The Spell of Undoing (12 page)

Tab didn't mind really. She was living her dream.

They had classes in just about everything, though it would be months before the apprentices even began to think of specialising. Tab's favourite lessons were in levitation, foretelling, spells and charms, wind-working and storm-bringing, magical defence and attack, and most of all in rifting – that rarest of all gifts, the ability to hear the deep whispering of the rift currents, to locate the vortexes … and find the way home for Quentaris …

Most of her fellow students were ahead of Tab, having started their apprenticeships nearly two months earlier. Amelia was actually two years in front. The guild believed in pairing younger and older students, and the arrangement seemed to work out well for both.

Tab didn't see much of Philmon at first. Shortly after her arrival he had accused her of acting first and thinking later, which had stung her, for he had gained a promotion due to her. And Fontagu failed to turn up. Verris visited her a few times but he had no news of the ex-actor, and Tab slowly came to the belief that Fontagu had perished in the battle with Tolrush.

She went one day to the Hall of the Fallen, had Fontagu's name added to the Quentaran casualty list and paid to have a candle lit on the anniversary of the battle.

Here, in the echoing silences of the Hall, she whispered goodbye to Fontagu and wished him well.

And after that, life continued.

Tab's only real complaint in this whole period was that they never got to do serious magic. She mentioned it late one evening to Amelia, who was sitting on her bed, yawning, trying to read a thick volume called
Levitating in Emergencies,
which was one of Amelia's specialities.

Amelia groaned and closed the book with a snap.

‘I am so tired,’ she said. ‘I think my eyes are about to fall out of my head.’

Tab had to ask her question a second time. Amelia just shook her head.

‘You need to walk before you can fly. I know it all seems a bit of a mish-mash at first, but trust me, all those little bits build up into bigger bits. And suddenly they all come together. Like, a brick is nothing, yes? But thousands of them built this school. Millions of them built Quentaris. Once you can make a brick, you can make anything.’

‘I know all that,’ said Tab, ‘it's just that I'd like to –’

‘Be a natural, like Nisha or Stanas,’ Amelia interrupted. ‘Wouldn't we all, Tab? But they had to learn how to control their raw power. Nothing's ever easy, even though we'd like it to be.’

‘But I
feel
as though I have something in me, Amelia. I –’

But Amelia was already snoring softly.

Tab scowled with frustration. Here she was, the girl who had saved Quentaris almost single-handedly, and she was learning how to levitate pins, or remove warts. She wanted to do something big, really big. Something that would make people sit up and take notice of her, that would make the
magicians
take notice of her.

Tab slumped back on to her bed.

She was tired, too, but her growing frustration stopped her from sleeping. Even her visions – her mind-melding with animals – seemed to have faded away, though that might be in part because the magicians’ school was warded by strong magic, which perhaps suppressed her abilities.

Desperate to sleep, Tab wove a relaxation diagram in the air. She had learnt the rudimentary spell during an enlightening lesson that day. Being the first layer of a set of ten, it was a minor spell.

Apart from a tingling sensation, Tab felt nothing. Perhaps she hadn't drawn the diagram particularly well. She tried again, this time adding a few curlicues. A fluorescent sheen morphed in the air then dissipated. ‘Oh!’ Tab gasped, sitting back. She watched the miniscule specks of twinkling magic fall like a shower.

Tab was tempted to try the spell one more time. But Dorissa had warned her students that magic didn't like being messed with. If it wasn't working, then leave well enough alone. There might be a reason why it wasn't forming.

However, Tab eventually drifted off to sleep.

Around midnight she woke suddenly. She was ‘in’ a dingy room lit by a single shaft of daylight. Three Tolrushians slept on the bare ground. Another stood watch by a broken window. A cloth was draped across the gaping hole. A burly Tolrushian grunted, climbed to his feet, and peered out the window. Tab started. Before the Tolrushian dropped the cloth back into place she had glimpsed the mainmast off in the distance.

The Tolrushians were right here in Quentaris!

Tab studied the room. A wolfhound stirred, got to its feet, and came towards her, nuzzling her. So she must be seeing through the eyes of a second wolfhound.

The other wolfhound stepped back and growled at her, as though it could sense her presence.

‘Settle,’ the Tolrushian at the window whispered. The wolfhound padded across to a bundle on the ground. ‘Leave it,’ said the man gruffly. He knelt and stroked the wolfhound's wiry coat. ‘You'll have more food than you can eat soon, Slezzer.’

The mound of rags stirred. Tab made the animal move closer. Someone or something was tied up there, but the hessian wrapped about the body made it impossible for Tab to tell who or what it might be.

‘All right you lazy lot, get up. It's time.’ The two Tolrushians still stretched out on the floor groaned, blinking. ‘Bruta, Carris, you mind that bag of slag. Once we get what we've come for we're off this pile of rock.’

The meld faded.

Tab sat up. Across the room, Amelia slept peacefully, still clasping the thick tome on levitation. Tab felt a chill. What did the Tolrushians want? And how had they managed to sneak on board Quentaris? She had sensed their tension, had smelt their nervous sweat.

Something bad was about to happen, Tab knew.

‘Amelia,’ Tab hissed. She reached over and shook the girl, but Amelia didn't stir. Tab was about to shake her again but stopped.

Maybe this was her chance to do something that even the magicians would have to acknowledge. If she foiled the spies’ plans they would see she had true power after all, not just beginner's luck. Maybe she'd even get put up a class or two.

There was another reason too. Florian Eftangeny. She had run into him a week after the battle and was stunned to see him wearing the scarlet robes of the Magicians’ Guild. Somehow – probably by bribery, she thought – he had become a personal apprentice to a magician. She herself was wearing the black and silver tunic and cloak of an apprentice in the Guild itself.

Florian sneered. ‘Well, if it isn't the little rift girl, made good.’

‘You can talk,’ she retorted.

‘Oh, I earned this – saved a magician, I did, just as a Tolrushian was about to cut off his head.’

‘They don't give you an apprenticeship for that!’

‘Quite right,’ said Florian, ‘they don't. So it must be the magic spell I used to stop the brute. I must say, it surprised me nearly as much as the Tolrushian. Blasted him over the battlement, it did. The magician was
so
appreciative. Said I had real talent, unlike the kind of dumb luck certain others seem to have … ’

Tab said hotly, ‘It wasn't dumb luck. I can
see
things!’

‘Yes, but it's not really
magic,
is it? I mean, it doesn't
do
anything.’

‘It does!’

‘Is that a challenge, then?’

‘Yes!’

They stood near the edge of the harbour on Spray Lane. All around them stood stalls selling fish. ‘Let's see what you've got then,’ said Florian. He removed a magic wand from under his robes and brandished it. Accomplished magicians didn't use wands; they preferred words, and hands, to weave spells.

But Tab didn't know many spells yet, not real ones. And levitating pins wasn't going to impress Florian. He was already conjuring something. A basket of fish guts and scales trembled. Tab realised that he was trying to fling it at her, but was having some trouble.

Angry, Tab grabbed the basket. Before Florian knew what was happening, she had dumped it over his head, plastering him with stinking fish innards.

‘I'll get you!’ Florian screamed.

Tab didn't wait around to find out what he would do in retaliation. She fled. Two streets away, she could still hear his howls of rage, and couldn't stop grinning. A little later she wondered if she had gone too far. It served him right, though. He had only got what he had meant for her.

But the incident left her feeling moody.

Florian could do genuine magic, and she couldn't. It wasn't fair. What use was mind-melding with animals? It hardly seemed like magic at all.

She wanted to make things
happen.
She wanted to control water like old Stanas once did, she wanted to cast fire, like Nisha Fairsight. She wanted …

More than anything right now, she wanted to beat Florian.

She made up her mind. She would capture the Tolrushians by herself. Even Florian couldn't do that.

She got up, dressed quickly, and tip-toed down the long corridor outside her room. Moments later she was outside in the street. High above, two moons peeked through the upside rigging. In the distance a city watchman strode across a square and disappeared into a shadowy street.

She would have to be careful. First, she must find the spies. Only then could she rouse the City Watch: if the spies hid or escaped without being seen, nobody would believe her and then she would truly be in trouble. The magicians might even kick her out of school.

For a second she hesitated. Maybe she should wake somebody …

She had just convinced herself that this was the right thing to do when Florian's words came back to haunt her. She flushed again. No. She would do this herself. She could handle it. After all, she was the girl who had already saved Quentaris once. She would do it again.

The streets were reasonably quiet. With fewer people since the Rupture, Quentaris had changed: life had become more peaceful – or it
had
been till Tolrush attacked. Tab passed a few night watchmen. They glanced at her as she hurried past but her initiate's clothing saved her from closer inspection. No one really wanted to get on the wrong side of the magician-dominated Navigators’ Guild.

Tab skirted Idler's Gardens. Like the Thieves’ Quarter, it was one of those places where shady characters plied their trade. Tab stopped in the shadows beneath a monument to some long dead magician, and opened her mind. She was a little nervous. She had never deliberately tried to re-establish contact with an animal she had already been linked to. Tab sat at the foot of the monument and concentrated. She wasn't entirely sure she could make it happen; usually, the mind-melds just sprang upon her, often when she slept or dozed.

She tried to remember what it felt like to be the wolfhound: the sense of sinew and strength in its long-limbed body; the panting need for breath; its beating heart … and the excitement, the anticipation, that soon there would be action, fighting,
blood
… She felt a sudden swooping urge to howl at the sky and with an audible
click
she was back inside the hound …

She frowned. ‘Where are you?’ she whispered, then all at once she recognised the Square of Dreams. Two Tolrushians moved with stealthy purpose through the shadows, pausing and listening. The other two, plus one wolfhound, were missing.

As a wolfhound began to growl, she broke contact and ran out of the park to find the raiding party.

Tab arrived at the square out of breath. With her heart hammering against her ribs, she slid into the nearest shadow. She tried to meld again, reaching out with her mind …

… then something hit her from behind and she crashed forward into darkness.

Tab woke several times. A buzzing sounded close by, and wind buffeted her. When she tried to move her hands she discovered she was gripped by claw-like pincers. A herb-soaked cloth was strapped around her mouth – that accounted for her drowsiness. Her head nodded and she lost consciousness again. In that brief moment of wakefulness Tab had seen she was hanging from a flying machine. And though she couldn't see the land below, she knew it was a very long way down.