“I will not risk flying my ship through that.” Captain Bothar’el indicated the firmament with a nod of his head. “Give us what you have”—the elf’s gaze fixed on several fine jewels adorning the fingers of the mysteriarch—“and we will return to our realm.”
Hugh could have told the elf he was wasting his breath.
Sinistrad would never let this ship slip through his ruby-and-diamond-sparkling hands.
He didn’t. “The journey might be the tiniest bit difficult, captain, but not impossible and certainly not dangerous. I will be your guide and show you the safe passage through the firmament.” He glanced around the bridge. “Surely you will not refuse to allow your crew the chance to view the wonders of our realm?”
The legendary wealth and splendor of the High Realm, made real by the sight of the jewels the wizard wore with such careless ease, kindled a flame that burned up fear and—so Hugh saw in the crew’s eyes—common sense. He felt a cool pity for the elven captain, who knew he was flying into a spiderweb but who could do nothing to stop himself. If he gave the order to leave this place and return home, he’d be the one returning—the hard way, head over heels through several miles of empty sky.
“Very well,” Bothar’el said ungraciously. A cheer from the crew died out with the flash in the captain’s eye.
“May I ride with you on the dragon, papa?” asked Bane.
“Of course, my son.” Sinistrad ran a hand through the boy’s fair hair. “And now, much as I would enjoy staying and talking further with all of you, especially my new friend Limbeck here”—Sinistrad bowed to the Geg, who bobbed awkwardly back—“my wife is waiting most impatiently to see her child. Women. What loving little creatures they are.”
Sinistrad turned to the captain. “I have never flown a ship, but it occurs to me that the major problem you will encounter passing through the firmament is ice forming on the wings. I am certain, however, that this most skilled colleague of mine”—he bowed to the ship’s wizard, who returned the courtesy respectfully, if guardedly—“can melt it.”
His arm around his son, Sinistrad started to leave, using his magic to transport him the short distance back to the dragon. Their bodies had faded to almost nothing when he paused and fixed a glittering-eyed gaze upon the captain. “Follow the path of the dragon,” he said, “exactly.” And he was gone.
“So what do you think of him?” Hugh asked Haplo in an undertone as both men, plus the dog, Alfred, and Limbeck, were escorted back to the brig.
“The wizard?”
“Who else?”
“Oh, he’s powerful,” said Haplo, shrugging. “But not as powerful as I’d expected.”
Hugh grunted. He’d found Sinistrad daunting. “And what did you expect—a Sartan?”
Haplo glanced sharply at Hugh, saw it was a joke. “Yeah,” he answered, grinning.
47
The Carfa’shon sailed through the ice floes, leaving a sparkling trail of crystals swirling and glittering in its wake. The cold was bitter. The ship’s wizard had been forced to draw magical heat from the living and working areas of the ship and use it to keep the rigging, the cables, the wings, and the hull free of the ice that rained down on them with a rattling noise, sounding so Limbeck said, like millions of dried peas.
Haplo, Limbeck, Alfred, and Hugh huddled for warmth around the small brazier in the hold. The dog had curled up in a ball, its nose buried in its bushy tail, and was fast asleep. None of the four spoke. Limbeck was too awed by the sights he had seen and expected to see. What Haplo might be thinking was anybody’s guess. Hugh was considering his options.
Murder is out. No assassin worth his dagger takes on the job of killing a wizard, let alone a mysteriarch! This Sinistrad is powerful. What am I saying?
This man is power itself! He hums with it like a lightning rod in a thunderstorm. If only I could figure out why he wants me now, when he tried to kill me once before. Why am I suddenly so valuable?
“Why did you make me bring Hugh, father?”
The quicksilver dragon threaded its way through the ice floes. It was moving with unusual slowness, being held back by Sinistrad so that the elven ship could follow. The lethargic pace irritated the dragon, who, in addition, would have liked very much to dine on the sweet-smelling creatures inside the ship. But it knew better than to challenge Sinistrad. The two had waged numerous magical battles before, and Gorgon had always lost. It hated the wizard with a grudging respect.
“I may need Hugh the Hand, Bane. He is a pilot, after all.”
“But we have a pilot—the elf captain.”
“My dear child, you have much to learn. So begin learning it now. Never trust elves. Though their intelligence is equal to that of humans, they are longer-lived, and tend to gain in wisdom. In ancient days, they were a noble race and humans were, as the elves are wont to sneer, little more than animals compared to them. But the elf wizards could not leave well enough alone. They were, in fact, jealous of us.”
“I saw the wizard take the dead elf’s soul,” interrupted Bane, hushed with remembered awe.
“Yes.” Sinistrad sneered. “That was how they thought to fight us.”
“I don’t understand, father.”
“It is important that you do, my son, and quickly, for we will be dealing with an elven ship’s wizard. Let me describe to you, briefly, the nature of magic. Before the Sundering, spiritual and physical magic—like all other elements in the world—were blended together in all people. After the Sundering, the world was split into its separate elements, at least so the legends of the Sartan tell us, and this happened with magic.
“Each race naturally seeks to use the power of magic to make up for its own deficiencies. Thus, elves, tending naturally toward the spiritual, needed magic to help enhance their physical powers. They studied the art of granting magical powers to physical objects that could work for them.”
“Like the dragonship?”
“Yes, like the dragonship. Humans, on the other hand, were better able to control the physical world, and so sought additional power through the spiritual. To communicate with animals, to force the wind to do our bidding, the stones to rise up at our command—this became our greatest talent. And, because of our concern with the spiritual, we developed the ability of mental magic, of training our minds to alter and control physical laws.”
“That’s why I could fly.”
“Yes, and if you had been an elf, you would have lost your life, for they do not possess such power. The elves poured all of their arcane skill into physical objects and studied the art of mental manipulation. An elven wizard with his hands bound is helpless. A human wizard, under the same circumstances, need simply tell himself that his wrists are shrinking in size and it will be true. Thus he can slip out of his bonds.”
“Father,” said Bane, looking backward, “the ship’s stopped.”
“So it has.” Sinistrad checked an impatient sigh and reined in the dragon.
“That ship’s wizard of theirs must be nothing more than Second House if he can’t keep the ice off their wings any better than this!”
“And so we have two pilots.” Bane twisted around in the dragon saddle in order to get a better look at the ship. The elves had been forced to take axes to the ice that had formed on the cables.
“Not for long,” said Sinistrad.