In the Wake of the Kraken

by C. Vandyke

It was more than just mermaids with their patches of scales blending into flesh that clawed their way onto the pathway, sharpened teeth bared as Tamsin stumbled back. Other bodies pulled themselves onto the island behind her, bloated and mangled, flesh sloughing from their bones as they breached the water and shambled their way onto dry land. Her heart skipped as she teetered down the path, pumping her legs as fast as they would go across the uneven ground. Try as she might, though, it wasn’t fast enough. The swollen corpses descended upon her as she reached the island, enveloping her into a ring of living death.

  The sounds escaping from her as she hacked at the walking bodies clawing at her were unnatural, desperate and feral as she cleaved off limbs and shoved away the pawing grips of too-soft fingertips. They hissed as their jagged nails dug into her skin, pulled at her hair, tore at her clothes. She tried fighting them all off, but there were so many—so many—all reeking of rot and moaning in an agony she wasn’t sure she was causing them. Her grunts turned to screams as she warded them off with her torch and thrust her blade into them, one after another, their bodies going limp–but for how long, she couldn’t be sure. All she could do was swipe, stab, stay the fuck alive, just until she reached that goddamn Well—

  Her blade pulled back from the gut of a rotund, naked corpse, and she collapsed on the ground next to it, gasping for breath and witnessing the felled corpses around her. They were all motionless, innards splayed onto the stones like a gratuitous painting. She huffed, pushing down the nausea as she pulled herself to her feet. There was a stitch in her side, blood running into her eye, and a sharp jab that ran up her right leg as she put pressure on her foot. Her coat was a shredded mess, hanging off her like rags.

  The door behind her shuddered, a thunderous pound, as the wood around the hinges began to splinter.

  Tamsin sputtered as she limped up to the Well, willing her feet to stay steady underneath her, though her legs felt like they would give out at any moment. Reaching the edge of the hole, she sprawled herself along the edge, pulling up the chain that she prayed held the well bucket.

  Another cacophonous strike echoed through the cavern, and she nearly let the chain slip through her fingers. As the bucket crested the stone edge of the Well, she hungrily grasped at it, eager to drink of the contents inside.

  This was it. She’d done it. All the torture and the guilt and rage and regret—it would actually mean something—

  As she put her chapped lips to the bucket and tipped it backward, she paused.

  It was empty.

  Pulling it away, she looked into it. Nothing. Not a drop glistened from inside the bucket. She reached a shaking hand inside, desperately feeling around for any hint of moisture.

  Her heart sank. Bone dry.

  Glancing into the hole, nothing but darkness stared back at her. Shaking, she tossed the torch in her hand down the hole, watching the pinprick of light flicker and fade into the darkness. She waited for the splash—please, there needed to be a splash—

  But it never came.

  She turned herself away from the hole, leaning back on the stone edge in shock.

  The Well of Eternal Life had run dry.

  Her fleet, her crew, her reputation—all of it gone. For a dried-up hole in the ground.

  For the first time in months, Tamsin laughed. Hysterical and unhinged, tears streaming down her face.

  She listened as the Holy City outside continued to pound on the bolted door. She watched as the waters in front of her shifted again, another dozen living corpses lumbering out of the depths and advancing toward her with twisted moans escaping from them like sighs. And her laughter roared louder as one stopped in front of her, staring down at her with almost luminous eyes. One green and one blue.

  Tamsin the Tattered smiled up at her first mate.

  Today, she lived forever.

  And as the tears streamed down her face and her crew tore into her, Tamsin decided she wasn’t ready.

  The Curse of the Crimson Eye

  Robert Mammone

  When a ship burns, it dies.

  The screams of the dying faded as the crackling grew louder, demonic laughter filling the twilit sky. Flames leaped through the rigging and burning rope fell onto the deck, where smouldering bodies lay like blackened petals. The inferno burned with an unnatural fury; already the quarterdeck, where Captain Hellion once ruled as a tyrant, was well ablaze. Watching all this, Corvin tried holding together the shattered remnants of his sanity. All around him embers floated; orange, then red, then black, dancing as the ship died.

  Even as the Maiden’s Kiss drifted aimlessly, smoke pouring into the sky, even as shadows danced and leaped and clawed, Corvin’s attention remained fixed on one particular shadow moving with a remorseless volition. Where that crimson-tinged shadow trod, death followed. And now, as timbers warped and cracked, the shadow turned its red-limned gaze onto him...

  Corvin stood at the prow of the Maiden’s Kiss, his eyes closed, his bracered arms raised above his head. His senses ranged out, deep beneath the surface of the ocean and high above the crow’s nest. Any hint of a current or a breeze, anything for him to latch onto to move the becalmed brigantine. On his second sweep, with the sounds of the ship a blur, Corvin sensed...something… A distant blaze, a dream of power. He focussed on it, felt the bracers grow warm as arcane magic poured through them. Then he recoiled, gasping.

  Something had touched his soul, a sickness that sucked at his marrow. In that fugue, Corvin sensed a dark presence. Blacker than night it was, shrouding a crimson pulse. Suddenly, an eye opened, red-rimmed and hungry. He felt that eye turn its burning gaze on him. Icy fear flooded him, and Corvin opened his mouth to scream when—

  Like a drowning man surfacing, Corvin found himself again. He grabbed for the rail to stop from toppling into the water. The day had shaded into evening. Great fingers of rusty light reached across the ocean like the Crimson King readying himself to drag the brigantine beneath the waters into the abyssal depths. Shaken by the vision, Corvin breathed a shuddering sigh of relief. As the bracers cooled, he looked around.

  Despite the hour, it was furnace-hot, made worse by the lack of wind. The crew was fractious, Captain Hellion more so, because this hunting season had been as barren as the Certurian Desert. Nursing unspoken grievances, the crew moved about as sluggishly as the drifting Maiden’s Kiss.

  ‘Holy Rek save us. It’s a black barge.’ Shark’s voice dripped with superstitious dread.

  ‘Don’t you dare say that, Shark. Don’t you dare.’ A crewmate standing nearby, Copper, made a sign of protection with his left hand. His earring winked bloody in the fading light. Unwillingly, Corvin turned and saw Shark standing beside the figurehead at the ship’s bowsprit, his shaking finger pointing to a black smudge in the distance.

  ‘Holy Rek,’ Copper said, echoing Shark. He looked at Corvin, panic written all over his face. ‘What should we do?’

  ‘You know not to speak to the conjurer. Hellion will have your guts for garters. We tell the Captain,’ Shark said and spit over the rail. Corvin watched the pair hasten to the quarterdeck, where Captain Hellion paced back and forth. Despite Shark’s words, Corvin drifted after them, his bracers suddenly cold.

  The quarterdeck offered an unimpeded view of the ocean from horizon to horizon. The water, tinged bloody by the dying sun, shimmered quicksilver bright. It had been a bad season, made worse for the deaths early on, deaths that some of the crew said proved the Maiden’s Kiss was an unlucky ship. One man drowned; the other died choking on a fishbone. The third man to die did so on Hellion’s orders. The corpse swung from the yardarm for a full day as a warning against speaking of ill-luck again.

  ‘Captain? Captain Hellion.’ Corvin heard an unfamiliar note in Shark’s voice. Fear. Shark clambered up the ladder onto the quarterdeck. His bare arms and face were covered in tattoos, faded to vague inkblots that looked like storm clouds. Top and bottom front teeth were filed to points, as was the way of his tribe. More than once, when leading a
raid, he’d buried those teeth into the throat of a sailor defending his ship, soft flesh ripped out in a spray of blood. It took much to make Shark afraid.

  Hellion unsteadily paced the quarterdeck. On embarking three months ago, his mood had been bad and grew worse with the passing of the season. The men crewing a pirate ship do so in the safe knowledge their existence depends on bloody violence and plunder. They will raid a ship, kill its crew and glory in it rather than spend a day in honest work. A pirate captain who cannot provide that glory is a captain living in constant fear of mutiny. The crew of the Maiden’s Kiss had watched in sullen silence as other pirate ships feasted on easy pickings, leaving only a few bloated, fish-eaten corpses wallowing in the ocean. Already partial to a drink, Hellion had gotten deeper into his cups the longer the crew waited for gold.

  Hellion stopped his pacing and squinted at Shark. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ship, Captain. A black barge.’

  Several of the crew working in earshot stopped at Shark’s echoing words. Everyone who sailed the oceans knew what a black barge was; after all, where there is magic in the world, there are dark things. Frightening things.

  ‘Get back to work, you dogs,’ Hellion roared, his face purpling with rage. He held a clay jug in his hand and took a swig from it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The First Mate, Tobias, stood beside the helmsman, watching Hellion with a cautious eye.

  ‘Come here,’ Hellion said, his voice dropping to a low snarl. Shark, perhaps reminded of his hanged crewmate, came to Hellion with the look of a whipped cur. Hellion held his hand out and snapped his fingers. Tobias, something of a whipped cur himself, came over.

  ‘Fetch me my telescope, and look sharpish.’ Venturing hastily to a small structure at the rear of the quarterdeck, Tobias returned with Hellion’s telescope.

  Taking the verdigris-stained copper-sheathed device, Hellion looked at Shark. ‘You go around shouting something like that again, and I’ll keel haul you all the way back to Labruma, do you hear?’

  Shark’s head nodded like it was about to drop off. Corvin sidled up to Hellion, who looked sidelong at him but said nothing. The runes stamped into the bracers Corvin wore ensured the conjurer’s magic could only be shaped to influence the weather. Otherwise, freed of them, Corvin would’ve enacted a wild, bloody vengeance on the man who held him enslaved. Both men knew it. Extending the telescope, Hellion clamped it to his eye. For a long few seconds, he focussed on the dark object sliding past a mile away.

  ‘Dog’s right,’ Hellion muttered. ‘Maybe.’ But greed lit his eyes. ‘It is a ship, of that you can be sure.’ He looked from Shark, to Tobias, and then to Corvin. ‘Can you summon up a breeze?’

  A half-smile crossed Corvin’s face. Even though he held the whip hand, Hellion didn’t like him. Of all the people on board, Corvin was the only one who gave him pause. The captain might be the master and Corvin the slave, but unlike the rest of the crew, who he could hang or keel haul, Hellion, who hated needing anyone, needed Corvin most.

  ‘I can, Captain. But the men...they won’t like raiding a black barge.’

  ‘Damn them, and damn you,’ Hellion said. He took a drink from the jug once more, and this only heartened his courage. ‘Dead sorcerers aren’t poor if they know what they’re about. Get the longboat into the water.’ He pointed to Tobias, then Shark. ‘You two, with me and the conjurer. Those barges have no crew. We’ll get across and see what pickings are to be had.’

  Shark went white, and Tobias looked pale himself. Corvin smiled, though, to see their discomfort. A man with nothing takes his pleasures where he can.

  Summoning a zephyr out of the hot air, Corvin shaped it so it pushed the longboat faster than two men rowing would.

  ‘Would that you could do that for the Kiss,’ Hellion grumbled, sitting in the stern. He knew as well as anyone that summoning such a wind was nigh impossible - conjurers could enhance what already existed, but calling up a breeze from dead air had killed better men than Corvin.

  The bracers on his wrists grew hot, warmed by the magic flowing through them. The engraved runes gleamed faintly. Hellion glanced askance at them, his gaze shifting uneasily to Corvin’s. Corvin might be a slave, but he had value, even if he was nothing more than a tool for a man too greedy to know when to stop. Corvin smiled and nodded, and Hellion looked away.

  The longboat drew closer, the sail snapping in the breeze. The ocean was like a mirror, quiet and dark. ‘Tis a black barge, Captain,’ Shark said. There was no triumph in his voice, only terror. He glanced over his shoulder at the Maiden’s Kiss. His face was white. ‘We should turn back.’

  The black barge was mastless, a wide caravel wallowing in the ocean. Despite this, propelled by a dead sorcerer’s final working, it slowly carved a path through the water.

  ‘Shut your trap,’ Hellion said softly. The look he gave the barge made Corvin shiver. ‘Tell me, conjurer, about these black barges.’

  ‘Rare,’ Corvin said, staring raptly at it. ‘This world is old, and the magic is dying. Fewer and fewer sorcerers exist. Their order has decreed that when they die, they must make the journey to the Lighthouse at the End of the World, which some claim is the source of all magic. Beneath the gyring stars, a barge circles the island widdershins three times before vanishing into the Utter West.’

  ‘And treasure?’ Hellion gave Corvin a hungry look. ‘What about treasure?’

  ‘You dare too much, Captain,’ Corvin said. He glanced at the setting sun; the mixture of red light and deepest shadows mingled into something unholy. ‘Desecrating a black barge on its journey can only bring ruin to the men who dare it.’ Shark and Tobias glanced at each other, their faces unreadable.

  ‘Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do,’ Hellion snarled. ‘Tell me what treasure lies aboard.’ By then, they were alongside the barge. A scent came off it, of incense from the far south and an underlying rot. And beneath that rot, something...wrong.

  ‘All sorcerers are placed inside a triple coffin. Wood for the Tree of Life. Stone for Eternal Balance. And beaten silver to represent the moon, from which they draw their power. Inlaid into the silver will be precious stones and gems.’

  Hellion licked his lips. ‘A king’s ransom. Treasure enough for all of us.’ He reached down and lifted a coil of rope, fashioning one end into a loop.

  ‘And inside the coffin?’ Shark’s voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘Inside the coffin?’ Now it was Corvin’s turn to smile. ‘Why, Shark, the sorcerer’s corpse. Triple sealed, to keep him in.’ His smile grew broader. ‘Maybe.’

  They heard a slap. Hellion had tossed the looped end of the rope at the barge, where it caught on a spar. He pulled, tightening it into a knot, then fastened the other end to an iron loop in the prow of the longboat.

  With the others, Corvin clambered hand over hand up the rope and onto the barge’s deck.

  ‘Why is there no crew?’ Hellion brought the jug to his lips and sucked greedily at it.

  ‘No need,’ Corvin said. He closed his eyes and inhaled, savouring the power in the air. ‘The tides of magic guide every barge to the Lighthouse.’

  ‘So the sorcerer’s casket is here, unprotected?’ Hellion laughed. He was most of the way to being drunk.

  ‘The legends talk of a curse, Captain,’ Corvin said. He felt lightheaded with the power coursing through the barge.

  ‘What sort of curse?’ Shark said.

  ‘Damnation. Utter damna—’

  Hellion’s fist knocked Corvin off his feet. The world blurred, and he struggled to rise when he felt a hand clamped over his face.

  ‘Say one more word, dog, and you’ll dance off the yardarm,’ Hellion said, spraying him with spittle.

  The lengthening shadows deepened. Through his daze, Corvin heard Shark whimper. Releasing his grip, Hellion stepped back. His shadow fell across Corvin like a shroud.

  ‘You’re all like women. Miserable and complaining and useless. Come on, damn your lazy hides, let’s get t
his treasure.’

  Corvin saw Tobias move to help him, only to be stopped when Shark grabbed him by the arm and gave a warning shake of his head. While Corvin struggled to his feet, they joined Hellion, who clattered down a gangway into the gloom beneath the deck.

  ‘Make light, conjurer,’ Hellion said, his face hidden in shadows. Holding the bracers to his lips, tasting the metal on his tongue, Corvin whispered a few words. The runes flared into life, casting a silvery light that sent shadows sprawling ahead of them.

  The corridor was narrow, the ceiling low. The smell of incense increased in the confined space, and the stink of rot, which Corvin was sure only he could scent, was stronger still. A ladder halfway along the corridor took them down into the barge’s depths. Despite the light cast by Corvin’s bracers, the darkness pressed close. Someone moaned. Hellion glanced back. His earlier bravado had vanished, leaving a pale face, sickly in the scant light. The barge creaked and groaned like a dying old man.

  ‘Stairs.’ Hellion’s voice drifted back to Corvin. He held the bracers high, but it did little good. Soon, they were descending what felt like an endless staircase, spiralling deeper and deeper into the darkness and farther and farther from the light.

  ‘What was that?’ Tobias moaned. Somewhere below in the cold and darkness, something large thudded against the hull. There was a pause, and then again. And again.

  ‘We should go back,’ Shark said, almost whimpering.

  ‘Shut your mouth, or I’ll gut you. Bring that light here,’ Hellion said, his voice muffled and echoing at the same time. ‘We’ve reached the bottom.’ It seemed as if they had been descending for minutes, but a bloody light bled through a chink in the caulking. They were still above sea level.

  Corvin did as ordered. The light led them through a narrow door into a room thick with incense. Lifting a hand, Corvin saw the light reflected back to him as if from a thousand eyes.