City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  A whirlpool formed at the base of the island, a yawning dark swirl of water. Fish Hook was shouting for the boy to row faster, and Gerrant was singing a spell with his strong voice, and the old woman’s eyes were squeezed shut, and Mara couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, because the laboratory would be underwater by now, utterly drowned, with no way out, no possible escape, and she had left Bindy behind.

  She had left Bindy behind.

  Mara was losing her all over again, only instead of fear fading away to grief that would never ebb, this time it was hope crumbling under the weight of a betrayal that could never be righted, and that was so much worse.

  Gradually, slowly, the waves calmed and the noise lessened. The whirlpool softened to a gentle sweep, but it did not entirely vanish. The sea was still pushing into the depths of the Winter Blade. Gerrant ended his spell-song, and Mara belatedly realized that he had been helping the Roughwater boy propel the boat away from the whirlpool. Without his magic they might have been sucked into the vortex. She should be impressed by magic that powerful—she wanted to be impressed by it—but all she felt was cold and hollow inside.

  The light rain had gathered into a heavy fog, and the night was damp and dark and cold. Already the Winter Blade was vanishing into the mist.

  “Mara?” Fish Hook said.

  She hurriedly wiped tears from her eyes. Fish Hook was sitting next to her, with the winged lizard clutched to his chest and his stone foot jutting awkwardly forward. She took in a determined breath and shoved the bleating little goats aside.

  She gently touched Fish Hook’s leg, and he flinched.

  “It hurts?” Mara said, snatching her hand away.

  “No,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure. “It feels . . . weird.”

  The transition from flesh to stone wasn’t abrupt, but gradual, pliable skin giving way seamlessly to solid stone. Looking at it made Mara feel ill, her stomach twisted up with horror and guilt. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how Fish Hook must feel. She had been so confident, so proud of herself, drawing on her mother’s old spell-song to use it against two experienced and dangerous mages. But it had all gone out of her control, so far beyond what she had intended.

  She reached out again, but stopped herself just before touching it.

  “Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?” she said quietly.

  That time Fish Hook didn’t answer. He was clinging to the little winged lizard, shushing it softly when it chirped and wriggled.

  “If I may ask,” Gerrant of Greenwood began. He hesitated and cleared his throat. “How long has it been? How long was I—”

  He didn’t finish the question. He wasn’t looking at Mara or Fish Hook or the Roughwater woman and her grandson. He was staring across the water to the lights of the city glowing weakly through the fog.

  “Two years,” Mara said.

  A brief pause, then Gerrant said, “It passed like a dream. A terrible waking dream. Sometimes I convinced myself the darkness was a starless sky, but the sun never rose.”

  Mara bit her lower lip. She didn’t know how to ask what she wanted to. “I don’t understand how the curse trapped you when the tower was yours.”

  “I’m afraid I lost the tower before the curse overtook me,” Gerrant said. “The Muck sneaked in and overpowered me in quite a mundane way—a blow to the head. I was unprepared for a challenge. Nobody had been interested in so long. When I awoke, he had already claimed the tower as his own. The protective spell set by the ancient builders overwhelmed me before I could fight back. That was always their greatest power, you know, their command of great elemental magic, such as turning flesh and blood to stone.”

  Gerrant tilted his head to the side, and at once Mara heard it too: a low, low rumble emanating from the Winter Blade. The island was barely visible through the fog. But she could still feel it, that tremble in her chest. The stone grumbled and groaned for the span of only a few breaths, then fell silent again.

  “The stone curse rolled over me like mist creeping over a lake, and all the while he watched with the most curious expression. He was not surprised. He knew the fortress would protect its master. Even so, he was awed to see such power at work—awed, I think, and eager.” Gerrant’s voice was little more than a whisper. “The Blade is a capricious old place. It obeys a new master as easily as a hungry dog will beg for scraps—as you demonstrated so well.”

  “What?” Mara said. “Me?”

  “You sang the spell that woke me, did you not?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  But Fish Hook’s foot was turned to stone, and the spell that had slipped away from Gerrant had trapped a little frog and a frightened seagull and who knew how many other animals, and two powerful mages too. Mara could not shake that last clear note of Bindy’s song from her mind. All she had wanted to do was escape with Fish Hook. She had never meant to hurt anybody.

  But she had felt so powerful when she was singing her songs. Songs she didn’t fully understand, calling upon magic she had no idea how to control. She couldn’t stop thinking about what it had felt like to realize the Muck was afraid of her magic, to turn the same fear she’d felt back at him. She had not considered the consequences. She rubbed the center of her chest, trying to ease the echo of the rumbling stone. The sea was eerily calm, as though the weight of the fog had pressed all the waves flat.

  “There’s somebody here,” the Roughwater boy said. He pointed away from the Winter Blade.

  A soft circle of light was moving through the heavy fog: a murk-light held high by a passenger aboard the flatboat.

  “Mara?” Izzy sounded like she was trying to shout without actually shouting. “Is that you?”

  “We’re here!” Mara answered.

  A moment later Driftwood was there too; he had taken a few of the passengers into his boat.

  Mara saw no sign of the black caravel, although Captain Amanta had promised they would be here. “Is it just you? Did the pirates come?”

  “They did, and they’ve already gone. They took their girl and left,” Driftwood said.

  “Who is that?” Izzy asked, looking at Gerrant. “Did we leave someone behind?”

  “I am Gerrant of Greenwood. I am Lord of the Winter Blade.” A pause, and he added, “That is, I was. I don’t know quite what I am now.”

  A murmur arose from the prisoners when they heard his name, and Mara spoke up quickly. “We should leave now. We’ll go to Tidewater.”

  She didn’t like being adrift on the water so near the Winter Blade. She didn’t like how quiet the night was, and how dark. She just wanted to return to Tidewater Isle, to get the prisoners back to their homes and families, and try to forget the feel of the stone song thrumming in her chest.

  The boats moved farther away from the fortress, and the spire of light that was Tidewater Isle grew closer. Soon Mara could make out the features of the palace: the tall windows ablaze with lamplight, the ornate balconies with torches flickering at every corner, its beautiful face so familiar it seemed impossible that it should still be here, exactly as she had left it hours ago. It felt like everything should have changed. Izzy and Fish Hook were safe now, but they had been hurt, and Mara still didn’t know how badly. Bindy was gone. The Muck was gone. The Winter Blade was quiet.

  “Look!” The shout came from a woman in Izzy’s boat.

  Mara whipped her head around. The woman wasn’t looking back at the Winter Blade, nor at Tidewater Isle. She was pointing at the water.

  At first Mara didn’t see anything. She heard somebody ask, “What are we looking at?”

  “I saw something,” the woman said uncertainly. “I thought— There!”

  The inky water between the boats rippled.

  Mara’s heart skipped.

  “I don’t see anything,” a man said.

  Another asked, “Why have we stopped?”

  “There’s something in the water,” the woman said. “Look.”

  Even as she spoke, the scaled shape of a sea serpe
nt rose from the water in a slick, glistening arch. It slid quickly into a dive, its scales reflecting the murk-lights with a greenish-black shimmer before it vanished.

  One of the prisoners moaned. “He’s sent his creatures after us.”

  “We’ll never get away!” cried another.

  Mara was staring so hard at the water her eyes began to burn. She barely heard the others shouting, all of them fearful and panicking as they searched the water for the serpent.

  “Mara?” Fish Hook nudged her shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” Mara said. Her heart was beating so fast she wasn’t sure she could tell if it was fear or excitement. She repeated herself, loud enough to carry. “It’s okay! It’s not him!”

  “You don’t know that!” a woman said. “You don’t know—”

  She broke off with a sudden shriek.

  A few feet from the side of Mara’s boat, a sea serpent lifted its large scaled head above the water. Its green eyes glittered. She couldn’t breathe. It was looking right at her. Right at her, and she knew without a doubt it was one of the serpents who had swum with her last night. The ones who had helped her find her way to land. The ones who had kept her company when she was most alone.

  “Hello again,” Mara said quietly.

  The serpent dove away, and the brief, stunned silence was broken. She became aware of several noises all at once: Driftwood and Izzy speaking to each other from separate boats; a woman shouting that they were all going to die; whimpers of fear and gasps of alarm; Fish Hook saying her name in a strange, tense voice; and the soft exclamation, under his breath, from Gerrant of Greenwood, “Oh.”

  “It’s okay!” Mara shouted, trying to make her voice carry. “They won’t hurt us!”

  “They?” somebody yelped.

  The water around them began to bubble and roil. Seawater slid from curved flanks of green and black scales, and tails flicked like whips. Serpents lifted their heads before diving to the left and right, front and back, and Mara realized, with growing trepidation, there were a great deal more than three of them this time. There seemed to be dozens, all swimming and tangling together, so many it was hard to tell where one ended and another began.

  The boats rocked and swayed, jostled by the massive creatures. Mara clung to the side of the rowboat. The great churning mass of them filled her with fear in a way her three companions last night hadn’t. There were so many. She had never imagined there could be so many—not anymore, not anywhere, and especially not right here in the city.

  As she stared at the serpents, an eerie orange glow shimmered over the choppy water.

  The Winter Blade wasn’t dark anymore. Bright light shone from a row of windows high on the tower, and that light spread like sparks across the face of the fortress until the entire island was aglow. The light stung Mara’s eyes, but she couldn’t look away. Windows and doors that had been blocked for years, balconies and ramparts that had been hidden by magic, all of them were being cracked open and set aflame from within. The Winter Blade was transforming from a spire of shadow and darkness into a blazing tower of light.

  With the blinding brilliance came a soaring spell-song, quiet at first, as though coming from a great distance, but it grew louder and louder as more and more light was revealed. It wasn’t possible. The Muck was gone. Bindy was gone. Turned to stone, or drowned, there was no mage in the tower, nobody left to sing a spell.

  Nobody left except the tower itself, and the echoes of magic trapped in its stones for hundreds of years. Another sound joined the song, something deeper and more terrible. It was the sound of breaking stone, cracking and grinding, so loud it was as though the heart of the island was shattering. Mara felt it both as a sound and as a spell, a noise in her ears and an ache in her chest, and her dread gathered.

  Just when she was sure she couldn’t bear it anymore, the terrible explosion erupted from the Winter Blade.

  Waves pulsed from the island, spreading in every direction, lifting the boats and dropping them again and again. Mara clutched at Fish Hook and he clung to her, and Driftwood was shouting, the freed prisoners crying out in fear, and Mara was certain they were going to capsize, and she didn’t know if they were strong enough to swim, if anybody was strong enough to swim in waves like that. There was nothing for those at the oars to do but row with the force of the water, row as quickly and frantically as they could.

  Then, as quickly as they had begun, the waves stopped.

  The Winter Blade was silent and dark again.

  But the sea was still glowing—this time from below.

  There were orbs of yellow light ascending from the depths of the sea. The nervous cries of the prisoners fell to a hush. Nobody spoke. The lights grew brighter and brighter, like murk-lights rising, but the orbs were bigger than any murk-light. The silhouettes of the sea serpents twisted around the lights, casting the whole night into flickers of brightness and shadow. Warm light reflected from the fog, the choppy water glinted, and still the lights grew brighter.

  “Mara,” Fish Hook said. “Mara. The serpents, they’re never . . .”

  The first of the lights broke out of the water. It was a massive curve of glass in the shape of an oyster half shell, so thin and delicate it shimmered like a soap bubble.

  Reclining in the shell was a woman. She had huge green eyes set in a face of gray and green scales, and her teeth were sharp and gleaming white. Her long arms ended in even longer fins, and a colorful frill of spines framed her face and shoulders. Her long, elegant tail flicked and curled as she looked around.

  “The serpents are never alone,” Mara whispered.

  One by one, all around them, gleaming glass shells rose to the surface.

  The founders had returned.

  24

  Mara the Stone-Mage

  All around the boats, more and more founders were emerging from the sea. Two, three, four, so many Mara quickly lost count. Every one of their glass half shells was lit a warm golden color, filling the foggy night with a soft glow like firelight. Soon they dotted the sea like stars.

  But it was the one nearest to Mara who captivated her attention. None of the paintings, statues, mosaics, or tapestries did the founders justice. They were so much more terrifying than Mara had ever imagined.

  The founder’s frill of spines looked blue when she turned one way, green when she turned another. Iridescent shades of blue and green shone so brightly from her scales that her entire body shimmered. She rested one of her long, bony hands on the side of the glass shell, the fins at her fingertips trailing in the water; the fins flashed to golden when she was in motion. Her eyes, so large for her thin face, so bright and uncanny and green, seemed to be lit from within.

  Gerrant of Greenwood started to say something, then stopped. Fish Hook was gaping, and the winged lizard clinging to his shirt had fearfully tucked its head into the crook of his elbow. The escaped prisoners were silent. Nobody dared say a word.

  High above the boats, people gathered on the balconies of Tidewater Isle. Shouts of surprise and alarm rang over the water. Mara thought she glimpsed Renata Palisado watching from a high balcony, but she didn’t want to look away from the founder for more than a second. Shouts echoed within Tidewater’s sea cave. Soon the whole city would know. The founders had returned.

  When the founder spoke, Mara was so surprised she let out a terrified gasp.

  The founder’s voice was strange and musical, like a flute trying to capture the sounds of the storm at sea. Her words made the hair on the back of Mara’s neck rise, raised goose bumps over her skin, an altogether strange experience—but not entirely unfamiliar. It felt, in a way, like magic. Like chasing the sensation of a spell drifting on underwater currents. Like stepping directly into the path of a powerful mage’s song and standing still to withstand its power.

  And Mara could not understand a single word. The founder sounded angry, exasperated, impatient, all of those things, none of them good, but Mara couldn’t make any sense of it. The woman looked a
round in frustration, her voice rising as the humans shrank away in terror.

  “We don’t know their language anymore,” Gerrant said, his voice breathless with awe. Mara spared a second to feel a bit sorry for how shocking this must be for him: to spend two years trapped as a statue, wake up in the middle of a mage battle, and escape to this. “It’s been lost for centuries, and we could never speak it properly anyway. It’s meant to be spoken underwater.”

  “I don’t think that’s their language,” Driftwood said. He cleared his throat, cleared it again, then he spoke a few words, more hesitant than Mara had ever heard him.

  “Ah,” said Gerrant softly. “Yes. That might work.”

  After a moment Mara understood: Driftwood was speaking Sumanti. The language the first human settlers to the islands had spoken, in the days before the founders left the city.

  The founder reacted immediately. She turned to stare at Driftwood, her collar spines flaring, her green eyes growing even more massive. She spat out another bunch of words. Driftwood listened intently, even as the people in Izzy’s boat began to whisper and murmur.

  “Can you understand her?”

  “Is she threatening us?”

  “What do they want?”

  “Quiet.” Driftwood’s voice was low but firm. He said something else, and the founder answered. Driftwood nodded. “She’s using Old Sumanti. I can’t understand everything she’s saying, but I recognize some of it.”

  Fish Hook tapped Mara’s arm and pointed. There was light shining from the base of Tidewater Isle: a boat emerging from the sea cave, lit by lanterns on tall poles. It was the Lady’s personal boat, with six rowers at the oars.

  “What is she saying?” Izzy asked.

  Driftwood said something else to the founder, who gestured impatiently, fin-fingered hands sweeping majestically to encompass the water, the city, the islands. Other founders spoke up, their musical voices coming together for a brief chorus, but Driftwood remained focused on the one nearest. She emphasized her words with a sharp nod that made the spines of her head flare like blades.