Wind Runner (Vanderbrook Champions Book 1)

by Edmund Hughes

  “Tie,” she announced.

  “Sink it,” said Zak. “You say that knowing that I’m the clear-cut winner, Hachia!”

  “She’s trying to save your pride, Zakarias,” said Demetro. “You should let her.”

  Zak brought his hands in close to Demetro’s ear, and cracked his knuckles.

  CHAPTER 3

  History reads in such a way to make it seem inevitable that Lord Emperor Altreis the First conquered the outer islands. Tis a shame that there is almost nothing on the official record of the desperation precipitating those events. – Cadwin the Historian, Founding of an Empire

  ZAK

  The Sand Angel was on the far side of the Arkaian Isles, and while it was prime territory for harvesting the sea, it wasn’t nearly as trafficked as the trade corridors around the central island of Malnia. The only thing near them, other than the coast of the island of Palmia, was the Stormy Sea, an uncharted, dangerous expanse of water.

  More than anything, that was what caused Zak to do a double take when he finished climbing back onto the deck and saw the familiar blurred image of a ship approaching on the horizon so soon after the catch flag had been strung up. He raised an eyebrow and made his way over to the ship’s bow.

  “We’ve got a buyer,” he said, calling to the rest of the crew. “And an early one, at that.”

  Demetro was still on the ladder, and Hachia was sitting on the starboard railing, braiding her hair. It took the two of them a second to make out what Zak had seen.

  “That’s not a ship…” said Hachia. “What in the stones?”

  Zak frowned, staring more closely at the shape in the distance. It didn’t look like any ship he’d seen before. The hull was long and rounded, and a deep, natural shade of textured brown. It had multiple sails, dozens of them at least, hanging from strange, diagonally angled masts with odd, jointed vertices. Stranger still was the shape in the water at the front of it, massive and grey skinned and spurting up regular jets of water.

  Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? This… is impossible.

  “It’s a treeship…” said Demetro. “By the Worldmaker… It’s the Luxians!”

  Heavy footsteps sounded from the middeck cabin as Bartrand’s huge frame thundered onto deck. His eyes were wide, and that gave Zak pause.

  Technically, Lux was still at war with Malnia. It had been over two decades since the last Malnian raid on their jungle peninsula, and the Luxians were by no means at naval parity with the Malnian Empire. The treeship was close enough for Zak to make out the details of the men on deck: at least a dozen of them, outnumbering the crew of the Sand Angel four to one.

  “Well,” he said, uneasily. “I guess we should trade with them?”

  “Are you out of your sinking mind?” snapped Demetro. “These people… They’re killers, and necromancers! I’ve heard stories of the kinds of things they do.”

  “I’ve seen what they do,” said Bartrand, who was older than anyone else on the ship by at least a score of years. “But it doesn’t seem like we have much of a choice, Captain.”

  Demetro frowned. Zak scanned his face, and then Hachia’s, feeling comforted by the fact that he wasn’t the only one wearing their uneasiness openly.

  “We’ll be fine,” said Zak. “They’re here because of our catch. We have fish to sell. Let’s just do what we do, and not overthink it!”

  More details came into view as the treeship neared the Sand Angel. The shape in the front was a full grown donphar, a massive, warm-blooded, intelligent sea beast, attached to the ship by some sort of vine harness. Zak almost couldn’t believe it, and began running over the hundreds of scenarios in which such an arrangement could go horribly wrong.

  The men and women on the treeship looked even stranger than what Zak had been expecting. Much of the information about the culture of the Luxians he’d assumed to be exaggerated, either by the Malnians for effect, or from being passed from one mouth to another for so long.

  Their shirts and jackets were deep green, and appeared to be made of thick leaves, each one wide enough to cover a person’s face, and glossy, as though some type of preservative had been layered over it. Their trousers were made of wool, and each pair was dyed a different color.

  The women wore low-cut blouses, revealing scandalous amounts of cleavage and almost dipping low enough to show more than just that. Zak tried not gape as he stared at him and failed miserably, the task compounded by how fit and lean all of their bodies were.

  The legends spoke of Luxians as jungle savages and necromancers, too wild and unfit to be a part of civilized society. They’d been at the periphery of the world for over a hundred years, since the dawn of the current era; since before Founding Emperor Altreis the First put an end to the Dynasty War and brought peace to the islands.

  The war between Malnia and Lux was not something born from intention. During the reign of Lord Emperor Altreis II, hundreds of expeditions were sent out to the old continent, most of them only rediscovering the Forsaken Lands and bringing back little of worth.

  The ships that followed the coast to the south eventually found Lux, the peninsula at the bottom of the world. It was the only remaining fertile land outside of the northern and southern islands to ever to be discovered in recent memory, and it was populated not by the scholars and statesmen of the old world, but by a very different kind of people.

  “They’re waiting for something,” muttered Demetro. Zak blinked, pulling his attention back into focus. The Luxian ship had somehow cut loose the donphar and set down anchorstone next to them. The men on it, their skin tanned deeper than that of any Arkaian, were watching them.

  “Well, we have to put the ship bridge down,” said Zak.

  “Are you out of your mind?” hissed Demetro. “They’ll think we’re attacking!”

  “There are four of us,” said Zak. “And around fourteen of them. I sincerely doubt they’ll think we’re attacking.”

  He started walking over to where the ship bridge, a sliding wooden slab used to connect one ship to another, was resting. Bartrand glanced nervously over at Demetro and then moved to help him. The Luxians were watching, sharing almost none of the nervous anxiety of the crew of the Sand Angel. One of them let out a deep, guttural laugh at something.

  “Alright.” Zak paused before beginning to tip the ship bridge over, and turned to the Luxians. “We’re just trying to connect,” he made a gesture with both hands, “the two ships together.”

  One of the Luxians laughed again. Zak couldn’t help but notice that all of them were either carrying a sword, or another weapon that he didn’t know the name of that looked a bit like a flail, except made of vines and rocks.

  He and Bartrand carefully leaned the ship bridge down. It let out a loud clunk as it struck the hull of the Luxian ship on the other side. Zak worried for a moment that it would slide, and they’d be stuck fishing it out of the ocean as they had many times in the past, but it caught against the rough bark of the treeship and stuck in place.

  “Great,” said Zak. “Now let’s just… calmly go get the fish.”

  Zak and Bartrand hurried around to the other side of the middeck cabin, where the prism fish had been stowed away in the catch bin. Having the Luxians out of sight, even for just a minute, was far more terrifying than seeing them in person had been. Zak thought of Hachia, and of what little Demetro could do on his own to protect her if something happened. He walked a little faster as he and Bartrand carried the bundle, and noticed the bigger man’s expression darken slightly.

  One of the Luxians was testing the integrity of the ship bridge out with a sandal-clad foot, speaking in his strange language to the rest of his crew as he did. When he saw Zak and Bartrand carrying the fish he clapped his hands together and leaned forward into a slight bow.

  “Alright,” said Demetro. “This is good. Yes. We want… to trade… with you.”

  He spoke in slow intervals, making wide, patronizing movements with his hands as he did. The Luxians watched
him for a moment, and then several of them burst out into laughter. The man who’d been testing the bridge waved to his crew and then slowly began to walk across.

  Zak was there to meet him once he’d made it to the other side. He saw the man’s face in detail and froze. Savage, tribal patterned artwork crisscrossed the man’s cheeks, forehead, and neck. Zak could pick up on the subtle hint of blue Methrakian celestial stone, crushed and powdered into fine glitter, within the intricate lines of the tattoos.

  That’s evil. True, unadulterated evil.

  Celestial stones were as rare as anything could be in Malnian society, and far more valuable than silver, gold, or any inert substance. They were beautiful to look at, but their true value came from the magic contained with their very essence. They were power itself.

  A few slivers of celestial stone, powdered and mixed into a potion, could give a person abilities far outside of anything natural. A pure enough celestial stone, bound into jewelry and kept in direct contact with the skin was a more practical, though far more expensive way of achieving the same effects.

  There was a third method for harnessing the power within the celestial stones, and in Malnia, it was an absolute taboo, punishable by death, or exile. Though why anyone would choose to go through with the process of receiving a tattoo to begin with, excruciating as it was rumored to be, was a mystery to Zak. He stared at the Luxian’s tattoos, each one a curiosity to behold; a statement of otherness scarred into skin. The Luxian didn’t notice, or was at least good at acting like he didn’t.

  Methrakian stone, fallen from the moon of reflection, was relatively rare in Malnia, and even rarer in Arkaia. Zak had heard the stories of people binding objects to their will at a touch, and lifting them free of hand, as though carried by invisible fingers. The stone seers called it telekinesis, magic of empty space and air.

  The Luxian was watching Zak, waiting for something. He looked over at Bartrand and Hachia, and bowed slightly.

  “Shevat Natoyus,” said the Luxian.

  The crew of the Sand Angel was silent for a several seconds, an eternity in the context of the situation. Zak took a slow breath, and then reached over to the bundle, patting it with one hand.

  “Prism fish,” he said. “To trade?”

  Food, and delicious food, at that. Let’s see if they speak the language of stomachs.

  He opened the bundle’s seal and pulled out one of the smaller ones. It was healthy, with good color to its fins. The entire bundle would be worth at least a dozen silver draigs in Malnia. Of course, that was supposing that they could make it all the way to Malnia without running into a storm or other hardship.

  The Luxian smiled. He had a thick beard, trimmed and well maintained. He took the fish out of Zak’s hand and brought it up to his nose, giving it a cursory sniff. After a moment, he looked back at his crew and said something in his own language. A few of the Luxian crew chimed in with comments that Zak could understand from the context alone.

  “All,” said Zak, gesturing. “We’re selling all of them.”

  He gave the bundle a tug, and then pantomimed handing it to the Luxian. The Luxian nodded, smiled, and reached toward his sword. A flash of fear went through Zak, and then dissipated as he saw the Luxian bring his hand back up with a small bag in it.

  “Take whatever he offers,” said Demetro. “Blood and thunder, just take his money so we can get the sog out of here!”

  “Relax,” said Zak. “We’re fine. Nothing’s wrong.”

  The Luxian dumped out a couple of odd-looking bits of money. Zak instantly recognized the gleam of gold, but it took him a second to understand what seemed off about it. Each one had intricate patterns set into it, and at the center, a tiny globular object had been pressed into the core. Zak gaped as the Luxian poured out ten of the coins, watching Zak’s expression, reading his reaction.

  “Those are… seeds.” Zak shook his head slightly, not fully understanding why any culture would set seeds into their coins as a standard for their currency.

  The Luxian frowned at Zak’s reaction and poured another two coins into his hand. He passed them to Zak, and said something resolute that spoke for itself. Zak closed his hands around the coins and watched as the Luxian tossed the bundle over his shoulder and then walked back across to his ship.

  The Luxian paused before stepping off the ship bridge. He looked back at Zak and smiled.

  “Shevat Natoyus.”

  Zak nodded slowly, at a loss for what to say back.

  “Yes… you’re welcome,” he finally said.

  Bartrand helped him swing the ship’s bridge back up into its resting position. The Luxians moved to active positions on the tree ship, several of them taking up positions on the various upward extending branches and angling the sails on each one into the wind. The tree ship pulled forward, cutting through the water into the distance.

  “They’re headed into the Stormy Sea,” said Hachia. “That’s… insane.”

  Zak shook his head and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

  “I don’t think there’s much that they could do now that would surprise me,” he said.

  He opened the bag in his hand and looked at the coins. Even though they were made of gold, the seed at the center of each coin made the weight feel off. Each coin could potentially be worth more than a Malnian gold draig of the same size, perhaps far more if they could find the right buyer.

  Zak flicked one of them to Demetro, who caught it easily, and then did a double take.

  “By the Worldmaker,” said Demetro. “Do you know how much each of these is worth?”

  “Tonight,” said Zak, “we celebrate.”

  Moons of Carnathia