by Barb Hendee
Magiere rolled her dark brown eyes with a huff, as if to respond, but then she spun about and tensed, staring toward the door.
“What—?” Leesil began.
Magiere lunged up, snatching her falchion as she flung open the cabin door.
Somewhere above, Leesil heard Wynn shouting.
In the scant lantern light, Wynn sat cross-legged upon the deck facing Osha and tried to focus on Dreug’an, an elven draught game borrowed from the hkomas’s steward. Osha was determined to teach her to play, but Wynn’s thoughts kept wandering.
The ship’s strange thrum vibrated under her buttocks, making it impossible to pay attention. And Chap’s disgruntled huffs every time she made a move did not help either.
“Do you want to play for me?” she asked.
Chap licked his nose at her, but no reply entered her thoughts.
Sgäile still leaned on the port side, staring out into the darkness. Off the starboard, the tree-lined coast slipped by at a rapid pace.
Wynn sighed and stood up. “I need to stretch my legs.”
Even on her feet, she was little taller than Osha on his knees. He started to rise, and she waved him back down.
“No, stay. I will not go far.”
Osha frowned, caught between having to watch over her and yet not wanting to impose.
“I will return shortly,” she assured him and strolled off toward the aft.
The hkomas had stayed in the aftcastle for much of the voyage so far, and the crew kept busy all over the ship. Wynn had avoided snooping about, knowing her presence was unwelcome. As night came, the hkomas retired and much of the crew went off duty, leaving the deck fairly deserted. Wynn wanted to peek about.
The absence of planks in the deck still astonished her. A crewman sat on a barrel, just as solidly one piece, though it showed far more sign of wear than the deck. He was weaving smooth pieces of cord into a stout rope. As Wynn passed, he spun atop the barrel to face away, and she knew better than to try chatting with him.
She crept idly toward the stern, and the rhythmic thrum beneath her feet seemed to grow. Reaching the aftcastle ladder, she saw its steps worn by years of use—unlike the deck—and she climbed halfway to peer over the top.
Three large lanterns lit up the aftcastle. A male elf loosely gripped the large wheel of the helm. He was stout and solid—or at least wide compared to others of his kind. Many of the crew cropped their hair short, but his sandy locks hung to his shoulders with the bangs cut just above the eyes.
The pilot’s large eyes narrowed upon Wynn, and then he returned to silently gazing ahead. Since he had not openly rebuked her, Wynn crept up onto the aftcastle, purposefully ignoring him in turn.
The rhythmic thrum lessened, and she wondered where it came from and if the height of the aftcastle dulled it. She kept to the rail-wall, as far from the pilot as possible. Before she reached the ship’s stern, she began to make out its wake under the dangling aft lanterns. Even a fast vessel under a heavy wind would not swirl the water so.
Foam-laced ripples trailed away behind the ship into the dark, and Wynn glanced suspiciously upward. The sails were still billowing but not full, so the wind was not that strong. And yet the vessel’s speed was enough to leave a visible wake. Wynn leaned over the aftcastle’s rear, peering downward, and sucked in a loud breath. She grabbed the rail-wall and froze.
Water boiled out from beneath the elven ship. Under the sea’s roiling surface, she saw twin rudders set wide apart, unlike on human ships—and something moved in the dark water between the twin blades.
A massive ribbon rippled below the ship’s wake.
Wynn raised her eyes, tracing it out more than two skiffs’ lengths behind the stern. It wormed like the tail of something massive swimming below the hull.
“Osha!” Wynn screamed, and backed up. “Get Sgäile!”
She turned as Chap leaped onto the aftcastle’s deck with a snarl. He cast a threatening glance at the pilot before he spotted her. Osha appeared immediately behind Chap.
“What?” he asked in alarm. “Are you injured?”
“A sea beast!” Wynn shouted. “It is pacing us under the ship!”
She had barely drawn a second breath when Sgäile hurried up the aftcastle’s steps. Just as Osha reached Wynn, the hkomas, his steward, and two crew members emerged from the stairwells below the aftcastle.
And then Magiere came running along the deck from the forward stairs with Leesil close behind.
Sgäile headed straight for Osha, grunting to the hkomas in quick Elvish that Wynn did not catch. Osha looked over the rail-wall and then turned around. He shook his head, glancing at Wynn in worried confusion.
“Can you not see it?” she insisted. “Look down . . . there . . . in the water!”
The pilot lashed the wheel, then stepped back and leaned over the aft. He straightened, and a glower spread over his face as he looked to his hkomas.
“Weakblood . . . makes for addled wits,” he said in Elvish.
Weakblood—lhâgshuil—was their scornful word for humans. Wynn curled one hand into a small fist.
“Maybe you should cut your hair higher . . . and further out of your eyes!” She shoved the pilot aside and pushed in at the stern next to Osha and pointed downward. “Osha, look there. You cannot possibly miss it!”
Osha sheathed his blade with a sigh.
“It is all right,” Sgäile said in Elvish, with little patience in his voice. “She mistook the ship’s root-tail.”
“Tail?” Wynn said.
She spun to find him speaking to the hkomas, but the captain stood his ground, gazing expectantly at Sgäile. Magiere and Leesil reached the aftcastle deck, and Magiere came straight to Wynn, falchion in her grip.
“What happened?” Magiere demanded. “Did somebody try to hurt you?”
“Magiere . . . please,” Sgäile pleaded, and gestured with an open hand toward her sword.
“I am all right,” Wynn said, but she glared at Sgäile. “What tail?”
“It is part of the ship’s function,” Sgäile said. “What you call . . . propulsion. This is how we move so quickly, despite mild winds.”
Chap hooked forepaws over the stern’s rail-wall, peering down, and Wynn looked again.
The long and shadowed shape snaked behind the ship in the dark water, but as much as it seemed to swim behind the vessel, it drew no closer. Wynn flushed with embarrassment and cast a dark look at Chap.
“Why did you not tell me?” she whispered.
I did not know. I never saw an elven ship as a pup, nor in the memories of those in the enclave where I was born.
“Ah, seven hells,” Leesil grumbled, still pallid and clammy-looking. “Wynn, we thought you were in trouble—instead of poking about again!”
Magiere sheathed her sword and stepped closer, but when she looked down, the same shock Wynn had experienced passed across her pale features. “Leesil, come look at this.”
“I don’t think so!” he growled, gripping the aftcastle’s front rail-wall.
Wynn shook her head. “My apologies. Our ships do not have such propulsion mechanisms.”
Osha nodded beside her. “No . . . human ship not alive.”
Wynn looked up at his long face, uncertain if she had understood his broken Belaskian correctly.
“What are you saying?” Magiere hissed.
Wynn spun around beside Osha.
Magiere backed away from the stern. Her shoulder brushed the helm-wheel, and she lurched away from it. She cast her wide-eyed gaze about with each hesitant step, as if she were weaponless and surrounded by some unseen threat.
But Wynn was caught up by Osha’s words. “How could the ship be alive?” she asked.
“In . . . grow in . . . ,” Osha fumbled in frustration and slipped into Elvish. “Thovarét’nach.”
“Enough!” Sgäile snapped at him.
Their dialect was older than the Elvish Wynn spoke, and she often struggled to comprehend it, particularly names
, titles, and other rare noun-declinations from archaic root words.
“Born . . . ,” she muttered to herself. “A birth . . .”
The Birth-Water Deep, Chap supplied.
“Alive . . . ,” Magiere whispered. “This damned thing is alive!”
“Let’s just get below,” Leesil urged.
“No,” she snarled. “I’m not going down into the belly of this . . . ship.”
Leesil half-stumbled as he grabbed for Magiere’s arm and pulled her toward the steps.
“Yes, it is best you all retire,” Sgäile said, though he watched Magiere with guarded puzzlement. “And remain away from the stern . . . as you were told.”
He cast a meaningful glance at Wynn.
“Chap, come on,” Wynn said, heading after her companions. “Osha . . . I am sorry for the trouble.”
A few of the crew stood about, grumbling as Wynn headed down the steps. The hkomas hissed something sharp at Sgäile, but Wynn’s thoughts were elsewhere. She was worried about Magiere’s reaction.
If this ship were alive—like the trees of an elven forest—and Magiere touched it with her bare skin . . .
Muted musical tones broke into Wynn’s thoughts as her feet hit the main deck. Chap raced by, heading after Magiere and Leesil, but Wynn paused, peering at one aft stairway hatch left open.
Blurred deep notes rose out of it from somewhere below the aftcastle. They did not come from an instrument, though reedy in quality. The sound was more like a baritone voice uttering a wordless refrain. The song’s cadence rolled in time to the thrum beneath Wynn’s feet—or perhaps it was the song which led the rhythm.
Welstiel felt dusk approach, but his overall sense of passing time had grown hazy. He had lost count of the days and nights. He sat in the upper floor’s passage throughout each day with his mind fixed upon the guttural sounds rising within the cells on the left side.
He had taken a great gamble in creating minions without carefully selecting candidates from a large population—and gambled that he might willfully dominate any who rose onto the Feral Path.
His success in both endeavors was a good sign.
He no longer needed the misguidance of the patron of his dreams.
Welcome imaginings filled his thoughts. Once he possessed the orb, something in its ancient nature would relieve him of the need to feed on the living. He could retire to Belaski’s remote peninsula and never be soiled again by blood. With Bela and the shipyards of Guèshk just to the south, he would order fine clothes and possessions and spend his time in arcane study. All that remained was to relocate Magiere and drive her onward. Sooner or later, she would lead him to where the orb was hidden.
Welstiel gazed along the three iron-barred doors. His new servants stirred within, restless with aching hunger, but they no longer clawed at the doors or tore at each other. Soon they would be ready for the journey. He looked down at his pack resting between the stool and passage wall.
He had scried for Magiere’s location several times since coming to this place. Her position had remained roughly the same, except for once when it had shifted a long distance, north by northeast. By his estimation, she was still within the Elven Territories. But tonight, so close to completion of his tasks here ...
Sliding from the stool and kneeling, he removed the brass dish from his pack and placed it facedown on the passage floor, domed back upward. Murmuring a low chant, he drew his dagger and sliced a shallow cut in what remained of his left hand’s little finger.
Magiere was still unaware of the true purpose of the bone amulet she wore around her neck. That ivory-colored piece set in a tin backing was the missing bone of Welstiel’s own little finger. He was not scrying for her as much as for the piece of himself that she carried. He watched his black fluids drip once, twice, three times from the stump of his finger to collect in a tiny bulge at the center of the plate’s back. A moment’s focus of will would close the slight wound, but he lost that focus before he could finish.
The dark bulge of his fluids quivered upon the brass plate’s dome.
It leaned, as if the plate tilted, and ran in a line away from the center, stopping short of the plate’s edge.
Welstiel had learned over many years to judge Magiere’s position by the length and angle the droplet traveled. She was on the move again, and traveling east too quickly to be on foot. It seemed she might now head beyond the bounds of the Elven Territories. But how? He knew of nothing in that direction and distance but the far ocean on the continent’s eastern side.
Welstiel stiffened—Magiere might be traveling by sea.
He could not imagine how. To his own knowledge, no human ship had ever rounded the continent’s northeast end into elven waters. He had hoped to hold out a few more nights here to drive his new creations into deeper hunger, until they were mad to feed. That time was lost. An entire range of mountains stood between him and the eastern coastline.
He had preparations to make—and he must feed his ferals one last morsel.
Welstiel cleaned the plate and dagger and tucked both away, but when he stood, he braced a hand against the wall. Lack of rest wore upon him since he had renewed his use of potions to stave off dormancy. He turned his attention upon the cell doors to the right, those of the living.
He’d been too focused on starving the others into a frenzy and driving them further over the edge. How many monks still lived? He would need more life to carry with him for the journey.
When he descended into the entry room, Chane was nowhere in sight. Welstiel wondered where his unstable companion had slept all day. Or was Chane already awake, skulking about?
Welstiel headed into the back passage, stopping to glance around the archway frame into the workroom.
“Chane?” he called out, but no answer came.
Since the first night in the monastery, when Welstiel had to cow Chane into obedience, the young undead had changed. He grew more sulking, more guarded and resentful. Sooner or later, this behavior would reach a peak.
Welstiel believed a moment would come when Chane’s assistance might be more trouble than it was worth. But for now . . .
He had no time to go looking for the young undead, so he kept to the near wall, watching all around as he headed for a large chest. With one backward glance, he flipped it open and rummaged for two more empty bottles with tight stoppers before he returned to the upper passage. He paused long enough at his pack to retrieve the box that held his brass feeding cup and then turned to the first door on the right and pulled the wood shard from its handle.
In the cell, three monks huddled together upon the narrow bed. Welstiel stepped inside, jamming the door shut behind him.
He needed more life to carry on his journey.
CHAPTER FIVE
“What are you doing in here?” Chane awoke with a flinch. He was curled in a ball against the door frame of the monastery’s library; for some reason, he kept coming back to this place.
Welstiel stood inside the entrance with a lantern in his hand.
“Get up!” he ordered. “We leave tonight . . . after the final feeding.” The thought of leaving this place sparked relief in Chane, but that starving beast inside him perked at the mention of “feeding.” Gripping the small library’s door frame, he climbed to his feet.