Wielder's Curse

by Elle Cardy

  “You don’t want to do this, Fisher.”

  “The lad’s death is all that can save us.” He charged Finn.

  “Fisher!” She couldn’t use her power against the man. She didn’t want him to become a Fisher-shaped burn mark on the bulkhead. But he was a strong man, and she wasn’t certain she could disable him.

  A meaty arm flashed out from a side door and knocked Fisher flat on his back. Brusan stepped from the room and, with his foot, leaned on Fisher’s wrist until the man let go the blade.

  “The crew onboard have lost their screws,” Brusan said. “They’re searching for Finn with murder on their minds.”

  Jasmine swore and ignored the look both Finn and Brusan gave her.

  “You should hide him,” Brusan said.

  “The ship is too small. They’ll find him.”

  “I mean with your voodoo.”

  Jasmine looked away. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Finn asked. “You’ve hidden me before. Why not now?”

  “I don’t trust my magic.”

  His eyes flashed. “Is something wrong?”

  She ground her jaw. This was why she didn’t want to tell him anything about her magic. “When have you known my power to be trustworthy?”

  His eyes crinkled in a faint wince.

  She had no desire to explain that if she attempted to hide him, anything could happen. For all she knew, she could blink him out of existence. Best not to admit that. He already had good reason not to trust her. Why give him more reasons?

  “I can’t protect you both here,” Brusan said.

  Jasmine frowned. “It’s not up to you to protect us.”

  Another crewman appeared in the passageway. This time it was Davit. “I found ’im!” he hollered and charged.

  Brusan slammed him hard over the head, and he dropped like a sack of beans.

  “We need to get out of here,” Finn said and turned.

  Brusan caught him. “We’ll go by the galley.”

  “You don’t need to come,” Jasmine said.

  “I know it, but we need supplies. Warm clothes. And you don’t get a say.”

  So they went by the galley, and Brusan picked up a pack he had stored in a cupboard.

  “You knew this was going to happen?”

  “Not in my wildest, but it don’t hurt to be prepared.” He shoved an extra two loaves of bread in the pack and pulled out a cloak for himself. Finn was already wearing one, as was Jasmine, though hers was weighed down by mud. “Let’s be gone.”

  A small figurine sitting on a ledge in galley caught her eye. Brusan had carved it for her tenth birthday. A round mermaid with a plump tail. It had been one of her favorites.

  She took it. It represented simpler days when she was just a cabin boy, apprenticed to her father the cook. There were no Beasts, no crazed crewmen, no phantoms, or visions. She feared she’d never get a glimpse of those days again. She feared she wouldn’t return to the Prize. But she had to return. She couldn’t survive without it.

  She clutched the mermaid tight. The figurine was a promise she would come back.

  They ran out into the rain, taking the path that led out of town and up into the craggy heights.

  Chapter 31

  On the narrow path that led out of town, Jasmine stopped, her face lifted to the dark mass of the surrounding mountains. The thrum of power up there beat against her chest. It pulsed like a fearful heart.

  “What is it, lass?” Brusan asked.

  “I can’t go up there,” she said.

  “We’ll be safer away from folk. There’s no telling who’ll be affected by those damnable waking dreams.”

  “You’ve had them too?”

  “Aye, lass, but I know what’s real and what ain’t.” He pulled out a battered silver disc on a leather cord around his neck. He’d worn the thing for as long as she could remember, along with the key to the Prize’s rum stores. “This charm ain’t perfect, but it helps. Bought it from a shaman years ago.”

  “She won’t leave the Prize,” Finn said with a soft sigh. “That’s what she means.”

  He knew her talisman was the Prize, so he knew she had little choice but to stay near her ship. She wasn’t doing it on purpose. Sure, she had the bolt, the swivel, and the cloth to act as her talismans, and now the mermaid statuette she realized, but they were poor substitutes, and she would quickly deplete them, as she had when she was in Oakheart.

  “I don’t understand,” Brusan said.

  Finn hunkered deeper into his cloak. The distant lights of the drinking house were inviting. There were few other lights in the little hamlet. The rain eased, though from the damp smell in the air, it seemed doubtful the reprieve would last long.

  “We need shelter,” Jasmine said. Hopefully Brusan could understand that much.

  The large man frowned and nodded. “There was an empty boatshed down the path. We could hole up there until dawn, then we can decide what to do. Maybe by morn, the madness would’ve passed.” He didn’t look convinced, but it was a good enough plan.

  The boatshed wasn’t far. It had been painted turquoise blue with white trim. It wasn’t exactly a warm place to shelter. Small square windows lined every wall. Two wide doorways opposite each other kept the wind whistling through. Open to the bay, the fourth wall was entirely missing. A two-person rowboat was tied up just inside the shed. From inside the eastern doorway, she could still see the swaying masts of the Prize above the ships moored in the bay. That alone gave her comfort.

  “Don’t look like we’ve been followed,” Brusan said, staring out the same doorway.

  Finn huddled under a tangle of netting as if it were a blanket. He pulled his hood low and fell asleep. Even in sleep he looked haggard and pale. He’d been through too much on account of her, and she suspected, if forced, he’d choose to do it again — because he loved her — but it wouldn’t make him happy.

  Brusan stayed on his feet. “Get some rest, lass. There ain’t nothing more we can do. I’ll keep watch.”

  It was hard to stay mad at him.

  Using the wall as shelter from the cold gusts, she settled near the opposite doorway. She needed to find a way to protect Finn, to hide him from the Beast, to make sure the creature never escaped its prison.

  It all seemed impossible.

  Sleep. That was what she needed. Sleep to restore her strength and clear her mind.

  * * *

  She’d been dreaming about grasping hands when she woke with a jolt. All seemed quiet. The creak of ropes and the lap of the bay waters were the only sounds in the darkness.

  “Someone’s approaching,” Brusan murmured.

  Jasmine rose to a crouch, paring knife in hand. Weariness clung to her, heavy on her limbs. She didn’t get near enough sleep. A soft crunch of gravel underfoot set Brusan in motion. He whipped out like a snake. A small shadow ducked.

  “It’s only me,” Gley said, hands up in defense.

  Brusan muttered an oath.

  The girl walked past Brusan and stopped in front of Jasmine. “I need to speak with you.”

  Jasmine straightened.

  “Somewhere private,” Gley said.

  Brusan lifted his chin. That small movement told her he would stay there and watch over Finn while they were gone. For some reason, he trusted the girl. She nodded back and led Gley outside.

  The faint touch of indigo lightening the sky told her it was later than she’d thought. Soon the hamlet would wake, and it would be harder to hide within sight of the Prize.

  Apparently satisfied by the short distance they’d walked, Gley stopped on the muddy path. “What would you do to save Finn?”

  The answer was easy. “Anything. Everything.”

  “You can’t return to the Prize,” she said.

  “I knew that already.” Hearing it from Gley didn’t help. If staying away from her Prize meant protecting Finn, then she’d find a way to make it possible.<
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  “You and I are similar,” Gley continued.

  Jasmine couldn’t agree. Sure, they were both women in a man’s world, both wielders, both could hide like perfect spies, but that was where their stories parted.

  “We both teeter on the edge of the Emptiness.”

  At the mention of the Emptiness, the dark vision clawed on her periphery, threatening to claim her and drag her down into a vast nothingness. The Beast’s void.

  Jasmine gasped. “How do you know?”

  “It swirls around you like a vortex. You skim the deep vastness that can’t be filled.”

  Jasmine couldn’t help wondering if Gley was an abomination too. If the girl knew about the nothingness, the vastness that yearned to devour everything within its reach, then she knew something of uncontrolled magic and what it was like to wield more than she should.

  “What is it? What is that emptiness?”

  “It’s both your beast’s prison and the space that keeps the world from burning.”

  The Beast. Gley knew of the Beast, and she’d said nothing. The girl had kept it to herself when she could’ve helped Jasmine convince the others. A thousand questions and a thousand emotions surged through Jasmine, passing so fast, she couldn’t latch on to any.

  “Do you know much about the history of your magic?” Gley asked.

  Not a lot, it seemed, and she suspected even the scholarly Guardians didn’t know much either, despite their crusty books.

  “Magic was different a thousand years ago,” Gley said, not waiting for a response. “A small number of magicians could become inordinately powerful.” That didn’t seem so different to today’s magic. “The world was in danger of extinction because of one man.”

  Kahld had been such a man. He could’ve wiped out Erenna, and if they hadn’t stopped him, nothing would’ve been left. Jasmine too had that potential, especially now that she had no real grasp on her magic. Blasting that phantom into oblivion had not been her intention. At least, not the way it had happened. The power had a mind of its own.

  “Now there is another with the same kind of strength,” Gley said.

  This was it. This was the moment when the girl would reveal she’d worked out that Jasmine was the real threat.

  “This … entity endangers the world. It could destroy everything we know.”

  Afraid to blink, Jasmine held her breath.

  Gley took a step closer, her gaze alight with intensity and purpose. “You are the key, Jasmine.” She touched her sleeve with her delicate hand. It took everything in Jasmine’s power not to flinch. “You are the most powerful wielder I’ve come across in — let’s just say a long while.”

  Jasmine swallowed. “What do you know of the Beast?” It was better to turn the conversation to the creature and away from her.

  Gley dropped her hand and stepped away. She peered out across the bay and the swaying boats in the early light. “I know it was imprisoned a thousand years ago. I know it’s somehow gaining strength and finding a way out of that prison. I know the dreams have been coming from the Beast, and I know everything will be lost if it escapes.”

  Jasmine suspected the girl knew a whole lot more than that. “So, it’s the Beast you’re hunting?”

  “We need to work together.”

  As much as she wanted to relax, she couldn’t trust this stranger. They might’ve sailed together for two and a half months, but the girl was impossible to get to know. She was full of secrets. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I wasn’t certain earlier.” She wrinkled her nose. “And I foolishly believed the old man’s dismissal of your story. I hadn’t thought it possible.”

  “When were you certain?”

  Gley dropped her gaze. The predawn air was still and cold. “When I saw the new star. The ghost ship confirmed it.”

  Jasmine came close to laughing — it was all so ridiculous and so out of her control — but the look on Gley’s face said she was afraid. Not just afraid, but terrified.

  “The Prize’s crew was right about the star,” Gley said. “It is an omen. It’s a sign of a doorway being unlocked. The coming of evil. The coming of an enemy. The end of all things.”

  Hearing it spoken like that sent a chill up Jasmine’s arms. This evil, this enemy, was hunting her for her magic. “What could we possibly do against such a power?”

  “Together we can fight it,” Gley said. “We can defeat it.”

  When Jasmine had first encountered the beast in the void, the power it held was unfathomable. It had hungered for her soul, yearned for her power, and craved for its freedom. She had barely escaped. It was a massive entity that was unstoppable. She hadn’t considered fighting it head on. She only considered fleeing it. Fighting it was foolish. Defeating it was impossible.

  “If you don’t fight it,” Gley said, “you’ll be running for the rest of your life.”

  Jasmine shrugged, trying for bravado. “That doesn’t seem so bad. I’ve been hiding most of my life.”

  “Can you hide Finn as well? Can you protect the entire crew of your ship? I had hoped this place would keep the powers at bay. It’s … protected,” she said before Jasmine could ask. “And it worked for a time.” She shook her head as her gaze traveled up to the mountains and down around the bay. “The attacks by the phantoms will get worse. The nightmares will send folk insane. Even your visions will get worse. Nowhere is safe.”

  The visions were already bad enough. She couldn’t imagine them getting worse. Above everything, she had to protect Finn and the crew. “You think you know a way of defeating this Beast?”

  “I do, but as I said, we’ll have to work together.”

  A pale glow in the overcast sky chased the deeper shadows away. The cold air seemed to vibrate with energy. Shoving her hands in her pockets, Jasmine felt fear and hope mixed into a stomach-churning potion. Gley didn’t know she’d lost control of her magic. If she knew, if any of them knew, they’d want to kill her along with the Beast. Some secrets were best kept silent.

  “Where do we even begin?”

  Gley smiled. “South, to the Icelands of Yactun.”

  Chapter 32

  Jasmine and Gley walked side by side down the path toward the boatshed. With the brightening morning, the hamlet came alive with fishermen heading to their boats. Folk chopped wood, lit cooking fires, fed penned animals, and milked cows. They greeted each other with smiles and waves. If she didn’t love the sea so much, or wasn’t forever bound to the Prize, Jasmine might’ve liked to live in such a place.

  Gley wrapped a thick scarf around her neck and pulled it over her nose then lifted her hood and pulled it low. Jasmine felt like she walked beside a shadow. It had been colder before dawn, yet the girl hadn’t wrapped herself up so tightly.

  “Are you wanted here like you were in Oakheart?” Jasmine asked.

  “I’m not a fugitive or a criminal or whatever you think along those lines. In Oakheart, I was simply an untagged wielder. Yet I was safer there than I am here in Pruma.”

  “Why?”

  “It would take too long to explain,” Gley said, picking up the pace.

  “Fine. Why the Icelands?”

  “It’s the only place we can defeat the Beast,” came the muffled reply. “The power is strongest there.” She ran ahead.

  Jasmine stopped on the path and shook her head at the girl’s back. Still with the enigmatic answers. No place could be a focus for power. It was as if the girl was saying Yactun could act like a talisman.

  She walked on, letting her thoughts carry her forward. Maybe there had been a reason she couldn’t detect a talisman on Gley. Maybe Gley hadn’t been carrying one. The girl could’ve left it behind in Yactun. That made far more sense. Of course, if that were so, Gley was more powerful than Jasmine if she could last this long without her talisman and still wield with relative ease.

  When she reached the boatshed, she came up short. Marcelo was there. Somehow the o
ld man had found them and was engaged in an argument with Brusan. Cook sent her a pained, apologetic shrug. Gley rummaged through a pack she’d brought with her and pulled out a loaf of bread. She tore it and handed half to Finn. At least he looked better rested than Jasmine felt.

  “There you are,” Marcelo said to Jasmine. “I must speak with you.”

  His glare alone made her weary.

  Brusan put himself between Marcelo and her, a gesture she appreciated even if she didn’t need it.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I want to know what he has to say for himself.”

  “You can’t trust anything he says,” Gley said with her mouth full. “He’ll only confuse you or convince you to do something for his own benefit.”

  “And we don’t need to hear your opinion,” Marcelo snapped.

  Gley raised an eyebrow. “Your writings could bore the socks off a cat, but they’re still interesting. To the right person. You work hard to make your visions come to pass.”

  It seemed Gley had been through the old man’s scrolls as well. Jasmine should’ve guessed that was what the little spy would do.

  Marcelo studied the rafters of the boatshed.

  Gley grinned. “What version of the future are you currently working toward? The one where you’re the only powerful wielder left alive? Or the one where you simply don’t die?”

  Marcelo glared at her. “You know nothing of me. Yes, I’ve had visions. I’ve even had bad dreams, but they’re just dreams, fueled by a lack of food. The visions I’ve been seeing have been murky. There’s nothing clear that’s relevant to our situation.” He held up his hand. “I swear.”

  Marcelo’s oath was worth nothing. Jasmine followed him anyway, out the opposite door and to the water’s edge.

  The old man eyed the boatshed. “Watch out for that girl.”

  “You’ve had a vision about her?”

  He scowled. “She brings sorrow with her everywhere she goes. I see it all over her.”

  “Is that what you came to tell me?”

  “No.” He rubbed at his temples then let his hands drop. “You can’t go to the land of ice and fire.”