The Journey to Dragon Island

by Claire Fayers

  The door opened and Ebeko came back in. Peter wondered whether she’d been using magic to listen to them, but he thought she’d be acting a bit more suspiciously if she had, and she didn’t seem suspicious at all. Unless you counted the smile she gave them.

  “Good news,” she said. “Kaya is finished. Your friend is going to live.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Aldebran Boswell says that no matter how far you travel in the world, you cannot get away from who you are. He’s right. In fact, you often don’t find out who you truly are until you travel. There is nothing like going on a grand adventure to find out what you’re made of.

  (from THOMAS GIRLING’S SECRET BOOK OF PIRATING ADVENTURE)

  Cassie lay motionless, her eyes closed and her sun-bronzed face ash-pale, so still that Brine couldn’t be sure she was even breathing.

  “Don’t worry,” said Kaya, “she’s alive. She just needs to rest. I had to use one spell to remove the poisons from her body, another to repair the damage to her leg, and another to speed up her body’s own healing. She’ll sleep for the rest of the day, but she’ll be back on her feet within a week.”

  “A week?” echoed Brine. She sat down on the edge of the bed. What were they supposed to do for a week? Her head throbbed with pain, her throat ached, and her nose felt completely blocked. She’d come home—she’d found her father. Supposedly. She ought to be celebrating, but instead she felt like crying.

  Talk to Kaya. Find out everything she could.

  “Did you find the child?” asked Ewan.

  Brine rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Yes, but … I think it’s best if he stays here for now. He’s safe.”

  She knew what that meant—they wouldn’t be taking Ren home by sunset. Cerro would be disgraced and Marapi would take the opportunity to seize control of the village again. Stella was going to hate them all.

  But what else could they do? They couldn’t leave Cassie here alone. Besides, they had to find out what was wrong with the children, and the answers lay here in Orion’s Keep, not in the village.

  Brine expected Ewan to argue. Maybe he would have if he weren’t worried about Cassie. He frowned and then nodded. “All right, if you’re sure.” He turned to face Kaya. “You’re going to use your magic to send Trudi, Bill, and Rob back to the Onion. I’ll stay here with Cassie.”

  “That isn’t possible. I can’t send you to your ship,” said Kaya.

  Ewan’s frown deepened. “You better make it possible.”

  Brine watched the two men nervously. Ewan would love another excuse to attack Kaya, she thought. Only Cassie, and the possibility that Kaya was Brine’s father, held him back.

  Kaya turned away with an exasperated sigh. “Believe me, I would like nothing better than to send you all back to your ship. But the movespell requires a spellstone at each end for you to travel between, and you don’t have one there. The best I can do is to send you to the village. You’ll have to make your own way from there.”

  “Do you know what he’s talking about, Peter?” asked Ewan.

  Peter shook his head. “They use magic differently here. But if he says he can only take you to the village, I’d believe him.”

  “And I believe Peter,” said Brine.

  Ewan fingered his dagger. “How do we know he won’t drop us in a swamp, or in the sea?”

  “Because however much I’d like to, it appears my daughter would prefer you to stay alive,” snapped Kaya. “I’ve already taken a risk inviting you into the castle. Wait there.”

  He swept out of the room and came back moments later holding two pieces of starshell, each set on a gold chain. He offered one to Ewan. The pirate jerked back as if Kaya had thrust a scorpion at him.

  “It won’t hurt you,” said Kaya with a smile.

  Ewan snatched the chain. “Only magicians can use starshell.”

  He jumped as the second starshell repeated his words exactly.

  “They are speakstones,” said Kaya. “Speak into one and your voice will come out of the other.” He offered the second one to Trudi. “If I drop you anywhere deadly, you can tell your friends. You’ll still die, of course, but at least they’ll be able to avenge you.”

  Trudi looked at Ewan and waited for him to nod before taking the starshell.

  “Now,” said Kaya, “if you have no more objections, I’ll send you back to the island.” His gaze found Brine. “Oshima, you’ll stay?”

  It was halfway between a command and a question. Brine nodded. “Of course I’m staying. Peter and Tom, too.”

  Kaya’s gaze narrowed. “I’m sorry, but the boy must go back to the island. He has a box full of dangerous, wild magic. I can’t allow it to stay in the castle.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” asked Ewan quietly.

  Peter shoved his box of starshell at Bill. “Take it back to the Onion,” he said. “It’ll be safe there. Now I don’t have any magic. Happy, Kaya?”

  Kaya’s eyes glittered angrily, but he nodded.

  Brine let out a slow breath and allowed herself to relax. “Look after Boswell,” she whispered to Trudi.

  “Don’t worry—we’ll take care of him. You look after yourself.” Trudi cast a meaningful glance over her shoulder at Kaya. “Just because someone says they’re somebody, you don’t have to believe them,” she said, just loud enough for the magus to hear.

  Brine’s stomach boiled with nerves. Peter and Tom stepped closer to her, one on either side.

  It felt strange to let them take charge for a change—strange, and oddly comforting.

  “I can’t wait to talk,” she said, following Kaya out of the room. “I want to know all about you.”

  “Speaking of knowing things,” said Tom. “Does this castle have a library?”

  * * *

  The wind caught Brine’s hair as she followed the group out onto the battlements.

  “Tell Stella we will come back with her brother,” said Peter.

  “We’ll do our best,” promised Trudi. She hugged Brine, then stared into her face as if she’d just noticed something different there. Maybe she had, Brine thought. So much had happened to her in the past years. Even if Kaya was telling her the truth, Oshima the magician’s daughter must now be a completely different person from Brine Seaborne the pirate.

  Kaya tapped his staff on the stones, and a thin haze of amber light drifted out. “The spell only works for one person at a time,” he said. “Stand still.”

  Bill started to say something, but Brine didn’t catch it because the air filled with bright amber light and he vanished.

  Brine watched as Trudi and Rob both vanished, too, then she walked to the edge of the battlements and looked over. Wings in the distance were probably teradons; then, looking down, she could see Marfak’s Peak, jagged and angry-looking, with broken stones and patches of rising smoke. A beaten dragon, or maybe a defeated magician.

  She was home, she thought. Not just that, but she’d found her father, alive and waiting for her. Why wasn’t she happy?

  She heard the sound of a staff tapping on stone behind her and she turned around. “On a clear day, you can see most of the island from here,” said Kaya. “You used to come up here all the time with your mother, and the two of you would spend hours just sitting and looking out at everything.” He held out his hand, obviously expecting her to take it, but she drew back. She knew him but she didn’t know him, and right now she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to trust him.

  “Hiri is going to show us the library,” Tom called to her. “Do you want to come?”

  Brine shook her head. “You go ahead. I’ll stay here awhile.”

  She almost lost her nerve and ran after them as they disappeared inside.

  “Oshima?” said Kaya.

  Brine remembered that was her name. She clasped her hands behind her.

  “What happened to me?” she asked. “I was found in a boat—but how did I end up on the other side of the world? I couldn’t have sailed all the way from here to there.”

/>   “Your mother sent you.” Kaya walked a few paces and stood, his gaze fixed on the circling teradons. “She meant well. You were losing your memory, forgetting us, forgetting your own name. We didn’t know what was happening to you, but your mother started to believe the castle was causing it. So she created a movestone. They are supposed to work in pairs, and you travel between them. But your mother used one stone on its own, and you simply disappeared. We had no idea where you’d gone. I spent months searching for you. I used every spell I knew. But Orion’s Keep needed me and, in the end, I had to accept that I’d lost you. All I could do was wait and hope you’d eventually find your way back.”

  And now she had, Brine thought. She gazed out over the battlements.

  “Where is my mother?” she asked. “Why isn’t she here?”

  Kaya turned back to her, his smile gone. “I’m sorry.”

  Brine felt all the breath go out of her. She gripped the battlement for support. She’d known already, of course—there had to be some reason her mother wasn’t here—but she’d managed to keep the thought out of her mind until now. “How?” she asked unsteadily. “How did she die?”

  “She fell ill, not long after you disappeared. I’m sorry, Oshima. There are some things even magic cannot cure.” Kaya rubbed a hand over his eyes and sighed. “You must have had an adventurous few years.”

  “Some of it.” Homesickness welled up in her, not for this place, but for the sea, for the Onion. Right then, she even missed Rob Grosse’s smelly underpants. She sat down on the castle battlements, her hands resting back on the warm stones, and, slowly, she began to talk, telling Kaya about her three years on the Minutes Islands, keeping house for Tallis Magus, how Peter had broken the magician’s starshell and they’d run away and joined the Onion.

  Kaya listened quietly until she got to Marfak West.

  “Marfak West?” he echoed sharply.

  Brine broke off her story. “He said he’d been here—he told us about Orion’s Keep. He didn’t mention the volcano, though.”

  Kaya frowned down at the stones. “He must have taken the name after he left here. He never told us his real name.”

  This sounded interesting. Brine shifted closer to him. “What happened?”

  “It was a long time ago,” said Kaya. “You were only a baby, and Orion’s Keep had twenty magi. One day we saw a ship.” He gave a flicker of a smile. “More of a wreck than a ship, to be honest. We went to investigate and we found a man on board, half dead, his skin burned by the sun, all his hair fallen off, even his eyelashes. At first we couldn’t get much sense out of him, but he said he’d come in search of magic. His health returned and he grew stronger—strong enough in the end that he tried to take over the castle and we had to fight him. We beat him, but only just—many of our magi were killed. That’s why there are only three of us here now, and that is why we so desperately need the children. They are the ones with the greatest potential, the ones who will be our next magi if only we can find a cure for them.”

  He turned to face her, his eyes burning bright. “I was beginning to lose hope, Oshima—beginning to think we’d fail and Orion’s Keep would fall. But now you have come back and we have hope again.”

  Brine drew back. The intensity in Kaya’s gaze puzzled her—it was something familiar and frightening at the same time. “Why is the castle so important?” she asked. “What are you even doing here?”

  Kaya put his hand over hers. “You really don’t remember? Orion’s Keep is the only thing standing between this island and destruction. If the castle falls, the island will die.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Weather warning: Mysterious whirlpools and waterspouts are causing chaos off the coast of Morning. Islanders are calling for the removal of their ruler, Baron Kaitos. Since the surprise reappearance of Marfak West on Morning some months ago, which resulted in the near-destruction of Baron Kaitos’s palace, the island has suffered a drop in trade, and difficult sailing conditions can only make things worse.

  (Report submitted to Barnard’s Reach by news-scribe)

  Peter had never been that interested in books, but even he paused to stare as he entered the library of Orion’s Keep. It was right at the bottom of the castle and, in contrast to all the straight lines of the other rooms and corridors, the room was round with a circular table in the middle and bookshelves following the curve of the walls. A carved dragon’s head snarled at him from near the ceiling—its tail curling from the lowest shelf—giving the impression that the shelving was made up of the dragon’s body, coil on top of coil.

  Tom stood beside him, openmouthed. “Where do all these things come from? They look old.”

  “They are,” said Hiri. “We used to trade. There’s gold in the sand here, and the magi used to sift it out and melt it down. They had translocation spells that could reach right across the sea to other islands. We don’t have enough magic to do it anymore. Worst luck.”

  Except when Kaya had sent Brine halfway around the world, Peter thought. He wondered how Brine was getting on now.

  “What’s it like living on a ship?” asked Hiri.

  “Smelly,” said Tom. “Nobody washes, and we keep getting attacked by giant spiders and things with tentacles. Almost everything that attacks us is either squishy or slimy.”

  Hiri smiled, and Peter took the chance that the young magus might be in a friendly mood. “How do you do magic? Everyone keeps talking about spellstones, and I never heard of them until I came here.”

  “Spellstones are the only proper way to use magic,” said Ebeko. “Your way of taking raw magic out of a stone with no preparation is completely wrong. I’m surprised you haven’t killed yourself with it. Don’t you know that wild magic is dangerous?”

  All magic was dangerous, Peter thought; that was the whole point of using spellshapes. They forced the magic into a particular pattern so it would cast one spell, and one spell only. And they confined a magician’s ability to the number of spellshapes he could remember.

  You don’t need spellshapes, Marfak West once said. They’re only the rules. As long as you were clear about what you wanted, magic would respond to your thoughts and change reality to match them. And that was exactly why Peter did need them—because spellshapes put a limit on what he could do, and he needed those limits. Especially now, when he really felt like turning Ebeko into a candlestick.

  “It’s dangerous,” repeated Ebeko stubbornly. “And it’s selfish. Instead of creating spellstones for other people to use, you’re hoarding all the magic for yourself.”

  Peter stared around the library uneasily, half expecting to see Marfak West’s ghost materialize. “Show me, then,” he said. “How do you make a spellstone?”

  Marfak West’s ghost remained pleasingly nonexistent. Ebeko shook her head, her lips tightly pressed, but Hiri gave Peter a broad grin. “Why not? It’s easy.”

  He took a box off one of the shelves and picked out a narrow sliver of starshell. Peter stared in amazement. They kept starshell unguarded here? Kaya had made him send his box back to the Onion when he could help himself to what was here already. This must be a test, to see whether he would steal starshell if he had the chance. Peter sat down, his eyes on Hiri, and kept his hands clasped under the table so he didn’t accidentally reach out.

  Hiri put the starshell piece on the table and set a pen down next to it. “This is a spellshaper,” he said. “The tip is pure gold. So, what you have to do is draw a small amount of magic out of the spellstone into the shaper, and then you draw the spellshape onto the stone.”

  The tip of the spellshaper glowed amber with magic. Hiri drew a circle carefully onto the starshell. “This is the shape for a finding spell.”

  Peter knew what a finding spell looked like, but he resisted the urge to say so. He watched as Hiri drew circle after circle. “You have to keep the shape exactly the same each time,” he said as he worked. “Do it enough times, and all the magic in the stone will settle into that shape. Then, as the magic rep
lenishes, the new magic is pulled into the shape that’s already there; so as long as there’s some magic in the stone, the spell will work. Some spells will keep casting constantly; others sit dormant, waiting to be cast. All you have to do then is agitate the magic, and it will cast the spell.”

  Peter remembered Stella rubbing the heatstones between her hands. He watched Hiri with fascination, and then growing boredom. This was like all those lessons with Tallis Magus, copying spellshapes out over and over onto sheets of paper.

  Hiri sat back. “That should be enough. I chose the finding spell because it works with a single stone. A lot of spellstones work in pairs, like speakstones and movestones. You need one at each end point, and you move either your voice or yourself between them.”

  “Can you write more than one spell into a stone?” Peter asked.

  “You can, but it’s not recommended, not unless the spells are related and you know a lot about magic.” Hiri held the starshell out to Tom. “Try it.”

  Tom rubbed the piece between his hands. “Show me the most interesting books in the library.”

  A blade of amber light shot from the starshell and hit the floor in the corner of the room.

  Peter grinned. “And that is a perfect example of magic not doing what you expect. Where do all these spellstones come from?”

  Hiri shrugged. “They’re just here. You can keep that one, Tom, if you like.”

  “Thanks.” Tom slipped the piece into his notebook. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to visit the children again.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Ebeko, getting up. It appeared that the magi didn’t want to leave either of them on their own. A sure sign they were hiding something, Peter thought. He waited until they’d gone, and then he sat back in his chair. “So,” he said. “Orion’s Keep is named after a dragon…”

  CHAPTER 20

  After the last eruption of Marfak’s Peak destroyed half the island, the surviving magi knew that the only way to protect Apcaron was to prevent Marfak from ever erupting again. And so they built Orion’s Keep, named after a dragon and full of magic.