The Way of the Wizard

by John Joseph Adams

  She noticed Proctor there and faltered. He held up his hands to indicate his peaceful intent.

  Only one of his hands was clutching a tomahawk.

  He quickly slipped it back into his belt.

  “—ikum wa rabmatulaah,” she finished.

  With her hands cupped, palm up, at chest level, she said something that only she herself could hear. She had to be one of the women Every had kidnapped. When Esek called them whores, Proctor had imagined exotic women in shameful clothing, flaunting themselves. But this woman reminded him of a pious goodwife or some popish nun. He wanted to speak to her, but something told him it would be wrong to interrupt. Finally, she wiped her face with her palms and stood. She turned to face him. Her skin was dark but her features delicate and perfectly formed. Her amber eyes considered him, thoughtfully but fearlessly.

  “You must be a most earnest and good-hearted man to find your way through these corridors,” she said in lilted English. “In all this time, no other man has found me here.”

  “To be honest I wasn’t looking,” Proctor said.

  “That explains it,” she said. “If you were, you would never have succeeded.”

  “Do you know the way out?”

  “Of course. That is why you came, to escort me away from this place. Come, we must hurry.” She walked past him, and he turned to follow her, his head spinning with questions.

  But the questions quickly disappeared. The corridors that had been twisting and ever-changing before were now straight and solid. She paused and pressed a finger to her lips. “We must stop somewhere on our way out,” she said softly. “There are dangerous men here, and we must be careful to escape their notice.”

  Contradictory choices raced through Proctor’s head. On the one hand, they still needed Esek in order to escape. On the other hand, if this poor woman wanted to avoid the notice of a pirate and a smuggler, he felt obligated to help.

  She led him down a narrow stairway into a room that looked like the nave of an old church, ringed with high arches. A balcony arcade circled the second story. In the middle of the floor sat a box that Proctor would have taken for an altar had not the top been knocked off to reveal an empty casket. The rest of the room was filled with the emperor’s treasure, or what was left of it. Bolts of brightly colored silk, silver plates and statues, casks of coins and jewels lined the walls. Many were cracked open, or lay empty, the pieces scattered.

  The woman held a small bag on a cord. She pulled it open and began to fill it with gold coins and gems.

  Proctor felt an itch on the back of his neck. Something wasn’t right. “Are you sure—”

  A roar as a shadow passed over his head, and then a heavy weight slammed into his shoulders, knocking him to the ground. He thought that the tiger had found him, pouncing from the balcony above, but then he saw Esek rise beside him.

  “The treasure’s mine!” Esek said. “And Every’s whore too.”

  Proctor saw the knife in Esek’s hand but he was unprepared for how quickly the smuggler moved to cut his throat. He twisted away just in time to feel the blade slash his cheek. The big sailor’s fist followed a split second later, connecting with his temple and snapping Proctor’s head against the floor.

  “Hold still, damn you,” Esek said. “There’s no reason this can’t be quick.”

  Proctor had no intention of letting it be quick. His left hand fumbled at his belt for his tomahawk, but it was twisted under him as he tried to roll away from Esek. His right hand grabbed blindly for a weapon, but all his fingers found was a bolt of silk. It was better than nothing, and Proctor whipped it around just as Esek slashed at him again. This time the knife bit into the fabric, which Proctor twisted, knocking the knife out of Esek’s hand; he then shoved the bolt into the smuggler to tangle his arms and knock him down. Esek grabbed a handful of coins and flung them in Proctor’s face, then rose and charged at Proctor again.

  The tomahawk came out. Esek warded off the first blow with his forearm. The second split his skull and stuck there like a maul in a piece of wood. Esek toppled to the ground, pulling the weapon out of Proctor’s hand as he fell.

  Proctor stood there shaking from the suddenness of the attack, the sharpness of the pain across his face, and the thought of having killed a man he knew so quickly, so easily.

  “You had to do it,” the woman said, slipping the cord around her neck and tucking the bag inside her robes.

  “We needed him to sail the ship,” he said.

  “No we don’t,” she answered. “We only need to cut it loose and go. Follow me.”

  “Wait a moment,” he said. He had to put his boot on Esek’s face to pull free his tomahawk, and then he stopped to wipe it on the bolt of silk before slipping it back into his belt. “Now I’m ready.”

  They exited the palace in just a few moments and crossed the rocky shore toward the ropelines. Deborah rose eagerly from her seat.

  “Are you all right?” she called. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

  “I’m fine,” Proctor said. “This is—”

  “I am the moghul’s wife,” the woman said softly.

  “—a friend,” Proctor called back. To the woman, he said, “Can you make your way across the ropes?”

  “I can,” she said, and climbed up on them as one who’d had some practice. Proctor watched her make her way across and then glanced back at the palace, where he thought he saw a face briefly at one of the upper balconies. Every would not let this treasure go lightly. Not if he had sacrificed so much to keep her here. The woman was barely halfway across the ropes when Proctor followed her. He moved more quickly than she did, and was catching up to her in the middle, when he heard Every scream behind him.

  “You can’t have her!”

  Proctor was twisting around to reply with reason, such as it was, when a pistol cracked and a ball whistled past him. The moghul’s wife gasped and slipped from the rope.

  Every stood on the shore with Esek’s pistol in his hand.

  “Hurry,” Proctor said. “Before he can reload or follow.”

  “I don’t . . . think . . . I can,” the woman said. A dark stain spread across her robes. Her hand slipped off the ropes and she fell into water.

  Proctor let go and dropped after her. The water was ice cold, worse than he expected, and he swallowed a mouthful. He floundered for a moment, gagging on the salt and trying to catch his breath, when he saw her robes. He swam over and grabbed them, intending to drag her to safety. He went to hook an arm around her, but he found the robes were empty—he had mistaken their waterlogged weight for a body.

  “Proctor—”

  Deborah’s voice called his attention to shore. Her extended arm carried it back out to the water. In the channel between the islands he saw the tiger.

  He looked frantically in either direction for the moghul’s wife and then he swam desperately for the shore. When he looked over his shoulder, the tiger paddled after him. His arms and legs were going numb from the cold when his knee banged against a rock, and he realized he had made it. Slipping and stumbling, he pulled himself up onto the rocks. He was shivering from the cold and his fingers refused to grab hold of anything. Deborah clutched a fistful of his jacket and dragged him to higher ground.

  It was not far enough or quick enough. The tiger splashed ashore only yards behind him.

  He grabbed Deborah’s arm and choked out words through chattering teeth. “The moghul’s wife is—”

  But there was no time for anything more. The tiger surged out of the water and climbed up the rocks behind him. He rolled over onto his back, reaching for his tomahawk. He could grab the beast by the scruff of its neck . . . maybe blind it . . . give Deborah a chance to escape . . .

  The tiger was wounded. Blood poured from its side.

  It took another step toward Proctor and he reached out to grab it.

  His hand missed . . .

  . . . and the tiger transformed into a naked woman, her body shivering with the cold, her face co
ntorted in pain, and she fell across him, gasping.

  “The moghul’s wife is the moghul’s sorcerer,” Deborah said.

  Deborah had put on her heavy coat against the fog that morning. Now she pulled it off and quickly wrapped the other woman in it.

  Proctor’s brain felt sluggish, as if he were only now putting together the pieces of a puzzle that was obvious to everyone else. The moghul’s wife was also the moghul’s sorcerer. When Every had captured her and tortured her, he had brought her here with him, to his hideaway. She built the palace for herself, a place where she could hide from him. But from time to time she had to come out, and when she did, she took a form that was not so easy for him to abuse.

  And now Every came for her again across the ropelines.

  The tomahawk was already in Proctor’s hand. He scrambled to his feet and hacked at the lines where they were knotted to a post. The sound of the iron striking wood was answered by a cry of rage. Proctor struck again and again.

  The top rope parted and Every fell into the waves.

  Proctor hacked at the lower rope and cast it also into the water.

  “He cannot swim very well,” the moghul’s wife said. Deborah’s coat was wrapped around her, and Deborah’s arms were wrapped around the coat. “We must hurry and cut loose his ship.”

  “I have to treat your wound,” Deborah said.

  “Aboard the ship,” the other woman answered. She looked at Proctor. “I was in too much of a hurry. You appeared at my left shoulder, and not my right. It was an evil sign. But I had been here too long already.”

  She tried to stand on her own and fell. Proctor scooped her up in his arms and lifted her. She barely weighed anything.

  Behind them, Every had floundered back to the far shore. “You can’t have her. Do you hear me? She’s mine.”

  The woman shuddered. “Please. Please help me get aboard the ship. I want to see sunshine again . . . ”

  “Can you wrap your arms around my neck and hold on tight?” Proctor asked.

  “Yes, I can,” she answered with grim determination.

  “Then I will get you aboard. Deborah?”

  “I’ll go first,” she said.

  “Good. I don’t want you here if he makes it ashore.” Deborah climbed back up to the ship as quickly as she had climbed down. Proctor followed deliberately, holding on tight to the injured woman with one arm as he slid along the ropelines up to the rotting ship. They could see the island of skulls and bones from the deck. It was impossible not to recall the sight of the tiger atop that pile of bones.

  “I am most sorry,” the moghul’s wife said. “I was only trying to frighten you away. Those are the bones of every man Every has killed. All his crew members, all the men from the ships caught in his trap designed to bring them here so he might scavenge the things he needed. He liked to pretend that he was trying to save people, then watch them crash—”

  She caught her breath in pain.

  “Is this place your work or his?” Deborah asked. She opened the coat and examined the gunshot wound. She didn’t say anything of it, but Proctor could read the worry on her face.

  “The building was my work, an attempt to protect myself, a place to remember. I formed it from my memories of the Taj Mahal, a tomb built by Shah Jehan for his love of Mumtaz. I made mine in memory of my dear husband, lost to me forever.” She lifted her head, but her skin had begun to look dusty gray. “All the rest, Every created to keep me here. One night forever, the night we landed here, locked in a room outside of time. I taught him, I taught him everything, because I was too weak to let him kill me instead,” she said to Deborah with a sob.

  “You only did what you had to do,” Deborah said, stroking her face.

  “How do we get away?” Proctor asked, glancing back to the island.

  “Just set the ship adrift,” the moghul’s wife answered. “It will want to return to its proper place.”

  Proctor ran to the anchor rope. He looked at the means for winding it in, and then decided it was easier to simply cut it loose. He began to chop at it with his tomahawk, but the rope was old and thick and strong.

  There was a thump against the side of the ship, and then clawing and scratching.

  Proctor chopped harder but the rope refused to part.

  One big black paw came over the side of the ship and then another. A panther’s snout followed, its ears laid back.

  The moghul’s wife cried out. She spoke rapidly in a different language, probably trying to transform, but whatever she did wasn’t working.

  The panther pulled itself onto the deck and shook itself, spraying water everywhere. His chest was heaving, and Proctor could see that he had struggled to swim this far.

  It was Every.

  Something in the way it stood, something in the ribs showing at its sides—he couldn’t say why, but he knew. This was the source of all those bones piled up on the shipwreck island. Proctor turned and brought down the tomahawk with all his force.

  The panther snarled and came at him.

  The anchor rope separated and the ship lurched into motion, throwing them all off-balance. As the rope-end slithered across the deck, tethered to the anchor left behind, Proctor said, “Spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.”

  The rope slipped through the anchor port and disappeared. The panther squatted, ready to pounce.

  With all his focus, Proctor drew his hands in the air as if he were making a knot.

  The rope whipped up over the side of the ship, wrapped around the panther’s ankle and tied itself into a knot. The panther lunged at Proctor—

  —and came up short.

  As the boat started to move, the anchor stayed put, and the panther was dragged across the deck. He snarled and bit at the rope, clawed at it, and then, as the ship began to pick up speed, he transformed. Every was naked, flat on his stomach, sliding toward the water. He spun over, grasping at his ankle, but he was a split second too late. He slammed into the side of the ship, flipped up, and was pulled over.

  His hand snapped out to snag the ship’s railing.

  “I’ll never let you go,” he shouted. “I’ll never let you go!”

  The railing snapped.

  Proctor ran to the edge of the ship. Every was dragged under screaming, water flooding into his mouth, and then dark water and silence swallowed him.

  “The ship is moving,” Deborah said quietly to the moghul’s wife.

  She nodded understanding. “Maraja al-bahrayni yaltaqiayni,” she said.

  Deborah wrapped her hands around the other woman’s. “Here, draw on my power.”

  “Maraja al-bahrayni yaltaqiayni,” she repeated, the words coming with longer pauses between them. “Do you understand? The two seas flow freely so they meet together.”

  “I understand,” Deborah said.

  Proctor watched. This is what Deborah did well, forming a circle and sharing power with another. Above them, the stars and the moon faded. The sky grew light. For Proctor it was like seeing the transformation from night to dawn to noon, all collapsed into a few seconds. The fog had burned off and it was a clear and sunny day on the ocean. The cries of gulls filled the air, and the smell of saltwater and the sound of waves.

  “It’s been so long since I felt sunshine,” the moghul’s wife whispered. She reached up and took the bag from around her neck and handed it to Deborah. “This was to buy my passage home.”

  Deborah tried to push it away. “I can’t take that.”

  But the woman forced it over Deborah’s head. “I do not think that I will need it now.”

  “Don’t say that—”

  “I am at peace.” Her voice faltered and the next words were faint. “It is very sweet.”

  Deborah squeezed the cords in her fist. “What is your name? We would remember your name.”

  But the answer was forever beyond her. Her face turned toward the sun, which bathed it in warm and gentle light.

  The ship shuddered beneath their feet
and tilted to one side. Proctor looked over and noticed they were low in the water. “Deborah . . . ”

  Deborah was still cradling the other woman in her lap, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Not now,” she said.

  “Deborah, the ship is sinking.”

  More than sinking. It was coming apart at the seams beneath them. The sides were splitting, the planks in the deck slowly separating. The mast cracked and toppled toward the deck. Proctor wrapped an arm around Deborah and pulled her out of the way. Wood and sail and rigging crashed into the deck just behind them.

  “Thank y—” she started to say.

  The words were cut off as she slipped out of Proctor’s hand. The deck tilted beneath them as the ship capsized. Proctor slid down the deck toward Deborah, both of them chased by a vast net of tangled wreckage. He had just enough time to take a deep breath before he hit the water. If they didn’t get clear of the wreckage they would be dragged under with it.

  His momentum carried him deep, so deep he thought his lungs would burst, but he kicked and pushed his arms and somehow rose again. When his head broke the surface he was gasping for air. He spun in the water, searching for Deborah, and saw her floundering nearby.

  He swam to her side. “Here, take hold of me,” he said. “I’ll n—”

  The words formed in his mouth, but he had just moments before heard them come from Every’s lips, and he couldn’t say them.

  Deborah had no such reservation. “I won’t let go of you,” she said.

  With a gladder heart than he’d had a moment before, he pulled them through the waves to a floating mast and they clung to it like shipwreck survivors. A sail appeared in the distance, perhaps even the ship scheduled to rendezvous with them when they had set out that morning with Esek. They would only need to hang on a little while. But Deborah looked despondent.

  “We know now there is no British spy ship,” he told her, as they began to shiver in the cold. “And no more ships will disappear in the fog, no more men will die at Every’s hand.”