Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  Stargazer’s sail whispered urgently: “Swim! Swim!”

  And finally she jumped into the sea and swam behind the others in despair.

  Drewgor climbed out of the water into Trevin’s empty boat.

  Her sail darkened somehow in the light of his scepter, and he sneered at her with grim respect. He pulled back his wet hair and leaned against her sternpost, convulsing with laughter as seawater gurgled from his blue lips. He regarded the Sea Mare’s haggard crew.

  To them his pale face, in the scepter’s glow, seemed vaguely beautiful for a moment. Neuvia climbed up the ladder to the Sea Mare’s main deck as Toy caught his breath on top of her head. Drewgor spoke to her in Trevin’s voice, which made the air quiver: “My Queen, where are you going?”

  The crew of the Sea Mare helped her aboard as the King waved his new scepter. Neuvia turned on the deck, raising Gieron’s scepter in both hands as righteous rage overpowered her, and yet her wisdom intervened and she held her tongue as Toy feathered her ear.

  Rainbow webs flickered faintly from Drewgor’s scepter in lightning bolts arching over the clouds. A distant thunder rolled from the southwest horizon, where his far-flung bolts touched ground.

  Neuvia saw him stand up in Stargazer and bow to her like a mawkish marionette in his expired body. “My brave lady, my wife and loyal guardian,” Trevin’s beloved voice rang out. “I am saved. Now we can be together in Hala at last!”

  She measured her words. “You are not my husband. You are not Trevin. You are nothing but a worm in his corpse, and I shall defy you as did my husband for as long as he lived.”

  “Your husband was a knave!” Drewgor spat.

  All marked his answer.

  The sharp-eyed Ed climbed the mast and shouted from the crow’s nest: “Land ho!”

  All were mystified at the warning until they looked to the southwest.

  There rose the last isle Trevin created, with raw rage that even he could not control or predict.

  The island widened on the horizon off their port bow, its tall cliffs glowing pink in the sun. All saw now why it had not been charted, for it moved.

  “You Ameulintians have come such a long way,” said the demon, chilling their bones. He grasped Stargazer’s mast with Trevin’s pale hand. “I will not destroy you myself. I owe you gratitude for giving me this rare diamond.” He raised Gieron’s scepter, amused. “I shall let Trevin’s last creation destroy you. It is a fitting reward for misplaced loyalty.”

  “’Twas you that plagued Trevin’s soul,” Neuvia accused him from the Sea Mare’s deck. Either the diamond on her own scepter, or the truth she spoke, magnified her voice so that it reached him.

  Drewgor studied Neuvia then. Already, the Seventh Isle was only a league distant and pushed a hill of water before it. “You would have made a delicious Queen, Ameulintian woman.” He gestured with his scepter, and Stargazer turned, bearing him swiftly northwest toward the point of the Dimrok’s bay.

  “All sail out, men!” Nil boomed, and the men sprang up the rigging to let down the mainsail.

  “You heard the Captain,” Rawley shouted, stamping his wooden foot on the deck. “Get it done, ya butt-headed donkeys, I see ya wanderin’ around there, Bultin, get forward and WEIGH THE DAMNED ANCHOR! Whaddaya lookin’ at me for, Tintil? Go with him, ya lunk!”

  The certainty of Lince’s presence was sorely missed, but as Rawley stepped forward to fill his shoes the crew was charged by the spirit of his example.

  “Let’s run him down, men!” Nil challenged.

  And the mariners cheered their approval.

  “Drop the lateen and haul up the jibs,” Rawley shouted.

  Neuvia felt faint and came to Lelinair’s side now. “I must lie down,” she whispered.

  Lelinair turned to her.

  “I must go to see the King…”

  “Eh?”

  “He is in Wynder.”

  Lelinair put her arm around Neuvia as she swooned and, with Bruthru Zee, they brought her to Nil’s cabin. They sat beside her as she lay on Nil’s bed and seemed to fall into a deep and deathly sleep.

  Nil thanked a favorable wind as they raced north in pursuit of Drewgor.

  Slicing past the Dimrok’s southern cliff, they saw the Seventh Isle gaining on them from the southwest, pushing a massive wave before it.

  “Why are we chasing him, Captain?” Karlok asked.

  Nil winked.

  Karlok grinned, trusting him.

  The Sea Mare closed the distance on Stargazer and the demon sent a set of heavy seas in their path.

  Drewgor sat on the midthwart pondering his pursuers as he looked back at Nil on the bridge of his rampant vessel. The ancient Khalwairn was likely the greatest general there had ever been, outlasting all others in Hala. Strategies and tactics excited him more than anything in the universe. He commanded more speed now from Stargazer and seemed to get some, but not quite enough as he rounded the point of the Dimrok’s bay with the Sea Mare in hot pursuit.

  Nil sneered at him from 500 yards as he spied the scoundrel’s vexation through his spyglass. The Sea Mare closed the distance even as the giant wave of the Seventh Isle lifted her white wake on the dark blue sea behind her.

  The Sea Mare cleared the point of the bay and Nil immediately ordered her yawed starboard and spun the helm wheel. With a thunderclap of her sails and a twang of her lines, she cut east into the Dimrok’s harbor, just as the wave smashed into the cliffs of the point and rolled across her wake.

  Drewgor scratched his head, spinning the scepter contemplatively, perplexed by this dilemma as the moving island he had sent after them was suddenly upon him. He was not quite sure how to approach this unexpected move. He tipped the diamond scepter, and a faint lightning of many hues touched the onrushing cliff then.

  The island halted as pieces cracked from its cliffs, and then it reared up from the sea, sucking back the wave in front of it with a mighty gasp.

  The Sea Mare continued into the bay as Drewgor waved goodbye to them and spurred his skiff north.

  Even as he did, the last isle rotated and smashed into the points of the Dimrok’s bay and came to rest, trapping the Sea Mare.

  Nil bent his head and gripped the rail. “Alas. He’s won!”

  Chapter 29

  Reunion

  Neuvia saw Trevin, sitting at the broken edge of the Wynderne Dimrok grasping his head. He was surrounded by his Wondyrnal subjects, who had rushed with joy and sadness to see their real king after their long ordeal with Drewgor.

  “I am here,” Neuvia said, and the Wyndyrnes looked up and rose around them as he rushed to embrace her, and the Wynder folk shone with happiness to see them reunited as they encircled them. She looked into his black eyes, soothing the perils she saw storming there, and she buried her head in his chest. “You are alive!”

  In grief, he sighed. “It is only a matter of time before the Gairanor see me and take me away. I am only a ghost, without a body.”

  “Your body there is grievously harmed, though he did take it,” she sobbed. “And lives in it!”

  “He is my grandfather’s nemesis, Drewgor himself.”

  “I know it, Trevin, and the men who came to save you know it now. Why can’t you save yourself, my love?”

  “I have no earthly body. It is a matter of moments before the Gairanor notice it and take me from Wynder and you, forever.”

  “Can you not come to Hala? Is there no magic you can use?”

  “Alas, there is no magic that can make a Hala body. If there were, Drewgor would not have gone to such great pains to steal my lifeless flesh. The worst injustice, my love, which ruins my heart and poisons my mind…” His eyes pierced hers: “is that I leave you now with no shred of hope to grasp, the very thing you honored this world with and the next, no matter how unlikely. Leaving now I take all hope away, though it seems that if I had left you with one grain of sand you could have made of it a beachhead and a garden, and eventually a paradise! For you are the miracle-worker
, Neuvia, not I. And though I gave you less and less all of these years, somehow you made of it more and more. How can you forgive me, or I myself, for taking away all chances for you to work your magic, as though to ridicule your nature? Let me give you this last stolen moment then. For it’s all I have. Kiss me!”

  “Drewgor has taken your body in Hala,” Neuvia wept, denying him.

  “Do not speak his name.”

  “He has taken your place and your crown and he will rule your kingdom in your flesh, Trevin.”

  “He will not live long with what I left him. Know that, my love. For I made sure it was ruined before I gave it to him. Listen to me, and not in anger, for surely I have not long to be with you, and you will have a lifetime to hate me if that be your final judgment.”

  “Speak, then, but by your soul you better leave me breath to make my answer,” she warned.

  “Know that I did in truth make full reform of my distrust of Hala that you never abandoned. For never was I more in love with Hala than when certain death replaced all doubts. Alas, we were not to be more than we have been, it seems. But just as there is no poetry in fate, there is no shame in death. So let me kiss you and say my words of love directly on your lips so they may not forget them now!”

  Trevin took her in his arms and made a last indelible impression that would defy time as tears streamed from her eyes and she finally relinquished her hope, submitting to his lips. But she squeezed handfuls of his hair in anger now as she knew he would be gone as Drewgor with his scepter would overcome the ravages done to Trevin’s body and carry it unopposed against Ameulis, as Toy forewarned. Yet there was no use in these tidings now, no hope and no reason, no purpose in telling him.

  They embraced like one statement out of time until he softened in her grip, draining away as though some ominous force lessened him. She looked on him and dared not blink as tears blurred her Wynderne eyes. Toy whispered in her ear as she extended her arm and she touched Trevin’s neck. And the pearl snake coursed over her hand and struck him, sinking sharp fangs into his throat.

  Then Trevin sighed and faded as she squeezed his hand until he was gone.

  And she lay down atop the cliff as the Wyndornes wailed in grief in the sky.

  Nil opened the door to his cabin and saw Lelinair and Zee seated beside Neuvia, who was deep asleep on his bed. He entered, followed by Karlok and Senthellzia.

  “What has befallen her?” Senthellzia asked.

  “She is in the other world, with the King, I think,” said Lelinair.

  Karlok glanced at Nil with wide eyes.

  Lelinair felt the heat on Neuvia’s brow with the back of her fingers. “She has a fearsome fever.”

  Toy moved on her throat and slid down, pushing back Neuvia’s tunic over her left breast. Then, as they watched, the serpent coiled around it, putting Nil and Karlok on guard.

  “What is the serpent doing?” Nil asked.

  “Leave him be,” Lelinair said.

  Then the snake struck Neuvia’s nipple, sinking its crystal fangs and injected some mystical venom.

  “What has it done?” Zee lamented.

  “Be still!” said Lelinair, her tears welling as she held back the physician’s hand.

  The Queen seemed to wake for an instant but then she sank into a fever dream as sweat broke over her brow. Toy braided himself around her throat again and then became still. Neuvia’s face turned gray as her cheeks sank and the peace of death fell over her features, like a shadow of winter cloud.

  And those present bowed their heads, dashed with grief, and yet, even as they turned away, her cheeks filled and flushed with color.

  Zee quickly bent down and examined her.

  “Is she dead?” Nil said.

  Very low, in wonder, Zee answered, “No… She is with child.”

  Senthellzia and the others stared as the Queen’s belly ripened before their eyes in the space of minutes. Senthellzia and Lelinair helped Zee bend her legs to deliver a glowing child, who came easily and effortlessly.

  Only then did Neuvia wake, exhausted and pale, and she looked upon the infant who looked back with Trevin’s eyes. He suckled her and those present turned away; for he was not drawing her milk like a hungry babe. They could not help but look again, however, as the infant at her breast grew into a child as if years were minutes.

  The crew that gathered outside the cabin trying to divine what was going on inside from the sounds they could detect through its walls.

  A great eagle swooped down through the rigging and landed on the railing of the bridge, startling Harm up into the crow’s nest. The Dimrok’s eagle half-folded its wings and glared at the men on the deck, and they all stepped back from the cabin in respect.

  When they heard the shrill laugh of a child, however, they were truly perplexed. And when the door of Nil’s cabin opened, and a boy dressed in one of Nil’s nightshirts dashed out on the deck with long black hair and sparkling black eyes streaked with blue, he was the very image of the statue perched over their crow’s nest. And yet he seemed no more than four years old as he ran with an adult’s nimble ease from man to man, taking their hands.

  “I know you, Karlok!” he said, shaking the old sailor’s hand. “You were the first mate on the Eventide who showed me round when I was a child. And you were Captain of the White Shark when we hunted the sea monster, Knot.” He laughed a bright scale.

  “My lord, are you reborn, then?”

  “I think I am!”

  One by one, he greeted the mariners as he ran from here to there, growing from toddler to child to boy before their eyes. “I’m starving!” he cried.

  Pickle had been preparing dinner and Trevin was brought to the galley where the cook served him a royal helping of bacon, onions, butter and eggs with a pork-filled cake topped with creamed enrids and shredded jimaca and beets, all served to him by the beaming Bombo. Trevin devoured the hearty fare, growing visibly taller with each swallow. Pickle sent out more, and Trevin sucked down lemon potatoes and sugar-fried lamb, black raisins and walnut bread, and ginger ribs and fried goat-cheese, and oranges and spinach leaves. He devoured them all to Pickle’s delight as his galley crackled with all burners blazing to feed the boy-king. He soon filled out Nil’s nightshirt, a mite taller than he was before, as his gathered subjects watched.

  The eagle on the bridge rail spread its wings and pealed a fanfare as it rose into the air. Neuvia emerged from the cabin after breakfast. She entered the galley as Trevin swallowed a morsel from his seventh plate of food and grew another inch. As she approached him he knelt at her feet. Then he rose, looking exactly like the seventeen-year-old prince she had married seven years ago, though perhaps because of Pickle’s cooking.

  “And if you wander from the road,” he said.

  “I’ll look for you down paths unstrode,” she said. A tear sparkled on her face as she bowed down to him, in return.

  He lifted her chin and kissed her lips to reassure her as nothing else could that it was him.

  “Here are some trousers, lord.” Lelinair handed Trevin a pair of Nil’s pants. He took them from her with a wry smile and winked as he pulled them on to the chortling cheers of their audience. Then, with Neuvia on his arm, he strode out onto the main deck in bare feet to greet his people and bade the crew show him the Sea Mare.

  He examined her harpoons and catapults on the aftercastle in wonder and then climbed the forward companion ladder to the fo’c’sle.

  “Lord?” Nil said.

  “Yes, Captain?” Trevin replied, the cliffs of the Seventh Isle at his back.

  “Drewgor is reborn and he makes for Ameulis.”

  Trevin looked startled. “Then we should follow him, I think!”

  Neuvia reached under her cloak and presented the Golden instrument of Gieron himself. “Take this scepter, my lord.”

  “Not yet,” he answered, lightly. And then he flourished his naked hand, pointing it at the sky. Behind him the Seventh Isle rose 200 feet straight up out of the sea.


  The men looked at each other for confirmation of the deed as it was happening, and then threw the few hats they had left in joy.

  “Set sail. Get her off!” Nil shouted, climbing the bridge.

  “Second watch, weigh anchor, first watch, get her going!”

  The sail fell and the Sea Mare cantered over the bay, and her passengers held their breath as they cruised under the Seventh Isle that rained seawater.

  And as they sailed, stretching the lateen and jibs for speed, the men kept glancing at the Cirilen who stood on the prow, oblivious, apparently, to the island he had suspended over their heads with Neuvia by his side.

  After they had passed under it, all sighed in relief, and the Seventh Isle lowered into the sea behind them.

  Trevin changed into some clothes given to him by the sailors, and yet, despite their wishes, he called for the drabbest they could offer. Then he asked for counsel with the Captain.

  They sailed then as full speed on a wind that Trevin had gathered behind them, and the men on her decks wrote songs on their instruments to remember the deeds they were witnessing that day.

  “You may have my cabin below, lord. I’ll take this upper one now,” Nil said. “It was my First Mate’s.”

  “Much obliged, Captain Ramesis,” Trevin said. They sat at the chart table in Lince’s cabin. “You fulfilled my worst nightmare, mariner!”

  “Eh?”

  “You rescued me.”

  They both laughed grimly then. “If you do the same we may be even,” Nil said. “I built as many walls, lord, between myself and happiness. In certain ways your walls became mine.”

  “You have broken all the walls and slain all the monsters.”

  “There is one left,” Nil said.

  “That one is for me. Thank you for giving me your cabin, Captain. Take an hour to be with your woman here in yours.”

  Tears shone in his eyes. “I will, lord. If you mean it!”

  “I command it.”

  And for one hour sailors extended their ears only to be frustrated by the shroud of birdsong Trevin conjured around the Captain’s cabin while they crossed the sea at a full gallop.