Chapter 13
The island might as well be a completely deserted one at this late hour. There wasn’t a light on in any of the windows and all around her the wind was rising. Portia turned away from the village, skirting around the edge of the castle, towards the woods behind it. Towards the caves.
She followed the treacherously steep path with familiar feet, long used to this place. They had been wild little things, her siblings and herself, rambling all over the island on their brief visits, especially when they were young.
‘Let them explore,’ her father had said, his voice indulgent and amused. And even after their parents died, Iris had hardly kept a tight rein on them.
This had been their playground. Their adventure. Their quest.
But maybe she had been away for too long, used to the sedate streets of Tesh, the sombre halls of the Academy.
The woodlands to the rear of the castle felt different now.
They tumbled down the steep slope towards the sea, as wild and ungovernable as the Starling children had once been.
They felt like a force of nature themselves, a living breathing thing made of magic, especially now in the dark, in the gathering storm.
Because, she realised, there was a storm coming in. She almost hesitated. Perhaps she should have waited until morning. Perhaps she should go back.
But somehow she couldn’t stop herself. This was her fault, what had happened to the dragons. She had to fix it. No one else was going to do it.
There was more to it than that as well. This could be the key to everything.
If she could find the source of one of those threads of wild magic, if she could use it, re-establish it or at least find out how and why it had broken…
well then, she could use that knowledge.
Prime threads were a theory, an old story largely dismissed.
If they existed, surely they would be found in Tesh itself where the Academy was the source of all magic.
But they had never been found, not in all the years the Academy had stood there.
Magic was found in people, in the air, in some objects or artifacts.
She and Milo had speculated that magic had to come from somewhere originally, that thaumaturgical fields could be manipulated and even contained or diverted but that ultimately they needed to have a source.
She had sought to bolster the fields through an elixir for individual mages.
It was a way of healing so many ailments, magical and mundane.
And in theory it worked. In principle they had seen some small successes but it depended entirely on the magical abilities of the subject, and the person creating the elixir, herself, or Milo.
That varied depending on what else they had been doing, their own energy levels.
To make something truly replicable on a reliable basis they needed another source.
What if this was it? Wild magic. What if it ran unchecked through prime threads in the land, just like the old stories said.
That would be the ultimate, untapped source.
It wasn’t a cure for what was happening with the dragons. Not quite. But it could be. Art had called it the Universal Restorative. If she could perfect the elixir here, it would help them. And many others.
She couldn’t believe it could all just be sitting there, right under her nose.
She paused. Art was never so straightforward, was he?
Just in case, she would get Noah to read over the instructions.
She couldn’t know if her uncle had left any other hidden instructions or secrets that would turn this into another disaster.
He had been paranoid, Seb had often said. She had to guard against that.
Portia struggled down into the gully at the foot of the cliff.
High above her the remaining lights of her home seemed very distant and the rain was coming down now in fierce sheets.
The trees offered no shelter here. She could hear the waves hitting the rocks not so very far below them, where the woods trailed down to the shore.
A gust of wind almost took her off her feet entirely.
She slipped, her hands plunging into mud as she caught herself.
This was a bad idea, she realised. She should have waited. But she didn’t know how much longer the dragons had, even with her family and friends working flat out to help. No, she needed to gather the moonflower tonight and get to work right away.
The ground beneath her was turning treacherous.
Cursing, she pushed on, but as she reached the rocks beneath the caves, she lost her footing.
It happened so quickly that she didn’t have a chance to let out more than a brief cry of alarm.
She tried to right herself, overcompensated, and fell backwards, tumbling into empty air.
Strong arms caught her, pulling her in against a broad chest as he staggered back a step or two.
‘Portia?’ Noah gasped.
His hair was soaked, and he was wearing some kind of oil skin of the kind Iris normally kept by the postern door.
She stared up at him, shocked and secretly relieved.
‘What are you – what are you doing here?’
‘I could ask you the same question,’ he muttered. ‘I followed you. What are you looking for out here at this hour? You could have been hurt.’ He set her down on her feet again, but didn’t release her. Not yet. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted him to. That rising tide of panic subsided a little.
She gazed up into his blue eyes, at the way his lips were slightly parted, the ghost of a frown that wrinkled his forehead.
His hair was wet, droplets trailing down the side of his jaw and down his neck.
For a moment she thought… he almost leaned forward, like she was summoning him, drawing him down into a kiss in spite of the wind and the rain.
And she wanted him to. This passionate man, who so infuriated her. He leaned in, as if swaying towards her in the wind and then seemed to catch himself and pull back.
Which felt like a shame.
‘Moonflowers?’ she replied feebly, afraid he was going to scold her again.
‘There’s a storm coming in,’ he told her. ‘It’s the middle of the night. Can’t it—’
‘No, it can’t wait,’ she snapped. What was she doing, standing here wishing he’d just kiss her and have done with it? There wasn’t time for that or the argument that it appeared was going to happen instead. This was not the place. ‘We can shelter in the cave. I’ll explain there. Quickly.’
The pair of them scrambled up the rocks and into the relative shelter of the cave where Portia summoned witchlight and pulled the map out again.
This was definitely the right place. The flowers clustered around the entrance, like hundreds of tiny white stars.
She peered at the map, the tantalising pull of the prime thread already winding its way around her consciousness. She could feel it calling to her.
‘These little things?’ Noah asked suspiciously.
‘Yes. Here.’ She opened the sample case she had brought with her and handed it to him.
‘We need about two dozen, maybe three just in case.’ The two of them set to work, and stored the treasured flowers in the case.
His larger hands moved carefully, diligently, and she was unaccountably grateful that he was here.
Not just to help her. Just… just that he was here with her.
It made the knot in her chest loosen a little.
Once they were finished, she turned her attention to the map again, tracing the line with her damp and trembling finger.
‘We should get back,’ Noah said, wiping his hands on his trouser legs and eyeing the worsening storm outside. He peered at the map. ‘What is that?’
‘A map,’ she said. ‘An impossible map. There’s something else I need to do here. I have to—’
The wind roared through the cave mouth and she took a startled step back. Not from the cave mouth. It was something else, something from deeper in the cave, pulling her further inside.
The prickle of magic roared up around her, something old and ancient, far greater than the power inside her had ever been. And yet she felt an answering call in her chest as well. Like a song.
Calling her. Summoning her.
That music. She knew that music. It sounded like the song her father used to hum when lost in thought. But it couldn’t be, could it? He was dead. He was gone.
Turning around, she plunged deeper into the cave, following that pull because there wasn’t anything else she could do right now. It was like the song made her take leave of her senses, to follow it, the song which hummed inside her chest as if it had always belonged there.
‘Portia, wait!’ Noah cried out but she didn’t. She ran, deeper and deeper, the tunnel twisting and turning until it opened out like a cathedral. And in the middle of it, there was a pool of light, flickering, and faint. It couldn’t be there. It shouldn’t be.
The music filled the air. Died away. Came back. Like waves.
This was impossible. She knew that. There was nothing of this kind in here. The caves didn’t even go back this far and the light…
The light was dying, the song fading in and out. She drew in a shaky breath. Had she done this? No, please, no. This couldn’t be her fault as well. She had to fix it, put things right.
As if in a dream, she dropped to her knees and reached out to touch the flickering threads of light. They were cool and smooth in her hands, like crystal, but living and moving, and so unbearably gentle, curling around her skin the same way Jade habitually wound her tail around her wrist.
You can fix this, something seemed to whisper. Only you.
That was all she had ever wanted to do. Fix things. To help those whose magic was faltering and failing, whose connection to the thaumaturgical fields had been damaged. To repair all the harm her family had done. To help the dragons…