Scimitar Sun (11 page)

“Nonetheless, it was very kind of you to make the trip.”

Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom as he closed the door behind her. She felt herself breaking into a sweat with the oppressive heat, and she knew it was more the pyromage’s proximity than the actual temperature of the room. “I daresay you understand now why I could not have made the trip to
your
home. And my apologies for the discomfort I know you must be feeling right now, so out of your element.”

“Not so much discomfort, as just too warm.” She fanned her face, then felt a cool breeze at her neck and knew Mouse was fanning her with his wings. “I’ll be fine if I can just sit down. In my condition…”

“Oh, my goodness me! You are with child!” He stared at her abdomen as if a sea drake might pop out at any second to devour him. “I didn’t know, I assure you! Why, I would never have imposed on you in such a state. The trip must have been torture!”

“The trip wasn’t bad at all, Master Lightkeeper, but right now, I’m feeling a little faint.” The claim was no falsehood, for the heat was truly oppressive. Her blouse was already soaked through.

“Of course, of course.” He motioned her up the steps. “Can you climb the stairs? I would offer you my hand, but I daresay you could not take it.”

“No, no! I can make it on my own, thank you.” She blanched at the thought of touching the man. Her magic permeated her being, as did his, and the thought of their opposed energies connecting when their flesh met made her shudder. Instead, she gripped the stone wall and pulled herself along. By the time she reached the third landing and entered the lightkeeper’s study, she was breathing hard and sweat was rolling down her face.

“Here, here! Sit! I’m sorry about this, really I am.” He ushered her to a chair, where she gratefully sat. Mouse buzzed around her face, fanning her, worry crunching his little face. The breeze helped, but she still felt as if she were sitting inside an oven.

“Something to drink, perhaps?” she asked, loosening a couple of buttons on her blouse and fluttering the material to move some air. “Something cool?”

“Hmm…something cool,” the old man said, as if the concept were alien to him. “I don’t know if I can…Ah! I’ve got it!” He rummaged through a stack of rustling parchment, which seemed to Cynthia an unlikely place to find a cool drink, but withdrew a single sheet and waved it at her. “This should do nicely!”

“I don’t under—”

“I never thought I’d have the chance to use this, but here we are! That just goes to show you: whatever’s worth doing, is worth doing backwards!”

Now he really had her confused, but she refrained from interrupting as he went to his little pot-bellied stove and poured her a cup of steaming blackbrew. He put the cup on the low table before her, then drew an intricate symbol in the air just over the beverage. As he recited from the scroll in a low mumble, his finger left a trail of crimson fire. The paper burst into flames and Mouse yelped, diving behind Cynthia’s neck. In moments, the scroll had dissolved into fluttering bits of ash.

“There you are!” he said triumphantly, taking a step back.

Hesitantly, Cynthia reached out and grasped the cup. To her surprise and delight, the thick porcelain was ice cold, as was the beverage within. “Now that’s a handy trick!” she said as she pressed the cup’s moisture-beaded surface against her forehead. “Lovely. Thank you.”

“The least I could do!” He poured a cup for himself, fortified it from a silver hip flask, and took a seat across from her. “I originally designed the spell to stabilize fulminating mercury, but that didn’t work out quite like I’d planned. Took a month to rebuild my laboratory! Ha! What a mess!”

“That’s…very interesting,” she said, sipping the chilled blackbrew. It was bitter without cream to lighten it, but right then she would have welcomed a glass of rigging tar if it had been cold. Mouse came back out and sniffed the rim of the cup, muttered a quizzical string of chirps and resumed fanning her neck. “And the reason you asked me to come; you wrote that it was important, and that it had to do with magic. Elemental magic?”

“That I did, that I did!” He sipped noisily and leaned back. “This really started a very long time ago, years before you came into your own powers, and I thought the matter was settled. Then you, my dear, broke the rules!”

“Broke the rules? You mean by becoming a seamage so late?”

“Quite, quite! Now he won’t shut up about it, and the convergence draws nigh, so I thought…Well, I see I’m not making much sense, am I? I suppose it would be much easier if I simply introduced you.”

“Introduced me to—”

“Edan!” he shouted, startling her. “Edan, come meet Mistress Flaxal!”

The door to the study opened so quickly that it was obvious the young man with short orange-red hair had been standing right behind it. Cynthia deduced instantly that he was apprenticed to the lightkeeper; his scorched and burned clothing, as well as the tiny firesprite that hovered over his shoulder at the end of a golden chain, were dead giveaways. He bowed to the lightkeeper, while the firesprite tugged at the end of her chain and emitted a petulant chirp.

Mouse’s wings suddenly stopped fluttering and he fell into Cynthia’s lap, almost landing in her cup of chilled blackbrew. The firesprite noticed him, and her flaming hair fluttered and flickered. She flew to the end of her chain and smiled, her tiny flaming eyebrows arching speculatively.

“This is Edan, my long-time apprentice,” the lightkeeper said, waving the young man forward. “He had the misfortune to fail his rites of ascension some five years before you inexplicably managed yours. Edan, say hello to Mistress Cynthia Flaxal, Seamage of the Shattered Isles.”

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Edan said, his voice deeper than his boyish features had led her to expect. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’m…uh…” Her mind whirled ahead, finally comprehending the lightkeeper’s previous remarks. “I’m sure you have. Most of it probably utter fancy.” She turned to the lightkeeper and nodded in acknowledgement. “Edan wishes to become a pyromage, I assume?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am! More than anything!” Edan stepped forward, his hands clenched together in eagerness. With his advance, the firesprite fluttered to the length of the gold chain, coming within a foot of Cynthia’s knee, her eyes fixed on Mouse like two blazing rubies. Cynthia felt the innate heat of the tiny creature even through her dress.

“Edan! Your manners!” The lightkeeper’s tone was harsh; obviously he was a stern master. “Sit down and keep Flicker away from our guest. We can’t have her catching the lady’s dress on fire.”

“Thank you,” Cynthia said, in full agreement. Edan shortened the chain, earning a chirp of annoyance from the firesprite. Mouse managed to get his wings working again and fluttered aloft. Although he feared the firemage, he seemed enchanted by the other sprite and ventured closer, but Cynthia snatched him back. “And you want me to help in some way?”

“Exactly,” the lightkeeper said, sipping his blackbrew and nodding toward Edan. “Edan is well into his sixteenth year, far older than I ever would have thought ascension was possible. You, however, succeeded at an even more advanced age. The convergence draws near, and Edan would like to attempt the ascension again.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand how my own…um…ascension occurred,” Cynthia confessed with a wrinkled brow, remembering that stormy night two years before: the storm, the moon, the lightning…the mer. “So I’m not sure how I can be of assistance. And what is the convergence you say is near?”

“Why, the convergence of the sun and moon, of course!” The lightkeeper looked at her incredulously, as if she’d just asked him whether it was day or night outside. “With your own ascension to seamage, the crescent moon converged with the constellation of The Hilt, Odea’s favored stars. During a pyromage’s rites, the sun and moon converge to emulate this.” He fished a bronze pendant from under his tunic. It depicted a simple sunburst, rays radiating in all directions, but the face was covered with a perfectly black obsidian disc, so that the rays extended from darkness.

“You mean a solar eclipse.”

“Quite right! The eclipse must be a complete occlusion of the sun, so timing and location are critical. As to the ascension, well, a pyromage’s rites can usually be accomplished with a simple coal-fire, but, presuming from your own experience that the requirements intensify with advanced years, we — that is, Edan — decided that he would try something rather drastic.”

“And that is?” she asked the apprentice.

“I’d like to go to Fire Isle,” he said, trepidation evident in his voice.

Silence hung heavily in the room. Mouse finally broke it with a quizzical, “Eep?”

Cynthia could only agree. “But Fire Isle is a — ”

“An active volcano,” Edan finished for her. “That’s the whole point, ma’am. If it took a hurricane to appease Odea for your ascension, then a volcano might be enough for Phekkar.”

“We need someone who is not afraid to take young Edan to the island,” the lightkeeper explained. “No other ship’s captain I’ve asked would agree to sail within a league of the place.”

“Understandable,” Cynthia said. The waters around the volcano were treacherous. There was no place on the island to land; every inch of the coastline was unforgiving volcanic rock and ash. Even with her seamage skills, it would be tricky. She looked at the two men: the elder’s quirky nonchalance, the younger’s fervor mixed with trepidation. The trouble was, she knew how Edan felt at being denied the magic that was his birthright; only those with the inherent talent could even dream of becoming an elemental mage. She would have risked all to become a seamage, had she thought there were the slightest chance, and she could see that same determination in his eyes.

“I can take you there,” she said finally. Edan’s face lit up like a beacon, and the firesprite hovering over his shoulder gave a cheer, her hair flaring brightly. “But, um, might I ask…what exactly do you have to do at the island?”

“He must enter the heart of the fire at the precise moment of the full eclipse convergence,” the lightkeeper said intently, his eyes fixed upon his apprentice.

Mouse let out another questioning “Eep?”

“You mean you have to — ”

“I have to walk into the heart of the volcano during the eclipse,” Edan said.

Cynthia could hear in his voice that he knew all too well what his fate would be if Phekkar refused to accept him.

≈

Dura’s heavy boots crunched through the litter of wood shavings as she made her way from her rooms in the back of the lofting shed to the front door. She trailed one broad hand along the port-side hull of the new ship, her calloused palm rasping like a finely grained sanding block along the smooth cypress. Despite her misgivings about Cynthia’s cockeyed new design, she could feel the power in it. She might feign ignorance, especially when some blue-blood fop asked her ridiculous questions, but decades of working with Ghelfan had taught her more about the intricacies of ship design than most naval architects ever learned.

What she did not know, and what had brought her out of her room, was what had made the clatter that roused her from her reading. She knew every block, tackle, pulley and plank in
her
shop, and nothing she knew could have made such a noise, especially at this hour. She’d tucked the book of dwarvish poetry under her mattress, pulled on her boots and ventured forth, lantern in one hand, her sharp eyes squinting into the shadows.

At the starboard bow of the new ship she stopped, glaring down at a two-foot-long wrench that lay at her feet.

“Where the bloody blue blazes did you come from?” she asked, bending to pick up the tool. She looked around, but nothing else appeared to be out of place. She glanced up at the bow above her head, wondering if one of the workers might have left the wrench lying up there; but even if the tool had been left out, why would it fall?

“If there’s a rat in this shop…” She let the thought die. Her shop was clean and orderly. Perhaps a faint vibration from the slumbering volcano beneath the island had tipped the wrench off a precarious perch.

“Bloody careless…” She replaced the tool on the tool rack, then checked the side door. It didn’t lock, but was firmly closed. She opened it, peered around outside, then closed it and returned to her rooms. “Must be gettin’ old, lettin’ ‘em leave tools lyin’ about like tankards on a barroom floor,” she muttered as she closed her door and hung the lamp on its hook. She kicked off her boots, retrieved her book and lay back in her bunk, already composing the stern lecture she would give her crew.

≈

Huffington slipped the folded sheets of fine parchment into the lining of his doublet and eased open the door of the lofting shed’s office. Light shone through the shuttered window of the dwarf woman’s room onto the shaving-strewn floor. She had been lured out by the noise he’d made, but had returned quickly, before he’d had a chance to go through more than a couple of the drawers holding the myriad schematics and drawings.

Norris would have to be satisfied with the few papers he could filch; he could not risk continuing to rifle through the office with the dwarf’s room right next door. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation with the burly, noisy Dura. Explaining a corpse would be much more difficult than explaining a few missing plans.

He moved through the shadows toward the shed’s door, his soft leather boots whisking through the shavings with barely a rustle. He eased through the door into the sultry night, evading the notice of the few native folk who wandered about, even at this late hour. As far as he could tell, there were no guards and few locks anywhere on the island, so his return to his room in the keep went as unnoticed as his departure.

Chapter Eight

Hidden Agendas

“I wish you would stay a few more days, Count Norris. Cynthia will be back from Southaven soon, and you can speak directly with her.” Camilla watched helplessly as a squad of sailors loaded the count’s baggage onto one of the longboats. “You’ll get a much better picture of what her plans are for the Shattered Isles, and if you wish to discuss the designs of her vessels…”