Songs of the Dying Earth

Descending to their cabin, Derwe Coreme whispered, “What are the chances that the real KirdriK will be victorious and return in time to help us?”

Shrue shrugged and showed his long hands. “As I’ve said before, my dear, a battle such as this in the Overworld may go on for anything from ten minutes to ten centuries of our time. But KirdriK knows the importance of returning as soon as he is victorious—if he prevailed and survived.”

“Is there any chance that the daihak simply fled?” she whispered.

“No,” said Shrue. “None. KirdriK is still well and truly bound. If he survives — and either he or the two Purples must die — he shall return immediately.”

All that day the pelgranes and their saddled passengers grew closer, until the black flapping forms held station a little less than two leagues behind the sky galleon. Shrue urged Captain Shiolko to have his sons practice with the air-powered harpoon gun, which they did diligently through the long, hot day, firing and reeling in the long barbed bolt time after time. A little after noon, the guiding nose of Ulfant Banderoz swiveled due east and the galleon and following pelgranes changed course accordingly.

“I’ve never seen pelgranes that large,” Shiolko said to Shrue late that afternoon as both men studied their pursuers through telescopes. “They’re almost twice the size of the normal monsters.”

It was true. Pelgranes fed on humans — they liked nothing better for their diet — but it would be all a regular pelgrane could do to carry off one adult man or woman in its talons. These creatures looked as if they could carry a man in each taloned claw while feeding on a third in its mouth-beak.

“Some magical breeding of the species thanks to Faucelme and the Red,” murmured Shrue. From the middledeck came a flat explosion of compressed air as three of the sons fired off the harpoon gun yet again. Then the screech-and-whine as they began laboriously cranking back the bolt on its quarter-mile of steel cable.

The eleven flying forms were backlit by the huge setting sun as one of the pelgranes broke formation and began closing the gap to the galleon.

“The saddleless one,” said Derwe Coreme, who was watching through Shrue’s telescope. She and her Myrmazons had all of their weapons strapped to their dragonscaled backs and belts. “Damn!”

“What?” said Captain Shiolko and Shrue together.

“It’s carrying a white and blue flag.”

So it was. Shiolko’s sons did their best to train the ungainly harpoon gun on the approaching pelgrane — and Derwe Coreme’s Myrmazons found it much easier to bring their short but powerful crossbows to bear — but the pelgrane was indeed carrying a white and blue flag of truce in one of its fleshy, pink little wing hands. They allowed it to flap closer and land on the portside railing.

Most of the passengers made a huge semicircle on deck, then half a semicircle as they tried to get upwind of the stinking pelgrane, as some of the Myrmazons and Shiolko’s sons kept an eye on the other ten pelgranes behind them, making sure this visit was not just a distraction.

Shrue and the captain stepped closer, moving into the sphere of carrion stench that hung around the creature. The diabolist noticed that the pelgrane was wearing smoked goggles — they hated flying in daylight.

“What do you want?” demanded Captain Shiolko. And then, as an afterthought, added, “If you crap on my railing or deck, you die.”

The pelgrane smiled a foul pelgranish smile. “Your magician knows what we want.”

“I’m fresh out of Finding Crystals,” said Shrue. “What happened to Faucelme’s apprentice?”

“He became too…ambitious,” wheezed the pelgrane. “As all apprentices do, sooner or later. Faucelme was forced to…punish…him. But do not change the subject, diabolist. Hand over the nose.”

Something about the phrasing of that demand made both Shrue and Derwe Coreme laugh. The others in the mass of passengers and crew looked at them as if they’d gone mad.

“Tell the Red and his puppet Faucelme that their projection of the Purples is a sad failure,” said Shrue. He nodded toward the silent, tall monk’s figure at their stern rail. At least Meriwolt had managed to turn Arch-Docent Hu? around so that the black veil under the hood was aimed in the general direction of the pelgrane. “We know how the battle in the Overworld really went.”

The pelgrane looked bored. “Are you going to give me the nose or make Faucelme take it from you?”

Shrue sighed. “Let me show you something, my friend,” he said softly. “Young Shiolko — Arven — could you give me that extra bit of block and tackle? Yes, set it on the deck in front of me. Thank you. Are you watching, pelgrane?”

The oversized pelgrane’s yellow eyes were shifting — hungrily — every way but toward the heavy block and bit of rope on the deck. It licked its foul chops while looking at the passengers, but said, “Oh, is there a birthday party underway here? Did you all hire a village magic-maker? Is the old man going to show us that there’s nothing up his sleeves and then make the big, bad block and tackle disappear? That will deeply impress one of the seventeen Elemental Reds in all of the universe!”

Shrue smiled and snapped his fingers.

The heavy block disappeared.

The pelgrane screamed in pain and horror. Its talons and both of its tiny fleshy hands clutched at its own belly.

“You looked hungry,” said Shrue. “I know that Faucelme and Faucelme’s owner are watching and listening through you. Let them know that they could never seize the nose of Ulfant Banderoz before I send it elsewhere — and to an elsewhere infinitely less retrievable than your foul belly, pelgrane.”

Still shrieking, the pelgrane flapped into the air, writhing and rolling, and then screamed, “I’ll have my dinner from you yet, mortals.” It feinted in Shrue’s direction, but banked suddenly, seized Reverend Cepres’s younger wife Wilva in its talons, and flapped away toward the south, still screeching and shrieking in pain even as Wilva screamed.

“Quick!” cried Shrue, gesturing the frozen Shiolko sons toward the compressed-air harpoon gun.

The Myrmazons needed no impetus. The pelgrane was no more than thirty yards away when six crossbow bolts slammed into the monster’s shoulders, back, and upper hairy thorax — the women warriors were trying to avoid hitting the woman hanging from its talons. The Myrmazons reloaded in an instant and Derwe Coreme raised her hand, ready to signal a second volley.

“No!” cried Shrue. “If it dies, it will release Wilva.” He gestured toward the Shiolko boys to fire, even as his lips chanted a spell and his fingers played the air as if it were the captain’s three-tiered piano.

Guided by the efulsion, the harpoon flew impossibly true, smashing through the pelgrane’s thick thorax. Yellow ichor flew everywhere. The pelgrane’s scream reached into the ultrasonic.

“Quickly!” cried Shrue, helping the sons crank in the metal cable.

“I’ll drop her!” screamed the raging pelgrane. “Let me go, or by Highest Gods you worship, I’ll bite her head off now and drop her!”

“Drop her and you die now,” shouted Shrue, still cranking the pelgrane in. The six Myrmazons had their crossbows aimed unshakingly at its head. “Return her safely and you have a chance to live,” he said. “I promise you your freedom.”

The pelgrane screamed in frustration and pain. They cranked it aboard like some huge, stoop-shouldered, carrion-stinking, feathered fish, and the pelgrane flopped and writhed and bellowed and vomited yellow and green ichor everywhere. But Wilva flew free and Reverend Cepres gathered her up, weeping but alive, in his arms.

“You promised me my freedom!!” screamed the pelgrane.

“So I did,” said Shrue and nodded to Derwe Coreme, who instantly used her longest and sharpest sword to strike the giant pelgrane just above the thorax, severing that hairy body part — larger than Meriwolt, who had to leap and scramble to avoid its thrusting stinger — and sending the thorax flopping on the deck, still pierced by the long barbed harpoon. Shrue gestured again, a backhand dismissal, and the rest of the shrieking pelgrane was thrown overboard as if by a huge, invisible hand. It plummeted a thousand screaming, cursing, ichor-venting feet or more before it remembered it still had wings.

It was a long night and neither Shrue nor Derwe Coreme slept a moment of it. The clouds had closed in and by midnight Steresa’s Dream was enveloped in cloud-fog so thick that the sons had reduced all canvas so that the sky galleon was barely making way. Huddled in the slight glow of the binnacle near