by Ember Lane
“We’re not,” Merl said suddenly, but then faltered when everyone focused on him. He shrank back into himself, trying to sum up the courage to carry on. Dredging it from the very depths of his gut, he continued, albeit it was a little more than a whisper at first. “We aren’t though, are we? We know that it starts with Quaiyl, we just don’t know how. We know the Power of Construction comes first. And we know that the Power of Source, Nascent, and War follow. We’ve found our beginning, Frank.”
Frank stared at Quaiyl. “It that it? Is that what I’ve been searching for? A featureless creation that doesn’t speak?”
“But it isn’t, is it?” Desmelda said. “It’s no creature. It’s no being. Can’t you sense it, Frank? I thought you of all people would understand its make-up.”
“Me? Of all people?”
“It’s pure magic. It’s mana. It’s everything, Frank. Can’t you sense the power that sits under its inert meniscus?”
Merl though that if they were all going to have a conversation about where they were it would be best to use words they could all understand. Merl hadn’t noticed Quaiyl’s inert meniscus and doubted Billy had either. He wondered where it could be and looked more closely at The Origin, or Quaiyl, and then he wondered why it had two names, even if one was the name of what it was. It was all very confusing.
“Is it the little lump under where its mouth would be?” Merl reckoned he could see a little lump, but it might have been a trick of the lantern’s flame.
Billy leaned in. “What ya lookin’ fer, Merl? That ‘nert miscus, like?”
“Inert meniscus,” Desmelda rolled her eyes. “I meant to say plain skin, there, does that do it?”
“I’d say you was sayin’ that it’s got a little power wrapped up in its guts. Would that be ‘bout right?” Billy asked.
“It would,” Desmelda sighed.
All the while, Frank had been staring at Quaiyl. “You think it’s some form of spell?”
Desmelda took a breath. “Like you said, ‘What do we know?’ Well, we know Arthur-what-not hid all his knowledge. What was his intent? I think he decided that the lords had become too reckless. That they killed each other for no reason whatsoever. Stormsurfer said their wars slaughtered millions. What if he decided that no one could be trusted with all the lore? That’s why he broke it into wards. It would follow that only someone whom he could trust could open the first ward.”
“The Power of Construction.” Merl sat back in his chair. Gloomy Joe curled up at his feet.
“Exactly,” Desmelda continued. “Surely this Arthur-what-not—”
“Arthur14579,” Frank added and received a stern look in return.
Billy yawned.
“Surely he would not want it falling into the hands of, say, a bastard.”
Merl pursed his lips. It made sense but didn’t really help any. Quaiyl was still The Origin, and a menis-something of power. Did that matter? Quaiyl could take them places, and whatever else it was, as far as Merl was concerned, didn’t exactly matter. “That’s the problem with learned folk,” he mistakenly muttered out loud. He’d fully intended to continue the conversation in his bonce. He quickly looked up to see if anyone had heard. His hopes they hadn’t were soon dashed.
“What is?” Desmelda growled.
Merl wondered when she’d first become learned. He’d known Frank was learned the instant he’d ducked his head and wandered into Frank’s level-one hut. Frank had held an air of superiority back then, though it hadn’t suited him. It was like Merl’s best tunic. He had only been allowed to wear it on Planting Day when the whole of Morgan’s Mount had made their annual pilgrimage to Beggarman’s Caves halfway up Three Face mountain. There they stowed their gifts to the Goddess Andula, and after, they would all go to Walinda Alepuller’s tavern and his dad would get blind drunk. Frank’s learned superiority was a bit like that day. Merl wore his best tunic, but it didn’t fit him well. He felt awkward in it. It itched in all the wrong places.
Desmelda’s learned superiority, on the other hand, was like a good pair of gloves. She slipped it on when she needed it and was quite comfortable with it. If she had no use for the gloves, she left them off. Merl knew the type of person that only wore gloves only when needed had always had them, so he concluded that Desmelda had always been intelligent, whereas Frank had found out he was much later on and was still a little uncomfortable with it.
“What is?” Desmelda growled, again, and Merl realized he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
“What is what?” he asked.
“What’s the problem with learned folk?” she said softly but like a knife-jab. Then she covered her mouth while she fixed a waning smile on it.
“Oh, that. You’re always in a hurry. You’re trying to figure out what Quaiyl is, when it doesn’t matter because Stobart Torped will tell us. He knows.”
A curious expression then crossed Desmelda’s face. It was like a mix of rainy day and frosty morning. Merl decided it would be a good time to check the ship’s direction and give Gloomy Joe a stretch of his legs. The dune dog was much better at walking now. It no longer looked like he had some kind mad hinge in the middle of his spine that opened and shut for no apparent reason. Plus, his lazy eye wasn’t quite so tired anymore, although Gloomy Joe’s ears still didn’t match, and Merl doubted they ever would.
“Where are you going?” Desmelda’s smile snapped. “Never mind. Don’t mind me. I’m sorry,” she said too quickly. “I’m sorry. A good few years alone in the woods and now my brain’s woken up again and just can’t stop thinking. I’ll try and slow down.”
Merl thought she’d gone a bit mad. He’d have done nearly anything to have more brains, and if he did have them, he’d use them all the time.
“I can teach you t’slow down,” Billy crowed, and Merl took that moment of confusion to slip out.
He climbed the little steps and took a long yawning breath as he emerged onto the deck. It was a blustery day. Windy gusts whipped the befuddlement from Merl’s head, clearing his wandering thoughts in an instant. Fluffy white clouds flew across the sky, and Wave Walker’s sails billowed with power as the ship sped across the choppy seas. Merl’s mood soared with the ever-following gulls, and even Gloomy Joe, whose temperament always appeared to match his name, chanced a tail wag and an excited look up. He bounded free, racing along the deck. Merl decided Gloomy Joe’s spinal hinge still had some attitude—it just wasn’t as severe as before. Quaiyl appeared behind Merl, like a slightly late shadow that had lost hold of Merl’s feet. The Origin took up a position just to one side of the deck, indicating that they weren’t quite going in the right direction.
Merl walked the ship in search of Starturner. Blustercatcher whipped around, taking a break from his constant sail trimming, and picked Merl up, swinging him around and setting him in the crook of his enormous arm. Blustercatcher was a wholesome giant, big of belly and cheek. A smile always graced his lips, and a glint sparkled in his deep, brown eyes.
“Tell me, young man, are we going the right way?”
Merl looked down at Quaiyl’s position. “A little to the right.”
“Right is not right. Starboard is right. Port is left. Starboard one turn!” Blustercatcher shouted back to Starturner, and he received a “Ho!” in reply.
“Why?” Merl asked. “Why is right not right?”
“Because port is where the port ladder is. It’s where the gangplank is. It’s how you get off. It’s the portside.”
Merl shrugged. He’d learned lots of things of late, and he was getting worried his head might be full. Knowing one side of a ship from the other didn’t seem important enough to think about storing, and he tried to forget it the minute Blustercatcher had told him, but it got stuck, and that was that.
“Oh,” Merl said, bereft of something better to say. “Can you drop me next to Starturner?”
Merl had his own little chair next to Starturner, and Gloomy Joe had a couple of blankets to lay on. Merl was su
pposed to spend a good portion of the day on deck with the giant, which he didn’t mind. None of the giants had ever heard of The Withering Tree, and therefore had no idea where to point their ship. The one thing they all knew was the Quaiyl would always try to go toward it, or at least they assumed and trusted that the strange being would. So, it stood to reason that as long as Quaiyl was directly ahead of Merl, then the ship was going in the right direction. Stickback had rigged up a simple navigation device. It consisted of a horseshoe-shaped balustrade and a chair. Merl walked far enough past the chair to trap Quaiyl in the horseshoe, and then he sat in it. If Quaiyl was dead center to the horseshoe, they were headed toward The Withering Tree. A little one way or the other, and Starturner could compensate with a turn of the ship’s wheel. So far, it had all gone to plan, and when Merl wasn’t within Stickback’s navigatory enclosure he just kept his eye on Quaiyl’s position and that was that.
Starturner adjusted the wheel and the ship’s bow inched around until Quaiyl was in the perfect place.
“Are we still going in the same direction?” Merl asked.
He’d been worried ever since everyone had decided that following Quaiyl’s direction was how they would get to where they wanted to be. What if they were wrong? Quaiyl had never said a word. He’d just started running toward the Isle of One’s coast. Frank had pointed out he’d gone in one direction, and one only: north-northeast.
“Yup,” Starturner replied. “Still the same. We should hit land tomorrow sometime. If my reckoning’s right, my charts are true, and my stars align, then we’ll end up somewhere off Alaria. Once there, we’ll drop anchor, and you can go seek out this Stobart Torped. I hope you know what he is and who he is?”
“Don’t even know he is a he,” Merl pointed out.
Starturner grunted. “Don’t trust Alaria. It’s a strange, strange place. They don’t take to giants, and we don’t take to them.”
“Why?”
“They’ve got customs that plain don’t suit us. They walk and talk like they’ve got poles stuffed down their back, and they see the worst in folk when there’s better to be had. Alarians are bastards in my book, plain and true. If you’re going to see them, make sure you’ve got yer story straight.”
“Story straight?” Merl asked, wishing he’d had some of Desmelda’s never-ending broth before he’d fled the adventurer’s bar.
“A witch, a wizard, and two folk traveling where they’ve no business? You think the soldiers n’ guards ain’t going t’stop you and ask yer business? Trust an old giant when he tells you they will. You need a story and that’s that.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Merl thought it would be a perfect if they were. A few giants and they’d be able to stomp through all of Alaria without any problems.
“Now that would make it even harder to explain. Giants are lonesome wanderers. We only bunch together to sail the seas looking fer adventure—or fight wars, we do that too. A few giants together would get everyone’s fears up an’ them poles the Alarians have up their back would get stiffer and stiffer. Stealth is not our thing. Stomping is.”
Merl frowned. That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. “Perhaps they’re all dead. What if the zombay curse ‘as got ‘em?”
“Ah,” said Starturner. “Then we’ll stomp across the lands fer you. But I don’t think it would have reached there yet. We’re a ways away from Tzeyon Bay and Harrison Reach, and even farther from Quintz, wherever that is.”
“How do you know if you don’t know where Quintz is? We might be on top of it.”
“Coz we picked up Ricklefess at Frobisher’s Folly and that’s about as far south as we’ve ever sailed of late. Though,” Starturner looked at the heavens, “I’d like to look farther. I’ve a mind there’ll be somethin’ there.”
“Great big monsters with curly teeth and tentacles the size of tree trunks that spring from the waves an’ pull ships into their horrid mouths,” Merl offered.
Starturner shook his head. “No, not them. Don’t want to meet one of them creations. So, what’s your story? Desmelda and Frank should be married, and you an’ Billy could be brothers. But Frank an’ Desmelda can’t be your mother n’ father, coz they’re too young, or you’re too old—one or the other. What about uncle and aunt?”
“Why do they have to be anything?” Merl asked. “Why can’t we just be traveling together?”
Starturner brought out a long, white pipe and stuffed its pot with leaf pulled from his pocket. Lighting it with a strike, he mulled over Merl’s question. “Because it’d be odd, and Alarians don’t like odd. Fer a witch t’be traveling with three men, well that smacks of the beginning of a cult. Fer a witch and a wizard t’be traveling with two men, it smacks of mischief. Fer a family t’be passin’ through, well that could be just moving to help with cropping and planting, felling or carving. You’ve just gotta make up your mind on what.”
Merl’s gaze fell on Quaiyl, and he decided they had forgotten about one thing that stuck out like a sore thumb. “What about the small, gray thing that’ll be running in front of us? Don’t you think that might cause a raised eyebrow or two?”
Starturner sucked his cheeks in, and then let out a little whistle. “That’s a bugger, that is. That’s an absolute bugger. What about a hat?” The giant let out a bellowing laugh as he doubled over the ship’s wheel.
Merl laughed along too, though he was sure a hat alone wouldn’t solve it. He imagined trying to sneak Quaiyl through Three Valleys but could see no way it was possible, and if he could see no way to sneak it through a familiar town, he’d have no chance through a strange country. The fact remained that a small, child-sized blob of gray-silver, human-shaped stuff would be marching along out in front of them as it forged straight for their destination.
Starturner stopped laughing. “It is a bugger, and I don’t think a hat will do it.”
The moon spread its silver light along the river’s slow-running surface, and glittering sequins reflected, mimicked the stars themselves. Billy sat the farthest forward. He took up the whole of the rowboat’s bow. Stormsurfer pulled hard on the oars, tearing inland like his very life depended on it.
Desmelda had come up with a solution to their travel dilemma, though none of them had particularly liked it. They would travel at night, rest during the day, and skirt any towns or villages as they tried to sneak through Alaria.
Frank had traveled its lands before, and he concurred with every one of Starturner’s thoughts on the place. He’d called it feudal, and informed Desmelda that the country had a habit of burning witches or dunking them until they drowned. Desmelda had preferred a dunking over a burning, although neither of the options were considered ideal. She’d then launched one of her tirades that somehow made Merl feel it was his fault Alarians were bastards.
Stormsurfer had agreed to take them as far upriver as he could in one night, just so long as he could be back on board by morning. He despised the Alarians nearly as much as he did dreadnails and vulgaries. According to him, they were the worst of the worst of the human races.
Once the plan had been hatched, it had only one problem left. They needed a way to tell the giants where they were. Fortunately, Farwatcher had come to the rescue. Farwatcher lived in the crow’s nest atop the ship’s towering central mast. He came down twice a day for ale and Slopmaker the chef’s servings before returning up top for a sleep. Farwatcher’s job was doubly important because of the depth of Wave Walker’s keel. Even a deep sea could be treacherous for it, especially when they passed near the numerous small isles and atolls that dotted The Sea of the Stranded Fool.
Farwatcher had an understanding with the ship’s loftier ecosystem, and that, apparently, consisted of a number of species of birds, not least among them sea pigeons. Merl had suspected that sea pigeons were much the same as land pigeons who had become lost, but then Farwatcher had explained.
“It’s like this. Pigeons always follow giants, and they nest in the rigging fer one reason, and one reason
alone. Crumbs. When a giant eats bread or biscuits and the crumbs fall on the deck, they’re the size of chunks of bread to you little folk, and a full meal fer yer pigeon. So, we have quite the couple up there. Now, believe it or not, keepin’ look out aboard a giant ship is pretty monotonous, especially if you’ve got as good’a eyesight as me. To stop meself from being bored, I trained me pigeons, didn’t I?”
Merl had no idea why Farwatcher had asked him the question, but the end result was that they now had a pigeon, and as long as they carried a cube of seasoned tuna, that pigeon would stick to them like barnacles on yer ass. Farwatcher, Merl surmised, spent too much time on his own. Either way, Billy now had charge of a pigeon called Princess Dewdrop, and the very strange Farwatcher was hopefully back up his mast. Merl couldn’t tell if Billy was happy with his role, or with stinking of tuna, but he was incredibly glad that Gloomy Joe hated the bird, so he didn’t have to look after the bird.
All they had to do was keep Princess Dewdrop in one piece, and when they were done with Stobart Torped they were to make their way to the nearest bit of coast and scribble their location on a note. They’d then affix it to Princess Dewdrop and set the bird on its way by finally feeding it the tuna. The giants would then come and get them. Which was fine, and the best they could offer. The only real issue was that Alaria was landlocked on three sides, and judging by Quaiyl’s direction, The Withering Tree was inland.
They’d passed one small settlement and ducked under one bridge, but Starturner had chosen their route well, avoiding all Alarian ports for fear of their enquiry. While the giants could drop anchor wherever and whenever they wanted, they certainly didn’t want to draw attention to Merl’s little party by showing their ship too soon. His plan was to sail on and weigh anchor in Grieving’s Port to the east and pretend to repair the ship’s hull while they waited,
Starturner turned the rowboat toward the riverbank and soon had its bow planted in the soft loam. Frank and Billy jumped out, but Quaiyl held, straining at the boat’s port side as the curious thing tried to go north. The moment Merl clambered out, however, Quaiyl followed and started venturing along the riverbank. After bidding farewell to Stormsurfer, Frank forged inland, ignoring Quaiyl while he distanced the group from the waterway. They entered a thick forest. Quaiyl stayed just north of Merl, copying Merl’s route like a slightly displaced shadow. After a good while, Frank turned north, and they began following Quaiyl.
