CHAPTER THREE

Royce clung to the railing of the ship, willing it to move faster, his attention stretched out over the waves through Ember’s eyes. Above him, the hawk wheeled and shrieked, calling out above the waves and occasionally plunging down toward them to take some small seabird that had become too tempting a target.

But Royce’s attention was on more than that. He reached out as deep as he could into Ember’s consciousness, searching for any sign of Lori, any chance to talk to the witch who had sent them this way and find out more about his father. There was nothing though, just the rolling of the sea and the glimmer of the sun.

“You’ve been standing up here for hours,” Mark said, coming to join him.

“It hasn’t been hours,” Royce insisted.

“Since sunup,” Mark said, looking a little concerned. “You and the wolf.”

Gwylim huffed beside Royce, the bhargir clearly not liking being referred to as just a wolf. Royce found himself wondering just how much the creature understood as they traveled. Several times, Ember had landed beside him, and Royce had the impression of some silent communication going on.

“Gwylim isn’t a wolf,” Royce said. “And I was hoping that Lori would have another message for me.”

“I know,” Mark said.

“Has it caused problems?” Royce asked.

“It’s meant that I’ve been the one mediating all the arguments between the others.”

“There are enough of those,” Royce guessed.

“More than enough,” Mark said. “Neave and Matilde seem to have decided on arguing as the best way to declare their love. Bolis is so stuck up, and the presence of one of the Picti here is enough to rile him.”

“And you, Mark?” Royce asked. “What do you make of the others?”

“I think they’re good to have beside us,” Mark said. “The Picti girl seems fierce, and it’s obvious Matilde is a survivor. Bolis might be a knight, but at least that means he knows how to use that sword of his. But they only work so long as you’re there to lead, Royce, and you’ve been up here all day.”

He had. He’d been hoping to catch some glimpse of his father, or at least find a way to connect with the witch who had sent him this way in search of him. To do that, he’d been keeping his focus out in front of the ship, and not paying much attention to anything that had been going on aboard it. At least things seemed to be going well, because they were heading in the right direction.

“How do you think things are going back home?” Royce asked Mark.

“You’re worried about your brothers?” Mark asked.

Royce nodded. Lofen, Raymond, and Garet were brave, and they would do everything they could to help the fight, but they could only do so much, and they’d already been captured once.

“Them, and Olivia,” he said. He didn’t mention that thoughts of his fiancée kept blending with thoughts of Genevieve, not even to Mark, because those thoughts felt like a betrayal of someone who was good, and pure, and whose father had given them so much for someone who had already pushed him away.

“We’ll get back to her soon,” Mark said, clapping Royce on the shoulder, and for a moment Royce couldn’t remember which “her” he meant.

“I hope so,” he said. He sent his awareness back up into Ember’s eyes, and because of that, he saw the Seven Isles in the distance before anyone else.

They sat shrouded in banks of mist that shifted along with the seas. Jagged rocks punched up from the waters around them like the teeth of great beasts. There were great beasts, because Royce saw a whale breach as he watched, its bulk sliding from the water in a cascade of spray. The rocks were adorned with the wrecks of ships that had tried to get by them without knowing the safe routes. It was enough to make Royce grateful that they’d found a captain willing to take them at all.

The islands themselves seemed to be a mixture of greenery and black rock, clustered around a central lagoon with one of their number at their heart. Most of them were decorated with turf and trees and sand so dark it must have been worn down from the granite and basalt faces of the isles. The central island appeared to be a volcano, bubbling with an angry red glare, and now Royce realized that the mist around them wasn’t mist at all, but the falling smoke sinking so that it formed a kind of halo around the islands.

The Mirror of Wisdom would be there somewhere, and if he’d gone in search of it, Royce hoped his father would be here too.

“Land ahoy!” he called out to the others, pointing.

The ship’s captain came up to them, smiling. “Where?”

Through Royce’s own eyes, the islands were a series of dots that only slowly grew into more.

“We have made it,” the captain said. He plucked a flask from his belt. “We must drink to such an occasion, and appease the spirits of the sea.”

He held it out to Royce, who took it and sipped politely. The liquid within burned at his throat. Mark took it too, obviously looking for a way to decline, but the captain was too insistent for that. He sipped at it, coughing afterward.

“Now that we are closer,” the captain said, “perhaps you will tell us more about why you are here. You are looking for your father, yes?”

It took Royce a moment to realize what the other man had just said.

“I never told you about that,” Royce said.

“Oh, don’t be coy,” the captain said. “Did you think there wouldn’t be rumors around all of the villages? You’re Royce, the boy who overthrew the old duke. You’re looking for your father, and if you’ve had me carry you all the way to the Seven Isles, then he must be somewhere here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Royce said, “we’re just—”

“Traveling players, I know,” the captain said. “Except you’re not. Do you think a little mud on your knight’s shield will disguise who he is, or get rid of the mark on your hand? You’re Royce, there’s no point denying it.”

The man stood staring at him, and Royce found the weight of expectation bearing down on him. He suspected there was no point trying to hide who he was anymore, but even so, he wasn’t comfortable merely admitting it.

“Why does it matter to you?” Mark asked beside him.

“Because I want to help,” the captain said. “You said you wanted to go to the Seven Isles, but that’s a lot of ground. I could take you to any of them. Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” Royce admitted. If he knew, this would be a lot simpler.

“There’s no need to be coy,” the captain said. “I want to help. Just tell me where your father is, and I’ll take you straight to him. Tell me where he is.”

There was a note of hardness in the captain’s tone then that caught Royce a little off guard. Royce looked at him, trying to work out what was going on, and reached out for Ember’s senses. He pulled her back toward the ship, and looked down on it from above in a way he hadn’t since they set off; he’d been too busy looking forward for the islands ahead, or trying to reach through Ember to try to contact Lori.

If he’d looked back toward the ship, he would have seen his friends tied in the stern, their hands behind their backs with their armor and weapons off to one side and a clutch of sailors guarding them.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Royce said. “Release my friends at once!”

The captain looked at him in obvious shock, as though only just realizing what Royce could do.

“Magic!” the captain said, taking a step back.

Royce reached for the crystal sword and staggered. Too late, he realized just how shaky and uncertain he felt on his feet. The flask! There had been something in the flask! Mark was already half-slumped against the railings.

“We’ll take you to your friends,” the captain said, “and maybe we’ll find a way to get you to talk if we hurt them enough. The king will pay handsomely for you, but them… we can cut them as much as we need to.”

He clapped his hands, and a couple of sailors came forward, grabbing Mark and Royce, dragging them back toward the stern of the ship.

“Why do this?” Royce demanded, the words seeming to come through a fog as thick as the one around the approaching Seven Isles.

“Why do anything?” the captain said with a shrug. “Money! I could take you all the way to the Seven Isles, risking my ship on the rocks there, or I could take your money and then make whatever the reward is as well for bringing you to King Carris.”

“Help me, and I’ll find a way to reward you just as well,” Royce managed. It was desperate sounding even to his ears.

The captain laughed. “With what? You’ve no coin. Or are you planning to be king yourself? There’s no profit in starting a war, boy. I do comfortably enough as it is, taking a few people where they need to go, selling a few where there’s coin for them, robbing the odd ship that’s out alone. I do very nicely with things as they are.”

Royce wanted to strike out at the man, but sailors had him by the wrists now, and the lethargy spreading through him made it hard to fight back against them.

“Oh, you want to fight?” the captain asked. “Trust me, after the effort you’ve put me to, I wouldn’t. All this way… I only took you this far because I thought there was a chance of delivering the old king as well as you. I’m not breaking my ship on those rocks, though.”

A thought came to Royce; a desperate, dangerous thought.

“You’ll never find my father unless you’re willing to go there,” he said.

“So you’ll tell us where he is?” the captain asked.

“I…” Royce pretended broken exhaustion. “I can show you.”

The captain rubbed his hands together, nodding to the sailors with him. He led the way to the ship’s bridge, where Matilde, Neave, and Bolis were all tied while a sailor worked the wheel. The sailors threw Mark down beside them, while Gwylim padded along in their wake.

The captain took out a knife, heading across to Mark. “So, your friend is going to tell us where to find the old king, and if he gives us any trouble, I’m going to cut pieces off you until he does.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Royce said. The knife so close to Mark made this more dangerous, but there was no other option. “I’ll guide you.”

He gazed through Ember’s eyes, looking down on the rocks and the wrecks close to the first of the islands. Using her sight, he started to call out instructions.

“Left a little,” he said.

“You think you get to tell us where to go?” the captain demanded.

“Do you want me to guide you to my father or not?” Royce asked. He still felt so weak. If he had his strength, he would simply cut through the ship’s crew and save his friends. As it was… as it was, this was desperate. “If you don’t believe me, keep an eye on the bird. Ember is leading us.”

The captain looked up, and Royce looked over to Gwylim, wondering just how much the wolf-like creature understood. He looked over to the captain pointedly, hoping it was enough. He kept looking through Ember’s eyes, letting the ship get closer to land and waiting for his chance…

“Now!” Royce called out, and the bhargir leapt, striking the captain in the chest even as Royce grabbed the wheel and wrenched it around toward a set of rocks.

The ship lurched, and even as it did so, Royce was already lunging toward his friends. Drugged as he was, it felt as though he were moving in slow motion, sounds and sights distorted as he heard the noise of a vicious fight coming to him from just a little way away. He couldn’t hope to join that fight, as unsteady as he was, but he could try to free his friends. He drew the crystal sword, leaning down to cut at the ropes holding Matilde’s hands.

“Thanks,” she said as she rubbed her wrists. “I’ll… behind you!”

Royce spun and thrust his blade into the chest of a sailor who was running at him. Even unsteady, barely able to stand, Royce had the strength to drive the crystal sword right through the man. The sailor’s sword cut down, and Royce felt something impact on his armor even as the sailor stood transfixed for a moment, and then collapsed.

Royce continued cutting the others free, and another sailor ran at them. This time, Ember swooped down to claw at his face, holding him still long enough for Bolis to kick him back over the side.

Then the ship hit the rocks with a screech of wood like a forest being uprooted, and the whole deck turned sideways.

Men screamed as they toppled from it, down into the waters below. Royce saw something rise up from that water, long and snakelike, fan-finned and knife-toothed, to meet them. The creature came up out of the water, rising like a tower from it, a man caught in its mouth and screaming as those needle teeth clamped down. Another was wrapped in its coils, and Royce heard the crack of bones as the movement of the great beast crushed him.

Royce had a moment to simply stare at the cruelty of the death, then he slid along the deck toward the edge, toward the sea serpent’s waiting maw.

He grabbed for the railings, barely holding himself in place. Beside him, Mark, Matilde, Bolis, and Neave clung on for their lives, while the ship continued to tear itself apart.

“What exactly was your plan?” Mark asked.

“This is pretty much it,” Royce admitted. Crash the ship and then try to work out what to do next. It had been a move founded on nothing more than hope, and now it had left them on a ship that was slowly tearing in half, its two parts ready to topple them down to the rocks, or worse, drag them into the depths.

“What do we do now?” Neave asked. She had one arm wrapped around the railings, the other around Matilde.

“I think…” Royce said, trying to think through the fog of his thoughts. “I think we need to jump!”

“Jump in that?” Bolis said. “Are you mad?”

“If we stay, we’ll be tangled in the wreckage and dragged down,” Royce said. “We need to get clear, and the only way to do that is jump!”

There was another reason to jump, too. Men were advancing along the deck, and there were too many to fight in his weakened state. In any state. Gwylim was there, blood around his mouth as he growled, but what could even a creature like him do about a situation like this?

There was only one choice left, so Royce made it for his friends. Without hesitating, he pushed Bolis and Mark over the side. Matilde looked as though she might try to stay, but Neave dragged her off the rail. Gwylim stepped up to it, the bhargir growling before it leapt clear.

That just left one thing to do. Royce stood up on the railing, looking down to where the water frothed and swirled below. He put the crystal sword back in its sheath, hoped the armor he’d found in the tower was as light as it felt…

…and leapt.