The Wand & the Sea (23 page)

Ailith was not the sort of mentor Holly had hoped for. She was bossy and impatient and, Holly thought, too self-important for someone who was hardly older than Holly herself. Still, Ailith said she had been in training for several years, and she had already mentored several younger Adepts. Compared to Holly, whose movements felt jerky and overdone, Ailith moved with liquid grace. One movement spilled effortlessly into the next as she spun waves out in the distant sea, raised them into whitecaps, and slammed them into the rocks. But after working for an hour, Holly only succeeded in creating ripples in the current that might have occurred naturally anyway.

“This shouldn't be that hard for you,” Ailith said. “Ocean waves are easy—they already have volume and movement. You're just directing them, not creating them out of thin air. Believe me,
that's
tricky.”

“I'm
trying
.” Holly's hair was damp with sweat, her muscles shaking.

“You're fighting the water. Get underneath the wave's energy, then give it a boost. Watch again.” Ailith raised her wand to the outer bay, flicked it, and uttered the spell,
“Tugaigí uisce.”
The waves in the distance rolled and crested, dancing with one another.

“Lady Holly,” said Jade quietly. “The Salamander.”

Of course! Holly had forgotten about him, crouched against her neck as he always was. Holly plucked him gently from her shoulder and nestled him in the sand.

“You've been holding a Salamander all this time?” Ailith rolled her eyes. “No wonder. You know you can't mix fire and water magic, don't you?”

“But he helps me. Isn't there a way to combine the fire and water magic? Maybe it would—”

“Maybe it would be helpful if you took instruction instead of giving it,” said Ailith shortly.

Holly glared at her, then took a deep breath.
“Tugaigí uisce!”

The gentle tide where she'd pointed the wand shot in the air twenty feet and bubbled over like a saltwater fountain.

“I did it!” Holly cried, laughing. Even Jade didn't seem to mind getting wet.

Ailith shook her head. “If I'd known you had a Golden Salamander, this whole thing would've been easier. That's not bad. Let's try again.”

By the end of the day Holly was exhausted. Almaric built a campfire apart from the crew and fried up the shellfish they had found along the beach. She tried to listen to the boys, who had spent their day repairing sails, filling barrels with water, and loading the longboats. Everett described how the women on the
Sea Witch
's crew swam beneath the boat at anchor, plugging holes in the hull. “They can hold their breath forever, like whales,” he said, and though Holly found this interesting, her mind kept wandering as she gazed into the firelight.

Ailith had already returned to her own time. She said Holly could call on her again, or rather, “You'll need a lot more work,” as she put it.

“You did very well today, Lady Holly,” Almaric remarked as he cleared away the dinner remains. “Once Áedán was out of the way.”

Holly unfolded her bedroll beside the campfire. “I still think I should be able to work with fire and water together. I like to keep Áedán with me.”

“On rare occasions one can harness opposing elements,” said the magician, “but ordinarily, no, especially not for a novice. Even fire and air, though they complement each other, can be dangerous. The Adept must be very skilled.”

“Now that I can call Ailith, I can train just like the other Adepts, can't I?”

“For a time.” Almaric sat down and stretched his short legs with a groan. “I'm afraid you cannot call her indefinitely. If you pull her from her timeline too often, she will fall out of synch with it. You must practice as much as you can without Ailith's help, and use your lesson time wisely.”

And what could she do for Anglielle in the meanwhile? Their mission had failed, but she wasn't ready to go home. She smiled at Ranulf, dozing just beyond the campfire. He and the Mounted would devise a battle plan, she guessed. Her job would be to bring the scattered Exiles together, as the changeling had said. She would continue to train, and eventually she'd be so powerful, it wouldn't matter if the Adepts never came home. She would learn to defeat the Sorcerer all on her own.

It was near dawn when a loud screech wakened her. She leaped up from her sandy blanket to find the red parrot flapping his wings from the palm tree above her. “Wake up, Adept! The captain sends for you in the longboat! To the
Sea Witch
!” Crewso flew off with another loud squawk.

“An infernal noise for this time of morning,” Jade said with a low growl as he stretched each limb. “But I suppose we must obey the summons.” Together they walked down the beach to Oggler, who stood ready with the longboat.

Crewso had flown ahead of them, and when Holly climbed aboard the
Sea Witch
, he was waiting on the poop-deck railing. “Inside the captain's cabin, Lady! Haste, haste, haste!” he called.

Having only seen it from the outside, Holly was unprepared for the cabin's luxury. The ceiling was high enough that Morgan could stand up quite straight and not hit her head, and there were windows all along the poop deck and portholes out to sea. Brass lanterns hung here and there, and a real bed draped with gold curtains sat in one corner. Morgan nodded at one of the leather chairs facing an oak table, and Holly sat down. Jade settled into the other.

“So,” the captain began, “I hear tell ye've been talking to Adepts and changelings on this island, Lady. When were ye goin' to tell me what ye've learnt?”

Holly took a deep breath, inhaling the sharp scents of tobacco and salt. Morgan's dark eyes were fixed on her. “I was waiting for . . . the right moment, Captain.”

Morgan drew out her dagger, letting it play between her webbed fingers. “Ye're in luck,” she said softly. “The right moment's come.”

Holly swallowed, watching the lamplight glint off the dagger's blade. “I'm sorry,” she said desperately. “I didn't know. None of us did. But I guess—or at least, the changeling said—that the Adepts have hidden themselves. You can't sail to their island until they want to come home.”

Morgan's brow darkened like the clouds before a gale while Holly talked. Then she allowed for at least two full minutes of silence before saying in a low voice: “The
Sea Witch
was badly damaged this voyage. And I've lost cargo.”

“I know,” Holly said anxiously. Clearly, Morgan thought it was her fault. “I'm really sorry—we did our best—”

“This ship, Lady Adept, is all I've got. If the schooner finds us again, she'll finish us.” She stood and pulled a sea chart onto the table. She squinted at it, mumbling.

“But what is the schooner? Is it another”—she hesitated, hoping not to offend—“ship like yours? Like a competitor?”

But Morgan was absorbed in her sea chart. “The devil take me if I know
how
they find us. The
Sea Witch
stays hidden from most vessels at sea.”

Holly shifted uneasily in her chair. “I don't suppose . . .”

The captain looked up. “Suppose what? D'ye know something about it?”

“It's probably nothing,” Holly said. “But Everett found this gold compass in the Northern Wood, and it's . . . strange.”

“ 'Tis more than that,” said Jade. “A compass with odd markings, and a thousand different directions. When the lad opens it, storms appear. As does the schooner.”

“We don't know that for sure,” Holly protested. “It might be a coincidence.”

Morgan pulled a piece of parchment from her desk along with a quill pen that she hastily dipped in ink. “Tell me. This compass—does it have markings like these on its cover?” She sketched out the Elemental symbols.

A line of goose pimples danced across Holly's shoulders. “Yes, but those are just the elements. They could mean anything, right?”

“Anything but good. Curse it! I ought to have searched the lot of ye. That compass
belongs
to the schooner. O' course it leads her right to us!”

“But what is the schooner? Whose ship is it?”

Morgan smiled bitterly. “Do ye not know, lassie? I thought by now ye'd be acquainted with him. Raethius of the Source.”

The warm breeze chilled Holly. Even her shoulder, where Áedán nestled, went cold, and her stomach clenched.

Morgan leaned forward. “He's got weapons beyond our powers. He could kill us all. But he wants you, and you only. What would you do in my place?”

Jade leaped onto the arm of his chair and hissed. “Whatever you might do, Captain, it is foolish to threaten an Adept.”

Morgan stood her ground. “A captain's first duty is to her crew. Second, to her ship. Third—and last—to any stray passengers that prove to be more trouble than they're worth. Looks like only two of ye'll bring me any ransom from the king.”

Holly's fear drained away. Her wand vibrated in its scabbard, and she drew it out in front of her. Jade's green eyes grew round, and even as Morgan's hand sought her sword hilt, she backed away. Holly stepped around the oak table, pressing her advantage. “Is that all we're worth to you?” she said. “Is it just about ransom now? The Adepts
will
come back someday, and I'm the one who will call them. But they'll never return unless there's something to come back
for
. We have to stand together. If everyone scatters, taking care of their own, Raethius will just pick us off one by one. This is bigger than you, can't you see that? And all you care about is this boat!”

Morgan sat back, fingering the dagger, and took a breath. “Ye've got it right at last. This boat
is
what I care about. And if he comes for ye—”

Suddenly a cry came from high in the crow's nest, echoed by Innes, who was at the helm on the poop deck: “Captain, a sail! A sail astern!”

Morgan lurched out of her chair and threw open the cabin door, with Holly at her heels. She seized the spyglass from her belt and held it to her eye, scanning the horizon. But she needed no glass; Holly saw it too: the black-sailed, three-masted schooner, small as a toy but clear on the horizon.

Morgan jerked the glass from her face. “Innes, the longboat! Back to shore at once, and gather all hands!” she shouted. “No more repairs; we can't wait. Bring the sails and give orders to hoist them at once. We sail in an hour.” She pushed past Holly, then turned back to her. “Here's yer chance, Adept. Show yer worth, and we'll keep ye on and get ye home. But fail us, and we'll not shelter ye. That's a promise.”

“I don't see why we can't talk to Morgan too,” Ben said, pouting. He sat next to Everett with a large woven basket between them. Not long after Holly left, Rowan had loaned Ben a sword and sent them into the jungle to pick the gourdlike yellow melons that had sprouted there since Holly's visit to the mountain.

“I'm not surprised,” Everett said now. He and Ben sawed on the tough melon vines with their swords. “She learns magic and chats with the captain while we're swabbing decks and picking melon things.”

“At least we got to come ashore,” Ben said. “I bet they've got Avery pumping the bilge.” They'd hacked up all the melon vines in their general vicinity. Ben wiped his forehead. “I don't see any more. And the basket's not even half full. I guess we'd better keep looking.”

They stood up and moved farther into the jungle, using their swords to slash at the foliage. “I hope Crews was right about there not being any people here,” Everett said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“I notice he didn't say anything about wild animals.” Ben smacked at a mosquito on his neck. “And who knows what diseases these things are carrying. That's all I need, something new to be allergic to.”