The Long Journey Home (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 8) (7 page)

“I thought you were going to stop letting him eat fish,” Zeezle said with his fingers pinching his nose shut.

“He caught the fish.” Vanx shrugged. “And don’t act like it’s all that bad. You should smell it with
his
nose.”

“Well, where is the island?” Chelda asked. Her look was one that expected Vanx to have a perfectly good explanation.

Ronzon was rattled, and so was Castavonti. Master Ruuk was hunched over, thinking hard on the subject, or maybe had fallen asleep with his legs dangling over the wheel deck’s edge.

Vanx imagined the wrong wave causing the Zythian to slip and take a tumble while he pondered Chelda’s question. Then, as the answer came to him, he decided that if a wave shook Master Ruuk from that ledge, he’d land like a cat or a feather. He was Zythian, after all. His reluctance to adventure stemmed from him knowing exactly how precious his life was. A lot of older Zythians thought that way.

“I suppose it is invisible.” Vanx said. “I lost the map—the whole scroll tube, actually—somewhere in there when I was fighting for my life.”

“And mine, brother,” Zeezle reminded. “You were fighting for my life, too.”

“Yup.” Vanx shrugged again, not wanting to take credit for anything more than trying to survive. “Either way, I think if you hold the map or are near the one who does, then you can see the place. I kind of remember looking back when those fish were schooling all around us, and I think it had already disappeared.”

Master Ruuk wasn’t sleeping, and Vanx saw a smile spread across his face.

“Makes sense to me.” Chelda said, and went back to helping Ronzon make individual chests to store their shares of coppers in.

Zeezle put his arm around Vanx’s shoulders.
The question is, what are you going to do with that amber gem in your pocket?
He spoke in the ethereal.

I was hoping that something on the map or the island would give me at least a clue, but I have no idea
, Vanx answered.

Smash with hammer
, Poops said, giving Vanx and Zeezle a curious look.

Where?
They asked the dog in unison; only Vanx added,
When?

Poops sauntered away and then sat in the shade against the wheelhouse and started liking his gonads voraciously.

Maybe it is the seed to your Elmwood Heart Tree, like the emerald was to the tree back in Harthgar
, Zeezle said.

Maybe so
. Vanx nodded. He had a good idea where he would plant it if that was what it was. But they still had weeks of sailing to get there.

Sea Mage Castavonti looked at Vanx when he noticed the slight change of course the
Adventurer
took. It couldn’t have been more than a degree, and it spoke to Vanx of the sea mage’s skill at his profession. Vanx also noted the man didn’t speak of the change to anyone, even him. Which could only speak of two things: trust, respect, or both. Or maybe fear?

They fished a few times over the next ten days and weathered a decent-sized storm that left Chelda seasick and a sizeable knot on Master Ruuk’s head. The man refused to let Chelda stick him with the Glaive of Gladiolus, and that was strange to Vanx. So, one day while they had the fishing line out, and the sky was balmy and blue, he asked him why.

“Why suffer the bruised noggin?” Vanx spoke quietly when no one else seemed to be paying attention.

“This is how we learn, Vanx,” the Zythian answered simply. “This pain will keep me from dropping my guard and snoozing on the deck of a ship for the rest of my life. If she just jabs me and heals it, I don’t learn a lesson.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.” Vanx laughed. He started to elaborate, but the line on the flinger rod started clicking away from the wooden reel fiercely.

Vanx got to it and didn’t even have to say a word to get the ship moving in his favor. The
Adventurer
changed course as he needed without him or Castavonti having to touch wheel or rope. The only thing more amazing than the way the boat was obedient to his whim was the way Castavonti went about letting the rest of them think
he
was controlling the thing.

This was no small fish, Vanx found, and even with the ship working fully in his favor, it eventually pulled the line to its limit and then ripped the whole rod from his hand.

Zeezle, however, had another idea. His dagger cut the line as he grabbed the rod, a good three feet away from the rail, over open water.

He didn’t fall into the sea, though. He disappeared from where he was and landed on his belly, right in the grass bed full of dog shit.

An argument between him and Master Ruuk ensued about the choice of his landing place. But everyone else gasped, drawing Vanx away from the Zythians to what their eyes were locked on.

It was a ship. A big, three-masted, cargo vessel, and it looked to be adrift.

Vanx was curious, but he was suddenly feeling a bit of Master Ruuk’s survival reluctance as the
Adventurer
drew them nearer to it anyway.

Chapter Sixteen

From a castle way up high
,

we can watch the world pass by
.

Sweet dreams of kings and queens
,

can you tell me what they mean?

T
he ship was named the
Ada Rosamond
. Vanx knew the name meant honorable protector of horses or something like that. His suspicion that this was a ship carrying animals was strengthened by the foul smell that wafted over them on approach.

“Leave it,” Master Ruuk said firmly. “Disease, or something, has taken the crew. Look. No one is alive, and we could contract the same ailment.”

Vanx was just about to agree when Poops heard something and started barking. There were still horses alive, more than two; Poops could tell.

Vanx told the others what Poops heard, then stood at the bow of the
Adventurer
and used a wind wish to blast the derelict vessel with fresh air. The tattered sails caught some of the wind, and they had to move to intercept the larger craft, but at least it didn’t smell like rotten death anymore.

“This could be a pirate trap,” Castavonti said matter-of-factly. “We should be very careful.”

“I’m bored as all the hells,” Chelda said, brandishing her war hammer. “I hope there
are
some fargin’ pirates on that ship.”

“Nah, nah,” Zeezle said from his place about halfway up the rigging. “Pirates would run after seeing the magic Vanx just used. Master Ruuk, can you get me there?”

“I can, but I’m against it.” The Zythian mage pursed his lips and put his arms across his chest.

“I think he meant now.” Chelda reached up and grabbed Zeezle’s ankle.

“You sure you want to go?” Vanx asked the two of them, allowing Zeezle to climb down and get his feet on the deck.

“I am,” Chelda answered, but Zeezle just gave him a look that said, why are you asking?

“I’ll have to put you a few feet above the deck to compensate for the waves.” Ruuk sounded reluctant. Vanx had been at first, but after hearing the horses, trapped, starving, and dehydrating, he had lost all worry of trouble.

“Search for their stores,” said Vanx. “They probably have water and grain, but the animals can’t get to it. A disease that killed the men may not have killed the horses.”

“I’ll shield us and stay clear of dead men.” Zeezle nodded.

“I have the Glaive, Vanxy.” Chelda brandished it, and he shook his head again over how small it looked in her big hand. “I’ll heal the horses that can be healed.”

“We can’t carry horses on this boat,” Castavonti said.

“No, but we can tow that one in, and probably get a hefty fee from the owner, or its sale.” Ronzon said. “We are only a week or so away from Cold Port.”

“Yup.” Vanx nodded. “I’d feel better if you took Ronzon, too. He will know how to rig the ships together, and after we are underway, Master Ruuk can use spells to fully cleanse the
Ada Rosamond
.”

The older Zythian mage groaned, but after they grabbed some gear, he grouped Zeezle, Chelda, and Ronzon on the deck and teleported them, as best as he could on a rolling sea, over to the deck of the larger ship.

They appeared ten feet above the
Ada Rosamond’s
main deck, and Zeezle saw that it was rising as they fell.

“Blasted wizards,” Chelda cursed as she slapped against the planks.

Zeezle saw Ronzon impact and winced. His legs struck a rail on an upper deck, and he was flipped so that the side of his face struck before the rest of him.

A few seconds later, he looked at Zeezle.

“That wizard makes me skin crawl and creep,” Ronzon said, rubbing his shins.

“I don’t see any bodies, living or dead, on deck,” Zeezle said. He’d caught a rigging line and kept himself from impacting badly.

“If they’d been dead,” Ronzon offered, “even a small storm would have washed them off.” He groaned as he touched the side of his bruised face. “These sails have been through a few storms untended.”

“Those poor horses,” Chelda mumbled as she found a door that opened onto a stairway leading down. The look on her face when the air hit her told Zeezle there was rotting meat below. “How do we bring the live ones up, Ronzy?” she asked?

“There.” He pointed to a set of double doors in the ship’s deck. “You use a horse harness and lift them up and down with that block and tackle.”

Zeezle was already throwing the doors open, and the smell from below was pretty bad, but not as bad as he’d figured.

Ronzon put his foot in a hook dangling from a rope and showed Zeezle which ropes to pull to swing him out over the hole and then lower him down.

“Gah,” Chelda said as she appeared under Ronzon. “I’ve found bones and more bones. Something has been eating their meat. The rot we smell is nothing but the gristle piles.”

Just then, a horse whinnied. Zeezle jumped the twelve feet down to the next deck, and landed in an acrobatic roll. He was on his feet, exiting the hay-strewn area a different way than Chelda had come in from.

Chelda offered Ronzon a place between her and Zeezle, but he bowed and said, “Ladies first.”

That made Chelda laugh, but she came right behind Zeezle anyway. Zeezle was glad. He’d rather have her at his back than a deckhand he’d only known a short while.

Zeezle had them easing down a row of gated stalls so narrow that the animals couldn’t fall in heavy seas; there should have been a horse on each side of the center passage, which was wide enough to walk the horses in. Zeezle counted seventeen doors on each side, and his heart sank.

The first few stalls were full of bones; the next few had bones with grisly fly-covered decay on them. The farther they went, the less decayed the remains were, but in no instance was there meat, fur, or even guts to be seen.

Zeezle heard the horse in the farthest stall snort, and then the one next to it made a low whinny.

He started running then. He was so intent on getting Chelda and the Glaive’s healing power to the horses that he ran right past something terrible, and it was two full strides later that it registered in his mind what he’d seen.

He turned just in time to see Chelda jog up and stop. She was far enough back that she looked right into the stall.

Zeezle started to reach out for her, but it wasn’t to be.

A fat, toothy, froggish-looking thing with a deft tongue had already snatched her off her feet. Her back and head hit the wood so hard, she let go of the Glaive of Gladiolus, but oddly, not the hammer.

Chapter Seventeen

Momma never told me there’d be days like this
,

when everything’s gone wrong, and it feels so bad inside
.

Momma never said nothing about broken hearts or innocent lies
.

But oh, my Momma tried. My Momma tried
.

T
he sound of the creature croaking and grunting in anticipation filled the stunned silence. Then the sound of Chelda’s roar drowned out the beast.

Zeezle couldn’t see it, but he heard the deep thumping wallops of Chelda pounding it three times with heavy swings. It must have let go of her. When he reached the stall, Zeezle saw that it had hopped on her, pinning most of her body underneath it. Ronzon stepped in and stabbed the thing. It responded by leaping over him, pushing off of Chelda with violent force.

The creature nearly smashed Zeezle into the opposite wall of the stable deck.

Zeezle managed to avoid being crushed, and he stabbed it twice, but it didn’t look to be slowed by the wounds. It really was a jagged-toothed, giant sea toad. Its skin was dried in places. And black bloody gore was chapped around a terribly wide set of jaws.

It was the dead black eyes that were most chilling. This was a creature in a survival mindset. It would kill them all or die trying. There was no doubt the thing’s size was due to all the free meals it had been enjoying. So content on feeding was the toad, it looked like it had forgotten about the water altogether.