Found

by Sarah Prineas

  Catching my breath, I crouched behind the shattered stones that had been the gateway leading into Dusk House and peered in. The area around the pit was deserted. The magisters should’ve been here helping the magic. But they were somewhere else, probably in the cellars below Magisters Hall, cowering and wishing Arhionvar would go away. The air felt thick with the magic, not protecting me as it usually did, not warm, but wound tight with fright. Pip perched at the top of the gate post, drawn by the magic, I guessed.

  I got to my feet, crunched across to the edge of the pit, and looked down.

  Swirling stars and darkness filled the steep-sided pit. The magic was here. It’d fought off Arhionvar last night, and maybe it was gathering its strength again, but it couldn’t hold out for much longer.

  Pip flapped over and landed on the ground nearby. That was enough to get the magic’s attention. It heaved up from the pit, washing over me, picking me up as it’d done before, and picking up Pip, too.

  This time I knew how to talk to it. It could hear me because of my locus stone, in Pip, and ever since I’d become a wizard I’d been reading enough grimoires and spell-books to know what to say.

  I shouted spellwords. The magic talked back, spellwords that hum-thrummed in my bones, deeper than my ears could hear. I couldn’t understand them all, but I understood enough. The blackness and bright stars whirled around me until I had to close my eyes and listen.

  For a moment, behind my closed eyes, I saw the city as the magic saw it. A rolling black plain with a line of glowing slowsilver running through the middle of it where the river was, and patches of warmth and life—that was the city and its people. The magic knew people lived in Wellmet, and it wanted to protect them. It couldn’t tell one person from another; they were just points of warmth in the darkness. Only the wizards stood out like twinkling stars in a black sky, noticeable to the magic because of their locus stones. Before I’d found Nevery, I’d been a patch of cold to the magic because I’d been more alone than anybody else in the city. Maybe the magic had found me after my mother’d been killed and Crowe’d had a word out on me, when I’d been trying to sleep in a freezing doorway in the Twilight. Maybe it’d known I was a wizard, and it had saved me, so I could save it.

  The magic was alone, too. All the other magics in the world were far away, at other cities. It was sick and weak, too. It’d been weak even before Underlord Crowe and Pettivox had built their device to imprison it. A city shouldn’t be like Wellmet, healthy and whole on one side and rotten and empty on the other. It wasn’t balanced. I should’ve seen it a long time ago.

  The magic was barely holding out against Arhionvar. It could fight for another night, maybe two, and then Arhionvar would have it.

  The magic told me what I had to do.

  I didn’t want to do it.

  But I would.

  CHAPTER 28

  My cousin, Embre, had called me the Twilight’s wizard. And I was. I would do what the magic needed me to do, but first I had to talk to Nevery. When I saw the city as the magic saw it, I’d seen a cluster of locus stones glowing on the islands that ran through the river. One of the glowing spots had to be Nevery. He was at Heartsease, busy preparing our defenses. He must’ve escaped from the Dawn Palace before Arhionvar arrived.

  As I left the Dusk House pit, I heard a flutter of wings, and a black bird fell out of the sky and landed at my feet. I crouched down and set it on its feet. It ruffled its feathers.

  I took a scrap of paper from a quill tied to its leg. Just one word in Nevery’s handwriting.

  Heartsease

  Yes, Nevery, I knew.

  Slinking through alleys, I headed for Fleetside Street and then the Night Bridge.

  As I reached the bridge, the heavy, red sun sank behind the dark tenements of the Twilight, making shadows reach out like long, dark arms. The air was icy cold and still. The streets were deserted; people were hiding from the coming of the night.

  The bridge was empty, too. All of the Sunrise people had come across during the day, then. The shuttered houses built right on the bridge leaned over me, cutting off the light.

  I heard a sound like the distant whine of factory machines. A dusty breeze sprang up and brushed past me, plucking at my sweater.

  The darkness at the other end of the bridge was moving.

  From behind me, I heard pip! and then Pip darted into the narrow crack between two houses.

  The factory noise got louder, and from out of the shadows came a whirling column of wind twice the height of a tall man, clogged with dust; it wobbled from one side of the road to the other, bumping up against the houses, ripping off shutters and gutters and chunks of brick, howling toward me.

  I scrambled aside into a doorway, crouched down, and put my arms over my head. The shriek of the whirlwind grew louder.

  Peering under my arm, I saw the whirlwind spin closer. Then I felt a surge of Wellmet magic rise up like a wall. As it met the wall, the column of wind lifted up like a long finger, and then its winds shredded, flying off like bits of dusty rag. Bricks and nails and shards of glass and splinters of wood spun out and rained down into the road.

  Dust swirled in the last eddies of wind. I got to my feet and stepped out of the doorway.

  Arhionvar was making an attack on the Twilight. I turned to keep going across the bridge, but the road between the leaning houses had turned white. In the greeny-black light, it seemed to move.

  I blinked. The road ahead was flowing with white predator-cats, slinking along close to the ground. They paced closer, their eyes glowing.

  Right, I couldn’t go this way. I turned and ran.

  So many people had rowed across the river from the Sunrise that finding a boat was easy. I wasn’t good at rowing, but I could do it well enough. While I rowed I looked over my shoulder, watching the bank of clouds over the Sunrise lower until the Dawn Palace on its hill disappeared in a black fog, and the werelights along the streets winked out one by one.

  After a while, the boat bumped against the black rocks along the waterline of the Heartsease island. I set the oars in the bottom of the boat and climbed out onto the rocks.

  The new Heartsease was almost finished being built, with windows in place and stairs leading up to an arched front doorway. The builders had stopped their work before finishing the roof.

  The ground floor windows glowed with pinkish werelight. Nevery. And Benet, I hoped.

  Pip was still in the Twilight, near one of the warehouses along the water. My locus magicalicus pulled at me. I stood waiting for Pip under the big tree in the courtyard, jittering a little, looking out over the dark water.

  Pip didn’t come. It’d have to come eventually; it couldn’t resist the pull from me to my locus stone for too long.

  I turned and went across the cobbled courtyard, trying not to make any noise. The werelight was coming from the ground floor, what would be the storeroom and Benet’s room when Heartsease was finished. I cat-footed up to one of the arched doorways and crouched beside it in the shadows. I peered in.

  Since I’d been here last the floor had been finished, blocks of slate scattered with bricks and bent nails. Somebody had gathered boxes to use as chairs, and planks were set across two barrels for a table. Sitting on the boxes were Brumbee and a few of the duchess’s council members, and Argent. The bristle-bearded guard Farn leaned against one of the walls, along with six other Dawn Palace guards. Nevery stood beside the plank table looking down at a piece of paper spread on it; beside him stood Rowan, wearing her sword, pointing at something on the paper; behind Rowan was bat-faced Nimble in his brown magisters robe.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” Nevery was saying.

  Rowan leaned closer to the paper—a map, I guessed—squinting to see better, and traced her finger along a line. “What about this way, Magister Nevery?”

  Nevery frowned. “Hmmm.”

  Nimble spoke up with his high, whiny voice. “We cannot send the few trained guards we have on a mission that could well b
e useless. We need them here, protecting us.”

  Rowan whirled to face him. “Useless?” She opened her mouth to say more, then closed her eyes for a moment and clenched and unclenched her fists. After taking a deep breath, she said, more calmly, “In the absence of my mother, I am the one who must make these decisions.”

  Across the room, the guard Farn nodded. “Until we find Captain Kerrn, we report to you, Lady Rowan,” he said.

  Rowan nodded. “Thank you, Farn.” She put her hand on her sword. “I will lead the mission myself, with Sir Argent, and the guards will come with us. We could use a wizard, too.”

  Nimble gave a shiver. “No wizard with any sense would go to the Sunrise at such a time. And if you are acting for the duchess, Lady Rowan, then you are too valuable to risk on this mission.”

  Mission? What were they up to? In the absence of my mother, Rowan had said. Was the duchess still in the Dawn Palace? I didn’t see Benet. He’d been arrested; was he trapped there, too?

  I got to my feet.

  At the table, Nevery caught sight of me at the edge of the doorway. His eyes widened, then he gave a slight nod.

  Come in, that meant.

  I stepped into the room.

  Nevery said something in a low voice to Rowan; she turned and saw me.

  “Conn!” she said. Her face was pale and soot-smudged; her hair was tied back into a tail with a piece of string. She wore a green wormsilk dress with dirty lace cuffs and a torn ruffle along the hem and had her swordbelt buckled around her waist.

  “Hello, Ro,” I said.

  The others in the room turned to stare as I came farther into the room.

  “That is the criminal who was to be hanged!” one of the councilors said, getting up from her box-chair, pointing at me.

  “He brought that huge dragon here!” said another.

  “Guards, arrest him!” Nimble said.

  Farn didn’t move; Rowan raised her hand and everyone fell silent. She really was in charge.

  “Well, Conn?” Rowan asked.

  I glanced down at the plank table. The paper was a map of the Sunrise, all the streets drawn in and the Dawn Palace carefully labeled. All under the cloud of Arhionvar.

  Rowan saw where I was looking. “Conn, my mother was trapped in the Dawn Palace after Arhionvar arrived, and she’s—” She gulped and went on more quietly. “She’s been very ill.”

  I looked across the table at Nevery. “Is Benet there, too?”

  “Yes, boy,” Nevery said.

  They weren’t going to like this. But sending guards in didn’t make any sense. “I’ll go to the Dawn Palace,” I said.

  CHAPTER 29

  After some shrieking and shouting from Nimble and the councilors, Nevery and Rowan took me aside, to give me a talking-to, I figured.

  “All right, my lad?” Nevery asked, and put his hand on my shoulder.

  I nodded.

  “Conn, Nimble overstepped himself,” Rowan said. “I didn’t know what he was doing. Argent tried to get in to tell me,” she went on. “I was with my mother.”

  “Ro, what’re you talking about?”

  “You were nearly hanged!” she said.

  “Oh, that,” I said.

  Nevery gave me a quick, keen-gleam glance.

  Rowan shook her head. “You can’t go alone on this mission to rescue my mother,” she said.

  “Kerrn’s there, too?” I asked.

  Rowan nodded.

  I knew Kerrn. While the rest of the guards and wizards had been running away from Arhionvar, she’d done her duty, went to protect the duchess, and got trapped in the Dawn Palace for it.

  And Benet, locked in a prison cell.

  The magic needed me to do this thing, and I would do it, but I had to get Benet out first. And Kerrn and the duchess.

  “Farn will go with you,” Rowan said, “and six guards.”

  I remembered how noisy the guards had been sneaking into the sorcerer-king’s fortress. “Ro, Arhionvar’s magic. The guards won’t be any help.”

  Nevery shook his head. “We have no idea what you can expect to find in the Sunrise, boy. I have been reading every grimoire I could get my hands on. I’ve found nothing to help us.”

  I knew what to expect. White predator-cats, dusty whirlwinds, and creeping dread.

  “I don’t like the idea of you going alone, either,” Nevery said.

  “You should stay here to help Rowan,” I said. I didn’t want him coming with me. It’d be too dangerous, and I couldn’t stand it if something happened to him.

  “I know that, curse it,” Nevery growled. “This is how you get into trouble, Conn. Inadequate planning.” He glanced at Rowan. “Still, if he needs to fight his way out again he’ll have Captain Kerrn and Benet to help. Lady Rowan, I think Conn alone might have the best chance of getting to the Dawn Palace.” He switched his glare back to me. “As long as he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

  I didn’t answer. Going to the Sunrise was exactly what I needed to do—if I was going to do what the Wellmet magic wanted me to. I didn’t know if that was stupid or not.

  The rest of the magisters and guards and councilors, led by Nimble, went through the tunnels to Magisters Hall to sleep and find supplies.

  Nevery and Rowan and Argent, with Farn and another guard, pulled the box-chairs up to the hearth in the shell of Heartsease to wait for morning. One of the guards built a fire to keep the night off. I leaned against the wall beside the hearth, where the guard boiled water for tea. The other guard brought us stale bread and cheese to eat. Lady-the-cat came and climbed into my lap and lay there purring.

  I scratched Lady behind the ears and told Nevery and Rowan about the flame dragon and the cave dragon and the slowsilver scales, and the top of the mountain exploding and my ideas about how the dragon gave up its body to become a magical being.

  “The magic’s original form is dragon, then,” Nevery said. “Hmmm. Interesting.” He was quiet for another moment and said, “Then every city was built on a dragon lair. And pyrotechnics. Clearly dragons have an affinity to smoke and fire, an affinity that must persist even after they have turned into pure magic. Very interesting indeed.”

  I nodded. Then I told them about how the thief dragon had eaten my locus magicalicus.

  “It was not a jewel stone?” Nevery asked.

  I shook my head. No, it’d been ordinary.

  Nevery looked thoughtful and pulled at the end of his beard. “Hmmm. Anything else, boy?”

  Yes, there was something else. “Embre’s my cousin,” I said. “And he’s the new Underlord.”

  Rowan leaned forward. “You mean Embre the pyrotechnist?” She’d only met Embre once, when we’d gone to him for blackpowder ingredients.

  “He’s the Underlord, is he?” Nevery said, his eyes gleaming. “While you were gone, Connwaer, I worked with Embre on the pyrotechnic traps.”

  Right, well, the traps might still be able to help us, but not in the way Nevery expected. He didn’t need to know that, though, or he’d get suspicious about what I was up to. “Embre’s making preparations to defend the Twilight from Arhionvar,” I said.

  “Good,” Nevery said. But he gave me another one of his keen-gleam glances. He knew that I always told him the truth, but he also knew that I didn’t always tell him everything.

  “Then Magister Nevery can deal with the pyrotechnic materials,” Rowan said. She gave him her sideways look. “I believe he knows a thing or two about pyrotechnics. See what you can prepare to help with the defense of the city. Conn, you take care of your mission to bring my mother out of the palace. Nevery and I will work with this new Underlord.”

  That’d be a first, the Underlord and the duchess’s daughter working together. But it’s what the city needed.

  After a while, Rowan told me to be careful, and she and Argent left for the Twilight so they could meet with Embre.

  Nevery should’ve gone with Rowan, but he stayed behind to talk to me.

  I stared into the fi
re, my eyes getting heavy with sleep. Lady had gone off to hunt mice. I could sense Pip on the banks of the Twilight side of the river. The pull of my locus magicalicus made my bones itch. Thinking about what the Wellmet magic wanted me to do made my insides feel shivery and scared.

  Nevery got up to throw some chunks of wood onto the fire. He sat back down on his box-chair and studied me. “You’re up to something.”

  I was, true. But I didn’t answer.

  “Don’t be stupid, boy,” Nevery growled.

  “I won’t, Nevery,” I said.

  “Curse it,” Nevery muttered. “It’s risky for you to go into the Sunrise, boy. After what happened in Desh, the predator magic will be drawn to you.”

  He was right. When I didn’t answer, he glared at me.

  “Nevery, it tried to get me in Desh, and I didn’t let it. Now I’ve got Pip with me. It’ll be all right.”

  “Pip?” Nevery said. “Is that what you’re calling your dragon?”

  “It’s not mine,” I said. I remembered something. “Nevery, d’you know what the spellword tallennar means?” The word the cave dragon had spoken.

  “Tallennar. No.” His eyebrows bristled. “Pay attention, boy. The dragon is your locus magicalicus, you say.” He leaned toward me, lowering his voice. “Can you do magic?”

  I shrugged. If Pip got close enough I could.

  “I don’t like this,” Nevery muttered.

  Neither did I. But I was the only wizard who knew how to melt into shadows, and under Arhionvar, the Sunrise was nothing but shadows. I could get Benet and Kerrn and the duchess out. They would go back across the river, and I’d stay in the Sunrise to deal with Arhionvar.

  CHAPTER 30

  After a couple of hours, Nevery left to meet with Embre about the defense of the Twilight, and I went out of Heartsease.

  It should’ve been morning, but the sky was still dark. The air was cold; my breath puffed out in steamy clouds before my face. Rubbing my arms to stay warm, I went across the cobbled courtyard to stand under the big tree. A few black birds perched there with their heads under their wings.