City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  “She wants to know . . .” Driftwood began slowly, frowning. “I don’t understand. I think she wants to speak to the emissary?”

  “The emissary?” Izzy said, incredulous. “There hasn’t been an emissary for hundreds of years!”

  “What use do we have for an emissary without anybody down below?” somebody else said.

  “Maybe she means the ruling families? Somebody important?”

  “Or the High Mage?”

  “Professor Kosta is coming with the Lady,” Mara said quickly, before the founder could grow frustrated with so many people talking at once. The Lady’s boat was drawing nearer, and the professor was standing at its prow. “She can help. She knows Old Sumanti.”

  Driftwood spoke to the founder and pointed. When the Lady’s boat was near enough that he didn’t have to shout, he called to Professor Kosta in Sumanti. The Lady listened as well, nodding as Driftwood finished. She spoke quietly to Professor Kosta for a moment.

  “I see,” said Professor Kosta. “I will do my best to translate.”

  “Tell them we welcome them to our city,” the Lady said. Then she amended quickly, “No, tell them we welcome them back to their city. Tell them—”

  “You don’t speak for us!” one of the men in Izzy’s boat shouted.

  “She better not tell them she’s the emissary,” another muttered.

  “Somebody’s got to say something,” a woman countered.

  “Nobody can say anything if you don’t shut up!” Izzy said.

  Professor Kosta relayed the Lady’s greeting. As soon as she began to speak, the founder fixed her eyes on her, and the spines along her back fanned and frilled as she listened. When Professor Kosta finished, the founder answered immediately, unleashing a rapid torrent of words.

  The response from the boats was immediate.

  “What is she saying?”

  “What do they want?”

  “Why have they come back?”

  Professor Kosta lifted a hand and waited for quiet. “She says they’ve come back because they want to know who woke the island with a song.”

  The Lady frowned, her brows drawing together. “What does she mean?”

  “What do you think she means?” a woman said. “The whole fortress lit up like a torch!”

  The light, Mara knew, had been the least of it. The fortress had also groaned and ground and shook to its very foundations.

  Professor Kosta asked, and the founder considered a moment before she began to speak. The professor translated: “She says they’ve been telling stories about their ancient city and the air people—that’s her word for us—for generations. Long ago they came to believe the stories were more fiction than fact.”

  “We were as mythical to them as they were to us?” the Lady said. “How is that possible?”

  “She says that they’ve spoken of their lost city for a long time, but most people believed it existed only in myth.” Professor Kosta paused to listen as the founder went on. “But when they heard an ancient song from far away, they decided to search once again. They first heard it several days ago, but again off and on since then, and most strongly tonight. They’ve been traveling hard for several days, as fast as their magic could carry them, to come farther than any of them has dared travel in a very long time. They sent their serpents, who are much faster, ahead as scouts.”

  Mara could scarcely believe what she was hearing. “Maybe they remember us as we remember them,” Mara’s mother used to say, on winter nights so many years ago, when the people of Gravetown gathered to share stories and warmth. It had been a fanciful idea, a Gravetown superstition, but she had been right.

  And it was an underwater spell-song that had drawn them back. First sung a few days ago, then more strongly tonight. Strong enough to stir the ancient spells within the Winter Blade from their centuries-long dormancy to a frightening awakening. Mara’s heart was in her throat. Her hands were shaking.

  The founder was speaking again. Professor Kosta listened a bit, then said, “She says they didn’t know what to expect. They were discussing what to do when they heard the magic from the—she says the first island, which I suppose is the Winter Blade. That rather impressive outpouring of magical power made the decision for them.” She waited a moment while the founder spoke again. “She really is very insistent in speaking to the mage who sung the spell-song that woke the island.”

  “Does she mean the Muck?” Izzy said.

  “Or the bone-mage?” the Roughwater boy put in.

  A debate broke out among the boats, but Mara barely heard it. She felt herself shrinking smaller and smaller into the boat. Fish Hook was looking at her, one eyebrow raised, lips curved in something almost like a smile. She turned away uncomfortably, only to find Gerrant of Greenwood was watching her too.

  “Child,” Gerrant said, so softly nobody outside the boat could hear, “you need not fear your own magic.”

  Fish Hook nudged her side. “You know he’s right.”

  Mara hesitated, frozen by indecision and fear. She knew she was being a coward, but the truth was, she did fear her own magic. Her song had broken the Winter Blade. It had trapped Bindy and the Muck. It had loosed an ancient curse that hurt Fish Hook. She didn’t even know if she could do any of it again. She couldn’t be who the founders were looking for. They were expecting an experienced mage, somebody worth traveling across the ocean for the first time in centuries. Not a fish girl singing her mother’s favorite song.

  But there wasn’t anybody else. There was only Mara.

  She lifted her hand.

  “Um, I, um.” She was shaking so much it was hard to speak. “I think it might have been me?”

  The founder whirled to face her at once. She gripped the side of her shell and stretched across toward Mara. She was so much bigger than Mara had ever imagined. Her head was nearly twice the size of Mara’s, her arms nearly twice as long even before counting the fin-tipped fingers.

  It was astonishingly, impossibly absurd that the Muck could have ever believed he could transform himself into this. All of his experiments, his hybrid creatures, his trials with the pirates, all of it seemed so very clumsy and desperate in comparison. Whatever the Muck might have achieved, whatever terrible magic he might have wielded, however many animals and people he hurt in the process, the one thing he never would have done was match the terrible beauty of the founders.

  Mara felt like a tiny fish cowering before a shark—but the founders weren’t mindless animals. They were terrifying and strange, but they were also people. People who had believed so much in their beloved ancient stories they had followed a song across the sea.

  “It was me,” Mara said, her voice stronger now. She straightened her shoulders and forced herself to meet the founder’s brilliant green eyes. They were the same color as seaweed growing in the shallows on a sunny day. “I sang the stone song.”

  “Mara?” the Lady said. “Wherever did you learn—”

  “Why would you do that?” a man wailed, then everybody was shouting all at once.

  “Were you trying to bring the island down?”

  “Were you trying to seize it for yourself?”

  “She’s working with the mage, you know she is!”

  “She wanted the island all along!”

  “No!” Mara cried. “I was only trying to help!”

  “She did help us, you idiots!” Izzy shouted. “Have you forgotten that already? She’s the one who helped us escape!”

  One man muttered, “Maybe that’s all part of her plan,” but he was quickly hushed.

  Before they could start shouting again, Professor Kosta spoke to the founder rapidly. The founder cocked her head to listen, but she didn’t take her eyes off Mara. When she answered, there was something different about her voice. It was hard to tell if she was less angry, or less impatient. It didn’t sound softer, necessarily, but Mara found the change reassuring.

  “She wants to know more about your song,” said Professor Kosta.


  “She does?” Mara said. “But I don’t—I didn’t mean—why?”

  “They’ve traveled quite a long way to meet the mage who sang it,” Professor Kosta said gently. “They didn’t expect the Winter Blade to react so dramatically any more than you did.”

  “But I don’t . . .”

  Mara trailed off. I don’t know anything, she thought, but she stopped, and she made herself think before speaking. She thought about the excitement she had felt that cool, gray morning just a few days ago, and the hope, and how much it meant to her, the prospect of finding something magnificent in the shallows. She thought about the texture of that very first skull beneath her fingertips, and the sound of stone grinding on stone, and the tears that had fallen from Gerrant’s eyes when he was trapped.

  She thought too of the fear that had driven her to sing songs she didn’t fully understand, to continue even when she knew the Winter Blade was reacting. Her friends had been in danger. The whole city had been in danger, or it would have been if the Muck had come close to achieving what he had wanted. She might not have known what she was singing when she started, but the moment she had realized it was more than a song, everything she had done with it had been her choice. That was true even if she hadn’t predicted or expected the consequences.

  “I didn’t know it was a spell at first,” she said, and Professor Kosta translated for the founder. “It was an old sailors’ song my mother used to sing. She was a stonemason in Gravetown. She never did magic—stonemasons don’t; they do all their work without it. But Mum had this . . . this idea, I guess, some people called it a superstition, that maybe the founders were out there somewhere, remembering us the same way we remembered them. It’s a song about missing Greenwood Island. Missing home. And I think . . . I think it’s always been magic, only nobody ever knew because it was never sung in the right place at the right time.”

  “For the ears of a homesick old Greenwooder trapped in a stone tower,” Gerrant said. “I could hear it, you know, when I was subsumed by the fortress. I could feel the island listening.”

  “I didn’t know it would do that,” Mara said. She wasn’t trying to apologize; she only wanted them to understand. “I was trying help my friends. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Professor Kosta was relaying their words to the founder, who was still watching Mara with unreadable green eyes. The professor finished, but there was a long moment before the founder spoke.

  “She says,” Professor Kosta translated, “that they would very much like to learn more about how this city has changed since the time of their legends. She asks your permission to remain in the city for a time.”

  “What?” Mara squeaked. “She wants my permission?”

  There was an amused glint in Professor Kosta’s eye. “You are the mage they’ve come to find. They wish her to be their—the word she’s using is unfamiliar to me, but I believe the best translation is emissary. They want you to be their emissary as they get to know the air people again.”

  “An emissary? But Mara is only a child,” the Lady protested.

  “You thought I was old enough to send into the Winter Blade,” Mara retorted. “You didn’t care that I was only a child then.”

  The Lady pressed her lips into a thin line and did not answer.

  Professor Kosta wisely did not translate that for the founder. “Nevertheless, it is Mara’s permission they seek. What do you say, Mara?”

  Mara had the sudden, wild image of the founders crowding into her dormitory cot above the kitchen, all terrifying green eyes and tall spines, and the household servants tiptoeing around them with canapés on platters. It was all she could do to stifle the hysterical giggle that rose in her throat. Fish Hook snickered softly; she elbowed him in the side.

  Mara swallowed; her hands were shaking. “What do they—but I’m not—I’m not a trained mage, I’m only . . .”

  A servant, a fish girl, a diver. Daughter of stonemasons. Former assistant to a sneaky bone-mage. She’d woken an island with a song and she didn’t even know how. There were a hundred mages or more in the city who could understand what she’d done better than she could. There were a hundred scholars or more who knew more about the history of the city.

  But that wasn’t what the founder was requesting. She wasn’t asking for help getting to know the city’s history and old magic. She was asking because she wanted to know it now.

  Mara had lived in the Gravetown workshops, played in the Ossuary crypts, worked the fish markets and magic shops. She had lived in Tidewater Isle, and she had lived on the streets. She had fought the master of the Winter Blade, and if she had not quite won in the usual sense, she had at least escaped with her skin intact. She knew the city’s ugliest parts and she still loved it, because it was her home and always had been.

  She did not know what the people of the city would see when they met the founders from their stories. She did not know what the founders would see when they came to know the city and its people again. Even the best legends were a weave of truth and lies, memories and wishes, and few people ever had a chance to revisit the foundations of their most cherished beliefs to learn how they withstood the test of time. It seemed to her very important that humans and founders alike be given a chance to see each other clearly, free of the cobwebs of ancient myths and lore, as they must have once, long ago, when the islands were two cities living side by side, one above and one below, both beautiful, both unique.

  Mara took a breath. Professor Kosta and the founder were watching her. Everybody was watching her, human and founder, faces near and far lit by warm light.

  “Yes,” she said. “They have my permission to stay. I would be honored to be their emissary. I welcome them to the City of Islands.”

  Professor Kosta smiled as she translated. The founder spoke then, not in Old Sumanti but in her own language, calling across the water to the others. Their voices rose in a sudden clamor, a high, screeching sound that sent a murmur of fear through the people in the boats. But after a second Mara realized the founders weren’t screaming—they were cheering. As Mara realized it, the other humans did as well, and soon the night echoed with whoops and shouts, laughter and chatter, and the sea serpents circling and diving and splashing all around.

  25

  Season’s Change

  Winter came to the City of Islands with howling winds and rough seas, and the whole of the city came to Tidewater Isle with questions for the emissary.

  “Are you quite sure this weather is not their doing?” asked the High Mage.

  He was standing beside the tall windows in the Lady’s library. There was a deep frown creasing his face. The founders’ lights glowed underwater day and night, and the sea was dotted with the boats of those who had come out to glimpse the founders and their sea serpents.

  “I am,” Mara said. “It’s a perfectly natural change of seasons.”

  The High Mage harrumphed, unconvinced. “It’s very strange.”

  Mara rolled her eyes—safely behind his back, where he could not see. A few weeks ago a reaction like that from the High Mage would have been enough to put tears in her eyes and a stammer in her voice, but she had learned very quickly not to let the powerful people of the city get to her. They could hmph and tsk and hmm all they wanted. She was still the emissary.

  “Nevertheless,” Mara said, “it is a natural storm. I don’t want to keep you from your duties any longer, Headmaster. You must have a great deal to do.”

  She had learned that tactic from the Lady, and it worked every time. There was nothing the High Mage liked more than being reminded about how important he was.

  He turned away from the window. “Quite right. I haven’t time to sit about chatting all day, as pleasant as it is. Until next time, Emissary. We still have important things to discuss.”

  Mara smiled. “Just make an appointment with my assistant.”

  The High Mage’s eyes widened slightly, and he scurried out of the library with barely a glance at the
assistant who held the door open for him. Fish Hook made a face at the mage’s back as he left, then shut the door firmly behind him.

  Relieved, Mara dropped into a chair by the fire. “I thought he would never leave.”

  Fish Hook came over to join her and threw himself in the armchair opposite. The winged lizard curled up in his lap; it rarely left his side anymore. Fish Hook pretended to be annoyed by the eager little creature, but Mara knew he didn’t really mind. He stroked the lizard’s head gently.

  “But, Emissary,” Fish Hook said, “he has important things to discuss.”

  Mara groaned. The High Mage had important things to discuss. The head of the storm-mage guild had important things to discuss. The head of the healers’ guild had important things to discuss. The lords and ladies of the islands had important things to discuss. The Harbormaster, the glassmakers, the fishing guild, they all had important things to discuss. They wanted to talk to the founders, they wanted to learn their magic, they wanted to explore the abandoned underwater city, they wanted to travel to the founders’ home, they wanted to compare myths and rewrite legends and argue about history. The past three weeks had been filled with visits from important people with important things to discuss, all of them braving the stormy weather to crowd into Tidewater Isle to make demands and offer advice and endlessly speculate—and to meet Mara. The girl who had brought the founders back to the city.

  And, of course, there were the founders. Mara couldn’t even talk to them without Professor Kosta there to translate, but that didn’t stop them. They met in the sea cave, on boats, on docks, all over the city. Already Mara had spent so much time talking with the founders that she heard their strange, high, musical voices in her dreams. The glassmakers’ guild was making plans to build a submersible globe like the emissaries used to have; Mara had learned more about glass magic in the last few weeks than she’d known in her entire life before.

  It had been the professor who suggested Mara take on an assistant to manage all the people demanding her time. Mara had asked, “Am I allowed to do that?”