by Dante King
I was about to turn Talon around and fly back to the fleet when I saw movement on the raft. One of the Yengishmen was not as dead as he’d looked, it seemed. He slowly raised his head, staring with bleary eyes at the hovering harpy. There was no trace of fear or bewilderment on his sunburned face; perhaps he thought he was hallucinating. His cracked lips and shallow breathing told me he’d been out here on the ocean for a long time, and whatever food and water rations these people had had on their lifeboat had been used up days ago. He was barely clinging to life, and if I hadn’t come across him, he probably would have joined his fellow passengers at the other side in a couple of hours.
“It’s your lucky day, my Yengish friend,” I whispered. “I don’t know what gods you worshiped in your own land, but from this day forward, you’re going to worship the God of Death.”
Then, controlling Talon, I swooped down, picked him up gently in her claws, and carried him across the ocean back to the warship.
“What’s going on?” Elyse asked when I opened my eyes again.
“I picked up a trace of human death far out at sea,” I answered, “so I flew Talon out there to take a look. I found a lifeboat full of dead Yengishmen, but there was one survivor. Talon should be back with him shortly. The poor bastard looks like he’s been without food and water for days.”
“Oh my!” she exclaimed. “I’ll get some food and water ready for him, some wine too. We have to be very careful feeding him and rehydrating him; too much too quickly could kill him.”
“How do you know so much about that sort of thing?”
“I served as a healer for a few years. Part of our duties was healing the sick and helping out starving peasants. Trust me, I know how to help someone in this kind of predicament.”
“Good thing you mentioned that. I probably would have just forced a bottle of wine down the guy’s throat the moment he got here. I mean, that’s what I’d want.”
“Now you know. Don’t forget.”
“I’ll go wait on deck for him,” I said.
Elyse nodded and hurried off. I went up to the deck.
“We’re getting a surprise guest, people,” I told my companions up there. “Look up.”
I made sure the undead harpy set the man gently down. He coughed and breathed shallowly, blinking his eyes and looking around in confusion.
“Am I... dead?” he eventually rasped, speaking the Common Tongue with a heavy Yengish accent. “Is this hell?”
I chuckled and shook my head, then squatted down next to him and propped his head up under a small sack of dried beans.
“This isn’t hell,” I said to him, “but it isn’t heaven either, unfortunately. The good news is you’re still alive. And when we get some food and drink in you, you’ll start to feel a lot more alive than you’ve felt in the past few days, I bet. Then you can tell us what happened to the ship you were on, and how you and your shipmates ended up on that lifeboat.”
“I’m alive?” he gasped.
“As alive as they come. You’ve got a pulse and you’re breathing.”
The instant I said this, his dark almond eyes grew wide with fear. He started struggling weakly, desperately trying to get up. I pressed my hand gently onto his chest to keep him lying down. The agitation wouldn’t do him any good in his state. I might not have been a healer, but I knew that much.
“Try to relax,” I said. “I’m not letting you bounce around until my friend’s back with food and wine. You’ll want wine. Then we’ll talk.”
“The kraken,” he gasped, ignoring me, his whole body trembling with terror. “Run for your lives! The kraken is coming. The kraken is coming!”
Chapter Twelve
“There’s no kraken here,” I repeated. “If you caught a glimpse of something while you flew over to this ship, that was just a whale.”
I wasn’t certain of this, but I figured assuaging the man’s fears was a good idea.
“K-kraken, k-k-kraken.” The Yengish sailor shook like a leaf in a gale, his eyes like saucers, spittle flying from his chattering jaw.
“He’s on the verge of death and has been adrift on a dinghy for days, possibly weeks,” Elyse said. “Don’t expect much sense to come out of this poor fellow’s mouth until he’s been properly rehydrated and rested.”
I knew she was right, of course, but the Yengishman had me intrigued nonetheless.
“I’ve got a few healing herbs for him too,” Elyse continued. “They should calm his troubled mind somewhat.”
I nodded, and Rollar took me aside, looking at the jabbering Yengishman with suspicion.
“Are you sure it was a good idea to rescue this man, Lord Vance?” he asked. “The insanity, the feebleness… couldn’t it all be a distraction until he gets one of us alone, when he’ll reap our lives one by one? You have had to deal with such types before.”
“You’re right to be suspicious,” I said, “but if he was a Blood Demon, he would have attacked me by now. Anyway, since I first encountered Blood Demons, I think I’ve learned how to sniff the fuckers out.”
“All right, I trust you, my lord,” Rollar said, quite relieved.
I smiled and patted him on the shoulder before returning to Elyse and the Yengishman. I really needed to find out more about the kraken, and I suspected that the trembling wretch in front of me would be just the man to tell me about the creature, if I could fix his mind.
“I’ve managed to get him to drink and eat some,” Elyse said. “It will still be a while before he’s gathered his wits though.”
“Do you think Anna-Lucielle’s Charm magic would help soothe his mind?” I asked.
“It probably would,” Elyse said.
“Excellent. I’ll bring her over here.”
“You mean the harpy will, I presume?”
“The Talon Express is a lot faster than a rowboat.”
“How will anyone there know the harpy is there to pick her up?”
“I was thinking of the same issue,” I said. “I have something new I’m itching to try.”
“If you keep fishing for my interest, I’ll stop listening, you know.”
“I’m going to make one of my zombies talk to her.”
Elyse couldn’t help but laugh at this prospect. “I thought the undead couldn’t talk? I’ve never heard a single one of your creatures utter anything even vaguely comprehensible.”
“If I don’t give it a shot, how will I ever know if it’s possible?”
“That’s quite true,” Elyse said. “And if you could get your undead minions to talk, it could prove to be rather useful in the future, for risk-free message delivery, for example. You could send ultimatums to armed enemies without risking the life of a living messenger.”
“You got it,” I said with a grin. “Here goes.”
This required me to do two things in quick succession: I sent Talon flying off toward the pirate ship Anna-Lucielle was on, and then I shot my mind, like a loosed crossbow bolt, into the heads of one of the zombies on the ship closest to hers.
Moving the zombies with as much ease as moving any of my limbs, down to the most intricate of motor functions, was simple for me at this stage, but talking was so different, it took me back to square one. I would have to think in detail about the mechanics of it all again.
But first, I had to get my zombie within earshot of her, and that meant getting on the same ship. A few of the pirates looked at the zombie in surprise when I sent it walking across the deck to grab a rope and a grappling hook. But I’d told Percy and the other pirates that they were not to interfere with the activities of any of my undead creatures, however strange they might seem, because their actions were an extension of my actions. So, they just stood and gaped.
Controlling the zombie’s hands and arms, I whirled the grappling hook around my head and flung it across the gap between ships. The zombie’s prodigious strength, far greater than that of even the burliest blacksmith, allowed it to easily toss the grappling hook up and over the neighboring ship�
�s mast. This gave the zombie enough swinging room to travel cleanly from the first ship to the second without getting close to the ocean.
Anna-Lucielle looked with increasing consternation at the undead creature as it approached her. I wondered if she could see me checking her out through the zombie’s yellow-green eyes.
“Uh, Vance?” she said uneasily. “Is that you? Are you in there?”
Now came the tricky part. I spoke, using my own voice, as I’d do for any other action I needed the zombie to complete. All that came out of the zombie’s mouth, though, was a garbled, phlegmy growl.
“Graargarrgh, grrr arrgh,” the zombie growled.
“It is you, right, Vance?” Anna-Lucielle said. “Or are these things growing brains? Vance, answer me; this is freaking me out.”
“Grargh graarghgragh, argh arrghh,” the zombie growled when I’d attempted to say, ‘Yeah, it’s me, damn it.’
I could make my undead do the most detailed fighting maneuvers, but this, what would seem the most basic thing… I needed to do something to let Anna-Lucielle know that it was me, so I thought fast. I reached out with the zombie’s hand, grabbed her perky left tit, and gave it a good squeeze.
“Hey!” She swatted the zombie’s hand away. After a moment of shock, a knowing grin broke across her face and she laughed.
“It is you in there, Vance, isn’t it?” she said. “But what is it that you’re trying to tell me?”
I found myself going through the layers of intuitive knowledge I had about language, especially how we speak. Forming coherent sentences or words—even syllables—was proving to be much harder than shooting an arrow through an enemy’s skull from a distance of a hundred yards, or dual-wielding a sword and a flail to fight off multiple opponents. Strangely enough, anyone could do the first thing, at least anyone who had half an ounce of brain more than the thickest dunce and the combat techniques required far more skill and coordination as a human. Why was this different for the zombies?
Ripping out tongues was a common enough punishment in Prand for perjurers or other such criminals who told damaging lies, and they sure lost the capacity to speak. I also knew that soldiers who were fond of smoking pipes developed diseases that affected their throats and their ability to speak and that soldiers who survived bad throat wounds often had trouble speaking clearly and intelligibly after such wounds had healed.
My zombies decayed a lot slower than normal, truly dead human corpses, but they still decayed. Perhaps the damage to their throats was enough to rule out speaking for the rest of their existence.
Were they then doomed to be dumb forever? Of course not, I thought right away. Speaking wasn’t the only way people communicated. I turned the zombie around and sent it running to the captain’s chambers.
“Vance, wait!” Anna-Lucielle called out after me. “I still don’t understand what you were trying to tell me.”
“Grarghh!” I yelled out over my shoulder.
Once in the captain’s cabin, I sat at the desk, dipped the captain’s quill in the inkwell, and scrawled out a note on a neat sheet of paper I found. I couldn’t speak, but of course, I could write; I’d made the zombies’ hands do the most intricate possible movements before, so why not this? The zombie’s motor functions were not as effective as my own, but I still managed to write a somewhat legible letter.
This is Vance. Could you come help us on my new warship? I need your Charm magic. I’m sending Talon to pick you up. —Vance
Anna-Lucielle flashed me one of her knee-weakening smiles when she looked up from the note.
“Of course, Vance,” she said. “Anything for you. I’m a little afraid of heights though. Don’t fly me too high, all right?”
“Grragh.”
Talon arrived shortly thereafter and gently picked up Anna-Lucielle with her claws. I didn’t need the zombie anymore, so I yanked my mind out of it.
“Did it work?” Elyse said. “You were talking as if you were having a conversation with her.”
“It turns out it’s a lot harder to make a zombie talk than it is to make it fight,” I said. “That doesn’t matter though; I found I could make the zombie scrawl out words on paper as easily as I could make it swing a sword or shoot a bow.”
We discussed how best to use my undead creatures as potential messengers until Talon came swooping in, carrying Anna-Lucielle.
“How’d you like your first flight?” I asked her after Talon had set her down on the deck.
“It was a little scary at first,” Anna-Lucielle admitted, “but once I got over that, it was actually quite enjoyable.”
“We have another guest on our ship,” I said, leading Anna-Lucielle over to the Yengishman, who was still lying on the deck and jabbering on about the kraken. “Do you think you can use your Charm powers to calm this poor guy down and get him to talk some sense?”
“Of course,” she answered.
She knelt down next to the Yengishman, placed her hands on his temples, and closed her eyes. I felt the Charm magic dancing around him, like a gentle whirlwind of comforting warmth. After a few moments, his eyes stopped bulging, his jaw stopped chattering, and his trembling subsided.
“I…feel... better,” he murmured, a smile coming across his cracked lips.
“Will this wear off?” I asked Anna-Lucielle.
“It’ll last a few hours,” she said, “but I can repeat it when it wears off. It doesn’t require much from me.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Now, let’s loosen his tongue some more with some good old grape magic.”
“Remember what I said, Vance,” Elyse cautioned. “Anna-Lucielle might have temporarily calmed his troubled mind, but his body remains damaged, and even a little too much wine could kill him.”
“Just a sip to wet his lips,” I said with a smile.
Elyse knelt down slowly and offered the man a few sips of wine, which he took with a grateful smile.
“I don’t know who you are,” he said, coughing as he struggled to swallow the wine, “but I owe you my life, kind stranger. I was knocking on death’s door out there on the ocean. A few more hours, and I would have been gone.”
“Ironically enough, you owe your life to the God of Death” Elyse said before I could answer the Yengishman myself. “Lord Vance Chauzec, God of Death.”
“A strange thing, it is, to be rescued from death by the God of Death,” the Yengishman said with a soft chuckle. “But it is a strange world, with many wonders and miracles, is it not? Praise then be to you, Lord Chauzec, God of Death. You have my loyalty from now until the end of my days for what you’ve done for me.”
“I’m glad to hear that. And what might your name be, Yengishman?” I asked. “Your command of the Common Tongue is superior to that of a common sailor.”
“It is,” he answered, “for I am no common sailor. Forgive me for my crass behavior; such rudeness would bring great shame upon me in my homeland. I have neglected to introduce myself correctly. My name is Zhenwan Chengum, and I am a chronicler—was, I should say. I am no longer anything of importance. This is why I am able to speak your Prandish tongue with fluency; I am fluent in a number of languages. I translated scrolls and tomes from all over the world into Yengish.”
This guy would be far more useful than I’d previously thought. He might have some knowledge of where the missing Dragon Gauntlet was and would certainly know all of Yeng’s dragon legends. He might even tell us about the Warlock, the Hooded Man, and any other notable news about the state of affairs in Yeng. First, though, I needed to find out how he’d ended up stranded on a dinghy.
“Tell me how you ended up on the dinghy,” I said to Zhenwan.
Immediately, the look of terror returned to his eyes, and his hands trembled.
“I was on a ship, with many other Yengish who, like me, were fleeing their homeland. Then, two weeks ago—”
“Hold on a second,” I said, “more about that.”
“The fleeing? Well, things in my homeland have become dangerous
in recent times. A great evil has infected the land, both in overt and covert terms. I will tell you of this terrible evil shortly, but first, let me explain how I ended up on that dinghy. We left Xenthan, one of the westernmost ports in Yeng, a month ago. We were setting sail for Prand, hoping to find new lives there. Word had traveled to us about one of our greatest goddesses, Xayon, the Goddess of Wind, being resurrected, and regaining her former powers. This gave many of us Yengish great hope, something that has been lacking in Yeng in recent times for any who have eyes to see and who are not blinded by lies and false promises.”
“I know a little something about the resurrection of Xayon,” I said with a grin. I wasn’t about to spill the beans that this guy’s favorite goddess was just a few ships away, though, not until he’d told me his tale in its entirety. I figured if he knew Rami-Xayon was near, he’d probably lose his focus.
“You do?” Zhenwan said excitedly. “Would you be able to help me find her?”
“Don’t worry too much about that for now. Go on with your story.”
“Very well,” Zhenwan said, propping himself up against the sack of beans. “So, we sailed uneventfully for around two weeks. Well, not entirely uneventfully, really.”
“What do you mean?”
“After our first 10 days of sailing, we came across the biggest fleet of ships I’d ever seen. There were at least 50 warships. They forced us to stop, and the soldiers boarded and searched the ship thoroughly, and interrogated the captain. I had to translate because the soldiers were Prandish.”
“Were they now,” I murmured darkly.
“It was the Transcendent Sails,” Zhenwan said. “Come to think of it, their warships looked exactly like this one, and …” He looked around him at the signs of the recent battle. “By Xayon,” he gasped, “are you part of that fleet?”