby dragon needs (lots) and how often it needs the toilet (oftener than you'd imagine). Much of those two days had been spent on Barnard's Reach.

The libraries had escaped, but not without damage. The lower book cellars were still full of water, and everything down there was beyond saving. Whole rooms might never be usable again.

The Mother Keeper remained a worm. Brine had taken her across to the
Onion
so Peter could try to turn her back, but nothing he did had had any effect. The Mother Keeper was living in a jar now while the Book Sisters researched ways of bringing her back. In the meantime, Ursula was serving in her place.

The library rules were changing, Ursula said. There wouldn't
be
so many rules, for a start, and anybody would be allowed to come in and read, men and women, boys and girls. Maybe if they started treating knowledge as something to be shared and not hoarded, she said, there'd be fewer people like Marfak West around. Ursula had, however, introduced one new rule: No dragons allowed. She'd been very polite but very firm about the presence of a fire-breathing lizard in a room full of books.

Peter had stayed behind on the
Onion
with the dragon. Someone had to look after him, he'd said, although Brine had seen from his face that that wasn't the only reason. He still hadn't told her what had happened during the time he was with Marfak West, and Cassie had warned her not to ask. He'd talk about it when he was ready.

Brine sighed. She ought to feel happier than this. She'd stood at Magical North, helped defeat Marfak West, and saved Barnard's Reach. She ought to be celebrating, but all she felt was the sadness of a story ending.

Ursula blotted a page. “Actually, Brine, I think you're wrong. This is not the end. This voyage of the
Onion
may be over, but your own story is only just beginning. Tom told me you want to find your parents. I was Assistant Keeper of Geography once, remember. I found a few books for you.”

She pulled out a box from under one of the racks and carried it to the table. “They're a little out of order,” she apologized, “but they might be helpful. You can borrow them if you like.”

Brine didn't dare look. Tom reached past her and took the first book out. Stories about the Western Ocean. A book of maps. And, right at the bottom, a book that looked even older than Boswell's journal. The cover was made of dark brown paper, stained unevenly.