Sword Quest (12 page)

Self-blame stings more than putting salt on one’s wounds.

—FROM THE
O
LD
S
CRIPTURE

W
here’s Stormac?” Wind-voice said quizzically when he and the gull almost arrived at the island.

“Oh, he forgot his staff and he went back to fetch it. He said not to worry; he would be back quickly. I think he will have no problem finding us here.”

Indeed, the large island was easy to locate and the place where the seabirds lived was hard to miss. Dozens
of nesting petrels, gulls, albatrosses, and tropic birds had formed an alliance, called the Qua.

Chief Aqual’s sallow cheeks lifted into a smile when he saw the gem. “Thank you, thank you! Those cruel pirates have limited us in many ways…but now our treasure is back. This calls for a celebration. Take out the stores from our cellar and share our food with our new friend!”

All the birds present hushed as a dozen fishes were carried out to the stone table.

“Please help yourself to our fish,” Aqual said kindly, but Wind-voice was rooted to the stone ledge. The fishes were curled up as if in embarrassment of their half-rotten, mildewed state. One fish’s round shriveled eye stared at Wind-voice.
How poor these birds must be, and still they share their food!
he thought. When Wind-voice looked up, he found that dozens of birds had crowded around the table.

“Why don’t you eat too?” he asked.

“Guests first,” said the leader, smiling.

Wind-voice ate a pungent sliver out of politeness. Soon, the rest of the seabirds joined in, rapidly devouring the fishes. A sealed pot was carried up to them by several tottering gulls. It was the second course. The gulls opened the clay jar, and a slippery, shiny green-gray
mass, cut in thin slices, was solemnly hooked out and placed in scallop shells. Beaks opened and murmurings of
aah
swept through the crowd. Some birds drooled in anticipation. Right beside Wind-voice, a small gull chick’s mouth gaped open and it nearly fainted at the sight of the rare food.

“Spicy pickled kelp,” said Aqual with evident delight.

For the final course, the gulls served coconuts. Most of the fruits were not green but a deep brown, and the few green ones were unripe. The sour odor that came from the bruised skin of one was sickening.

The chief had been beaming at Wind-voice, but now he looked ashamed. “Alas,” he said apologetically, “the coconut trees on our islands have just been raided by the pirates. However, do try them; they are more nutritious than the preserves, and being so aged, they have actually acquired a flavor very close to ale.”

“I have something to contribute to the feast as well.” Wind-voice took off his sack and poured half of his remaining supplies into a pile. The gulls stared at the acorn-flour cakes, raisins, thistleseed bread, and dried worms before them. Wind-voice took a fragment of acorn and ate it to demonstrate. Small seabirds unknowingly drifted forward, their beaks opening and closing in time with his. The chicks leaned out of their nests, their
heads bobbing with hunger.

“Thank you, thank you!” Aqual said thickly, and the group of seabirds fell upon the food, eating happily, saving bits for the old, the young, and the weak among them.

Contented, thankful smiles grew on faces as the food diminished. Wind-voice told them of his journey to stop Maldeor from getting the hero’s sword.

“I have heard that the carvings on the gem contain some hidden wisdom,” said Aqual thoughtfully. “Still, we have nobird with us who can read Avish, I’m afraid. Our lives are so hard now that all must strive to find food every day; we have no time for scholarship.” He held out the gemstone and gazed at it sadly.

Wind-voice leaned in. “It looks like it says, ‘Find flowers amid ice.’ Avish! Oh, I miss Ewingerale,” said Wind-voice slowly, then looked up in alarm. “And where’s Stormac? He should be here by now.”

“Look here, mateys! What a nice catch we’ve got!” a pirate sniggered, scratching a salt-crusted beak.

The twenty or so jaegers, skuas, and frigate birds chortled. Sleek and shimmering in scraps of silk and satin, they piled around the entrance of the cave. Stormac looked around frantically. He was trapped.

Captain Rag-foot squeezed himself in front, waving a curved dagger. “Stop the fool laughing, you lot.” A skua, speckled brown and riddled with fleas, he wore strings of shark teeth draped around his neck and shoulders, and the webbing on one of his feet was mangled.

Rag-foot jabbed his dagger at the myna. “My scout here says you were spotted with the white one, the one worth the biggest reward. Where has he gone?”

“You must have seen a small cloud.” Stormac tried to muster his bravery. “I don’t know who you’re speaking of.”

“Cloud! Imprudent bird, tell us what you know.” The pirates stepped closer.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Rag-foot clacked his beak. “Certainly there are things to tell! Why are you here? This is our cave.”

“I was—”

“Passing by? A woodland myna, yes, very likely. Your companion took the blue gemstone, too.” Rag-foot stared at the myna for a long time. Stormac could not think of anything to say. Around him, pirates twiddled with their bludgeons and knives.

The silence was abruptly broken by smacking eating sounds. “Hmm…the reward for this one is plenty, but it says only the head is required,” Rag-foot called to
another pirate, a smirk settling on his face. “He looks nice and juicy. Lots of fat on him. Seize him and build a cooking fire.”

To Stormac’s dismay, he was bound to his own staff. “You careless fool,” he moaned to himself, but it was too late for regrets now.

A pirate pulled out an enormous cooking pan the size of a tub. Two birds crouched on their bellies to blow at the coals, and a third poured coconut oil into the pan.

“Now,” said Captain Rag-foot, “pluck him!”

Beaks shot forward and grabbed Stormac’s feathers. His head spun and he writhed in pain. “No! Stop!” he cried.

Rag-foot gestured and his minions stepped back. “Tell us immediately where the white bird went,” he growled. “Speak up!”

“I don’t know,” Stormac whimpered. A pirate came forward and tore another clump of feathers away. “I don’t know…I really…don’t…”

The captain shook his strings of shark teeth and glared. “Enough! Fry him!”

A dirty seabird wearing a bandanna dragged Stormac and his staff to the sizzling pan. Four birds, two on each side, raised him over the pan and lowered him slowly.

Stormac screamed and screamed as the hot oil
splattered onto his bare skin where his feathers had been torn away. “If you lead us to the white bird, you might not end up in our bellies,” Captain Rag-foot added sweetly as he squashed a flea in his feathers.

No,
Stormac thought.
I can’t. Not Wind-voice. I can’t betray him.
But the pain filled his mind until he could think of nothing else. “All right! I will!” he agreed.

The pirates pulled him from the pan. One came forward and snapped a chain around Stormac’s right foot. Three pirates held the other end of the leash.

“You must promise to draw him out in the open for us. Don’t you dare try leading us on some false trail,” the pirate captain warned. “Or there will be worse to come for you…”

Stormac gulped, nodding.

All along the way, he flew as slowly as he dared. His eyes couldn’t see properly, but this time the mirage was not in the sky but in his head. He remembered how, when others, even Fisher, had sometimes had faint doubts about him because of his past, Wind-voice had never seemed to doubt him for an instant. He remembered the times when he had fought side by side with Wind-voice, together driving the enemy away. He remembered how Wind-voice proclaimed that they were brothers. What a wonderful friend Wind-voice was! The
bird was always caring for others.

Now I am betraying him
, Stormac thought. So selfish. So terrible. The tears of shame in his eyes nearly blinded him. Could he truly do it?

“Where is Stormac?” Wind-voice said again, pacing the cliffs in agitation. He looked up and scanned the sky…and this time he saw a figure winging his way. It was the myna, all right, yet strangely he was not holding his staff. A chain trailed from his feet.

Wind-voice jumped into the air to greet his friend.

Stormac banked, screaming, “Stop, Wind-voice! Go back! Pirates!”

The myna darted toward Wind-voice, wings outstretched as a hissing rain of arrows filled the sky behind him. But none hit Wind-voice. The myna’s outspread wings protected the white bird from harm.

Wind-voice dove forward, but before he could reach Stormac, a swarm of figures surged up and over the myna, blocking him from sight. In the motley group of outcasts a bedraggled frigate bird held an outrageously curved sword while a swaggering jaeger clutched a spiked bludgeon. Wind-voice saw flashes of silk and gold among the extravagant weaponry. Despite their diversity,
what unified them was their greed and their stink of rotten fish.

“Stormac!” Wind-voice screamed. He charged, spinning his sword to hack the pirates away. Behind him, the seagulls burst out of their caves, holding fish spears and swinging rocks on ropes.

“Robbers!” they screeched.

“Murderers!”

“We won’t stand this anymore!”

The battle began.

Each of the pirates realized he could take advantage of the new opportunities arising from the melee. “Look! Tender young birds,” one frigate bird yelled as he pointed at a row of nests on a ledge. He landed below the ledge before the parents could stop him. Fluffy fulmar chicks peeped over the edge with open mouths, and arc after arc of foul-smelling vomit hit the pirate in the face. “Ahh!” The frigate bird staggered back, wiping at his sticky face.

“Silly of you. Fulmar chicks always do that!” another pirate snapped at him. “Let’s go over
there
! There is the gemstone that we need to steal back.” However, Aqual and four terns pelted him with broken oyster shells before he could get near the gem.

Though the Qua, the seabird alliance, had only crude
weaponry, they numbered no less than a hundred. Crowded onto the guano-streaked ledges, ten birds fought with every pirate.

A tern dressed in checkered pink and red silk swiped at Wind-voice, who ducked and sliced off a piece of the fabric, trying to fight his way toward Stormac’s fallen body.

Finally Rag-foot tried to organize his dirty pirates. “Now, all of you, get that strange dove! Get him! He’s worth a bag of treasures!” he shouted. The seabirds swarmed protectively around Wind-voice, swinging the rocks on their ropes. Then a well-aimed rock slammed on Rag-foot’s ragged toes. He screeched in pain and plummeted toward the sea. The other pirates stopped what they were doing and followed their captain, trying to steal the bangles and shark-teeth ornaments from their own leader. They fought among themselves. A few more blows from the Qua and they were driven away, still quarreling and wondering why they had come in the first place.

After the skirmish, Wind-voice dashed down the cliff to where Stormac had fallen. The myna was lying unmoving on the beach. Every time the tide surged up, he bobbed and was carried a few inches farther toward the
ocean. The sand around him was wet with blood.

In a few more moments, Stormac would be lost in the tide. Wind-voice hovered above him, gripping Stormac’s clenched claws. Another wave hit them. Wind-voice could feel the pull of the receding tide as it swirled around Stormac’s body.
I must be quick….
Wind-voice ground his beak through his tears.
You won’t take him, ocean…he is my friend.
He flapped his wings harder, dug at the sand with his free claw.

Then he felt Stormac’s balled claws uncurl. “Let go, Wind-voice. It’s all right.” Another wave battered against them, and Wind-voice felt their grip loosen. He saw something faint—a sad smile?—on the myna’s face. “I won’t hinder you anymore,” Stormac whispered.

No!
Wind-voice lunged at his friend, and an overwhelming strength he did not know he had possessed in his blood. Suddenly he and Stormac were the only two birds in the world, and all he cared about was saving the myna. He held on fast to his dear friend, turned back toward the shore, and advanced, one strenuous wing beat at a time. The sun hanging low at the edge of the cliff seemed to burn into him.