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In the Land of Stories Old
It took the ship not quite a day’s worth of hours to catch up with the first fishing boat, which was found tipped over and bobbing upside down in the water. Merlin threw a lightning bolt at it that blasted a hole in the upended hull, and then he rained blue fire down not just on the boat but on the water around it as well. “Shadows, like slugs swimming in the water,” Pino confirmed, as he was the one using the glass this time. “Why do these things have to leak? It is disgusting!”
“I can’t disagree, it is disgustin’,” Arthur said. “Do you think they’re able to swim way out here, or would they just sink and leak more?”
Merlin made a face. “I really do not want to think about piles of the tainted piling up down on the sea floor,” he said. “And as we’re still underway, Jack can’t dive down and check.”
Jack snorted. “I could not do that anyway, as the bottom here is too far—and the water is not clear enough for me to see without going so far down I could not get back up.”
“No, nobody except a mermaid could swim down to the bottom here,” the captain confirmed. He pointed out over the water. “Over that way is Caray, some people call it the Isle of Deer. Small island, just the one village. We don’t usually come out this far, but last time we were it was under a self-declared duke and he wasn’t too picky about who he traded with. Not that I can blame him too much, all the way out here—trading with the raiders most likely keeps them off his people.”
“Hopefully there are not any docked there now,” Jack said.
The captain shrugged. “Even if there were, they wouldn’t touch us—Caray is one of the few islands that freely trades with them, and if they want the trade to keep flowing they know they have to leave the trade ships alone when we’re in port.” He smirked. “Doesn’t mean that time I ended up docked two slips down from Rufus Fear that I didn’t run an armed watch and sleep with one eye open all night, though. Really glad I’ve never seen him again.”
“And you won’t, because he’s dead,” Arthur told him. “He attacked the Black Castle not long after we all got there, and that was the last thing he ever did. The guards sort of took their frustrations out on his men, and then they burned the bodies that night.”
“Good on them,” was the captain’s response. “I’ll have to spread that around some—that Fear is dead, not necessarily where he died. Nobody knew that I know of.”
“We were still cursed when that happened,” Hans told him. He had the baby this time, and she was cooing happily in his arms because he’d known how to make a brew to soothe the pain of teething. Merlin had taken care of it the day before with magic, so between the two of them little Minnie had not been even the least bit cranky since she’d come aboard. “We told the magistrate once we were able, I am surprised he did not make sure the news got around.”
“News doesn’t always flow very fast coming off the Black Isle,” the captain said, and took the baby for himself. She giggled and grabbed his beard, and he rather absently kissed her forehead. “You’re going to have to go below soon, little girl. I bet your father thinks we’ve adopted you as ship’s mascot, at this point.”
Her response was to giggle and stretch out one chubby hand in the direction of the blue fire. “Pitty!”
That made Merlin smile. “It is,” he agreed, and then held out his hand and made a glowing blue orb appear above his palm—and orb which sent up a fountain of blue bubbles that turned into blue flowers as they popped and fell.
The baby squealed in delight, and the captain rolled his eyes. “A showoff, that’s what he is,” he told the baby, who clapped her tiny hands. “Yes, I’m sure you do approve, since it’s you he’s doing it for. But now it’s down below for you.” He took the baby below to join her father and older sister, as the ship’s next stop was Caray and he was going to tell the man not to come above again until someone came down and got him—no telling what was going to be waiting for them there, after all.
They were within sight of Caray, the Isle of Deer, in half an hour’s time, and the fishing boat was spotted well ahead of them, drifting toward the shore. People were visible clustered together on its small deck, swaying, staring at the island; one of them either fell or jumped off and started splashing unevenly to shore. Kio’s glass and the captain’s confirmed that they were all infected with the sickness, bloody-mouthed and blank-eyed, stomachs bloated with blood and flesh that wasn’t able to sustain them. The boat crashed up onto the beach and threw a good many of them off, either into the water or up onto the sand, and the ones who’d managed to stay aboard crawled out of the wrecked boat and joined the others as they all began to stagger or crawl or drag themselves off in the same direction.
Which wasn’t toward the pier or the still village beyond it, but in an oblique line away to the right. Nobody else was in sight, although a few bodies were. “What…they’re all dead!”
“All of them, from the looks of it,” Kio confirmed. “The pier looks clear, I do not see shadows in the water on this side. Should we dock?”
The captain’s jaw set. “If we go with the idea that those…infected from the boat are heading for fresh blood, then I don’t see that we have a choice.”
“Let us off on the pier, and some of us will check the village while the others follow the tainted,” Merlin suggested. “You can move the ship back, the same way as before…”
“No,” the captain interrupted. “We’ll stay docked, just in case you have to come back in a hurry…but we’ll be ready to cast off at a moment’s notice. And I’ll have all hands watching the water, just in case.” He looked Merlin in the eye when it looked like he might object. “Prince Merlin, I’m not leaving the seven of you without a means of quickly escaping that island. There is no telling what you’re going to find out there…and honestly I’m just hoping that whatever it is, you’ll all be fast enough to outrun it.”
Merlin blinked, and then he bowed. “I hope we are too, Captain.”
And so they waited on the starboard side of the ship as she pulled up to the pier, and the moment they were close enough all seven of them jumped onto the pier; the triplets at once headed for the silent village, swords already in their hands, while the rest made their way as quickly as possible in the direction the people from the wrecked fishing boat had gone—but not too quickly, because catching up with them wouldn’t have been the best idea either. As it was they got closer than they wanted to, but strangely these people did not even seem to notice. They were all focused straight ahead with a strange sort of desperation, bumping into each other and falling over obstacles in their path, dragging themselves along in a straight line to…something.
Merlin stumbled when they finally came within sight of the forest. “I…I can feel that.”
Hans swallowed. “It looks like the forest I went hunting truffles in, but…stained with red?”
“I do not like this,” Jack said. “Look, they are heading straight for it. Merlin, do you think it is calling them?”
“Yes.” Merlin seemed completely sure of that. “Yes, it’s calling them. Because that’s where the curse came from. I can feel it.” He swallowed. “It wants blood.”
Arthur’s eyes went wide. “You don’t think that’s where…”
“It’s possible. But we need to see why it’s calling them before we worry about that.”
And so they kept walking. Here and there bodies could be seen, unmoving dark lumps just barely visible amid the dry meadow grasses. The infected made their way into the forest, staggering and falling at the foot of the black-bolled trees, and then they began making horrible sounds, almost like they were choking. They retched and writhed and moaned and then vomited out the rotting blood that filled their stomachs and what looked like more besides onto the roots of the trees…which glowed red and shivered in what could only be arboreal ecstasy.
Merlin had a slip of paper in his hand before he’d even consciously thought about it. A ball of lightning formed, far larger than what he would usually cast, and flew toward the forest. Trees at the forest’s edge were singed, their leaves withering on their branches, and a terrible inhuman cry went up…but the forest remained mostly undamaged. Merlin swallowed and pulled out another slip, but Arthur caught his arm. “No, if that didn’t do it, you can’t…Merlin, that was enough to take out a buildin’ and they’re barely singed! We’ll have to think of somethin’ else!”
“We will have to think of it on the ship, far out to sea!” Hans countered, beginning to shove everyone back the way they’d come as another cry rang out from the forest. “Those bodies, they are getting up!”
“Run!” Jack shouted, and they all raced back toward the shore and the pier, hoping that the bodies in the village weren’t also stirring to that hideous call. The breeze shifted, carrying the smell of death and rot to them, but there wasn’t time to stop to be sick and they all kept running. The pier finally came into view, and they vaulted writhing corpses on the shore to reach it, gathering up the alarmed Brothers Vinci along the way and then throwing themselves back on board and falling to the deck. “Captain, get us away from the shore! They are coming!”
The captain, luckily, really had been ready to shove off at a moment’s notice, and the ship was moving away from the pier before the first staggering shapes could reach it, rimmed with a sickly red glow. “What in…”
“Everyone there is dead,” Arthur gasped, still trying to catch his breath. “It’s a cursed forest.”
“It’s…it was calling them to it. To get the blood they carried.” Merlin forced himself back to his feet, visibly shaking. “We need to get farther away, and then I’ll have to cleanse the ship. I can feel the taint more clearly now, it was in the soil, the water, everywhere. This is where it came from.” He waited until they were far out away from the cursed island’s shore, far enough out that no one could swim to them, and then he grabbed hold of the ship’s rail and closed his eyes. Power flared out in a wash of blue light, sweeping over the ship, over the crew and the Seven and even down into the water, chasing what looked like pale, dingy shadows before it and leaving everything clean and clear and bright and good.
And then the light faded away and Merlin crumpled to the deck like a puppet with cut strings. Hans winced. “He is going to be feeling that when he wakes up.”
“When he wakes up.” Arthur pulled himself to his feet and moved to his brother’s side, checking the pulse of life fluttering at his throat. “Maybe tomorrow?”
Jack gained his feet and came over to check as well. “Hopefully tomorrow,” he agreed, and then sat back down on the deck and buried his face in his hands. “How in the world are we going to fix this?”
Arthur put a hand on his shoulder. “I…I just don’t know.”
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