The Wizard’s Promise

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  The gangplank was down, so I climbed aboard. No one was on deck, but I could smell the residue of magic, like burnt salt. A scrap of woven blue fabric had been nailed to the boards beside the ship’s wheel. A Kjoran protection charm – I’d grown so used to the Tuljan ones that the sight of it startled me. I wondered how new it was.

  “Hello!” I shouted. “Hello, is anyone here?” I walked across the deck, my voice lifting with the wind. “It’s Hanna. Please! I have an emergency!”

  No answer. I turned slowly in place. The waves sloshed out in the bay. A cold fear gripped at me. Maybe they weren’t here at all. Maybe Lord Foxfollow had killed them, or dragged them away to the Mists. Or done worse, somehow.

  “Hello!” I screamed again, panic turning my voice ragged. I ran to the hatch and flung it open. The underbelly of the boat was lit with a faint blue glow. A lantern. I scrambled down, taking deep breaths every time my foot touched the rung of a ladder. “Kolur!” I shouted when I made it down. “Frida! Anyone?”

  The Penelope II was not laid out like the original Penelope, and the corridors twisted off in strange narrow angles. It must have been the Jolali style, but the confusing layout just made me frustrated. I could hear the ocean everywhere, but nothing else, no human voices, nothing. “Kolur!” I screamed. My voice echoed like I stood inside a cavern, not a boat. Another side effect of the magic that had been done here.

  “Be quiet.”

  Frida. I recognized her voice.

  I whirled around. I couldn’t see anything but blue-lit darkness. “I can’t see you,” I said, lowering my voice. “I need to speak with Kolur.”

  “He’s resting.” Frida ducked through a low-hanging doorway. She was dressed in sleeping clothes. “What are you doing here?” She looked at me. “You shouldn’t come with us, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s too dangerous. Stay here until you can find passage home.”

  Her voice was sharp-edged and it made me shiver. Too dangerous. At least they were being honest now.

  “It’s not that.” I shook my head. “I need Kolur’s help. The magic he did a few nights ago, when Lord Foxfollow attacked – it hurt one of my friends.”

  Frida froze. “How do you know that name?” she hissed. “Lord Foxfollow.”

  “I know everything that’s been happening.” I jerked away from her. “Plus, I talked to him. He showed me what Kolur did, sending the monsters into the open sea. He sent them straight to the Annika.”

  Frida’s hand went to her mouth. “No,” she said softly. “No, we didn’t mean–”

  “I know you didn’t.” I slumped down. “But one of those monsters bit my friend and put him into a magic-sleep and I have to know if Kolur can help him. Please? They sent for the village priests, but it’s almost a day’s journey for them to leave their cave and I don’t think Finnur – that’s my friend – I don’t think he has enough time. So will you please let me talk to Kolur?”

  The words spilled out in a tumble, and when I finished, I had to steady myself against the wall and catch my breath. Frida looked away from me, her hand still covering her mouth.

  “What?” I asked breathlessly. “What’s wrong?”

  The lanterns threw liquid light across us both. I wanted to scream. Finnur was dying, and Frida wouldn’t help me.

  “Kolur can’t go to your friend,” she said softly.

  “What? Why not?”

  “Magic-sickness.” Frida looked back at me. “Parts of him changed – he can’t leave the ocean, not for the time being. Pjetur and I wove a spell to reverse the effects, but it will be at least a week’s time before he’s able to breathe air again.”

  The world fell away. I heard a rushing in my ears like the air was pouring out of my body. I hadn’t seen that in the vision Lord Foxfollow gave me. Only the magic.

  I pressed up against the wall, my whole body shaking, Sea and sky, we were lucky the magic-sickness hadn’t infected us on board the Annika.

  “I’m so sorry,” Frida said. “I am.”

  “You can heal him,” I said. “You’re powerful, I’ve seen it–”

  She stared at me sadly. “I’ve never had the ability to heal,” she said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable, not against Mist magic. I’d likely cause more harm than good.”

  Panic hammered through my thoughts. “What if we put Finnur in the ocean?” My voice echoed around the strange corridors of the Penelope II. “We could put him in a rowboat and Kolur could look at him that way–”

  Frida shook her head.

  “Why not?” My voice trembled. I didn’t want to cry in front of her, but I was afraid I was going to anyway. “Please, I swore to his wife–”

  “He’s too weak to work magic,” Frida said. “Yes, he could look at your friend, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Not in his current state. It would destroy him, turn him into saltwater.”

  I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. I stalked away from Frida and ran through the corridors, choking back my sobs even as tears streaked down my face.

  “Hanna!” she called out, but I ignored her. I stumbled through the murky shadows until I came to the square of sunlight illuminating the ladder leading back up on deck. Finnur was going to die. Kolur couldn’t help him, and the priests would never get there in time.

  The burden of my responsibility hung like a weight around my neck.

  I climbed back onto the deck of the Penelope II. The sun had risen completely, lemony and bright like the summer sun back home. I felt like it was mocking me.

  “Hanna, don’t go yet.”

  I stopped. I almost recognized the voice. It was more human than I remembered.

  Isolfr dropped down from the masts, landing softly on his feet like a cat. The sunlight refracted through my tears, and in that liquid haze, he shone the way he had when I first saw him.

  “I was just leaving,” I said, trying to hold my head high. I turned away from him.

  “Wait.”

  There was an urgency in his voice that I didn’t expect. I stopped, staring off at the dock in the distance. The wind blew my hair into my eyes. I was blinded.

  “My friend’s going to die,” I said. “I can’t stay.”

  “What?” Isolfr walked over to stand beside me. I thought he was going to put his hand on my shoulder, but he didn’t. “Why? What happened?”

  “Don’t you know?” I snapped. “Don’t you know everything?”

  Isolfr looked down at his feet. His cheeks reddened. “Not in this body.” He lifted his eyes, peering at me through his lashes. “But I heard you yelling, and so I know that it must be serious.”

  I hesitated. The wind blew harder, gusting in from the west. I thought I smelled summer on it, the fresh scent of berries and wildflowers.

  And then I told Isolfr everything. I was desperate.

  He stared at me as I spoke, not once looking away. His eyes were the same color as ice. They were the only part of him that didn’t seem human.

  “I can help,” he said. “Take me to him. But we have to move quickly.”

  I stared at Isolfr, taking in those blandly handsome features, those unsettling eyes. It made sense, in a way. Isolfr was not human, and Finnur had been struck down by inhuman magic.

  “You don’t trust me,” Isolfr said.

  “Why should I?” I snapped. “I won’t put my friend in any more danger–”

  “I want to help him!” Isolfr shouted. “I want to help you.”

  I’d never heard him raise his voice before, and I took a step back, shocked.

  Isolfr seemed to shrink down inside himself, back to the soft Isolfr I knew from our time at sea. “I’m not from the Mists,” he said.

  “You’ve certainly told me that enough times,” I snapped. “Not that you’ll say where you are from–”

  “I’m from this world,” Isolfr said. “From the north.”

  “Jandanvar?”

  He hesitated, and that was how I knew. Somehow, he came from Jandanvar.

  “I know w
hat to do to help your friend,” he said.

  The wind gusted again.

  I nodded.

  “Show me the way.” He ran toward the gangplank. I followed, too scared to let myself get hopeful.

  “We kept him on board the Annika,” I said. “It’s moored at the usual place – the seventh dock.”

  “All right, yes. I know where that is.”

  We ran. I focused on the line of Isolfr’s back ahead of me. Then the Annika rose up against the docks. With the masts empty, she looked haunted.

  Zakaria and Reynir were standing guard next to the ladder. They looked up at us as Isolfr and I skittered to a stop.

  “Who the hell is this?” Reynir asked, jabbing his thumb at Isolfr. “Baltasar said you were going to get your old captain.”

  “He couldn’t come. This is – Pjetur. He can help.”

  Reynir narrowed his eyes at me.

  “We don’t have time for this! Move!” I shoved Reynir aside, and he let out a surprised cry of protest that made Zakaria laugh. But neither of them tried to stop me.

  I let Isolfr climb up the ladder first. Please don’t betray us, I thought. Please please please.

  The deck was empty except for Baltasar. He sat over by the ship’s wheel, smoking a pipe and staring off into the distance. He glanced at us when we scrambled on board.

  “This is Pjetur,” I said before he could ask any questions. “He’s not my captain, but I know he can help.” I hope he can help.

  “Where is he?” Isolfr stopped in the center of the boat and sniffed at the air. “He’s far gone. I need to see him now.”

  “Captain’s quarters.” Baltasar blew out a ring of smoke. “Sure hope you can help him, boy.”

  Isolfr nodded. The way the sun shone on him, he didn’t look human at all but like some manifestation of the spirit world, a creature of light and magic.

  A creature of wind.

  I went very still, thinking of the north wind, the whistling, whispering voice, the way it had cradled me down from the stars–

  No. It couldn’t be.

  Isolfr disappeared into the captain’s quarters. Baltasar studied me through the haze of his pipe smoke.

  “What is he?” Baltasar asked.

  I decided not to lie. “I don’t know.”

  Baltasar turned back to the sea. “You better get in there. He might need your help.”

  My entire body felt shaky and indistinct, and the world didn’t seem real. But I nodded and walked over to the captain’s quarters with careful, quick steps. Cold, brittle magic was already seeping out through the walls. It wasn’t human magic. But it didn’t belong to the Mists, either.

  The door swung open when my hand passed by it.

  The scene inside the room was a quiet one, not the wild display of enchantment that I’d half expected. Asbera stood pressed up against the far corner, her arms wrapped around her torso. Finnur’s shirt was peeled away from his chest, which gleamed pale and weak in the lantern light. I slid over beside Asbera.

  “It’s that boy,” she said, her voice flat. “The one at the mead hall. I don’t remember his name.”

  “He didn’t give you a real one.” I hesitated. Isolfr was tracing patterns on Finnur’s chest with his fingers, runes that I didn’t recognize. They glowed in the darkness. “His real name is Isolfr.”

  “He’s not human.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  But Asbera didn’t seem to be talking to me, not really. “He’s kjirini.”

  “What?”

  Asbera blinked. Isolfr ignored both of us, all his concentration focused on painting those runes on Finnur’s body, working with light and magic.

  “It’s a Jandanvari word.” She looked at me. “I don’t know how to translate it, not exactly. Sometimes they use it to mean wind, but a particular kind that sweeps in from the north.”

  I went very still.

  “It also means magic,” Asbera said. “But a certain ki–”

  And then Isolfr began to sing.

  Asbera cried out and grabbed my arm. She never finished what she was going to say.

  Isolfr’s voice was not a human one, and he did not sing a human song. The notes were low and whistling and mournful, somehow just like the wind, and it filled up the room with a presence strange and eerie and – familiar.

  A word that means wind.

  The north wind.

  And so, I finally understood completely: Isolfr was the presence in the north wind; the presence in the north wind was Isolfr.

  I didn’t know how and I didn’t know why, but I knew.

  Magic materialized on the air and dotted across my arm like snow. Asbera pressed closer to me. I wrapped my arm around her. We pressed close together.

  Isolfr’s voice grew louder. The music seeped into me and drew out my emotions: loneliness and fear. Homesickness. A yearning for something beyond home, for something larger than just me. Tears streaked down my cheeks. When I looked at Asbera, she was weeping, too.

  Across the room, Isolfr flickered. In one second he was Pjetur, a dull and handsome human boy, and in another he was Isolfr, shining like the moon, sharp-eyed, elven, too delicate to be real. He shifted back and forth between the two. The song grew louder and louder.

  And then Isolfr’s hand slid into the skin of Finnur’s chest.

  Asbera shrieked and moved to lunge forward, but I caught her and held her tight. This was not evil sorcery. I could sense it deep inside me, a hard echo inside my bones. It was the magic of the north wind, the magic that brought me home from the in-between world, the magic that drove the Mists away outside the mead hall. He was helping.

  Isolfr’s hand disappeared completely.

  He shut his eyes and flickered once, and then remained Isolfr, his skin glowing with foreign light. The song shifted, abruptly, into something faster and more howling. It didn’t even sound like music anymore, just the shriek of wind in a storm. The enchantment in the room thickened. The walls rippled like sails. I squeezed Asbera tighter.

  He was using wind-magic, but not any that I’d ever seen.

  And then, with a gasp and a cry, Finnur sat up.

  Asbera screamed and tried to lunge forward again, but I stopped her. I didn’t want her interfering with Isolfr’s spell – his hand was still tucked inside Finnur’s chest, and the magic still vibrated around us.

  Finnur’s twisted expression hadn’t changed, and even though he sat up now, he was as still and waxy as before. The light in Isolfr’s skin pulsed. His song fell away, and the silence was like the silence in the eye of a hurricane. He stared at Finnur straight on.

  Asbera whimpered.

  Isolfr took a deep breath. He seemed to suck in all the air in the room. The lanterns flickered. The walls flapped and snapped, no longer wood but fabric. Asbera grabbed my arm so hard that her nails dug into my skin. But I didn’t move. I could only watch Isolfr, transfixed by this strange wind magic.

  With his free hand, Isolfr opened Finnur’s mouth.

  And kissed him.

  But it wasn’t just a kiss; I could hear the air passing between them, a roaring rush like being caught in a wind tunnel. The air in the room grew thin and weak. It was hard for me to breathe.

  Isolfr snapped his head back and yanked his hand, completely unbloodied, out of Finnur’s chest.

  There was a long, terrible pause. Asbera sobbed.

  And then Finnur blinked.

  “Finnur!” Asbera ripped away from me. I didn’t stop her this time. Finnur looked over at her, dazed. Then he smiled. It was a smile to light up the darkness.

  Asbera threw her arms around him. “I thought you were going to die,” she said, sobbing into his hair. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

  “I thought of you,” he whispered. “While I was trapped. Sometimes I saw your face–”

  Asbera kissed him.

  Isolfr was lying on the floor of the cabin, stretched out, pale. He looked like Pjetur. I knelt beside him. He dropped his head
to the side and blinked up at me.

  “Is he alive?” he asked.

  I nodded. “And awake.”

  Isolfr smiled and turned his gaze back to the ceiling. “That was more difficult than I expected. The poisons had gone in deep.”

  I hesitated. Asbera was still weeping behind me, but I could hear the happiness in her tears. I felt that happiness myself. Finnur was alive.

  Isolfr had saved him.

  “We should give them some time alone,” I said.

  Isolfr nodded, though he didn’t move. I stood up and held out my hand. When he took it, his skin was cold to the touch. I pulled him to his feet. He was lighter than I expected. There was something intangible about him. Like air, magic, wind.

  He didn’t let go of my hand once he was standing, and he leaned up against me for balance. I could feel him shaking.

  Asbera and Finnur ignored us both; they were too wrapped up in each other to care that we were still in the cabin. So I just led Isolfr out onto the deck. The captain’s quarters looked the way it always had, out here. Baltasar was gone. I wondered if the spell from the cabin had frightened him.

  “Will they be safe?” I asked. “With the magic-sickness?”

  Isolfr nodded. He stumbled over to the side of the boat and slumped down, his back pressed up against the railing. He took a deep breath. “It’s not true magic-sickness. It’ll fade in time.”

  “Not true magic-sickness?” I frowned. The air was warm and unmoving, like summers in Kjora. I sat down beside Isolfr. “If you don’t mind me asking – what kind of magic was that anyway? It felt like it belonged to the wind–”

  “It did.” Isolfr looked at me, his eyes clear and pale and icy. “But not the sort you can do. The sort I can do.”

  I stared at him for a long time, trying to work things through in my head.

  “Your sort can stop the Mists.”