Storm Riders Page 4

  Gythe latched on to his arm, indicating she was coming with him.

  Stephano gently detached her. “You stay here, play your music. Let them know I’m not a threat. Sing the song about the Pirate King. They seem to like that one.”

  Gythe rolled her eyes. As far as she could tell, the dragons didn’t like anything she sang. She sat down on a fallen log, placed her harp in her lap, and began to sing the old Trundler song that told in a great many verses of the adventures of the Pirate King, a Trundler hero, even though in the end the nations of the world had come together to sink his island base.

  I steered from sound to sound, as I sailed, as I sailed.

  I steered from sound to sound, as I sailed.

  I steered from sound to sound, and many ships I found,

  and most of them I burned, as I sailed.

  As Gythe sang, accompanying herself on the harp, Stephano began to walk toward the dragons. He held out his hands to show he was not armed. He walked slowly, deliberately, smiling and calm on the outside, even if he was not particularly calm on the inside. He kept close watch on the dragons.

  The three seemed at first puzzled by this break in the routine they’d established over the weeks. Stephano walked closer and the dragons’ puzzlement turned to suspicion. With their spiked manes bristling in warning, they raised their heads and dug their back claws into the ground. As Stephano moved ever nearer, Petard’s head reared up. He half spread his wings, a clear sign to Stephano to back off. Viola watched Stephano intently, making no overtly threatening gesture, yet giving him no encouragement either. Verdi gazed down his snout at Stephano. The green dragon’s eyes narrowed.

  Stephano slowed his pace, creeping nearer a small step at a time.

  “I want you to trust me,” Stephano called to them, having no idea if they understood him or not. “I want you to know that I trust you.”

  Petard heaved himself to his feet, wings spread fully, his head lowered, his jaws slightly parted. His tail thumped the ground. His lip curled, showing his fangs. Viola rose, not as dramatically, moving fluidly, with an effortless grace. Verdi shifted, half rising, poised and ready for flight.

  Stephano stopped. The message was clear. He gave a rueful smile and shrugged.

  “Sorry,” he said to them. “I guess I’ve failed.”

  He backed off. Petard continued to flare his wings. Viola had a glint in her eye. She seemed more amused than frightened. Verdi settled back down. When Stephano reached his usual place in the field, near the stump on which Gythe usually sat with her harp, Petard finally relaxed. The dragon folded his wings and returned to his recumbent position. He continued to keep a wary eye on Stephano.

  Gythe came out from beneath the shelter of the trees, carrying her harp. She sat down on the tree stump and prepared to play another tune.

  “Not today. Let’s go back to the boat,” said Stephano, dispirited.

  Gythe cast him a pleading look.

  “It’s no use, Gythe,” said Stephano. “The dragons don’t trust me. And if they don’t trust me, I can’t trust them.”

  He looked back at the dragons.

  “We won’t be coming to the clearing anymore,” he called to them. “We have work to do to repair our boat. But we both have found pleasure in knowing you. Thank you for visiting us.”

  He bowed formally and Gythe made a graceful curtsy, then the two walked back to the tree line. When they were in the shadows of the trees, Stephano cast a glance over his shoulder.

  The three dragons remained seated in the clearing, staring after them, expressionless.

  * * *

  Gythe and Stephano returned to find Rodrigo sitting at the table. He was attempting to draw constructs on a board that had been part of the Cloud Hopper’s deck before it was damaged by a beam of green fire. He had placed the four-foot plank on their dinner table and was trying unsuccessfully to restore the ruined constructs. He was deep in concentration, muttering beneath his breath. Stephano, seeing his friend shake his head in frustration and then rub out the constructs he’d drawn, had no need to ask how things were going with the magic.

  On board the Cloud Hopper, Dag and Miri were testing the workings of the two air screws used to steer the boat. Miri operated the screws from the helm—a brass control panel inscribed with magical constructs. When Miri touched a construct, the magic flowed from her into the construct and from there along cables made of braided leather that led to the screws. Miri touched one construct and the air screw began to whirl. Then she touched another. Dag walked to the opposite side of the boat, peered down at the air screw.

  “Nothing,” he reported.

  “Is the cable connected?” Miri asked.

  “Yes,” said Dag patiently. “For the tenth time, the cable is connected.”

  Miri shook her head in exasperation. Her red hair was damp from the moist air, red curls clinging to her cheeks and forehead. She dragged her hair back.

  “It’s the magic. It’s not working. So damn frustrating. I always took the magic that powered this boat for granted. Never again, let me tell you!”

  Disheartened, she walked over to the table where Rodrigo was working.

  “How is your repair work coming along?” she asked.

  “It isn’t,” Rodrigo answered dourly. “What makes this problem so baffling is that we sailed from the Abbey to Westfirth and from Westfirth to wherever we are without any problems. The contramagic must have been eating away at the magic all this time and the damage from the cannon fire exacerbated the situation. We might well have sailed along for months without ever knowing the extent of the damage until we simply dropped out of the sky. Observe.”

  When he drew sigils on either side of the damaged portion, they stayed where they were drawn. But in the section affected by contramagic, the delicate lines of the sigil shivered and slowly warped even as he drew it, rendering it useless.

  Rodrigo was glaring at the plank in frustration when Doctor Ellington came strolling out of the woods. Seeing Rodrigo and Stephano seated at the table, the cat thought it was time to eat. He jumped up and landed in the middle of the plank, treading all over the useless sigils.

  Rodrigo swore, and both Miri and Stephano made a grab for the Doctor. Stephano dragged the cat off the table. Rodrigo stopped swearing abruptly.

  “A flash!” he cried excitedly. “There was a flash! Did you see it?”

  “See what?” asked Stephano, struggling to hold the hissing, squirming cat. “Ouch! He’s scratching me!”

  “Set the Doctor down on the board again. Right in this spot. Hold him there.”

  “He doesn’t want to be held,” said Stephano grimly.

  “There! I felt it!” Rodrigo said at the same time. “Did you feel that? Oh, sorry, I forgot. You haven’t a magical bone in your body. Miri, did you see? Gythe! Come look!”

  Gythe came running to see the magic. Dag came running to rescue his cat, who was pinned to the table. The Doctor’s howls could likely be heard for miles.

  “Ouch, damn it! He bit me. Dag, take your cat!”

  “Miri, see … Wait, it’s not happening. Dag, pick up the cat and put him down again in the exact same spot.”

  “Are you experimenting with my cat?” Dag demanded irately.

  “I’m fairly certain this won’t hurt him,” said Rodrigo.

  “‘Fairly certain’?” Dag repeated, glowering.

  “I think the Doctor might be the key to getting off this island,” said Rodrigo.

  Dag glowered, but he picked up the Doctor and, looking grim, gingerly set the cat down on the table. Miri and Gythe hung over Rodrigo’s shoulder, watching intently.

  “There! Did you see?” Rodrigo exclaimed, triumphant.

  Miri gasped. Gythe put her hands over her mouth.

  “What? What did you see?” asked Stephano, staring down at the table.

  “A flash of light arced between the two sigils in the far construct,” said Miri, awed. “The magic is flowing through the cat over the part damaged
by the contramagic, forming the connection. But how is that possible?”

  “At the moment, I don’t know,” said Rodrigo. “I will have to study the matter, but it would appear that Doctor Ellington is a bridge. The cat must be a natural channeler. I wonder if all animals are natural channelers or is this just unique to the Doctor? Or maybe unique to cats? I will make that a part of my study, perhaps write a treatise…”

  “Rigo!” said Stephano sharply. “What about the damage?”

  “What? Oh, yes. The cat’s body connected the magic that connected the sigils. The magic flowed through him as magic flows through Miri when she touches the constructs on the helm. Just for an instant, mind you. The Doctor could not do channeling on a regular basis.”

  “Damn right he won’t!” Dag said firmly.

  Rodrigo smiled broadly at the cat. “I could kiss him on his little flea-bitten head!”

  Doctor Ellington, looking deeply offended at the notion, wriggled out of Dag’s grasp and fled into the woods.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how having a magic-channeling cat helps us,” said Stephano.

  “The problem has been that any new construct I tried to draw across the contramagic area shriveled up and disappeared. These constructs are necessary because they don’t just act as protection magic for the hull plank here, they transmit the commands from the helm along the leather cables that run to the lift tanks, the balloon, the air screws…”

  “And if I can’t control the magical constructs in the balloon or tanks, they won’t work,” Miri added.

  “When the cat was a bridge, I could keep the magic flowing over the damaged area to the construct on the other side.”

  “But I thought you couldn’t draw a construct through the contramagic,” Dag said.

  “I still can’t. I’m not drawing a construct. Watch: I place an energy sigil here on the undamaged part and a sigil on the other side,” Rodrigo explained, demonstrating. “You see the energy flowing between them over the bad part.”

  “Some of us can see it,” Stephano said grimly. “And some of us can’t.”

  “I can see it and it works. This means we can jury-rig the magic,” said Miri excitedly.

  “We can place bridging lines between the constructs that were not hit by contramagic, using them to bypass the parts of the boat damaged by contramagic. This will keep the magic flowing. It won’t be easy,” Rodrigo added more somberly. “Gythe and I will have to renew these energy-generating sigils during the flight to keep them working. And there is, of course, always the distinct possibility the magic could fail…”

  Stephano shook his head. “I don’t want to know what could go wrong. Tell me this…” He looked from Rodrigo to Gythe to Miri. “Will this repair get us home?”

  “I think it might,” said Miri.

  Gythe nodded her head and smiled.

  Stephano breathed a deep sigh. “How long will it take?”

  “Shouldn’t take long at all,” said Rodrigo. “A day, maybe two.”

  “Oh, Rigo! I could kiss your flea-bitten head!” Miri cried.

  “Even I could kiss him,” said Dag, smiling broadly.

  “Kiss me instead,” Miri said, smiling up at him.

  Dag blushed, but he did give her a peck on the cheek. Gythe began to sing and clap her hands. Miri tugged at Dag, who hesitated, then began to shuffle his feet and at last broke into a lumbering stride.

  “He looks just like a bear in the circus,” Rodrigo remarked to Stephano under his breath. He held out his hands to Gythe. “May I have this dance, mademoiselle?”

  Gythe laughed and the two went spinning gracefully over the grass.

  Stephano stood apart, watching his friends with affection so great that it threatened to overflow his heart, spill out of his eyes. For a long time, he had refused to allow himself to think of home. Now he relaxed and let himself remember with fond longing his old retainer, Benoit, griping about his aches and pains; the smell of the leather-bound books in the library; the small area in the backyard where he practiced his fencing; the kitchen where the Cadre gathered to make their plans. Within a week or so, depending on how far they were from Rosia, he might be sitting in that kitchen with his friends, reminiscing about the time they had been marooned on a deserted island.

  When everyone ran out of breath and stopped dancing, Rodrigo, Miri, and Gythe went back to the Cloud Hopper to start work on the bridging constructs. Doctor Ellington returned from his jaunt, jumped up on Dag’s shoulder, and began kneading with his paws.

  “He’s never going to let us forget that he saved us,” Stephano observed.

  “Do you mean Rigo or the cat, sir?” said Dag, petting the Doctor.

  “Both, unfortunately,” said Stephano. “Whenever I try to avoid going to court with Rigo he will sigh and say, ‘How soon you forget! If it hadn’t been for me, you’d still be stuck on that wretched island.’ And I’ll end up having to put on a cravat to go have tea with some infernal duchess.”

  He and Dag boarded the Cloud Hopper to find Rodrigo talking breathlessly to himself as he scrawled magical sigils and lines on the lift tank. Gythe and Miri stood close by, watching him intently.

  “There, it’s finished,” Rodrigo said, standing up. “We should do a test, send the magic into the tank or whatever it is you do to the tank to see if it works.”

  “At the same time, we should fill the tank so that we can check to see if it leaks,” said Miri.

  “All we have left is the gas in the reserve tank,” said Dag. “If the gas in this tank leaks out, we’ll have only one full lift tank.”

  “Can’t we sail with one lift tank?” Rodrigo asked. “We have the gas in the balloon as well.”

  Gythe giggled, then caught her sister’s stern eye and put a hand over her mouth.

  “No, Rigo, we can’t,” Miri said. “When I send the magical charge through the gas, the amount of lift increases as the internal pressure of the tank increases. That’s the advantage of the lift tank over the balloon. The lift tank is much smaller than the balloon and provides the same amount of lift. We have to have pressure enough inside the tank to hear any significant leak. And we have to see if your magic works. If it doesn’t, it won’t matter if we have a hundred lift tanks.”

  “The decision is yours, Miri,” said Stephano. “The Cloud Hopper is your boat.”

  Dag was unhappy. “I wish I could be absolutely sure those fixes I made will hold…”

  “None of us can be sure of anything,” said Miri briskly. “We have to fill the tank sometime. Might as well be now.”

  Miri opened the valve that released the gas in the reserve tank, sending it flowing into the lift tank. She bent down to keep watch on a small metal bump on the tank known as the “wart.” Inside the wart were several pieces of leather covered with extremely detailed constructs designed to react to slight changes in the internal pressure of the tank. Reading those changes, Miri knew to shut the valve off when the tank was full.

  Miri hurried to the brass helm, where she touched the construct that sent the magical energy flowing into the lift tank. Everyone waited tensely to see if the bridge Rodrigo had created would work. Nothing happened for several heart-stopping moments, and then the starboard side of the Cloud Hopper began to rise.

  “We’re going home,” said Rodrigo.

  4

  I made a discovery today with the assistance of that wonderful cat, Doctor Ellington. A bridging construct that routes the magic through a conduit can bypass the damage done by contramagic. Gythe and I will have to work day and night to keep the magic flowing by constantly renewing the constructs, but I believe it should work.

  —Journal of Rodrigo de Villeneuve

  Miri stopped the flow of magic and the Cloud Hopper gently sank back to the ground. While everyone else was congratulating one another, Dag cautioned them not to get too excited.

  “We have to make certain the tank doesn’t leak. I’m still not sure about those repairs I made…”

  “On
ly one way to find out,” said Miri.

  The tank was built into the bulkhead beneath the starboard wing. On Miri’s orders, they all crouched down near the tank, their heads cocked, straining to hear.

  “We must look like a bunch of lunatics,” Rodrigo remarked. “Squatting here staring at a tank.”

  “Quiet!” the others all said, glaring at him.

  Miri shifted her glare to the Doctor, who came over to remind them with loud meows that it was time for dinner. Gythe hurriedly grabbed the cat and scratched him under his chin. He purred and shut his eyes in contentment.

  “I don’t hear any hissing,” said Stephano, after several moments.

  “I don’t either.” Miri smiled at Dag. “You did a wonderful job.”

  “Might be a slow leak,” Dag said. “We wouldn’t hear that.”

  Miri shook her head at him.

  “Dag will fret over his repairs all the way home,” she said to Gythe. “Let’s fix supper.”

  Rodrigo turned to go below. “I’m going to start packing.”

  “Supper and packing can wait,” said Stephano. “Rigo, you need to finish the rest of the bridging constructs. Gythe, you start placing your protection magic over Rigo’s bridging constructs,” said Stephano.

  “Protect the constructs from what? Mosquitoes?” Rodrigo asked, slapping irritably at his neck. “Never mind dragons, I think we could ride the mosquitoes back to Evreux.”

  Stephano was adamant, however, and Rodrigo was forced to postpone his packing. Gythe enjoyed weaving her magical web of protective spells. Singing softly to herself, she drew the constructs so swiftly that Rodrigo was enthralled.

  “I’ve seen her create constructs all over this boat,” he said to Stephano. “And I still have no idea what she does or how she does it. I think it has something to do with her singing. Miri sings when she whips up that yellow healing goo of hers, as well. Does the singing help her to remember the constructs? Or does the singing work as a construct itself? Do all Trundlers sing when they cast magic or is this unique to the McPike clan? I have no idea.”

  “You’re watching to make sure she doesn’t cocoon the boat in protective magic, right?” Stephano asked. “Like she did the time we almost sank in the Breath?”