Severed Empire: Wizard's War (16 page)

Mykal realized the danger they were in. They’d surrendered themselves into the hands of their enemies without so much as even a punch thrown.

The seven people with him reached for weapons.

The Voyagers were fast. Axes were soundlessly raised. They held the weapon handles in both hands.

Captain Sebastian held up his hands. It worked at calming the crew. “We were not with the Mountain King, old man. He had a witch with him. She used her magic and put all of us under some kind of spell. We were forced to follow them, to fight for them. It was not by choice!”

“And you escaped?” Blodwyn said. “I don’t see how that’s possible!”

Again, Mykal and his friends tensed. They were prepared to battle. Lives would be lost. The combat was too close for there not to be severe casualties.

Sebastian said, “Stop!”

Somehow it worked a second time. The Voyagers relaxed. Axes and swords were lowered. “We did not escape. Once they had the items they wanted, and the woman, they had us escort them as far as the foothills of the Rames, and then freed us. I can recall the magic wearing off. It left most of us drained. I believe we slept for a few days. It is hard to remember exactly. But you, boy, you were dead.”

“I was,” Mykal said. “But now, I am not.”

“That answer makes no sense,” Sebastian said.

An awkward silence fell over everyone. The captain kept his eyes locked on Mykal. It was as if his brain tried desperately to understand the impossibility standing before him.

“Cearl,” Sebastian shouted, suddenly. His voice boomed like thunder, like a strong wind snapping the sails taut. “Raise the anchor.”

Cearl shouted, “Raise the anchor.” Other tars repeated the command. It was like an echo.

“Bring us around,” Sebastian said.

“Bring us around,” Cearl shouted, then the echo.

“Head back for the island,” the Captain said. His command was repeated by Cearl, and the others.

Men cranked a wheel. Wet, dripping chains rattled making their way up the outside of the hull and were wound about the wheelbase. The anchor came out of the water, and rose until it stopped by the bow. The
Derecho
surged forward, dipping down into the sea. Cearl was at the wheel, and spun it toward the port side.

Mr. Reed yelled for angling the sails twice. The first time his voice cracked, and he needed to clear his throat.

The wind caught in the giant white sails, and they puffed out full, harnessing the wind. The vessel was then free and made its way cutting through the small swells.

Mykal noticed that everyone seemed more relaxed, and that only he and his friends were now off balance. Quill stumbled backwards several steps. He held onto the side of the ship to keep from falling down.

The tars enjoyed the show, and were not shy about laughing at all of them.

“We will get some answers,” Captain Sebastian said. He stared directly at Mykal. He ground his teeth. “The governor will get to the bottom of this. Of all of this.”

Mykal said, “Are we free to move about?”

The Captain scowled. “Don’t get in anyone’s way. For all we know the old man was the only one we were to bring back to the islands. I’d have no problem tossing the lot of you overboard.”

Mykal watched the Captain walk away. He looked over at his father, who shook his head.

The
Derecho
moved smoothly across the water. It was a completely different experience than horseback riding. The fact that the wind still blew through Mykal’s hair was about the only similarity. Walking with extreme caution, his hands grasped for anything secured down. There wasn’t much. He made his way toward the bow, which dipped and rose with the swells. Sea spray doused him, soaking his clothing. The water was cold. He didn’t mind. There was a freedom associated with sailing that he never could have imagined before. He wondered if it was what a falcon felt like when flying.

At the bow he saw the Isthmian Islands ahead. There was one main island, and two smaller islands. Beyond he knew was the east bank, the Osiris Realm. He could not see that far in the dark, not even with the moon bright in the cloudless night sky.

He could not count the times he’d fished in the sea and stared across the water wondering about the islands. His imagination always ran wild. In his mind’s eye he saw dragon nests, with dragon eggs waiting to hatch. He pictured natives with harsh languages living in small huts amid the trees. He also imagined mines filled with rare and exotic gems waiting to for excavation. Playing on those fantasies, there were a few times when chores were completed early and he’d spend the day collecting small logs, and limbs and tying them together with string—not even rope, but string. The raft would never hold together in the sea, and he would never test her ability to float. He never dreamed he’d sail on a Voyager vessel, or head toward the mysterious islands. It would no longer be stories and legends after today.

Chapter 13

Ida stayed in the shadows and concentrated on her breathing. She kept her breaths short, and shallow. The hood of her cloak was draped over her head and covered her face. She was as hidden by the darkness, but standing in plain sight in the corner of the bed chamber.

With the curtains drawn tight, no sunlight entered the room. Queen Chorazin slept silently in the bed. Her snores were thick, and rumbled. It sounded like thunder erupting from her throat and nostrils. The queen drooled onto her satin-covered pillow.

Ida didn’t care one way or the other about the queen. What put her off was the king’s request. How could he even call himself a man? He shouldn’t be a position to rule his realm, much less become emperor over all of the kingdoms. The feeble man might have the ambition, and the dreams of success swimming around inside his head, but he possessed little else. He was an angry man, who felt life had slighted him. How did that make him worthy to rule? It didn’t.

She’d help him.

She would do some of his bidding. As long as there was always something in it for her, then it was worth it. The way she saw things now, his plan had some errors in it. She saw the flaws. It wasn’t her place to call them out to him. He didn’t ask for her opinion, so she didn’t offer up advice. What he proposed was doable, far from perfect, but it could work. She saw the glimmer of light sparkle inside his plan, and that was why she allowed him to believe he was in control of the situation.

The queen stirred.

Ida stepped out of the shadows, and walked over to the side of the bed. Killing the woman would be easiest while she slept. There was less chance of causing a scene this way. Part of her wanted the queen to wake up. Chorazin deserved to see who was ending her life. The woman wasn’t bright enough to connect the dots. Not even when the two dots stood next to each other. If the queen opened her eyes, and even if she recognized Ida, she’d never realize the witch was only following the king’s orders. That was the pathetic truth in the matter, and was also why whether Chorazin was asleep or awake was beside the point.

Closing her eyes, Ida concentrated on the spell. The words flowed through her mind like music. Shades of gray waves washed over a spider’s web. Drops of gray water dripped from the sticky silk, and left the spider’s construction glistening in artificial light. When the next wave came it washed away the web, leaving no sign it had ever existed.

Ida opened her eyes. On the bed things moved beneath the linens. Reaching out her hand, Ida pulled away the top sheet. Hairy spiders with yellow and black bodies, and yellow and black striped legs crawled over the queen. By her feet, a spider with a grotesquely thick abdomen spun webs around crusty toes before it sank fangs into the queen’s corns.

Queen Chorazin’s eyes opened, and she screamed.

Ida moved fast. She covered the woman’s mouth.

Jerking her legs and screaming were the worst things the queen could have done. It agitated the spiders. The creatures panicked. When they became startled, they bit. Hundreds of the spiders buried fangs into her skin, and spilled poison from hollow teeth into her body.

With their faces so close together, it was impossible to see anything. They were in complete darkness now.

Ida heard the spiders. They were crawling all over the queen. At first, Chorazin struggled, thrashing back and forth. Ida had to hold her down, keeping her fat body in the bed. The fight didn’t last long. The injected venom from the spiders paralyzed the queen. Their curse raced through her bloodstream with every bite.

Ida pulled her hands away and stood up straight—as straight as her knotted back allowed—and walked over to the window. She threw open the heavy curtains. The sun crashed into the room with sudden intensity. Shadows were instantaneously forced into corners, nooks, and crannies.

On the bed, the queen only had the strength, the ability, to move her eyeballs. Fear radiated from them like a distress beacon from a sinking ship. It would be cruel showing enjoyment in someone else’s suffering. Ida covered her mouth when she chuckled.

Tears streamed down the corners of the queen’s face. Flat on her back, she succumbed to the arachnids. There was no other choice, however. They didn’t seem to bite her as much now. Ida wasn’t sure the wretched woman felt the sting of bites. She couldn’t remember if the paralysis prevented the victim from feeling pain, or if it simply rendered them immobile. Either way, it didn’t matter. The queen was completely subdued.

The spiders were industrious and simply fascinating creatures to watch. The beautiful way eight legs choreographed each calculated step was both graceful, and stilted. Short, fast steps that jerked up, back, left, right, and down. The spinnerets spun sticky silver silk webbing that tethered itself from the start of the strand to the back of the spider’s body. They began creating a cocoon around every exposed part of her body. The hundreds of spiders had their work cut out for them. There was mounds of flesh exposed, and dangerous folds of fat and flab for them to consider, and yet it didn’t slow their work any. They scurried across and up and down her body.

As entertaining as it was to watch the spiders work, Ida also took great pleasure in watching the Queen’s eyes. She didn’t think the woman had blinked yet.

Perhaps she couldn’t?

Regardless, Ida wasn’t sure if the queen fully comprehended the seriousness of the situation. It was more than dire; it was downright detrimental. There was enough venom inside Chorazin’s veins and arteries that even if by some miracle she wasn’t consumed by the inside out, and the spiders were exterminated, she’d be a shell of a woman, crippled, and bedridden. Surely as the sands of time dropped, the queen relinquished bit by bit pieces of any remaining sanity. If she lived through the ordeal she’d only ever be moved from her bed to a chair by the window and back to her bed again.

Ida shook her head, as if shaking the ludicrous thought of survival from her mind. The queen could not survive this attack. The spiders were relentless, and hungry, and soon they’d lay eggs, and have millions of babies ravenously set loose inside the cavity of a dying, or already dead royal corpse.

Ida knelt by the bed and watched turning her attention back to the spiders with renewed fascination. There was no way the spiders could get under the queen’s body in order to fully wrap her in their webbing, but that was not a deterrent. They tightly encased her feet, and legs with ease, her arms and neck were swaddled next. Lastly, they stretched the webbing from the neck to the back of her head, and across the queen’s forehead, and then over her nose. Mouth and eyes were about the only parts of Queen Chorazin left visible, and the queen’s eyes pleaded silently with Ida for help.

Ida covered her hand over her mouth and chuckled.

Without replying, Ida simply watched as one especially rambunctious spider laid webbing across Chorazin’s eyes, and covered her ears. The only part the black critters left uncovered was the mouth. Ida laced her fingers together and giggled as, one by one, the spiders converged from the different parts of the body to the face, and then after a few pulls at her lips, they crawled into her mouth. The queen gagged. It must be a reflex, regardless of paralysis. Her tongue protruded from the side of her lips, as if in an effort to escape the clutter of spiders filling the orifice. They were insistent arachnids, eager to get down the narrow throat, but were bottlenecked in the mouth. Hairy legs kept protruding up and over teeth, and then disappeared back inside an obviously overcrowded mouth. Once every last one of the spiders was inside the queen, a spinneret appeared just before a seemingly chaotic spray of web was ejected. It secured in place on top of the rest of the silk, and completed the cocoon covering over the entire jaw.

Ida wasn’t sure how much longer the queen might live. The spiders were web-weavers, and their work almost certainly lead to hunger. Inside the fat queen’s body, the spiders would isolate organs and muscles, and spin webs until there was nothing left to eat, or to cover.

The spiders, mostly female, almost certainly all pregnant, would also be busy laying eggs.

It was truly a nasty way to die
, Ida thought as she clucked her tongue off the roof of her mouth. With that, Ida stood up and took a final few moments admiring the work the spiders had done. The web was nearly all encompassing. It was quite truly an exquisite wrapping. The way the sun reflected off the spun web was as brilliant as the sun on mirrored glass; nearly as blinding.

There was no way anyone could blame the king for the death of his wife. This could never be called murder. No investigation would be ordered. A curer wouldn’t even be called on for determining cause of death. The proof was the silky shroud around the obese body. Should they decided to dig deeper, an autopsy would reveal a belly full of spiders and spider-lings.

That could prove dangerous. In twenty-four hours, all of the clutter would die. They lived short, magical, lives. If released from their self-sealed tomb, they’d move on to another target, a new victim. It could prolong their existence. She made a mental note to suggest the corpse be set afire immediately. The king would agree. It would prevent an unneeded and potentially hazardous outbreak.