The Voyage: An Official Minecraft Novel

by Jason Fry

  “Oh, Stax, why so serious? You are unhurt, wealthy, and have made interesting friends. Was that really all so bad?”

  With both boots in place, Stax took his helmet from Osk and tightened its chin strap. His armor felt light and strong. The sword seemed to hum in his hand.

  “Now you can get up, Fouge,” Stax said.

  Fouge glanced at Ramoa, who nodded and released the tension on her bowstring. He stood and stretched leisurely. Stax glared as Fouge drew his own diamond sword, that predatory grin back on his face as he approached.

  A long-sought confrontation * Hunting for very specific treasure * A puzzle with maps

  Now, you’ve probably read other accounts of the duel between Stax Stonecutter and Fouge Tempro. Some of them are very exciting, full of sparks flying off diamond blades and sorcerous fireworks. Muscles bulge and sinews strain and there’s a lot of that sort of thing.

  But I’m going to tell you what really happened—or at least, what really happened the way I heard it. (And my sources are pretty good.) And while this version has less in the way of sparks and sinews, I think it’s pretty dramatic too, in its own way.

  What really happened was this: Fouge Tempro took a couple of steps toward Stax, smiling that nasty smile of his. He made a few cuts in the air with his sword, to see what Stax’s reaction was. Stax, remembering what Hejira had taught him, simply waited. He was watching Fouge’s feet, and the way he set his shoulders, and was ready for whatever happened next.

  Or at least he thought he was.

  What happened next was that Fouge laughed, opened his hand, and let his diamond sword clatter to the stone floor.

  “You know what, Stax? I’m not going to fight you. You can do whatever you want to me. Didn’t I teach you that nothing matters? That all this—our lives, the Overworld, everything we get so worked up thinking means so much—is just a big cosmic joke? When we first met, the joke was on you. Now it’s on me. So do what you will.”

  Stax hadn’t been expecting that. He looked at Fouge for a long moment, expecting some kind of trick—the revelation of a second sword, or a bunch of bandits rushing in from a secret entrance. But Fouge just shrugged and sat back down, crossing his legs at the knee.

  Stax glanced at Ramoa, Hejira, and Osk, but Ramoa and Osk looked as stunned as he did, and Hejira had no reaction whatsoever, because he was Hejira. After a moment, Stax bent, which wasn’t easy to do in his armor, and picked up the sword Fouge had dropped.

  “You did tell me that nothing matters,” he told Fouge. “And you certainly tried to make me believe that. But I learned something else, Fouge. You might be right that nothing we do matters to the sea or the stars, but we aren’t either of those things. Our lives are only meaningless if we live them that way. The world can be cruel, I agree. But that makes it more important for us to be kind. For us to create a bubble, however fragile and short-lived it might be, against the world’s cruelty.”

  Fouge chuckled and clapped his hands.

  “Oh, bravo, Stax. When I found you, you were a lazy, spoiled child. And look at what you’ve become. A warrior, an adventurer, and even a philosopher. Really, you ought to thank me. Would you have become any of those things, sitting in your solitude and clipping lawns and petting cats? I made you what you are. I made your singularly useless life matter.”

  Ramoa, teeth bared, made to draw her bow again, but Stax caught her eye and shook his head.

  “I did those things, not you. It wasn’t your job to turn me into anything. And your cruelty isn’t designed to make anything. It serves nothing except your own selfishness. And now, I’m going to make sure you can’t ever hurt anyone else.”

  “Ah, finally,” said Fouge, spreading his arms and thrusting his chest forward. “Very well, Stax. Strike true and try not to make a mess of it.”

  “No, Fouge. I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Too noble to do the deed yourself, eh?” asked Fouge, glancing at Ramoa and Hejira. “So who will it be? The hot-blooded archer? Or the mysterious swordsman?”

  “Neither,” said Stax. “I’m going to leave you to my friend the artificer. Osk, you know what we discussed, and you’ve now seen the fortress. Do you have everything you need?”

  “Oh yes,” said Osk, pausing to give Fouge a little bow. “It’s a complicated design, relying on obsidian and lava and water and pistons. And I’ll need lots of redstone. But I’ve been thinking about it since Stax suggested it on the way from Tumbles Harbor, and I’m pretty sure it will work. An impenetrable prison: claw through the obsidian, and wham! A new block of it snaps into place.”

  “Sounds ingenious,” Fouge said. “But no thanks. I’d rather die.”

  “I’m sure you would, Fouge,” Stax said. “But you aren’t going to. You’re going to live, and comfortably. But you’ll spend the rest of your days alone. No minions to boss around, no victims to torment, no shiny stolen baubles to distract you for a minute or an hour or a day. It’ll just be you, alone with yourself, which I think is the only thing that’s ever really frightened you.”

  Fouge, for once, had no words. But Ramoa did.

  “Total isolation?” she asked. “That’s a lot, Stax. For anybody.”

  “He won’t change. Don’t make the mistake of thinking he will.” Ramoa frowned, but Stax had already turned back to Fouge. “Ramoa and I will see that you’re comfortable—and secure—until Osk’s prison is built. Osk, is there anything else you need?”

  Osk shook her head. “A drawing table, some paper, and help. All of which I have.”

  “Don’t you want to know why, Stax?” Fouge asked, in an unnaturally quiet voice. “You asked me that, a while back. You didn’t deserve an answer then, but you do now.”

  “I don’t want your answer,” Stax said.

  “You don’t want to know why?” Fouge asked, incredulous. “I find that impossible to believe.”

  “I don’t. Because, to be honest, I don’t care. I’m not going to let you invent some reason for what you’ve done, because it would just be another lie. You’re like a hazard deep in a mine, Fouge. Like a lavafall or a dungeon full of monsters. It’s a waste of time trying to convince lava not to burn or monsters not to attack. Instead, you wall those hazards up and put up warning signs. And once you’ve done that, you don’t have to think about them anymore.”

  * * *

  —

  Fouge resisted briefly, but he was trussed up and watched by Ramoa while Stax found a pickaxe in one of the fortress’s storerooms, dismantled the nether portal, and used the obsidian to construct a temporary cell.

  With that unpleasant task completed, they explored the fortress, discovering it contained a courtyard open to the sky, with shaggy oak trees. Hejira, to everyone’s relief, decided this didn’t count as a shelter and immediately climbed into the tree’s branches to sleep and heal.

  Stax returned to Fouge’s hall and all the loot it contained. He pawed through gems, looked through stacks of paintings, and examined banners for hours. In the corner of the room, he found two simple wooden frames: one enclosing a stone pickaxe worn down to a stub, and the other housing a dull and notched stone sword.

  “Do you recognize those things?” asked Ramoa.

  “I do,” said Stax. “They were my grandmother’s. They used to hang in the hall by our gardens. Once I wanted to get rid of them, but now I know better.”

  He put them aside to examine the next pile of things, and nodded. Here was a banner with the Stonecutter family crest, a blue triangle on an orange field. And below that were long rolls of paper.

  “Could you help me spread these out?” he asked Ramoa, and they brought them to the table in armloads.

  As Stax had hoped, they were his father’s maps, with symbols for the outposts he’d set up on the ocean voyages he’d made to sell stone.

  “They’re all out of order,” said Ramoa, fr
ustrated. “It’s like a giant puzzle.”

  “My grandmother and I used to do puzzles all the time,” said Stax. “I’m sure we can solve it.”

  And they spent the next couple of hours rearranging maps, and turning them this way and that, and standing atop the table for a better view, and making suggestions that went nowhere and trying to convince themselves that coastlines fit together when they actually didn’t. But little by little the right answers began to outnumber the wrong guesses, until finally the table was covered with a huge map of lands and seas.

  Ramoa studied it, walking around and around it with her hand on her chin, until her eyes lit up and she laid her finger on a stretch of coastline.

  “I think that’s Desolation Bay,” she said. “Which would mean you and I met about here. And if you go up the coast to the north—”

  “—here’s Tumbles Harbor,” said Stax.

  He smiled at Ramoa, but then the import of what they’d discovered hit him, and he felt his knees go weak. He brought his hand back to Desolation Bay, and this time he followed the coast west. To the wide body of water that had to be the Sea of Sorrows. And from there, farther west…

  “Here’s my little peninsula,” he said, and felt tears start in his eyes. He knew he was right; there were little spikes of pale blue right off the coast, representing the ice floes, and an orange chevron next to them. “Here’s home.”

  Ramoa nodded, and showed Stax where her own finger was resting on a patch of green adjoining the coast, some distance south of Desolation Bay.

  “What’s that?” Stax asked.

  “River House,” she said. “My home. Which you better come see.”

  * * *

  —

  It took a couple of weeks for Osk’s prison to be finished and another couple of days to test it, to ensure Fouge wouldn’t be able to escape. The completed prison was striking, if a little odd-looking—a seemingly solid block of obsidian covered half of Fouge’s fortress, with lava surrounding that, an artificial lake on the roof, and a perimeter of pistons around the lava. Inside, two of the rooms had been converted into a small farm and a pen for cows and pigs, while the others retained their creature comforts. Fouge would have a bed, furniture, some paintings, and books—everything except the freedom he’d used to hurt others.

  And the prison came with another layer of security. Osk announced that if it was all right with the others, she’d set up shop in the rest of the fortress, as Fouge’s custodian. The fort would make an excellent laboratory and a sprawling home. When word spread that the bad men atop the mountain had been run off, farmers and traders would follow the river east of Karamhés and become Osk’s neighbors.

  With a glance at Ramoa, Osk said she’d keep watch over Fouge—and see if he showed any sign of repentance for what he’d done. And, she added with a glance at Stax, she’d be alert to his tricks—Fouge would find charming his way out of prison as difficult as digging his way free.

  Stax, Ramoa, and Hejira said their farewells to Osk on a crisp, clear morning and walked back to Karamhés, where Ramoa said a not particularly reluctant farewell to her horse. The donkey, recently weighed down with chests of redstone, was now blissfully unencumbered. Stax had taken a small amount of diamonds and lapis, his father’s maps, the Stonecutter banner, and the frames with his grandmother’s tools. The rest he’d given to Osk.

  Stax and Ramoa had rented rooms at the caravanserai. It was dusk, and Stax’s stomach rumbled.

  “Goodbye, Heji,” he said, embracing the black-clad warrior. “Thank you for everything you taught me.”

  “And I, in turn, thank you,” Hejira said. “Your path has been a fascinating one to observe. And I remain keenly interested in where your destiny lies.”

  “So do I,” said Stax.

  “Farewell for now, my friend,” said Ramoa, hugging Hejira. “I’ll see you at River House. It’s been too long since I’ve been home, and this time I think I’ll stay awhile.”

  “I am glad your path is returning you there,” Hejira said, and embraced her. “I hope it leads you to the peace you deserve to enjoy.”

  “Where are you going, Heji?” Stax asked, when the two old friends parted. “You haven’t said.”

  “North,” said Hejira, and his smile faded. “I will watch for signs that the raiders are regrouping. And I will seek word of Miggs. I believe he needs another nudge onto a better path.”

  “It might take more than a nudge,” said Stax.

  “It might,” said Ramoa. “But Heji can nudge pretty hard.”

  A tower revisited * A familiar peninsula, and a long-awaited reunion * The future, considered

  After parting ways with Hejira, Stax and Ramoa traveled through forested hills, sprawling meadows, and rolling grasslands. They set a leisurely pace, with Ramoa telling Stax about caravans she’d guarded, amazing vistas she’d always wanted to return to, and lands known to her only through travelers’ tales. Each night, they’d look at one of the Stonecutter maps and try to trace routes Ramoa had walked, or find places she’d been.

  The time passed pleasantly, but it passed, and one afternoon Stax stopped Ramoa, sniffing at the air.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The sea,” he said. “I just realized how much I missed it.”

  Another hour’s walk brought them to the caravan track that led north to Tumbles Harbor, not far from where they had met. And a few minutes after that Stax was standing in the shallow water at the eastern end of Desolation Bay, looking west to where the sun was already low on the horizon.

  They passed the night in a little hollow hacked out of a rocky hill. Tomorrow they would be parted, with Ramoa heading south around the Shining Desert, and Stax heading west toward home. They talked of a number of things, like bizarre experiments Osk might actually make work and demanding new rules Hejira would dream up for himself, but mostly they simply enjoyed each other’s company.

  In the morning, Ramoa sat on a rock on the seashore, ignoring the bees humming around her head and shooing away curious sheep, while Stax built a crafting table and hammered together a little boat from old logs. They discussed the route Stax would take home—Stax had studied the maps so many times that he could almost see it if he closed his eyes—and how best to avoid the perils along the way.

  Until, finally, the boat was finished and it was time to part.

  They hugged each other for a minute, or maybe it was two, and Stax smiled.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said, because he could tell Ramoa was doing exactly that. “I have this.”

  And he showed her the compass he’d carried in his pocket for so many months.

  “Is that the one you found on the beach? The one Fouge dropped?”

  “It is,” Stax said, looking down at it. “I was convinced it was his, and maybe it was. But at some point on the journey I stopped thinking about it that way. My father would have used one just like this. And who knows? Maybe this was my dad’s, before one of Fouge’s raiders stole it. Which would mean it came back to me.”

  “I like that,” said Ramoa. “Let’s tell the story that way from now on.”

  “Agreed,” Stax said, and returned his father’s compass to his pocket.

  He checked for leaks one last time and pushed the boat into the sea, standing next to it in the shallow water with one hand on the gunwale.

  “I circled River House on your map,” Ramoa said. “When you’re ready, come see me. And if I’m not there, I will be again soon. A girl does get restless.”

  “I will,” said Stax, and clambered into the boat. He rowed for a minute, and looked back to see Ramoa’s figure growing rapidly smaller on the shore. He raised his hand in farewell, and a moment later she did the same.

  * * *

  —

  Stax stuck close to the southern shore and soon found himself rowing past the b
arren desert coast he’d come to know all too well. He now knew it was called the Shining Desert, and avoided by wise travelers, just as he knew he was rowing across Desolation Bay. Before, he hadn’t had names for these places; now he knew what they were called and could look at his father’s maps and find them sketched out in miniature.

  At midafternoon Stax saw a little black dot on the shore ahead. He knew what it had to be, but it was still a strange sensation to discover that, yes, he had returned to the patchwork tower where Fouge’s raiders had left him. It was the place where he’d thought he would die, but instead, became the place where he’d learned how to save himself.

  Stax stopped rowing and let the boat drift for a moment. Ahead, he could just spot the keel of the shipwrecked boat offshore, the one he’d plundered for wood to make a boat.

  Stax looked at the position of the sun in the sky and thought about his route through Desolation Bay, calculating how far he’d come and how far he might still go before needing to find shelter. When he realized what that meant, he frowned and started to do the calculations again—and then stopped.

  “Oh, what the heck,” he said, and rowed for the shore.

  The tower smelled of salt and charred wood. Stax spread out his bedroll, relit the furnace, and pondered whether he wanted to eat a beefsteak or a couple of slices of pie. He decided on pie, and after dinner he stood outside the tower and watched the sun sink into the sea.

  As Stax was getting ready for bed and considering his choices for breakfast, something growled outside the door, the noise ending in a gurgle of seawater.

  “Oh, get lost!” Stax called out. “We’ve done this!”

  He decided against dried kelp for breakfast, though.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning Stax bid the tower farewell and rowed west. And, I am happy to say, for the next several days his story wasn’t terribly interesting. Each morning he checked his route on the map, decided how far he would go, and figured out a likely stretch of coast where he should look for a place to rest for the night. Then he rowed, glancing at the compass he kept on the bench beside him to ensure he was on the right course.