by Mel Odom
At her elbow, the tortoiseshell-colored cat flicked her tail lazily.
“I was,” Craugh admitted. “This is … unexpected.”
The images continued coming.
Wick turned the page and worked on a blank sheet, quickly blocking out the relative positions and capturing some of the armor details he could see. He recognized some of the standards and emblems of the great warrior houses that still existed along the Shattered Coast, but there were several others he didn’t know.
“There’s still a lot of emotion that’s tied to those days,” Cap’n Farok spoke up in his gravelly voice. “Perhaps it’s that what draws ye there.”
“Perhaps,” Craugh replied. But he kept his eyes fixed on the smoke images.
Wick knew it was true.
“There’s Captain Dulaun,” Alysta said, sitting up straight now and wrapping her tail around her feet.
Automatically, Wick moved to a new page, staring into the smoke and locating the human hero at once. Wearing silver armor with a blue standard tied around his arm, Dulaun cut an impressive figure. He stood at the forefront of a ragged line of dwarves and humans with two groups of elven archers flanking them.
“It’s you,” Alysta whispered to Quarrel. “You’re bringing this vision.”
Wick sketched the figures locked in battle, then added Quarrel and the cat. He knew from experience how determined the young woman was to find her ancestor’s sword. She’d posed as a mercenary in Wharf Rat’s Warren.
“I don’t mean to,” Quarrel whispered.
One-Eyed Peggie rolled suddenly, causing everyone in the galley to grab hold of something in order to keep from being pitched about. Except for Craugh, Quarrel, and Bulokk. They stayed in place as if they’d been mounted there.
Farok glanced about uneasily. One-Eyed Peggie had been in the grip of the storm for hours now. When they’d seen it forming, they’d tried to outrun it, but it hadn’t proven possible.
In the smoke sphere, the goblinkin warriors met Captain Dulaun and the smaller team that tried to stand their ground. Several of the humans and dwarves stumbled and seemed unsure of their footing.
“They’re sick,” Wick said in disbelief.
“This is the morning of the last battle,” Craugh said. “After they were betrayed.”
Sadness leeched onto Wick. That had been part of the story of the Battle of Fell’s Keep: that someone among the defenders had deliberately made the warriors too sick to fight any longer. Some of them had actually died during the night from whatever they’d been given.
The goblinkin had rolled over most of the ones that had been left.
In the smoke, the goblinkin did that anew. Several of them dropped, victims of the unrelenting elven archery, but in the end there were too many goblinkin. Captain Dulaun went down with a pike through his chest, driven by a troll that stood head and shoulders above the goblinkin. Crimson smeared across the battered silver armor.
Wick wanted to look away but found he couldn’t. He’d met Captain Dulaun, after a fashion, in the mystic frieze where his sword had been hidden and stored. He’d been young for a human, too young to die in such a manner.
But he did. The troll bore down hard on the pike and kept Dulaun pinned to the barren earth. A second troll joined the first and raised his double-bitted axe.
“No!” Quarrel cried out, taking her hands from Craugh and Bulokk’s.
The smoke sphere ruptured and poured up toward the galley ceiling, dispersing entirely.
“I’m sorry,” Quarrel said, tears in her eyes. “I could bear no more.”
Craugh looked a little irritated. “The spell isn’t working as I’d thought it would, but we mustn’t give up on it. This may be the only way we have of finding out where Sokadir and Deathwhisper are.”
With obvious reluctance, Quarrel extended her hands once more to the wizard and the dwarf. Craugh spoke Words again, and the candle flame once more turned green and released a steady stream of smoke that formed a sphere.
This time the image formed and showed a dwarf in thick armor. He swung a mighty battle-axe, cleaving through his foes and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
“Master Oskarr,” Bulokk whispered.
Wick didn’t think the dwarf could be anyone else.
Oskarr moved through the canyon battle, shoving through the goblinkin line to reach comrades-in-arms who were in trouble. Several times he rescued people in confrontations that looked like they would take his own life in forfeit.
Then he saw Dulaun lying at the mercy of the trolls. Though there was no sound with the sight, Wick saw Oskarr flip his blood-smeared helm mask up and shout, Nooooooo!
But there was no undoing what had been done that day. Dulaun was stretched dead upon the ground, and the trolls took away his sword, Seaspray.
“That was when Seaspray was lost,” Alysta said. The cat somehow managed to look sad.
The sheer numbers of the goblinkin drove Oskarr back, flowing over Dulaun’s corpse and concealing it from view. Then the goblinkin were in Oskarr’s face, pulling down dwarves at a high cost, but pulling them down all the same.
A moment later, Oskarr grabbed the nearest standard-bearer and called for the retreat. The standard-bearer blew the horn. Reluctantly, the dwarven line collapsed and fell back.
“He ran,” one of the dwarven pirates muttered.
Angrily, Bulokk looked over his shoulder for the offender. “He didn’t run,” the dwarf growled, “an’ I’ll break the head of anyone that says he did.”
“Not on me ship,” Cap’n Farok said. “I’ll decide any head-breakin’ that needs to be done.” He glared around the packed galley. “Anyone tries something like that, I’ll toss him in the brig, an’ think about puttin’ him out at the next desert island we come across.”
“The world,” Craugh said, “could always use a few more toads.” He added his glare to the captain’s.
“What ye’re lookin’ at there,” Cap’n Farok said, “is war. Most of ye’ve been blooded somewhere, whether at sea fightin’ true pirates or goblinkin, or in a tavern brawl.” He nodded toward the images trapped in the smoke sphere. “But that there’s war. No rules. No give an’ take. Only survivors an’ them that died. Ain’t none of ye got any rights judgin’ a single man there for what he done—unless ye were there, too.”
The crew looked shame-faced and offered apologies.
“Master Oskarr done only what he could,” Cap’n Farok said. “Comes a time when a warrior has done all he can for the cause an’ his country, an’ it’s time to pack it in so he can fight again another day.” He ran his trembling hand through his beard. “Master Oskarr did himself proud, he did. After the Battle of Fell’s Keep, he returned to the Cinder Clouds Islands an’ made the best armor a warrior could hope for.”
“Until Lord Kharrion tracked him down there an’ killed him there,” Zeddar, One-Eyed Peggie’s principal lookout, said.
The battle continued, and even though he knew he was seeing something that no one alive today—save one!—had seen, Wick wished that it would end.
This time it was Craugh who took his hands away. He frowned. “Something’s wrong. I can use the spell to tie our vision to the Battle of Fell’s Keep, but I can’t locate Deathwhisper.”
“Perhaps it’s because you don’t have one of Sokadir’s descendants,” Alysta said.
Craugh appeared to consider that. Then he looked at Wick. “Join us,” the wizard said.
“Me?” Wick didn’t like the idea of being that close to a magical spell. Although he’d never seen one of Craugh’s spells backfire, he knew that spells sometimes did go awry.
“Of all of us,” Craugh said, “you are the most curious to know the end of the story, and what has happened to Sokadir and Deathwhisper. And you’ve touched Boneslicer and Seaspray.”
Wick looked around desperately. “Not me.” He shrugged it off. Haven’t I already gotten involved enough in this? He really didn’t want to be drawn into the center any further
. He was quite content working from the outside from here on out and watching events unfold, thank you. “I’m not curious. Not at all.”
Craugh frowned. “Get over here.”
“No thank you.” Wick smiled to show that he meant no offense. Being rude was never a good idea. Being rude to a wizard was just foolish.
“As a dweller or as a toad,” Craugh threatened, “with warts or without, you’ll serve for this spell.”
“In that case,” Wick said. With a true feeling of dread, he closed his journal and put away his inks, charcoal, and quills.
“Would you hurry up?” Craugh snapped.
Wick jumped and quickly finished.
“Holding this much power open this long is taxing.” Craugh gestured to the table.
Wishing he’d stayed in his room and chiding himself for his curiosity, Wick sat on the bench bolted to the floor. He kept his hands in his lap.
“Your hands,” Craugh said in exasperation.
Fearfully, Wick brought up his hands. They were his most prized possessions. Without them, his whole life would change. Reading books wouldn’t be the same (he could use his nose to turn pages, he supposed, except on days when he had a cold). Writing would be a lot harder (though he’d read that some authors and artists who’d suffered physical disabilities had learned how to use their feet). And the privy—well, he honestly couldn’t see how that could be done at all!
“Wick.”
Recognizing the level of frustration in Craugh’s voice as dangerous, Wick met the wizard’s glare. “Yes?”
“Are you quite through wool-gathering?”
“Actually,” Wick said, “I was just thinking. Maybe you can’t do this even with my help—”
“I can,” Craugh interrupted.
“—and since doing this spell is taxing and everything—”
“Give me your hands.”
“—maybe we could just try doing this another time. I mean, maybe the storm, the atmospheric conditions, aren’t good for—”
“Give me your hands! Now!”
Shaken to his core, remembering how Craugh had once vaporized a whole building just to get someone’s attention, Wick handed his hands over. Craugh put him between Quarrel and Bulokk. Then the process was repeated, this time with more favorable results.
2
Monster!
A tingling sensation spread through Wick as the candle flame sputtered again. Smoke formed into a sphere that filled with an image. This time the focus was on an elven warder who fought with a mystic golden bow that fired ruby arrows that formed in his fingers every time he drew back the string. The loosed shafts plunged among the goblinkin, blasting holes through their ranks.
Tears slid down the elf’s face. He stood above the bodies of two other elven men. Both of them favored him in their looks. Wick knew that many would have thought that just because they were elven, but the little Librarian had drawn enough faces that he easily distinguished one elf from another.
“Sokadir,” someone behind Wick whispered.
Another elf, this one who also favored the elven champion, though not nearly so much, caught Sokadir by the shoulder and pulled at him. Sokadir turned on the other for a moment, pointing one of the ruby arrows at him. Then he whirled again and fired the arrow into the heart of a lumbering jallackdross, one of the huge war beasts Lord Kharrion had brought to the battle.
The war beast disappeared in a blaze of fire. In the next moment, Sokadir gave the two elves on the ground a last look, then fled before the goblinkin army. The defenders were now in full rout.
“That was then,” Craugh said. “We need to know where Sokadir is now.”
Wick stared after the retreating elf. Curiosity rose high and strong inside Wick. Who were the two men at Sokadir’s feet? So many died that day, that final day of the Battle of Fell’s Keep, that it didn’t make any sense. And Sokadir was a trained warrior; he knew that losses on a battlefield were inevitable.
“Think about Sokadir,” Craugh commanded. “Where is he now?”
Wick considered the question. Oskarr had returned to the Cinder Clouds Islands and had begun smithing armor despite the rumors that persisted that he had been the one to betray the Unity defenders. Dulaun had died there on the battlefield, his sword lost and his body never seen again.
But Sokadir—
Wick thought about the elven warder. Sokadir had been from Laceleaves Glen. He’d been a prince there. Had he returned there after Lord Kharrion’s defeat? Had he even made it back from the Painted Canyon? Wick didn’t know. He wished he’d been at the Vault of All Known Knowledge. There might have been some mention of him in the journals and memoirs that had come out of the Cataclysm.
He knew where at least three histories on Sokadir were, and six books on Laceleaves Glen.
Would he have returned home? Sokadir was an elf. Nowhere else made sense. Most of them died within only a few short miles of where they were birthed. Wick thought of Sokadir going home to get healthy again. It was the only logical thing for the elven warrior to do.
Abruptly, the smoky sphere grew agitated. The clouds of smoke oozed and flowed into each other, then just as quickly, an image formed. An elf hunkered on the branch of a tree. He was lean and handsome, and his profile striking. A large brown bear lumbered under the tree branch, and an owl glided soundlessly to the branch over the elven warrior’s head. The forest around him was tall and straight, a shipbuilder’s dream.
“Sokadir,” Wick breathed.
“Where is he?” Craugh asked.
Wick studied the forest. In the corner, he caught a blue flash of a stream or river. A moment more and he thought he had it. He focused on the mountain range in the distance, recognizing the Broken Forge Mountains from the time he’d gone there the first time he’d been shanghaied. The area shown him wasn’t far from where they’d encountered Shengharck the dragon. “This has to be Laceleaves Glen.”
“In the Forest of Fangs and Shadows?”
“Yes. As I recall, Sokadir was from Laceleaves Glen.” There were other elven communities in the Forest of Fangs and Shadows, of course, but Sokadir was from the Laceleaves sprawl, so it was reasonable to assume he was there. “He was a prince there or something. He took several warriors from there with him when he traveled to the Battle of Fell’s Keep.”
“He was a prince,” Craugh agreed. “Upon his return from the Battle of Fell’s Keep, he withdrew from the fight and stepped down as prince of his people.”
“Why?”
“He lost two sons in the Painted Canyon when the goblinkin overran the defenders. Most assume it was because he was grieving. As I understand it, he’s stayed aloof from his people ever since.”
“Rootless,” Wick said, and the word sounded harsh and cruel in his ears. And I’m not even an elf. He watched the elven warrior for a moment as he stood in repose. Without warning, Sokadir turned to Wick, lifting the bow into the air and taking aim.
“Who are you?” the elven warder demanded, gazing at him with his purple eyes.
Watching him, Wick saw Sokadir’s lips move, but he also heard the man, speaking like he was in the galley next to him.
“What are you doing spying on me?” Sokadir demanded.
“I’m not spying,” Wick answered. With all the accusations he faced from Frollo, he’d learned to first deny all wrongdoing.
Rage mottled the porcelain skin and tightened the purple eyes. Quick as a striking snake, Sokadir released the string without firing the arrow and reached for Wick through the smoke sphere.
Wick was hypnotized by the action (he still couldn’t believe the elven warder could somehow see him) and tried to dodge away too late. Sokadir’s hand extended past the smoke sphere and caught the front of Wick’s shirt.
Yelping in surprise, Wick found himself dragged from his seat. He caught Sokadir’s wrist and tried to pull the elf’s hand from his clothing. But it was to no avail. The elven warder had a death grip on him. Wick was lifted bodily from his seat and hau
led toward the smoke sphere.
Craugh barked a single word. The sphere lost its shape and floated up to the ceiling. Sokadir vanished and Wick dropped back into his seat.
“What happened?” Bulokk asked.
“Didn’t you see that?” Wick asked, adjusting his shirt.
“What?” Quarrel gazed at him intently. “All we saw was you rising from your seat and sliding into the smoke.”
Wick looked at Craugh.
“I didn’t see anything,” the wizard said.
“It was Sokadir,” Wick exclaimed. “He saw me. He grabbed me!”
“Impossible.” Craugh frowned.
“I didn’t yank myself off that bench.”
“No,” the wizard admitted, “you didn’t.” He rubbed his long nose with his forefinger. “It only means that Sokadir has his magical defenses in place.” He nodded to himself. “And he’s stronger in his powers than I’d believed.”
“He doesn’t want anyone to bother him,” Wick said. “I understood that well enough.”
“Unfortunately, Sokadir doesn’t have a choice in that matter. If we don’t get to him first, Ryman Bey and Gujhar will.”
“We also need to get our ancestors’ weapons back from them,” Bulokk added.
That was another part of the puzzle. They still didn’t know why Gujhar’s employer wanted the three mystic weapons the champions had used at the Battle of Fell’s Keep.
One-Eyed Peggie staggered sideways without warning, heeling over hard to starboard. The candle tipped over and would have gone sliding across the table, but Wick’s quick reflexes snatched it from the air. Pots and pans hanging from the galley hooks and in cupboards set off a ferocious racket.
“By the Old Ones,” Cap’n Farok exploded, shoving himself to his feet with the aid of his crutch, “what was that?”
No one had an answer.
A moment later, the pirate ship heeled over again, this time to port. Timbers cracked somewhere below. One-Eyed Peggie righted herself with difficulty, knocked off balance by the blows and now struggling between the troughs of the stormtossed waters.
