The Quest for the Trilogy: Boneslicer; Seaspray; Deathwhisper Read online

  “I says we let the halfer cook,” one of the dwarves suggested. “After all, he was cookin’ fer the goblinkin when we found him.”

  Wick sat and looked out to sea, deciding not even to deign notice of the slight the men threw at him. The dwarves quickly put the suggestion to a vote. The little Librarian wasn’t at all surprised to find himself suddenly in charge of the makeshift kitchen.

  As he built a proper fire there on the beach, he set up—with Adranis’s assistance—a clever framework of metal rods that became a spit. The dwarves fishing the waters off the bank had experienced good luck and brought in several edible fish, and other dwarves had dug up clams in the mud.

  In short order, with the addition of the cooking supplies, Wick had fish smoking over the fire on the spit and a large pot of clam chowder simmering on the coals. He also made pan bread in a large iron skillet that Drinnick proudly admitted he’d made. Wick made the bread partly because he had a hankering for it and partly because he wanted to prove to the dwarves that he could cook. If he could cook, there was at least some worth he could continue to bring to them once his days as guide were over.

  If we don’t get killed looking for the axe, he told himself.

  The dwarves’ disparaging comments quickly gave way to interest as the concerns of their empty stomachs outweighed the work of heckling Wick. The pan bread was new to them, and was something Wick had picked up in his travels. He’d even added the recipe to the book of favorite recipes he was in the process of writing.

  The dwarves kept themselves busy with the repairs to the longboat and with guard duty. They rotated in and out at regular intervals. Lunch was ready before the boat was, but only just.

  Once Wick announced everything fit to eat, the dwarves chose up and posted guards, then hunkered in and started eating.

  While he was serving, Wick went ahead and cored a few apples, stuffed them with cinnamon, butter, and sugar and drenched them in firepear juice to heat up the flavor even more. During that, Rohoh kept slipping down his arms and snatching choice bits. Even though the dwarves protested that they couldn’t eat another bite, Wick saw that the apples disappeared easily enough.

  Afterward, Bulokk pronounced the longboat seaworthy again, then gathered his men and said a few words about the companions they’d lost. The sun was setting in the west, and the sky was bleeding orange shot through with purple veins.

  Seeing the dwarves with their caps and scarves doffed and in hand touched Wick’s tender heart as they listened to Bulokk’s words. Wick had seen similar scenes aboard One-Eyed Peggie while on his excursions aboard the ship. Humans had a tendency to float among families, taking what they needed wherever they were at the time. Arrogance kept elves together, and avarice and fear generally kept dwellers together.

  But love and a long sense of history bound dwarves. Their world was the earth, given to them by the power of the Old Ones during the Beginning Times when things were created.

  “All right then,” Bulokk said, clapping his hat back on his head. He gestured to the setting sun. “As ye can see plainly as the nose on yer faces, we ain’t goin’ nowhere tonight. We’ll rest up once more, get us a fresh start in the mornin’.”

  The dwarves grumbled, not truly happy spending life out under the stars when they were used to being able to burrow up whenever they liked.

  Wick wasn’t happy about it either. Especially when he realized that he was going to have to cook another big meal. This time, though, Bulokk posted guards and assigned two dwarves to help the little Librarian.

  “The meal ye fixed were helpful,” Bulokk said in an aside to Wick. “Kept them men from feelin’ hollow, it did. So I’m gonna see to it ye get help.”

  “Thank you,” Wick said. “I won’t let you down.”

  Bulokk looked at him and smiled a little. “I don’t think ye will, halfer. Just get me to where I can find Master Oskarr’s lost axe, I’ll be thankful to ye the rest of me days.”

  Weakly, not at all certain he could deliver on the promise he was being asked to give, Wick nodded. Then, when his crew showed up, he put his plans into action to organize the evening meal.

  Later, with fish chunks floating in a seaweed soup made a little more exotic with the firepear pulp he’d saved from juicing earlier, Wick wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm and wondered where Craugh and One-Eyed Peggie’s crew were. The bottom of the cook pot glowed cherry-red and the soup bubbled.

  Several of the dwarves looked on with fond expectation. Bulokk had organized a guard rotation and taken one of the posts himself.

  “Them stories ye were a-tellin’ back at the burrow,” Drinnick said. “The ones about Master Oskarr, them was true stories, wasn’t they?”

  “They was, er … were,” Wick agreed.

  Drinnick scratched the back of his neck with a big forefinger. “Would ye, uh, mind tellin’ us a few more of ’em? We ain’t ever heard the like. An’ the way ye tell ’em, why folks would pay to hear ye a-tellin’ ’em.”

  So as he cooked and fried (and tried frightfully hard not to think that his life might be on the line), Wick told the dwarves stories about the Cinder Clouds Islands dwarves. He included tales of Master Blacksmith Oskarr as well as that worthy’s ancestors.

  During the telling of Varshuk’s Blockade, when a human pirate named himself king of the area and tried to enforce his laws, none of the dwarves said a word. Wick employed all the tricks he’d learned in Hralbomm’s Wing to tell the tale properly. He continued the tale while he filled the dwarves’ metal plates and tankards, then feigned distraction to the point that they washed the dishes in the sea so that he would be free to speak. It was a bit of chicanery he’d learned while making his way across the mainland hunting down lost books.

  Later, when the coals had burned low and were deep orange, Bulokk put an end to the tale-telling. Several of the dwarves thanked Wick for the meal and for the stories. That night, the little Librarian slept without wondering if he was going to wake up with his throat slit.

  But he kept wondering where One-Eyed Peggie and Craugh were, and why they had abandoned him.

  “Easy. Go easy there, ye great-eared lummox,” Bulokk growled from the longboat’s stern. “We got this boat fixed up good as we could, but she ain’t gonna take a fierce poundin’.”

  Despite the dwarves’ best efforts, the longboat scraped the jutting teeth of the rocks they passed through. The hoarse sound carried over the water.

  Wick swallowed hard, telling himself that the water probably wasn’t that deep there if the rock was jutting above the sea surface. But he knew that might not be true. Slender spires of rock drove up from the sea bottom a hundred feet and more sometimes. The forces contained within the earth and unleashed through the open sores of the volcanoes festered with tremendous power.

  All around them, the gray fog closed in swirling waves. The manifestation happened every time cool air came down from the north and hit the blast furnace that was the Cinder Clouds Islands.

  Wick sat in the longboat’s prow and peered out. The dwarves had since admitted that Wick had some of the best eyes among them. The fog glided over Wick’s skin like damp silk and he resisted the impulse to claw it out of his face.

  Although it was mid-morning, darkness covered the Rusting Sea and the sun couldn’t be seen. Gull cries echoed across the water so much that Wick couldn’t determine the true direction of the birds.

  Stiff and sore from sleeping on the hard ground a second night in a row, Wick disliked acting as lookout now. There was too much moving around involved.

  “D’ye see anythin’, halfer?” Drinnick asked.

  Wick sighed. He wanted to be angry, but he was afraid to be. Even though he’d told them stories last night, and cooked meals for them, he didn’t trust the dwarves to be so thankful that they wouldn’t throw him overboard while reacting to their own frustrations. Wick had already seen two saurian creatures gliding through the murky water.

  However, D’ye see anythin’, halfer? from t
he dwarves was becoming as irritatingly monotonous as, Are you sure that brushstroke was made by the Dalothak Canopy Elves, Second Level Librarian? from the Novice and Third Level Librarians. (And, truthfully, even a few Second Level and First Level Librarians still asked that! Wick thought that was shameful.)

  The demand was repeated on the heels of Wick’s sigh. “D’ye see anythin’, halfer?”

  “These dwarves,” Rohoh whispered irritably, “are awfully short-sighted.” Then the skink laughed at his attempt at humor.

  Turning, controlling his ire only through excessive fear, Wick said (as politely as he could while trying to sound capable), “No. If I had seen something, I would have said that I had—”

  Of course, at that point the longboat ran aground.

  11

  Landmarks

  Loud grinding filled Wick’s ears. From the deep-throated sound and the way the longboat continued to glide evenly over the surface of the hidden object, Wick believed they’d hit stone. Then his thoughts immediately flew to the holes that had been so recently repaired in the longboat’s hull.

  “Good job,” Rohoh commented. “Maybe you should have been watching instead of getting all sensitive.”

  “Reverse!” Bulokk commanded, keeping his voice down because it carried across the water and he didn’t want to alert anyone that might be in the area that they were there, too. “Reverse!”

  Immediately, the dwarves churned their oars in the other direction, pulling back away from whatever they had hit. Their efforts yanked the longboat backward.

  Caught unprepared, Wick nearly went ears over teakettle into the water. He flailed for a moment, certain he was going to land in the sea and be a mere gobbet for some passing monster. Then Adranis flicked out a lazy hand and caught him, keeping him in the boat.

  “Ye think ye mighta seen that, halfer,” Adranis griped.

  Chagrined, Wick sat in the prow and concentrated on staying aboard and staying alive.

  Adranis peered forward. “Don’t see nothin’.”

  “We hit somethin’,” Bulokk said.

  “Aye. I know that. But I’ll be jiggered if ’n I can find it.”

  Curious, though he felt certain he should just try to stay out of everyone’s way, Wick turned and looked into the water. A small fish broke the surface only a few feet away. Reaching into the small bag at his feet, Wick palmed a handful of pan breadcrumbs and scattered them over the water’s surface.

  “What do ye think ye’re a-doin’?” Drinnick growled. “Tryin’ to bring us face-to-face with one of them beasties?”

  “Face-to-face with ye, Drinnick?” another dwarf asked. “I’m a-thinkin’ there ain’t a monster in these waters what’s brave enough fer that.”

  A few of the other dwarves chuckled at that.

  “Quiet!” Bulokk ordered.

  They all fell quiet.

  As Wick watched, several small fish broke the surface and fed on the crumbs he’d spread. “There’s something down there,” he announced.

  “Why?” Bulokk asked.

  “That’s a school of small fish. You won’t find them out in the open because the bigger fishes eat them.” Motivated by that same powerful pull of curiosity that had gotten him into so much trouble over the years, Wick grabbed the sides of the longboat and peered down into the water. He still couldn’t see anything.

  “Are we ashore, then?” Bulokk asked.

  “Don’t see no shoreline,” Adranis replied.

  “It’s an underwater structure.” Wick was certain he was right. He thought about how the longboat had glided across the submerged surface. “A big one.”

  “What makes ye say that?” Drinnick challenged.

  “Because we moved across it evenly. If it were the shallows, it would have tapered up and probably stopped us in our tracks. And it has to have hollows or be porous in some way to hide the small fish.” Wick searched the bottom of the boat and found the weighted line they used to test the depths.

  “D’ye think it’s Zubeck’s Hammer?” Bulokk asked.

  “That’s what we were here searching for.” Wick wasn’t really thinking about the dwarves or their reaction to him. He was excited about possibly finding the dwarven lighthouse.

  Standing in the prow of the longboat, Wick cast the line. But the rope was more tricky to manage than he’d thought. When he released it after spinning it around, the weight sailed backward.

  Dwarves cursed and covered their heads.

  “Give me that!” Adranis snarled. “Afore ye brain somebody!”

  Meekly, Wick handed the line over and knelt in the prow again.

  After a few casts, Adranis found the underwater surface about twenty feet forward and to port. The weight landed solidly on it.

  “Slow,” Bulokk said. “Slow an’ easy as we go.”

  The dwarves barely moved the oars and eased the longboat through the water. A moment later, they bumped up against it again.

  “All right,” Bulokk said. “Drop anchor an’ let’s see what we found.”

  The water, though shallow, still came up to just under Wick’s chin. Although he didn’t want to, he had a tendency to bob on the tide and Bulokk had finally assigned Adranis the task of keeping the little Librarian anchored. It wasn’t a task Adranis was particularly fond of, and he occasionally waited until Wick was over the edge and had started to swim. Then the dwarf would yank Wick back like a wandering toddler. The skink clung to the back of the little Librarian’s head, hidden by his hair.

  Thankfully, the Rusting Sea was warm. On the negative side, though, there appeared to be plenty of depth for a sea monster to come by and try for a quick catch. Wick’s attention was divided between the mystery of what they’d found and survival. In the end, though, the discovery devoured his attention.

  Walking across the underwater surface, Wick found that it was thirty feet long and eight feet wide. Although Wick and two of the other dwarves had dived and followed the line of the submerged structure, they hadn’t been able to go more than forty or fifty feet down.

  Given the measurements, Wick was certain they’d found Zubeck’s Hammer. The lighthouse was in surprisingly good shape. Nothing had appeared broken, though there were some pitted places on the surface.

  Unfortunately, the ocean held too much sediment for Wick to see the lighthouse. The only way he’d ever see Zubeck’s Hammer would be for some freak of chance to thrust the structure to the surface once more. Since the Hammer was reputed to be one hundred forty feet tall, he didn’t see how that would happen.

  And besides, he thought glumly, pacing across its submerged surface once more with his bare feet, it was a miracle that the lighthouse wasn’t destroyed when it sank.

  “Is this it then?” Bulokk asked.

  “It has to be,” Wick said.

  “Then where should we head next?”

  Wick sighed and ended up with a mouthful of salty, metallic-tasting seawater for his trouble. He also snorted some up his nose and it burned strong enough to bring tears to his eyes.

  “Do you understand how important this is?” Wick asked. “We’re standing on a piece of history.”

  Bulokk frowned. “There’s lots of history. Everywhere you go, there’s old things.”

  “But don’t you realize how much those old things can tell us?”

  “About what?”

  “The past,” Wick moaned. He gestured at the lighthouse, a feat that was incredibly hard to do because he had to wait between waves of the incoming tide and even then the water was up well past his armpits. “Can you even imagine what it would be like if we could get inside this place?”

  “We’d drown,” Adranis said. “This place is underwater.” He shook his head. “Ye know, to be as smart as ye are, ye got some awfully dumb ways.”

  “He’s speaking the truth there,” Rohoh muttered in Wick’s ear.

  “Not while it’s underwater,” Wick argued. “If we could somehow raise it up and go inside.”

  “Everything inside
is ruined,” Bulokk said. “The only thing that survives the sea is gold. Even silver rots away.”

  “Some enchanted things survive, too,” Wick said.

  Bulokk frowned. “I don’t hold much with magic. Can’t see a need fer it.”

  “But you want Master Oskarr’s battle-axe.”

  “Master Oskarr’s axe ain’t magicked up none,” Bulokk replied. “It’s just … Master Oskarr’s axe. Something that touches all them before times.”

  Wick was thinking of all the books that might have survived. Some books were magical in nature and couldn’t be easily destroyed by the vagaries of weather. But other books, especially ones that were kept around water or the constant threat of fire, tended to be kept in protective bindings. Just as his own journal was wrapped securely in oilskin beneath his clothing.

  There have to be books in there, he thought desperately. The Rusting Sea can’t have claimed them all.

  “Which way?” Bulokk demanded.

  Wick had difficulty wresting his thoughts from books and maps and journals that might still be lurking in Zubeck’s Hammer. The lighthouse would have been a natural gathering place for seafarers, tale spinners, and those seeking their fortunes in legends and maps of old.

  “Which way is the sun?” Wick asked.

  Bulokk pointed.

  Squinting up at the light that had grown somewhat brighter, Wick silently admitted that the sun probably did lie in that direction. He thought about it for a moment, then turned back to Bulokk. “Is it morning or afternoon?” He’d lost all track of time. It had been morning the last he’d looked.

  “Afternoon,” Bulokk answered.

  “Then that way is west?” Wick pointed toward the sunniest part of the haze.

  “Aye.”

  “We need to go still farther east, but in a northerly direction.”