by Paul Collins
‘Sheathe your sword, friend,’ said Verris. ‘For now, we are safe. So let us find out the damage. There will be little enough time to mend things if Tolrush runs us to ground.’
Running blind, Quentaris drifted deeper and deeper into thick cloud. A chill clamminess invaded every corner of the city, and sounds took on an odd quality, as though the whole city was underwater. Captain Bellgard ordered the all-clear sound and a thunderous cheer went up from soldier and citizen alike. Quentaris was safe. For now. Even the Archon stood on his balcony and waved languidly to any citizens interested enough to look up.
‘A narrow escape,’ Verris said to Borges the day after the battle as he sat in the new and hastily appropriated Marine Guildhouse, not far from the Square of the People. ‘For which we're in debt to that young girl for discovering Tolrush.’ He signalled two of his men, Baldrear and Cafferty. ‘Find the youngling, if she's still alive.’
An hour later, someone knocked on the door. Lord Verris looked up from his desk. ‘Come!’ He placed the quill in its inkwell and smiled when the door opened. ‘Young Tab Vidler. Where have you been hiding?’
Tab glared at him. She had a cut on her cheek and her left arm was in a makeshift sling.
‘Ah,’ said Verris. ‘I see that you were in the thick of it. I might have known. Here, please take a seat.’ He offered Tab his own chair, carrying it around the desk and depositing it in front of her.
Verris had food and drink brought and Tab wolfed it down. In all the excitement and danger, she hadn't eaten anything substantial since the battle. When she was finished, Verris asked if she had had any more visions.
Tab was tempted to tell him the truth, as she had to Philmon. She believed that she could trust this man, this pirate and thief, probably more than most of the so-called honest citizens of Quentaris.
Yet still something held her back. As they said in Quentaris, you can't unscramble an egg.
Just then Captain Bellgard was shown in. Tab leapt to her feet, but the captain smiled kindly and waved her to sit down again. He seated himself nearby. Verris gave Tab a nod to speak.
Tab frowned, trying to remember everything. ‘I saw a big youth, a Tolrushian. He wasn't much more than a boy, but everybody took orders from him. He was very cruel, with fox-like eyes.’ Tab thought for a moment. ‘He had an advisor, someone called Genkis. Oh, and last night I couldn't sleep because my arm hurts. I had another vision.’
Verris nodded for Tab to continue.
‘There's a horrible, black creature – like a kind of big wolfhound. It kept hissing and spitting.’ Tab shivered at the memory of watching it. ‘Anyway, the boy-leader was yelling at some people, telling them they were imbeciles for letting Quentaris get away. He had two of them killed on the spot by a magician who vaporised them into a dark mist. He's… I think he's in desperate need of icefire.’
‘That's Kull Vladis you're describing,’ said Verris. ‘He's the blood-thirsty boy-king of Tolrush. His pet's name is Sherma. The Tolrushians use animals as slaves and fighters. What else did you see?’
‘Kull blames Quentaris for their plight. He says our army was having no luck with the siege and so we bewitched them.’
Verris’ lips moved with the merest hint of a smile. ‘Obviously, he doesn't realise we're in the same boat, so to speak. Perhaps that will prove useful.’
Tab shrugged. ‘Kull is telling his people that we know how to get back home to Amlas. And that we have a stockpile of icefire with which to fuel the propellers.’
‘If only that were true,’ said Captain Bellgard wistfully. ‘Our stock is pitifully low. We lose people every time we send a landing party out to find the gemstones.’ He sighed.
Verris gazed at Tab thoughtfully. ‘I'm going to ask you for a favour, Tab. You are free to refuse, if you choose. It is this – that you keep future visions just for our ears.’
‘Why?’ asked Tab. She didn't mind keeping silent, but she was curious.
‘Well, you're our secret weapon,’ said Verris. ‘With your help, we have a way to eavesdrop on Kull and his plans. I have no doubt that that could prove enormously helpful.’
‘Aye,’ said Captain Bellgard. ‘And that's putting it mildly!’
Tab shrugged again. ‘I don't mind. I've already told my friend Philmon, but you can trust him.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Captain Bellgard said, ‘the young ensign who tried to alert Crankshaft. I shall have to see about giving that young man a promotion, I think.’
Tab couldn't help herself. She clapped.
‘And now, before we let you go, is there anything we can do for you, Tab?’ Verris asked.
Tab stared back, blinking. No one, in her whole life, had ever asked her that question. She was dumbfounded. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
Verris smiled.
Finally, Tab said, ‘Could you help find my… friend, Fontagu? He disappeared during the fighting. I'm worried about him.’ She quickly described him.
Verris said, ‘If he still lives, he will be found and brought to your door.’ Tab felt a huge sense of relief. It wasn't like Fontagu to just vanish, especially when there were so many opportunities to brag about his heroic fighting exploits.
‘Is there anything else we can do for you, child?’ This was from Captain Bellgard. He was leaning forward slightly. For a moment Tab wondered how different things would have been if she'd had someone like him for a father, someone gruff but kind. But she swiftly pushed the thought away. There was something else she wanted, more than anything in the world. It was an ache within her, but she knew it could never now be fulfilled – because she'd been told she had no magical skill…
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
‘Well, you'd best be off then. You have a big day tomorrow and will need your sleep.’
Tab gave him a puzzled look. ‘What for?’
‘Well, naturally,’ said Verris, ‘you can't begin your training as an apprentice magician if you can't even keep your eyes open, now can you?’
Tab's eyes grew as big as plums, and there was a roaring in her ears. ‘A what?’
THE RAIDING PARTY
Hardly daring to believe her luck, an extremely nervous Tab reported for training at the Magicians’ Guild the very next morning.
She didn't know what to expect as she arrived at the Hall of the Initiates. Here a duty clerk peered owl-like over her thick glasses and mumbled, ‘Another initiate, eh? Name? Sponsor? Former address? Come along, girl, don't just stand there witless. I'm busy, as well you might be if you'd gather your thoughts. Dear me, I don't know where they find you all.’
Tab stumbled over her answers. After a harrowing time, Amelia, Philmon's cousin, was called to collect her.
‘Don't mind Mrs Haggerty,’ Amelia said as they walked between thick pillars. ‘I'd be rather short too if I had to sit in that hall day in and day out poking questions at every visitor. She calls us all good-for-nothings, you know.’
‘But the Navigators’ Guild is the most important guild in Quentaris,’ said Tab.
Amelia laughed. ‘That's just her way. Mind you, she doesn't talk to the magicians like that. Oh no, they'd turn her into a frog or something. But we're not magicians, not yet anyway. I mean, we don't have real powers.’ She suddenly gave Tab an odd look. ‘Maybe you do, though.’
‘Me?’ Tab shrugged. ‘I just have – visions… ’
‘Mmm,’ said Amelia. She led Tab along twisting corridors. Groups of students could be seen taking lessons in classrooms and in the leafy grounds. Magicians would look up annoyed as they passed, and Tab realised they were late for her first class. Amelia stopped outside a classroom door and knocked.
‘Come in,’ said a magician.
Amelia wished Tab good luck and hurried away to her own classes. Tab took a deep breath and entered. Several students looked at her with interest, even awe, though they were too busy copying something written on the blackboard to do more.
Tab stood just inside the doo
r, not sure what to do. ‘You're late,’ the magician snapped. ‘Take a seat.’
Tab spied a seat at the back of the class and hurried to it. The students might think she was something of a hero for saving Quentaris, but it was clear the magicians did not or if they did, refused to give any sign. Perhaps they thought it would go to her head. Or maybe they were just peeved that she had seen something that they hadn't.
Tab sat beside a smiling girl called Seretha. In a hurried whisper she told Tab what they were doing. Tab got out a notebook she had been given – along with several textbooks – and started copying from the board. The class was on levitation, which didn't just mean making objects float in the air; it was also the method by which the magicians themselves flew.
Happy beyond belief, Tab settled down and started to work.
That day and those which followed hurtled along in a haze of lessons, homework, practice, breaks, friendships, and more homework. At the end of each hour, the initiates were shunted from one class to the next. As the days wore on, Tab learnt about magic lore, herbs, poisons and the rudiments of rift navigation. It seemed to her that being an initiate wasn't as much fun as she had imagined. Instead it was hard work, and yet she found a deep pleasure in that too, though she would have liked something more challenging. The fun stuff, like sending exploding bubbles of soap suds diving at your enemies, usually went on after school hours.
Tab soon began to believe she actually did have powers. At least that's what most of the other apprentices seemed to think. Wherever she went whispers followed, as well as pointing fingers. ‘That's the girl who saved Quentaris from Tolrush.’ Again and again she heard the words. Girls jostled each other to get a good look at her, and several times teachers had to scold students for trying to pass notes to Tab in class.
Tab thought back to her introduction to the Hub, that part of Quentaris that housed an icefire gem that powered the ire ore.
‘And there,’ said Quartermaster Dorissa, pointing, ‘is the fabled bloodfire beetle. See how the Seeker hums and strokes the creature?’
The initiates stared open-mouthed.
‘Note that its carapace is like a ruby version of icefire, hence its name. It feeds on icefire and so incorporates particles of the gem into itself. Look, it sparkles and glows like a ruby reflecting the flames of a fire,’ Dorissa went on. ‘When it's spinning in perfect harmony with our city and that of another plane, it sets up a harmonic humming that is integral to the process of sensing out the pathways to an alternative rift plane – looking for and predicting weaknesses, flaws, sensing where the next vortex will form, and when. It feels the raw fabric of space-time.’
‘It's disappearing!’ an initiate cried.
‘No, child,’ Dorissa said. ‘Bloodfire beetles exist mostly in and marginally outside this plane, hence their flickering. It's a form of concealment and escape for them. They shift into alternate rift planes for short periods of time.’
Without thinking Tab tried to mind-meld with the bloodfire beetle. An unimaginable harmony came over her and, sensing the risk of being consumed, she immediately withdrew. ‘Until a predator has passed or given up searching for it?’ Tab said, slightly disoriented.
‘Well done,’ the quartermaster said. ‘The morphing is a camouflage.’ The magician frowned. ‘Are you all right, child?’
Tab felt her face drain of colour. ‘I'm fine,’ she said. ‘A momentary turn, that's all.’
Dorissa continued with the lesson.
Without realising it at the time, that first, albeit brief, mind-meld with the bloodfire beetle had been Tab's first real inkling of the part she might one day play in the Navigators’ Guild.
Tab held up her head. Although she was currently a minor cog in the Navigators’ Guild, she was still part of an essential organisation. Being able to move Quentaris from place to place was one thing. Knowing where to move her to was quite another. And hence the need for navigators. It fell to the Navigators’ Guild to find the way back to where Quentaris belonged. And for this they needed to navigate the rift planes and pathways. Once again, the icefire gem, coupled with ire ore, was the key – the catalyst. It could enhance the natural abilities of the magicians to ‘sense’ and ‘see’ these pathways. It even enabled some very powerful magicians to open vortices, rather than just to locate them by how they made the rift planes tremble.
Under the leadership of Chief Navigator Stelka a black-eyed, raven-haired magician and clever court politician – all the key positions in the Navigators’ Guild belonged to magicians.
Dwelling on the magnificence of the Hub, Tab fell asleep in her new room which she shared with Amelia. Later that night she suddenly sat bolt upright. She knew what had been needling her.
She felt – important. Bleary-eyed, she glanced down at the seed-gem that all initiates were given. Its lambent glow made her smile. How protective the magicians were of their little brood.
That first week flew past in a blur. Tab was dazed much of the time and had to keep pinching herself, half afraid she would wake back in Mrs Figgin's orphanage. Oddly enough, there were some similarities to her first home. The rooms, for instance, were very small and had to be kept sparkling clean. And there were rules. Lots of them.
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.’