Tales of Mantica

by Rospond, Brandon; Waugh, Duncan; Werner, CL

  The naiad had to fight to keep hold of his harpoon as a sudden urge to cast it aside swept over him. He knew it was no inclination of his own, but an alien impulse seeking dominance.

  “Relent, mythican,” Psarius snarled. “Ere your spell can subdue me, I will make my cast.”

  At once, he felt the urge abandon him. A voice that was not his own echoed through his mind, intoning its excuses. “Speak,” Psarius told the cephalopod. “Keep your magic out of my head.”

  The cephalopod's eyes turned a cold blue and its hide transitioned into a mottled crimson. The thuul lived at the bottom, far from the richer waters of Lord Ichthyon's domain, but Psarius knew enough about them to recognize that this shift in color denoted irritation at best and rage at worst. He tightened his hold on the harpoon, ready to react at the merest hint of wizardry.

  Instead, the thuul's tentacles fanned outward, exposing the fanged beak hidden behind them. Slowly, as though out of practice, the cephalopod's mouth formed words. “I bear no harm to you, Psarius Sharkstalker. I bring warning. All the mythicans have ascended into Ichthyon's shoals to alert you.”

  “Alert us of what?” Psarius asked, slowly lowering his harpoon.

  “Invaders come,” the thuul declared. “We have seen them in our scrying pearls. A fleet of the landborn, more black and evil than anything before seen in these waters.”

  Psarius threw aside the chains that held his catch, forgetting entirely about the prize shark. The mythicans were known for their magic, among them the art of prophecy. For them to arise from the depths, the threat must be great indeed.

  “Lord Ichthyon must be told!”

  The thuul waved one of its hands. “Ichthyon has been warned, but he will need time to muster his army. By then it may be too late.” It pointed a clawed finger at Psarius. “You must rally the others who prowl these reefs. Gather the hunters who swim through these waters. It is they... and you... who must defy the landborn until Ichthyon's warriors arrive.”

  Psarius fluttered his gills in agitation. “What can we do? All told, there may be two or three score naiads in these reefs. How can we defy a fleet such as you describe? Is it not better to let them pass us by and strike them with the rest of Ichthyon's forces?”

  “The landborn will not pass you by,” the thuul said. “It is here they will come.” It gestured at the decayed shipwrecks littered around the coral outcroppings. “This is what they seek. They intend an abominable profanation, an atrocity we cannot allow.” Again, the mythican pointed at Psarius. “It is your burden to take on this responsibility. There is none other who can.”

  The naiad bowed toward the thuul. “I will seek out the other hunters and discover what kind of defense we can make ready.”

  “You will not defeat the landborn,” the mythican said. “But if they can only be delayed, the victory will belong to Psarius Sharkstalker even more than Lord Ichthyon of Ceticia.”

  *****

  Djwet felt a strange sense of unreality when he recognized the jagged snarls of rock that peaked above the rolling waves. To him, it seemed eternities had passed since his disastrous raid on the tombs of Karkus, yet here were the Coils just as he remembered them. He wondered if the settlements on the isles would still be familiar. Would the people recognize his ships? Would they appreciate the horror he was bringing with him?

  The revenant looked down on the decks of his flagship, at the bony ranks of rowers seated on their benches, tirelessly propelling the galley across the Infant Sea. A macabre gesture was the skeleton seated on the raised platform amidships, its fleshless claws pounding away at a rotten drum, beating a rhythm for the crew. A dirge for the undead.

  “All is the way you remember?” Nekhbet asked. The high priest stood beside Djwet on the elevated quarter deck. His tattered robes and funeral bindings fluttered in the sea breeze while the charms that hung around his neck clattered against his shriveled chest.

  Deep inside Djwet there was a tiny ember of resistance, a spark that made him want to lie to the mummified creature and divert the destruction that was sailing ever closer to the Fang Isles. Instead, it was the truth that rattled from the revenant's mouth. “Little has changed,” he said, unable to resist the necromantic power of his master. “The rocks are where they have always been. We will not share the fate of the pirate-chasers and bounty hunters. I will bear us safely to the islands.”

  Nekhbet nodded, his leathery lips pulling back in a black-toothed grin. “Those who fell victim to these rocks will rise again. The drowned dead will have their revenge upon the thieves they sought.” A fanatical gleam shone in the high priest's eyes. “Then they will be bound to the Ahmunites, thralls of the empire evermore.”

  Djwet imagined that ghastly scene, the undead marching out from the surf in answer to Nekhbet's magic, converging upon the settlements in a merciless campaign of massacre.

  “No longer are you any part of these people,” Nekhbet told Djwet, guessing the turn the revenant's thoughts had taken. “Their lives were forfeit when their ancestors sent you to plunder the tombs of Karkus. More, it is with their blood that the drowned legions will be called from their long sleep. Their blood will become the chains that bind their killers to the empire.”

  Again, Djwet felt the faint flicker of resistance. If he could but reach out and seize Nekhbet and snap the monster's scrawny neck, he could end all of this. There would be no massacre. His people would be spared the annihilation the Ahmunites intended for them. Even as the thought took shape, it crumbled away. He was Nekhbet's creature now, enslaved to him in body and soul more completely than any mortal thrall. To defy him might not be unthinkable, but it was impossible.

  “Then the sunken wrecks will be rebuilt,” Djwet stated. He stared at the flotilla of galleys that accompanied his flagship, each one scarred and pitted by the many years they had spent beneath the waters around the Pharos. “A graveyard armada.”

  “A fleet to bring doom upon the kinslayers of Ophidia,” Nekhbet gloated, contemplating a revenge that would be far more horrible than what was intended for the Fang Isles.

  Djwet could just make out the outlines of the Fang Isles on the horizon when the flagship suddenly bucked violently in the waves. Many of the skeletal rowers were thrown from their benches, a few cracking apart as they slammed into the gunwales. The drummer's hand stabbed through the rotten skin of its instrument as its cadence was disrupted. A grotesque grinding sound rose from the prow of the ship.

  Nekhbet steadied himself with his staff, his eyes ablaze with fury as he looked at Djwet. “You have run us upon the rocks!”

  “Back!” Djwet called to the skeletal crew. “Keep her from pushing any higher on the rocks!” Vividly he could picture the fate of a pirate hunter he had long ago led into the Coils and how rapidly that ship had sunk once the rocks ripped away at her hull.

  With unquestioning obedience, the skeletons carried out Djwet's command. The galley slowly pulled back against the waves. As it started to move, the ship was again shaken from stem to stern, even more violently that before. Djwet marched forward, intent on seeing for himself the extremity of their predicament. How badly were they caught upon the rocks?

  When Djwet drew near to the prow, he was surprised to find that their dilemma was caused not by submerged rocks, but by a great length of chain that was stretched between them. Drawn taught, the chain had ripped across the hull, digging deep into the wood. Unless great care was taken, the very act of freeing the galley would send her to the bottom. He started back to explain as much to Nekhbet when the groan of splintering wood drew his attention to port-side. One of the other ships in his flotilla was caught upon another stretch of chain. Hurriedly, he called out to the rest of his vessels to stop their advance. Put into harmony with Djwet, the captains obeyed as unquestioningly as the skeletal rowers had.

  Water spilled across the decks as angry waves pounded the stricken ships. A third galley was caught upon a submerged chain, swinging around until its prow was dashed to splinters upon one
of the rocks. The galleys that had thus far retained their freedom gradually pulled away, retreating from the Coils.

  “Cut us free!” Djwet commanded the skeletons of his crew. Several of the undead rose from their benches to retrieve bronze-headed axes. Showing no sign of hesitation, they climbed over the gunwales and climbed down the side of the rocking galley to come within reach of the chain. When the crashing waves ripped one of the skeletons free and sent it plunging into the depths, the others gave no notice to its doom but assiduously continued to hack away at the chain.

  “What treachery is this?” Nekhbet demanded as his withered figure stalked toward Djwet. “One of your piratical traps you thought to keep from us?”

  Djwet bowed his head in submission to the high priest. “These chains were not here when I sailed from the Fang Isles, master. Someone has put them here while I was gone.”

  Nekhbet's smoldering gaze held Djwet, as though peering into his spectral essence. “They will not stop us,” he snarled, deciding that there was no treachery in the revenant. “All of them will die. Their islands will become dust and their bones will serve the Ahmunites.” He gestured with his staff and a ghoulish light flickered about its head for an instant.

  A groaning rattle sounded from the chains that gripped the galleys. Djwet could see the dark patina of decay that spread across the links. With the next blow of the axes, the flagship was free, leaping forward like a stallion plunging from its stall. The other trapped galleys were likewise freed, though the vessel with the smashed prow began to ride low in the water. Across the maze of the Coils, other lengths of chain came whipping upward, the links rotted by Nekhbet's magic snapping under the strain of the pounding waves. They flared upward into the sky, then went spiraling back into the sea.

  “To the Isles!” Djwet called out to his skeletal rowers. The echoes of kinship he might have had for the islanders were suffocated by the sting of failure that now gripped him. His masters had entrusted to him the duty of bringing this fleet safely through the Coils, but the trap had caused him to fail in that purpose. To the revenant, there was nothing which could forgive such an offense. He would bring Nekhbet through and then watch his descendants pay for their temerity.

  A flash of metal in the waves drew Djwet's attention to starboard. At first he thought it was another chain snapping and then snaking away down to the bottom. Then he caught the glimmer again and saw that it wasn't something sinking, but rather it was rising to the surface!

  Memories flashed through Djwet's mind, recollections of terrifying encounters between his seafaring kinsmen and a race even more at one with the sea than they. “Boarders!” Djwet shouted as he ripped his sword from its scabbard.

  The warning came too late to prepare the skeletal crew for action. A great wave rolled across the deck, sweeping some of the undead off of their feet. The wave carried more than mere water onto the ship. As the flow receded, a dozen blue-skinned creatures were left behind. Manlike in shape and proportion, each of the invaders bore in his webbed hands a hooked sword or a barbed spear. Their wide, dark eyes gazed across the skeletons, the gills along their necks fluttering in what might have been a trace of fright. Then one of the mermen aimed a bulky box-like weapon at the ranks of rowers and sent a harpoon crashing into them. One skeleton was cut in half as the harpoon sheared through its rib-cage, while a second was impaled on the point and transfixed to the bench behind it.

  The harpoon's havoc spurred the rest of the mermen into action. Croaking out their glottal war cries, the blue-skinned invaders charged into the undead crew.

  “Kill these vermin!” Nekhbet howled. “They must not interfere with my ritual!”

  Djwet bowed his head and his bony fingers tightened about the grip of his sword. “As you command, master,” he replied as he started toward the melee. If the mermen had lost their fear of the undead, he would soon remind them of it.

  *****

  Psarius brought his sword crunching down through the decayed skull of his adversary. The skeleton toppled backward, spilling its bones across the rolling deck. Other undead lurched toward him, spears and axes clenched in their fleshless talons. A slash from his blade sent the forearm of one foe spinning away into the sea while a backhanded drive of the sword's pommel tore the lower jaw from the creature's head. The maimed skeleton plodded onward, relenting only when Psarius kicked it in the knee and sent it crashing to the deck.

  “Lord Ichthyon will have no need to stir from his palace,” the naiad fighting beside Psarius exulted as he shattered the rib-cage of a skeletal spearman. “These things go down easy enough.”

  Psarius stamped down upon the head of the skeleton whose arm he had cut off, pressing the undead back against the deck as it started to rise. “It is not enough to put them down, Narian. They have to stay down.” He ground his heel against the creature's skull, finally cracking its bones and collapsing its structure. Only then did the bleached bones fall still.

  “They will stay down,” Narian swore. He met the sweep of an undead sword with his own blade and used his greater strength to push the skeleton back into the ranks of those following close behind it. “We will send this cursed fleet to the bottom where gigas larva will nest in their skulls.”

  The thought of the undead ships sinking down beneath the waves sent an eerie chill through Psarius. It was not comforting to think their victory over the intruders would see these vessels polluting the waters that closed around them with the black magic that kept them afloat. Better by far to capture them and run them aground on the islands, let their evil taint the land rather than the sea.

  A burbling cry of anguish sounded from behind Psarius. He swung around to see a naiad warrior spitted on the end of a sword. The merman's killer wore pieces of ancient armor strapped to its bones, and the hollows of its skull glowed with an uncanny light. There was an impression of wrathful scorn on the fleshless head as the revenant contemplated its dying victim. With a brutal twist of its curved blade, the undead ripped its weapon free and sent the mangled naiad crashing forward.

  Psarius darted aside as the dying naiad pitched and fell. “Narian! Golatha! Behind us!” he shouted to the closest of his companions. Then there was no time for shouting. The revenant was bringing its heavy sword smashing down. Psarius blocked it with his sword, but the impact sent a shiver trembling through his body. There was an infernal power inside the revenant, a strength far beyond that exhibited by the skeletal crew. When the creature struck at him again, the force of the impact almost knocked the blade from his hand.

  “My ship, and you shall not have her,” the revenant hissed, the words spoken with archaic intonations that Psarius scarcely recognized.

  Psarius brought his sword whipping around, catching the hilt of the revenant's weapon and spoiling the side-wise thrust the creature made. He staggered back as the monster smashed its bony elbow into his face. Blood spurted from a cut cheek. He risked a glance around him, wondering where his fellow hunters were. A sick sensation boiled inside his belly. Narian and the others could not come to his aid because they too were beset by armored revenants with glowing eyes.

  “You should not have interfered,” the revenant said, again striking at Psarius with its curved sword. “The living are foolish to incur the enmity of the dead.”

  Psarius lunged at the undead creature, his sword crashing across its armored shoulder and raking a sliver of bone from the side of its arm. “You trespass upon our waters with your profane fleet. Psarius Sharkstalker will teach you the folly of your invasion.”

  The undead responded with an angry sweep of its sword that smashed into the naiad's breastplate and sent him sprawling onto the deck. “Your waters!” it snarled down at him. “I am Djwet of Tarsa! I am a son of the Fang Isles! It is you who trespass upon my domain!”

  Horror seized Psarius when he heard the old names echo from the fleshless mouth. Stories so old they were almost legends even to his grandfather swirled through his memory. How old was this creature he was fighting? “The
Tarsains died long ago. Those the plague did not kill were exterminated by the avenging tridents of the sea! There are no more Tarsains! There are no more sons of the Fang Isles!”

  Djwet came toward Psarius, ready to bring his heavy sword chopping down, but as the naiad shouted to him the doom of his people, the revenant hesitated. In that moment of uncertainty, the naiad kicked a webbed foot into a bony leg. The blow was not enough to trip Djwet, but it did cause him to stagger. The descending sword slashed down into the deck instead of Psarius.

  Psarius seized the chance. Rolling to the side, he brought his blade stabbing into Djwet as the revenant tried to drag his sword free. Ribs shattered under the blow and bony fragments jounced across the deck. The naiad surged up from his prone position, adding the impetus of his rise to the attack. Djwet was bowled backward, the revenant's sword left shivering in the deck.

  “Your people were an evil and unscrupulous race,” Psarius accused Djwet as he drove the weaponless revenant back. “Piratical hagfish, they earned their doom. I will send you to join them in their graves.”

  The cleaving stroke Psarius sent whistling toward Djwet failed to strike the revenant's neck. Instead, it was blocked by the creature's upthrust arm. The sword smashed through the skeletal limb, but the blow was deflected enough that the edge merely glanced off the revenant's helm. Before he could recover, Psarius had his sword-arm seized in Djwet's remaining hand. The undead pressed close to him, the glowing eyes staring into his own.