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Tide of Magic: Chapter Two (Excerpt) Wherein Enid Engages in a Sorcerous Duel At another time Marquise Enid d'Tancreville would have found her circumstances invigorating. Slate gray waters ran past the hull of the merchant ship like a pair of joyous, courting streams singing watery love songs as the sails and rigging snapped and hummed in accompaniment overhead. A fine, salt-spray peppered her angular face with cool kisses and left a brisk trace of its perfume as it passed. A part of her recognized the perfection of the day unfolding beneath a rare, clear sky over the tempestuous Strait, but the rest of her was conscious of only one thing: The hostile frigate closing in on her ship from the starboard side. Without the impromptu tutelage of the merchantman's Master, a rotund fellow named Arnaud, Enid would have recognized neither the sort of ship closing on them nor the quarter from which it approached. She was a student of High Sorcery, not of ships and the sea. As far as she could discern, there was no real difference between the merchantman carrying her towards a destiny she prayed was rich in vengeance and the predatory warship that barred her way. Certainly this "frigate" carried more cannon. That was obvious to even her untrained eye. Still, reason seemed to decree that their smaller ship with its rakish lines and gallant spread of sail could bear her past the reach of those guns. Unfortunately, reason apparently held little sway over the affairs of wind and wave. The frigate grew visibly larger with each passing moment despite the frantic activity of the sailors in the merchant's rigging and the master's grim concentration as he paced the rail of the quarterdeck. As he passed, she put out a hand to stay him and asked how so large a vessel could close on a smaller, fleeter ship, something that seemed as incongruous to her as an ox running a hare to ground. "She has the gauge of us, for one thing," Master Arnaud snapped, and then, seeing the blankness in Enid's eyes, continued in a softer tone. "The weather gauge. It means that she has the favor of the wind. She can match our every move and still close on us." "But surely its sheer bulk will slow it! We are smaller, lighter, and faster, are we not?" The Master smiled in a sardonic way that did not please Enid at all. "Milady, we are smaller and lighter, of that there can be no doubt. But faster than a frigate under a full press of sail?" He chuckled grimly and shook his head at her naiveté. "Size has its advantages in many things, lady, and sailing is one of them. All those yards and yards of canvas she spreads would tear the masts from our poor Marie, but it pushes the Artagny there along at a pace we can never outstrip without we abandon all our cargo, water, and passengers to the sea." Enid's brow furrowed slightly at the mention of abandoning passengers to the sea and her hand strayed towards the hilts of the small-sword dangling from her hip. Master Arnaud raised a reassuring hand and was about to apologize for his poorly chosen words when a fluttering noise came floating down from the sails above. Squinting up at the rigging, the broad-faced commoner cursed under his breath. "We're losing our wind, Milady." A glance at the frigate indicated that it was more fortunate in finding loyal zephyrs. Her sheets still bellied with wind and a great spume of spray greeted her blunt prow each time it rose above one wave to fall upon the crest of another. The sailors high up in the little merchantman's rigging began to whistle. "Why are they whistling?" Enid asked absently as she allowed her will a looser reign. She felt light headed as her being began to encompass both more and less than her physical shell. The coppery taste of magic welled up in her throat and she felt the other sorcerer somewhere in the dark depths of the frigate, well beneath the waterline. Dying sylphs surrounded him, slowly suffocating in that dark place. He was literally killing their wind. "To call up a wind, Milady," The master answered, absently scratching the back of a spar himself. "Whistling for a fair wind is a common practice at sea." "I do not think that the winds can hear them. I will see what I can do to help." The Master took a cautious step backwards and muttered his thanks as she closed her eyes and reached out towards the foam wreathed frigate with her hand and, more penetratingly, her will. There he was: A small man in more than physical stature, the sort that reveled in such small cruelties as extinguishing the spark of minor spirits. Still, he was strong in his own element and she doubted she could counter his workings even if she had the time to properly prepare. So be it. If she could not stop him, she would lend her strength to his. Enid's outstretched arm tensed and her hand curled into a fine-boned claw. The Master backed into the quarterdeck's rail, his blunt fingered hand clutching the rosary around his thick neck as she drew in a seemingly endless, whistling breath. She barely noticed him. She was somewhere else, across a narrowing expanse of tumbling waves, and while she did indeed see a face sinking into a mask of fear, it was no common sailor's face. Here was a petty sorcerer. A mage of the fifth or sixth rank, she reckoned, highly capable at the casting of a few rote processes, but no true practitioner. There was a moment when, if he had known more, he could have made their encounter a true duel, but he was virtually unarmed in the face of true Art. Even as her heart soared with personal triumph, her spirit sank at the thought of how low the Theocracy had brought the greatest nation in the world, a nation once famed and feared for the prowess of even its lowest ranking mages. As she came back to herself, she was aware of the cheers of the sailors around her. The wind had slipped from Artagny's sails, which now hung limp like so much laundry on a charwoman's lines. The little merchantman's topsails, on the other hand, had scratched up a breeze and filled with a satisfying snap of canvas. Even in such light airs she was pulling away from the becalmed Artagny. The men and women of her crew voiced their joy as the distance between the two ships widened. The celebration was short lived. The Marie had not made more than a mile before the frigate's top-sails filled and she began to make way again. Enid raised an inquisitive brow at the Master, but he shook his. "She will still run us down, Milady. We have gained some time, but not much. I expect we'll be under her guns before dark. Then the killing will begin." "It has already begun." In her mind's eye she could still see the little mage's blue face, his hands clawing at his throat as he struggled fruitlessly to draw one breath past his last.
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