Often, studying grimoires would trigger flashes of memory and understanding in Lillet. It was all on account of the twisted history of her time at the Silver Star Tower. She'd spent literal centuries reliving the same five days over and over, studying every book of magic to be found in the greatest magic library in the kingdom, but thanks to the way the Philosopher's Stone warped time, she only carried with her the memories of the final five cycles.
That magic, though, learned through impossible lifetimes, even over multiple simultaneous existences in some cases, all remained engraved on her soul. It was for that reason that she'd been able to pick up masterwork grimoires and be summoning dragons immediately, or deciphering in hours forgotten Runes that would take ordinary magicians days, or even months, not because she was some kind of genius but because she'd already learned it.
Neptune, though, did not provoke that kind of reaction, that instantaneous familiarity that signaled a memory carried in the soul. Oh, she was at ease with the basic symbolism and structure of the Runes; her fundamental technical knowledge of Glamour, especially, was superior even to that of Professor Gammel. But these were Runes she hadn't cast over and over again in the forgotten time now known only to God. The magic of the ocean hadn't been of use in dealing with a landlocked tower and she'd probably only looked it a handful of times, if that.
And the problem was, from what she could see, it was exactly as she'd said to Limoux: the monsters of the sea were powerful, but destructively so. A great serpent might crush a ship in its coils or shatter it with magical lightning, but it wouldn't beckon the crew to just abandon the shop, to walk off the side. And even if something could do that to a crewman, how could it affect all of them at once, so that none would leave any kind of record, or fight to restrain their fellows?
If only I'd had time to research this properly! She cursed Limoux's secrecy and the greed that drove him to maintain it. Just like he'd unjustly exposed the St. Julien's crew to danger, he'd impaired Lillet's chances of success, even putting his own life at greater risk, solely for the purpose of hedging his profits on the financial markets.
But there was no point in cursing him now. Frustrating as it might have been, it was nevertheless the hand that she had been dealt—that they all had, Lillet and Amoretta and the ship's crew and even Limoux himself, for whatever risks he'd forced on other people he at least had been willing to face them himself. That was a lot of faith to put in a magician he'd never met.
And for all their sakes, Lillet needed to live up to that faith.
But what was it? What creature of the sea—
Wait.
Those ships hadn't been attacked on the high seas, but while making their way through a channel between islands, navigating among ragged, rocky shores and hidden reefs and sandbars. They were in range of land throughout. Was there an answer to be found there?
Lillet shook her head. Oh, it opened the door for more possibilities, different kinds of creatures, but it still didn't answer the main issue: how had something managed to get entire crews to leave their ship, without them leaving any trace? And not just once, but three times running, so that the trick was repeatable.
"So it can't rely on chance," she said aloud, thinking it through. Nothing like bribing the crew—all it would take was one dissenter to ruin the game. Besides, if a business rival was out to ruin Limoux that way, it would make more sense to simply buy the secret of his route through the Horn Rocks instead of staging such an elaborate charade. Good planners didn't burden themselves with excessive complexity and theatricality, and if there was a human planner behind these disappearances they were by definition good just to have pulled it off.
So no, that was out, or at least highly unlikely. Which was too bad, because the easiest way to explain the crews' disappearances was that they'd abandoned ship of their own free will. If it were only a single incident, Lillet would definitely have concentrated her efforts along those lines. But three times? That made no sense. And violence hadn't been used, nor likely the threat of violence or someone would have left a message—or the Gannett's crew, knowing of the Molly May's fate, would have fought back simply because they'd have known the threatener was untrustworthy.
That just brought her back around to magic. There were magical ways to subdue a person without violence. A grimalkin was a relatively basic Sorcery familiar, for example, capable of magically putting a person or even a powerful magical creature to sleep. There were even familiars capable of taking over a person's body and puppeting it even though the person's mind was still conscious. But that was one person. Whatever effect had struck, it had to affect the entire crew at once. It wasn't a case of, say, a half-dozen grimalkin prowling the ship and putting crew members to sleep as they met them. That would leave too much time for people to act, and even futile resistance would leave traces that a merchant very, very interested in what had become of his employees and his money would not have missed seeing.
So, what could affect an entire ship at once? It couldn't be something like a flock of harpies descending from above and snatching people, since there'd always be someone below decks.
The air, maybe? Lillet's imagination conjured the vision for her, a large cloud of mist or smoke that filled the air, that a ship on a fixed course through the channel had to sail through, imagining it an ordinary fogbank until it was too late, and the crew were dropping off to sleep, so that they could be removed. But why remove them? A creature that could create such a field of mist would be too big to go through the ship, carefully removing people, and if it had been a human agent—say, using Alchemy of the type that might be put into play among armies—it put Lillet right back at the beginning, with questions of motive that had led her, and Limoux, to shy away from the idea of a human agency. But she was on the right track, she thought, with the idea of something that could affect the entire crew at once. Perhaps not breathed, but—
Lillet sat bolt upright in her seat. Scraps of a half-remembered story flitted through the edges of her mind, just out of reach.
Something I'd read? A story I heard once? A casual mention by someone at the Royal House of Magic?
She couldn't be sure of exactly how she'd heard it, but she did have it, that faint memory of something that might answer all the conditions of the riddle. Lillet snatched up her books and darted out of the cabin, down the short passageway and out on deck.
"Mr. Limoux! Amoretta!"
Lillet frantically scanned the deck, looking for either of them. She didn't see them at first and wondered if they'd gone below to talk to any of the crew down there, but then she turned around and saw the broad figure of Limoux in his distinctive bottle-green coat with gold braid and trim, standing next to the helm. Lillet darted up the companionway to the quarterdeck and saw that the merchant was apparently speaking with the helmsman, while a ship's officer stood not far away. Amoretta was there, too, the slight girl having been blocked at first from Lillet's sight by Limoux.
She'd seen something more ominous as she looked around, though. The setting, the scenery, had changed in the time she'd been below, poring over her book and wrestling with the problem. The sun had dipped quite a bit lower in the sky, indicating that hours had passed, while instead of being surrounded by the open sea, there were bare walls of jagged, black stone rising up to all sides, the cliffs of the Horn Rocks.
"Sirens!" she burst out, rushing up to Amoretta and Limoux. They turned, startled by her sudden arrival, as did the mate and the helmsman.
"Lillet?"
"Sirens!" Lillet repeated. "I don't know much about them, but they're supposed to be beautiful mermaid creatures whose song enchants anyone who hears it. Song! The effect could cover the whole ship at once, and it would subdue the crew without a fight."
"Aye, I've heard such tales," the helmsman said. "Fairer than any maiden—beggin' yer pardon, Mistress—but they'll drag yer off ter th' depths."
"Yes, of course, the old Illyrian myth-tales," the mate contributed, snapping his fingers to punctuate. "We read them at school, when we were being tutored in Old Achaean."
The mate, it was clear, had come from an upper-class family that had afforded him access to a private school. Lillet had been taught at the village school, and classical literature and language had not been on the syllabus.
"Of course!" Limoux agreed. "Iason, wasn't it? Or perhaps it was one of the Dire Tasks? But I thought those were just stories, myths from long-lost pagan times."
Lillet shook her head.
"There's a lot of truth embedded in those old myths. Although the technical details tend to become obscured either to make for a better story or to teach the audience a lesson, they tend to be based upon real encounters with magical creatures, ghosts, or devils. It's the same with a number of fairy tales."
"The Sirens were said to be so alluring that their music charmed the hearts of every man on the ship," the mate said. "According to the story, the crew would just walk off the ship into their arms."
"It's good that our magician is a woman, then," Limoux said, grinning broadly.
"Um, there's two problems with that, Mr. Limoux. Between three whole crews, I think it's very likely that there was at least one man who wasn't attracted to women, but they were all taken anyway. I don't think that whatever effect their song has is limited to those who'd normally be attracted—or maybe there are male sirens, too? And even if that wasn't true, well…"
She reached out and took Amoretta's hand.
"Oh."
"How did they stop the sirens in the story?" Amoretta asked the mate. He rubbed his chin, thinking it over.
"I don't entirely remember, but…I think they stopped up their ears with wax? Except the captain, who tied himself to the mast so he couldn't run off to them. The crew knew they were past the danger and could take the wax out when he stopped trying to fight his way loose."
"That could work! If the magic works via the sense of hearing, then stopping us from hearing it would prevent it from taking hold."
"Right. Mr. Cahors, break out the candles and start distributing plugs to the men," Limoux instructed the mate. "I'll tell Captain Pouillac so that he can verify the orders." Even though Limoux owned the ship, by the law of the sea the captain had near-absolute authority until they reached harbor.
"All right, but we have to be careful. There are places where we can't run the channel without being able to give and hear orders in a precise, timely fashion," Cahors said. "So much as thirty seconds' delay could end with the keel torn out on a reef and us wishing the monsters got us instead of the water."
Hearing that, Lillet could appreciate how it was that the route was worth so much to Limoux. If it needed that level of precision to navigate, it was something no competitor was going to be able to match. No wonder he's going to such lengths to protect it.
"Better to face the risk of a shipwreck than the certainty of our fate if we're taken," he told the mate. Cahors nodded, and headed down towards the main deck at once. To Lillet, Limoux continued, "Are you certain that this is what's been attacking my ship?"
Lillet shook her head.
"No, I'm not. This is just the only thing that I can think of that fits the facts. I wish I had access to the library so that we could have the truth about sirens and not just myth and rumor. Then, maybe we could be sure."
Limoux gnawed at the end of his moustache, a nervous habit doubtless left over from his younger days when presentation of a well-groomed appearance wasn't so important to him from a business standpoint.
"I hope you're right, then, because if the crew can't handle the helm and sails with precise timing in the Seven-Crag Slot then this ship will—"
He didn't get a chance to offer a take on their potential fate, because at that moment they could hear a high, lilting song ring out.
The song had no words, just a soaring melody that rang with the heartbreaking beauty of crystal chimes. Beneath it wove in choral harmony a deep, throaty under-layer that throbbed along the nerves. While the soprano voices called to exaltation, to elevation and glory, the altos were rich and sensual, tempting the body on the basest level. All across the main deck, the crew were standing awestruck. Lines and halyards slipped from slack hands, motion froze in mid-step, and rapt faces turned towards the nearest rail, looking out to sea.
They were emerging on all sides. Some surfaced within the water itself. Others pulled themselves up onto rocks, a few even on the jagged stones that were the forbidding shores of nearby islets. They were alluring temptresses, with curved, rosy flesh clad in nothing but sea-foam, so that their iridescent scales could scatter the sunlight in rainbow showers. Lillet's flesh burned to be caressed by long, agile fingers tipped with hooked claws, webwork spreading between the fingers. She ached to be kissed by soft, crimson, honey-sweet lips that parted to reveal rows of razor-sharp serrated teeth.
She clutched at her head, the cascade of conflicting imagery barraging her. It's the wards, she thought, the clarity an effort. Her defensive charms were fighting the effects of the siren-song like they would any hostile magic. The warping sight was the effect of the illusions the enchantment were trying to make her see—to feel—fighting against the reality.
It was a fight they were losing.
She dropped to her knees on the deck, fumbling for her grimoire, but she knew it was hopeless. Her vision was swimming as the spell fought to control her. Lillet could never manage the concentration necessary to accurately draw the Rune—particularly one from Neptune that she hadn't cast dozens or hundreds of times before—let alone the focus needed to kindle the Rune with mana, not while reality itself was shifting and twisting around her, constantly in flux.
She needed magic to break the spell, but only by breaking the song's spell could she cast magic. It was a hopeless situation.
No, not "spell," she thought. Not "enchantment," even though it was. Song. Siren song. Not break a spell, silence a song.
"Amoretta!" she cried out. Her homunculus lover was only a couple of feet away from her, wasn't she? Or was it a hundred miles? "Sing counterpoint!"
Lillet didn't know if it was any use, if Amoretta could even hear her or if she was as lost as the crew; she couldn't see and the world was dissolving into clouds and sea-foam as her battered wards began to fail and—
And then reality returned, hard and sharp. The sand-scrubbed planks of the deck, the cold sea-spray, the shifting wind that fought its way through the rocky channel, every sensation clear-minted and bright in her mind. Maybe it was Amoretta's own wards, lovingly set by Lillet to help keep her true heart safe, or perhaps it was that Amoretta was a creation of Alchemy, inherently resistant to the magic of Glamour that had to follow the patterns of nature instead of using its laws as it wilt.
Either way, though, she'd heard Lillet's desperate cry, and it was there, that beautiful angel's voice, rising up in precise, purposed vocalizations that slid into the siren-song and changed it, undercut it, stole away the greatest weight of its power. The sirens' voices were magically beautiful, impossibly beyond human, and yet Amoretta's shone through all of them, a golden thread of perfection woven into the song that reshaped it entirely. Lillet could still feel the pressure of the song against her consciousness, but it was a weak thing, a headache from reading too long into the night rather than a migrane. Across the deck, men staggered, shaking their heads or clutching at them, fighting off the effects but still somewhat under their influence, since they lacked Lillet's protections and had been completely under the force of the song.
"Sing!" Lillet called to them. "Lift your voices and give them a song of your own!"
"Aye, me hearties!" roared a crewman with a red bandanna tied around his head and massive shoulders—the bosun, Lillet thought, remembering how he'd barked orders when they set sail. "Sing out, every man-jack of you!"
In the next moment he put action behind his words and lent his rich baritone to a rousing, upbeat chantey. The song was funny, vulgar, and a bit profane, and Lillet had a feeling he'd picked it precisely because of that, a worldly song by sailors cast back in the teeth of the sirens' inhuman mystery. In the next few moments, voice after voice joined in, and each new crew member singing blunted the effect of the siren song even more.
They might have sailed past that way, escaped the sirens' clutches with the combined power of their voices, but Lillet had a job to do. Her mission was not to protect the St. Julien, but to stop the problem. The next ship to pass would be attacked by these monsters, and the next, and the next.
She flipped the Neptune grimoire to the correct page and began to draw. In two verses she had the basic structure of the Rune traced out on the deck with her wand. In another verse it was kindled with mana, bright and shining with the green light of Glamour. This wasn't the rich, verdant green of the deep forest that most Glamour runes shone with, though. Rather, it was an appropriately aqueous light, tinted with the blue of a tropical lagoon, and in its radiance it seemed like fish swam and danced, circling the upraised trident that represented pagan sea-gods.
Lillet did not stop there, but continued to pour mana into the Rune, awakening deeper powers. This was not merely a rote chore, like adding a second layer of bricks atop a first. Rather, it demanded that the magician understand the symbolism of the Rune, to mentally guide the flow of mana in particular ways to give shape to their will. This was why advanced versions of Runes required weeks, months, even years of study, why an apprentice who could cast a basic Fairy Ring couldn't just bring forth astral Fairies right away.
Neptune wasn't a Rune that Lillet knew by heart. But what made her a great magician, a match even for the Archmage, wasn't just experience with particular castings but her knowledge of fundamental principles, her ability to grasp how Runes were put together. She might not have known Neptune in the depths of her soul, but understanding each step, following the logic of the pattern to the effects desired, that she was able to do at little more than a glance.
By the time the chantey ended and the sailors had switched to the highly colorful legends of Black Jack Bergerac, the Rune shone like a beacon from the quarterdeck. The sirens sang on, their magic clawing at the edge of Lillet's awareness, but the hearty tune helped drown the lure, and somehow through it all the pure sweetness of Amoretta's voice continued to ring out, deftly matching the monsters in their musical duel even as the sirens tried to shake her off, shifting their melody, harmony, even pitch with a musical deftness even the greatest orchestra on the continent could only hope to achieve.
And then the summon answered Lillet's call.
Ordinarily, it would have lurked beneath the waves, struck from below, but the channel they were in was far too shallow to contain it. The massive wedge-shaped body reared in the air, towering high above the galleon's masts, its eyes alone a dozen feet across at the least. Ten massive arms, whipcord tentacles of thick muscle, lashed out at their designated prey.
The kraken's arms could have coiled around the St. Julien and crushed the ship to splinters if it had wanted. The sirens stood no chance at all. Their song fell silent as they were snatched up, some crushed at once, others pulled beneath the water that mercifully hid the sight of them being pulled to the kraken's beak and consumed. The illusion was broken, leaving only the scaled fish-creatures fleeing in terror, scattering in all directions in their attempts to escape.
Lillet felt a pang of sympathy at the sirens' plight as they desperately tried to flee their doom or bit and clawed at the kraken's arms in a futile defiance. She didn't like causing anything to feel that kind of horror, not even monsters. But she did not relent. The sirens had in their turn attacked the crews of at least three ships and carried them off to become food for their rapacious appetites. There was nothing innocent about them, and they did not somehow gain moral license just because their intended victims had brought overwhelming force this time.
The crew, who weren't the ones bringing that force, had no such quandary. They cheered lustily as the monsters who'd wanted to overwhelm their minds, then devour them, were struck down, though more than a few kept a nervous eye on the kraken, not entirely certain of whether it truly was on their side (or under control).
In a frighteningly short time, though, it was over, the siren-song stilled and none of the monsters left in sight. To be certain, Lillet summoned a pair of the Rune's lesser familiars, full-sized seahorses called hippocampi, and sent them patrolling out underwater, using their clairvoyant-like sonar to explore the channel and make certain that none of the sirens had escaped and were lurking, ready to strike back.
She gave a deep sigh of relief when they found nothing, and dismissed her familiars back to the eternal deeps of Faerie where they made their natural homes.
"That was well-done, Lillet."
"Amoretta?"
The homunculus laid a gentle hand on Lillet's shoulder.
"They were monsters, not people, even though they looked humanoid. I don't know if they even have intelligence, but if they do, then they made a choice, and the consequences are theirs to receive."
She knew.
Lillet sighed, then took Amoretta's hand in her own and pressed it against her cheek. The homunculus's skin was cool and dry and felt good, Lillet being flushed from the magical exertion. The comfort her touch brought, though, was far more than physical.
She'd understood at once what Lillet had been feeling, the conflicting emotions, and had acted at once to put her own weight on the balance.
"Thank you, little love. I tried to tell myself that, but hearing it from you carries so much more weight."
"You saved all of us, Lillet, and not just us but the crews of any other ships that might follow."
"Only because you saved us all first. That was amazing, how you were able to match and counter their song."
"I never would have thought of it, not until you called out. I don't even know how you knew that I could."
"I didn't! It was just the only thing that came to me, that, well, you have the most amazing voice I've ever heard and that you might be able to oppose theirs. I'm glad that it worked."
All around them, the crew was getting back to work, hauling lines, shifting sail, and beginning to measure out the careful navigation they'd have to take to get through the upcoming sections of the channel. It was almost as if the attack had never happened, the only lingering traces being in the minds of those who'd gone through it.
"I'm glad, too. And Master Freixenet will be very happy with you, too, for dealing with the problem with no further loss of life or even damage to the ship."
"That's true. And it wouldn't have worked if you hadn't come along, so I even have the perfect answer if anyone makes any snide comments about this job being an excuse to take a sea vacation with my beloved."
"But now that we're done with work, it can be that."
"True! But after this experience, little love…"
"Yes?" Amoretta prompted.
"As much as I dislike travel by dragonback, I'll be just as happy to fly home from Vendrick!"