ARC: The Wizard's Promise (21 page)

He was using wind-magic, but not any that I’d ever seen.

And then, with a gasp and a cry, Finnur sat up.

Asbera screamed and tried to lunge forward again, but I stopped her. I didn’t want her interfering with Isolfr’s spell – his hand was still tucked inside Finnur’s chest, and the magic still vibrated around us.

Finnur’s twisted expression hadn’t changed, and even though he sat up now, he was as still and waxy as before. The light in Isolfr’s skin pulsed. His song fell away, and the silence was like the silence in the eye of a hurricane. He stared at Finnur straight on.

Asbera whimpered.

Isolfr took a deep breath. He seemed to suck in all the air in the room. The lanterns flickered. The walls flapped and snapped, no longer wood but fabric. Asbera grabbed my arm so hard that her nails dug into my skin. But I didn’t move. I could only watch Isolfr, transfixed by this strange wind magic.

With his free hand, Isolfr opened Finnur’s mouth.

And kissed him.

But it wasn’t just a kiss; I could hear the air passing between them, a roaring rush like being caught in a wind tunnel. The air in the room grew thin and weak. It was hard for me to breathe.

Isolfr snapped his head back and yanked his hand, completely unbloodied, out of Finnur’s chest.

There was a long, terrible pause. Asbera sobbed.

And then Finnur blinked.

“Finnur!” Asbera ripped away from me. I didn’t stop her this time. Finnur looked over at her, dazed. Then he smiled. It was a smile to light up the darkness.

Asbera threw her arms around him. “I thought you were going to die,” she said, sobbing into his hair. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“I thought of you,” he whispered. “While I was trapped. Sometimes I saw your face–”

Asbera kissed him.

Isolfr was lying on the floor of the cabin, stretched out, pale. He looked like Pjetur. I knelt beside him. He dropped his head to the side and blinked up at me.

“Is he alive?” he asked.

I nodded. “And awake.”

Isolfr smiled and turned his gaze back to the ceiling. “That was more difficult than I expected. The poisons had gone in deep.”

I hesitated. Asbera was still weeping behind me, but I could hear the happiness in her tears. I felt that happiness myself. Finnur was alive.

Isolfr had saved him.

“We should give them some time alone,” I said.

Isolfr nodded, though he didn’t move. I stood up and held out my hand. When he took it, his skin was cold to the touch. I pulled him to his feet. He was lighter than I expected. There was something intangible about him. Like air, magic, wind.

He didn’t let go of my hand once he was standing, and he leaned up against me for balance. I could feel him shaking.

Asbera and Finnur ignored us both; they were too wrapped up in each other to care that we were still in the cabin. So I just led Isolfr out onto the deck. The captain’s quarters looked the way it always had, out here. Baltasar was gone. I wondered if the spell from the cabin had frightened him.

“Will they be safe?” I asked. “With the magic-sickness?”

Isolfr nodded. He stumbled over to the side of the boat and slumped down, his back pressed up against the railing. He took a deep breath. “It’s not true magic-sickness. It’ll fade in time.”

“Not true magic-sickness?” I frowned. The air was warm and unmoving, like summers in Kjora. I sat down beside Isolfr. “If you don’t mind me asking – what kind of magic
was
that anyway? It felt like it belonged to the wind–”

“It did.” Isolfr looked at me, his eyes clear and pale and icy. “But not the sort you can do. The sort I can do.”

I stared at him for a long time, trying to work things through in my head.

“Your sort can stop the Mists.”

He nodded.

“It comes from the north wind, doesn’t it?”

He sat very still. I didn’t think he was going to answer. But then he nodded again.

“So it was you,” I said. “The night the Mists attacked in the form of the Nalendan. You saved me.”

“No.” Isolfr gave a weak laugh. “No, I
helped
you. You were holding your own quite well, but human magic–” He shrugged. “You have a talent.”

I shrugged, but I looked away from him, my cheeks burning.

“Thank you,” I said, speaking to the air. The ocean glittered around us. “Thank you for everything.”
Everything
was such a simple, meaningless word, but I didn’t know how else to say it.

He seemed to understand.

“It was my pleasure,” Isolfr said.

Two days later, we held a funeral for Harald. I thought it would be at sea, because he died in the water, but Tuljans honor their dead with fire and smoke.

There was a procession from the
Annika
, the whole crew draped in garlands made of dried flowers and summer moss. Harald’s family was there, too. They were yak herders, land people. His younger brother was only ten or so, and he ran to the edge of the docks and stared out over the sparkling water.

“The first time he’s ever seen the ocean, probably,” Asbera said softly. “It’s rare for us to come so close to the edge of the land.”

Because Harald’s body had been lost to the Mists, his friends carved an effigy of him instead. They scraped his features into a post of soft pine and painted in his skin and eyes and hair. The effigy was laid down on a cloth of woven yak fur and scattered with the same white flowers the Tuljans tossed at the Nalendan. Protection, Asbera explained. To draw his soul out of the underworld of the Mists.

Finnur was quiet in that time before the procession started. He hung back, sipping a cup of mulled wine to stay warm. Asbera and I helped in the preparations, me following Asbera’s directions for how to drape the garlands and how to scatter the flowers. But Finnur just watched us.

“He’s been like that since he woke up,” Asbera said. We were lighting the candles for the procession, one after another, with natural fire and not a bit of enchantment. “He saw things, you know, while he was under.” Her voice hitched. “He was in a prison, he said, wrapped up in cold gray mist. He couldn’t move, but they showed him things, showed him terrible things happening to me, to our children – we don’t even
have
children.” Her hands were shaking. Gently, I took the lighting candle away from her.

“He’s back now,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll take some time, but he’ll get better.”

Asbera looked up at me.

“He’s got you,” I said. “He’ll be fine.”

She smiled, wavering and thin. But then she asked, “Why did this happen to us?”

I paused for a moment, thinking. Then I set the candles aside and hugged her. “Bad luck,” I whispered. “But Kolur will be gone soon. He’ll take the Mists’ interest away with him.”

Asbera wiped at her eyes. “I hope so.”

I hoped so, too. But at the same time, the thought of Kolur leaving almost made me sad.

The procession started. Musicians led the way, playing the clanging, droning song I associated with the costumed men, although no one wore costumes. Harald’s effigy followed, carried on its pallet by three of the crewmen and Baltasar. Then his family. Then the rest of us. We carried our candles close to our chests and stayed silent as the music led the way, winding us through the village. People stepped out of their shops and threw white flowers as if we were the Nalendan. They watched us with solemn faces.

Eventually, we came to the open fields. Here, villagers stood outside their tents, all of them holding their own candles. By now, it was almost dusk and the candles glowed like stars in the purple twilight. I had never seen anything like it, all those licks of flame gathering toward us as we moved deeper into the fields.

Our procession grew as we twisted through the tents. The music never stopped, but it still wasn’t enough to cover up the occasional bursts of throaty sobs.

We walked, and walked, and walked, until we came to a clearing paved over with smooth flat stones that were blackened and charred.

The music stopped.

For a long time, nothing happened. We stood in a ring around the stones, me and Asbera and Finnur all side by side. The only sounds were the wind through the grass and the muffled hush of weeping.

Then Baltasar and the crewmen set Harald’s effigy on the stones. They stepped back, and Harald’s mother took their place. Her whole body trembled as she knelt beside the effigy and anointed it with oil. She had covered her face with a scrap of tattered old lace, and in the flickering candlelight, she looked like a ghost.

She was the first to touch her candle to the effigy. The flame caught and trembled, and she blew out her candle and then stumbled back, into her husband’s arms. Baltasar went next, and then Harald’s father and brother. Then the rest of us. One at a time, villagers touched their candles to the effigy, even as it was already consumed by flames. By the time it was my turn, I could only see the fire. But Asbera whispered in my ear, “Just hold your candle to it,” and I did, grazing its tiny flame against the fire’s huge one.

I felt something, a tremor of magic inside me. The release of a small part of Harald’s soul, from the Mists back to our world.

I stepped back into the cold night air, my face stinging with the fire’s heat. I blew out my candle. That was a sort of magic, wasn’t it? That transfer of a small light into a large one.

We watched the fire burn. It rose higher against the starry sky, letting off flares of sparks and a great tail of dark smoke that, to my surprise, smelled sweet, like incense. Finnur stared into the fire, the light staining his skin orange. His eyes seemed to glow. Looking at him gave me a hollow feeling, but then he reached over and took Asbera by the hand.

I knew, looking at them, that it was enough.

That night, the
Crocus
was hung with dozens of tiny floating lanterns, the deck covered in dried sea lavender. Seimur played Tuljan songs on a carved guitar while Benedict sang along, both of them perched on the empty helm so their voices carried across the deck. All of the moored boats were lit up that night. A funeral in the evening and a celebration at night. It was the Tuljan way, Asbera told me.

I sat in one of the chairs that we’d dragged up from down below and sipped a glass of honeyed mead, watching as Asbera and Finnur spun each other around in an elaborate Tuljan dance. All of the
Annika
crew was there, and most of the folk from the docks and the people who lived in their tents out on the tundra. Almost all of them were clapping and stomping time to the music as Asbera and Finnur danced. It was reassuring to watch: Finnur’s skin was full of color, and he moved with a liquid grace that didn’t suit someone who had, two days ago, been trapped in an eternal sleep.

Finnur tossed Asbera up in the air and caught her at the waist. Everyone erupted into cheers, and Asbera laughed and covered Finnur with kisses. The music jangled on.

Cold whispered against the back of my neck, just for a moment, and then it was gone. I glanced up and saw Frida crawling up the ladder, her hair twisted into a dark, knotted braid.

Isolfr was with her.

No one else had seen them yet. I stood, mead sloshing over the side of my cup. Frida lifted her hand in greeting. Another cheer went up and rippled into the night.

“You still haven’t left,” I said when Frida and Isolfr walked over to join me.

“No,” Frida said. Isolfr didn’t look at me, only watched the dancing, the lights shining in his eyes. “Kolur hasn’t recovered.” She smiled. “He can at least come out of the water for a bit at a time now. So it should be soon.”

Isolfr looked over at her when she said
soon
, and then over at me. His expression was grave. “Yes,” he said. “Soon.”

“Don’t look so sad,” I told him. “You’re at a party.”

“I’m not sad.” He smiled. “But I don’t go to many parties.”

Frida shifted her weight. “I’d like something to drink.”

“Talk to old Muni there.” I pointed up at the bow of the ship, where Muni was perched with a great towering barrel. “He’s got the mead.”

Frida thanked me and slipped off into the crush of people. Finnur and Asbera were still dancing, both of them spinning wildly in tandem, although now their crowd of onlookers was dancing, too. For a moment, Isolfr and I watched them in silence.

“Finnur and Asbera haven’t noticed you’re here yet,” I said.

“I haven’t let them.”

I looked over at him. He looked like Pjetur, more or less, but the light of the lanterns seemed to strip his disguise away, revealing the imprint of his real features.

“Why not?” I said.

“I don’t want to steal the attention away from them.” Isolfr nodded. “It’s their party.”

I wasn’t certain if I believed him, but I decided to accept his answer. After a pause, I walked back over to my chair and sat down. Isolfr followed and crouched down beside me, one hand on the armrest.

“Why aren’t you dancing?” he asked.

“I don’t know any of these songs.” I took a drink of my mead. It had cooled in the chilly night air. “And I don’t know any Tuljan dances.”

“So if you were on Kjora, you’d be dancing?”

I smiled a little. “I guess.”

Isolfr was looking hard at me. He squeezed the armrest. “How much longer until you’re able to go home?”

Silence. The music played on, Seimur’s singing growing louder and more riotous. In the flash of dancers, I spotted Frida spinning around with Reynir. She held her drink high over her head, and her mouth was open in a continuous laugh.

“What did you tell her and Kolur?” I said. “About being able to heal Finnur?”

He stared off into the darkness beyond the boat.

“Isolfr!”

He sighed. “I made them forget.” He looked down at the floor. “I–I actually made all of them forget. Asbera and Finnur and everyone else in the village.”

“You what?” I sat up, knocking my drink over. It spilled across the floorboards in a gleaming amber strip. “Why? Why would you do that?”

“It’s easier.” He kept looking down. “They think the priests healed Finnur. What does it matter?”

“You didn’t make me forget.”

“No.” He looked up and his face was nothing like Pjetur’s. I was transfixed by it, caught in a spell. I couldn’t look away.

“Stop that,” I said.

“Stop what?”

“Holding me in place like that. Whenever I see the real you–”

“I can’t help it,” he sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t take your memory away because – because I need you, Hanna.”

I closed my eyes. The music flowed around us, and so did some vague, unfamiliar magic. His magic. I wondered if he’d made us invisible to the party. If we were shades now, or spirits. Ghosts.

“Not this again,” I said.

He put his hand on my arm, and I was shocked at how cold it was. Like ice water. I looked over at him.

“I’m not here because I want Kolur to win back the Jandanvari queen,” Isolfr said. “I’m here because we can’t let the Mists through to our world–”

“This isn’t your world.” I snatched my arm away from him.

“Yes, it is.”

The party twinkled on without us.

“You aren’t human,” I said softly. “That’s all I meant–”

“I’m not human, but this is still my world. My home. And I won’t see it destroyed by Lord Foxfollow.” Isolfr stared at me. “That’s what he wants, you know. The queen of Jandanvar will bring him here, and then he can hurt everyone the way he hurt Finnur.”

I trembled, remembering the horrors of the prison where Foxfollow held Finnur. I thought of Asbera weeping at Finnur’s side as he screamed in silent anguish.

I thought of that happening to everyone, north and south, east and west.

“You know that I’m right.”

“Why me?” I was shaking – I was cold, despite the heat globes drifting around the party. But I knew I wasn’t at the party anymore. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to keep warm. “What do you need me for? I’m no one special–”

“You have ties to the south wind,” Isolfr said. “And you have a talent for magic. You’re exactly who I need.”

“But I’m not even a proper witch. Just a fisherman’s apprentice.” I glared at him. “And you wanted
Frida
in the first place–”

“And I was too much of a coward to work with her, yes. Is that what you want to hear? That every time I look at her, I remember what she did to my brother?” Isolfr’s eyes shimmered, and for a moment, I was afraid he was going to cry. “I am a coward. That’s why I need you. Because you’re brave.”

I stared at him. “I don’t think you’re a coward,” I said.

“He’s tried to do it before, you know.”

“What?”

“Lord Foxfollow. He’s tried to come into our world before. And he was stopped. Twice.” Isolfr straightened his shoulders. His Pjetur disguise was melting away. “You’re named after one of the people who stopped him.”

I realized then that I couldn’t hear the music anymore. The party had receded into the darkness. Isolfr and I sat on an island of shadow, and the
Crocus
and all my friends were a dot of light far in the distance. But I didn’t care.

“What are you saying?” I said.

“Your mother served aboard the
Nadir
, didn’t she? Surely she told you the story about how Ananna stopped the Mists from crossing over into our world.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the stories.” I felt very cold. “Are you saying
that
was Lord Foxfollow? The lord she defeated?”

Isolfr nodded.

“So you want me to help you because Ananna and I have the same
name
?”

Isolfr scowled. “No. I want you to help me because you’re talented and brave. I already told you that.”

“Fine. But I’m not Ananna. She was a pirate queen when all that happened.”

Isolfr leaned close in close. He smelled of honey and ice-flowers. “How well do you know the stories?”

“I know them fine.”

“Then you should know she wasn’t a pirate queen when she defeated Lord Foxfollow. She was your age.” Isolfr leaned back.

I stared at him. “What? Are you sure about that?”

“Of course. The problem is that story usually gets entangled with her later adventures. But she was your age when she sent Lord Foxfollow back to the Mists. Now it’s your turn to do the same.”

I looked away from him. All around was a thick inky blackness, darker than night, and the faint glow of the party.

“All I want,” I said, staring at that glow, “is to go home.”

Isolfr grabbed my hand. This time, I let him. His sharp inhuman features gleamed like a star.

“I swear to you,” he said, in a voice like ice and snowfall, “that I’ll see you safely returned to your family. All I ask is that you sail to the north and stop Lord Foxfollow from permanently entering our world.”

For a moment, I was struck dumb. Isolfr squeezed my hand tighter.

“Make sail with us,” he said, and this time his voice was normal, musical, the voice I knew. “Make sail with us and join your magic with mine. It’s the only way.”

The only way. I looked at the party again, shrunken and bathed in light. It seemed like a wizard’s trick, a toy to enchant children. I thought about the jar of stones sitting aboard the
Cornflower
. Half empty. Nowhere close to enough to buy a ship and a crew.

I thought about the chill of speaking with Lord Foxfollow in the in-between world. I thought of the torment he had visited upon Finnur.

I’d never thought of myself as brave.

I looked at Isolfr. My heartbeat rushed in my ears.

“You can’t guarantee my safety,” I said. “But I’ll go with you anyway.”