by Ember Lane
“Are they?” Frank asked.
“They are the names of the first four wards of Arthur14579,” Merl said.
Desmelda dropped her mug of ale, Frank’s jaw gaped open, and Billy said: “Cool.”
Frank shook his head, then asked, “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, Frank, sure as eggs are eggs and dune dogs chase dune cats.”
Frank brought out his book of words and scribbled furiously. “Construction, Source, Nascent, and War,” he muttered as he scribed his beautiful letters. “Did it tell you how to unlock these wards?”
Merl thought on it but had to disappoint Frank. “No,” he replied. “It didn’t tell me anything.”
Frank looked crestfallen. His shoulders slumped. He placed his quill back in its pot. “Oh,” he said.
“It didn’t have to,” Merl continued, avoiding Frank’s eyes and staring at Gloomy Joe.
“It didn’t have to?”
“I already know,” Merl said softly.
“How?” Desmelda asked, sidling over and sitting next to Merl. “How do you know… anything?”
Merl shrugged. “All I know is that I know. One Power leads to another. By unlocking one, you automatically unlock the next. That staff,” Merl pointed. “It might show off, and it might flash lightning to the sky, but it can’t do anything, not without the Power of Nascent.”
“Do you know what Nascent means, Merl?” Desmelda asked.
“Not a damn clue. Don’t rightly know what Source is either. They had some red sauce at Walinda Alepuller’s tavern, but I don’t think that was what it was on about.”
“No,” Desmelda said, drawing Merl close to her. “I don’t think so either. Now, what say you and me and Gloomy Joe go for a walk on the deck, and I mean the proper one, not the one by the mermaid. Let’s go see our giant friends.”
“But I have more questions,” Frank protested.
“Which will wait,” Desmelda snapped. “We mustn’t pressure Merl. Let his memories come naturally.”
Merl leapt up. “That would be nice,” he said, glad that he didn’t have to look inside his bonce anymore. The staff was weird. It was full of echoes. He hadn’t told Frank or Desmelda, because he wasn’t exactly sure what the feeling was, but echoes described it. He could hear bits of them, like snippets of stories, but they were all gobbledygook, and now it didn’t seem to make any difference whether he was holding it or not. It was weird, and that was that. The staff had woken up, and it was nattering, but it wasn’t Merl’s staff, so why it was talking to him was beyond Merl.
Desmelda took his hand, and Merl set Gloomy Joe down on the floor. The dune dog was finding its feet slowly but surely. It was looking a bit less ungainly as the days passed. Merl thought it was because the poor thing had been starving when Stormsurfer had found it, but now, through the Power of Bacon, it was gradually recovering. Merl had told Billy what he thought, and Billy had said it the greatest power ever.
The adventurers’ tavern spilled onto a small set of normal-sized steps that in turn led up to Wave Walker’s deck. They soon walked amongst the fat ropes, though huge squared rigging, and between the tall gunwales. It wasn’t a busy ship, not that Merl had a frame of reference to be able to judge the bustle of a ship, but he did know what busy was. The giants appeared to do the minimum amount of work they could get away with and that produced the maximum effect. For instance, Blustercatcher trimmed all the sails. It was his job and his job alone. Starturner was in charge of the wheel, and he was the only one that touched it. When he slept, they simply went in a straight line, or stopped if Blustercatcher was sleeping too. Stormsurfer appeared to coordinate Blustercatcher and Starturner, telling each exactly what to do to make the vessel zip across the waves in its relentless chase toward the horizon.
There was also Stickback. His task was to make sure the boat didn’t leak. Cook was cook, and that was that. Storesey looked after the ship’s inventory, and a young giant called Catchpole spent the days and nights fishing. Merl was sure there were more giants—positive, in fact—but whatever they did, so far he’d had no reason to seek them out, or they him.
“Why are we going to The Isle of One?” Merl asked Desmelda as they circumvented a coil of rope. “And don’t tell me it’s the right way, because I’ll just ask why again and again until you tell me.”
Desmelda dumped herself down on the rope coil. Gloomy Joe lay at her feet, clearly pleased for a rest after walking nearly a hundred yards. “Why did we do the quest?”
“To get passage on the ship so we could go to Quintz.”
“No, we did the quest because Stormsurfer wanted us to do the quest. He could have taken us aboard the ship straight away. Tell me, you’ve been with Frank, same as me. Has he tried to give the Staff of Morrison White to Stormsurfer? Has the giant tried to take it, or was the retrieving of it a mere qualification for passage?”
Merl decided that Desmelda wasn’t talking to him anymore but talking to herself as she tried to work out what was going on. He thought he ought to stay silent so she could carry on, though he noticed she was staring at him from the corners of her eyes and had paused too. He grunted, but that didn’t work, so he answered reluctantly.
“He couldn’t fit in the tunnel,” Merl said. Then it came to him. “It’s like sending a hunting dog down a wolf-hole to flush out the wolf. Stormsurfer couldn’t fit through the tunnel. He couldn’t go down the steps to the underground temple, and so he used us to go get the thing.”
“Almost certainly. But, did he want the staff? Because if he did, all he had to do was snap Frank in half and take it once he was dead.”
“Couldn’t,” Merl said, “coz the staff would reappear in the mountain.”
Desmelda looked startled, but them drooped a little. “Oh yes, I remember now. So, Stormsurfer wanted Frank to have the staff. It only goes to reinforce my point. The giants are taking us to The Isle of One because that’s where they want either you or Frank.”
“One what?” Merl asked. “The Isle of One what?”
A sheepish look colored her expression. “All I know is that it was once purported to be inhabited by a group of warriors descended from One, and One was an ancient clan that once dominated a good part of the known lands. One was a name that used to instil fear in all other lords.”
“But not anymore?” Merl asked.
Desmelda shrugged. “As far as I know, I’m just a witch from Falling Glen.”
Merl scoffed, a little too loudly. He doubted very much if Desmelda was anything but ordinary. She knew too much and acted differently. Whenever Merl had a visit from his belly butterflies, or when his knees started shaking, Desmelda rarely lost her cool. It was like she’d seen it all before.
“What?” she said.
Merl slunk down beside Gloomy Joe. “I think you know.”
A vast shadow fell over Merl. “Well, well, what strangers have come aboard my ship, and who said dune dogs were allowed on deck?”
Merl looked up to see Stormsurfer bent over him. Stormsurfer knew things. He knew things that were bugging Merl. Yet, he elicited passive authority. It was as if you did what he wanted without question. They had done the quest in return for passage to Quintz, yet now they were going to The Isle of One instead and not one of them had questioned it.
A burst of courage suddenly appeared in Merl’s gut. “Why are you taking us to The Isle of One?”
Stormsurfer hesitated. It was the first time Merl had seen him stammer, and he instantly regretted his question. Ruffling his unruly hair, Stormsurfer inhaled long and hard, then exhaled through his teeth to make a shrill whistling noise. He then started wagging his finger at Merl. A reticent smile graced his lips.
“I think you’re sharper that you pretend to be, Merl, much sharper. Is it better to be underestimated and strike when you have to? There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who conceals their worth. The answer to your question is yes.”
Merl knew that couldn’t be right, unless he’d asked the wrong question.
> “Wait a tap or two,” Desmelda said to the giant. “That’s an answer but no answer at all. Answer his question properly!”
Stormsurfer crouched down. “The answer to the question Merl didn’t ask is, ‘Yes.’ The reason we need to go to The Isle of One is because we need something there, plain and simple.”
“What?” Desmelda asked.
“Isn’t that the fun of it?”
“What?” Desmelda repeated.
“Not knowing.”
Merl cocked his head. Stormsurfer had done it again. He’d evaded answering by talking gibberish. It was brilliant! Merl decided if he ever got asked a question he didn’t want to answer, then he’d just answer an entirely different question and be done with it. The problem then became one of how to ask Stormsurfer a question that would attract the answer to Merl’s previous question and not the one he was currently asking. It was tricky, no doubt about it. He decided he’d have to think about it, but in the meantime he’d do his best to tie Stormsurfer down to answering at least something.
“If I ask you one question, will you answer it no matter what? It’s a question you must know the answer to, so you you’ll ‘ave to answer. If you answer it truthfully, then we’ll ask you nothin’ else jus’ in case you’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
Stormsurfer pursed his lips. He looked up at the sail. “Wave Walker goes where Starturner takes her, but Starturner doesn’t really command the ship. He nudges it the way he wants it to go, but so many other things determine where it ends up—the tides, the wind, the moon, and the storms. You might ask me a question, and I might answer it, but a whole lot of things you just don’t know about will influence my answer one way or the other. What I’m trying to say is this: It might not be the complete answer, and it might not be the right answer. Hell, it might not even be the right question. So take care, Merl—sometimes it’s best not to know.”
Merl knew all about wrong questions and not wanting the right answers. He’d once asked his dad why Walinda Alepuller came around to their croft, and why the two of them shut themselves in his bedroom all night or day. His dad had decided it was as good a time as any to sit Merl down and explain a few things about life. Merl knew all about girls, and a lot of the stuff that went with it. At the time he hadn’t been sure about any of it. Portius had opened his mind to loving someone, but that was holding hands and being friends, close friends. It wasn’t how his dad had explained it, not at all. His dad appeared to have a different take on it altogether, and he had become unsettlingly animated during their discussion, or rather his discussion, because his dad just kept on talking, and dribbling a little bit—like Gloomy Joe.
“Yer gotta make ‘em scream, lad.”
Those were the words Merl remembered the most, and also the ones that confused him the most. He’d rued the day he’d ever asked his dad that question, and wasn’t about to make the same mistake again. He prepared his question carefully, searching out all avenues that might return an answer he didn’t want to hear. Eventually, he settled on the simplest question.
“I want to know why you sailed to Harrison’s Reach. What made you go there in the first place?”
Stormsurfer drew his head back a little, as if he was about to launch a head-butt at Merl’s noggin. Merl retreated a bit in readiness but knew it wouldn’t help him none.
“What brought us to Harrison’s Reach? Is that what you’re asking? Be sure.” The giant seemed to stumble over his word to visibly weaken, and he sighed. “Be sure, because things might not be the same again.”
Merl pondered it briefly but decided things already would never be the same because everyone he’d known apart from Billy was dead. “It’s what made up most of my question, so yes.”
“Good question.” Stormsurfer relaxed his neck, the fight clearly leaving him. Merl breathed a small sigh of relief as the giant stared at the sky. “Very good question indeed.”
“It may well be,” Desmelda butted in. “But do you know what would make it an even better question?”
Stormsurfer grunted. “I would imagine some form of answer. Let me try and gather my words so that you might understand. Firstly, it wasn’t any flighty reason. We giants follow the sweep of the stars and the heartbeat of the soil. We are beholden to the path of the moon and the pull of the tide. Our will is solid. It is a hundred-folded steel. I say this because I don’t want you thinking us petty fools who follow a God’s whim like it was our only fate. A better question, young Merl, would have been, ‘What makes a giant stir?’”
Merl shifted uneasily as he bore the full weight of Stormsurfer’s intense stare. “I’ll ask that one, then.”
“For that one, we need ale, and ale is served in our giant’s mess.”
Merl didn’t like the sound of that one little bit, but Desmelda shot up and said, “I could use a drink,” and so Merl reluctantly got up. Fortunately, it turned out to be a different mess than the one that had immediately sprung to mind. The giant’s mess was actually a bar, and it was located under Wave Walker’s rear deck. Stormsurfer called the deck something else, but Merl was wise to his jokes by then and took no notice.
The bar was as impossibly large as all other aspects of the giant’s ship except the adventurers’ quarters. Its counter towered up ten feet or so. The stools that stood in a line along its face could have easily made a nice tent frame, and the tables and chairs all strewn around the place resembled a forest of turned trunks. Fortunately, Stormsurfer led them to a huge sofa that was positioned in front of a roaring hearth, and he picked them up and set them all down on its expanse of soft cushions. Gloomy Joe seemed particularly happy with the giant’s choice of venue and promptly spread himself out, belly to the fire.
Once Stormsurfer had handed them some thimbles of ale, and a hearty tankard for himself, he set himself down on an adjacent armchair and huffed. “What makes a giant stir?”
The silence that followed appeared to Merl to be Stormsurfer’s contemplation time. The giant sipped his ale and stared at the roaring flames. Merl’s mouth dried. His head began throbbing a little, like a headache was rolling in. This was the exact reason he hated asking questions that might elicit too serious an answer. Stormsurfer stirred, but he didn’t turn or move in any way, just stirred, and Merl knew his answer was finally coming.
“I’ll tell you, Merl, the spirit of adventure that is what makes us stir. We giants get offered plenty of quests, and why not? Our mere size alone means a few of us could turn the tide in many a battle. The reach of our ships is beyond anything human, elf, goblin, or dreadnail can muster. We can search out artifacts within the ice mountains of the Thriftling Sea. We can hunt treasure in the Darneath Wastes. There is nothing a giant can’t do, and nowhere that a giant can’t go.” He turned and wagged a finger at Merl. “And before you say it, I could have retrieved the Staff of Morrison White with ease. I could have torn a chunk from the mountain and then ripped its top off by using a tree trunk as a lever. So, I tell you again, what stirs us is adventure, but it has to be special because we abhor mediocrity.”
Merl took everything in. He like the way the giants talked. It was unlike his fellow travelers whose explanations tended to be like an avalanche of information or a spray of words that peppered you with more questions than answers. Stormsurfer dribbled his answer like the beginning of a slow tale, and it was a much more comfortable way of doing things. “We’re a special adventure?”
Stormsurfer grunted. “The adventure itself promised to be our crowning legend. Now that we have all met its actors, well, every single one of us is honored to be a part of this fine story. It’s just a shame how it all started, but…” he paused a moment. “You must never look at a bruised apple and discard the rest of the fruit. It might just be the finest apple you have ever eaten.”
“You still haven’t answered us,” Desmelda snapped. “Merl asked a plain and simple question, and the question was: ‘What brought you to Harrison’s Reach?’ An adventure isn’t the complete answer.”
; A sorrowful shadow darkened Stormsurfer’s face. His eyes clouded as his brows furrowed like gathering storm clouds. Great lines rippled across his forehead, and his cheeks lost their color. Tears then meandered down him and angst took hold. Merl had never seen a sorrowful giant before. He’d never seen anything so packed with its pain. Stormsurfer descended to vicious turmoil, but then visibly rallied as if he’d come so far and now had to tell his tale.
“A communique—that is what eventually brought us to Harrison’s Reach—it all started with a communique. It was from a great wizard named Ricklefess.”
Merl stifled his gasp. He’d heard Frank talk of the man on several occasions. Stormsurfer appeared to note his reaction and lightened the set of his brows in subtle acknowledgement. The giant continued speaking, but his voice was much lower, barely louder than the crack of the fire-filled hearth.
“Ricklefess urged us to sail to Frobisher’s Folly and anchor a mile out from the coast. He said he would meet us there and charge us with a task that would save the world from the dark shadows of Pandemonium. Now, giants are not blind. We had been watching the rise of Pandemonium for some time. We knew that dreadnails had infiltrated the western lands, and that dreadnoughts and vulgaries had rallied beyond the Thrifting Sea. We knew that the armies of Order were already in hasty retreat, and that Chaos was abroad in valley and dale. All this, we’d seen before; we knew that, like the high tides of spring, all would ebb to its status quo before too many turns of the everlasting clock.”
Tears now streamed from the giant. Gathering on his chin, weaving into his matted hairs before dripping down his jerkin. His hands clasped his tankard tightly, his knuckles as pale as his drawn cheeks.
“Did Ricklefess come?” Merl coaxed as gently as he could. Desmelda shifted uneasily and Merl noted how coiled she was. He thought she’d likely go off and spring straight into the hearth if she didn’t relax, and then two words dribbled out of her mouth.
“Oh no,” she hissed, but not in an angry way, more a tone of absolute desolation.
Dread filled Merl’s gut, along with his usual butterflies, except this time each of them was wearing a tiny backpack filled with lead and slamming into his belly time and again.