The Wizard Hunters (12 page)

Tremaine swayed into the rail as the boat dipped into the next trough and rose on another wave. The peaks of the island, even more thickly wreathed in mist than usual, lay some way off their bow. Tremaine had no idea how far, not being enough of a sailor to gauge distances over water. The edge of the storm lay just past the island and she could see where the clouds dissolved into blue and the sun glittered off the water. “Gerard, look—” she pointed.

“I see it,” Gerard muttered. “We’re on the very edge of the storm. That’s oddly coincidental.”

Feraim cursed at a squawk from the speaking tube. He grabbed it, listened a moment, then threw it down.

“Stanis needs help in the engine room. We’re taking on water.”

Tremaine looked at Gerard, seeing the worry on his face.
It was that drop
, she realized. They must have come through the doorway at exactly the wrong moment, just above the trough of a wave, and the fall had been much harder because of it.

“I’ll go below,” Gerard said, tucking the sphere under his arm and swaying as he started toward the door to the aft cabin. “I can do a binding spell on the hull, that should help.”

Tremaine started after him, lurched as the deck moved underfoot, and caught herself awkwardly on the railing. “Do you want me to come along?”

“No, stay up here.”

He staggered as he opened the cabin door and Tremaine caught a glimpse of Florian’s worried face. Gerard closed the door behind him and she turned back to the frightening view out the port.

The boat troughed and crested again, their vision blocked by another spray of water and foam. Suddenly something else appeared on the water. Tremaine stared.
What the hell. . .
. She gasped, pointing.

There was another boat out there, cresting the next wave. It had sails, purple ones, and she could see figures frantically trying to furl them. It had no smokestack and even in the gray light she could see red, green, and gold painted designs on the wooden hull.

“Stanis, what’s going on down there?” Feraim was shouting into the speaking tube. “This storm’s not natural,” he growled.

The other boat vanished in the trough, leaving Tremaine pointing at empty sky and water. She tried again. “I saw a—”

Then something else filled the port, dropping out of the storm-wracked sky like death. It was a Gardier airship, black against the gray clouds, less than a hundred yards away.

Tremaine gripped the railing, thinking sourly,
just as things were getting interesting
. It hung there, a fragile fabrication of duralumin, linen and membranes, protected by a sorcery that left it untouched by the wind that made the heavy wood and metal of the compact Pilot Boat creak with strain. Feraim was shouting, hauling hard on the wheel, and that was the last thing Tremaine remembered.

F
  Chapter 6  
F

T
remaine dreamed she stood in the bow of the
Queen Ravenna
, the whole bulk of the great ship behind her. It was night, and under the clear chill moonlight a strange landscape of sharp hills rose across the water to either side, as if the
Ravenna
had sailed up a fjord. Tremaine glanced down and saw that the sea, dark and still as a sheet of glass, was far closer to the railing than it should be. She turned around and saw to her horror that the ship was sinking. Slowly, silently, with only a slight backward tilt to the deck, the ship was disappearing beneath the inert blackness, the water already up to the railings on the A deck. All the electric lights were out in the main deck and above, and she knew that the moment to give the warning had passed her by, that she had stood here with her back turned while the water got into the engines and the generators. There were no people on the deck or in the water, but the lifeboats were still in place. She could see everything in the moonlight that shone, cold and clear, out of a cloudless and starless night sky.
I did this
, she thought.
I brought us to this
. She turned back to the bow to see a man stood there now.

She knew it was her father though she couldn’t see his face. He told her not to jump, that the suction might pull her down with the ship, but to stay on as long as possible, to wait until the bow went under, then simply step off. That sounded like something he would know, so she waited until the cold still water rose above her waist and the deck dropped smoothly away from under her feet. Nicholas held her hand as they swam to shore, and it wasn’t nearly so far away as it looked.

Cold salt water splashed her in the face and Tremaine woke to a screech of stressed metal and splintering wood. She groped at the crazily tilted deck, realizing she was crammed into the back corner of the Pilot Boat’s steering cabin. Her head pounded and she couldn’t tell how much of her skewed perspective was the angle of the deck and how much was a concussion.
Gardier, storm, dead
, she remembered. Except of course with her luck, her death was going to drag out horribly and painfully. “This is what I get for putting things off,” she muttered disgustedly as she struggled to push herself upright.

Glass from the shattered windows covered the deck and the ceiling was sagging. Waves washed through the empty port just above her and she knew the boat must be wedged atop something. The door to the aft cabin was crunched, splintered on the edges as the sides of the hatch had pressed in on it. She looked around vaguely, freezing when she saw Captain Feraim. He was tangled in the broken wheel, covered with glass and blood. “Captain!” She dug her fingers into the uneven boards and hauled herself toward him.

She reached him, grabbing on to the broken end of the wheel’s post to stay upright. As she tried to feel for his heartbeat she realized blood was running down the deck, mixed with seawater to stream in rivulets between the boards. He was cut to ribbons from the port’s shattered glass.

I was standing right beside him
. She stared down at her hand, wet with his blood. She didn’t have a scratch on her.

“Tremaine!” It was Florian, somewhere outside the cabin.

“In here.” Remembering that Feraim had always carried a pistol on these trips, Tremaine steeled herself and put her hand into the pocket of his greatcoat. She drew out only a handful of warm fragments of twisted metal that stank faintly of gunpowder. Of course, the Gardier had used then-favorite spell.

Cursing, she pushed away from the wall, managed to grab the brass-lined doorframe. Her stomach gave a warning lurch as she stretched to step over Feraim’s body. She was just beginning to realize the enormity of the disaster.
We can’t let the Gardier get the sphere. Not Arisilde’s last sphere
. If it hadn’t already been destroyed; the spell might have shattered its mechanical parts too.

Tremaine pulled herself through the door and onto the open deck. The wind had died and white clouds of fog hung in shrouds above the choppy gray water. She saw Florian climbing up the sharply angled deck by holding tightly to the railing. The other girl had a bloody nose and the beginnings of a black eye. Tremaine grabbed her arm and they steadied each other. “Are you all right?” Florian asked, blinking unsteadily at her.

“I’m fine.” Tremaine realized Florian was staring at her bloody hand and she wiped it on her middy. “Captain Feraim’s dead.” The Pilot Boat was jammed against a reef; she could see the black rock under the bow, green-gray waves washing steadily against it. The rock disappeared into the mist only a few yards past the bow, but she could see gray shapes of boulders in the dimness. “We’re on that island,” she said blankly, then shook her head, trying to get her brain moving. The boat wasn’t covered by Gardier and the airship was nowhere in sight, though with this mist that meant nothing. “Where’s Gerard?”

“I think he was still down in the hold. I was in the other cabin and I got knocked out.” Florian stumbled and caught herself on the bent railing as the boat shifted under them. She sounded dazed. “I couldn’t find Ander or Stanis—”

“We’ve got to get off this boat.” Still gripping the other woman’s arm, Tremaine slid cautiously down toward the hatch that opened into the stern cabin, bracing her feet against the wall. Florian stretched across to grab the railing, helping Tremaine stay upright as she reached the hatch.

Tremaine shoved at the unresponsive door, then let go of Florian to throw her whole weight against it. It still didn’t budge. Florian added her weight and after three tries, the door popped open, revealing the tumbled cabin with books and charts slung every which way. Tremaine aimed herself at the hatch that led down to the hold, let go, and staggered across the angled floor, fetching up against the far wall.

Florian stumbled in after her, catching herself against the table still bolted to the floor. “Tremaine, careful.”

“Get a bag and grab things.” She waved helplessly at the lockers across the cabin that held the emergency lamps, rations and other equipment. The wireless, of course, was shattered to bits from the spell.

Tremaine turned to the closed hatch, hoping it wasn’t jammed like the other one. She heard Florian rummaging in a cabinet, then the other girl said, “Here’s a rope.” The loose coil hit Tremaine in the back of the head for emphasis.

“Oh, good.” She caught it against her waist as it unraveled and looped a length around her shoulder. Wood cracked and the boat shifted ominously, underlining the urgency. Tremaine grabbed the door handle and shoved with all her strength, almost flinging herself down into the dark hold when it swung abruptly open. The stepladder had been twisted and wrenched off its support and she could see water lapping at the bottom. “Gerard!” she called desperately.

“Tremaine?” She heard thumps and bangs from the compartment, then Gerard appeared below. She tossed the rope down to him, glancing back to make sure Florian was tying the end off on the bolted table leg. The case with the sphere hung over Gerard’s shoulder in a makeshift sling fashioned out of a sheet.

Tremaine steadied the rope as Gerard climbed, bracing herself against the cabin wall. Florian slid to the opposite side of the hatch to grab the sorcerer’s arm and help him pull himself up. “Stanis is down there, dead,” Gerard reported, his voice grim as he got shakily to his feet and steadied his spectacles. His clothes were soaked and he had a bleeding cut on his temple. “He was down below, near the engine when the Gardier’s machinery destruction spell engaged.”

Tremaine grimaced.
Stanis
. “The sphere wasn’t affected?”

“Apparently not. I was leaning over it when the spell hit, and it even seems to have protected my watch.” He tapped the object in question, still hanging intact from his vest pocket. He shook his head with a bitter expression. “If we had only known it could do that—”

“We could have kept it next to the engine.” More vital information they couldn’t tell the Institute. And she had the suspicion they were too far from the target point to trigger the reverse adjuration to take them back home. When they had tested the distances on earlier trips the target point had had a radius of less than a mile, and the island had been much further away than that. Tremaine pulled up the rope and collected it into an awkward bundle. “Gerard, we’ve got to”—the boat shifted again with a great crack of abused wood and metal, punctuating her words—“go.”

“Yes, of course.” He made sure the sling with the sphere was still secure, then hauled himself across the cabin toward the hatch on the port side. “Captain Feraim and Ander?”

“Feraim’s dead,” Florian told him, climbing back to the other side of the cabin. She tore open one of the cabinets and grimaced when she saw the rifles stored there were now nothing but pieces, trickling out of the open rack. She moved on to the next. “We haven’t found Ander yet but—” Her foot knocked against something, scooting it across the floor to land in the middle of the cabin. Tremaine stared at it. It was the grip of a pistol.

“Ander’s,” she said with a wince. “He wasn’t down below?”

“No. He must have been washed overboard. Poor boy,” Gerard said grimly, turning back to the hatch. “Come on.”

Florian gave Tremaine a stricken look, then shook herself and turned back to the cabinet. Tremaine climbed across the cabin to help as the other girl dumped the wireless operator’s manuals out of their canvas satchel.
I can’t think about it right now
. She helped Florian stuff in cans and packages of provisions, matches and the medical kit.

The door grated against rock as Gerard finally forced the port hatch open. Through it Tremaine could see gray daylight and fog drifting over the dark rock wedged under the boat. The railing all along that side was crashed.

The deck shifted abruptly and Tremaine staggered. Florian caught her arm, keeping her from falling into the cabinets. Florian muttered, “That wasn’t good.”

“Now,” Gerard said, motioning urgently to them, “we’re slipping off.”

“Go, we’re right behind you!” Tremaine pushed off the wall toward him, shouldering the satchel of provisions. Florian grabbed one of the oil lamps and straggled after her.

Gerard climbed out of the hatch, making his way cautiously through the shattered wood to the knob of rock that was holding the hull in place. Tremaine took his supporting hand gratefully and scrambled after him.

Just as Florian jumped down out of the hatch behind her the boat shifted again. She yelped and Tremaine and Gerard both grabbed for her, Gerard catching her arm and Tremaine her jacket flap, pulling her to safety. The hull ground slowly down the black rock. With a great crack and a screech of abused metal, the boat slid away from the reef, rolling away into the waves. “That was close,” Florian breathed, stumbling a little as she gained her balance on the wet rock.

Tremaine nodded in relief. Continuing its long slow roll, the boat capsized, gray foam washing over the scarred hull. They retreated hastily, Tremaine looking back to see the wreck fading into the fog.

“Well, that’s that,” Gerard said wearily. He took the oil lamp from Florian and they carefully picked their way along the ridge. “I just hope this protrusion is actually attached to the island.” He paused, looking around at the fog, trying to get his bearings.