The Fire's Stone

Nine

Head pounding, guts heaving, miles away from a cure, Darvish staggered to the rail to throw up.

"Now a sailor'd time it t'the swell, so it don't splash back on the ship."

"The Nine can time it," Darvish muttered, and spat. He straightened up and glared at the mate, who grinned genially back at him. "What the One were we drinking last night and may She have mercy on me for doing it?"

"Rice wine."

"What wine?"

"Rice wine." The mate's grin broadened and the early morning sunlight gleamed on a pair of gold teeth. "You bought a keg out of cargo."

"Good for me." He clenched his teeth on another spasm, and managed, barely, to keep control. "Charged me double, did you?" he asked hoarsely when he could speak again.

"You didn't have quite double. We cut you a deal."

"Thank you." A callused hand clapped him jovially on the shoulder and the shock of the blow echoed through his head. Only his death grip on the rail kept him standing. The mate, while not quite the prince's height, had shoulders and arms so heavily muscled that he appeared in constant danger of tipping over. Darvish had sparred with him twice and he hoped never to meet the man in a serious fight. "If you're looking for some exercise, I don't think I'm up to it."

"Nay, I wondered if you wanted somethin' to eat. We've a fine mess of roe fried up with big chunks of onion."

Darvish growled out most of a curse before he had to heave his guts over the rail again. "You have a sick sense of humor," he snarled when he could.

"You're not the first to say it," the other man admitted, laughing. He leaned his massive forearms on the rail and squinted into the distance. "Now then. What's that there?"

Suspecting that he'd already found The Stone, that someone had slipped it into his skull during the night, Darvish peered in the direction the mate seemed to be looking. "It's land," he said at last.

"Aye. It's the Ytaili coast. There's a strong current north the captain likes to ride close in. But look there," he pointed, "by that great white lump, what do you see?"

The dark bank of land merged into the sea at one edge and rose up to disappear into a gray veil of morning mist at the other. Darvish, attempting to ignore the additional pounding that focusing caused, finally found "the great white lump." It was probably a cliff, and an immense one to be visible even as a blotch of color from this far out. He could just barely see a tiny black speck, no, two specks bobbing up and down on the waves before it, silhouetted against the white at the top of each crest.

"Ships?" he guessed.

"Can't think of what else it could be. Can you? But the question is," he continued without waiting for an answer, "what're they doing just sitting out there?"

"Fishing?" Darvish asked and winced as that brief enthusiasm sent a spike through his head.

"Could be. 'Cept there ain't nothin' to catch in there; too close to the current." He scowled and pushed back off the trail. "Captain'd best be told." Another scowl into the distance and he was gone.

"What are you looking at?" Chandra had done a finding for one of the sailors who'd lost a new awl and had been paid with a bright red silk shirt. She didn't usually care much about clothes but she'd never had to wear the same plain brown tunic for almost a nineday before. Her new wide sleeves billowed in the wind as she leaned over the rail beside Darvish.

"Ships," Darvish told her shortly, his attention more on keeping his stomach quiet.

She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward to the edge of safety. "Where?"

"That way." Aaron had come up on her other side and now he pointed. "By the white cliffs."

"How can you tell it's a cliff?" Darvish wanted to know, curious if Aaron could actually see clearly that far.

"What else could it be?"

Darvish shrugged and immediately regretted it.

"That doesn't look like much fun," Chandra observed when he'd finished and was wiping his mouth.

Darvish glared at her over the back of his hand. "And you only studied for five years to figure that out?"

An errant breeze crossed the distance between them and Chandra vigorously fanned the air in front of her nose. "Why do you do it if this sort of thing happens afterward?"

"Why do I do it? You mean why drink?"

"Yes. Why?"

He smiled viciously. "Because I do it so well." Then with a mocking bow he turned and walked away.

Chandra sighed and bit her lip. "I did it again, didn't I?"

"You ask too many questions," Aaron said quietly, his eyes still apparently locked on the ships in the distance.

As the sun rose and the mists burned off the land, the Gryphon drew closer to the white cliffs. The strange ships, slightly larger but still not large enough to be identified, remained where they were, riding the swell and waiting.

"Can they see us?" Darvish asked, back at the rail, a ship's biscuit in one hand and a wineskin dangling from the other. At that moment he was as close to contentment as he'd been in years. The court had receded into the past and he could do nothing about The Stone until they reached Tivolic.

"Aye, they can see us but no better than we can see them." The mate refused the offered wineskin.

"Could it be pirates, waiting to draw us into a trap?"

"Aye, could be. Could be ships in trouble. Be better to stay out here and avoid them entirely, but the captain don't want to miss the current. It's a bitch of a row without if the wind drops." He hacked and spit over the side. "Can't tell from here. We have to go in."

"But if it's pirates and you go in..."

"We'll be in a wind abandoned heap of shit for sure. And if it ain't pirates, if they're in trouble and we don't go in that's the same kind of help we'll get when we need it."

"So it might be ships in trouble or it might be pirates pretending to be in trouble to lure you closer?"

"Aye." His massive hands twisted around the rail and the wood creaked alarmingly. "Sailed with a captain once who had a brass tube with circles of glass set in it. Forget what she called it, but when you held it to your eye you could see for miles. Wish we had one now."

Darvish chewed thoughtfully on the biscuit. "Was it magic?"

"Nay, just something she'd picked up in the east."

"I wonder if there's something magic can do..."

"Aye, mumble a deal of nonsense and charge more'n you've got for it." The mate pursed his lips and rubbed at the sweat on his chest. After a moment he sighed. "Go ahead. Ask her. Even if she doesn't do any good, I don't imagine a slip of a thing like her could do much harm."

As Darvish headed back to the stern and their cabin, he noticed that the crew worked with one eye on the job at hand and the other on the ships in the distance. No one sang, growled orders were reinforced with muttered threats, and the loudest noises came from the Gryphon herself; the wind straining against her sail, the sea slapping against her hull. Darvish glanced up onto the sterncastle and saw the captain standing by the great sweep oar, one hand resting lightly on its secured end. Although a braided gray beard covered most of the captain's face, what little remained visible did not look pleased.

Better you than me, Darvish thought as he ducked and went into the cabin.

The hammocks were slung against the wall and Chandra lay on the bunk, hands behind her head, getting lost in the grain of the wood above her.

"Chandra, we need you to scry those ships."

She blinked and slowly came back to herself. "What?"

Darvish hooked the cabin's one small stool out of the corner it had been shoved into, pulled it over to the bunk, and sat down. "We need you to scry those ships," he repeated earnestly.

Chandra swung her legs out and sat up carefully, the bunk left her a little headroom but not enough for enthusiasm. "The ships by the coast?" she asked.

"Yes. We need to know if they're pirates soon enough for the captain to change course if he has to. And I might add, he doesn't want to."

"Well, I'd like to help..." Darvish opened his mouth. Chandra stopped him with an upraised hand. "But I can't. I'd need a piece of the ships to scry them."

"Bugger the Nine!" Darvish stood, and kicked the stool aside. "We have to know what's going on." He slammed a fist into the cabin wall. "Where's Aaron? Pirates are just thieves in a boat, maybe he'll know how to identify them."

"I don't know."

"How can you not know? This isn't that big a ship."

Chandra looked up from buckling her sandals and frowned. "He wanted to be alone. I'm sure you could find him if you looked, you're the one with the soul-link, but Darvish," she stood and tossed her braid behind her shoulder, "there might be something else I can do."

He paused, bent over to clear the low lintel, and half turned. "What?"

"There's a spell, a distance seeing spell." Her chin came up. "I don't see so well in the distance, so I use it a lot. I could cast it and take a look at those ships."

"And how could you tell if they were pirates?" he asked, not unkindly.

"Well, there must be some way of telling."

"There is; they swarm screaming over the side, swords drawn and start hacking the crew to bloody bits." He grinned, shrugged, and came back into the cabin. "Could you cast it on someone else?"

She never had, but... "Yes, of course I could."

"Could you..." Darvish took a long pull on the wineskin while he tried to slap an idea into shape. "Could you cast it on something else?"

"What?"

Quickly, Darvish explained the brass tube the mate had mentioned. "So if you could make something like that, a distance tube that anyone could look through..."

"It isn't a hard spell," Chandra said thoughtfully. She'd used it often enough that she could probably cast it in her sleep. A spell she knew less thoroughly she wouldn't dare to modify. Rajeet, her teacher, had warned her time after time to follow the parameters of a spell exactly, but new spells had to come from somewhere. And Wizards of the Nine were not meant to be tied as other wizards were. She took a deep breath. "Get me a small piece of coal and a little bit of dry sand."

"Sand? Chandra, we're at sea!"

"Ask the cook," came Aaron's quiet voice from the door. "He banks his coals with sand."

"Aaron, that's brilliant!" Darvish turned the full force of his smile on the younger man, then pushed past him and ran for the bow.

"It is very clever," Chandra agreed.

"I notice details," Aaron muttered, trying to get his traitorous heart to start beating again after being caught in the vise of Darvish's smile. When he felt the heat had faded from his face, he pushed back his sunhood and came into the cabin. "Can you make a distance viewer?"

"Of course I can, I'm..." She stopped and wilted a little under Aaron's gaze. He didn't accuse, he didn't even look like he didn't believe her; he just looked. "I think I can," she amended with a sigh. "It should work."

"Is it dangerous?"

She opened her mouth to say no, then closed it again. Magic worked through well defined rules to focus power into something entirely new which—and realistically she had to admit there was a slight chance things could go wrong—might not hold it. "There's a possibility of danger..."

"Then why do it?"

This time there was only one answer. She could say "to help the ship" or "because Darvish asked me to" but she didn't think Aaron would believe either. "To prove that I can."

Aaron grinned. Chandra returned it. Just for a moment they understood each other perfectly.

"All right, I got the coal and I got the sand and the cook thinks I'm out of my mind," Darvish rushed back into the cabin and his excitement made the tiny room seem smaller still. "Anything else?"

Chandra took the dish of sand and the pieces of coal and placed them carefully in the center of the stool. "I need a tube; it has to be fairly stiff, but it can't be metal..."

"Why not? The mate talked about a brass tube."

"If I mark on a brass tube with charcoal, the symbols will rub right off and as soon as they're gone, so's the spell. I need something hollow that charcoal will stick to that's about this long." She held her hands about six inches apart,

"I had thought of the perfect item," Darvish waggled his eyebrows rakishly, "but it turned out to be too big."

"And she'd have to remove it," Aaron put in dryly from the bunk, where he'd tucked himself to get out of the way. "You wouldn't like that much."

"What...?" Chandra looked from one to the other. "Oh." She scowled up at the prince, who winked. "Is that all you ever think abou... no, it isn't! Give me that!" She pulled the wineskin down off his shoulder and shook it.

"Hey!"

"Never mind!" She shoved it back into his hands. "Finish it!"

A little bemused but willing to oblige, Darvish did as he was told.

"Now cut the neck off, here," she drew a line on the leather just below the thickened spout with her thumbnail, "and here." A second line was drawn just above the bell.

A few moments later Chandra peered through the narrow end of the flared tube and said, "Now get out."

"Get out?"

She put her hand in the small of Darvish's back and pushed, waving Aaron up from the bunk and out the door in the same motion. "I need to be alone to work. You're too much of a distraction."

Darvish beamed back over his shoulder at her. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me." Then he followed Aaron out onto the deck. As she pulled the door closed, she heard him say, "My sword, your brains, and her talent... that wizard with The Stone doesn't stand a chance."

It could have been the wine talking, it probably was the wine talking, but it was nice to hear anyway.

"It's a what?" The mate looked suspiciously at the piece of wineskin dwarfed by Darvish's hand.

"A distance viewer." Darvish held it out to him again, his thumb and forefinger carefully in the places that Chandra had indicated.

"It's a chunk of One abandoned wineskin with black marks on it."

"Yes it is," Darvish agreed. "But it's also a distance viewer."

The mate snorted and spat, his opinion obviously clear.

"I thought you wanted a closer look at those ships?"

"Aye."

"This will give it to you. You saw me look through it, it won't hurt you."

"Ain't afraid of it."

"Then take it. I've seen the ships, but I don't know what I'm seeing." At his most charming, Darvish could persuade a frog to sing. "Just try it. What have you got to lose? Hold it here and look through the narrow end."

The mate grunted and, obviously humoring the other man, placed his fingers by Darvish's and lifted the cylindrical bit of leather, still smelling strongly of fermented grape, to his eye.

"Nine Above and One Below," he breathed. Through the flaring end of the wineskin he could see the ships they'd watched through most of the morning only now, instead of a vague silhouette impossible to identify, he saw two masts, the sails down but not secured, a hull narrower and higher than the merchant ship, an anchor rope running taut down into the sea. The second ship could have been cast from an identical mold. "Nine Above, they're navy!"

He spun away from the rail and bounded for the stern-castle, waving the distance viewer over his head like a very small and grubby flag. "Captain! Captain!"

"What's that all about?" Chandra wondered, jolted out of her fit of the sulks by the mate's strange behavior. Darvish had insisted he present the viewer to the mate.

"Please, let me. You're a wizard, you have other skills."

"You think if I gave it to him he wouldn't take it."

Darvish looked down at the mutilated wineskin. "Well, yes."

He hadn't exactly said she was tactless, but he'd implied it. It hadn't helped her mood to realize he was probably right.

Darvish raised a questioning brow at Aaron, but the thief only shrugged. "I have no idea," the prince admitted. "But before we go and find out, let me see your hand."

"My hand?"

"Your palm, let me see it." He smiled down at her. "Aaron isn't the only one who notices things, you know. You've been holding your left hand like it hurts you since you came out of the cabin."

"It's nothing."

"Let me see."

The tone said, let me help, and it was the kind of voice her father had used when she was young and had hurt herself, a voice he'd used before her mother had died and he'd... But Darvish was weak, nothing like the strong man her father had been then, much more like the man he'd become.

"Hand wounds are the most difficult to tend yourself," Darvish said reasonably. "You're going to need both hands if we're to get The Stone."

He had a point. Chandra turned her palm up and held it out.

An angry red circle, both like and unlike a burn, cut across the mound of her thumb and curved around the base of her fingers.

"Aaron? Do we have any salve left?"

Aaron, who'd stood quietly in the background through the testing of the distance viewer, nodded and said, "A little." He slipped off to get it.

"What happened?" Darvish asked, gently flexing the fingers. The bones of Chandra's hands were so tiny and delicate they reminded him of bird bones and her wrist slid with room to spare through a circle of his fingers.

Chandra shrugged. "I had to block the open end to set the spell. I guess," she added ruefully, "I shouldn't have used my hand."

"I guess not," Darvish agreed solemnly, unsure of her reaction if he laughed.

They stood awkwardly for a moment almost but not quite holding hands.

His hands are warm. And rough, not like a courtier's hands at all. And they were so large, Chandra realized, that he could probably completely enclose her fist in his. Why doesn't he say something?

Darvish couldn't think of anything to say. All the glib and clever phrases he used at court didn't apply to someone who'd become a friend; although it was a strange and tentative sort of friendship, really more like comrades-in-arms. He'd never had one of those before either, well, not before Aaron and he wasn't likely to end up holding Aaron's hand. Not if Aaron had anything to say about it.

"Dar." They both jumped and shot Aaron looks so identically relieved that he had to hide a grin. He held out the squat clay pot. "There's a little left in the bottom."

"Right." Darvish shoved Chandra's hand in Aaron's direction. "You do it, I'm going to see what the captain has decided. We seem to have changed course." He smiled strangely down at the wizard, spun on his bare heel and almost trotted off.

"What was that all about?" Chandra wondered, the lines smoothing out of her forehead as the salve soothed the pain out of her hand.

"I think he likes you," Aaron told her, his voice expressionless, his heart strangely heavy.

Chandra remembered a number of the things the crowd had shouted as the dowry procession had made its way to the palace. "I can't see why," she sniffed.

A moment later they followed Darvish to the sterncastle where a great sweep oar had been untied and the two steersmen had turned the Gryphon to the very edge of the wind. The captain still peered through the distance viewer, his legs braced against the roll of the deck and his gaze locked on the navy ships. When he lowered his arm, he stood quiet for a moment longer, then nodded once at Chandra and said, "My compliments, Most Wise." It was the first time anyone on board had used the honorific. "You have saved us from a great disaster."

Behind him, sunlight gleamed on gold teeth. The mate beamed as though it were all his idea.

"You have my thanks, Most Wise," he continued. "For the losses you have saved us, your passage price will be refunded. Now, about this viewer..." His eyes glittered. "Will it work for anyone?"

"Yes, of course," she answered, tossing her head. "The spell is in the tube, but it will only last as long as the symbols on the outside do, so be careful. Why?"

"If you had a brass tube and proper etching tools?"

Chandra shrugged, she was getting a little tired of explaining. "Then it would last a lot longer. Not forever, but longer. Now," she crossed her arms and frowned, daring him to cut her off again, "why are you running away from navy ships?"

The captain's expression froze and the glitter grew harder. Behind him, gold teeth disappeared. The mate flexed his massive arms and waited for orders.

Aaron and Darvish stepped up to stand beside her and Darvish, who had been trying to think of a tactful way to ask the same question, muttered, "You do like to live dangerously, don't you?"

The silence grew.

The two steersmen, the captain, and the mate. Not completely impossible odds if it comes to it, Darvish thought.

There was an almost imperceptible change in the captain's expression and Aaron knew the balance had tipped. As he didn't know which way, he kicked out the fulcrum. "They're smugglers," he said. "There's four bags of ground kerric nut in with the spices."

"But kerric nut kills!" Chandra exclaimed.

"In large enough doses," Aaron agreed.

"Well, I'm glad we've got that settled." Darvish spread empty hands and grinned his patently irresistible grin. "We'd prefer to stay clear of the Ytaili navy ourselves."

The captain glared at Aaron. Aaron stared steadily back. Although it was difficult to tell for certain, down in the depths of the captain's beard, one corner of his mouth may have twitched in a rueful acknowledgment. "I bet you would," was all he said.

"Captain, Sir!"

"What is it, Ensign?"

The ensign leaned as far over the edge of the fighting top as she dared. "They've changed course, Sir."

The captain of the Sea Hawk turned and, shading his eyes, peered in the direction of their quarry. The ship, facing them dead on all morning, now angled about forty-five degrees to port, paralleling the coast rather than heading straight for it.

"Sink the Nine," he swore. "Most Wise!"

Both wizards looked up at the bellow.

"Is that soul-link still on board?"

The Wizard of the Fourth closed her eyes for a moment in concentration. "It is," she sighed. She had come only because the king had ordered it. Ships made her sick.

"Then the waiting is over." The captain rubbed his hands in anticipation. Pretend you're in trouble, let them get in close, then take them. He hated that sort of order. The Sea Hawk was meant to swoop down into battle, not sit like the cheese in a trap.

"So there's honor amongst thieves after all," Chandra observed, picking at a sliver of wood.

"Not at all," came the answer from the shadowed depths of Aaron's sunhood.

"Then why..."

"Are we alive?" Aaron finished. "The captain figures he can use us." It had been a calculated risk mentioning the smuggling. "He could have easily decided if we weren't for him we were against him," he explained. "Now he knows whose side we're on."

"They're raising their sails," Darvish called out, running up fully armed. "They're coming after us."

"We need a wind," the mate added, right behind him. "The captain wants to see you, Most Wise."

The captain wanted a wind. "One in my sails, one that they'll have to tack across to reach us. Can you give me such a wind?"

Chandra pulled at the end of her braid and thought about it. Gentle breezes to cool a garden or a sleeping room, she'd called many times. A wind was a difference in intensity not form, easier in that than the distance viewer. She tossed her braid behind her shoulder. "Of course I can."

"What do you need?"

"Another piece of coal, a dagger," she held her hands apart, "with a blade about this long, a ribbon," the distance between her hands lengthened, "about this long and," she looked down at her feet, "a circle of the deck off limits to everyone but me."

"They have a wizard." The Wizard of the Seventh held his face into the freshening wind and sniffed. "This wind is power called."

"Well, turn it," commanded the Sea Hawk's captain.

"They have a wizard," Chandra gasped. "They're trying to turn the wind."

"Can they do it?" Darvish asked, taking a long pull on the wineskin that dangled from his sword hand.

"I don't know." Her brow furrowed and the ribbon, beginning to tangle, flew straight and true once more.

The Gryphon surged forward; the sail belled taut.

"I thought I ordered you to turn that wind."

"It isn't as easy as all that," the wizard panted. "Their wizard is very powerful and responds to everything I do by pulling in yet more power."

"I don't care what you have to do," the captain roared.

He had never failed in a commission for his king and he had no intention of starting now. "Stop that ship!"

The wind rose and above the Gryphon the sky grew black.

"It's too much," the captain screamed over the protests of his ship. "The mast is about to come down. Stop it!"

"I can't!" Chandra's hair, free of the braid, whipped around her. "There's too much power!"

"Why are you stopping?" The captain glared down at the Wizard of the Seventh. "I thought your god controlled the winds."

"Storms," corrected the exhausted wizard from the deck. He raised a shaky arm and pointed over the captain's shoulder. "And it's in His hands now."

Chandra's ribbon tied itself in a knot.

The storm broke.

The Gryphon bucked and wallowed as frantic figures crawled over her, lowering her sail, securing lines and hatches.

"Get below!" The mate dragged Chandra to her feet and thrust her at Darvish. "The last thing we need now is landers on deck!"

"I can walk!" Chandra protested with what little energy she had remaining.

Darvish ignored her and lurched toward their cabin. He grabbed at a line as the ship rolled and a wave sucked at his feet, then dove through the door that Aaron had wrestled open. Shoving Chandra onto the bunk, he lunged back at the door and, adding his strength to Aaron's, dragged it closed.

Inside the tiny room, it was like being in a drum as the wind and waves beat at the ship, trying to drive her down. Strained timbers shrieked and moaned. They couldn't talk. They could barely think.

Darvish emptied the wineskin he carried. Then he sat, wedged in a corner, and worked the leather in his hands. Pulled it. Twisted it. Waiting. He hated waiting. He didn't do it well.

Aaron, his feet braced against the bunk, his back against the wall, sat wrapped in the void and waited to die. He was good at it. He'd been doing it for the last five years.

"If you truly want your cousin's death, you're not going about it the right way."

"Any death will do now, Faharra."

He shoved the small voice that dared suggest he couldn't die while Darvish needed him, back behind the walls and drowned it out with Ruth's screams.

Chandra turned her back on the two men and chewed her lip, blinking rapidly to clear the heat building behind her eyes. She'd failed. She'd never failed before. She was a Wizard of the Nine.

The ship dropped out from under them. Even Aaron cried out as it slammed back up to meet them as they fell.

"That is it!" Darvish pulled himself to his feet and settled his sword on his hips.

"What are you doing?" Chandra yelled. She could hardly hear herself over the howl of the storm.

The prince unhooked his shield, slipped his arm through the strapping, crashed into the wall, and said in a sudden lull, "I'm going out for a drink."

"You're what?" Chandra couldn't believe her ears, then the storm struck again and nearly threw her from the bunk.

Aaron dove for Darvish's legs, but the deck heaved and he grabbed at air.

The wind whipped the heavy wooden door out of Darvish's hands and slammed it up against the outside wall. A smaller man would have been pulled from his feet, but Darvish only laughed and staggered into the storm.

Aaron scrambled upright and, clinging to the wall, somehow made his way outside. The world had become a seething mass of gray, clouds and wind and rain and sea, impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. He squinted and could just make out a darker mass by the rail and beyond that a line of black. Darvish? And land? With arms made strong from a thousand midnight climbs, he inched his way forward, hand over hand, scarred chest muscles protesting as more than once they held his entire weight, feet having been swept or blown out from under him.

The ship rolled and he watched the rail and the prince-shaped shadow beside it, slowly, majestically, go under. Then the Gryphon, like a great dog, shook herself upright again. By some fluke of the storm, he could see that section of the rail clearly. It was empty.

Aaron let go of his hold and took one step, two; by three he was running. Then the storm picked him up and dashed him against the rail. He sucked in salt water, coughed, and pulled himself to his feet.

Someone grabbed at his arm.

"Are you crazy?" he screamed at Chandra.

"Are you?" she shrieked back.

Then the ocean reached up and took them both.

Barricaded into her bunk, the Wizard of the Fourth wanted to die and it didn't help that the Wizard of the Seventh kept declaring in a smug voice that no one ever died of seasickness. She could care less that the soul-link had left the Gryphon and not if the king himself commanded it would she leave what she knew was her deathbed to give the information to the captain.