Chapter 28

Among the stories commonly found in mythology were tales of treasures once used by the gods: a staff that could conjure flames fierce enough to dry up a river with a single sweep, armor that kept its wearer safe even from the gods themselves, a flask that endlessly poured forth an elixir of life capable of raising the dead...

Only a few dozen of these Freyan magic tools, otherwise known as “Holy Rel relics,” existed in the entire world. Not all of them possessed tremendous power, of course, but some were treasures that even the heads of great houses guarded with their lives, intent on passing them down through the generations.

And a mere merboy who had been captured by common pirates claimed to possess one?

“How impressive. If a prince possesses something like that, what extraordinary treasures must the merfolk king have?”

Perhaps sensing the sarcasm in Turan’s voice, the merboy’s blue skin turned purple. It was probably much like a human blushing with anger or embarrassment.

Armani, the self-proclaimed prince, shouted.

“I’m not lying! I really did find one of your gods in a cave, dead from battle! I meant to tell my royal father so we could retrieve it, but then you people tricked me and captured me...”

“You found a god who died in battle? Explain in more detail.”

Turan’s serious stare seemed to frighten Armani, who stammered out an answer with a slightly fearful expression.

“H-he was a blue-haired man, lying dead with a great sea serpent’s fang through his body. His hand had pierced his enemy’s head, too. Everything else had deteriorated with age, but the round piece of metal at his waist was perfectly intact, without a speck of rust. It must be a treasure beyond compare.”

“Why didn’t you bring it back right away?”

“I couldn’t touch it. Whenever I tried to approach, some unknown force pushed me away...”

“Why were you certain he was a god?”

“Because only a god among your kind could fight a great sea serpent and kill it while dying himself!”

The great sea serpents were a race the merfolk had once worshipped as gods. As their name suggested, they were enormous snakes tens of meters long. Of course, they had long since vanished into history.

Still, a body preserved beneath the sea without even shifting from its battle with a beast revered as a god? Whether or not these truly were a god’s remains, if the story was true, something extraordinary was certainly there.

Realizing he had grown excited, Turan took a deep breath to calm himself, then carefully reconsidered his earlier thoughts. Had the merboy’s voice beguiled him? Would he reach the same conclusions with a cool head?

As he sorted through his thoughts, a question occurred to him.

“Come to think of it, you said you were tricked into being captured. How exactly did that happen?”

Armani suddenly clamped his mouth shut and bowed his head. They might be different races, but their faces were similar enough for Turan to read the faint shame in his expression.

“Well, you land dwellers have that trick for pulling creatures out of the water. The one with a line tied to an iron hook.”

“You don’t mean fishing?”

“Yes, that. Normally I can spot something like that easily enough, but when I’m transformed, my instincts tend to get the better of me...”

In other words, this merfolk prince had actually been caught on a fishing line while transformed into a fish. Absurd as it sounded, it did make a certain amount of sense.

The pirates had probably been startled when the fish they caught suddenly turned into a merboy, and locked him up. Ignorant though they might be, sailors would surely have heard that merfolk royalty fetched eye-popping prices.

Whether his excuse was true or not, that was the only reason to keep a male merperson who could not even demonstrate his transformation.

“Did you tell the pirates all of this, too?”

“I did, but none of them would listen. They just told me to stop spouting nonsense about a dead god’s body.”

That was the normal reaction. Meeting the librarian in Orem’s library had made the Freyans’ existence feel real to Turan, but to ordinary people, gods were quite literally mythical beings found only in scripture.

Even he was unsure whether the merboy was telling the truth or simply saying anything he could to stay alive. Why would the pirates abandon a safe profit to take such a risk?

“What about the sailors who found you just now?”

“I didn’t—no, I couldn’t. They took one look at me and ran out shouting that there was a merperson here.”

That meant only he and Captain Pires knew about this. Turan glanced at the captain, who had been listening in a daze. Noticing his gaze, Pires spoke with a stiff expression.

“I heard nothing.”

He seemed to think Turan might kill him to keep him from spreading the story. Of course, Turan had no such intention—not so much because he trusted Pires’s character as because he trusted his own strength.

On land, there were plenty of nobles stronger than Turan, but out on this sea, he was among the most powerful. Assuming he did not suddenly encounter a powerful noble of House Karmine or a similar bloodline, that was.

“You needn’t be so nervous. For now, I’d like to keep him alive a little longer. What do you think?”

“I don’t believe that will pose a problem. If it did, those pirates could never have kept him captive.”

Pires offered his opinion with the same grave expression. As he said, the fact that ordinary human pirates had captured the merboy suggested he had little in the way of fighting ability.

“Come to think of it, those fellows were ridiculous. They could have become rich just by selling him, yet they insisted on more piracy and got themselves killed.”

“Greed is what drives men like them. Besides, they could hardly have imagined a ship this size would carry a noble, rather than merely a knight.”

Turan tilted his head briefly at Pires’s words, then asked, “Did I overdo it?”

“Yes. The others seem not to have noticed, since they’ve rarely seen a knight fight properly, but I know. Ordinarily, it’s difficult to emerge unscathed against that many men.”

Why reveal so suddenly that he had recognized Turan’s true status? He was clearly pleading his case: he knew how powerful Turan was, and therefore had no intention of doing anything so foolish as coveting a legendary treasure in his presence.

Turan gave a slight nod to acknowledge the implication, and the tension visibly drained from Pires’s shoulders. Having headed off any potential conflict, he turned back to the merboy.

“Could you show us roughly where in the North Sea those remains are? If we showed you a map, I mean.”

Even as he asked, Turan expected the merboy not to understand what the North Sea meant. Surely his kind had never seen a human map.

Contrary to his expectations, however, Armani tilted his head and readily shared what he knew.

“It isn’t very far. About five hundred kilometers south of here?”

“Five hundred kilometers south?”

Turan’s eyes widened in surprise. First, how could someone locked in a ship’s hold know where they were? And second... how could he use the same directions and units of distance as humans?

When he voiced these questions, the answer was somewhat disappointing.

“I don’t really know. We’ve always used them. Did you land dwellers invent them?”

“Probably. Did you know about this, Captain?”

“This is the first I’ve heard of it. People don’t usually ask merfolk such things. Perhaps the distinguished folk who keep them already knew.”

As far as Turan knew, everything from the human calendar to their units of measurement originated in the old empire. Perhaps these things were an even older legacy, dating back to when humans had been slaves to other races. Almost no history of that period remained; even Orem’s library had offered nothing on the subject.

The fact that merfolk spoke the same language as humans might be connected to this as well.

“In any case, five hundred kilometers south...”

“That would put it quite close to Miguel Island. Even allowing for error, I’d say less than a hundred kilometers away.”

Miguel Island was one of the largest islands in the North Sea Archipelago, where the Marlin would resupply and sell off the pirate ship. In other words, the place was close enough for a brief detour.

“Let’s keep him locked up a little longer while I think it over. I’ll look after him myself, in case he starts spreading strange stories.”

After considerable thought, Turan decided to postpone his decision. He knew too little about this merboy to make up his mind just yet.

* * *

In truth, Turan did not take everything Armani said at face value. After all, like the Dark Elves, the merfolk were one of the other races that had captured, enslaved, and eaten humans in ancient times.

What he did trust was the boy’s desperation. A being with reason no different from a human’s would be willing to offer anything to save his own life.

“Here’s your meal for today.”

“Thank you, kind demon.”

It was the second day since Armani’s capture. Ever since learning that Turan was a wizard—and a noble at that—Armani had called him a demon. Come to think of it, hadn’t the Dark Elf wraith sorcerers called him and Asiz the same thing?

When he asked what it meant, he received a curious answer.

“Because your ancestors were demons who came from outside and destroyed our perfect world.”

For someone making such a statement, Armani swallowed the food Turan brought him quite nonchalantly, without much reluctance. Turan had wondered whether he would need to catch fish for a merboy, but fortunately, Armani ate human meals without complaint.

“If you can eat this perfectly well, why bother eating humans?”

“I don’t really know. I’ve never eaten a human... Perhaps the lower ranks of our people do it because they don’t have enough food? I’ll ask my royal father when I get back.”

Turan had never promised to release him, yet Armani spoke as though his return to the merfolk kingdom were assured. Answers like these left Turan with mixed feelings. The boy’s speech and behavior were far too human to dismiss him as just another man-eating creature of a different race.

He was unlike those Dark Elves who had tried to kill Turan without a word.

Turan continued discussing all sorts of things with Armani: how the merfolk’s actual customs and social structure differed from what he had read, whether the legendary mirror linking the two merfolk kingdoms in the North and South Seas truly existed, even ancient merfolk myths...

“Oh, come to think of it, how far is it now? That place, I mean.”

“About sixty-five kilometers west?”

Over the past few days of conversation, Turan had also learned how Armani knew their location. Apparently, merfolk could instinctively sense direction and position at sea, allowing them to return to any place they remembered.

While they were engrossed in conversation, a knock sounded against the wooden planks above.

“I’ll be back.”

“See you later!”

Watching the merboy wave him off, no one would have guessed Turan was the one keeping him imprisoned in the hold. As he climbed up from the bottom of the ship, First Mate Osvan, who had come aboard to take charge of the captured vessel, greeted him.

“Sir Knight, we’ve reached Miguel Island!”

“Already? I’d better head up.”

“Yes, sir!”

After securely chaining shut the entrance to the hold where Armani was confined, Turan went up on deck. Across the dark nighttime sea, he could see a large island and several sailing ships moored at its docks.

* * *

Once both ships had entered port, Turan made his way to the Marlin in a few easy leaps. Captain Pires, whom he had not seen for two days since they were staying aboard different ships, gave him a brief greeting before getting to the point.

“Well, have you reached a decision?”

“Yes.”

His question was simple. Would Turan trust the merboy’s story and seek out the unknown treasure, or simply sell him to some influential local figure?

Rather than answer, Turan asked a question of his own.

“How long will you be staying on this island?”

“A day or two, unless something comes up.”

Letting the sailors rest after nine exhausting days at sea was important, too. With Turan present, there was no danger of it now, but it was all too common for overworked crews to mutiny, kill their captain, and turn to piracy.

“Perfect. Could you find me a small boat? One big enough for two people will do.”

“Surely you don’t mean...?”

“Fortunately, it doesn’t seem very far from here. I’ll go and be back before the night is over.”