“Also,” Julian said distractedly, reaching for another book, “what’s this about me and Leo? Shelby told me yesterday that you said we were an item.”
It took Noa a moment to remember that she had in fact said this, and to understand that Shelby must be the green-eyed sentry who’d summoned her to the council meeting. “What? You and Leo?”
Julian wasn’t fooled. “You shouldn’t spread rumors like that, Noa. Were you making fun of him? Just because someone could use a bath doesn’t mean they deserve—”
“I wasn’t making fun,” she said through gritted teeth, thinking how rich it was for Julian to lecture her about mocking someone’s hygiene when he went around turning people into zombies and feeding them to sea serpents. There were moments when she wanted to strangle him, and others when she wondered why she hadn’t already.
She looked at the book, and again felt that scratchy feeling. Was it her imagination, or were there more shadows in Julian’s tower than usual? “What power do you think that book has?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his head, making more of his hair stick up. “The ancient mages didn’t provide any clues. Well—except for this, I suppose. It was marking one of the pages.”
He pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to her. It was a strip of hide from some sort of animal. The fur was brownish and soft. As she stroked it, some of the fibers crumbled. Like the book, the hide was very old.
“What if it’s something bad?” Noa said.
“There are no ‘bad’ magics,” Julian said, and Noa finished for him quickly, before he could go off on one of his soliloquys, “Only magics that people are afraid of. I know, I know.” She tapped her fingers on her knee. “Have you had the other mages look at it?”
“Yes. None of them can read it, either.”
“Maybe nobody can. Maybe magic dies if it’s locked away too long.”
“Maybe.” Julian sighed. Absently, he reached out and plucked leaves from Noa’s hair that she must have accumulated during her morning survey. He didn’t look irritated anymore, only tired. “So what should we do?”
Noa’s eyebrows shot up into her scalp. Julian smiled. “I’m not sure I deserve that look. It’s not as if I never ask for your advice.”
You used to. But Noa didn’t want to start an argument now. In fact, with Julian sitting there smiling at her with his old smile, she just wanted to forgive him for everything.
“We might not be able to speak whatever language is in that book,” she said. “But we stopped Xavier from getting it. So you should congratulate your mages, and the sailors, too, especially after scaring them half to death yesterday. Where else has Xavier been looking for the Lost Words?”
“The southern reaches of the Ayora Sea. Greenwash Strait. Thadeus doesn’t know if Xavier has ships there now, or if they’ve come and gone. That’s the extent of his knowledge—we’d have to capture another one of Xavier’s mages to get more recent information.”
Noa fixed him with her iciest stare. “And if we do capture one?”
Julian pressed his hand against his face with a groan. “We’ll tickle their toes until they talk. I don’t care—you’re in charge of prisoners from now on, Noabell. I can’t take any more harassment from you. I still have a headache, you know.”
“Serves you right,” Noa said loftily, but inside she was exulting. True, refraining from doing a bad thing because you didn’t like being lectured wasn’t quite the same as having morals about it, but she chose to see it as progress nevertheless.
“We should set sail for Greenwash Strait today,” she said. “Hopefully the king hasn’t sent his entire navy there. You can obsess over that old book on the way.”
“Fine.” His gaze drifted, and he lost his Old Julian look, which was replaced with what Noa thought of as his Dark Lord Julian look. “I wouldn’t mind if the king’s navy was there. I have a few ideas for how to repay Xavier for those mangoes.”
Noa stood up. “Well, you don’t need my help with that.”
“I can give you advice, Julian,” Mite piped up.
Julian rose. “I’m sure you can, Maita. Would this advice be pertaining to cakes, by chance? I’m afraid you have to eat your salad before we discuss that subject.”
“It’s not about cakes!” Mite said. “It’s about the cats. I have an idea for how we can stop them catching birds.”
“And bugs, too, I suppose.”
As Mite launched to a complicated description of a cat warning system involving magical bells and light beams, Noa slipped away. Before the tower door closed behind her, she glanced over her shoulder. It seemed for a moment as if a shadow hung in the air above Julian, stretching dark tendrils out as if to embrace him. But then she blinked, and the apparition vanished.
That afternoon, Noa tried to write in her Chronicle, but her thoughts kept drifting back to the book from Evert and those strange, swimmy words. She didn’t know why she was so fascinated by some moldy old magical book that was probably useless, but for some reason, part of her wanted to look at it again.
She paced through the castle, along the beach, then back up to the castle (there were still cakes in the kitchen, and she tucked two chocolate creams into the pockets of her cloak). Eventually, her wandering feet took her to the throne room.
It was empty, except for Asha and another mage, who sat on one of the benches with their heads bent together in conversation. Asha smiled at her when she came in.
Noa plopped down on the throne. Sometimes she came here when she wanted to think—sitting on the throne felt like being at the prow with the wind in her hair. Her feet didn’t quite touch the floor, but that was okay.
What were they going to do if they got to Greenwash Strait and it was bristling with the king’s warships? What if they got there and found not only warships, but a strange new magic at the command of Xavier’s mages? She opened the Chronicle and unfolded the map of Florean she had glued into the inside of the cover. But even as she tried to focus on strategy—usually her favorite subject—her thoughts kept returning to the book.
Her gaze fell on a strange statue that had appeared beside the council table. It was a woman, carved from bronze, her mouth open in a silent scream. Something about the statue made Noa’s skin ripple with goose bumps.
She hopped off the throne and walked over to it, peering into the statue’s face. Then she recoiled.
It was Esmalda.
“Doesn’t much improve her, does it?” a voice said.
Noa started back with a cry, and nearly tripped over Asha, who put out an arm to steady her.
“J-Julian did this?” she said.
“Who else?” Asha looked grim. “I wasn’t here to witness it. But I hear it wasn’t pretty.”
Noa forced herself to look away from Esmalda’s horrified face. “Why?”
Asha blinked. “Didn’t he tell you? Renne caught her writing a letter to Xavier, offering to turn spy for him—for a price.”
Noa’s mouth fell open. “Esmalda?”
Asha nodded. “You’re not the only one who was surprised. It seemed like she worshipped the ground King Julian walked on. But I’ve found that when it comes to spies, it’s always the person you least suspect.”
Noa’s thoughts whirled. Julian had once turned one of the king’s soldiers into a tree. That had been different, though—the man had snuck onto the island and stabbed a villager. Esmalda was one of his own mages, and a councillor. As much as Noa disliked her, she was one of them.
“When did he do this?” Her mouth felt dry.
“This morning. You saw the mood he was in when he returned from Evert. I suspect Esmalda could have fared worse.”
Noa didn’t see how. Her hand shaking, she reached out and brushed her fingers against Esmalda’s wrist. It was cold as stone, and horribly smooth. Noa imagined that cold metal creeping up her legs, freezing her stomach and stopping her heart—
“Why did he leave her here?” she asked.
“He said it wou
ld be a warning.” Noa had never heard Asha criticize Julian, and there was no criticism in her voice now. But she didn’t look happy. “In case anyone else is tempted to betray him.”
Noa couldn’t sleep.
She stared up at the ceiling of her bedroom. It was a nice bedroom, in her opinion. At first, she had missed her room in the royal palace in Florean City, and had tried to make this one look as similar as possible. But even after the mages moved the walls around, and even with all the furniture in the right spots, it would never look like her old bedroom. Her old room had overlooked a manicured garden full of daisies, miconia, and lanternflowers; her new bedroom looked out over a rocky shore often populated by smelly sea lions. Her old bedroom had a floor of polished black marble; the new one was uneven with missing tesserae that formed a simple blue-and-white pattern. Eventually, though, she had come to like the new bedroom just as well, with its shell-shaped balcony and stone walls that kept it cool even on hot days. Over time, she had filled it with blue whales—they were woven into the rug, and painted onto the walls, and lined the windowsill in the form of ceramic figurines. Julian had even placed little whale-shaped lights in the ceiling that came on after sunset.
Noa pressed Willow to her chest. Her thoughts kept returning to the book. She knew with a bone-deep certainty that there was something wrong about the power it held. She didn’t know how she knew, but that didn’t make her any less convinced. Julian might believe that magic couldn’t be bad, but Noa wasn’t so sure. Maybe there was a good reason why the mages had bound that old language and hidden the book away. And maybe Julian shouldn’t have the power it contained. Maybe it would only make him stronger, and crueler, and less like the old Julian.
All these fears mixed together with her strange desire to look at the book again, to hold it in her hands and stare at those mysterious words. She had never felt that way about any magical object before, and it made her even more convinced that something about the book was wrong.
Finally, after tossing and turning for an eternity, Noa flung back the covers and hopped out of bed, pausing only to tuck Willow back in. She picked up a lavastick, blowing on the end to stoke the ember, then padded past Mite’s room and up the stairs that led to Julian’s tower. The door was still locked.
Grimacing, Noa stuck her finger into the lock. There was a small scraping sound, which was disturbing, and then something that felt like a tiny creature breathing on her fingernail, which was worse, and then the lock clicked and Noa pushed the door open.
She gazed into darkness. A strange, shifting darkness. Setting her jaw, she stepped inside.
The moon hadn’t risen yet, but starlight shone through the tower windows, and the lava slumbered in its cauldron, dark but for a few gleaming fissures. She didn’t see the book anywhere, so she quietly climbed the spiral staircase up to Julian’s loft. This held only a bed and a carved wooden wardrobe that Julian had owned since he was a boy. Piled around the bed were more books, seemingly at random. Julian himself was sprawled across the bed on his stomach, fast asleep. His arm dangled over the side, as if reaching for the plain black book that lay just beyond his fingertips.
Noa shook her head. It was just like Julian to fall asleep with a book, even if he couldn’t read it. She pulled the blankets over him. He didn’t stir, and she doubted he would if she yelled in his ear. The spell he’d used to turn Evert right side out had been big, and he’d take a few days to recover.
The book also did nothing strange when Noa picked it up, nor when she carried it downstairs to the lavaplace. Reckoner, slumbering beside the dying glow, let out a growl when she settled into Julian’s chair, but he went back to sleep after she let him smell her hand. Julian’s cats ignored her completely, except for one who invisibly pounced on her slipper. Noa abandoned the slipper to its fate, and it hopped onto the windowsill, where it began to molt like a strange purple bird.
Her hands shook. Perhaps it was only her imagination, but it seemed like the tower had grown darker since she had picked up the book, as if the stars gleaming through the windows had dimmed.
She ran her fingers along the spine. She didn’t know why, but holding it felt good. Right.
She opened the book.
Inside the cover was a mess of words, just as illegible as any magical language. And yet, as Noa stared at them, the words began to dance. It was as if the letters were rearranging themselves. Noa flicked to the first page, and then, slowly, dreamily, through the rest of the chapter. Whoever had written it had a fine hand, though in places—perhaps because they had been in a hurry—some words were marred with blots of ink. Noa was so intent on the book that she didn’t hear the murmuring begin again.
Now that she actually focused on it, she found that the book was not, in fact, divided into chapters, but letters—it was indeed a dictionary, filled with words that rolled strangely off Noa’s tongue. That was when she realized two things at once:
One, she was reading a magical language.
And two, the man in the gray robe was standing in front of her.
He towered over her, blocking out the light, and his face was in shadow. But it was the same man she had glimpsed before. Reckoner’s snout was practically resting on the man’s bare foot, yet the dragon gave no sign he could see him.
“W-who are you?” Noa said.
The man gave no reply. The lavalight outlined his body—there was something terribly wrong with it. His outline was smudged and frayed, with little drifting tendrils of gray, as if he were made of fog. In places he was entirely translucent. He reminded Noa of a bit of cloth left outside in the sun and rain, worn threadbare by the elements.
The man eyed Noa with a greedy interest. Shaking, she slid off the chair and backed away. But she walked into something cold and unyielding as a stone wall. She spun, and found herself staring at a woman. She was also clad in a gray robe, and in her eyes was the same hunger. She gripped Noa by the shoulder, and her fingers were cold as snow.
“Julian!” Noa screamed. She tried to wrench away, but another pair of icy hands rose out of nowhere and gripped her other arm. “Julian!”
The tower was now full of threadbare figures. Some had tendrils for arms and legs, while others were mere smudges of gray. Her screaming woke Reckoner, who gave an indignant snort. But that was the last thing she heard. A shadow rose above her that was like the shadow she had seen before, rising over Julian. It reminded her of a curtain fluttering in the breeze. It terrified and fascinated her—she wanted to reach out a hand and push it aside, to see what was behind it. But before she could do anything, the cold hands thrust her into the air, and through the darkness.
12
Noa Finds a Door under a Shadow
Noa screamed, squeezing her eyes shut. Behind the shadow, the world was cold and dark. She stumbled forward, choking. The air was thick and tasted of ash.
She opened her eyes. She was no longer in the castle. And she knew with a bone-deep certainty that she wasn’t on Astrae. All around her was a hazy darkness. Strange ruins reared up: a tower lying on its side; a cracked marble fountain; a stone archway leading to nothing.
The threadbare people shoved her along, murmuring all the while. Their voices were as frayed as the rest of them, and she could make out only the occasional word. Noa tripped over a bit of rubble. She didn’t fall normally, but drifted slowly to the ground like an autumn leaf. When she lifted her hands, they were dark with ash.
The man reached out to pull her to her feet. She let herself go limp, and then, when his grip loosened, she wrenched her arm free.
She lowered her head and ran right into the woman who was in her way. She was so frayed and translucent that she didn’t have a face. When Noa rammed into her, she drifted several yards before falling into a heap on the ground.
Noa ran.
Running wasn’t the same in this strange place, either. It was slower, and every step sent her gliding several paces through the air before her foot touched ground again. Beyond her stretched hills
of shadowy sand and valleys so dark she couldn’t see the bottom, covered with ruins: houses and palaces and amphitheaters, all jumbled together as if a child had scooped them up and then smashed them onto the ground. The architecture wasn’t at all the same; some of the ruins looked Florean, while others looked foreign or impossibly ancient. Noa whirled to see if the threadbare people were following her. They were, but they didn’t seem able to move as fast as she could. After a few minutes, she left them behind. She didn’t stop running, though.
Finally, she could go no farther. She fell to the ground, her lungs burning, coughing from the smoky air. She was in a little circle of standing stones, in the shadow of something that looked like the broken hull of a ship, half-buried in sand. Noa crept deeper into the shadow and drew her knees up, shaking all over. Would the threadbare people find her here? She could see nothing but ruins and hills of sand. This place was horribly silent. Her knee was bleeding—she must have skinned it when she tripped.
Tears trickled down her cheeks. She wanted Julian. She wanted Mom. She clutched at her charm bracelet, pressing the blue whales into her skin.
“Noa?”
“Julian!” Noa sprang to her feet. She didn’t see him, though she looked in every possible direction. “Where are you? Where am I?”
“Noa, listen to me.” Julian’s voice was muffled, as if he were speaking from behind a wall. “You need to go back to the place where you fell through.”
“Where I fell through?”
“Yes. Do you remember?”
“I don’t know. I ran for a long time. There were people . . . things chasing me. Can you come get me?” Her voice sounded high and shaky, like a little girl’s, but she was too frightened to care.
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry, Noabell.”
“Why not? Where am I?”
There was a slight pause. “Let’s just focus on getting you out,” Julian said, and Noa realized that wherever she was, it must be terrible, if Julian was afraid to tell her the truth. “Try following the sound of my voice.”
The Language of Ghosts Page 11