Read Elementary for Free Online Page B

as he worked, he saw Don Ruarte, the
capelán
assigned to the
San Lorenzo
, standing near the rails at the side of the forecastle, above the deck where he sat.
    To most, Don Ruarte looked like any other priest, with only the gold chain given him by the King to indicate that he was one of the most senior priests of the fleet. But when Rodrigo observed the Don, he also saw
sílfide
, spirits of Air, which the Don held bound to him. Don Ruarte, like several clerics Rodrigo had noticed on the decks of the other ships, was a
mago dos ventos
, a mage of the winds. Rodrigo had also seen at least one
mago da auga
, one who could command the spirits of Water, the
náiade
and
nereidas,
as Don Ruarte commanded those of Air. Though the black-clad Don now looked forward over the bowsprit, his fingers raised as he sifted through the winds that pushed the Armada onward at its ponderous pace, Rodrigo was sure that, moments before, those piercing ice-blue eyes had been turned his way.
    The Don had taken to watching Rodrigo once the fleet had begun its slow progress northward from the mouth of the Tagus, just beyond Lisbon. Rodrigo had been pressed into service that March, seized from Lisbon’s streets while taking a day away from his family’s trading ship. When he had been forced to join the Spanish forces, he’d feared becoming a
buenaboya
, a “volunteer” chained to the ranks of oars in the dank, poisonous hold, but the Neopolitan crewmasters had recognized the usefulness of another experienced sailor, even if he was a Galician.
    Rodrigo had become a boy-of-all-work on the flagship, assigned to odd tasks, acting in relief of both ship’s boys and apprentice mariners, but officially neither one nor the other. He obeyed every command with alacrity, knowing that one more would always be welcome among the
buenaboyas
, especially as illness took its toll during the Armada’s slow progress. Yet despite his determination to efface himself among more than a hundred other sailors, to be a nameless pair of hard-laboring hands aboard a ship full of crew and soldiers, Don Ruarte had taken notice of him, had picked him out as different from the rest. As Rodrigo’s eyes could see the
sílfide
accompanying the Don, could the
capelán
have seen something unusual about him?
    Daring another glance between the rails, he could just make out Tareixa’s spined body breaking in a glossy curve between the waves. Had the
mago dos ventos
seen her as well? Her snakelike form was nearly half as long as the ship itself, although her sinuous coils and serpentine movement made it difficult for even his practiced eye to spot her, especially if she stayed just below the surface, where her shimmering skin matched the colors of the sea. Rodrigo frowned and bit his salt-cracked lip. After all the years he had known her, after she had even followed him from Galicia to Lisbon and out to sea again, should he try to warn her to keep away?
    He looked back up at Don Ruarte. He had never heard anyone among the Spanish speak of a
mago
, openly or secretly. Nor did folk in his home village, but he had still grown up with an awareness that, at one time, the
magos
had openly communicated with and commanded the spirits of Air, Fire, Earth, and Water, and that the Inquisitors had sought out and destroyed all of the
magos
whom they could find, claiming them heretics. Yet here was the Don, holding the winds in his fingertips as the Spanish sought to hold all of Europe and, it seemed, the whole of the globe.
    If one could not see the
sílfide
, one might think that the Don simply held his hands up in supplicating prayer to Our Lord. Perhaps that was all any of the Spanish soldiers and sailors saw, or they were as silent as he if they saw more. But surely the King, or at least the
Capitán-General
, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, knew that what was supposed to be a forbidden heresy was being practiced aboard the ships. It could not be by chance