A Blight of Blackwings

by Kevin Hearne

  The first stake I successfully enchanted had to be destroyed, since it actively repelled Murr. I crafted all subsequent ones with an exception for bloodcats. That meant the camp was vulnerable to them, but since Murr was the only bloodcat around for many leagues, it wasn’t a real danger. The greatest peril would come from other strange animals of a type I hadn’t met yet and therefore could not include in the enchantment. I left birds out of the enchantment entirely so that Eep and all the other winged creatures could land on the ground without trouble.

  Enchantment took a lot out of me. I could usually only do two or three stakes a day before I began to feel excessively tired. But two a day would suffice, Olet assured me. The idea was to build up a stock of them over the winter so that they’d have plenty to trade in the spring. Protection from land-based predators would be one of the camp’s first and best exports. There weren’t any flesh eels up this far north, but I made sure to include them in the enchantment; that alone would give people the freedom to move about south of the Gravewater. Land-based trade could begin if small caravans—no more than five wagons—took a stake with them.

  That work, while tiring, did not take up an especially long chunk of my day. That left me free to pursue my other interests: Finding new creatures, drawing them in my journal, and exploring the unseen deeps of the Northern Yawn with my kenning. And thinking of Tamhan and wondering what he was doing while I shivered in the cold.

  I was often accompanied by a woman from the shipwrecked crew as I meandered about. Her name was Haesha, and she would point to things and I would tell her the word for it in Nentian. She would repeat it back to me and sometimes try to use it in a very simple sentence. Almost every member of their crew was paired up like that with a Nentian as they tried to learn our language and help out as best they could. Their best was pretty good on all counts, from what I could tell. I didn’t know much about them except that they were from an island nation called Joabei and they’d been trying for many years to find a northern passage around the world. Fintan was picking up a lot more of their language than I was, since he had that perfect memory, but he was also probably the only one really trying. The Joabeian crew had decided it made more sense to learn the language of their hosts rather than teach theirs to us. Plus, they didn’t seem especially eager to hang out with the Hathrim or learn their language. There was still a lot of mistrust on both sides. I could tell that Haesha had many questions to ask me but understood that she would need to wait awhile before she could ask them properly.

  That didn’t stop her from trying, at least once a day, to draw something in the sand and talk about it.

  One day was particularly embarrassing.

  I heard through Fintan that one of the Joabeian crew had shared a bed with a Nentian man the night before. He looked concerned about it, but I didn’t understand why. Maybe he just didn’t like gossip.

  “Is that a problem?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “How would it be a problem? People are going to be people.”

  “We don’t have the ability to talk about relationships yet,” he said. “What if that had significance to the Joabeians beyond mere sex? What if jealousies start to develop on one side or the other or both? What if—”

  “People are going to be people,” I repeated. “So, yes, all of that will happen and more.”

  And what happened to me was that once we were down at the beach, Haesha drew simple figures of a man and a woman in the sand and correctly identified them. Then it got awkward as it became clear she wanted to learn the word for kissing.

  She didn’t try to kiss me, but she did make kissing noises and faces and said a phrase in her language that I knew was a request for how to say that in Nentian. She remembered the Nentian formulation for it and asked, “How you say?”

  I shifted my weight and scooched away before answering, trying to be clear that I wasn’t looking for a practical demonstration, and then I told her the word in a flat voice, not meeting her eyes or smiling. This was just teaching.

  What followed after that was a whole lot of pantomime and me trying to guess what she wanted. She stood and spread her hands over her abdomen, palms flat. Then she pushed them forward and ran them up and down in a spherical shape. “Woman,” she said, then pointed to her imaginary large belly with one hand and said, “Small woman inside.”

  “Pregnant,” I guessed. “Or baby. I’m not sure which.”

  She wanted the words for both, of course, and with some additional drawing in the sand, she understood which was which.

  My urgent hope that she would stop there was silly and in vain, because people were going to be people. Through additional drawings, gestures, and some rather terrifying grunts, she made it clear she’d like to know some Nentian words for making a baby.

  I leapt to my feet and backed away, shaking my head. As far as I was concerned, Haesha could learn those words from her crewmate who had performed such actions the previous night.

  My scramble startled Murr and Eep, who both came to my side and faced Haesha, Murr growling low in his throat and Eep spreading her wings in a threat display and screeching.

  Haesha immediately prostrated herself in that body language we’d come to understand was a Joabeian apology. I calmed myself and then my friends and felt like an ass for overreacting.

  “Haesha, it’s okay.”

  She peeked up at me and I repeated myself to make sure she understood from my voice and face that I wasn’t angry with her. I held up my hand and said, “Wait,” which she understood. She rose to a kneel with her hands folded in her lap, a stance of patience. I found a clear stretch of sand near where I was and knelt, after asking Murr and Eep to move aside and give me some room. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but if the Joabeians were thinking of pairing up with various Nentians for some reason, I needed to break that egg and poke the yolk fast.

  I drew six figures in three pairs and then beckoned Haesha to approach and look at them. She came over and adopted the same posture as before in the sand, a patient kneel. I pointed to the first couple on the right, a man and a woman, then drew a heart between them. I taught her the word for that kind of relationship and that orientation, and she repeated it. Then I pointed to the next two couples: two women and two men. I drew hearts between each and taught her the single word for those relationships and orientations. Some languages have separate words for them, but Nentian used a single word: sakhret.

  I tested her and she repeated the correct words for each relationship. I then circled the two men and pointed at myself. “I am sakhret. Abhi is sakhret.”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth formed a tiny o of surprise, and I waited for some hint of condemnation to appear there, but none did. Instead, she smiled and chuckled.

  “Abhi sakhret,” she said, and put curled fingers up to her eyes and made a little whimpering sound, as if she was sad. Then she smiled and chuckled again to communicate that she wasn’t really sad but meant it in more of an “Aw, bad luck” sort of way. Then she spoke at length in her language, not a single word of which I understood, and she knew that, but we both realized after spending days together that much can be communicated through tone of voice and expression. In this case she was entirely friendly and bubbly, and she ended by nodding and saying, “Abhi good,” so I didn’t worry too much about what I missed. But I think she understood why I had been reluctant to discuss terms for intercourse with her earlier. I didn’t want her to think that I was interested in it with her or any other member of her crew.

  “Haesha good too,” I replied. Then I very purposely rose, turned to face the water, and pointed. “Krakens,” I said.

  “Yes. Krakens,” she replied.

  We had been making a habit of traveling down to the beach every day, partially for ease of drawing in the sand, and partially so that I could conduct a census of the krake
ns nearby. If our theory about this being their breeding ground was correct, then at some point I should become aware of an increase in the kraken population. The number had remained stable for a couple of weeks, but even that was useful to know. We were getting a vague idea about how long their gestation or spawning or whatever it was took. And once the little krakens were born and the temperatures dropped precipitously, we should see the population decrease as they moved out of the Yawn and into warmer seas. That day there was an increase in population, and because of our earlier conversation, I could tell Haesha why. “Baby krakens,” I said, and held up my hands twice, all fingers spread, to test her. She chewed her lip before guessing. She gave me the word for thirty instead of twenty, but that wasn’t bad. We hadn’t reviewed numbers in a week.

  This area, the spawning ground, was the reason no one had ever successfully navigated the Northern Yawn. For the scant few months in which this sea was free of ice, it was simply full of krakens.

  If I could come up with an enchantment to protect ships—to repel krakens, at least, if not prevent other hazards—it would have a greater effect on the world than even the enchantment of stakes to allow free movement across the Nentian plains. People could sail anywhere and trade! Or, unfortunately, invade.

  The stories we’d heard about the surprise invasion of Rael and Brynlön by strange giants from across the sea made me wonder if the krakens might not have been a kind of blessing instead of a curse. Indeed, what if they were there precisely to keep the continents separate? Would it be right for me to make them obsolete? Protecting fleets against krakens might usher in a new age of war.

  But it seemed that an age of war had descended upon us anyway, without my interference. Someone across the ocean had solved the riddle of krakens before me. Perhaps I would only be evening the scales. Perhaps I was supposed to do this.

  The Sixth Kenning had been hidden for an awfully long time. Had someone found it years ago, no doubt we would have been crossing the oceans years ago. But now that one culture had already found a way to neutralize the kraken threat, ours needed an answer, and…I wound up being bitten by a bunch of bloodcats? That seemed like a ridiculous chain of cause and effect. It sounded like I was looking through “lenses of destiny,” as my father would have put it. People put them on to convince themselves that they were special and not just meat like everyone else. It was most likely me assigning divine significance to a matter of coincidence.

  Karlef and Suris had been working with Koesha and others to build a fishing boat—a project that did much to soothe tensions. It was finished now, and they had proven it seaworthy and were going to let me try to enchant it, but Olet had made clear that she wanted that island off to the northeast explored before a single spinefish got pulled out of the water. Eep’s assertion and subsequent confirmation that there was a man living on that island had everyone curious. I was leaning a bit more toward furious; he’d shot a couple of arrows at Eep and missed. But his intent was clear, and it provided me a certain clarity regarding his character.

  We saw him one day, observing us from a distance, in a small vessel. No doubt the smoke of our many campfires had drawn his attention. He was too far away for us to make out any features, and no doubt he had the same difficulty. But even though we stood on the shore and waved to him, he behaved as if there was nothing to see and rowed back to his island. The krakens didn’t bother him, everyone noted.

  Enchanting a boat, I learned, was much more difficult than enchanting a stake. There’s a lot more surface to be covered and I tired after an hour of pressing my hands to the hull, infusing it with what I hoped was a ward against krakens. It would take days, and I informed Olet of the fact after the first hour.

  “That’s okay. We’re going to get started on the next project, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Koesha would like to get her people home. For that, we’re going to need a bigger boat.”

  They moved the fishing boat to one side and began prepping a major operation. Leisuen and Koesha were both competent shipwrights, and while the Hathrim weren’t expert woodworkers, they were excellent at moving heavy stuff around, and once it was made clear that this project would send the Joabeians away, the Thayilist faction did all they could to speed construction.

  Once I had enchanted the entire hull of the fishing boat, I informed Olet, and she got so excited that she set La Mastik’s head on fire and said that’s how hot she was to find out more about the man on the island. For the trip across to the island, she was sending Haesha, Fintan, Suris, and me. Eep would come with me, but Murr would stay behind and nap in my tent.

  Suris rowed, while Fintan and Haesha did their best not to look nervous. I trailed my fingers in the water over the side to monitor the activity of krakens as we cruised over the top of them.

  Once we cleared the river mouth, there was some time before we floated directly over the drop-off to the deep channel where most of them were nesting. My three companions took turns asking me what the krakens were doing, because they couldn’t stand the suspense.

  “Still nothing,” I said in answer to Fintan asking, “How about now?”

  But that changed once we were directly above the deep water. A whole lot of movement, a surge of bulk and tentacles toward the surface.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, and that was the wrong thing to say, since it instantly panicked the others.

  But a second after I said it, the movement roiling in the deeps subsided and coiled back into darkness and whatever passed for kraken contentment.

  “It’s okay,” I said, and repeated it a couple of times until the shouting stopped. “They’re not coming. Keep going, Suris.”

  “What happened?” Fintan asked.

  “They sensed the ship all at once and reacted. I don’t know how they can tell we’re up here, but it was a definite reaction. Four or five of them at least began to rise toward us, fast, but once they began rising the ward must have reached them and they changed their mind. I think we’re going to be fine. I’m going to continue monitoring, of course, but there’s no need to worry at the moment.”

  Suris sighed heavily in relief and pulled at the oars. “If you make me shit myself, I’m going to sit on your head.”

  “Ha. Okay. I’ll be careful.”

  Suris had incredible stamina to go with her strength, and she had us rowed out to the island in an hour. The docks that Eep had scouted were on the eastern side, but it would have taken much longer to get there, so we dropped anchor in the shallows and waded up to a rocky beach on the southern coast. I asked Eep to fly around and locate where the man was, if she could.

  “Right,” Fintan said. “Any ideas about what we should do until we hear back from Eep?”

  “Head for the buildings?” I offered, with a shrug and a gesture toward the cluster of thatched roofs we could see in the distance.

  We did that. Once we gained a bit of elevation from the beach and could see the buildings better, they were uniformly unimpressive—except for one.

  There was a line of long, low stone houses with sloppy masonry and poorly thatched roofs. The rock was a washed-out gray, and the mortar was cracked. A stable of similarly poor construction squatted to one side, along with some other buildings that had served various functions. My guess was that the longhouses were bunkhouses for laborers, all long gone. The focus of their labor must have been the exquisite structure that nearly preened in the sunlight, it was so pretty. I’m not an expert in architecture, but it was unlike anything I’d ever seen in Ghurana Nent. And the materials had quite obviously been imported. The roof was made of fired clay tiles infused or glazed with some sort of sparkling material so that it winked and shone in the sun. The stone of the walls was not a jumble of random rocks but rather finely cut stones plainly quarried elsewhere and shipped to this island. Which meant the docks had seen some significant c
argo come in at some point.

  Eep returned, and once she was situated comfortably on my shoulder, I asked her if she had found the man. She nodded.

  “Is he near that shiny house?”

  The answer was affirmative. Since we could see no one in front of it, I guessed.

  “Is he behind it, in the back?”

  Yes, he was.

  “We have a destination!” Fintan crowed. “Let’s go.”

  As we neared the place, I noticed that the island was pretty quiet. There weren’t a lot of trees around and there wasn’t a variety of vegetation either. It was tundra, basically, some spare and basic grasses and the dying remnants of ephemeral succulents. With so little food, it was no surprise that wildlife was lacking. But it seemed to me to be an especially barren place, which led me to wonder aloud to the others.

  “Why would anyone want to spend all the resources that house represents to live here? I mean, why move to an island that’s frozen most of the year, that no one knows about, and that’s surrounded by krakens?”

  “Good questions,” Fintan said. “I was thinking along those lines myself. This represents extreme hermitage, except for the vast expenditure of resources. Normally hermits tend to be ascetic, don’t they? But that house is pretty lush. Or plush. Something like that. And how did they get everything past the krakens, by the way, since they presumably didn’t have a convenient member of the Sixth Kenning shepherding them across the Northern Yawn?”