Jackdaw!
He ripped out of bed. A short time later he set his staff down carefully just inside the doorway to the court. He was about to step outside when a huge raptor shape drifted down from the sky.
This was not his mysterious jackdaw. Raptors did not behave like that; he ducked back into the shadows of the door as the enormous bird—half the size of a northlands gryph—sailed down to the flagged stones. Its outline blurred, shrinking briefly and then altering into the form of a thin, short man who immediately swept a night-black cloak about him. Just before he was shrouded in its folds a deep ruby gleam at his breast caught Connor’s attention. It looked like some kind of gemstone hanging around the man’s neck.
Then the man was shrouded by the enveloping cloak. He blended with the night-shadows and made his way noiselessly to the jail.
Connor couldn’t stop a mage, so he dashed to the Commander’s headquarters. The time was obviously past midnight, as the building was empty. Connor eased the door open and faded inside, moving swiftly as he retrieved the Eye of Truth.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to overhear any conversation in the jail, not without alerting the man in the black cloak, but he could do the next best thing.
He waited for the night patrol to walk by, and as soon as they vanished beyond the jail he eased out in their wake. He walked slowly below the tiny windows—no more than air holes—of the jail, the sphere in his hand. Colors glinted faintly in the Eye, magical reflections from those inside. Connor kept moving until the colors rippled, forming the pattern belonging to the pirate. That pattern was as pale as a lick of candle flame next to the mage’s powerful glow, which was shot through with fire-bright crimson, orange, and yellow, formed around a sharp, malevolent green of intent.
Connor stilled, keeping the Eye between him and the jail wall. Then he let his mind sink into the endless, brilliant ripple of colors . . . and images began to flicker behind his eyes, quick and vivid as dreams.
A ship. Ah—a small brig. There, then gone again. Three burning ships. A man wearing a dark, hooded cloak. A wall, with gargoyles atop it, between huge, iron spikes . . . the little brig again, from the stern—
The ship, much clearer, from the pirates’ view.
Dizziness rippled across Connor’s vision, making him sway. He placed his feet apart, closed his eyes, and gripped the sphere. Again he concentrated.
Ship . . . Closer. Glimpse . . . . Yes! Across the back, in weatherworn letters,
Sandskeet
.
Fast images. Arrows falling, impossibly limp and green, into the water. Burning sails, burning rigging. Ropes turning into broken reeds of hemp.
And on the deck of the brig, glimpsed for a single heartbeat, a short, round brown-faced girl with wide blue eyes, her long, unruly braids streaked with yellow and brown.
Wren!
Connor fell out of the vision so fast he swayed, the Eye dropping to the ground as he clutched with both hands at his head. The world swayed sickeningly, but he managed to recover his balance, and just in time. The cadenced tramp of boots on gravel announced the return of the patrol.
He scooped up the sphere and slipped back inside the Commander’s building as the patrol rounded the jail corner into the main court, one yawning, the other giving a cursory look around.
Connor replaced the Eye, then crossed the empty courtyard to the barracks door. He reached for his staff, but his fingers only brushed the stone wall. He frowned, remembering clearly how he’d set the staff
right
here
.
A sharp, wailing cry rose from the air holes in the jail. “No! I
didn’t
talk! I didn’t— ahhhh!”
Connor dashed inside, feeling for his staff, and ran squarely into a chair he couldn’t see. He and the chair crashed to the stone floor, sparks shooting across his vision when his elbow smacked into the chair leg.
The sounds of running footsteps and the jingle and clank of gear filled the courtyard as the guards converged on the jail. Connor disentangled himself from the chair and felt around desperately for his staff.
He found it just as the weird, hot tingle of strong magic seared along his bones. Greenish light flickered in the courtyard. The patrol guards lay frozen on the ground. The sullen ember-glow of crimson snapped Connor’s gaze up as the mage raised his hands to make the transfer signs.
Connor and the mage gazed into one another’s astonished eyes, then the mage vanished.
The courtyard filled with swinging lanterns, and more guards arrived , some wearing odd combinations of day clothes and night shirts. Everyone talked and exclaimed when they found the stone-frozen guards.
The Commander arrived, his fingers impatiently buttoning his official coat. “Here, here, what’s all this?”
“The pirate is dead,” someone reported.
“And the night guard has been turned into stone!”
Connor squeezed between guards, and the Commander caught sight of his staff, and turned his way. “You awake too, Red? You’re the closest thing we’ve got to a mage—can you tell me what’s going on?”
“No,” Connor said, sick to the heart. “But I can tell you who is responsible. He was once a king. His name is Andreus, formerly of Senna Lirwan.”
“How do you know that?” the Commander demanded, raising his voice above the comments and questions of the growing crowd.
Connor gestured with the staff, impatient to be gone. “Because I recognized him just before he vanished by magic.” And to prevent a lot of useless questions about how a lowly clerk could possibly know a king well enough to recognize him, he stated, “I am Connor Dareneth Shaltar, Prince of Siradayel.”
The Commander rubbed his grizzled chin. “I’m not arguin’, though everything you’ve said raises ten fresh questions. But if this mage just killed a pirate, what business is that of yours, prince or no?”
Connor smiled at the Commander, having no idea just how frightening that smile was from someone everyone had previously shrugged off as a big, strong, amiable dreamer. “It isn’t. But he’s after a friend of mine, and I intend to get there first.”
“ . . . now that the wind’s dropped, as it usually does when the sun sets.”
Wren woke out of a soggy sleep. The gray, choppy, nervous sea reminded her somehow of a horse that smells trouble. The sky was a uniform gray that hid the sun. The others were all awake, looking tousled, as no one had had either a bath (other than head-plunges into the bucket of fresh water) or a cleaning frame for days.
Thad rapped his knuckles against the mast, a helpless, angry gesture. “We can’t be but a day or two from land,” he exclaimed. “That’s what’s so maddening.”
Lambin hunched over his tiranthe, strumming it softly. Two of its strings were missing now, but he had no replacements. “They have to know how close we are to land, but are risking it anyway. This chase just doesn’t make sense, even if that sorcerer-king is really after you, Wren. Would he really send all these ships just for a grudge?”
Wren sighed. “It doesn’t make sense to me either, but then nothing Andreus ever did made any sense. Unfortunately I can’t scry home to find out if there’s any news about him, so here we are.”
“Here we are,” Danal echoed, rubbing his hands.
Wren said, “Are you sure we’re near land?”
Patka was crouched over their tiny cooking pot, under which Wren had made a mage-fire. “I think Thaddy’s right. There are far too many birds over that way, besides those two big black daws.” She pointed high overhead.
Wren peered up. The birds they’d seen earlier on their journey had vanished days ago, but here were two of them back again, two great jackdaws circling and circling. She scowled. “I hope those aren’t spy birds.”
Wren bent over their water bucket, staring into its depths. If she could just scry the birds, at least enough to sense magic on them . . .
She watched the ripples bouncing back and forth across the bucket, like tiny slivers of scattered light, but she could not get anything at all from the birds.
“Shall I make a slingshot and chase them off?” Thad asked.
“Do it,” Patka exclaimed. “I hate being spied on.”
“But we don’t know that.” Wren shook her head. “If you toss things at them you might hurt one. Even if they are ensorcelled spy birds, it’s not the birds’ fault.”
Patka turned her back on the birds. “Then we won’t pay them any attention. See here. I’ve stewed the last of the fish we caught yesterday, flavoring it with all our remaining nuts.”
The light faded rapidly as the big pirate ships bore down steadily on them. Using the last of the light, they ate their meal and drank rain water. Then Wren and Danal practiced their spells.
Lambin had pointed out that six ships couldn’t surround you like horseback riders can. Not only did they have to deal with wind, but their yards and rigging could get tangled if they got too close together.
“And that’s just what we want,” Thad had said.
Wren and Danal looked over their fire-spelled biscuits, all lined up and ready, then rehearsed their other magical preparations
“Looks like three are leading,” Thad said, breaking into her reverie. “The others are hanging back.”
Lambin said, “An old sea-captain in our village told me once they almost always attack big ships in threes.”
Patka snorted. “Now they’re attacking a gig in threes.”
“A gig with a mage aboard,” Danal breathed.
The three pirates sailed steadily toward the gig, their sails—ghostly pale in the weak, swinging lantern-light— full and tight with the slow, steady wind right on their beam. The gig’s two sails were just as tight. Lambin and Danal stood at the ropes to keep the sails taut. Thad remained at the tiller.
Shadows flitted overheard, black against the purpling clouds. Wren looked up as the two jackdaws soared low, banked, and wheeled to glide back.
She settled in the stern sheets next to Thad.
“Gonna let them pirates get up to us?” Lambin asked, the end of his rope under his bare feet, his callused fingers toying restlessly with the tiranthe. He sent sweet chords drifting into the warm, humid air.
Danal said confidently, “The closer the better, for spells. Best of all is touching, but we don’t want that.” He grinned at Wren, who grinned back.
“Especially since we don’t have surprise on our side,” Wren began. “Hey!”
Glowing orange with fire, arrows arced toward them from the foremost ship.
“Aimed high,” Thad announced.
“Just as we guessed,” Patka said with some satisfaction.
Wren was too scared to feel any satisfaction about Thad’s guess proving right: he’d said that the pirates would not want to sink the gig, but to disable it so they could capture those on board. So they were aiming at the sails.
“Danal?” Wren wiped her sweaty hands down her tunic.
A
clear
and
calm
mind
. . .
no
chickens
! “Net first.”
Danal leaped to the prow of the gig. “Ready?”
Wren touched her seaweed net. This was a new idea, one she’d never tried before. “All right.”
“Up it goes!” Patka, Danal, and Lambin pulled the ropes that raised the seaweed net up to the top of the sails. The net flew up just as the first arrows reached it, and the fires snuffed out with snaky hisses. Then the arrows clattered into the net.
The pirates stopped shooting before Wren and her friends gathered more than a couple dozen arrows.
“Net down,” Wren said. “Danal, start the dunking.”
“I’ll help,” Patka declared.
Danal handed her his pile of arrows. “You dunk, I’ll say the words over each then hand the arrows to Lambin.”
Lambin had stowed his tiranthe. He stood ready with the bow they had made with his last two extra tiranthe strings, and a piece of the gunwale.
Danal started his spells, but his excitement made him speak too quickly. He ran several words together, and reversed two key phrases.
“Again,” Wren said, keeping her voice low, calm, but encouraging. “Clear and calm mind.”
Danal gripped an arrow, bending over it. In a stiff, slow, wooden voice he began again. Wren held her breath, her lips framing the words—
“Nafat.” And a tiny spurt of light. Danal looked up, joy lifting his round, smiling face. “Done!”
“One,” Patka said, eyeing the pirate ships. “We’re going to need more than one, little brother.”
Danal’s skinny shoulders hunched, and he gripped another arrow.
“One at a time and they get done,” Wren said. “Go ahead, Danal. Make it two.”
A volley of fire arrows shot over the intervening sea from all three ships.
Now it was Wren’s turn. She muttered her spell . . . and felt the magic dissipate. “What?”
Arrows rained all around them, some sticking in the hull, and three pierced their sail. The sharp smell of burning oil and wood nearly made Wren sneeze.
Thad whacked them away before the canvas could catch fire. More arrows thudded into the rail just below Danal and Patka.
Wren forced herself to close her eyes and breathe slow and deep. Once. Twice.
You have the ward ready. Calm. Clear.
This time she sensed the building of the magic. And just as another volley began their lethal arc through the air—
“Nafat!”
And the ward snapped around them like an invisible wall.
The arrows parted as if by a sudden wind, falling into the sea to float there on the waves.
“They’re just a distraction,” Lambin yelled, pointing.
Wren whipped around. From the sterns of the outer two ships came the silhouettes of two longboats full of pirates, oars dipping and rising swiftly.
“Smoke?” Danal asked, as Patka used an oar to collect some of the nearest arrows floating by.
“Get it ready.”
Wren shut her eyes against the terrifying sight of those longboats, and in a slow, deliberate voice began her illusion spell.
This one had to be exact, repeated over and over as she created a mirror of the gig, with each person on it.
When she gestured, Danal threw a tiny pinch of bread-crumbs on the fire below the cook pot, a pinch that had been laden with spells. A huge gout of smoke billowed up, drifting over the water to obscure the longboats.