by P. D. Kalnay
They weren’t worth going back for.
Once past the ship, we drove straight into the current. Ivy kept the pump at full, which under the circumstances was genius. The current drew the ship back and away from us, and the undead leviathan couldn’t keep pace, although it made the effort. When the ship had grown small behind us, whatever life had animated the dead creature vanished, and it sank listlessly back into the murky water. The spray filled chase hadn’t lasted more than a minute or two.
“No more exploring,” Ivy said.
Without warning or ceremony she made hard to port and took us clear of the ring current. I lay my head against the side of the boat—too exhausted to argue.
***
We spent our first quiet night in weeks out on the open sea with nothing more than a blanket of stars for shelter (along with blankets of the regular sort). I missed sleeping on the dry ground. Sailing was pleasant enough in good weather and travelling was exciting, but I’d come to the belated realisation that I wasn’t a sailor. As hard as it was to believe—I missed the workshop and smithy on Knight’s Haven. Weird.
Since our old schedule was messed up, and I wasn’t tired, I took the tiller when darkness fell. The ghost ship had cost us a much needed crate of dried food, an empty water barrel, and the little lantern that Falan brought with him. Ivy sat one bench ahead of the tiller looking up at the sky. She’d been too angry to talk earlier, but she seemed calmer now.
“You said there are no ghosts,” I said.
I didn’t whisper since Falan had proven to be a sound sleeper.
“There aren’t,” Ivy said.
“Corpses that walk around—or swim—are pretty close. I mean something must be in there to make them move.”
“Spirits,” Ivy agreed, “but not their spirits, or the spirits of the dead or damned, or any other ghostly thing. A necromancer summons Spirits of Name, places them in the shell of the dead, and commands them with Purpose. Most need fresh bodies to accomplish it. To animate skeletons of the long dead…”
“Powerful?”
“Incredibly so. I’ve never heard of the like. Size matters too—the necromancer raised a leviathan. Little real knowledge of necromancy exists among our people, but that goes against all I thought I knew.”
“What kind of creature is a necromancer?”
“A few races practice the art. It isn’t common or permitted anywhere. Although they are despised, others have often made use of the talents of necromancers.”
“How?”
“In battle. Every fallen soldier is a recruit for a necromancer. The risen feel no pain and only fall again when incapable of standing. An army of the dead can grow at a terrible pace, and facing former comrades is often traumatic.”
No kidding.
“How long do they stay animated?”
“It depends on the power of the necromancer and the material he or she has at hand. The bodies on a battlefield are fresh.”
“That ship’s been adrift for a long time. Are necromancers immortal?”
“No, they are just enchanters of a different sort than you and I. Some scholars consider them a subset of namers.”
Before I could ask what a namer was, Falan spoke from his blankets.
“It was a jinn,” he said.
Ivy’s head swivelled toward him, “Are you certain?”
“I saw its shell in the last cabin. My father’s cousin is a great scholar who made study of the Jinn—technically, he’s a tavern keeper now. Anyway, he showed me copies he made of old texts. One of them had a picture of a jinn’s shell. That was why I said we must run.”
“You didn’t feel the enchantments or see the shadow?” I asked.
“No, just the shell, and then the jinn rising from it.”
“Jinn need no food,” Ivy said. “They live mainly within their shells, where time moves slowly.”
“Like Aladdin’s lamp?”
“What’s that?” Ivy asked.
I sketched out the story of Aladdin, the lamp, and the three wishes jinn were supposed to give.
“That was a strange tale,” Falan said when I finished.
“And a gross misinterpretation of the Jinn,” Ivy said, “with tiny grains of truth mixed in. Do you remember how I told you that there are beings who are little more than a name?”
“Yeah, when we were talking about Hal—the Destroyer.”
“Yes. Jinn are such beings. If you learn their name, they must serve and obey you, so they guard those names carefully. I believe nothing would happen if you rubbed a jinn’s shell. That the jinn has stayed on the ship and not moved its shell suggests that another compelled it to do so.”
“And jinn are necromancers?”
“Among other things. Those who are mostly name themselves, are natural namers.”
“Well, it seems likely it was compelled to protect the ship and its treasure,” I said.
“Treasure?”
“Lots of it. A whole mine’s worth of gold was dumped in the bilge, and I sensed more precious materials around us when we moved through the ship.”
“You did?” Falan asked.
“Is that why you took your measurements and notes?” Ivy asked Falan.
Falan had scrambled to unbox and assemble navigational instruments his father had packed. He’d continuously checked the ghost ship’s position until it vanished on the horizon, while scribbling notes in a journal and marking our maps.
“Yes,” Falan said. “It’s a lot of gold. I wanted to mark the location and ship’s speed. Though I think no one knows how long it takes to circle one of the ring currents and there is no guarantee it will survive the Maelstrom.”
“That ship has been doing it for a long time, I’d guess,” I said.
“Yes. There is hope.”
“You could set a barrel adrift in the current and time how long it took to travel a distance, measure that distance, divide it into the circumference of the current, multiply it by the time, and that should give you an estimate of the round trip,” I said. It was simple math, though estimating the distances might be tricky.
“That might work. I have the ship’s information. Someday, I’ll return for the treasure when our quest is finished. My father’s cousin may have ideas for dealing with the jinn. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Ivy asked.
“Unless—you also plan to make claims upon the treasure?”
I found it strangely satisfying seeing somebody else on the receiving end of Ivy’s you’re-a-moron look.
I stretched my legs, failing to get comfortable on the hard bench, “All yours, buddy, we have bigger fish to fry.”
Chapter 23 – Mouth of the Dun
In our mad scramble to escape the ships from Felclaw, Falan hadn’t been able to take careful measurements or chart our course, meaning that our exact location was unknown. We did have the advantage of Marielain’s homefinder, and for the next three days we sailed a southerly course staying safely westward of ring current and Maelstrom. Then we turned toward land and hoped that if our pursuers hadn’t given up the chase, we’d at least outpaced them. In the time it took to spot land again, we rigged the new sail and used it as much as the pump under the keel. We still had two new water barrels, but only our old one had any drinking water in it. Clear sailing meant that no rain fell to replenish our supply.
Careful rationing made it a thirsty trip.
Although it was late afternoon, I was the only one awake and was the first to spot land on the western horizon. When it grew closer I woke the others, “Land ho!” I shouted, but what came out from between my cracked lips was more, “Lan ha!”
“Thank the spirits,” Falan, said. “We must keep alert for a river.”
“Obviously,” I said, “we’re trying to sail up one.”
“I meant any river—to fill the water barrels.”
“Oh. Should I continue due west?”
“Yes, we can turn south when we are closer to shore, and watch for a river mouth. There a
re a few ports south of Felclaw, but we should pass them by.”
If Felclaw was the most legitimate of the southern ports…
“No arguments here,” I said.
Ivy was up, but she was staring ahead, lost in her own thoughts.
“Is something amiss?” Falan asked her.
“I’m unsure,” Ivy said. “I have an uneasy feeling, but my senses are diminished at sea…”
Later, when the shoreline stood closer off the bow, I saw what had made her uneasy.
An unbroken coast of dark rock and black sand ran north and south ahead of us as far as I could see. Above, the sky was clouded by a swirling haze, which turned out to be a fog of fine black sand.
“Take us to Starboard,” Falan said.
That would take us north, back towards Felclaw.
“Why?” I asked as I eased us northward.
“The Black Wastes,” Falan said. “We’ve come too far south. Now, we must sail north to find the mouth of the Dun.”
“How will we know it?” I asked. “How far south are we?”
“We’ll know the river, because it marks the end of that. As far as where we are, I don’t know. Hopefully, we are just a little south, since we’ll find no water in the Wastes. I can take the tiller if you want to rest.”
***
Falan sailed the coastline through the night. When I woke the next morning, we floated just offshore with the sail furled. Ivy and Falan spoke quietly in the stern.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
My eyes were extra gritty, and I rubbed black sand from them.
“We’ve reached the Dun,” Ivy said.
I sat up and looked around. Straight ahead lay a miles-wide river mouth to rival the Gaan. On the north bank the jungle grew up against a cliff-like shore, and along the southern banks a thin strip of stunted vegetation grew in scattered patches between river and desert. When we got closer, I learned that what I’d thought was cliff to the north was the remains of a wall that followed the river’s course to the sea before turning up the coast and heading out of sight.
Falan began the last leg of our journey with the same easy competence he always showed at the helm. I stared in fascination at the wall as it grew to the north of us. I’d seen pictures of the Great Wall of China, but the wall running along the northern banks of the Dun made that wall seem… cute.
The manpower and time required to build the wall was unimaginable.
Falan took us closer to the north side, and I got a better look. I estimated the wall’s height at around ninety feet, and it was built from smooth, reddish stone. A tower marked each quarter mile. Those towers were statues carved in the shape of imperial warriors, wearing armour the same as that worn by the skeletons on the treasure ship. Dark windows were cut from the visors on the helms, and it felt as though someone watched each time we passed a tower.
“How long is this wall?” I asked Ivy.
The box with our maps and charts was at the other end of the boat under a pile of gear.
“It ran across the Empire’s southern border,” Ivy said. “It’s called the Watching Wall, and it protected the Shogaan Empire from intrusions out of the Wastes. I don’t know how much of the wall still stands. The Dun formed most of that boundary, so I expect we’ll pass a long stretch of it.”
The wall cut right down to the water’s edge creating a sheer shoreline.
“That might make camping at night difficult,” I said. “Unless, we camp on the southern bank.”
Two faces, one cute and green, and the other hawk-like gave me matching looks of incredulity.
“Bad idea?”
“Camping in the Wastes is a terrible idea,” Ivy said. “Even at the border. Many creatures will visit the bank to find water. Ports and waystations existed along the wall, but I expect they have fallen into ruin and are little safer.”
“We should be able to drop anchor and sleep on the river,” Falan said. “We’d be wisest to do so in the middle and to keep a watch.”
“Can we travel at night?”
“Not knowing the depths and hazards…,” He frowned before adding, “It’s not all bad.”
“No?”
“We now have ample drinking water.”
I dipped a finger into the water and tasted it. The water was only slightly salty.
“Give it another mile or two,” Falan said, when he saw my grimace.
***
We sailed up the Dun for the rest of the day without incident, and a careful observer might have noted that our sail did nothing for all that time. The river stretched miles across, and we kept to the northern side of the middle. It didn’t seem possible to lose our way, and, if rapids or waterfalls lay ahead… we approached from the safer direction.
Nothing of interest appeared on the sandy southern shore, but I studied the wall—and where it had gaps—the jungle. Just like jungles on Earth, an endless variety of noises came from the multi-coloured canopy. Birds of various colours and sizes flew above, and most were as exotic looking as the fisherbirds. Smaller monkey sized creatures that weren’t monkeys appeared in flashes along the top of the wall from time to time. I’d have liked a closer look. The trees were taller than any I’d seen and the hanging vines put the ones Ivy grew on the Starburst to shame. The jungle dwarfed the wall, and in most places the canopy shaded the northern edge of the Dun.
As interesting as the flora and fauna were, I was more interested in the wall. It was flawless in the places where plant life had yet to make inroads. I sensed enchantments in the stone too, but couldn’t work out what they did or had done in the distant past. Those enchantments felt alien with none of the natural affinity I’d had for the ones on Knight’s Haven. The more wall we passed, the more impressive it seemed. It also increasingly felt like the towers really watched us. Given the deadly desert to the south and the dense danger-filled jungle north, I decided not to add paranoid flights of fancy to our already perilous journey.
As Falan suggested, we dropped anchor in the middle that first night and took turns staying awake—no great inconvenience since the day provided ample napping opportunities. Minus the cries of animal life from the jungle, our journey was largely silent.
***
We passed the first intentional break in the Watching Wall on our second day. A small semicircle of city pushed out into the Dun. The city was overgrown with jungle and the buildings were in ruin, but it was still pretty cool. After the jinn and the undead, I didn’t bother suggesting that we stretch our legs and look around. I did steer us so we passed within a few hundred yards of the old docks. There was a similarity to the architecture of Gaan and Felclaw, but it wasn’t the same. The red stone buildings were sharper and more angular, but the empire had been big, so I figured regional differences were to be expected.
“Don’t bring us any closer,” Ivy said. “Something watches from the shadows.”
It was a long bowshot to the docks, even for Ivy.
“I assumed that something is always watching from the shadows,” I said. “What’s the point of living in a dark, spooky jungle if you aren’t going to watch people from the shadows?”
Ivy frowned at me, but Falan snickered. At least somebody enjoyed my incredible wit.
“Funny,” she said. Then she raised a hand to silence me. “I believe I know what watches…”
A small maigur stepped from the shadows of a half tumbled tower and strode to the shoreline. When I say small, I mean comparatively small. The maigur would have stood shoulder to shoulder with me and weighed as much as a bull.
“A female,” Ivy said.
The maigur watched us pass in silence. It remained unmoving when the curve of the river finally blocked our view. Even at a safe distance, the maigur was threatening—I tried to picture an army of them.
***
After days of uneventful river travel, I was bored. Staying on course required nothing in the way of navigation. The rare tributaries that joined the Dun were much smaller, never temptin
g us to steer off course, meaning there was no risk of becoming sidetracked. I had to work at not mentioning my boredom, since I didn’t want to jinx us. For all I knew, jinxing was a real thing on the First World. When Ivy broke a long silence, and interrupted my internal dialog, I wondered if you could jinx yourself with a thought.
“The maigur is still pacing us,” she said out of the blue.
“What?”
“It has followed us along the wall since it showed itself,” Ivy said.
“What do you think it wants?”
Ivy shrugged, “Probably not to become our friend.”
General friendliness didn’t seem to be a thing on her world.
“Yeah, probably not.”
“Hopefully, it will be content to watch.”
“Can they swim?” I asked. I still knew next to nothing about maigur.
“It is likely,” Ivy said. “I’m no expert.”
“We’re already keeping a watch. What else can we do?”
Ivy shrugged and turned her gaze north again.
***
The river’s width provided us with a measure of protection as we travelled, but the further we moved upstream the narrower the river became, offering less and less buffer from the banks. We continued our policy of sticking to the middle until we saw the wyvern. Just before that I’d returned to silently bemoaning my boredom… that’s when I decided that jinxing probably was a thing.
“Not counting our shadow on the wall, I’m surprised at how little wildlife we’ve seen,” I said. “Based on the sounds from shore, you’d think we’d see more animals.”
Ivy and Falan ate their lunches while I manned the tiller. The look Ivy gave me said I’d missed an important and obvious fact. She kept chewing, shook her head, and frowned at me.
“What? What don’t I know now?”
“I have… discouraged curiosity,” Ivy said when she’d finished her mouthful. “There is little I can do about thinking beings, such as the maigur, but animals are another matter. When predators take an interest in us, I implant the notion that we are not worth the bother. Many creatures have noted our passing.”
