Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (37 page)

Also, the Chwahir hated the atmosphere of the White Palace,
with its ancient magic and shifting rooms and things. We found out later one
gang of them tried to loot a room—but when they went through the door, they
vanished, and never came back.

Unaware of all that, I climbed up high in one tower, and
looked out over the moonlight forest. It had been days since it had rained. The
ground needed moisture, but the balmy air did good for my spirit. It was
horrible not having Clair back. The kingdom was sort of free and sort of not ...
we had to get her back ... had to ...

I fell asleep right there.

o0o

And got two volunteers the next day, Seshe and Puddlenose.

So I called Hreealdar again, and the three of us squished on
for the short ride straight down.

Then in we went. The cavern entrance is near the source of
the waterfall into the Lake. For a while, it’s just gloomy cavern, but then you
get to the area of the glowing gems. The air is so pure it’s hard to breathe,
so you think you’re hot and breathless and you become giddy, and the colors
dazzle your eyes, and you’d swear you hear singing, whispered singing, if that
makes any sense.

Presently Seshe said, “Can’t move. Parking here.”

Puddlenose joined her.

I pushed on, hoping I was right. My mood kept veering
between certainty and gloom. What if I was wrong? What would we do to get Clair
back? Not having her back I couldn’t bear to consider.

At last I reached a brilliant room, where one diamond was
brighter than all the others. This was the one you could think things at, and
sometimes you’d hear this inner voice, or see inner visions, or hear whispers
that were almost words ... and you’d get your answer.

I touched it, somehow knowing it was right—and in a snap of
light there stood Clair.

We grabbed each other in a tight hug, though I gasped when
my bandage pulled. Clair jumped back, and looked upset.

“Just a slice,” I said. “Chwahir. Nothing bad. But we need
you!”

“First let me get that ward off you.”

She whispered. In that atmosphere the magic potential was so
strong she easily handled spells that otherwise took concentration, and so she
did some rapid magic. My head panged, then it was all there again—all my magic
knowledge!

“Puddlenose and Seshe are out there,” I said, and as we
began to walk, “so what happened?”

“I told you once I’d prepared some surprises. Just in case
they tried something.”

“I remember.”

“You didn’t know enough about magic then for me to explain.
I looked through all the records to see what kinds of wards the Chwahir usually
put over a place if they took it over. I build the counter wards, and put the
key to the enchantment on me. I hoped that I could get away if I felt anything
going on, but if they killed me, they would never break the enchantments. My
warning spell worked, though just barely, because the Chwahir were storming in
at the same time Kwenz did his magic. But I did get away, where I knew even if
he traced me, he couldn’t get me.”

“Wow, that was smart,” I marveled, and as we walked out, I
gave her a fast rundown on what had happened. I got to finding Diana when two
voices exclaimed, “Clair!”

We reached the others. Puddlenose grabbed Clair and swung
her around, and Seshe laughed for joy.

Clair beamed at them, then said to me, “It was only smart
because you came for me. You could have left me there, you know.”

“No I couldn’t,” I shot back. “Kwenz is out cold up there—we
got Jilo in the Junky—warriors all around—it’s a mess.”

“You could have solved that,” she said soberly. “You could
have taken over MH. Or you could have stayed where they sent you. Or when you
escaped, you could have roamed the world, free and clear.”

“No, no, and no.” I made a fish face. “And it
wasn’t
nice at Raneseh’s. Oh, it wasn’t a dungeon. I didn’t have any of the problems
that Irene had—despite that stinker Rel. But it was horrible to be away from
home, and knowing that Kwenz had crunched you and MH.”

“Maybe,” Clair said, and took a deep breath. “My head is
foggy from the magic, and everything else. But one thing is clear. The best
thing that ever happened was when you came.”

I felt really good about that all the way upstairs.

Then all the worries glopped onto us, one splat at a time.

But Clair had plans in place. She transferred Kwenz to the
Shadow, then said, “He’ll know as soon as he comes out of it that he failed.”

“What about Jilo?” Puddlenose asked, wiggling his brows.

“Blindfold him again, and send him home, of course,” Clair
said. “I’ll come with you. I just need to get the book that has the spell, then
we can reverse the transformation on Diana.”

And that’s what happened.

Clair departed on a magic-transfer journey to the mayors,
while we went back to the Junky to wait for the sailors to return.

It took a few days for the Chwahir to go back to where they
belonged, and for our people to get back to normal life. Kwenz did not
communicate—he’d failed to defeat Clair’s defensive magic, and his evil brother
couldn’t get mad because (as it turned out) the alliance of free traders had
been joined by the local navies, none of whom wanted any Chwahir fleets passing
by full of warriors. They kept the fleet of reinforcements so busy that Shnit
couldn’t keep his end of his promise to send warriors (oh, and incidentally
take over from Kwenz, is our guess).

Everything was back to the way it should be ... except for
two things.

The first was Captain Heraford.

I thought they’d just vanish. After all, he’d said something
about being in trouble a long time ago. But when they came back to the Junky to
make sure everything was really okay, Clair was there in the main room when he
and the sailors came down the tunnel.

Captain Heraford stopped, looking surprised. Then his
expression turned sort of serious and sort of wry, and he performed an
elaborate bow, kind of like the one he gave me when we first met. “Your
majesty, I take it?”

“It’s all right,” Puddlenose said. “This is just Clair—and
she knows how you helped us. How many times you saved us.”

Clair looked up at the captain for a moment, then said, “If
you like, please come up to the White Palace.”

She vanished.

Captain Heraford made a slightly pained smile. “Nobody told
me she was a Morvende.”

“She isn’t,” Puddlenose said. “Just has white hair. We
figure maybe there’s Morvende in our family history.”

Captain Heraford rubbed his eyes, then he said, “Why did she
go like that?”

“So you have a chance to leave, if you like,” Seshe said
calmly. “She knows about our first meeting—what you told us.”

“She doesn’t know who I am,” he said.

None of us had an answer to that.

But when I said, “The transfer spell works again. I can take
us all upstairs,” he nodded.

And so we all went to the White Palace. Clair met us in the
magic chamber. She sat there on a table with books all around her, wearing her
usual knee pants and plain cotton top, but somehow she seemed serious and she
even had, oh, I guess the best word is dignity.

“I know the girls did their best because this is their home,”
she said. “If they wanted rewards, I would give them what I can—”

“Ugh,” I honked.

“Ugh indeed.” Irene crossed her arms, her chin high.

“A party!” Faline rubbed her hands. “With chocolate pie.”

“We’d have that anyway,” Sherry said.

“But we could call it a Triumph,” Puddlenose put in, finger
pointing upward. “I’ve seen those, Triumphs. Mostly speeches and junk. Yours
would be fun.”

“No speeches!” five girls said at once.

“Except funny ones,” Sherry whispered.

Captain Heraford smiled at us, then said to Clair, “Heraford
is not my name. My family name earned—”

Clair raised her hand. “I thought the Hera River might have
something to do with your past.”

“The ford is where I made my break for freedom. But
loyalties die hard, I find,” he said.

Clair smiled. “So everybody proved. Look. What happened to
you back then is the past. It’s a good name, Heraford. Why don’t you keep it,
and that will be your true name?”

This time when Captain Heraford bowed, there was none of
that faint air of mockery.

“Now, what reward do you ask? I’ll grant it if I can.”

“A new start,” he said.

The sailors were silent, and so were the girls. Even Faline
was quiet—but she didn’t know Captain Heraford.

“You have that. You are a citizen of Mearsies Heili, Captain
Heraford. In turn, I have something to ask of you. Would you be our navy?”

Puddlenose’s eyes grew round.

“I can offer pay. We really need protection around the
Tornacios, and also for our traders, when they go east with the winter winds.”

“Whose orders would I be under?” Captain Heraford asked
cautiously.

“Your own. Unless I had need. I can give you one of the
magic blotters that you saw in the Junky. I know how to make one. If I need
you, I’d write to you on that. In turn, I can give your people pay, and also,
magical protection on your ship.”

“Done,” Captain Heraford said, his weather-brown face
reddening. He grinned like a kid.

And we sent up a cheer for our new, one-ship navy.

So that night we celebrated with a party. Clair got the
musicians to come over and play, and the party spilled over into the cloud top,
as the night was balmy, the sailors doing their dances out on the terrace steps
between the palace and the street that leads down the middle of the cloud top.

The next day the new navy (and Puddlenose) left to take up
their new job—and right behind them, pushing them eastward, came rain at last.

o0o

For several days it rained intermittently. I prowled around
while Clair was busy with queening junk. While the girls tackled cleaning and
organizing the Junky again (not that the sailors left it in bad shape, they
didn’t, but everything was all shoved around) I hit the books, studying magic
until I felt like my brains were bulging out. I finally took a break in order
to see if I had actually remembered any of what I’d studied.

Finally Clair came in when I was eating lunch over a magic
book.

“Busy?” she said.

“I tried to call up this stuff about several person
transfers, and found out I remembered two of the ten spells I memorized
yesterday. Sort of remembered them. Arglebargle!”

She sat down, and helped herself to a crispy cabbage roll.
On the other side of the kitchen Janil was humming as she supervised putting
the kitchens back in order. The Chwahir cook had changed everything around.

“Where are the girls?”

“Irene wants to make a trip to Elchnudaeb to find out what
PJ is saying about us. That’s why the spell. If I can’t figure it out, she and
Faline and Sherry will go the regular way.”

Clair gave her kitten-squeak of a laugh. “Do they think
they’ll hear anything good?”

“Faline is hoping to hear something funny, of course.”

Clair said, “And you?”

“Snarglesplat,” I groaned. “Let’s go outside.”

We stashed our plates and went out on the back terrace,
which was under a balcony, so we could see the rain but not get rained on, as
the air had turned cold.

I told Clair all the stuff I’d been thinking. Then finished,
“Am I dumb to even think about who’s the center of us girls? Is that being like
PJ? I mean, I bet he thinks everybody respects him. But they don’t.”

“I think we all hope that what people say about us is the
same as what they say to us.”

“True.”

“I don’t know ... I think you’re the center, but sometimes
all the girls are centers. Irene is the center when we do plays.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“And Sherry is the center when we have a feast. She loves
that so much.”

“You’re right!”

“And Diana is the center when she’s showing us woodcraft or
lock picking. Well, everybody gets to be the center. Isn’t that best? Rather
than one person all the time?”

“Yes, it sure is,” I said. “Now I feel as stupid as Rel.”

Her face changed. Not quite a frown, but a closed look.

“What?” Then I remembered Irene’s crack about Rel, and I
said, “You weren’t there.”

“No ...”

I sighed. “Go ahead. I know I’m being mean.”

“And you’re making it a habit. Is he really that evil?”

“Well not
evil
. Not like Shnit, though he was on his
side! So, well, yeah. Isn’t that evil?”

Clair picked a dead leaf from one of the flowering vines
climbing a trellis. “Was he? Did he really say he was on Shnit’s side?”

“No.” I got madder. “They thought
I
was the evil one!
They believed all Kwenz’s lies! I just hate that—I hate them thinking I was a
big liar and some brat full of bragging about being a princess and all, when
Kwenz is this wise guardian. Ugh! Argh! Ick!”

I stomped away, then went below to run around in the rain
and cool off. I found the girls ready for a patrol. Now we were watching the
area straight to the west, where Jilo and his pals had been centered.

“I wish I knew what they wanted,” Diana growled. “I followed
them around a lot. They weren’t just looking for the Junky, they were spying
around.”

“Could you understand them?” Irene asked.

Diana shook her head. “Sounded like gabble to my ears.”

“I wish they’d go away,” Sherry said, fists tight against
her chest.

“Well, we’ll make things nasty for ’em if they do anything,”
I promised.

We didn’t find any of them that day. The next, a few of the
girls decided to go help Lina. All the kids she had there had scattered, after
the Chwahir first attacked and tried to grab a bunch of them to put them to
work as slubs. After the girls helped Lina, they’d go across and spy on the
Auknuges, like Irene originally proposed.