The Voyage to Magical North (21 page)

Any minute now, he thought, he was going to sit down. Just for a little while. Any … minute …

He paused, looking down, a frown cracking the ice on his face. “What's happening to the ground?”

The ice looked different, less white and more amber, as if there was magic buried so deeply he couldn't feel it.

Tom stumbled into him. Cassie stopped. “That's it—we're turning back. Even Magical North isn't worth dying for.”

“Who said anything about dying?” asked Marfak West. “We're here.” He stamped hard, then bent his knees and jumped.

Cracks ran across the ice. With a roar like a bear, the ground gave way.

 

C
HAPTER
24

A person passes through seven distinct stages when falling to his death. One's whole life does indeed pass before the eyes. Sensation is amplified as the screaming brain tries to cram in every last scrap of information before the universe turns forever dark.

(
From
ADVENTURES
IN
MAGIC
AND
SCIENCE:
THE
RESEARCH
AND
EXPERIMENTS
OF
MARFAK
WEST)

Ewan Hughes was the first to see the ocean darken. A ship-sized patch of sea off the starboard side, rapidly turning the color of ink. The pirates edged closer together in the middle of the deck. The
Onion
moved sluggishly, bumping between icebergs.

“Faster!” yelled Ewan, though it didn't do any good. The sails flapped once or twice and gave up on the effort. The dark patch of sea raced closer and abruptly disappeared beneath the
Onion
.

The ship sat still for a second, then something slammed into her hull from below. The pirates yelled, and the ones who weren't still tied to various things grabbed hold of one another, which wasn't a lot of use, as it only meant they all slid together. The cage with Tom's surviving messenger gull rocked on the mast where it hung. Zen ran in circles beneath it until the deck tipped a little more and he dug his claws into the planks and hung on.

Then, as quickly as it had started, the sea slapped them back flat. Groaning and bruised, everyone tried to get untangled from everyone else.

“That was clo—” began Trudi.

A jet of spray arched across them and hit the mainmast. The ship rocked. Ewan Hughes grabbed for a trailing rope and missed. Luckily, the
Onion
chose that moment to tilt back the other way, or he'd have been tossed into the sea. He scrambled back to his knees and stayed there, his mouth wide open.

A vast blue-gray head rose out of the water right ahead of them, and an eye the size of a planet regarded them indifferently. Ewan Hughes drew himself to his feet. All fear drained out of him: This was beyond fear. At least the fish-birds had made the fight seem personal.

The whale sized up the entire ship in a single look. A mouth opened, wide enough to swallow the
Onion
whole. Thought flooded back into Ewan's brain.

“The anchor!” he snapped.

He ran to it. Tim Burre grabbed hold, too, and together they threw it. It bounced off the whale's head and made a hole in the deck.

Ewan swore, but the whale vanished. For a second, Ewan allowed himself to believe they'd beaten it. He ran to the side of the ship and peered over. A shadow in the water shrank, then rapidly expanded. Ewan Hughes had less than a second to register the fact that something enormous was going to hit them before a tail burst through the icebergs. It paused overhead for the space of a heartbeat and crashed down, catching the
Onion
on the port side.

The ship skipped sideways like a pebble on a pond. Everywhere, ropes snapped free. Tim Burre tried to haul the anchor out of the deck but couldn't move it. Then the great blue tail swung around. It missed him—just—but came back a moment later and flicked the
Onion
up in the air. They landed with a prow-shattering jar. Waves washed across the deck. Trudi lost her hold on the mainsail and slid, screaming. Tim Burre forgot the anchor and ran after her.

“Hold on!” he yelled.

“What do you think I'm doing?” Trudi's expression changed. “Tim, look out!”

A shadow fell across the deck. The whale loomed over them, its tail thrashing the waves into yellow foam. Spray and ice filled the air. The mainmast cracked and toppled.

“Tim Burre!” shouted Ewan.

It was too late.

Trudi rolled free, but the mast gave a sickening crunch and fell right where Tim Burre was standing. He disappeared into the deck with a cry. And all around, pirates screamed and wood began to split as the
Onion
sank lower into the freezing ocean.

*   *   *

Peter had thought that falling to his death would be different than it turned out to be. There wasn't enough time even to begin thinking, and the only part of his life that flashed before his eyes was the split second in which he screamed and grabbed a chunk of ice, which snapped off in his hands. That moment seemed to go on forever, though. He didn't even notice he'd stopped falling until a pair of boots kicked him in the head and Brine's voice said, “Ouch.”

Peter lay still, waiting for his thoughts to catch up with him. His companions sprawled around him, groaning. Tom's glasses hung off his face in pieces. The others had scrapes and bruises. Marfak West should have come off worst, with his hands chained behind his back, but he was the first of them to sit up.

“Where are we?” asked Peter, coughing. He struggled upright, looked around, and gaped in astonishment.

They were at the edge of an underground cavern so big the other side was lost in shadow. Sunlight flooded in through the jagged holes everyone had made when they'd fallen, and glittering spears of ice hung from the remaining ceiling. The middle of the cavern was a perfectly oval lake of dark blue water, but to reach it—and this was the part Peter was having the most trouble taking in—you'd have to clamber over an entire mountain of shiny, glittering treasure.

The floor was not so much paved with gold as buried beneath it—heaps of coins so deep you could plunge your arm in up to the shoulder and still not touch the bottom. Necklaces coiled in piles like snakes. Bracelets, rings, and earrings spilled out of decaying sacks. Discarded rainbows of emeralds, rubies, and sapphires lay in swathes.

“How could so much treasure end up here?” asked Rob Grosse.

Marfak West kicked a breastplate aside and stood up. “Nobody knows. The fact is, it's here. I promised you treasure. Help yourselves.”

The pirates needed no more encouragement. They whooped and ran at the golden piles. Bill Lightning ripped open a sack of coins and started stuffing them into his pockets. Cassie picked up a sword with emeralds in the hilt and swished it.

“It's raining diamonds,” shouted Rob, tossing handfuls of them in the air.

Peter watched them all uneasily. They were behaving perfectly normally, he supposed. This much treasure ought to be exciting. But he couldn't shake off the feeling that it was only bits of metal and stone, and none of it really mattered. He edged back to join Brine, who was trying to put Tom's glasses back together. “I don't like this,” he said.

“Me neither.” She turned her head. “What's Marfak West doing?”

The magician was picking his way across the piles of treasure to the lake in the center. “Peter,” he called. “Come and have a look at this.”

“Don't,” Brine said. Peter brushed her hand aside.

“It's all right.” He crossed the treasure to join Marfak West.

The lake was frozen over, but Peter could see water moving beneath the thin layer of ice. He put his foot on it, and cracks spread. Marfak West pulled him back.

Peter gasped, realizing the magician was no longer chained. “How did you do that?”

“Practice,” said Marfak West. His voice was coldly mocking.

Across the cavern, Cassie noticed what was happening and started forward. “Let the boy go. Now.”

“Make me.” Marfak West's hand closed around Peter's wrist. “You really are completely stupid,” he said conversationally to Peter. “You don't know the first thing about power or how to use it.” He forced Peter's hand up over his head. “You don't even know, for example, that you have a piece of starshell embedded in your hand.”

Peter experienced a moment of ice-cold shock, then the center of his palm blazed with heat and magic flooded out. Amber light flashed across the cavern. Necklaces writhed like snakes around Cassie's feet and tripped her. A suit of armor fell on Rob Grosse. Bill Lightning's sword twisted in his hand and stabbed him through the foot. Tom squeaked out a battle cry and prepared to charge, but the coins on the floor shimmered and opened up like quicksand, swallowing him and Brine.

Marfak West wrapped an arm around Peter's throat, half choking him. “Stay where you are, or I'll break his neck,” he threatened needlessly, as everyone was too entangled in treasure to move.

Peter felt the last of the magic drain from his hand. His palm turned cold. Marfak West grunted in annoyance and threw him aside onto a pile of armor. Peter's vision swarmed with stars. He scrambled back to his feet, gasping painfully. Brine shouted something, but her voice was lost in the roaring in his ears.

Marfak West had tricked him. He'd pretended friendship, taught him things so that Peter would trust him, only so that he could stand and laugh at him now. Peter had known it all along, but he'd ignored the warnings. He'd wanted to believe that he was the only one who really knew Marfak West and, as usual, it turned out that he was wrong and the rest of the world was right.

He'd deal with the rest of the world later. For now, Marfak West was not going to get away with this. He wrested a sword out of a pile of treasure. “You can't go anywhere,” he said, “you might as well surrender.”

“That's what you think.” The magician raised his arms and plunged them straight into the icy lake. He hissed in pain and then he stood up again and turned to face them all. A lazy smile lifted the corners of his mouth. It was a smile that said whatever anyone had been planning to do, it was far, far too late.

The sword fell from Peter's hand. Brine, struggling out of a quicksand made of coins, sneezed explosively and sat back down.

Marfak West held something roughly the shape of an egg, but if it was an egg, it was the largest one Peter had ever seen. The bird who'd laid it would have had to be the size of a horse. It filled the magician's hands completely. And it glowed. Beneath a coating of frost, it shone softly, pure amber. It could have been made of rock or metal, or ice packed down into a hard ball, but of course it wasn't. Because something else survived the presence of magic, something besides gold and precious jewels, and Marfak West was holding it in his hands.

“Fools,” said Marfak West. “All this way for a sight of Magical North and some common treasure.”

Magic spilled out of the starshell and wound around Peter's legs like chains. Looking at the others, he saw that they were held fast, too. Magical North was not the end of the journey for Marfak West—it was the beginning. The beginning of a new reign of terror, only now he'd have the biggest piece of starshell in the whole world and not even Cassie O'Pia would be able to stop him.

The ground trembled. Marfak West calmly tucked a fold of his coat around the starshell and stepped backward into the lake. “Thank you for the use of your ship, Captain,” he said. “Unfortunately, I've already sunk her and everybody is dead. I have my own transport from here.” The lake began to churn around him.

Peter clenched his fists until they hurt. He'd been lied to, used, consistently pushed around. He'd had enough of it.

“Peter, do something,” shouted Brine.

Why did everyone expect him to fix things when they went wrong? His vision turned scarlet, and he did something that he knew was impossible—he caught up a thick blade of magic from the air and, without thinking, he used it like a sword to cut himself free. The spell gave way around his legs so suddenly he almost fell, but he kept his feet and plunged straight on into the lake. He crashed into Marfak West and grabbed hold of him as the water closed over them both.

They seemed to fall through water for a very long time. Peter's chest burned. He felt air leaking away from his nose and mouth. His arms became too heavy for him to hold on to Marfak West any longer, and he let go. His coat snagged on something, or maybe something grabbed his coat—he wasn't sure. A second before he opened his mouth, a great darkness rushed upon him and swallowed him whole.

 

C
HAPTER
25

COLD
FISH-BIRD
SOUP

Ingredients:

1 fish-bird

Salt

Onions

Water (or you can use seawater and leave out the salt)

Cut the fish-bird meat into small pieces (can be done with a cutlass) and boil with the onions in plenty of salted water until falling apart. Allow to cool, and serve cold. If you are near any icebergs, you may chip off pieces and add them to the soup to chill it more quickly.

(
From
COOKING
UP
A
STORME—
THE
RECIPES
OF
A
GOURMET
PIRATE)

“Tim Burre!” shouted Ewan. He ran to the fallen mast and heaved. The deck creaked under him. Black spots danced across Ewan's vision, and he felt a muscle in his shoulder tear, but then the mast started to move. With a final gasp of effort, he hurled it aside, where it made another hole in the deck.