by Jeff Minerd
They came closer. Vaguely human shapes took form in the fog. When they stepped out of the mist into the firelight, their corpse-white skin took on a faintly bluish glow. Their black eyes fixed on her. These Gublins looked different than the ones she knew—leaner, scruffier, hungrier, and taller, too. Two of them looked to be about six feet tall, and the third one was only a few inches shorter. They were armed, but with only one sword each, not two. They didn’t wear armor. Their clothes were made mostly of old spider-silk sailcloth, ingeniously stitched together and interwoven with other cast-off things they’d found—bits of rope and leather and chain. Their hairy ears and thin, colorless lips were pierced with rings and studs of silver and gold. They carried bulky packs on their backs, and the leather straps crisscrossing their chests were strung with all kinds of metal tools, which clinked and clanked together as they moved.
Two of the Gublins hung back behind the first one to emerge from the fog, who seemed to be the leader. He stepped up to Brieze and looked her squarely in the face. He leaned in and sniffed, his nostril slits twitching. Brieze’s nose wrinkled. She’d never smelled a Gublin so badly in need of a bath before.
“What is it?” One of the ones behind him asked. This one was missing an eye. Where the left one should have been, a round leather patch was sewn right into the skin with black stitches.
“A human,” the leader replied, looking Brieze up and down. “A live human.”
“I’ve never seen a live one before,” the one-eyed one said. “They look funny with flesh on their bones.”
“What does it want?” the third, shorter one asked.
The leader locked eyes with Brieze. “What help do you seek?” he asked.
“I seek the wreck of a ship,” she said. “This ship.” From her notebook, she took out the blueprints from the construction of the Atago Maru, which she had “borrowed” from the naval records. She handed them to the Gublin. He took the blueprint gingerly, almost distrustfully. Gublins don’t have paper. They write on sheets of foil. Brieze opened her notebook and tapped a page. “The ship has these markings on the stern. It wrecked here about seventeen years ago.”
Without looking up from the blueprint, the Gublin reached out his other hand for the notebook. Gublins are not left-handed or right-handed. They use both equally well and completely independently of each other. Brieze handed him the notebook. He squatted on his lean, stringily-muscled legs and spread the blueprint and the notebook out on the ground in front of him, reading by the light of the fire. The other two Gublins squatted next to him and bent their heads over the paper. They murmured back and forth.
Brieze couldn’t get much of what they said. But she knew, from her conversations with Western Gublins, that there was a race of Gublins in the East that scavenged shipwrecks in the Wind’s Teeth. Gublins are extremely intelligent and detail oriented. They keep meticulous records, and they share stories. If any Gublins had scavenged the wreck of the Atago Maru, she was fairly sure that many of them would know where it was. And she was right. The Gublins that made their living scavenging in the Wind’s Teeth knew every wreck along the middle passage as well as a human would know every tree in a favorite park, or every house along their route to the market.
The Gublins finished murmuring. The leader stood up. “We know this ship. If you seek treasure, you will not find it. There is nothing of value left in that ship.”
Ah, they knew of it! Wonderful! Brieze’s heart flooded with warm relief. “I do not seek treasure,” she said. “I seek a book.”
“A book…?” The Gublin asked, puzzled.
“Like this one,” she pointed to the notebook.
The Gublin shrugged. “It may be there. We would have no need of such a thing. It must be a very valuable…book.”
“It is to me,” she said. “Will you take me to the wreck?”
“It is three day’s walk from here, on the way we are traveling. We could take you.” The Gublin paused. “What will you offer us for our help?”
“This!” Brieze said, picking up and hefting the five-pound sack of salted goat strips.
The Gublin’s nostril slits quivered. A greedy, ravenous light shone in his eyes. His black pointed tongue snaked out to lick his pale lips and sharp teeth. The other two stood up, the same light shining in their eyes. Brieze had bet right. Gublins everywhere are crazy for goat meat. It’s so much better than anything they have to eat in the underworld. On her last visit to a Gublin realm, she had been offered beetles, bats, and a centipede stew. She’d politely refused, of course.
They edged closer. Brieze stood her ground. She’d brought along a knife, which was tucked into her belt. But even so she was, for all practical purposes, completely defenseless. Even a full-grown human trained in combat would be no match for one Gublin, much less three. They were simply too fast. Then the one-eyed one said something she hadn’t expected, something she’d never imagined a Gublin would say, from what she knew of them. Something that left her dizzy and unable to breathe.
“Let’s kill it,” he said. “Take its meat and anything else it has we can use, and be on our way.”
There was a silence for a second or two that became an eternity for Brieze. The leader looked at her as if he were considering, his eyes going to the medallion on her chest.
“No need to kill the silly thing,” the shorter one said. “Let’s just leave it be.”
“Shut up, both of you,” the leader said. “A live human could be helpful. It will know many things about their ships that could be useful to us.”
“I do,” Brieze said in a rush. “I know a lot. Anything you want to know.”
“Then we agree,” the leader said. “Hurry and pack up your things. We are already behind schedule.”
“Wait!” Brieze said, summoning up what she knew of Gublin culture and their codes of ethics. “You have to swear, on the honor of your clan, that you won’t harm me. That you’ll take me to the wreck as you promised.”
There was a pause.
“We swear,” the leader said, though without much enthusiasm.
“We swear,” the other two echoed. “On the honor of our clan.”
“Now let us go, quickly,” the leader said.
“Wait!” she said. “I need you to bring me back, too. Back here to this spot. I won’t be able to find my way back alone.”
The leader made an unpleasant gurgling sound. The other two hissed in distress. They argued among themselves. Finally, the leader turned to Brieze. “My companions cannot take you back. We will lose too much time. However, I myself will bring you back to this spot for…,” he moved closer and pointed to the silver medallion, “…that. That might be very valuable to me.”
Brieze hated to give up the friendship medallion the Gublin king had given her. She doubted it was meant to be traded at will. And a very large part of her was urging her to call the whole thing off, to scurry back up that rope as fast as she could to the safety of the Devious on the ledge above. To fly back to the Palace of Kyo and the family that waited for her there.
But if there was even a chance of finding her father’s journal…
“Deal,” she said.
The three-day walk with a heavy pack on her back was the hardest thing Brieze had done in her life. The three-mile walk from the port of Kyo to Mamma Kasshoku’s boarding house was a tea party by comparison. The sand shifted under her feet, slowing her progress and keeping her constantly off balance. At least she had sturdy boots for walking this time. But the damned gritty stuff got into her boots and irritated her fiercely. The wind blew it into her eyes and managed to get it under her clothes, where it itched.
Still, she did her best to keep up and walk beside the leader, whose name was Zeelak. He asked her question after question, which she answered breathlessly as she struggled to match his pace. What type of cargo did merchant ships carry these days? How many warships did her kingdom have? How old were the ships in her fleet? What kinds of metals were used in thei
r construction? She answered as best she could, and when she didn’t know an answer she guessed but presented it as truth. She wasn’t about to appear ignorant or unhelpful.
She managed to ask Zeelak some questions in return. Did he know how the Wind’s Teeth had been formed? How about the liquid dirt? How many wrecks were down here? How many had he scavenged? He answered her tersely. Nobody knew how the Teeth had formed, although some Gublins thought they were made of a kind of crystal that was somehow able to grow. The “liquid dirt,” as she called it, was created as wind, rain, and lighting strikes eroded the Teeth. Nobody knew how many wrecks were down here. He had scavenged fifty-two so far in his life.
The other two Gublins, Zeetog and Zeefor, didn’t talk to her at all. But they complained about her to Zeelak as they marched. They did this right in front of her, as if she weren’t even there, referring to her as “it” or “the human.”
“The human is slow,” Zeefor, the one-eyed one, said. “It is making us late.”
“It talks too much,” said the shorter one, Zeetog. “Its voice is annoying, like a whining baby’s.”
“Shut up you two,” said Zeelak, “or I’ll make one of you carry her.”
“I’d be happy to carry the human…,” Zeefor said. “In my belly!” He snickered. “It eats such tasty meat, it must be delicious itself.”
“Shut up!” Zeelak said. “Keep moving.”
Zeefor edged up behind Brieze. He whispered softy in her ear, so only she heard. “Beware, tasty human. I often wake up in the middle of the night. Hungry for a snack.” He chortled.
Brieze’s heart thudded even faster than it had already been thudding. She was pretty sure that Zeefor swearing on the honor of his clan prevented him from eating her in the middle of the night. Still, she hunched her shoulders as she trudged and tried to make herself look as small and unappetizing as possible. She didn’t ask Zeelak any more questions.
The feeble sun came up as they walked through a barren, mist-shrouded landscape, following a narrow valley that snaked its way through the roots of the Teeth, heading south toward the middle passage. The Teeth themselves rose to dizzying heights all around them, losing themselves in the fog above. Brieze counted her paces and noted their direction, filing the information away in her memory, just in case she needed it to return. There was no knowing what might happen on this journey, and if she found herself alone at least she’d have a rough map in her mind of how to get back to her starting point. It would give her a chance, at least.
At midday, with the pale sun glimmering in the haze directly above them, they came to the middle passage. The slippery, shifting ground sloped down to a wider valley, running east-west. The desolate valley was filled with sand, which the wind had shaped into row upon row of rippling dunes. They stretched off into the distance. Brieze had never seen anything like this. The wind gusted stronger here. The sand stung her face. It began to snow—fat, wet flakes that whirled and mixed with the airborne grit. They climbed down into the valley, then headed west, plodding up and down each treacherous dune.
They came upon the hulking wreck of a ship that loomed out of the fog—very old, half buried. The ribs of its hull poked up out of the sand. Between its ribs, the planks of its upper and lower decks had collapsed into a jumbled pile. Its masts had toppled like sickly trees. Brieze wanted to stop to investigate, but Zeelak refused, urging them on. “It’s an old wreck, nothing interesting there,” he said. “You’ll see many more like that before we reach the ship you want.”
“I just want to see what kind of ship it is,” Brieze said.
“It’s a crashed ship. Anyone can see that,” Zeelak said, not slowing his stride. “Foolish humans flying around in such dangerous contraptions, made of such flimsy material. It’s a wonder you haven’t all died and gone extinct.” Gublins, who make most everything they need from stone or metal, have nothing but contempt for wood. In their opinion, the fragile, splintery stuff is completely unsuitable for making anything. They don’t even use it for fuel, finding coal to be far superior.
Not far from the wreck, they came upon the remains of three airmen. They sat huddled together, back to back, buried to their waists. They were nothing but bones and a few flapping, tattered remains of cloth. Their skulls nodded, staring down into their laps. Their ribs interlaced as they slowly crumbled into one another. Brieze wanted to stop to investigate these too, but Zeelak again refused. “You’ll see many more of those, too,” he said. “One dead human is much like another.”
When the sun set, Zeelak called a halt and they made camp. The Gublins dropped their packs with a groan and had a meal. Zeelak rationed the goat meat among them. Zeetog and Zeefor ate with smacking lips, then complained they didn’t get enough. “Don’t be so stingy,” Zeefor said. “Give us more!”
“Fools,” Zeelak replied. “The two of you would eat the entire bag in one sitting, then not be able to walk because of your swollen, cramping bellies.”
“But I’m still hungry,” Zeefor complained, fixing his one eye on Brieze and licking his lips.
She made herself eat some bread and dried fruit, swallowed down with water and a fair amount of sand. She had enough food and water to last about a week. More if she stretched it, which she probably would. She didn’t have much of an appetite.
The Gublins didn’t erect any kind of shelter. They wormed themselves into the sand and slept there with their heads on their packs. They seemed perfectly comfortable in the nasty environment. Brieze struggled for a long while to pitch her tent. The stakes wouldn’t stay in the ground at all, and she couldn’t find any good rocks to weigh down the corners. The wind kept trying to yank the uncooperative tangle of poles and fabric out of her hands. Once, the tent caught a good gust and nearly dragged her along the ground. She was reminded of a passage in a history book that suggested the principle of air travel was discovered by some ancient person trying to hold down a tent on a windy day. As she cursed and fought a losing battle against the wind, she saw how that was possible. In the end, she gave up, rolled up the tent and stuffed it back in her pack. She wrapped herself in a blanket, wormed herself into the sand like the Gublins, and slept fitfully.
Some instinct woke her in the middle of the night. Everything was black save for the vaguest fuzzy hint of a moon, low in the sky. But something nearby caught and reflected that suggestion of moonlight. A single eye, gleaming in the dark. Low to the ground, it was inching toward her. She heard ragged breathing and indistinct muttering. Smacking lips. She was too afraid to move, but she made herself move anyway. Silently, she rummaged through her pack until her blind fingers found what they were searching for. They closed around a cool glass cylinder. She pulled the light stick from her pack and shook it hard.
The glass rod blazed with blue white light.
Zeefor, crouching not ten feet from her, leapt up with a shriek and clamped both his hands over his one good eye. To a Gublin eye, that kind of light hurt like a dagger.
His shriek woke Zeelak and Zeetog. They covered their eyes too, and cursed the light.
“Put that thing away!” Zeelak shouted. “What’s going on here?”
Brieze doused the light by stuffing the rod inside her jacket. Still, some of the glow leaked and shone through, making her look like some kind of ghost, or sorcerer, in the night.
“He was sneaking up on me!” She shouted. “He was going to eat me…or something!”
Zeefor recovered some of his composure. He pointed a long bony finger at her accusingly. “I only got up in the night to relieve myself, and the stupid human attacked me with that awful thing.”
“Settle down, both of you,” Zeelak said. “And get back to sleep. We rise in a few hours.”
Zeefor shuffled away, mumbling, and wriggled himself back into the sand.
The glow from the light stick faded. But Brieze spent the rest of the night gripping it in a sweaty hand, her ears straining to catch any suspicious noises.
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The next day they came across an unusual sight. It was one of the Wind’s Teeth, but a tiny one, standing in the valley of the middle passage apart from the others. It was no more than a hundred feet high and maybe thirty feet in diameter. They had encountered a few of these small teeth poking up out of the sand before. But this one was unusual because its top had been blasted off by a lightning strike. Molten bits of it had dribbled down its side like hardened candle wax. And brittle pieces of it were strewn everywhere—chunks the size of boulders, and shards like glittering blades poking up out of the sand.
“This is new,” Zeetog said. “This happened since we last came this way.”
“Be very careful where you step,” Zeelak said.
But he’d no sooner said this when Zeefor shrieked in pain, hopped about on one foot, then crumpled to a sitting position, clutching his other foot. They all ran over to see what was the matter. Zeefor had stepped on one of the bladelike shards. Gublins don’t wear shoes. The stone had sliced deeply into the leathery sole of his webbed foot. Black Gublin blood sluiced out of the wound, dripping onto the sand.
“Quickly, bind it up! Stanch the blood!” Zeelak yelled.
“We are doomed!” Zeetog moaned.
“Curse my clumsiness!” Zeefor said with a grimace.
“It’s not that bad of a wound,” Brieze said. “I could sew it up with some needle and thread.”
“Ignorant human,” Zeelak glared at her. “The scent of blood could wake the Sleepers. They smell it from miles away.”
“The Sleepers?” she asked.
“We must all get to higher ground. Hurry!”
Zeelak hastily bound Zeefor’s foot with a rag, then hauled him to his feet. He ordered the group to run as fast as they could to the small tooth with the blasted-off top and to scale it. The Gublins took off at a Gublin-fast pace, kicking up spouts of sand and leaving Brieze far behind as she ran uncertainly after them. “What’s going on?” she called, out of breath.
