Wizard's Blood [Part Two] Read Free

tossed it over board.
    With a sigh of relief, she let go of the barrier inside and sat down at the table and ate. She had been holding off on her food and was very hungry. While she ate, she considered what she wanted to do.
    First was the mast. She’d always been good with materials, and she knew how she could weaken the grain from the inside where it wouldn’t show. She didn’t know if there would be time before the storm Mishim had warned her about, but even if it took longer, the mast would fail before too long even without those stresses. Without the largest mast, the ship would be at a real disadvantage, and would become more difficult to handle and slow. Carefully, she reached out and laid her hands on the mast and let the power flow inside. Working covertly, still taking the smallest amount of power she tested her theory. She could feel the structure alter at her command. Knowing she could do it, she pulled back. This was something to do at night when the others were asleep. She’d need to use the power for a long time at the minimal rate she could hope to work undetected.
    Now to try something else. She wasn’t as confident she could accomplish her second task, but she might as well try now since she couldn’t work on the mast at the moment. She stood by the porthole and reached her hand out and laid it on the side of the ship. She allowed her power sense to slide along the surface until it reached the waterline. Here was where she would start.
    The ship had been built like most wooden ships of the time. The heavy planks that formed the hull were as closely fitted as possible, but counted on the swelling of the wood to close the final small gaps and make it watertight. As long as the ship remained in the water, the wood would remain gorged with water and all the small leaks would be closed. Shyar intended to undo that. The wood could be modified slightly, and the structure changed so it wouldn’t be able to hold the water and would shrink again. Perhaps not back to its dried dimensions, but very close. The water it currently held would be released in the process, and the many small leaks would be reopened, allowing water from the sea to start to seep into the hull. It would be slow, and hopefully the leaks wouldn’t be obvious, but it would also make the ship sit deeper in the water and make it slow and hard to handle as well. Combined with the mast she hoped to wreck, they would make very little headway and might have to put into shore for repairs. One of the best things, this was a spell she could start and let run its course alone. She’d learned the technique from Buris, and had practiced it under his guidance. Once she started the process, she could instruct it to migrate through all the wood of the hull. It would continue without her direct guidance, and would take the power as needed. She could control the level, so once again she would make it a very low power action, which would make it progress very slowly, but she had time. Since the action would be happening below the water level, the low level of the magic would be that much harder to detect. It was too bad that the spell she wanted to use on the mast wasn’t one that could be made automatic.
     
    * * * *
     
    It wasn’t until the second storm that she’d been able to weaken the mast sufficiently that it broke under the stresses of the wind loaded sails. She directed her action up toward the deck level, so when the mast snapped, it did so close to where it intersected the deck, dragging two of the sailors and all of the sails into the water. The ship tilted alarmingly, and was in real danger of over-turning until the crew managed to chop away the lines that held the ruined mast to the ship. Once freed, the pole and sails disappeared aft, the ship being blown by the heavy winds and the sails dragging the pole ever deeper into the water.
    Without the added sails, the ship couldn’t run properly against the wind, and was battered and thrown by