Son of a Dark Wizard (5 page)

Hoff slapped him again with his other hand.
“Enough of your madness, you mindless wad of wolf carcass! Get back
to work!”

The man trembled, tears dripping from his
eyes, and he pointed to something behind Hoff.

Hoff turned around. For a brief second, he
thought he saw a shadow pass in front of an airship window. A chill
ran up his spine, and goosebumps rose along his arms.

“Spirit,” the man whispered.

“Shut your face,” Hoff grunted, watching the
windows. “It must be pirates.”

“But captain, I felt—”

“I said shut your face.”

Hoff had often wondered what he would do if
he were ever threatened by pirates. Would he put his hands up and
surrender like a frightened child, letting the pirates take
whatever they wanted? Or would he give the pirates the fight they
deserved? “And I got this scar killing pirates,” was something Hoff
had always dreamed of saying with honesty. Perhaps he’d earn that
scar tonight.

“When a pirate steps onto my ship,” Hoff
said, “he steps onto his grave. Or into his graveyard. Or
something.” Hoff regretted that he had not daydreamed this moment
nearly enough. He turned to the man beside him and put a hand on
his shoulder. “If I don’t make it tonight, let my name live on in
your stories.” Not waiting for a reply, he turned to his ship and
walked toward the loading bridge.

Hoff kept a sword in the navigation room,
hidden behind a loose board on the back wall. Weaponry had been
forbidden on cargo ships by order of Vonlock, but Hoff knew he’d
need one someday. He wasn’t about to lose his ship without a
fight.

Climbing up the loading bridge, Hoff realized
all the lanterns had been extinguished. Fortunately, he knew his
ship well. He knew every turn, every doorway, how many footsteps it
took to walk every hall. He knew where the floor creaked and
sloped. He knew how to make no sound.

He inched his way through the airship’s
narrow passages, down halls and up staircases. At last, he came to
the navigation room, moonlight pouring through its windows. The sky
outside was cloudless, full of its countless stars, while black
shadows of distant mountains ran along the edge of the horizon, as
if some large portrait of the night sky had been torn in half.

Hoff kept in the shadows, listening for signs
that someone else was on the ship, but he heard nothing. Still, he
knew he wasn’t alone. He could feel it in the stillness of things.
The darkness was alive. It was breathing and waiting and
watching.

The air was cold. Too cold for this part of
Morrowgrand. The tips of Hoff’s fingers and the edges of his ears
were going numb. Maybe he had only smoked too many glowstones
tonight. How could it be so freezing?

Satisfied that the navigation room was as
empty as it appeared, Hoff stepped into the moonlight and, with his
hands sliding across the wall, made his way to his hidden
sword.

Toosh!

Hoff jumped as something crashed against one
of the windows. Hoff spun around to see the raven just beyond the
glass, its wings flapping wildly, its head drilling into the window
as if it expected it could just fly through.
Toosh!
It
slammed its whole body into the glass.
Toosh! Toosh!
Again
and again, as if possessed by some demon, the raven smacked its
head into the glass so forcefully that Hoff expected the glass to
crack or explode into a thousand shards.

But nothing happened and the raven flew
away.

Hoff took a deep breath and turned back to
his work, pulling a board from the wall and sliding a hand into the
narrow gap. He grabbed the sword within and pulled it out. It sang
a high tone as Hoff accidentally tapped its end against the wall,
but it was music to Hoff, like the voice of an angel. The sword was
long and narrow, perfect for stabbing a man between his ribs and
through his heart. Hoff knew exactly how to do it too. He’d worked
with swords in his youth, reducing countless straw men to mere
piles of straw.

He held the sword at his side and glanced
into the darkness beyond the navigation room door. “All right,” he
said. “I know you’re there.”

No answer.

“Come now,” Hoff called out, “don’t be a
coward. There is a place in the netherworld for you, and I will
open its door.”

Still nothing.

How does one tempt the darkness?
Hoff
thought. Sword in hand, he turned to the airship controls behind
him and pulled a lever, turned a cog, and spun the helm. The
airship shook and groaned, waking from its rest, and began to move,
floating, turning slowly to the side and rising from the
mountain.

“Now you cannot escape,” Hoff said.

And a response came from the darkness, a
whisper, like a winter wind through a forest. Hoff turned toward
the shadows, facing the icy breeze. His arms trembled and he saw
his breath on the air. He realized his guest was no sky pirate or
mountain spirit.

“Who are you?” Hoff called out, clutching his
sword tightly. “What do you want?”

“The ship is mine now,” came a whisper from
the dark.

“You cannot have it,” Hoff said, pointing his
sword at the shadows.

A dark form stepped forward into the
moonlight. A silhouette, like a moving shadow. The moonlight seemed
to have no effect on it. It was shorter than Hoff, its body narrow.
It looked as if it were dressed in a long coat, carrying a long
staff in one hand. It took slow steps forward, reaching out an arm
as if it meant to take the sword.

There was still an icy breeze in the air, and
it seemed to whisper a thousand different things, like a thousand
children chanting in the far distance.

“You cannot take my ship,” Hoff said. His
voice quivered and he held his sword close. “You cannot take my
ship.” It had become a plea.

The shadow figure continued forward, its hand
outstretched. No, it wasn’t going for the sword, Hoff realized. It
was reaching for his throat.

Hoff knew there would be death in that touch.
“Get back,” he warned.

“The ship is mine now,” the figure repeated,
its voice no longer a whisper. It was a male voice, sounded
young.

Hoff raised his sword and swung it at the
figure’s outstretched arm. He felt it strike flesh, and the shadow
figure recoiled, stumbling to the side.

Hoff raised his sword again, preparing to
strike another blow.

But the sword was pulled from his clutch as
if it had a will of its own. It lashed through the air, glinting in
the moonlight, then became a shadow, part of the figure’s
silhouette. The figure swung it to the side and it flew through the
air and through a side window, exploding through the glass.

In that moment, Hoff thought he saw the
darkness in his own soul, all his ugly pride and dishonesty and
greed alive and writhing like demons in some other world, waiting
for him to come, and he knew he was not prepared to die. He
collapsed to his knees and tried to beg, but could not find the
words. He tried to shout, but could not find his voice.

And then the young shadow figure dropped his
staff and lunged forward, catching Hoff’s face in his hands, so
cold they seemed to burn. Hoff looked into the shadow figure’s
eyes, bluish green, a young pale face. Then he felt his strength
fade away as the world turned to darkness.

“The ship is mine now.”

* * *

“Hoff?” a voice called out. “Hoff?”

Hoff opened his eyes to the sight of the
Nyrish moon. The air was warm. He was lying on rocky mountain
ground. There were no signs of the demons he thought he had seen.
He sat up, his arms weak.

“Hoff?”

Hoff turned to see his three men running
toward him down the mountainside, large torches in their hands.

“Hoff!” one of them called out. “Hoff! There
you are!”

Hoff stood up as the men approached. “What
happened?” he asked.

“We’ve been looking for you for hours,” one
of his men said. “You flew away without us, and Raskin said
something about pirates . . .”

“Spirits,” Raskin said.

“What was it captain?” the man asked.
“Pirates or spirits?”

Hoff looked up at the sky, searching for the
silhouette of his cargo ship among the stars. He wondered if what
he had experienced was real. The shadowy figure of a young man, the
icy air, the raven. It was like something from a terrible
dream.

“Hoff?”

Hoff turned to his men. “You piles of pig
vomit! You let pirates steal my ship!”

Hoff spent the rest of the night lying to his
men about what had happened and believing his own stories.

Sorren examined the long cut near his
shoulder on his flesh-and-blood arm. The wound did not look deep;
the trails and smears of dried blood underneath made it look worse
than it actually was. The airship’s owner had been a lousy
swordsmen, and the sword hadn’t been very sharp. The wound stung,
but he was more annoyed about the sleeve of his coat being
ruined.

Sorren had flown the airship above the
mountains and set it on a slow course northward. He and Kovola were
sitting in the airship’s cargo room, now empty save for a few
wobbly wooden chairs, a narrow wooden table, a log book full of
schedules and statistics, and writing supplies. Sorren’s staff
stood leaning in a corner near a softly glowing lantern. Quove sat
perched on the staff, facing his master.

“You let him slash you with a sword?” Kovola
asked.

“It’s only a small wound.” Sorren squeezed
the wound between his mechanical silver-copper fingers, testing the
strength of the clotted blood. Red beads of fresh blood emerged and
oozed down over his skin.

Kovola grimaced. “Even so,” he said, “why
wouldn’t you disarm him first?”

“I wanted to see what he would do.”

“What if he had stabbed you in the heart?”
Kovola asked.

“Are you genuinely worried,” Sorren said, “or
are you trying to make a point?”

“Both.”

Sorren wiped his mechanical hand on his
shirt. “I’m not going to die by a sword.” The wound was not likely
to leave a permanent scar, but he didn’t have the supplies to treat
it properly. All he could do for now was go back to the caverns and
clean the wound as best he could. “Where’d you put the mirror?”

Kovola thought for a moment, then stood up
and started toward the door. “Left it in the engine room.”

“You installed the lucator already?” Sorren
asked, pulling his torn and blood-stained sleeve back down over his
arm.

Kovola turned back and nodded. “I hope I did
it right.”

“Let me check,” Sorren said. He put his hands
on the table and slowed his breath. If the lucator was working
properly, he’d be able to find it with his mind. It would feel like
a weight somewhere in his subconscious, like some small inner voice
crying out for attention. It was just a matter of letting all other
thoughts float away. It didn’t take long. Sorren caught it in his
mind’s eye and activated it, letting a portion of his Nyrish power
flow into it. Not only would this eliminate the airship’s need for
fuel, it would also allow Sorren to, in a sense,
feel
the
airship, to feel what it was doing and whether or not it was
damaged. It made him and the airship
connected
.

Kovola shuddered. “Found it?”

Sorren let out his breath and nodded. “It’s
working.”

“Good,” Kovola said. “Let me get the mirror.”
He turned and left.

While Kovola went off to fetch the mirror,
Sorren made his way across the hall to the navigation room. He
ruffled through the pages of a journal he had left there earlier
and studied a map of the kingdom he had drawn inside. He took a
fountain pen from his pocket and wrote out some quick calculations,
then adjusted some dials on the airship’s control panels, rerouting
the airship’s course slightly eastward. He knew there was someone
in the Takotoa Forest who could heal his arm quickly.

Back in the cargo room, Kovola placed the
mirror on the table. Sorren whistled Quove to his shoulder and took
his staff from the corner. Enchanting the mirror only took a few
minutes, and the image of Thale appeared. He was sitting on the
cavern’s cold stone floor before the mirror, his head hidden by the
large covers of a thick musty old book. Sorren’s silver pocket
watch sat at his side.

Sorren leaned over the mirror. “Thale.”

Thale gasped and jerked backward, dropping
the book from his hands.
Thud
. “Sorren. You scared me.”

“How long?”

Thale glanced at the pocket watch. “Half an
hour.”

“That long?”

“Ooh.” Thale flinched, leaning back. “Your
arm.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Kovola peered down at Thale through the
mirror. “Have you been studying?”

“Yes,” Thale said. “I’m tired of reading.
When am I going to actually . . .” He wriggled his
fingers. “I want to
do
something.”

“It will take time,” Kovola said. “We don’t
have a laboratory at the moment. It makes things difficult. And you
still do not understand some of the basic theories.”

Thale looked down at the book before him, his
tovocular eye twisting back into his socket, and he sighed. “I
know.”

“Do you want to see the Ashwood Mountains?”
Sorren asked.

Thale looked up. “What?”

“The skies are clear and the moons are
bright,” Sorren said, motioning for Thale to crawl through the
portal with his silver-copper hand. “The kingdom is glowing.”

Thale leaned forward and crawled through the
portal as if he were climbing up through the table. After sliding
over the table’s edge, he looked around, studying the small dark
room as if it were some new castle, his tovocular eye whirring in
and out. “I’ve never been on an airship before.”

“The best view of the mountains is from the
navigation room windows, through there.” Sorren pointed out the
door. “Across the hall. Careful not to touch any controls.”