“Ah,” Korak said. He grinned. “We’ve not gotten out yet but that doesn’t mean we don’t have ideas. Ever seen one of the Mornan tribe’s warships?”
“The turtle boats?”
“Aye, hulls are the shell of a giant sea turtle. Tough as dwarf jerky.”
Thud decided to let that slide. “What about ‘em? Is there one down here?”
“Not a ship, no, least not that I’ve seen. But we did find a dead giant sea turtle a couple of days ago, about half a mile from here. Looks like it fell into the trap same as everyone else. At least a year ago, based on what’s left. Stinks like a Hammerfell cave but the shell is pretty good sized. Between the lot of us I expect there’s enough know-how to turn it into something that could float us out of here.”
Thud was gritting his teeth but forced his face into what he hoped looked like a grin. The Dwarven Kingdom lay under the Hammerfells. Second jab in a row. The orc was provoking deliberately. Why? To see if he had a temper or not? To try and establish dominance?
“How are ye plannin' to get it from down here to on top o' the water?”
Korak shrugged. “Haven’t sorted that out yet. But now there’s more heads to think about it.”
“Some of my people are, uh, what you might call ‘traditionalists’.” His grin felt tight on his face.
Korak nodded. “No surprise. Lot of history between dwarves and orcs. Is it going to be a problem?”
“I’ll see to it that it ain’t but I’ve got the same question for you.”
Korak gave a single sharp bark of a laugh. “No, I’m recent generation. Never crossed swords with a dwarf in my life. My grandfather, now, were he here…”
“Didn’t pass them notions along, eh?”
“I found it hard to hate something I’d never seen,” Korak said. “And frankly you all mostly seem to spend your time whistling and digging holes in the mountains somewhere. I got no problems with that.”
“Just suggesting you might want to go easy on quips about dwarf jerky and caves in the Hammerfells.”
Korak blinked in surprise. “Ah, my apologies. Two expressions from home that I’d never actually considered.”
“Well, I’ll dig a hole for ya as soon as you show up with a necklace of ears and a gark fang through your nostrils.”
Korak laughed again. “Fair enough. Maybe we can both learn a thing or two, eh? We’ll talk more later. You have a camp to set up and it looks like you already have reports coming in.” He nodded his head toward Mungo, now standing nearby and jigging around like he had to go to the little delver’s room. Thud also saw Ruby rapidly approaching.
The orc captain stood. “I’m going to go back to torturing that lute over there but I’ll send some crew out to help with setting your camp. Create a few bonds among the personnel.” He tipped his hat to Ruby as he left who responded with a nod and a polite smile that flared in then out like a match.
“I found the Katie’s Jigger,” Mungo said. “And a clue as to what happened.”
Thud grinned. “I think I’ve found us a way out of here,” he said.
“I’ve found the artifact,” Ruby said. “Does that mean we win?
Chapter Fifteen
The parrot clung to the side of its cage, claws wrapped around, head pressed against the bars, eye glaring balefully at him. Periodically it would chuckle in a low, evil voice. Had it heard that from someone or did it come naturally? Larry could feel the waves of hate rolling off of it. He had tried sticking it behind a curtain but anytime the parrot was out of his sight it started up with a prolonged warbling banshee screech, on and on, sending skittering chills through his bones.
He could handle the hate.
He had a harder time with embarrassment.
Was that the right word? Was humiliation more fitting? Having his entire crew watch as he writhed and screamed on the deck with that skull-faced witch standing over him?
He had the suspicion he’d just been victim of a mutiny, at least in that he’d been demoted. Everyone on board knew who was in charge.
Obiya stood to the side of his chair, just out of his peripheral vision unless he turned to look. All of his time spent with these two evil things staring at him and measuring his every move. Obiya was the only person on the ship that the parrot feared. Larry wondered if she’d given it a hit of the pain as well and found himself hoping that she had.
Raggins appeared in the doorway of his quarters. The parrot didn’t interrupt its stare but Larry knew that horrible lizardy eye on the other side of its head was moving independently, watching Raggins. A clawed lizard with pretty feathers and flight capability. Its wings had never been cropped. The parrot was perfectly capable of flying away instead of sitting on his shoulder while he manned the wheel. But it didn’t. It stayed out of sheer malevolence.
“Captain,” Raggins said, but his eyes were aimed at Obiya.
“What is it Raggins?” His voice came out low and hoarse. His jaw muscles hurt.
“Diving bell coming back up with the first of the scouts.”
“Send him directly to me. No one else is to question him.” Larry wasn’t ready to stand back out amidst the crew yet, his episode on the deck still fresh in their memories.
“Aye, Cap'n.” Raggins vanished.
Larry made a note of Raggins earning a merit point. Raggins knew he was in the hole and had taken it upon himself to report every single incident of note that occurred on the ship. So far today he had reported on each of the bell’s successful descents, Wargen’s joke about biscuit weevils that had made everyone laugh, an argument between the cabin boy and the scullery boy and what the quartermaster had eaten for breakfast.
The scout arrived a few minutes later and stood at attention, dripping small puddles on the expensive Temalian carpet. He reeked. During the voyage the crew had used the diving bell to store bait. Not a lot of effort had been put into cleaning it as, they reasoned, they were dropping it into water and what better way to clean it? The trapped air and the salt of the sea had worked together to leave a thick layer of reeking black muck coating the inside of the bell. Using it made for a wretched dive of chum and salinity.
Larry imagined he could feel the tension from Obiya behind him. The scout’s name was Tatts. He didn’t have any, leading Larry to believe that this was more sailor humor.
“I found the Katie’s Jigger, Captain.” He stopped there, as if that was everything. Larry could see his throat apple rolling up and down his neck like a bobbing-lawnbird in a stiff breeze. Like Raggins, the report seemed directed at Obiya.
“Make your full report, sailor. Don’t make me drag each sentence out of you.”
“HELP ME!” the parrot screamed. “I’ve been turned into a parrot!”
Whoever had taught the parrot that line was another on the list of people Larry would like to strangle.
“Someone’s already been through the cargo,” Tatts said, pulling his attention away from the parrot. “Crates are all pried open. All the food and tools is gone and didn’t see any sign of any books. Just empty rum barrels, some brass pots and a few crates of silk.”
Larry heard a low hiss of air from behind him.
“Any indication who might have been there?” Larry asked.
“There were a lot of tracks, yeah. Boots. Acorn went to follow ‘em and sent me back to report.”
“I’m infected!” the parrot screamed.
“There’s a crewmember named Acorn?” Larry asked.
“Yes, sir. Was the boy William afore, sir.”
“Is this some sort of newly bestowed off-color nickname that you all find amusing?”
“Aye.”
“Then you can spare me the details. As soon as Acorn returns, send him to me.”
Tatts bobbed his head and started out after another nervous glance at the parrot.
“Wait,” Obiya said. Her voice was soft but Tatts somehow heard it and had sudden onset paralysis, one foot hanging in the air mid-step. Sailor dramatics or had she actually fro
zen him where he stood? Larry didn’t know.
“The boot tracks,” Obiya said. “Were they regular or small?”
“Regular mostly. ‘Cept one set was really big.”
“Go.”
Larry turned his chair to face Obiya. Then he scooted back a bit as she was far too close and didn’t show any sign of stepping back.
The parrot started into a low moan of rage.
“Is now when you tell me more about this book?”
“We will wait for the other scout,” she said. She turned back to look at the door, signaling the conversation over.
Larry turned his chair back around, cutting the parrot off just as it was starting to really build its shriek into the nightmare realm. It pressed its eye back to the bars and let loose with another of its sinister chuckles.
Larry hoped the wait wasn’t long.
***
“Missed ya at campfire last night,” Nibbly said. Thud was sitting on a driftwood log, blinking blearily at his morning coffee. He had only a vague notion of what the actual time of day was. The misty blue light never changed, the seawalls were always murky and dark and the narrow strips of sky were always black. The hourglass wasn’t a piece of gear that had survived the wreck. Thud suspected Mungo was already designing an impact-proof replacement.
Nibbly plopped down on the driftwood next to him. Then re-plopped a few inches over, having found some fault in the first location.
“Ginny did a puppet show,” he said. Thud wasn’t sure if he was happy he’d missed that or not. “Had a puppet dragon and a little puppet prisoner needed rescuin',” Nibbly went on. “Then in comes a pixie riding on a chicken puppet with a little sword! Pixie had the sword, not the chicken. Can you believe that? She actually trained a lantern pixie!”
“The pixie weren’t a puppet too?”
“Nope, little guy with a stickpin sword and a match for a torch. Accidentally lit the chicken puppet on fire and Ginny panicked and threw it into the audience. There was dwarves jumpin' ever'where. Was good times.”
“Male pixie, eh? Hunh.” Thud had been aware that one of the lantern pixies was male. He’d also noticed that Ginny used that lantern more often than not. He added a few things in his head and chuckled. He was more aware of small goings-on in the team than probably any of its members realized. “Sorry I missed it. I was helping Mungo find building supplies for the turtle. Long day o' construction ahead of us.”
“Really think we’re going to get that plan to work?”
“Maybe. Don’t think turning the shell into something seaworthy is going to be a problem. Getting it into the water is going to be the trick. But that’s the only problem that stands between us and leavin'. We have what we came for, now we just have to get free and clear.”
“Still leaves the mystery o' what this place actually IS,” Nibbly said. “Leavin' a place just as dangerous as when we arrived ain’t our usual style.”
“Hard to sack an entire island, or whatever you want to call this thing. Ruby thinks the book might answer that.”
“Messing with the artifact ain’t really our style either.”
“You’re right. But we’re doin' one to try and accomplish the other. Because no, I don’t want to leave this place just going on doing its thing. But it looks like our only chance o' solvin' that is in that book. Aye, the book is also the artifact we was sent here to retrieve and that is unfortunate.”
Nibbly thought about that for a few seconds then nodded. “I just hope Ruby’s readin' with caution,” he said. “Powerful books is squirrely. Read the wrong poem and suddenly there’s a giant oozeblob with eyeballs all over tryin' to make your acquaintance.”
***
“Acorn has returned, captain.”
“I told you to send him in, Raggins, not announce him in hopes of another merit point. One demerit for delaying a report.”
“Aye sir.”
Acorn entered a moment later and stood, dripping on the carpet in the same place Raggins had dampened.
“It’s the dwarves, sir. Them ones from Stilton.”
“How very disappointing,” Obiya’s voice came from behind him.
“DISAPPOINTING!” the parrot squawked.
“If everyone is quite finished interrupting this report I’d like to hear the rest of it.”
Acorn shuffled his feet, perhaps having noticed that the carpet was squishing beneath them.
“They’s holed up in a shipwreck with some others. Half a league or so.”
“Others?” Larry asked, arching his eyebrows. He’d spent hours in front of a mirror, trying to learn to arch only one eyebrow at a time, but it was a skill that had eluded him.
“Shipwrecked sailors, I think. Looked like ‘least a dozen souls, maybe more. Had a giant too. Little one, maybe four yards.”
“The tracks led you there?” Obiya asked.
Acorn nodded.
“You may go.”
“You think the dwarves have it?” Larry asked, turning his chair.
“I thought the dwarves were supposed to be stranded in Stilton with no idea of where to go.”
“DISAPPOINTING!”
“Then I thought they were supposed to have been sunk, or destroyed by the island.”
“As that is apparently not the case,” Larry said, “I suggest we discuss solutions rather than dwelling on things that didn’t happen as expected.”
Obiya’s face was as motionless as a mask. Her pale eyes never blinked. Larry squirmed in his chair and made a mental note to mind his tone.
“If not the dwarves then the ones they are with,” she finally said. “We will take it from them either way. Prepare your assault.”
“You are joking…” Larry began, then caught himself. Tone. “Assaulting them would be inadvisable. They have numbers and are in a defensible position. It will take a great deal of time to send enough people down in the diving bell.”
“They are not expecting an attack. What sort of pirate exactly are you? Have you never taken a ship?”
“Not on land and not one that we haven’t softened up first. I’m the sort of pirate that doesn’t needlessly sacrifice his crew. I’m owed a great many demerits. Negotiate from a position of force is my advice.”
“You propose we just go and ask them for it?”
“Yes, accompanied with the threat of attack and an offer of rescue. Carrot and stick. They don’t want to lose people either.”
“They will refuse and all you’ll accomplish is to warn them,” Obiya said.
“It’s malnourished sailors and a dwarven salvage team. If it comes to conflict I’m sure we’ll manage.”
“Very well. But I am coming with you to negotiate.” She hissed the last word as if it were an expletive.
Larry arched his eyebrows. This was an instance where he’d have arched both even had he mastered arching one. Descending to the chasm floor required using the diving bell, a task typically undertaken in smallclothes rather than an ankle length wool robe. At some stage in the process of Obiya going down, things were going to acquire an awkwardness.
“I’m sure I can manage…”
“You have managed very little of what I have requested from you,” she said. “I will represent the stick.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ruby had seen what a human brain looked like. There was one in a jar on a shelf behind the lectern in the Third Floor East-Northeast scriptorium at the Athenaeum. It had sat there amongst other jars containing a variety of pickled bits of various creatures. Ruby used to daydream, wondering who it had been and what they would think if they knew their brain was in a jar. What ideas had once swirled in there? The brain had looked like a big clump of thick noodles. Ever since, an aspect of Ruby’s self image was of a noodle-wad piloting around a body like a live-in puppeteer.
Reading the book made her noodles wriggle.
It was how she knew when she’d deduced the correct meaning of a word. It would squirm through her mind, burrowing in, noodles wriggling around it.
“I think,” Aldine said from next to her, “that this Gr'bl-Neb'gthrb might be a person or an entity of some sort.” She was working on translating the opposite page. “This passage here is talking about it passing within or passing without. Perhaps it’s a Mer name for a daemon?”
Ruby shook her head. “This book predates the Daemonwars. If it’s an entity then it’s something older. I have more references to the passing process here, but nothing clear.”
The ‘passing’ seemed to be the focus of the book. Lengthy details on how to facilitate it. The majority of the text discussed the reasoning behind the different processes. If you could call it reason. A word porridge of insanity was another phrase that sprang to mind. Convoluted diagrams of arcing lines and squiggled labels, strange glyphs and unspeakable marginalia.
They turned the page and there it was. The incantation. The format change of the text made it clear. It was lined and metered like a poem or a song. Both pages full, each symbol carefully painted. The ink glistened in the candlelight as if it were still wet. If the book had artifact status, these two pages were the reason why.
Ruby licked her lips. She was no mage. Magic for the untrained was like walking a tightrope over lava. Magic for the trained was the same but with a strong wind and cindersharks in the lava. It was the sort of thing that grew more dangerous with knowledge.
As Ruby understood it, the words and gestures of a spell were the only means by which mortals could harness the runes that were the ingredients of the arcane. The runes created a framework that shaped magical energies into a desired result. A flaw in the frame or a frame larger than the caster could manage resulted in a small black scorch mark to forever commemorate where the magician had failed. It was traditional to use the charred flooring as part of the mage’s gravestone. Wizards were rare not for any lack of people with an insane lust for arcane power, they were rare because most had self-vaporized by the end of their Wizarding 101 book.
There were another two pages of text and then, curiously, the incantation was repeated. Ruby flipped back and forth between the two. Were they the same?
The Dungeoneers: Blackfog Island Page 18
