THE WIZARD HUNTERS

by Martha Wells

She explained hurriedly, “Not a natural creature, but something created by a sorcerer. If he can break the spell that created it... but that’s got to be one powerful spell.” She threw them a desperate look. “I don’t think he can do it without the right preparations.”

  Giliead suddenly leapt back from the bow, yelling a warning. Before they could move the ship shuddered. Tremaine felt the deck lift under her feet. She grabbed Florian, feeling the other girl’s fingers dig into her arm. People scrambled for handholds, cried out in alarm. Ilias swung back on the railing, clinging to it. Ander cursed, bracing his feet to keep from falling. It’s surfacing under us, Tremaine thought, shaken, then she heard wood crunch. No, it’s got us in its teeth.

  The sphere jerked suddenly inside the leather case. “Uh oh,” she muttered. She could hear it clicking, feel the trembling as it spun itself up into a frenzy. “I think it’s going to—”

  A flash like ball lightning flared between the sphere clutched in her arms and Gerard. Tremaine could almost feel it add its power to his. It didn‘t even have to be in contact with him, she thought, startled. It’s getting stronger.

  Gerard’s voice rose to a shout and Tremaine’s stomach lurched as the ship dropped. The sea sprayed up, soaking them, then fountained as if the ship had plowed into a waterfall.

  A triangular head crested with spines surfaced suddenly, sending up another drenching spray. Tremaine stumbled back, getting a confused image of white staring eyes and scales the size of platters. It opened its jaw in a soundless screech, revealing huge teeth clotted with splintered wood. Then the eyes grew a gray film and the head wavered back and forth as it sank.

  “He got it, Gerard got it!” Florian called excitedly. Then she froze in shock.

  As the leviathan’s head submerged they could see the Gardier ship, only a few hundred yards away. It must have come for them at full steam, alerted somehow by the creature. “We’re done for,” Tremaine said under her breath.

  She saw a flash near the gray deckhouse and Ander yelled, “Get down!” He dragged Tremaine and Florian to the deck just as a booming crash announced an artillery shell.

  Tremaine felt the deck shift under her feet, then suddenly the world turned upside down and planks smashed down on top of her and she slammed into the sea’s surface.

  Tremaine flailed underwater. She surfaced, gasping, and caught a wave in the face that almost drove her under again. She kicked and managed to get a breath, looking around in time to see half the bow roll over. A haze of smoke drifted over splintered wood, people clutching floating timbers. Something tugged at her arm and bumped her shoulder. Her mind on monsters and Gardier, Tremaine splashed wildly before realizing it was the leather bag with the sphere, still caught on her arm.

  She heard Florian calling her name and twisted around to see the other girl clutching a floating spar, only a few yards away. She saw Ilias surface near it and realized he was holding on to an unconscious Ander. He shook the hair out of his eyes, trying to paddle awkwardly toward the spar, but something was wrong with his free arm. He’s hurt, Tremaine thought, swimming toward him.

  Her progress was awkward and furious but it got her there. She grabbed Ander’s arm just as Ilias went under again. Without that burden he surfaced, managing to keep himself above water with his good arm. Florian, holding on to the spar and kicking, managed to bring the end of it within reach. Ilias grabbed it and Tremaine managed to push Ander up far enough that Ilias could hold on to him too. Tremaine treaded water, looking around as the sphere, still caught on her arm, bashed her in the head with each wave.

  The damn Gardier boat was almost on top of them. Tremaine cursed under her breath. She wasn’t seeing a ready way out of this one. Several people clung to the Swift’s largest remaining hull section, about twenty yards away. With relief Tremaine saw Dyani and Arites among them. Then Giliead surfaced, pulling Gerard up so he could get a grip on the wood. “Gerard!” she yelled, waving to catch his attention. The sorcerer was conscious, shaking his head and gasping.

  He spotted her and shouted, “Try to go! We might be in the target area!”

  “We can’t!” she shouted back, appalled. They had discovered early in the experiments that the sphere could transport large numbers of people and objects, as long as they were connected by something etheric waves could travel through. It would have taken the entire Swift and everyone on it through the portal easily. But with the ship in disconnected pieces and most of the people floating on the water, it would leave them behind.

  A hatch sprang open on the upper hull of the Gardier ship and a man carrying a large gun emerged, then another.

  “Go, go! Get the sphere away!” Gerard shouted furiously.

  “Shit.” Tremaine gritted her teeth and swam toward Florian. She caught hold of the spar one-handed and held out the bag to the other girl.

  Florian eyed it uncertainly and twitched her wet hair out of her face. “I don’t know— Can I see it?”

  “Sure.” Tremaine pulled at the lacing and Florian helped her get the sphere out of the bag. She didn’t know whether she wanted Florian to be able to do this or not. She didn’t want to leave Gerard and the others, but they couldn’t let the Gardier get the sphere either.

  Ilias, keeping Ander’s head above the surface and awkwardly gripping the spar, twisted around to shout desperately, “Gil!”

  “Go with them!” Giliead shouted back.

  Hating this, Tremaine told Florian, “Now.”

  Florian nodded, her expression torn between anguish and anxiety. She put her hand on the sphere, whispering the words of the reverse adjuration.

  Tremaine felt the familiar lurch as the world changed. Something slammed into her legs and she collapsed, knocked flat by a heavy thump in the back. The light of a poisonously red sunset dazzled her. The surface beneath her was hard, warm and gritty.

  She shook her head, dazed, trying to push herself up. She could see a dusty brown hill rising in front of her, with scrubby dark-colored grass poking up out of the sand. Where the hell. . . ?

  Something heavy lay across her back and she twisted, shoved at it. It was the spar. Squinting against the brightness, she could see Ilias and Ander a few feet away, sprawled on the gravel-strewn ground. Ander stirred without waking, but Ilias sat up, shaking the dripping hair out of his eyes, wincing as he looked around. He was cradling one arm and she could see Ander’s temple was bleeding.

  Tremaine turned to see Florian, curled protectively around the sphere, just lifting her head. She managed to say vaguely, “What. .. where?”

  Florian shook her head, bewildered. Tremaine looked at Ilias hopefully, but he was staring past her, eyes narrowed incredulously.

  She twisted to look. About fifty yards away a dark cliff face stretched up, curving away at the top. There was an oddly square cave entrance in it, nearly a good three stories high. The land around it was barren, empty, just dusty desert hills rolling away under the orange-red sky.

  Aghast, Ilias shoved to his feet and said slowly, “Is this your world?”

  “No, no, this isn’t it.” The impact of her own words hit and the bottom seemed to drop out of Tremaine’s stomach. This isn’t it. She wet her lips nervously. “We’re in the wrong place.”

  “The wrong place?” he echoed, looking at her, his expression torn between relief and dawning horror.

  “Oh, shit!” Florian dropped the sphere as if it had burned her. “I did something wrong!”

  “Florian.” Tremaine caught the other girl’s shoulders, speaking calmly and deliberately. She felt she had gone beyond panic and into a state far more profound. “Just calm down, and try it again.”

  Horian’s eyes were wide and she choked on the words, shaking her head rapidly. “I can’t—”

  Tremaine gave her a gentle shake and smiled. She didn’t know where this strange calm person had come from, but she hoped Florian listened to her. “You can. You just. . . dropped a decimal point, that’s all. Just try it again.”

  “Right, rig
ht, I have to.” Florian pressed her palms to her forehead. She looked up at Tremaine, uncertain. “The return location sigil is very close to one of the other sigils that Niles and Tiamarc and Gerard never could figure out. But it was a constant, so we didn’t have to manipulate it, so ... Maybe I changed it by accident.”

  Ilias flicked a desperate look at them. Tremaine nodded reassuringly to Florian. She hadn’t a clue what the other girl was talking about, but Florian needed encouragement, not questions. “That must be it.”

  “Right.” Florian nodded to herself and rolled the sphere back between them. “Everybody hold on to the spar, we need that to connect us.”

  Tremaine nodded to Ilias and he crouched next to them again, between her and Ander.

  Florian closed her eyes, wetting her lips. “Here goes,” she whispered.

  “Let it help you,” Tremaine told her impulsively as she put her hands on the humming metal. “It just wants to help.” It better help. You hear me in there, sphere? You want to act on your own, then get us the fuck out of here.

  “All right. I’m calm. I’m taking a deep breath,” Florian whispered.

  The ground shook and they stared at each other. Then it did it again. And again. “What is that?” Florian muttered, distracted.

  Warily watching the opening in the cliff, Ilias hissed, “Hurry!”

  Tremaine shook her head slightly, baffled. “What is it?”

  He looked at her as if she was crazy. “It’s coming this way! The giant thing that lives in the ... thing.” He nodded toward the cliff face.

  In the opening Tremaine suddenly saw a shadow, a moving shape, coming closer.... Her eyes widened as her perspective shifted and she realized what she was looking at. It wasn’t a cliff, it was a wall, a stone wall, and that opening— “That’s a door.”

  Florian swore as the realization struck her too. She grabbed the sphere and the world shifted again.

  Chapter 17

  Tremaine plunged into salt water again but this time it was freezing cold. She thrashed, her feet reaching unsuccessfully for the bottom and surfaced into pitch dark, treading water. Oh no, we did it again. Her voice harsh with panic, she called out, “Florian! Ilias!”

  She heard splashing nearby and a gurgle and a gasp, and Ilias’s voice called roughly, “I’m here! I’ve got Ander. Where’s Florian?”

  “Florian!” Tremaine bellowed, sweeping her arms around in the dark, the freezing water making her teeth chatter. No answer. That was a big spell for a barely trained witch like Florian. If she was unconscious she would be floating facedown. She won’t be far away, dammit.

  Her flailing hand encountered wet cloth and she grabbed and pulled, feeling hair slide over her hand. “I found her!” She hauled Florian’s head out of the water. Having no recourse to better methods of resuscitation, she slapped her as hard as she could, almost submerging herself in the process.

  She felt Florian twitch and gasp, then the girl started to cough up water, her body convulsing. Tremaine supported her head, paddling frantically to keep them both afloat.

  A door banged open and a light split the darkness. She saw a silhouette poised in the illuminated doorway, hanging apparently in midair somewhere above them. She clutched Florian more tightly and sank lower in the water, wondering if this was the Gardier again or if they had fallen into some odd surrealist world, like something out of a bad modern painting. Doors floating in the air had to be worse than giants, or at least less explicable. Then the figure shouted, “Who’s there?” in Rienish and flashed an electric torch.

  “Here!” Tremaine called in relief, splashing so he would see her. “It’s us!”

  More figures appeared in the lighted doorway, then someone flicked on the overhead lights, revealing the bare wooden rafters of the old boathouse. Tremaine swore, her chattering teeth garbling the words. Florian had managed to bring them through right into the Pilot Boat’s old slip.

  Out of the shouting and confusion and familiar faces, Niles emerged, leaning over the edge of the dock as Tremaine struggled to hoist Florian up to the waiting hands. “Where’s Gerard, Feraim, Stanis?” he demanded, looking past her into the water, as if expecting to see them surface at any moment.

  A soldier and a man she vaguely recognized from the research group lifted Florian up onto the dock. The girl was trying to come around, choking on the water she had swallowed, but she still didn’t seem aware of what was happening. “Feraim and Stanis are dead,” Tremaine reported as someone caught her arm and hauled her up. She scrambled onto the wet wood on her hands and knees, looking around for Ilias and Ander. Ander lay on the far end of the platform, still unconscious, someone hurriedly covering him with a coat. Ilias crouched nearby, uneasily watching all the activity, his wet hair making him look like a drowned rat. She turned back to Niles, waiting impatiently. “Gerard was captured by the Gardier just before we did the reverse adjuration.”

  Niles, pale to begin with, went white. Tremaine felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. It was the right thing to do, she knew that. They could still pull this whole situation out of the fire with what they knew about the Gardier now. She meant to say that, but what came out was, “He told us to go back so we did. I didn’t know what else—”

  Niles shook his head, telling her it could wait. “Where’s the sphere?”

  “It’s here.” Tremaine looked around vaguely, realizing she didn’t have it with her. The bag Karima had given them was still looped over her arm but it hung open, empty. She was shivering hard enough to make her bones rattle and it was getting difficult to focus on the conversation. “It’s probably on the bottom. Do that calling charm thing. Gerard did it once before.”

  Niles turned immediately to stare at the still-choppy surface of the water, lifting a hand and muttering the ritual words. The sphere surfaced in a plume of spray and Niles waved wildly at the soldiers. “There it is! Get a net, a net!”

  Colonel Averi, wearing an undress uniform jacket over a pajama shirt, pushed forward to take stock of the situation. He said briskly, “Call the infirmary. And get them out of the cold.” Tremaine looked hopefully to see if he wore bedroom slippers, but he had managed to get his pants and half boots on. His eyes fell on Ilias and he asked, frowning, “Who the hell is that?”

  “He’s our friend,” Tremaine said quickly. People turned to stare at her, startled, and she added, “We made contact with a new civilization.”

  There was a door under the stairs to the upper platform that Tremaine had never noticed before. Someone opened it and they were rapidly shepherded into a room that had been stripped down to stained plaster and worn water-damaged wainscoting. But it had a potbellied stove and several bunks with worn dusty mattresses.

  In a thankfully short time, Florian and Ander lay on the bunks, heavily bundled in coats and blankets and under the care of the nurse who had hurried down from the infirmary. Both were still unconscious. Tremaine was sitting on a straight chair, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket that smelled of mildew and was stamped with Property of the Royal Navy. Many of their lower-ranking rescuers had been shooed away to wait in suspense for word of what had happened, but some intelligent person had got a fire going in the stove and Tremaine could smell coffee heating.

  Niles stepped in, the sleeves of his coat dripping wet and the sphere tucked under his arm. He gazed worriedly at Florian and Ander. “How are they?”

  “I think the girl got a bit of water in her lungs, but she’s breathing well now,” the nurse reported, sounding weary. “The young man’s had a bad knock on the head; he may need a healer.”

  Niles nodded and Tremaine saw he looked exhausted and older than when she had seen him last, only a few days ago. He said, “Is Doctor Divies on his way? I don’t want to try an intrusive healing spell on a head injury without a physician present.”

  “He’s on his way with the stretchers.”

  Niles glanced around and spotted Ilias, standing against the wall and trying to appear as much like a piece of fu
rniture as a man dressed like he was could in this bare room. Someone had dropped a fatigue jacket over his shoulders and he was cradling his injured arm. “What about . . . ?” Niles touched Ilias’s good shoulder lightly.

  Ilias flinched, backing away along the wall, eyeing Niles warily. Suddenly he looked dangerous. Sharply he said, “No,” one of the few Rienish words he knew. The two soldiers still in the room tensed, one of them dropping a hand to his sidearm. Niles just looked startled and mildly affronted.

  “Hold it,” Tremaine ordered, standing. Dumping her blanket, she stepped quickly over to Ilias. She put an arm around his waist and was relieved when he didn’t pull away from her. The gesture reassured him, while keeping anyone from attacking anyone else.

  “It’s all right—” She realized she was speaking Rienish and shook her head in annoyance, switching hurriedly to Syrnaic. “It’s all right, that’s Niles. He is a sorcerer, but he’s like Gerard. They’re friends and they work here together.” She realized that since Gerard had discovered the Syprians’ feelings about magic, he hadn’t done any of the little spells and charms that working sorcerers commonly used. No wisps of light, no calling charms. It was probably a mix of caution and Gerard’s habitual good manners, but it hadn’t prepared Ilias for a sudden visit to Ile-Rien.

  He threw a dubious glance at Niles, still wary, but she felt his tense muscles relax a little. Of course he was edgy. All his friends had been captured by the Gardier and he was trapped in a strange world full of sorcerers, where he couldn’t even understand the language. Switching back to Rienish, she told Niles, “They don’t have real sorcerers where he comes from, just the Gardier and a few crazy wizards.”

  Niles’s expression cleared. “I see. Can you explain to him that I can heal his arm?” He frowned suddenly. “And how do you know that language? I don’t recognize it.”

  “Later, Niles, it’s a long story.” She told Ilias, “He just wants to fix your arm.”

  “It’s fine,” he assured her with a touch of earnestness that told her just how frightened he was. “It doesn’t need fixed.”