“I would, but she can barely move,” Julian said. “Being separated from her daughter almost killed her. That was Xavier’s plan, after all—to incapacitate my greatest weapon, and then sweep in and destroy us all when he found the Lost Words.” He ran his hands through his hair. “How do they know we’re here?”
“Renne,” Noa said, her voice grim. “He’s a spy. Mite saw him sending a letter yesterday. That must be how Xavier always seems to know where we are.”
Julian looked as if he’d been struck. “Oh, Renne,” he said. On the deck of the ship, another man came to stand by Gabriela’s side. Even at that distance, Noa could see the worshipful look he gave her.
“I knew he had feelings for her,” Julian said. “He was furious when I abandoned her on that island. I just never thought . . .”
Gabriela raised her arms, her lips moving. Another dark, glittering cloud coalesced out of thin air and floated toward Astrae.
“It’s her,” Noa murmured. “She can speak it. What have I done?”
“What have you done? Well, you foiled Gabriela’s last plot,” Julian said. “And provided me with excellent advice, and saved the island numerous times. I could go on.” He let out a breath of laughter. “So, Gabriela’s a dark magician, is she? I wish I had time to gloat properly.”
He turned to Asha. “Have the salt mages keep at it. And send someone to round up the others. I won’t have my mages cowering before Gabriela’s specters.” Asha nodded, and he turned to Noa and Mite. “We have to come up with a plan.”
“What is there to plan?” Noa said. “Move the island. They’ve passed the shoals, so they can see us now, but if we move away from them, your spell will hide us.”
“I don’t want to run away.” Julian’s jaw was set. “Not this time. This time, we finish it.”
“Julian—” Noa began.
“Noa, if we run, they’ll come after us again.” He met her eyes. “And again. And again. You know that.”
A dozen arguments rose to Noa’s lips. There would surely come a time when they were better prepared to fight Xavier. When they had more allies, more mages. But Noa realized that she didn’t want to wait for that time. She thought of Gabriela’s betrayal. Xavier storming around the palace as if it had always been his.
She wanted to fight now.
To her surprise, it was Mite who piped up. “Can’t you throw a storm at the ships, Julian?”
“No, Maita.” Julian rubbed his eyes. “All Xavier’s warships are defended against magical attack.”
“Magical attack . . . ,” Noa murmured. Calculations flitted through her head. Astrae’s coordinates, the date, the season. If she was right . . . Julian and Mite watched her with nearly identical hopeful expressions.
Noa nodded. A smile was breaking across her face. “I have an idea.”
“Finally!” Mite said with what in Noa’s opinion was an unnecessary degree of exasperation.
“Follow me,” she said, and raced up the beach.
They ran across the hillside and onto the path that led to the Nose, the same place from which Noa had observed the mysterious island they had crashed into. It felt like years ago but had actually been only a few weeks. The shade cast by the scalesia forest was a welcome change from the beating sun, and the branches were alive with finches and warblers and flycatchers going about their day-to-day business, oblivious or indifferent to magical battles.
“We have something better than warships,” Noa said, panting. “Something Xavier will never expect. If you can reach them.”
A few minutes later, they arrived at the top. Noa leaned against the rock that crowned it, out of breath. Mite’s cheeks were bright red. She flopped facedown in the shade. “My side hurts!”
Noa turned slowly, peering in all directions. The mountaintop afforded a view of the entire island, as well as King Xavier’s warships. The dark cloud had completely covered the beach, and the wind carried the sound of screams all the way up the mountain. Noa wondered what new horrors the mages down there were dealing with. Had Gabriela made the walruses on the rocks look like ravenous sea serpents?
The cloud could reach anything above the water, change it, warp it. But it couldn’t touch anything below the water—it was a cloud, after all.
“Julian,” she said, “call the whales.”
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What?”
“Astrae is close to one of the migration paths,” Noa said. “I know where they are—at this time of year, there are hundreds of them heading south. If you can get one to collide with Xavier’s ship, you’ll capsize it!”
“Noa,” Julian said slowly, “I can’t call the whales. I can’t speak whale language.”
She grabbed his hand. “You don’t have to. Just—just lure them here. They follow the krill, you know.”
“I don’t, actually.”
“Julian.” Noa yanked on his arm, hauling him down so they were face-to-face. “You can make bees out of water. You can make your own reflection jump up and run around! You do this sort of flashy, show-offy stuff all the time! Now there’s actually a need for it.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed. “‘Flashy, show-offy’?”
“Oh, come on!” Noa said. “Just do it!”
“All right,” he said, after staring at her a moment longer. “But I want you to know that of all the mad plots you’ve come up with, this takes the cake.”
He turned to the sea and began to chant. It was the most ridiculous spell Noa had ever heard—he sounded like he had a lot of bubbles stuck in his throat, bubbles that fizzed and whistled and popped. Mite actually giggled. But after a moment, the sea around Xavier’s ships began to darken, as if a cloud was rising through the water. The cloud made the water writhe and foam, because it wasn’t a cloud at all but a swarm of tiny krill.
“That’s it!” Noa said. The cloud spread out from Astrae, forming something that resembled a path. Julian was creating the illusion of a feast the likes of which no whale would have seen before. Noa didn’t see how they could resist.
And indeed, one of them couldn’t. After only a few minutes, Noa caught a glimpse of a familiar shape off the coast of Astrae—a broad back curving out of the water like a wave given form, a hint of something massive and ancient, more force of nature than animal.
“You did it!” Noa shouted.
A smile spread across Julian’s face, the dark sort of smile he wore whenever he tossed someone to Beauty. “Now let’s see if we can’t give Xavier the surprise of his life.”
Bigger than any ship, bigger even than Beauty, the blue whale glided toward the island and the great krill cloud. Noa watched in helpless fascination. The whale exhaled, sending a tremendous geyser into the air. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
“Noa,” Mite said, tugging on her sleeve.
“What?” Noa said distractedly.
“Noa.” Mite yanked hard enough to pull her cloak off her shoulder.
Noa turned. The dark fog was creeping up the mountainside, and birds fled in a cacophony of chirrups and squawks. The trees near the foot of the mountain began to rustle, as if something very large was moving through the forest. Noa felt certain that some huge, horrible beast was making its way toward them. She shook her head. No. It was an illusion. It wasn’t real.
“Ignore the fog,” Julian said. He let out another stream of fizzy-bubbly words, and the krill began to encircle Xavier’s ship. “Nothing it shows us can hurt us.”
The fog swept over them. Noa tried to ignore whatever was moving through the trees, slowly yet surely getting closer and closer to the mountaintop. But it was harder this time. There was something different about this fog. Every time she took a breath, awful images rose in her mind. She saw Gabriela attacking the village, Xavier’s cannons tearing the castle apart. Julian gagged and chained, paraded across the deck of a ship while the king’s mages jeered at him. Mite locked in a dungeon. Her heart thundered, and she felt sick.
Mite, crouched at h
er side, was whimpering. Julian’s chanting faltered. Noa could see that King Xavier was lowering boats full of mages from his warships.
“Julian.” She went to his side. “What you’re seeing isn’t real. You have to keep the ships moving.”
“He’s hurting you,” he rasped, his eyes wide and unseeing. “He’s hurting you and Mite. And I’m—I’m gone. I can’t protect you. Gabriela—”
“It’s not real.” Noa shook him, even as another powerful vision overwhelmed her. She saw Xavier’s mages setting fire to Astrae. She saw the forest burn, and the apple orchard. The tidy houses in the village reduced to blackened shells. The tortoises, birds, and lizards all fleeing the flames that gobbled up everything they touched until Astrae looked like Evert before Julian had turned it right side out, a barren, lifeless thing.
No. This was what Gabriela wanted. She wanted them to lose the ability to think or plan, to feel nothing but fear. Noa was afraid. Her hands were shaking and it felt like there was some cold, clammy creature crouched on her chest, weighing her down, making it hard to breathe.
But she could still think.
The fake krill vanished, then reappeared again. The blue whale let out a long, melodious cry that had a querying note in it. Xavier seemed to have seen it, and was trying to move his ship away. Julian crouched on the ground, his head in his hands.
“Julian, remember when Mom was sick?” Noa said. “Remember how scared I was? You told me it was okay to be scared. That it was okay to feel whatever I wanted. But to also remember that you were there and you weren’t going to leave me. Remember?” She touched his shoulder. “Me and Mite aren’t going to leave you. Whatever happens, we face it together. Just like we always have.”
Julian lifted his head. His gaze was unfocused, but at least he seemed to be listening to her.
“One step at a time,” Noa said soothingly. “Just stand up first.” She helped him to his feet. “Now look at the whale. Can you lure it underneath Xavier’s ship?”
Julian drew a breath. He repeated the incantation, and the krill stopped flickering in and out of existence. They drew together like a wave.
“Good,” Noa said, even as another horrible vision filled her thoughts, this time of the assassin from the palace creeping toward her with the long knife. She forced herself to focus on Julian. “Keep doing that.”
Julian’s hand was squeezing hers far too tightly, but Noa didn’t protest. He continued to chant, his voice low and uncertain. The blue whale dove deeper and deeper until it was barely a shadow beneath the waves. But even as she rejoiced, Noa became aware of a crashing sound in the forest.
She screamed.
A huge spider emerged from the trees. Its limbs were black and furred with hairs thick as rope. On its back was a red splotch like an eye.
Mite took a step toward the spider. “Patience!” she shouted. Her face broke into a grin.
Julian wasn’t looking at Xavier’s ship anymore. He was staring at the spider, his face frozen. “Mite, get back!” He ran toward her, and the spider reared up on its back legs.
“No! Bad Patience!” Mite said in the same sort of voice Julian used with Reckoner when he wet his blankets. Then she said something else in a language Noa had never heard before. It was a strange, whispery language—almost musical, but in an uncomfortable way, like a lullaby sung backward. The huge spider froze, its many eyes fixed on Mite. Then, in a puff of black fog, it disappeared.
“Patience!” Mite ran forward. She leaned over something in the grass. “There you are! You’re all right.” She turned to Julian and Noa, beaming. “I knew I would find her! Although . . . I guess she found me.”
They stared at her.
Mite frowned. “What?”
“Mite,” Julian said in a wondering voice, “I think you can speak the language of fear.”
“Really?” Mite’s eyes were round.
“Could you . . . could you read the page I brought back from Death?” Noa said.
“Yeah,” Mite said with a shrug.
Noa gritted her teeth. “Then why didn’t you say something.”
“You didn’t ask,” Mite said. She paused. “Does this mean I’ll explode more?”
Noa burst into laughter. It had a wild edge, but the sound was a balm, and Julian smiled, too. She looked down at the beach, and her heart started thudding again. There was another cloud of fog moving toward them. “Mite, see if you can tell that fog to go away. Can you try?”
Mite set her jaw. “Okay.” She turned to the fog and yelled something at it. But even though she was yelling, there was still a whispery quality to the words. The fog seemed to tremble. It didn’t dissipate, but it froze at the base of the mountain.
“She’s holding it off!” Noa cried. Julian was already chanting again, and they watched as a second blue whale appeared in the distance, drifting closer to Xavier’s fleet. Xavier’s ship gave a sudden jolt, as if something enormous had brushed up against the bow. Several mages were so startled that they fell overboard, and sailors raced back and forth across the deck.
Julian’s chanting grew more confident, and the krill cloud grew thicker. In the second before it happened, Noa saw Gabriela dive overboard, abandoning King Xavier as he stared, motionless in his confusion.
Then King Xavier’s ship simply tipped over.
Noa had been expecting something more dramatic. The whale rising up from the deep with its mouth open, smashing a hole in Xavier’s ship, or slashing its tail down and cleaving the bow in two. But the whale didn’t even lift its head above the waves. Noa saw only the curve of an enormous back that lifted the warship several feet above the water and then sent it slamming back down on its side. The whale may not have even known the ship was there.
The other warships were making a run for it, but the captains were so frantic that two of the ships rammed into a third. Noa wondered if they thought the whale was some new monster Julian had tamed. The second whale arrived, slamming its tail against the water to stun the krill. The wave it created washed over one of the warships, sending several mages into the sea.
Julian began chanting a different spell that struck Noa as familiar, but she couldn’t place it—as usual, the words fell out of her head right after she heard them. Julian collapsed against the rock, his face gray, but kept chanting. The warship rolled and floated for a moment upside down, and then it slid below the waves.
Noa shook Julian’s shoulder. “What if Xavier’s still alive? He’ll swim ashore!”
“No, he won’t,” Julian said darkly. Noa blinked, then turned back to the sea. Now that she thought about it, the other warships were getting smaller far too fast. And the ripples that marked where Xavier’s ship had sunk—those were shrinking, too. She turned to look at the row of volcanoes on the horizon, and found that they were moving. But no—they weren’t moving.
Astrae was. Away from Xavier and Gabriela and the ruins of their ship.
As Noa watched, the ripples and the cloud of krill grew smaller and smaller, as did the foam churned up by the whales’ hunt. Mite leaned her head against Julian’s shoulder, and he put his arm around her. The clouds Gabriela had summoned dissolved, streaming off the island like rainwater after a storm.
Noa knelt at Julian’s side. “You did it,” she said wonderingly.
“Me?” Julian gave her a serious look. “I think you’re forgetting someone.”
“Well,” Noa said, puffing out, “I guess I—”
“Mite, obviously,” Julian said. “It’s quite clear that she did it.”
Mite’s eyes grew even rounder. Noa glared at Julian. But she was smiling, too, which made for an awkward glare, and Julian, seeing her face, began to laugh. The three of them sat together on the mountaintop and watched the sea churn in Astrae’s wake.
28
Noa Figures Some Things Out
“What will you learn at magic school?” Mite said. “Nobody else can do your magic.”
“I expect I’ll learn the rudimentary theory,” Noa
said in a misty voice, because she didn’t actually know.
They were in Noa’s bedroom, packing—or, more accurately, taking everything out of Noa’s wardrobe and chests and laying it on the floor in categories so she could decide what to pack, and checking quantities against her list in the Chronicle.
It was a month after Xavier’s death, and the Marchenas were back in the palace at Queen’s Step. With General Lydio’s ships—not to mention all his mages—they’d retaken the heart of Florean without too much trouble, given the disarray in Xavier’s forces after he died. Xavier didn’t have an heir, so there was nobody to give his soldiers and mages orders apart from the generals, and the generals didn’t know what to do. Julian had sailed Astrae right to the palace and demanded that the council surrender. When they didn’t, he had told Beauty to pound her tail against the cliffside below the councillors’ apartments. As the rock began to crumble and the apartments grew perilously close to tumbling into the sea, one of the councillors had emerged to inform Julian that they would surrender, provided none of them were fed to Beauty or burned alive by Reckoner. (Just as there were exaggerated stories about Julian, there were also exaggerated stories about Reckoner, and many people in Florean believed that the Dark Lord’s dragon was an enormous beast that could breathe flame so deadly it rivaled a volcanic eruption. Noa and Julian had laughed themselves silly at the look on the councillors’ faces when they saw Reckoner for the first time.)
None of this meant that the Marchenas had won the war altogether—there were a few islands where Xavier’s mages had holed themselves up in castles and whatnot and refused to surrender to the magician they still called the Dark Lord. But most of Florean belonged to Julian now, and Noa knew he’d soon capture the rest.
Noa wouldn’t be there to see him do it, though, because she was going to Northwind Island.
The headmistress had written to Julian soon after he’d retaken Queen’s Step to say that she’d heard about Princess Noa’s unique powers (apparently the whole of Florean was buzzing about her and Mite), and that since she was around the right age, she could come and study at Northwind if she wanted to. Noa had dug out her suitcase before Julian was finished reading the letter.
The Language of Ghosts Page 24