by Mel Odom
Cabin space for officers and for important passengers occupied the stern.
Raisho immediately turned his attention to the stern. He kept his sword in hand as he went.
Fearfully, Juhg trailed behind the big sailor. He took heart in Raisho’s reasoning. The wizard’s quarters had to be located in the stern, but Juhg didn’t know how the man had withstood the stench that permeated the ship.
Perhaps he used a spell, Juhg reasoned. He opened his own mouth to breathe and only felt the impact of the stink lessened in a small degree. His bare feet left tracks in the creeping sludge and slime that coated the deck. At that moment, he was grateful for the care and work that Captain Attikus put into Windchaser.
Never once, even with all the cargo the ship shifted, did Juhg remember Windchaser’s decks ever feeling like the grunge he now walked through. He felt certain that his poor feet would never be clean again or be free of the putrescence of goblinkin filth. At the very least, it would take a flensing knife to whittle the flesh from his foot bones to—
Raisho stopped at a locked door. Two others he had tried had opened at his touch. He produced his lockpick again and felt for the lock.
“Careful,” Juhg said, striving not to let his teeth chatter. “There might not just be a lock on the door. The wizard could have an alarm warded onto the wood. Arch-mage Kulkinny in The Foul Master of Heart’s Bane often left his door ensorcelled to tell him when someone tried to—”
The lock clicked open.
Raisho froze.
For a moment, Juhg thought a spell had struck his friend and rooted him to the spot. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He couldn’t carry his friend to safety and he couldn’t leave him either.
Then Raisho shifted and pushed the door open with his free hand. He kept his cutlass crossed in front of him to parry any attack that might come.
Drawn by the innate curiosity that had lured so many dwellers to their doom, Juhg peered around his friend. Peeking into places where he hadn’t been, especially if he wasn’t supposed to go there, was catnip to a dweller.
Warm yellow light filled the small room. Opposite the door, a sagging bed occupied the wall beneath built-in shelves. Robes, some of them plain and unadorned, shared space on the right with other, more wizardly, garb. A heavy leather traveling cloak showing years of hard use lay across a small chair.
A desk sat on the left side of the room. A narrow trough held a capped inkwell and a sleeve of goose quills.
There were no books in sight, but Juhg’s interest peaked instantly. Whenever you find ink and quills, books are not far away. Forgetting himself for the moment in the fresh flush of discovery, he moved forward around Raisho.
The big sailor stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Hold up there, bookworm,” Raisho ordered in a hoarse whisper. “Ye don’t know what mayhap be waitin’ on ye in that room. An’ it were yer own warnin’ ye were all set to forget about.”
Chastised, Juhg put aside the excitement that screamed through him and stopped at the door. He stared longingly at the desk, wondering what secrets the drawers might hold. Still, a wizard’s quarters couldn’t be a safe place.
With cautious care, Raisho stepped across the threshold and into the room. He looked almost surprised that something didn’t immediately leap on him.
“Didn’t expect it to be this easy,” he said.
And you may have just cursed us with that bold statement, Juhg thought. But he didn’t retreat. “We probably haven’t got much time.”
Raisho nodded. “I’m likin’ this less as we go.”
“There’s a desk.”
“I don’t see no book.”
“It’s probably inside the desk. The wizard wouldn’t leave it out where something could happen to it.”
Raisho scowled. “Like as not, he wouldn’t leave it in a desk where it can be so easily pilfered neither.”
“The goblins wouldn’t want it. They’d have no use for it.”
“They could sell it.” As always when it found its own way, Raisho’s mind turned to profits.
“And risk a wizard’s wrath?”
“Which is what ye an’ me are doin’ here now, I might remind ye.”
The reminder, Juhg thought, was a very unhappy one, though timely. He gazed at the desk. “Let me try the desk. I can be very careful.”
Raisho hesitated.
“You can keep watch at the door,” Juhg pointed out.
“An’ we’d probably be the better for it,” Raisho said. “At least, I can keep me mind on lookin’ out for goblins an’ the like.”
Juhg ignored the comment. Quelling his fears, he crossed to the desk. He focused on the evil ways of the goblinkin and those who worked with them. No book should ever be kept by goblins.
He ran his fingers over the desk, searching with nimble alertness for tricks and traps. Wizards were a crafty and canny lot by nature, and the more evil they were, the more crafty and canny they were. He found nothing untoward. Quick as a wink, though, he filched the inkwell and quills from the desktop. Writing utensils were hard to come by along the mainland too.
With the inkwell and quills inside the kit he wore at his waist, Juhg tried the middle door. Although it stuck and seemed jammed into the desk somewhat crossways, the drawer pulled out.
Inside was a book.
The sight of the book took Juhg’s breath away. The book was slim and tidy in appearance, standing out at once against the crusted grime that littered the drawer. A blue handkerchief provided a bed for the book. Maroon cloth bound the book. Black writing of a language Juhg couldn’t read and couldn’t immediately identify—which was strange because he was well versed in several languages and trained to recognize scores of others—scrawled across the front. A black lithograph of a small cottage on a hill filled the lower right cover.
He studied the book for a moment, still wary of the wizard’s possible magicks. If the volume was the wizard’s personal spell book—and Juhg doubted that because most wizards’ books tended to be invisible to normal eyes or hidden away in pockets of otherwhereness until such time as the wizard called them forth—it was much too slim to hold much in the way of spells.
Probably a discourse or a treatise, Juhg told himself. The Librarians at the Vault who still labored to sort out all the books gathered after Lord Kharrion rose to power among the goblinkin often began their initial separations based on heft alone when those decisions couldn’t be made based on language or interior illustrations.
But so many important things arrived in the pages of discourses and treatises. Scholars with a true talent for words could unveil so many large mysteries with only a few well-chosen words. Secrets to crafts and metallurgies and healing herbs had gotten lost during the Cataclysm. The Librarians worked hard to rescue those processes and applications from the books they studied.
And histories, Juhg reminded himself. Normally, histories came fat and unwieldy, no matter what the language. Paper books weighed in by the ream and books like the Vuwelchel Shark People’s shell books rolled along in wheelbarrows. But every now and again, a slim book detailed a monarch’s rule or a year of trade that brought so much understanding of a culture. He loved histories because the more skilled writers painted such bright and vivid pictures of lost lands and countries and peoples that might never be seen again.
“Juhg,” Raisho called.
Juhg’s mind snapped back to the moment. He realized he’d forgotten to breathe. He did so now, and the sounds of the ship lying at anchor—the lap of the waves against the hull and the creak of the timber and the clank of the chain—all returned in a rush.
He reached for the book.
Movement froze Juhg in place like a mouse that had spotted a hawk. Then he realized that the movement rippled along the desk’s top surface.
The wood rolled and drew up airy and light like bread dough. It twisted and shifted, becoming an open-mouthed viper the same color as the dark wood of the desk, just as stained and
just as scarred, but bearing the unmistakable markings of scales.
The wooden snake’s mouth looked big enough to swallow Juhg’s head. Fangs stood out prominently in powerful jaws that dripped green-blue venom. Cold light danced in the ink-black eyes.
The creature lunged at Juhg.
5
Blowfly
Juhg flung himself backward, hoping to escape the snake’s lunge but knowing in his heart that he couldn’t match the magical creature’s speed. He was dead, and though he didn’t accept that, he wished that his passing might be quick and painless.
Even as the snake’s distended mouth and gleaming fangs seemed to fill all of Juhg’s vision, he saw Raisho already in motion. The young sailor strode forward and swung his cutlass.
The keen blade caught the wooden serpent behind its wedge-shaped head and knocked its strike to one side just as Juhg tripped over his own feet in his panicked haste and fell to the floor. The serpent’s fangs embedded in the ship’s deck with a thunderous crunch.
“Get up!” Raisho stepped in front of Juhg. “Hurry afore it kills ye!”
The serpent lifted its head. The eyes looked cold and indifferent, but Juhg saw now that they also contained intelligence.
As he pushed himself to his feet, the snake wrenched the rest of its body free of the desk. The massive coils, at least twenty feet of them and as big around as Raisho’s thigh, plopped to the wooden floor. Another snake’s head formed on the desk and started stretching to free itself from its prison.
Raisho set himself and swung as the first snake struck again. The cutlass swept overhead and crashed down on the snake’s head. Splinters flew like chaff and the dull thunk of a blade meeting wood filled the cabin.
The second snake wriggled and squirmed, reaching almost five feet long as it bumped its head against the ceiling.
Holding the snake’s head pinned with the cutlass, Raisho swung a boot around and slammed it onto the creature’s snout. He looked up at Juhg. “Go!”
“The book,” Juhg protested. He looked longingly at the desk that contained the coveted prize.
“Leave it!” Raisho freed his blade and stood precariously atop the snake’s head. The creature writhed and jerked, working its massive body toward the young sailor. “Now!”
Hurling himself from the room, Juhg slid across the hallway and banged into the wall on the other side of the narrow stern corridor between two rows of cabins. The vibration of the snake’s struggle to get away from Raisho echoed in Juhg’s feet.
The second snake struck without warning, uncoiling and launching itself from the desk.
Raisho ducked the second snake’s attack and slapped his free hand against the underside of its throat as the head passed. Moving quickly, he leapt from the first snake and sped for the doorway. The snakes gathered themselves in his wake and pursued at once.
In the hallway, Raisho spun and caught hold of the door, barely pulling it closed. The two snakes slammed through the door like arrows driven from a Bramblethorn elf warder’s war bow. The resounding impacts echoed in the mid-deck hallway.
“Run!” Raisho grabbed Juhg by the shoulder and shoved him forward.
Juhg ran, but his breath burned short and quick in his lungs. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the snakes slithering through the holes in the shattered door. Coils of wooden snake filled the hallway behind them.
Raisho grabbed the lantern from the wall and flung it back toward the snakes. The lantern burst against the snout of the lead snake and showered cargiff oil over both magical creatures. Luckily, the wick stayed lit, though it didn’t at first ignite the oil.
Juhg caught the ladder and hauled himself up. He missed the first rung with his foot in his haste, barked his shin painfully, then curled his toes around it on the second attempt and hurled himself up. By the time he reached the upper deck and started to pull himself through the hold, the wick caught the oil aflame.
Blue and yellow fiery tongues gave chase to the wooden snakes in a slow, liquid rush. The snakes moved in a zigzag fashion, throwing their heads back and forth, then twisting their coils to follow.
“Move! Move!” Raisho grabbed onto the ladder and clambered up after Juhg. The ladder shook under the young sailor’s weight.
Juhg threw himself from the hold and turned to watch his friend, afraid that the quickly moving snakes were fast enough to catch him.
With a seaman’s ease, Raisho fairly ran up the ladder and flung himself from the hold. As he came clear of the opening, Juhg peered down and saw the snakes coiling around the ladder. The flames caught up with the creatures, zigzagging along the oily paths they’d left. Greedily, the fire rolled over the snakes and enveloped them. Juhg didn’t know if the magic that animated the creatures would protect them from the fire and he was curious.
“C’mon!” Raisho called. “Ye’ve got goblins fit to skewer ye!”
Glancing up, Juhg saw the three goblinkin racing pell-mell across the deck. The creatures carried harpoons and short swords. Behind the goblinkin, the wizard held his hands out and chanted. Blue sparks flickered in the wizard’s palms. Ozone crackled in the air.
Although he hadn’t often been around magic, Juhg recognized evidence of the arcane art. Hair stood up on the back of his neck. He turned and fled and a harpoon rattled against the deck where he’d just been standing.
Up the stairwell as quick as he could go, Juhg spotted Raisho beside one of the two stern lanterns that marked the ship for all to see. The young sailor yanked one lantern free of its moorings.
“Wizard!” Juhg yelped, pointing and running at the same time. The efforts didn’t complement each other. Before he knew it, his legs went out from under him and he sprawled across the deck.
“I know.” Raisho threw the lantern amidships.
Pushing himself up again, Juhg watched the lantern arc out onto the deck as a flaming snake’s head thrust up from the hold. Obviously in pain, the magical creature cracked open its maw and bellowed.
The goblins stopped, pointed at the fiery snake, and shrieked in terror. The captain had left the three in charge of the ship. If the flames spread and the ship burned to the waterline or even only suffered major damage, the captain would deliver the goblins’ executions on the spot.
Then the lantern Raisho had thrown smacked into the starboard side of the deck. The glass shattered on impact and oil spilled in a long, ropy puddle. Caught by the wind, the flames quickly danced across the surface of the oil pool.
The goblins shrieked in terror again, pointing at the new threat.
“A diversion,” Raisho said. “C’mon, now. Unless you’ve a mind to hang around until they get those fires out.”
At the prow of the ship, the wizard threw his sparking hands forward. A fireball formed in the air only inches from his fingertips. While sailing through the air, the fireball grew in size till it was almost as big as Juhg.
“Down!” Raisho roared, but by then Juhg was already facedown on the deck and striving to be as small a target as he could manage. The fireball screamed over his back. The heat drenched him, so hot that at first for a moment he feared he’d gotten caught up in the conflagration.
Then the fireball was past him, catching the stern railing and setting the wood there alight before whooshing into the cargo ship astern. The fireball smashed against the ship’s mainmast, spreading into a thousand fiery bits that dropped to the merchant ship’s deck. In the space of a drawn breath, as Juhg watched in horrified disbelief, flames spread along the ship’s deck and climbed the ratlines and rigging to the furled sails.
Raisho got to his feet. “Juhg!” He waved anxiously as he moved toward the stern.
Juhg glanced back toward the ship’s prow, checking to make certain the wizard didn’t have another fireball up his voluminous sleeve. Instead, the wizard was crossing the deck, moving arthritically. Evidently his spell had cost him dearly.
The three goblins pointed at the flaming stern as well. Terror etched the creatures’ ugly faces.
At the bottom, Raisho snared the cargo skiff with his foot and pulled the tiny craft close enough to jump on. He held the skiff steady while Juhg leapt the short distance. Together, they lifted the oars and stroked away from the burning goblin ship.
Already frantic and frenzied cries of alarm rose from the cargo ship blasted by the wizard’s wayward fireball. Ship’s crew raced with buckets of water and wet sand to extinguish the blaze. From the looks of things, the goblinkin would spend their efforts in vain because the fire claimed ground quickly.
Juhg pulled his oars vigorously as Raisho aimed the skiff for the promising shelter of the shadows of a ship on the port side of the goblin vessel. Despite his best intentions, Juhg glanced up and searched the goblin ship till he spotted the wizard through the smoky haze given off by the burning merchanter. The two wooden snakes burned like dry branches but writhed across the decks like they truly were the creatures they resembled.
Despite the fact that he and Raisho were lucky enough to escape, Juhg couldn’t help thinking about the book they had left behind. A book in the hands of goblins; it was unforgivable. But he set his feet and pulled harder on the oars till the ship they passed blocked the view of the goblin ship.
* * *
“So ye went an’ had yerself an adventure, didja? An’ here ye was, a-sayin’ that ye wasn’t wishful for such a thing.”
Reluctantly, Juhg turned his attention from the activity he was watching out in Kelloch’s Harbor and glanced at Herby. The boy had come to Juhg’s side so quietly that he hadn’t heard him. Of course, the fact that activity out in the harbor had captured the dweller’s attention so completely might have aided in his distraction.
“It wasn’t an adventure,” Juhg said. “It was foolhardiness.”
Herby cocked an eye skeptically. “I warrant the cap’n might not like hearin’ it called that. Seein’ as how it was hisownself what sent ye an’ Raisho onto that ship.”
“Only to find out if there was a goblin ship,” Juhg said. “Deciding to climb aboard her, that was Raisho’s doing.”
