The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

Sherry Thomas



CHAPTER 1


THE GIRL CAME TO WITH a start.

She was being pelted with sand. Sand was everywhere. Beneath, her fingers dug into it, hot and gritty. Above, wind-whipped sand blocked the sky, turning the air as red as the surface of Mars.

A sandstorm.

She sat up. Sand swirled all about her, millions of sepia particles. By reflex she pushed at them, willing them to stay away from her eyes.

The sand stayed away.

She blinked—and made another pushing motion with her hand. The flying particles receded farther from her person. The sandstorm itself showed no signs of abating. In fact, it was worsening, the sky becoming ominously dark.

She had power over sand.

In a sandstorm, it was much better to be an elemental mage than otherwise. Yet there was something disconcerting about the discovery: the fact that it was a discovery; that she’d had no idea of this ability that should have defined her from the moment of her birth.

She also didn’t know where she was. Or why. Or where she had been before she awakened in a desert.

Nothing. No memory of a mother’s embrace, a father’s smile, or a best friend’s secrets. No recollection of the color of her front door, the weight of her favorite drinking glass, or the titles of books that littered her desk.

She was a stranger to herself, a stranger with a past as barren as the desert, every defining feature buried deep, inaccessible.

A hundred thoughts flapped about in her head, like a flock of birds startled into flight. How long had she been in this state? Had she always been like this? Shouldn’t there be someone to look after her if she didn’t know anything about herself? Why was she alone? Why was she alone in the middle of nowhere?

What had happened?

She set two fingers against her breastbone. The pressure inside made it difficult to breathe. She opened her mouth, trying to draw in air faster, trying to fill her lungs so that they wouldn’t feel as empty as the rest of her.

It was a minute before she gathered enough composure to examine her person, praying for clues—or outright answers—that would tell her everything she needed. Her hands were not forthcoming: a few calluses on her right palm and little else of note. Pulling up her sleeves revealed blank forearms. A look at the skin of her abdomen likewise yielded nothing.

“Revela omnia,” she said, surprised to hear a deep, almost gravelly voice.

“Revela omnia,” she said again, hoping that the sound of her own speech might trigger a sudden cascade of memories.

It didn’t. Nor did the spell bring to light any secret writing on her skin.

Surely her isolation was only an illusion. Nearby there must be someone who could help her—a parent, a sibling, a friend. Perhaps that person was even now stumbling about, calling for her, anxious to locate her and make sure that she was all right.

But she could hear no voices carried upon the howling wind, only the turbulence of sand particles hurtled about by forces beyond their control. And when she expanded the sphere of clear air around her, she uncovered nothing but sand and more sand.

She buried her face in her hands for a moment, then took a deep breath and stood up. She meant to start on her clothes, but as she came to her feet, it became obvious that she had something in her right boot.

Her heart somersaulted when she realized it was a wand. Ever since mages realized that wands were but conduits of a mage’s power, amplifiers that were not strictly necessary to the execution of spells, wands had turned from revered tools to beloved accessories, always personalized, and sometimes to a silly degree. Names were woven into the design, favorite spells, insignia of one’s city or school. Some wands even had their owners’ entire genealogy engraved in microscopic letters.

She would dearly love to see her family history laid out before her, but it would be more than good enough if the wand had an In case of loss, return to ______ inscribed somewhere.

The wand, however, was as plain as a floor plank, without any carvings, inlays, or decorative motifs. And it remained just as bare when examined under a magnifying spell. She had no idea such wands were even made.

An oppressive weight settled over her chest. Loving parents would no more give a child such a wand than they would send her to school in garments made of paper. Was she an orphan then? Someone who had been discarded at birth and brought up in an institution? Elemental magelings did suffer from a higher rate of abandonment, since they were so much trouble in their infancy.