by Ember Lane
“Merl! Come here!” Frank shouted. “You might just want to take a peek out of the window.”
“Why?”
“Just look.” Frank’s excitement bled through his words. Merl knew only one thing could fill him full of so much elation.
“Are they?” he said, dashing over.
Merl looked through the shattered window. A great bay spread to misting clouds. Huge waves crashed against rocks way below them. The sea was a tumult of raging gray and storming white, but there was no mistake what blinked in and out of view, shrouded in the tempest’s haze.
“They came!” Merl said. “They made it!”
The great giant ship, Wave Walker, came into view again. It looked like a floating island, and to Merl it was nothing less than salvation. His grin split his face in two.
“Aye,” said Frank, “but we need to get a signal to them. We need to make sure they hang around.”
Desmelda waltzed over. “Stand back,” she said, and she shook her shoulders out and clasped her hands together. A ray of crimson shone out, a beam of magic so intense that Merl had to raise his hands to his eyes and shy away from its brilliance. “There, they’ll see that and know we’ve arrived.” Desmelda said. “Now, can I weave a vine wall over this hole so we can shut the weather out.”
“They’ve come,” Merl said, his voice hushed. “They came for us.”
Frank put his ear to the door and his finger to his lips.
Merl knew what that meant, and so did Billy. It was the rest of Frank’s hand signals that confused them. They stood in three ranks. Frank and Desmelda, Billy and Merl, Mushroom and Quaiyl, who was carrying Gloomy Joe.
“How do you think Mushroom knows what we’re doing?” Billy asked.
“Must have earholes,” Merl replied. “I’m sure its nose is getting bigger.”
“Hasn’t got a bloody nose, and will you all shut up,” Frank hissed. “Remember, we’ve got one shot at this, so let’s just hope my magic has recharged.”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Bit tetchy, Frank.”
Frank sent Billy daggers.
Desmelda cleared her throat. “Me and Frank burst into the middle of the corridor. Merl and Billy cross the corridor and push the doors open. Mushroom, Quaiyl, and Gloomy Joe run through. Me and Frank follow hot on their heels, and then you two pull the doors shut. With a bit of luck, we’ll be in the next room,” Desmelda recounted.
“Are we ready? On three?” Frank was getting a little exasperated.
Everyone nodded.
“One, two, three!” Frank shoved the first door open. Desmelda kicked the other. They both spilled into the corridor. A flash of crimson magic buffeted the zombays on one side of the door. A burst of green barreled down the other. Merl and Billy raced forward, shoving the doors across the hallway open. Mushroom, Quaiyl, and Gloomy Joe pelted through. Frank and Desmelda followed. Merl and Billy slammed the door shut just as the zombays outside recovered.
It was dark inside. Very dark.
“What is this place?” Merl asked.
“I think it’s a cupboard,” Desmelda said, resignation filling her tone.
A torch burst into flame and Frank waved it around. “Yep, it’s a bloody cupboard.”
The muffled howls and pounding thumps of the zombays sent fear through Merl’s heart.
“Is that a coat of armor?” Billy asked, swiveling around on the spot.
“Sure is,” Frank said.
“Too small for me,” Billy pointed out.
They all stared at Merl.
Merl hated the armor. His legs could hardly bend, and his back was bolt upright. The helmet stank like the inside of a tin bucket, and he could hardly feel his fingers and toes. Billy eased the cupboard door open, and Frank pushed Merl out of it. The cupboard door clunked shut with an ominous thud.
“Oh, sweet Andula,” Merl whimpered as the enraged zombays frenzied and started slathering, jostling, and clawing at his armor. He shoved his foot out and forced his first step. A zombay guardsman chomped on his arm. His teeth splintered and scattered.
“Come on, Merl,” he growled to himself, “draw them away.”
Another came at his face guard, but that zombay was a soup-slurper, his teeth long gone. Merl was shoved, bullied, carried along by the frenzied zombays as they pressed from all sides and jostled him down the corridor.
“Come on, gang. You can burst out and save me any time now.” Merl’s voice was trembling nearly as much as his bones. Sweat soaked him as the armor made him boil. The breastplate pinched. He not been impressed with the plan. He’d known he wouldn’t be, and he’d told them so.
No, he hated the plan.
By Andula, it was hot. Zombay breath and the press of their bodies made it even worse. Sweat blinded him. Merl began hyperventilating. Panic set in, alarm born of sheer terror. This wasn’t like battling. It was far worse. It was terrifying, horrifying. He could hardly move, let alone fight. Rage grew within him—rage at his friends who still hadn’t come. Rage at Daemon Mercer, who’d caused all this in the first place. Merl felt a strange pressure in his head. It was like a box exploding. His gut tightened. The zombays jostled him along.
Foul breath, sweat, pinching armor, and snapping teeth. Merl exploded.
He exploded into a strange calm. One that shoved his panic away. One that steeled his trembling bones. His arms sprang out from his sides, shoving the gruesome press back. He picked up the closest zombay and hurled it at the others. He punched the next, watching in muted satisfaction as the thing’s jaw and nose exploded. As its ruined head snapped back, Merl grabbed it and then swung it around like a huge ball and chain.
The weight of the armor no longer meant anything to him. It was no heavier than his tunic—no more cumbersome than his woolen pants. His gauntlets were like a second skin. His boots gave him seamless leverage.
He punched, he kicked, and he snapped the bastards in two.
He fought with clinical ease. The zombays were nothing but mindless shells of the folk they once were. He ripped a priest’s head off, then punched a nursing maid so hard her head snapped backwards. He stamped on a squire’s leg and cracked it in two. Fetid black blood welled up around jagged yellow bone. Two dead-eyed guardsmen came at him, snarling and spitting. Merl hefted one high and tossed him into the other. He spun around and kicked at them. His armored boot crushed both ribcages at the same time as he drove it in with terrible force. The noise of battle erupted behind him, and Merl understood that Frank and the others had joined his war. He plowed through the zombay horde, punching, twisting, snapping, and pummeling, until he came to the end of the corridor, and then he simply stood at the top of a flight of steps that suddenly presented themselves to him.
Instinct told him to turn and rejoin his friends. The steps led down, clinging to the side of the keep’s walls that lined its inner bailey where at least fifty zombays milled around. Instinct failed him because at that exact moment, the courage, strength, and prowess that had briefly possessed him, fled. His body stiffened as the old Merl returned, and he teetered on the edge of the steps.
Oh no, he thought, as he overbalanced and fell.
Merl crashed down the steps. He tumbled, slid, and bounced. The sound of metal on stone brought a resonant groan from below, and that soon turned into howling rage. Merl smacked into the first corner, grabbing a tap or two’s respite until gravity took hold of him once more. The zombays surged up the steps in a swarm of disgusting malignance. Conversely, Merl tumbled down in a blur of silver.
He picked up pace. The zombies closed. The two met in an explosion of limbs and noggins. Tossing the zombays aside, Merl continued to roll down until he hit the second corner with a dull, sickening thud. He raised his eyebrows, snapped an eyelid back, and saw only a cloudy sky. He could hear groaning, but it was coming from way below him.
“There he is!” Frank’s shout ricocheted off the bailey’s walls.
“Merl!” Billy shouted, but by that time Quaiyl’s featureless face was loo
king down at Merl, who stared up through his face guard.
The construct pulled him up and straightened him. For the first time, Merl got the sense that Quaiyl was trying to communicate with him—that the construct wished to tell him something—but as soon as the moment came, it was over. Quaiyl turned away and jogged down the steps. The construct began twisting heads and rinsing bodies of their foul guts. Mushroom hopped from the top of the steps, sailing down with his cap billowing, and joined Quaiyl as they methodically set about the remaining bodies. Merl tugged his helmet off.
“Next time we have to do that, you’re wearing the armor, Billy Muckspreader,” Merl shouted up to his supposed friend.
But Billy didn’t answer. He was just staring at Merl, as was Frank and Desmelda. All three descended the steps slowly, deliberately, as if each of them was saving up words to say to him. Merl decided he was in a mood with them, and dumped his helmet back on and stomped off down the steps and away, soon tripping and falling as the armor failed to follow his determined instruction. By the time he’d tumbled to the bailey, Quaiyl and Mushroom had destroyed all the zombays. Gloomy Joe raced past him, wagging his tail and sitting.
“Hey, boy, everything all right?”
The dune dog looked up, panting.
Merl took his helmet back off, but this time he tossed it away. He shook his sweat-soaked head out, and then raked his hair away from his eyes. Armor was strange. One minute it weighed a ton and was just plain awkward to move in, yet the next it was like a second skin. It didn’t make any sense, at all. Perhaps, he thought, he’d been using it wrong for some of the time.
Frank drew aside Merl. “Are you okay?”
“Can I have my boots back?”
Merl tugged his boots on. “We going to the giant ship now?” he asked.
“Not now, Merl. I was kinda hoping to find this Worm fella.”
“Oh yes, him,” Merl said, remembering that bit of the quest that had said told them to seek out The Worm, and that he’d give them their just reward.
Frank rested his hand on Merl’s shoulder. “These quests you’ve been finding recently have changed you.”
“Changed me?”
“Yeah. Not fer the worse, you understand. But the old Merl wouldn’t have been able to toss all those zombays aside so easy. The old Merl would have never stood up to me. Since that time in Firthing Wood, you’ve… you’ve… grown, Merl. You’ve grown.”
“Fer the better, Frank?”
“I hope so, Merl.” The Wizard of Quintz shook his head. “I mean, I think so—I know so. We’ve just got to see where it’s going, and where we’re going at the moment is following the quest. That ghost-woman said we should seek out The Worm. So that’s what we need to do.”
Desmelda grabbed hold of Merl and spun him around. “Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”
Merl hadn’t thought about that. “Don’t think so, and I’m telling you all this fer nothin’. Next time we get trapped in a cupboard in a strange bloody castle, and zombays are thumpin’ on the sodding door, someone else is going out first. I done my bit.”
He glared around. Quaiyl and Mushroom had finished off all the zombays, and none appeared to be coming from the keep’s grand-looking open doors, nor from stables that lined two sides of the inner bailey, or from the keep’s gatehouse. Quaiyl came and stood by Merl. The construct faced the keep’s main entrance, and it gave Merl the sense that it was the way to go. He felt none of the questing tugs that he had before in Firthing Wood, or for Amy Wainwright’s quest, but he shrugged and marched toward it.
“Wait, hold on, don’t you need to rest up?” Frank asked.
“This way, Frank.” Merl had his firestone axe ready. Quaiyl was by his side. Gloomy Joe tagged along behind. Merl felt as safe as houses, and he wanted to get the quest done. Once they had, they could make their way to the giant’s ship, and that was all Merl really wanted.
Then, however, he paused. The couple of steps that led to the keep’s large doors became a challenge, a barrier to his progression. He knew that it was a step he had to take himself—that he had to lead, not Frank, not Bill, not Desmelda. Him, Merl Sheepherder. But his guts became queasy, and doubt gathered in his mind.
“What is it, Mer?” Frank asked, drawing beside him.
Merl glared at the doors, at the grand hallway beyond them. “It’s nothing, Frank.” He climbed the steps and strode through the door. The instant he crossed the castle’s threshold, Merl felt the tug, yet it didn’t take him in any particular direction. It came from the heavily beamed ceilings. It came from its pilaster-clad walls and its marbled floor. His feeling was one of permanence, of history and grandeur, and he understood immediately.
“I know why,” Merl said. “I know why this castle and Vorast still exist.”
“Why?” Desmelda asked.
“Because they were here before the lords. The lords came and went. Their castles appeared and vanished. These were different. The lords conquered them. There are two types of magic, not one.” He turned and stared at both Frank and Desmelda. “We’ve had it all wrong. It isn’t the Lord’s magic we need to conquer, it’s ours. It’s been ours all along. They just gave it order, nothing more.”
Merl walked in. The vast hallway was silent and cold. All the zombays had been drawn to the fracas outside and had been dispatched by Quaiyl and Mushroom. He paused once more, and then conjured his guardians into being, satisfied now that he knew how to stop them leeching his own energy. He separated himself from them, compartmentalized them within a chamber that was hidden deep within him.
A fraction of understanding had come to him, and it had come with the familiarity of the castle. The chamber was like a store, yet not in the sense of a big barn, more in the sense of a tally of goods. The construct guardians were born of that place, and they could feed from it rather than take his own, pure energy. It was a perilous action to take, as he had no control over their consumption. Until he gained control of that compartment, Merl understood he would have to use the guardians sparingly. But for once, he just wanted to be a show-off—to revel in his new-found power.
With Quaiyl, Gloomy Joe, and Mushroom by his side and columns of guardians behind him, Merl marched down the hallway like a conquering general. They wheeled into the keep’s throne room and all halted the instant Merl did.
The grand hall was empty. A parade of lofted windows took up one wall. Grand tapestries hung from another, but before him, placed upon a raised dais, a stout, iron throne challenged Merl to approach. Beside the throne, dressed as like a priest and with a golden shepherd’s crook over his head, stood a man.
“Hold back, Merl. It could be a trap,” Frank said. “Anything could trigger it.”
“There are no traps, Frank. Don’t you see? There would be no point. If a lord got this far—if he’d vanquished all of Deathpunch’s forces to stand before him—why would the land try and kill him? Why would it let such a strong lord die? Don’t you see? The land favors the powerful and spits on the weak. It’s the way it’s always been.”
Merl snapped his fingers and the guardians lined his way to the throne. He marched up their middle. As he closed on the figure by the throne, it began groaning and snapping its jaw.
“Careful, Merl, it’s a filthy zombay,” Billy called. His friend shoved his way past Quaiyl to stand at his side. “What’s going on in your noggin?” he whispered. “You’re actin’ all strange, like.”
“Not sure, Billy,” Merl hissed back. “But I’m tired of holding it back. I’m tired of being ashamed that I’m different. I don’t want to hide it anymore.”
Billy didn’t reply. Instead, he thrust his shoulders back. “And I’m tired of…” He thrust his chin forward. “Somethin’, like.” He held his hammer high. “You want me t’bash the bastard?”
“Gotta find out what The Worm knows, Billy.”
“How d’you know it’s tha worm-bloke?”
Merl shrugged. “Just do, don’t I?”
Merl faced The
Worm. The zombay’s face was all rotted, with half his cheek missing and two rows of brown teeth on show. Yellow eyes glared out from under a tangle of wild, gray-black hair that had congealed blood and guts nesting in it. His neck had a huge chunk bitten out of it with a flap of maggot-punctured flesh hanging down. A ripped and stained cassock barely clung to The Worm’s fetid frame. The thing snapped and snarled but appeared to be unable to move from its spot.
“Don’t reckon you’re going t’get a whole lot of words outta him,” Billy said. He held his hand close to The Worm’s drooling jaw, and it spat and hissed at him. If words were part of the sound, they were lost in a sea of vicious hatred as gob sprayed over the pair of them. A tooth dislodged and fell to the floor with a delicate tinkle.
“HAVE. YOU. GOT. ANY. INFORMATION. FOR. US?” Desmelda asked, in her loud and deliberate way.
Merl decided it was her go-to method of interrogation for any being she didn’t quite have a clue how to talk to. As usual, it didn’t work. The Worm continued to spit and snarl, but curiously still didn’t move.
Frank leaned in. “I think the answers might have been lost when it got zombayfied.” He strolled over to the windows. “I guess the only thing to do would be to fight our way to the docks and hail Stormsurfer. Let’s give up on this futile quest.”
Merl turned away from The Worm and skulked over to Frank’s side.
“What if it’s got something important to tell us?” he asked, but when Merl looked out of the window and over Erreden Bay, his heart surged toward Wave Walker. “What if we get to Quintz and we’re none the wiser?”
“Mushroom!” Desmelda screamed.
Merl whipped around to see Mushroom pounce on The Worm. Its fangs glistened as its cap creased and forced them into the zombay’s bonce. A terrible slurping sound filled the throne room. Mushroom drained The Worm’s guts, and in an instant just a bag of empty skin and bones remained. Mushroom straightened, and its stalk pulsed. The curious golden shepherd’s crook with the tiny dot under appeared right above Mushroom’s cap.