Hexult

by Perry Aylen

  ‘Of course it would work!’ Jacob insisted. ‘Why wouldn’t it? Look, I’ll show you. Wait here. There’s something I need to get from the barn.’ He hurried to the door, grabbing his coat as he went. When he came back he was carrying parchment and a pen, retrieved from the belongings salvaged from Gem. While Ingar and Aulf hung over him, Jacob sketched the outline of a square tower, and demonstrated with a few quick lines where the mirrors would need to be placed on the top in order to be able to signal in different directions. To Elya’s amusement and the bafflement of Ingar and Aulf, he then began to theorise about angles and distances, scribbling little arrows and ever more complicated calculations around his drawing.

  ‘You know what you’re talking about, don’t you?’ Aulf said, shaking his head in undisguised awe. ‘Would you actually know how to build one of these towers?’

  Jacob stared at Aulf, then looked at his sister. Elya grinned. ‘He’s never actually built a full sized tower,’ she said, ‘but it’s what he loves to do, design things and build them.’

  ‘We should go to Quayven and talk to the mayor about your idea, Jacob.’ Aulf was hardly able to keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘This really could help the situation between the islands.’

  Ma looked dubious. ‘He’s only a boy, Aulf. He doesn’t even belong here on Hexult. Do you really want to drag him into all the political strife going on here?’

  Jacob turned his face to Ma, and there was a light flush on his pale cheeks.

  ‘Elya and I owe you all so much. If there really is a way we can repay some of that debt, I’d love to do it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ma, impressed, ‘you two really are a surprising pair.’

  Jacob swivelled his gaze to Aulf. ‘Will you take us with you to Quayven when you go?’

  Aulf’s face was split by a wide grin. ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ he said.

  Chapter 9

  ‘There it is! Quayven harbour!’ called Aulf. Jacob, staring forward, could see nothing except some broken ice in front of the island. As they drew nearer the ice ridge and Aulf tacked to sail along it, Jacob realised that there was a short wall to the front, covering a gap in the main edifice, and that these walls of ice were not edges of broken ice sheets, as he had at first supposed, but manmade structures, huge solid ramparts of ice. As the Aurora turned again, a pair of massive wooden gates came into view, slowly opening as they approached. Obviously, Aulf’s boat was well known. The sentry on the gate lifted his hand in a friendly wave, and then cut it abruptly short as he counted two extra passengers, and ran hastily from his sentry station. By the time the Aurora reached her customary berth, there was a small committee awaiting her arrival.

  ‘I told you they were suspicious!’ Aulf told Elya and Jacob. ‘I’ll introduce you before we dock. The man with the beard is the sheriff, Dan Proctor. Watch out for him. He’s mean. To his left, with the grey fur hat and the scowling face, that’s Ivor, who runs boats from this harbour. About as close as you can get to a land-based pirate, if you ask me. The other two are Tomas and Noah Shanks, the gate keepers. They’re sort of cousins of mine. You’ll like them.’

  ‘Since when do you carry passengers?’ shouted Ivor to Aulf as the Aurora touched the dock, Tomas and Noah taking hold of the lines and making the boat fast.

  ‘Since I found some stranded on a shipwreck,’ retorted Aulf.

  Ivor didn’t reply, but a murmur went round the little crowd that had followed the sheriff down to the dock. The sheriff held out his hand to Jacob.

  ‘Let’s see your papers.’

  ‘They don’t issue papers where we come from,’ Jacob informed him. ‘We sailed for the best part of a month across the ice before we crashed here.’

  A little crowd of bystanders was already growing as the harbour folk scented new material for gossip. Jacob’s appearance, tall and waxen, with his pale blond hair standing in strange little spikes all over his head, was singular enough to cause a stir, and his unfamiliar accent raised another ripple of anticipation as he addressed the sheriff with such boldness.

  ‘Likely story,’ retorted the sheriff loudly, for the benefit of the crowd. ‘Nobody has ever crossed the great Ice Plain. How many of you are there?’

  ‘Just two,’ said Jacob.

  The sheriff fixed him with a hard stare as though Jacob had given him an insolent answer.

  ‘Escort this pair to the court house,’ he commanded his men. ‘We’ll have the truth out of them there.’

  Elya, who had been waiting in the stern of the boat, now stepped up into the sunlight, next to her brother, pulling off her hat as she did so. A startled murmur ran through the crowd. The deputies hesitated. The pair on the deck, delicately built, with identical wide green eyes set in pale carved faces, were strikingly alike, yet one face was framed with hair so blond it was almost white, the other with long dark tresses, as black as a moonless night.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ snarled Proctor to his men. ‘Get them up to the court house now!’

  The deputies moved forward again, and seized Jacob and Elya. The crowd drew back hastily to let them pass.

  ‘Let them be!’ Aulf called out. ‘They’re only children! They haven’t done anything wrong.’

  The sheriff turned back and eyed him coldly. ‘They’re going to the cells until I find out where they really come from, and why they’re here,’ he growled, narrowing his eyes and pursing his thin lips. ‘And you had better hope they’re not spies, or you’ll find yourself in big trouble too.’

  The sheriff turned to follow his men along the dockside. Aulf thought quickly, but no plan sprang to mind. In desperation, he shouted after the sheriff, ‘Be careful, Sheriff. They’re magicians, you know. If I were you, I’d call the mayor.’

  He saw the sheriff hesitate. The deputies faltered, and the crowd shrank back with an audible murmur of surprise. Jacob heard someone mutter, smugly, ‘There you are! I told you!’

  ‘Don’t play me for a fool!’ snapped the sheriff, spinning round angrily.

  For a heart sinking moment, Aulf could think of nothing else to say. Unexpectedly, a voice rang out above his head.

  ‘It’s true! I’ve seen their magic too. They have enchanted stones that tell them where to go, and they can make fire from ice!’

  All heads snapped upwards to see who had spoken. A scrawny girl with wild red hair and freckles all over her face was perched, cat-like, in the rigging. Most of the crowd knew Ingar by sight but few had ever heard her speak.

  ‘We’ll see about that!’ growled Proctor, but a line of perspiration had broken out on his top lip, and he looked uncharacteristically flustered.

  A hubbub had broken out again in the crowd at the mention of magic. As the deputies marched Jacob and Elya along the quayside, the people of the town followed with a growing thrill of excitement rippling through their ranks. As the crowd made its way up the hill towards the top of the town, other curious townsfolk came out to see what the stir was about and to join the throng, so that, by the time they reached the town hall, the small crowd had swelled to a jostling mass, all eager to see what would happen next.

  Chapter 10

  Mayor Sleetfoot was in his office, staring hopelessly at a letter from Orking Do. Things were getting out of hand. Orking Do was now accusing Quayven of deliberately sabotaging trade convoys, and making the attacks look as if raiders were responsible.

  He ran his fingers through the little remaining hair he had left, and groaned to himself. ‘We’re heading for an all out trade war! How am I going to break this to the elders, especially that infuriating know it all, Gabriel? He’s just going to smirk and say he told me so!’

  As he pondered, he became aware of an increasing noise downstairs, and more commotion outside on the street. Crossing his office, he hauled open the heavy doors. Beyond the gallery, the reception hall below him was crammed with people, all looking up at him.

  ‘Ah, mayor!’ called a voice louder than the other voices. It was the sheriff. Having given
up trying to fight his way through the crowd, he now had to resort to shouting at the mayor from the middle of the floor. ‘Sir, I…er…we found these strangers…or rather, these strangers arrived with the post…on a mail skiff, with no papers. I suspect they may be spies.’

  At this point he was drowned out by several different voices from the crowd.

  ‘They’re only children!’ protested one.

  ‘Sorcerers!’ shouted several others. ‘Magicians!’

  ‘They crossed the Ice Plain!’ a woman’s voice called out shrilly.

  ‘Prophets!’ insisted another voice.

  ‘Spies!’ yelled another, and the noise swelled again.

  Over the commotion rose a different voice, commanding and clear.

  ‘Who mentioned sorcery?’

  There was an instant hush. All eyes turned to the end of the gallery. Gabriel, the wizard, had appeared.

  ‘How does he do that?’ thought the mayor to himself.

  ‘Why don’t you bring our guests up here to meet the mayor?’ suggested Gabriel to the sheriff.

  The crowd parted. Jacob and Elya made their way up the carved stone staircase with Sheriff Proctor trailing and looking decidedly disgruntled.

  In the mayor’s large square office, Gabriel was waiting for them, leaning on his carved wooden staff. Even though it was the mayor’s office, it was Gabriel’s presence that dominated the room. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was draped from head to foot in robes of black and silver, a long mantle of hair and a beard, as silver as the threads of his robes, trailed down to his girdled belt. He had a long narrow face, dissected by a long narrow nose, presided over by a high arched forehead and a pair of penetrating eyes of a pale, washed blue, as if their colour had been veiled by a thin film of ice. Mayor Sleetfoot had never yet seen him wearing a pointed hat, but he was sure Gabriel had one tucked away somewhere.

  ‘So,’ began Gabriel, addressing the sheriff, ‘these young people arrived on the mail skiff?’

  ‘Yes, we saw them arrive. They say they crossed the Ice Plain, and they have no papers of introduction. Look at them! They’re either spies from Thorland, or saboteurs, so I brought them straight here.’

  ‘And the mail boat captain?’ questioned Gabriel.

  ‘Oh, we know him!’ said Proctor dismissively. ‘He’s not a spy. Hasn’t the brains for it.’

  Gabriel gave him a withering look. ‘That isn’t what I meant. Did you bring him here to corroborate their story?’

  ‘No,’ muttered the sheriff, scowling at Gabriel’s beard. ‘There wasn’t… I mean, we couldn’t…’

  ‘Then please find him and bring him here.’

  The sheriff looked as if he’d like to punch Gabriel, but the mayor was nodding his head in agreement.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he agreed. ‘We should have the captain here too.’

  As the door closed behind the seething sheriff, Gabriel turned to Jacob and Elya.

  ‘Allow me to make the introductions. This is Mayor Sleetfoot, mayor of the islands of Quayven. And I am Gabriel, elder and advisor.’

  The mayor was trying to appear stern but welcoming, and failing entirely. ‘Ah, yes,’ said the mayor, ‘that’s right. Well, actually,’ he added, throwing a wary glance in Gabriel’s direction, ‘Gabriel, here, is a wizard of some renown.’

  Jacob and Elya regarded Gabriel with new interest.

  ‘Really?’ replied Jacob, stepping forward boldly and taking the hand the mayor offered, shaking it with a firmness that surprised him, and then turning to Gabriel and proffering his hand again. ‘I’ve never met a real wizard before!’

  ‘Apparently not!’ returned Gabriel, a glint of amusement in his eye.

  Mayor Sleetfoot was impressed. Despite Jacob’s youth, he had a confident and forthright manner about him that made him seem older than his years. Already he was taller than the mayor, who was somewhat short of stature, if not of girth. To begin with, the mayor had been taken aback by Jacob’s alarming appearance, tall and thin with white-blonde hair, stuck up like the quills of an albino porcupine, all over his head, and penetrating green eyes that seemed startlingly large and dark in a bony face as pale as the frozen sea. The boy’s appearance was made all the more remarkable by the fact that beside him stood his double in female form, except the girl’s hair was as black as the boy’s was pale. The strangest pair the mayor had ever seen.

  ‘The sheriff seems convinced you’re spies,’ he said to the twins. ‘I have to say, you don’t look very much like spies to me.’ Even as he said this, it occurred to the mayor that he had never knowingly met a real spy. But if these two were spies, they had gone out of their way to draw attention to their appearance, and Mayor Sleetfoot was almost certain that a real spy would make more of an effort to blend in. ‘Tell me how you come to be here.’

  Briefly, Jacob recounted the tale of their shipwreck, and their subsequent rescue. Elya put in how kind Aulf and Ingar had been to them. When they had finished telling their tale, Gabriel looked thoughtful.

  ‘You say you’re magicians?’

  Jacob shook his head.

  ‘We never said that. The people down at the harbour said it.’

  ‘Explain to me why they would think you were magicians.’ Gabriel’s unflinching gaze was unnerving.

  Jacob gave a little shrug and shook his head again. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps because we look different.’

  Before the mayor or Gabriel could reply, there was a brusque knock on the door. It burst open, and Aulf appeared, a rough shove from the sheriff sending him stumbling almost into the middle of the room. The mayor, took a surprised step backwards. Aulf straightened up and looked around at everyone in the room, while his hand rubbed cautiously at his left side.

  ‘Aulf, you’re the mailman that brought in these two, I presume?’

  Aulf nodded.

  ‘I’d like you to tell us your account of where and how you came across this young pair here, if you please,’ said the mayor.

  Aulf gave his own account of how he had come across the wreck on the ice, by the Dragon’s Teeth, and found three bodies, one dead and two barely alive. He recounted the tale the twins had told him of their journey across the ice, and of how they had built the pyre for their father and then sailed to Jakir Chine.

  Gabriel studied Aulf’s face, his own expression inscrutable.

  ‘Aulf, you are the captain of the mail boat, and a very experienced sailor, are you not?’ he questioned.

  Aulf nodded.

  ‘So then, do you believe these two when they tell you that they sailed all the way across the great Ice Plain?’

  Aulf met Gabriel’s pale, penetrating stare with his own piercing sky-blue gaze. ‘I believe they can do anything they say,’ he replied. ‘They have magic stones. That’s how they navigated across the Ice Plain.’

  ‘Magic stones?’ said Gabriel, his eyes as sharp as two pieces of unyielding flint.

  ‘They have arrows that point at the sun and tell them where to go.’

  Jacob was already fishing for the cord he wore around his neck. He pulled out the lodestone and held it up for their inspection.

  ‘It’s not magic, it’s science,’ he told them. ‘This is called a lodestone. If you know how to use it, it can help you navigate.’

  The mayor examined the stone with interest. When he saw that it was indeed just a small black stone with an arrow engraved on it, he looked disappointed. It certainly didn’t look very magical. Gabriel was more intrigued. He took it in his hand and turned it over, inspecting it carefully.

  ‘Interesting,’ he murmured, weighing the stone in his palm before handing it back to Jacob, who replaced it carefully around his neck.

  ‘And this is the extent of their so-called magic?’ Gabriel asked Aulf, and the implied disdain in the question made Aulf bristle.

  ‘No. They can make fire out of ice. I saw them do it with my own eyes!’

  ‘That’s remarkable!’ said the mayor, suitably impressed.

&nbs
p; ‘And they’ve come to Quayven because they want to help.’

  ‘Help?’ queried the mayor, surprised. ‘Help with what?’

  ‘Help solve the communication problems between your islands,’ put in Jacob brashly.

  The mayor’s eyes opened even wider. ‘Really?’ he said, hovering between hope and disbelief.

  ‘Where we come from, people communicate using light towers,’ Jacob went on without any more preamble. ‘Perhaps that’s what you need here.’

  ‘Light towers?’ echoed the mayor, raising his eyebrows. ‘Is that something to do with magic too?’

  ‘No,’ said Jacob, firmly, ‘it’s to do with science. Light towers built around Hexult would enable you to send messages instantly, from island to island, and back again. No boats needed, so no threat from raiders, and no waiting days for a reply.’

  ‘That’s the sort of useful magic I like!’ exclaimed Mayor Sleetfoot with a pleased smile. He looked to Gabriel for his opinion. ‘This is more your area, Gabriel. Does this make sense to you? Could we build towers like that here in Hexult?’

  Gabriel was staring hard at Jacob. ‘It would depend. I would need to know more details.’

  The mayor was beginning to look excited. ‘Do you know how to build these magic towers?’ he questioned Jacob.

  ‘Well, yes. I know how it’s done,’ began Jacob, hastening on to explain, ‘but it’s not really magic, it’s just sci…’

  ‘I think,’ interrupted Gabriel, in a loud voice that drowned out Jacob’s explanation and took them all by surprise, ‘before we go any further, Mayor Sleetfoot, we need to be sure of what we are dealing with here. These two have already been accused of being spies and magicians. We must not be deceived by their youth. It would be well to establish exactly who and what they are, and why they are really here, before we proceed any further.’

  ‘Exactly!’ growled Proctor, eyeing the twins darkly from beneath his heavy brows. ‘Let me take them away and question them, sir, and we’ll find out what they’re really about.’