A Meddle of Wizards

by Alexandra Rushe

  Raine lowered her gaze again. Sailors moved about the deck, engaged in various tasks. Standing apart from them at the bow of the ship was a slim woman in a dark blue mantle. The wind ruffled her long, dark hair and lifted the edges of her cloak. There was something unbearably sad and lonely about her. A wisp of memory teased the edge of Raine’s mind and vanished.

  “That’s Glory,” Gertie said, noticing Raine’s perusal.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “A beautiful pain in the arse, maybe.” Gertie turned away. “Wait here while I make you a tonic. My medicine bag got destroyed in the fire, but Raven keeps a stock of herbs on hand. You’ll need dandelion and milk thistle to cleanse your liver of toxins, I think, and a dash of cat’s claw to ward off infection. A surge is hard on the body.”

  “FFUME.”

  Gertie whipped her head around. “What?”

  “FFUME.” The bitter kiss of the sea wind made Raine shiver. “It’s short for free-form uncontrolled magical emission. That’s a more accurate term than surge, don’t you think?”

  “Humph,” said Gertie. “Better throw in a little catnip. Your nerves are obviously overworked.” She stalked off, pausing to snarl over her shoulder, “Next time tell me you’re cold. I forget humans don’t have fur.”

  “Whew, tetchy.” Raine drew her knees to her chest for warmth. “Somebody’s in a mood.”

  A large pair of boots stopped in front of the crate. “She’s vexed with herself, not you,” a deep voice said. “She’s angry because she didn’t notice you’d taken a chill. Her gruff exterior hides a loving heart.”

  Raine raised her gaze and felt a zing of recognition and awareness. The man before her was handsome like Mauric, with a stubborn jaw and chin, but leaner and more feral. Dangerous, with slanted, tawny eyes, and a wide, sensuous mouth.

  “I’m Reaven Gorne, but everyone calls me Raven,” the man said. “I’m the captain. I hope you’ve found the cabin to your liking?”

  Raine realized her mouth was open and closed it. “Yes, thank you,” she managed. Remembering her manners, she held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Raine.”

  “Regular goggin, ain’t he?” Mauric clapped a hand on Raven’s shoulder. “As you can plainly see, I’m better looking.”

  “Mauric,” Raine cried, jumping up to give him a hug.

  Mauric laughed and twirled her around.

  “Careful, cork brain, she’s been ill,” Raven said as Mauric set her down. He took Raine’s arm to steady her. “Come, you’re pale as wax.” Leading her back to the crate, Raven slipped a woolen mantle around her shoulders. “Your cloak, milady. I fear ’twas badly stained, so I had my cabin boy clean and press it.”

  “Gog goo,” Mauric said, rocking on his heels. “Your cape was dripping with it. My fault, really. Dropped it in a puddle of the stuff by accident. I must say, that was something, the way you liquefied that tracker. Nothing left of old toady but slime.”

  “Oh, dear,” Raine said, feeling faint.

  “Stow it, chucklehead,” Raven said. “Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?”

  “Upsetting her?” Mauric was plainly astonished. “It was a compliment. It’s not every day you see someone melt a goggin.”

  “I said stow it,” Raven ground out. “Don’t you have something to do?”

  “No.”

  “Then find something. Now.”

  “Yes, Roark.” Mauric sketched him an elaborate bow. “Anything you say, Roark.”

  He sauntered off with a roguish grin, leaving Raine alone with Raven.

  “My apologies.” Raven gazed at her in concern. “I can have him thrown overboard, if you like.”

  “Please don’t. I like Mauric. He has a way of growing on you.”

  “Aye. Like a carbuncle.”

  Raine laughed. “He means well. So, I’m confused. Is your name Roark or Raven?”

  Gertie clomped up with a steaming mug in one paw. “Roark’s a title, not a name. Means ‘son of Rowan.’” She pressed the metal cup into Raine’s hands. “A tonic, as promised, to fix what ails you.”

  Raine caught a whiff of the steam rising from the mug and blenched. Eyes watering, she tried to hand the cup of sludge back to Gertie. “No, thank you. It smells like dirty boiled socks.”

  “Wouldn’t know about that. Never wear socks, myself,” Gertie said, pushing the cup back at her. “Claws, you know. Drink it down, pet. It will make you feel better.”

  Raine took a cautious sip of the grainy mucous, and gagged. “I can’t, Gertie. It’s too disgusting.”

  Raven’s lips twitched. “Come, now. It can’t be that bad.”

  “Yeah?” Raine shoved the cup at him. “You drink it. I dare you.”

  Raven shrugged and downed the contents of the mug. “See? Nothing to it.” He handed the cup back to Gertie. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead. “Excuse me. I’d best relieve Gurnst at the helm.”

  He turned and made a beeline for the nearest water barrel. Snatching up the ladle, he took a swig of water, swished it around his mouth, and hurried to the rail.

  “What’s he doing?” Gertie asked.

  Raine leaned around the troll for a better look. “I can’t tell. He’s either heaving over the side or scrubbing his tongue.”

  She turned when she heard someone call her name, and saw Brefreton coming toward her. He looked gaunt and worn, but his eyes were no longer quite so haunted.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said. “What you’ve done . . . There are no words.”

  Raine blushed. “Forget it. Just take it off my bill.”

  Brefreton took her hands in his. “My dear, you have repaid me a hundred times over. Indeed, it is I who owe you. How can I ever make it up to you?”

  “W-e-e-l-l,” said Raine. “You and Gertie keep saying I need training. I was wondering . . . That is, I was hoping . . .” She cleared her throat and blurted, “Would you be my teacher?”

  Brefreton bowed. “My dear, ’twould be an honor.”

  A small figure hurtled across the deck. “Rainey,” Chaz said, throwing his arms around her. “You’re all better.”

  “Chaz.” Raine knelt to give the boy a hug. “I’ve missed you. Look at you. I swear, you’ve grown another two inches.”

  Chaz’s eyes were blue today like those of the sailors who manned the ship, and danced with excitement. “I’ve missed you, too, Rainey. Guess what? I’ve got a friend. His name is Tarin and he’s a cabin boy, and he knows all kinds of stuff. Ropes and masts and sails and all sorts of things. There he is now.” He pumped his arms up and down to get the other boy’s attention. “Gotta go.”

  Chaz tore off to join his friend.

  Brefreton cleared his throat. “About that training. We’ll start with the basics, then move on to skills like levitation.”

  “I don’t know, Bree,” Raine said, feeling uncertain. “I’m not crazy about heights.”

  “I wasn’t planning on levitating you, Raine. I was thinking more like a feather or a cup.”

  “Oh. That’s different.”

  Taking her by the arm, Brefreton drew her toward the stern of the ship to begin her lessons.

  Chapter 38

  Into the Drink

  Humming under her breath, Raine stepped out of the galley stairwell and onto the deck. Balancing a pot of jam in one hand and a tray of warm cookies in the other, she maneuvered her way around several piles of rope and set the tray and the jam pot down on a large wooden container.

  “Tea time,” Gertie announced, plunking two enormous pots of tea on the crate beside the cookies.

  Raven appeared without warning. The man had the uncanny ability to materialize out of thin air. No doubt he’d learned the trick from Gertie, but Raine found it disconcerting.

  “You’re spoiling my men, mor,” he said. “Worse, you’
re making them fat.”

  “Nonsense. They’re hard-working lads. They deserve a few treats.”

  Raven eyed the tea pots. “Yes, but tea, mor? Warriors drink ale.”

  “The warriors on this ship drink ale a-plenty. A little tea, now and again, won’t hurt them.” The troll scowled. “But, if you insist, I could dose them with tonic. Some of the men look wormy.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Raven said. “Tea will be fine.”

  Gertie’s eyes narrowed. “The crew giving you a rough time of it because of your talent?”

  “Not exactly.” Raven avoided her gaze. “Let’s say I make them nervous and leave it at that.”

  “Pay no heed to them, son. You need training, though. A green wizard is a—”

  “—dangerous wizard,” Raven said. “If you’ve said it once, you’ve said it a thousand times.”

  “That right?” The troll cocked a brow. “Then you should heed your old mother’s advice and join Bree and the girl for lessons.”

  “The girl has a name,” Raine reminded her, and not for the first time. She tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “It’s Raine.” She turned to address Raven. “You’re more than welcome to join us. You can’t be worse at magic than I am.”

  Raven shook his head. “I thank you, but not in front of the men.”

  “Halfwits, the lot of them,” Gertie pronounced. She caught Raine in the act of levitating the jam pot and snapped, “Careful, girl, that’s the last of the brambleberry.”

  Raine started and spilled some of the jam. “See?” She glanced at Raven, her face burning. “Told you I’m no good at it.”

  “You’ve only begun.” Gertie plucked the jar out of midair and set it down. “Now, go practice somewhere else.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And don’t flap your hands about so much,” Gertie said. “It’s babyish and marks you as a beginner. If you must make a gesture, keep it controlled and deliberate. You look like you’re swatting at flies.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Raine mumbled, and slunk away.

  The Storm’s hold was loaded with cargo, and more goods were lashed to the deck. Raine slipped into her hideaway, a sheltered cranny among the crates. Since waking at sea, her life had settled into a routine. Mornings were devoted to magic lessons with Brefreton. Afternoons, she helped Gertie in the galley, baking fresh bread and goodies for the men. She didn’t mind. Baking brought back happy memories of time spent in the kitchen with Mimsie as a child, before her sickness confined her to bed: pound cakes and sugar cookies for Christmas, popcorn balls and candied apples for Halloween trick-or-treaters, and pumpkin and pecan pies for Thanksgiving.

  When she and Gertie had finished their baking for the day, Raine would find a quiet corner and practice her magic out of sight of the crew. Like Mauric, the crew disliked anything that smacked of the supernatural. Raine found the Finlaran aversion to magic baffling, given that magic was an immutable force in Tandara. Nonetheless, she’d been raised to be considerate of others and did her practicing in private.

  She quickly discovered there was more to being a practicing wizard than she’d imagined. Her brief experiences with magic—the battle with the mud goggin and the encounter with the Shad and the tracker in Gambollia—had been adrenaline-charged and spontaneous, kneejerk reactions to danger. She didn’t count the episodes in the magic shop and the inn. Those were accidents, magical hiccups, not the result of conscious effort on her part. Magic with reliable results was harder to do, and the first step was learning to channel the raw energy around her.

  “There’s power in all things, Raine,” Brefreton had explained during their first lesson, echoing what Gertie had said weeks earlier on Captain Braxx’s barge. He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on the heels of his worn boots. “It’s in wind and water, wood and stone, living creatures and sod. Empty your mind, and let it fill you. Make it a part of you, then channel it through your wizard stone. Nothing to it.”

  Nothing to it, maybe, if you were an accomplished adept like Brefreton, but Raine found it hard to concentrate. She’d lived in her head for so long as an invalid that she didn’t know how to find the off switch. The wheels in her head kept turning and little nagging thoughts and worries buzzed through her consciousness like pesky mosquitoes. Her hair tickled the back of her neck or blew across her face, making her nose itch. The thud of her heart, the rumble of her tummy, the twitch of her muscles distracted her. There were plenty of distractions on board the ship, too. A mast would creak or a sail would boom in the wind, drawing her from her reverie, and the sailors’ fondness for bawdy songs was diverting. The first time Raine managed to levitate a cup she’d shouted for joy, but her elation had been short-lived. The wind blew a verse of “The Wallydraigle Wench from Wartooh” her way, and her train of thought derailed. The cup crashed to the deck and shattered.

  “Pay attention, Raine,” Brefreton had clucked in disapproval. “What if that had been a person you dropped? What would you say to them?”

  “Oops?” Raine had said, earning another chuck of censure from the wizard.

  She made her way across the busy deck now, slipping between the boxes to a small square space in the middle of the stacks. For some reason, she felt antsy.

  Which is one reason I bobbled the jam jar, she thought, feeling unaccountably cross. She rubbed her stinging neck. Stupid thing’s been bothering me since I woke up.

  She sat down and felt something bang against her thigh. Reaching under her cloak, she removed a small, leather-bound book from an inside pocket. “There you are,” she said, setting the book aside. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”

  The book was entitled A Beginner’s Guide to Mastering the Glow: Incantate—Don’t Incinerate, and had been penned by a Valdarian scribe named Vaculis. It was part how-to manual and part history, and Brefreton had given it to her.

  “Absolute rubbish,” he said when he’d handed the book to Raine, “but it’s all I could find on board. Vaculis Verrillis was a drab who couldn’t summon a thought, much less the glow. The first half is diagrams and theories. You’ll want to skip those. You can’t diagram magic, for Rebe’s sake. You either have talent or you don’t, and all the charts and drawings in the world aren’t worth gog scat without it.”

  Raine had obeyed, skipping past the incomprehensible scribbles in the beginning to the second half of the book, a disturbing catalog of cautionary tales about adepts who’d come to bad ends. Dorfus the Doomed, for instance, accidentally turned himself inside out. No coming back from that. And then there was Olfred the Ominous, a newbie wizard who’d inadvertently transformed an entire village into mice and himself into a cat, and then proceeded to do what cats will do.

  The stories had terrified Raine, and she’d confessed as much to Bree when she’d finished the gruesome little book. “What if I blow myself up?” she asked. “You know, like Carlo the Combustible.”

  “The windy fellow who ignited his own farts?” Brefreton had tugged on his ponytail in thought. “Concerning, but you’re not so stupid as that.” He’d glanced at her sharply. “But no beans. Just to be on the safe side.”

  Raine took two cookies from another pocket in her cloak. Caraway shortbreads—her favorite. Munching on a cookie, she contemplated the large packing boxes to her right. They looked heavy—packed with who-knew-what—but according to Bree, a wizard could lift a mountain if he put his mind to it.

  “Not that I’m recommending it, mind you,” he’d said sternly during that particular lesson. “As a rule, it’s best to leave things like mountains and rivers where you find them. Horace the Hapless learned that, much to his regret.” He paused. “Which didn’t last long. Dropped a mountain on his head, the nincompoop.”

  Horace’s mishap was sobering, but so far, the biggest thing Raine had managed to levitate had been Bree, and that had been purely by accident. On the morning of this u
nhappy mishap, she’d been trying to coax a coil of rope to rise into the air without success.

  “Up,” she’d muttered, grasping her wizard stone.

  The rope shimmied and slithered across the deck like a startled rat snake, but did not rise.

  She took a quick peek around. No troll in sight. “Up,” she’d commanded again, adding a gesture for good measure.

  A satisfying blast of energy had shot from her fingertips. Unfortunately, Bree had chosen that exact moment to arrive for their morning lesson. The light beam had clipped him in the kneecaps, blasting him over the ship’s rail. He’d dangled there like yesterday’s wash, a circumstance Gertie and Mauric had taken no small delight in. Brefreton, on the other hand, had not been amused. Raine had apologized, profusely, of course, but her words had fallen on deaf ears.

  Brefreton’s manner had remained frosty for several days, thawing only after he’d launched Raine on an impromptu flight around one of the ship’s masts.

  “As a purely academic exercise, of course,” he’d assured her, brushing a stray thread from his ragged cloak. “To demonstrate the proper method of levitating a person.”

  Her shrieks of terror must have satisfied him, because lessons had resumed the next day.

  Raine contemplated the big container. It certainly looked heavy. Her fingers itched to try to move it. She glanced around. No one was in sight. Her hand crept to the stone around her neck, and she opened her mind to the hum. The crate trembled and rose a few inches off the deck, wobbling in the air.

  “Yay,” she squealed. “I did it.”

  Her concentration slipped and the heavy container crashed back to the deck. She cringed, expecting Bree to thunder up and demand to know what the devil she was doing, but no one came.

  Something bit her. “Ow,” she howled, slapping her neck. She looked around. Not a bee or hornet in sight. “What the heck?”

  Massaging her burning neck, she crawled from her hiding place. The sea was smooth as a duck pond. Raven stood at the ship’s rail, his handsome profile rigid.