The Quest for the Trilogy: Boneslicer; Seaspray; Deathwhisper (50 page)

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Authors: Mel Odom

BOOK: The Quest for the Trilogy: Boneslicer; Seaspray; Deathwhisper
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Like the other two books, this one was also written in code. Hypnotized by the words, he thanked the tree for its help, then he ascended the tree house once more, telling Raisho that they would camp there while he worked through the book.
“Returnin' to
Moonsdreamer
would be safer,” Raisho said.
“The ship is three days away,” Juhg called back. “And there may be goblinkin along the way.” From the doorway, he peered back down at his friend. “I need to translate this as quickly as possible, Raisho. Once you learn something, once you know something, no one can take it away from you. That was one of the first lessons Grandmagister Lamplighter taught me. If we lose this book before I translate it, we may never know what we need to.”
Raisho growled a curse, but agreed with obvious reluctance.
Juhg settled in at the small work table in the tree house living room. He
took out the blank book he'd brought to record the translation in, and set to work, dipping his quill as his mind manipulated the coded entries. In the space of a drawn breath, he was no longer in the tree house in the Forest of Fangs and Shadows, but was once more upon the Blood-Soaked Sea with Grandmagister Lamplighter.
Battleground
E
dgewick Lamplighter, Second Level Librarian at the Vault of All Known Knowledge, sat at the table in
One-Eyed Peggie
's galley and wished he were somewhere else. He didn't like magic. Especially when it was a powerful spell being done right in front of him.
At the moment, the pirate ship fought the strong winds of a building storm front. She rocked back and forth between the waves, slowly cresting one, then falling headlong down another. The lanterns lighting the galley swayed and thumped the walls.
Craugh sat at the table.
The wizard's long gray-white hair fell past his shoulders and his beard rested at the bottom of his chest. His nose was a savage blade set between two green eyes that held lambent fires. A slouch hat shadowed his seamed face as he murmured the Words of Power that activated the spell he wove.
No one spoke. The waves crashing against the pirate ship's hull sounded loud.
Cap'n Farok sat at a nearby table.
Craugh focused on the two people seated at the table. Bulokk and Quarrel sat quietly, awaiting his command
“Give me your hands,” Craugh bade them.
The three—dwarf, human, and wizard—held hands at the center of the table around a candle with a dancing flame.
Although he didn't like magic, Wick watched with interest.
As Craugh's droning voice died away, the candle flame turned green and sputtered. In response, a cloud of green-tinted
smoke floated up and hung in the air between the three. Green embers darted inside the smoke sphere.
“Yes,” Craugh said, and Wick thought the wizard sounded a little surprised at his own success.
Craugh had hoped that he could track the third weapon through the ties the descendants had to the weapons through their blood. Actually, Craugh had claimed he could do such a thing, but Wick felt certain it was only a hope.
Now, however, it was reality.
Wick sat to one side, a journal open in one hand and a stick of charcoal in the other. He'd been blocking out images of the gathering, putting them into the journal he kept for stray and random thoughts. Later it would be transferred to the journal he kept that recorded his adventures. He'd almost finished the second, and planned on dropping it with Evarch in Deldal's Mills.
Images swirled within the smoke sphere. Warriors—human, elven, and dwarven—fought with goblinkin. Swords, spears and battle-axes chopped down foes as war chariots thundered through the battlefield. Dead lay strewn in all directions.
“This is the Battle of Fell's Keep,” Craugh said, with a slight frown.
“I thought you were using this spell to discover the location of Deathwhisper,” Quarrel said. As always, she was frank and forward.
At her elbow, the tortoiseshell-colored cat flicked her tail lazily.
“I was,” Craugh admitted. “This is … unexpected.”
The images continued coming.
Wick turned the page and worked on a blank sheet, quickly blocking out the relative positions and capturing some of the armor details he could see. He recognized some of the standards and emblems of the great warrior houses that still existed along the Shattered Coast, but there were several others he didn't know.
“There's still a lot of emotion that's tied to those days,” Cap'n Farok spoke up in his gravelly voice. “Perhaps it's that what draws ye there.”
“Perhaps,” Craugh replied. But he kept his eyes fixed on the smoke images.
Wick knew it was true.
“There's Captain Dulaun,” Alysta said, sitting up straight now and wrapping her tail around her feet.
Automatically, Wick moved to a new page, staring into the smoke and locating the human hero at once. Wearing silver armor with a blue standard tied around his arm, Dulaun cut an impressive figure. He stood at the forefront of a ragged line of dwarves and humans with two groups of elven archers flanking them.
“It's you,” Alysta whispered to Quarrel. “You're bringing this vision.”
Wick sketched the figures locked in battle, then added Quarrel and the cat. He knew from experience how determined the young woman was to find her ancestor's sword. She'd posed as a mercenary in Wharf Rat's Warren.
“I don't mean to,” Quarrel whispered.
One-Eyed Peggie
rolled suddenly, causing everyone in the galley to grab hold of something in order to keep from being pitched about. Except for Craugh, Quarrel, and Bulokk. They stayed in place as if they'd been mounted there.
Farok glanced about uneasily.
One-Eyed Peggie
had been in the grip of the
storm for hours now. When they'd seen it forming, they'd tried to outrun it, but it hadn't proven possible.
In the smoke sphere, the goblinkin warriors met Captain Dulaun and the smaller team that tried to stand their ground. Several of the humans and dwarves stumbled and seemed unsure of their footing.
“They're sick,” Wick said in disbelief.
“This is the morning of the last battle,” Craugh said. “After they were betrayed.”
Sadness leeched onto Wick. That had been part of the story of the Battle of Fell's Keep: that someone among the defenders had deliberately made the warriors too sick to fight any longer. Some of them had actually died during the night from whatever they'd been given.
The goblinkin had rolled over most of the ones that had been left.
In the smoke, the goblinkin did that anew. Several of them dropped, victims of the unrelenting elven archery, but in the end there were too many goblinkin. Captain Dulaun went down with a pike through his chest, driven by a troll that stood head and shoulders above the goblinkin. Crimson smeared across the battered silver armor.
Wick wanted to look away but found he couldn't. He'd met Captain Dulaun, after a fashion, in the mystic frieze where his sword had been hidden and stored. He'd been young for a human, too young to die in such a manner.
But he did. The troll bore down hard on the pike and kept Dulaun pinned to the barren earth. A second troll joined the first and raised his double-bitted axe.
“No!” Quarrel cried out, taking her hands from Craugh and Bulokk's.
The smoke sphere ruptured and poured up toward the galley ceiling, dispersing entirely.
“I'm sorry,” Quarrel said, tears in her eyes. “I could bear no more.”
Craugh looked a little irritated. “The spell isn't working as I'd thought it would, but we mustn't give up on it. This may be the only way we have of finding out where Sokadir and Deathwhisper are.”
With obvious reluctance, Quarrel extended her hands once more to the wizard and the dwarf. Craugh spoke Words again, and the candle flame once more turned green and released a steady stream of smoke that formed a sphere.
This time the image formed and showed a dwarf in thick armor. He swung a mighty battle-axe, cleaving through his foes and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.
“Master Oskarr,” Bulokk whispered.
Wick didn't think the dwarf could be anyone else.
Oskarr moved through the canyon battle, shoving through the goblinkin line to reach comrades-in-arms who were in trouble. Several times he rescued people in confrontations that looked like they would take his own life in forfeit.
Then he saw Dulaun lying at the mercy of the trolls. Though there was no sound with the sight, Wick saw Oskarr flip his blood-smeared helm mask up and shout,
Nooooooo!
But there was no undoing what had been done that day. Dulaun was stretched dead upon the ground, and the trolls took away his sword, Seaspray.
“That was when Seaspray was lost,” Alysta said. The cat somehow managed to look sad.
The sheer numbers of the goblinkin drove Oskarr back, flowing over Dulaun's corpse and concealing it from view. Then the goblinkin were in Oskarr's face, pulling down dwarves at a high cost, but pulling them down all the same.
A moment later, Oskarr grabbed the nearest standard-bearer and called for the retreat. The standard-bearer blew the horn. Reluctantly, the dwarven line collapsed and fell back.
“He ran,” one of the dwarven pirates muttered.
Angrily, Bulokk looked over his shoulder for the offender. “He didn't run,” the dwarf growled, “an' I'll break the head of anyone that says he did.”
“Not on me ship,” Cap'n Farok said. “I'll decide any head-breakin' that needs to be done.” He glared around the packed galley. “Anyone tries something like that, I'll toss him in the brig, an' think about puttin' him out at the next desert island we come across.”
“The world,” Craugh said, “could always use a few more toads.” He added his glare to the captain's.
“What ye're lookin' at there,” Cap'n Farok said, “is war. Most of ye've been blooded somewhere, whether at sea fightin' true pirates or goblinkin, or in a tavern brawl.” He nodded toward the images trapped in the smoke sphere. “But that there's war. No rules. No give an' take. Only survivors an' them that died. Ain't none of ye got any rights judgin' a single man there for what he done—unless ye were there, too.”
The crew looked shame-faced and offered apologies.
“Master Oskarr done only what he could,” Cap'n Farok said. “Comes a time when a warrior has done all he can for the cause an' his country, an' it's time to pack it in so he can fight again another day.” He ran his trembling hand through his beard. “Master Oskarr did himself proud, he did. After the Battle of Fell's Keep, he returned to the Cinder Clouds Islands an' made the best armor a warrior could hope for.”
“Until Lord Kharrion tracked him down there an' killed him there,” Zeddar,
One-Eyed Peggie
's principal lookout, said.
The battle continued, and even though he knew he was seeing something that no one alive today—save one!—had seen, Wick wished that it would end.
This time it was Craugh who took his hands away. He frowned. “Something's wrong. I can use the spell to tie our vision to the Battle of Fell's Keep, but I can't locate Deathwhisper.”
“Perhaps it's because you don't have one of Sokadir's descendants,” Alysta said.
Craugh appeared to consider that. Then he looked at Wick. “Join us,” the wizard said.
“Me?” Wick didn't like the idea of being that close to a magical spell. Although he'd never seen one of Craugh's spells backfire, he knew that spells sometimes did go awry.
“Of all of us,” Craugh said, “you are the most curious to know the end of the
story, and what has happened to Sokadir and Deathwhisper. And you've touched Boneslicer and Seaspray.”
Wick looked around desperately. “Not me.” He shrugged it off.
Haven't I already gotten involved enough in this?
He really didn't want to be drawn into the center any further. He was quite content working from the outside from here on out and watching events unfold, thank you. “I'm not curious. Not at all.”
Craugh frowned. “Get over here.”
“No thank you.” Wick smiled to show that he meant no offense. Being rude was never a good idea. Being rude to a wizard was just foolish.
“As a dweller or as a toad,” Craugh threatened, “with warts or without, you'll serve for this spell.”
“In that case,” Wick said. With a true feeling of dread, he closed his journal and put away his inks, charcoal, and quills.
“Would you hurry up?” Craugh snapped.
Wick jumped and quickly finished.
“Holding this much power open this long is taxing.” Craugh gestured to the table.
Wishing he'd stayed in his room and chiding himself for his curiosity, Wick sat on the bench bolted to the floor. He kept his hands in his lap.
“Your hands,” Craugh said in exasperation.
Fearfully, Wick brought up his hands. They were his most prized possessions. Without them, his whole life would change. Reading books wouldn't be the same (he could use his nose to turn pages, he supposed, except on days when he had a cold). Writing would be a lot harder (though he'd read that some authors and artists who'd suffered physical disabilities had learned how to use their feet). And the privy—well, he honestly couldn't see how that could be done at all!
“Wick.”
Recognizing the level of frustration in Craugh's voice as dangerous, Wick met the wizard's glare. “Yes?”
“Are you quite through wool-gathering?”
“Actually,” Wick said, “I was just thinking. Maybe you can't do this even with my help—”
“I can,” Craugh interrupted.

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