Deathcaster (Shattered Realms)

by Cinda Williams Chima

  But now, overcome with urgency, she didn’t know where to go.

  The day after Jenna and the dragons freed the musician from the empress’s ruined palace, Jenna sat down with him to try to get some answers. The musician’s lack of voice made the interview an awkward and laborious process.

  “What is your name?” Jenna said, gesturing toward the tablet on the musician’s lap.

  In careful block letters, he wrote BREON. After a moment’s hesitation, he added, D’TARVOS.

  “So you’re from Tarvos?” Jenna said.

  He shrugged, as if to say, Maybe.

  Jenna wasn’t entirely sure where Tarvos was, but it seemed like she’d seen it on a map somewhere. “That’s in Carthis? On the coast?”

  Breon nodded. Laboriously, he drew a squirmy vertical line. His hand shook, and it seemed to take forever. Still, Jenna recognized it as the coast of Carthis from their aerial views. He added a dot near the lower end and labeled it TARVOS.

  “It’s on the southern coast of Carthis?”

  He nodded, looking pleased that she’d deciphered his map.

  “Did you know your parents?” By now, Jenna wasn’t hopeful, but she had to ask.

  He shook his head.

  “How old are you?”

  He rocked his hand, then wrote 16.

  “What is your gift?” Jenna said, feeling like she was asking the wrong questions somehow. That she was missing something important.

  He pointed at his throat, then at his instrument.

  “Music?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know any other magemarked people?”

  He shook his head, pointing to Jenna, and then back at himself.

  “Have you met a pirate named Evan Strangward?”

  NO

  Well, you smell like him, Jenna thought of saying. But didn’t. But he was writing again, unprompted. He held up the tablet.

  CELESTINE SAYS SHE IS MY SISTER.

  “What?”

  Breon nodded. Then squeezed his eyes shut, massaging his forehead with the heels of his hands, as if he had a headache.

  Jenna studied Breon, seeking telltales of kinship with Celestine. She breathed in his scent, tantalizingly familiar.

  If Breon was Celestine’s brother, and the empress was hunting him, and hunting Jenna, and hunting Strangward, then—

  “Cas.”

  The dragon had been sleeping off breakfast in a patch of sun. He opened one eye.

  “Does Breon’s scent remind you of anyone else?”

  Jenna scrambled away from the musician as Cas lifted his massive head and swung it toward him. The closer it got, the paler Breon became. The dragon breathed in sharply. Breon closed his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer.

  Musician smells like Jenna, Cas said. Then rested his head on his forelegs and returned to his nap.

  Jenna’s mind raced. If Celestine, Strangward, Jenna, and Breon shared the same scent, then they must share the same blood. Was it possible that they were all siblings?

  Though this news hit her like a slate fall, it was almost as if she’d always known it, under the skin. It was as if they shared a long-buried history.

  Scent is the seat of memory.

  She looked up. The musician was sitting, eyes closed, his face gleaming with sweat, as if enduring some private pain.

  “Do you know where the empress is now?” Jenna said.

  THE REALMS.

  “Do you know where? What city?”

  Breon shook his head, then wrote:

  SHE WILL COME BACK. MUST LEAVE NOW.

  “Do you know why the empress is hunting us?” Jenna said. “Is it because of the magemark?”

  Breon lifted his hands, palms up, as if to demonstrate that he was all out of answers. Then he leaned forward, looking into Jenna’s eyes as if to give the letters on the page greater emphasis. He was pale, trembling.

  “Are you all right?” Jenna said.

  He waved off the question, running his finger under the words MUST LEAVE NOW.

  “We’re getting ready to leave,” Jenna said. “But there’s someone else we’re looking for. A Captain Gray. Do you know where she is?”

  Breon hesitated, eyeing Jenna suspiciously as if unsure of her intentions, then picked up his tablet and wrote, WHY?

  “Why do we want to find her?”

  He nodded.

  “Because . . . because we’re friends. We’re worried about her.”

  The spellsinger gazed at her for a long moment, as if he might look through her skin and read her heart. Finally, he wrote, LYSS LEFT WITH THE EMPRESS.

  Lyss? “You know Lyss?”

  He nodded. FRIENDS.

  “So she is on her way back to the Realms?”

  Breon nodded.

  “We’ll leave tomorrow, then,” Jenna said, her mind racing. By now, Celestine’s ships could be anywhere on the broad ocean between here and the Realms. She knew that Lyssa Wolf had been trying to persuade Celestine to take her forces south, but there was no guarantee the empress would listen. The entire wetland coast was a lot of territory to cover.

  Jenna told the dragons what she’d learned, and they packed up again, preparing for departure. For safety’s sake, they left the remains of the harbor town and moved back into the mountains.

  But the young, magemarked musician had a bad night. He shivered and sweated, as if he were running a fever, but his skin was cold and clammy. He doubled up, like he had belly pain. The only thing that seemed to soothe him somewhat was playing the jafasa, but the music was harder and harder to listen to, it was so infused with pain.

  The dragons were beside themselves with concern. They brought choice chunks of raw goat meat and water from a spring high in the mountains, but he ate next to nothing. They put on aerobatic displays to divert him. They carried glittering bits of quartz from the mountains and intricate shells from the sea.

  Finally, Jenna took hold of his hands again, hoping to get a clue to what ailed him, and his pain and despair all but overwhelmed her. His mind was clearer than before, though, and she could make out the shape of a curved pipe and some crinkled brown leaves.

  That’s when Jenna finally understood. He’s addicted to razorleaf, she thought. He’s in withdrawal.

  Spellsinger sick? Splash asked, for the fiftieth time.

  As soon as Jenna mentioned leaf, the dragons were off to all parts of the island, returning with their claws filled with every kind of leaf, dropping them in front of the boy for his inspection. He just kept shaking his head. Finally, he jerked upright, his limbs twisting as he went into a seizure. That made the fledglings so nervous that they kept taking off and landing again, unable to control their agitation.

  Finally, Splash curved her body around the boy in a tight embrace, holding him close until the seizures eased and he fell asleep.

  Once again, they were being held back by the weakest in the flight.

  That night, they held a council. “We can’t stay here,” Jenna said. “We’ve burned the nest, but Celestine still lives. We need to find her.”

  Find Lyssa Wolf, Slayer said.

  Stay with Spellsinger, Splash said, adjusting her coils around the musician with an air of finality.

  “I don’t want to leave the spellsinger behind,” Jenna said. “He’s marked like me. He might be my littermate.” At the very least, she hoped he might know pieces of her own story.

  You stay. We go find Lyssa Wolf, Slayer said.

  No, Cas said. We all go or we all stay.

  A dragon argument erupted, punctuated by brief launches and landings, eruptions of flame, tail slapping, and aggressive posturing. At the end of it, they came to a decision: they would leave the island in two days. If the spellsinger hadn’t recovered by then, they would have to carry him along and hope that he survived the journey.

  The next morning, Jenna was awakened by the keening of a dragon. She’d been leaning against Cas, but he rolled away, dumping her unceremoniously on the ground.

&n
bsp; Now fully awakened, Jenna scrambled to her feet. The young dragon who called himself Goat Toes was the one raising the alarm. He’d been on the dawn watch. Finally, Jenna could make out what he was shouting.

  Ship!

  One ship or many ships? Cas said.

  One ship, Goat said. Where Splash fell. To the dragons, Celesgarde would forever be “Where Splash Fell.”

  Jenna’s heart clenched like a fist in her chest. Was it Celestine? It seemed unlikely that the empress would return so soon, if she had been heading for the Realms. Unless she’d made a quick trip to the Carthian mainland and come back again.

  “Is it a big ship?” Jenna asked, even though she wasn’t all that confident about Goat’s ability to judge the relative size of ships. “The empress’s ship?”

  Not big ship, Goat said. Little ship.

  It could be just another one of Celestine’s captains arriving at an inopportune time. The dragons were whipping themselves into a fiery frenzy, anticipating revenge.

  Then Jenna noticed something else. It was eerily quiet, save for the sounds of seagulls, the hiss of steam from the fissures, and the battle cries of dragons. The continuous roar of the wind was gone. The light had changed, too. The sun had cleared the horizon, sharp and bright, no longer muffled by cloud and ice.

  The stormwall was down.

  What did that mean?

  Fear quivered through her. It had to be the empress. Who else would have the power to put up a stormwall or bring it down?

  “Cas,” Jenna said, fetching her armor from their campsite and buckling it on. “I think it must be Celestine. If it is, we’ll have to be smart and careful. We don’t want to scare her off.” She knew that would be better received than She might kill us.

  Dragons sneak, Cas said. Splash and Pricker, stay with Spellsinger. Slayer and Goat, come with us, find ship. Splinter, stay high, watch for more ships. There was a certain amount of grumbling about these assignments, but the young dragons deferred to Cas in the end.

  One by one, the dragons launched from the side of the mountain, circling to gain altitude, losing themselves in the glare of the sunrise, something Jenna hadn’t seen since her arrival on Weeping Sister. Jenna and Cas were the last to fly. When all were so high as to be barely visible from the ground, they flew west, to the harbor side of the island.

  Jenna leaned down over Cas’s shoulder, straining to see. There was the ruined city, the rubble that had been the palace, and the remains of the quay. And there—one small ship at anchor in the harbor.

  Not the empress ship, Cas said. Too small.

  Jenna squinted. “Can you see anyone aboard?”

  Something moving, Cas said. He circled lower, followed by his dragon honor guard.

  Soon, even Jenna could pick out details on the boat. It looked to be badly damaged, its masts and rigging mangled and broken. The empress’s fleet included a broad variety of ships, given that she often put into service the vessels she’d captured. Still, this was smaller than most she’d crewed. Jenna didn’t recognize the tattered flag they flew; it was not the empress’s siren signia.

  Jenna could make out three people moving on deck, attempting to clear away the mess, oblivious of death coming at them from the skies.

  Prey.

  Had they been damaged going through the Boil?

  Had they damaged the Boil going through it?

  Burn the nest? Cas said hopefully. Jenna could hear the fledglings behind them, their excited chorus.

  Burn the nest! Kill the hatchlings! Claim the hoard!

  Jenna fingered her magemark. It wasn’t responding the way it usually did in proximity to the empress. It did not burn, or seethe, or even prickle. Instead, images sluiced through her mind, so quickly that it was difficult to grab hold of any one of them.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Go lower.”

  Have guns, Cas warned. Tricky maybe.

  Still, the dragon continued to lose altitude. Now Jenna could mark out the enemy individually. All three of them were wearing watch caps pulled down over their ears. Two of them shone like pale dawn stars against the horizon. Wizards—but not the kind that Celestine fielded in her army. One of the wizards was slender and agile, scrambling up the single remaining mast and down the standing rigging like a spider. The other was tall, rangy, more deliberate in his movements. Something about him struck a chord of memory in Jenna.

  The third—a female—was not gifted, except in size and strength. She went at the work with a will. The spider seemed to be the one in charge. Jenna saw no sign of the empress.

  Burn ship and go? Cas said.

  Burn ship! the fledglings chorused.

  Jenna was about to agree, but then a new sound rose from the broken ship. The spider was singing, in Common. He seemed to be trying to cheer up his companions.

  The mate was drunk, and he went below

  To take a swig of his bottle, oh

  A bottle of belch and a clank of stingo

  The sailor loves his bottle, OH!

  The laddies, oh, the lassies, oh

  The sailor loves the clicket, so

  A romp in the Midden and a dock in the bow

  The sailor loves the clicket, OH!

  It seems wrong to burn somebody alive when he’s singing a bawdy song, Jenna thought. They hovered, indecisive, Cas keeping them aloft with broad sweeps of his wings.

  Let pirate finish song, Cas suggested. Then burn ship and go.

  Jenna was beginning to think they should just return to the aerie and hide until the crew of the little ship made its repairs and left.

  She remembered her vow. I will not hesitate. I will not fail. This ship had to be part of the empress’s fleet. No enemy or rival would be foolish enough to sail this little gunship into the siren’s lair.

  Whatever she might have decided, it was too late. Goat had continued to circle, each round bringing him closer to the water’s surface. Now he folded his wings and plummeted toward the sea, screaming a challenge. Just before he hit the surface, he shot forward, skimming the deck, obviously meaning to rake the ship bow to stern with dragon flame. He was so focused on his target that he neglected to notice the lines spreading like a net from the single standing mast. He plowed into them at high speed, then landed heavily on the deck, the rigging that remained coming down on top of him. The more he flailed, the more ensnared he became.

  The singing stopped abruptly. The female shouted and pointed skyward, at Cas and Slayer, then sprinted toward the guns that spiked both sides of the ship. Cas plunged toward the deck, too, but the spider mage, quick as thought, swept his hands toward them, and they were buffeted by a blast of wind, sending them tumbling head over tail. The tall mage followed with a bolt of flame that would have burned anyone else to a crisp.

  Slayer began his own sortie, screaming out of the blinding dawn like an avenging banshee. But the tall, rangy wizard held his ground on deck, one hand on his amulet, the other casting skeins of glittering netting over the ship with each flick of his wrist. Slayer had to turn away at the last minute to avoid being entangled himself. His torrents of dragon flame didn’t penetrate the barricade, either.

  In his struggles to free himself, Goat managed to set fire to some of the debris on the deck. The spider gestured, and a large wave crested over the deck and quenched it, quenching Goat in the process.

  A weathermaking mage, Jenna thought. There was something she should be remembering.

  The cannon boomed, one by one, as the female lit the match and projectiles screamed past them. All in all, it was an impressive defensive display. Ships’ cannons make a satisfactory noise, but they are not good at hitting any target that moves as fast as a dragon. Once all the cannon had fired, it would take time to reload. Meanwhile, Goat was reducing what remained of the ship’s rigging to splinters and line, screaming all the while.

  Both wizards seemed weary, though, wrung out, their auras as pale as the winter sun. Jenna suspected that they couldn’t keep up a defense for too much longer.
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  Who were they? She breathed in sharply, but couldn’t catch a scent other than woodsmoke.

  Meanwhile, they couldn’t get through the wizard’s magical barricade and free the hopelessly entangled young dragon.

  As Jenna watched, the taller wizard fought his way through the tangled debris to reach Goat’s side. He crowded in as close as he dared to the floundering dragon, staying just behind the dragon’s front legs, where Goat couldn’t see him. Even if he had, he couldn’t reach him with his tail, his flame, or his teeth.

  Cas dropped as low as he dared, while still avoiding the magical barrier, the force of his wings driving ripples across the water’s surface.

  “Goat!” Jenna shouted. “Look out!”

  The wizard heard. He stopped and looked up, shading his eyes with his hand. Then he shook his head and went back to business. He pressed one hand against the dragon’s side and leaned in close, his forehead all but touching Goat’s scales. The wizard murmured a charm. His voice—and the words—seemed familiar. Gradually, Goat quieted, stopped struggling, lowered his head to the deck, and closed his eyes, all but purring.

  The tall mage reached under his coat, and something new glittered in his hand. A knife.

  Goat! Cas screamed a warning. But Goat, mesmerized, did not respond.

  Mage trick attack! Slayer roared his frustration, sweeping back and forth over the ship, repeatedly flaming the mage’s barricade. It seemed to be fading, weakening in places, and now and then the flame penetrated. As if aware of the danger, the spider repeatedly wet down the decks and drove the dragons back with gusts of wind while the female beat out any flames that caught.

  But the wizard did not attack. Instead of trying to stab into Goat’s underbelly, or creeping forward to cut his throat, he began methodically slicing away at the rigging pinning the young dragon’s limbs. He worked his way around the dragon’s body, even hoisting himself onto the dragon’s back so as to cut away the lines that had threatened to strangle him when he struggled. He spoke to Goat, and the dragon rolled onto his back so the mage could get at the rigging underneath him.

  The mage was skilled with a knife. It wasn’t long before Goat was free of his bindings.