Author: Steve Goble
Edited by Michael Ouellette

Spider John winced as the whip cracked across Ezra's back.

Somehow, hearing his friend cry out hurt him more than the bleeding stripes on his own naked back.

Spider turned his eyes away from the mast where Ezra was bound. Ezra, a gentle soul, was unable to stand. Only the ropes lashing him to the mast kept him from falling to the bloody deck.

The whip whistled and cracked again, and Spider caught the captain's eye. Captain Petris had seemed the very soul of virtue when reading from the Scroll of Law, but now Spider was certain the old blackguard was finding an unnatural thrill in this moment. Spider imagined the captain lashed to the mast, and the whip in his own hands.

Petris had caught Spider and Ezra rolling bones on the deck. He called it a sin, even though neither sailor owned enough in this world to hurt anything by losing it. Such realities didn't matter to Petris, who was constantly on the watch for excuses to cut a crewman's pay. Spider spit on the deck, and wondered if that act would earn him another lashing. But he was too angry to care.

"Irons now, clap 'em to the gunwale," Petris ordered. The first mate gave Spider an apologetic look as he clasped the sailor's wrists in the shackles. "No worries," Spider said. "Just doin' yer job."

Ezra, who in a few seconds was similarly shackled, clenched his eyes shut tight and sobbed aloud. He was a quiet man, who probably never had been whipped in a dozen years at sea, Spider guessed.

"We'll see Shirimizar by dawn," Petris told the crew. "And then I'll be rid of you two criminals."

"We'll gladly part ways with you too, ya bastard," Spider said, staring defiantly at the captain. Petris looked for a moment as though he would call for the whip again, but the first mate's call sent him scurrying to the foredeck.

The sun rose and painted the sky with a tinge that reminded Spider of the red welts on Ezra's back. Ezra had not moved since being chained on the deck, and had made no sound save for whimpers he failed to quiet. Spider burned with fury. Friendships were rare for him, and often fleeting. But he and Ezra hailed from the same city, vast Carnivah in the Mnogon Empire, and Ezra had proven to be a willing audience for Spider's tall tales. Spider had quickly grown attached to Ezra, and it startled him a bit to realize that his normal fatalist attitude wasn't serving him now. Petris had hurt his friend, and Spider could think of little else but making Petris pay.

That wasn't likely to happen, though. The ship already was well into the broad bay of Shirimizar, and Petris would put them ashore. After that, Petris would sail on, beyond the reach of revenge. Spider spat on the deck, and cursed the day he'd signed up with this sadistic bastard.

###

A couple of hours later, Spider and Ezra stood on the beach. Sailors dumped their sea chests out on the sand and looked apologetic. "No worries," Spider said. "You jus' do what ya gotta to keep from gettin' the same as us." The sailors departed in the longboat, returning to Petris. "At least we won't have to wait for his lordship to give us our shore leave, hey, Ezra?" Ezra just looked down at the sand, his eyes full of shame.

Spider opened his battered chest and began removing his few goods: a weathered blue sea coat, a black tri-cornered cap he'd pilfered from Petris and a somewhat rusted sabre on an old leather strap. He slipped a woefully light leather coin purse into his pocket, then opened Ezra's chest. Aside from an iron Sarkovy helmet and a dainty dagger, the chest was empty.

"Well, our provisions is light, I'd say," Spider said. "But this is a great city, and we'll find our way somehow." He looked about at the gigantic statues that stood at each side of the bay entrance, ancient kings of Shirimizar immortalized in stone, watching over the dozen ships with their bright orange sails each painted with a fearsome black eye. He then turned to gaze at the spires of white that towered behind them. "Yes, a great city." He'd never been here before, and tried to keep the worry he felt out of his voice, for Ezra's sake.

"C'mon lad, let's see what we can see." He strode defiantly away from the shore, and Ezra followed like a pup.

By nightfall, Spider realized their predicament was worse than he'd feared. Both he and Ezra knew a smattering of tongues throughout the world, but neither could make sense of the warbling language of Shirimizar. They had no money for lodging, as Petris had denied them their pay, and had to steal a loaf of bread. That proved almost fatal, as the local guard was numerous and well-armed with halberds. Spider found a camel stable, and they bedded down.

"What are we gonna do, Spider?"

Spider John grinned, glad to see Ezra talking again.

"Well, we ain't shippin' on no local vessel. I don't think they treat strangers kind here, and I've heard things about the local ships here that'd make shippin' with Petris seem a good idea. So we'll hang around, steal food where we can, and wait for a Sarkovy ship, or a Mnogon. There's lots of trade here, and it can't be long before two stout sailin' men find work again."

"Hope you're right," Ezra said. He was resting on his stomach in a pile of hay, his back too sore still. "What's that?"

Spider shushed his friend, and pulled him behind a pair of barrels. The stable door cracked open, and two guardsmen entered with halberds at the ready. Behind them, a dark-skinned man held a candle.

"Lookin' for us," Spider whispered. He gathered up a handful of camel dung. "We gotta run for it, or we'll spend a lot of time in one of their jails."

Ezra looked frightened, but nodded his willingness to follow. Spider wadded the dung into a large ball. "Here we go."

Spider hurled the ball. Bits of dung flung into the faces of the guards, but most of it hit its intended target, the candle in the camel master's hand. The bright circle of light disappeared, and the three men stood silhouetted against the moonlight spilling through the stable doors.

"Now!" Spider screamed, charging from behind the barrel. He put his head down and hit the nearest guard full in the chest, spilling him. Spider's sabre lashed out and caught the other guard in the calf and he went down, crying out. Spider rushed out the door, with Ezra right behind him. They ran, turned at every corner, and eventually found themselves on the beach again.

"That was a lark, wasn't it?" Spider laughed. "Did you hear that poor bastard scream? Probably thought he was attacked by demons!"

"We can't go back there now," Ezra said, sternly.

"Well, you're right, Ez," Spider said, sobering. "It's the beach for us. Let's head west a bit, we should be able to see any friendly ships coming that way."

Spider led the march.

###

An hour or so later, they spilled themselves on the sand. Ezra seemed relieved to be away from the city, and sleep came quickly for both of them. But magic tickled Spider's dreams.

Dawn came again, and the sea lapped at their feet. "Another lovely day in a foreign land, hey, Ez? We're world travelers, we are. Hope we don't have to walk home." He scanned the horizon for a friendly sail.

Ezra, pissing on the sand, pointed at something in the sea wash. "What's this?"

In the sand by Ezra's feet was a bottle. It was a glassy white vase, pot-bellied at the bottom, with a long skinny stem. It reminded Spider of a whiskey bottle, but he doubted he had that kind of luck. The bottle didn't have a scratch or smudge on it. The end was corked and sealed about the rim with wax.

Spider picked the bottle out of the sand and scratched at the cork. It was hard, like stone. Maybe old age had done that, or maybe it was something other than cork. Spider couldn't tell. There was something written on the cork in black ink. Neither man could read it.

"I'll bet it's a djinn," Ezra said, excited. They'd both heard the tales told by sailors who'd been to this land before, stories of cloud-demons trapped in bottles by wizards. These demons would grant wishes to anyone who freed them. It was plain by Ezra's face that he was already conjuring up a wish or two.

Spider had doubts. He could feel some magic in the air, having learned a little about spells and omens in his travels. He knew that magic has its price, and that the powers beyond have little regard for mortals. "I've heard tales of men getting their wish and then wishin' they hadn't," he said. "Sometimes the thing you want is the thing that seals your doom."

But Ezra just grinned excitedly. "We could wish to go home, Spider."

"Good stuff just don't happen by accident like that, Ezra. The universe is out to get you, and it's heeding that notion that's kept me alive this long."

Spider jumped back when Ezra clapped his hand around the neck of the bottle and yanked it out of his hands. "There's definitely something in here, because it's right heavy," Ezra said, shaking the bottle next to his ear. But there was no rattle of coins or slosh of liquor.

Spider felt magic brush the hairs on the back of his arms, and saw a spindle-legged spider scurrying away from Ezra's bare foot. Spider John knew all about spider omens.

"Put it down," Spider commanded.

But Ezra didn't listen. "It could be our fortune, Spider, a gift from the gods to make amends for our shoddy treatment at the captain's hands." That was Ezra, Spider John thought, always figuring the universe owed him something.

"The gods don't care that much about you and me, Ezra."

Ezra grasped the cork and twisted it hard. He pulled at it a long time, while Spider dove onto the sand and crawled away.

The wax crumbled, and the hard cork finally gave way after half a minute or so. It came away with a loud pop, flew out of Ezra's hand and plopped in the sand. He held the bottle out from his body as though it were an offering to the gods, and waited for the djinn to come out.

Nothing happened.

Ezra's smile disappeared. He slapped at the pot-belly with his fingers, trying to coax the cloud-demon out.

He turned it upside down, trying to pour wishes out of it.

He slammed the bottom of the bottle with his fist, hoping to knock its contents onto the beach.

Spider watched all of this, remembering the horror stories and the tickle of spells and the scurrying spindle-leg. "Put it down, Ezra," he said, and he crawled over to pick up the cork. "Let's not play with this fire long enough to get burned."

"There's something in it, Spider," Ezra said. "It's heavy." Spider watched Ezra lift the bottle up to his eye to peer inside.

The hairs on Spider's arms itched like devil ants.

"Don't!" Spider yelled.

But it was too late. Ezra put the bottle up to his face and screamed, louder than he had when he was being whipped on deck. It was a scream that reminded Spider of animals caught in traps, or children awakened by a night-terror. It was primal, pulled right up from the oldest part of Ezra's soul.

Blood poured out around the mouth of the bottle, the mouth that was clamped over Ezra's right eye. Ezra had both hands on the pot-belly, trying to pull the thing off of his face. He fell to his knees and screamed and screamed and screamed.

Spider knew he would never forget the sound.

Spider ran to Ezra, dropped on the sand and pulled at the bottle. It was like trying to pull one end of a log off of the other. The thing was stuck there on him, and Ezra's face contorted madly and leaked blood. The bottle made a sucking sound that almost made Spider sick.

Then Spider saw it, the mouth of the bottle writhing against poor dumb Ezra's face. The neck of the bottle grew fat, like a python's body does when it devours a piglet or a big rat. Spider stopped pulling and just shook as the fat meat inside the neck slid its way down toward the pot-belly. Another swell in the neck followed that one, and Ezra's face began to look slack, like a leaking wineskin. Ezra stopped screaming and lay flat in the sand. The bottle still sucked at his face.

Spider knew he should have run. But he and Ezra had been pals, and maybe both of them getting whipped by Petris made them blood brothers or something. Ezra was dead, but Spider couldn't let that bottle-thing just eat him.

Spider pulled his sabre free of its leather strap. He steeled himself, braced his feet in the sand as best he could and struck a blow right at the pot-belly of the bottle.

It was like attacking a marble column. It put a nick in his sword the size of a half-penny, and shocked his arm so badly he could feel it to his toes. The blow didn't even scratch the bottle.

But it made the bottle mad.

It let go of Ezra's face, and tumbled to the sand. Spider could see Ezra, staring up at the gods with one eye. The other eye, and all of his face around it, was gone. Spider could see his tongue laying there in the bloody cavern that had been Ezra's face; teeth, bone, skin, all of it eaten.

Spider shuddered, and thought to kick the bottle into the sea. But the bottle was moving, pot-belly rolling on the sand, its python neck reaching up at the sky, its hungry little mouth rimmed with Ezra's blood and dangling Ezra's skin. The mouth sucked at the air, and Spider could see a circle of little sharp teeth, painted a wet red.

The bottle came at him.

Spider swatted it with his sabre, but couldn't knock it off its course by more than an inch or two. He might as well have tried shoving a hippo. He backed away, and it kept coming.

Spider turned to run, but lost his footing in the sandy beach and went down hard.

The bottle, like any killing animal, was quick to pounce on weak prey. Spider rolled on his back just as it leapt. He caught it around the neck, and screamed as the bottle writhed in his hands. It was strong, and Spider knew he couldn't fight it for long.

The neck stretched and reached for his face. He let go of the neck with one hand and tried to guard his face. The bottle mouth clamped onto his little finger. In a second, most of the finger was gone, sliding down that python neck.

Spider, who normally bore pain with fatalistic silence, screamed. It was as though his finger boiled. He could feel the little teeth dig at his flesh, pulling him into the bottle, then reach up higher on his finger to suck down a little more meat. It was trying to climb up his arm, devouring him as it went.

Spider knew he was dead. He bashed the beach with the bottle, flinging his arm around him like a whip. It wouldn't come off. It was never going to come off. Part of him hoped he'd die right then of fright, not live long enough to feel that hungry bottle-thing eating him any more. But he saw his sabre on the sand, and crawled to it, dragging his unearthly foe with him and leaving a trail of blood on the beach.

Spider John grabbed the blade, thankful that the bottle was eating a finger of his left hand and not his good right hand. He knelt and lifted the sword. He screamed as he let the blade fall, sweat in his eyes blurring his vision. But his stroke was true.

He sliced his finger off, right in front of the bottle's sucker mouth. He rolled away from it as fast as he could.

He knew the fight wasn't over when he tried to stand. Blood was flowing out of him like a river, and he hadn't slept well nor eaten much in days. Dizzy, he fell headlong.

He heard the sucking sound near his foot, and scrambled. He crawled like a baby, but could hear the thing rolling on the sand behind him. He let go of the blade because it was slowing him down. Even so, he knew he didn't have the strength to get away from the hungry little demon.

He rolled again, and snatched at it. He caught the neck and tried to bury it in the sand. He held it there, its mouth buried like a gooney bird head, the neck twisting and stretching, the pot-belly banging against his forearms and leaving bruises.

He had won, for a moment. But he couldn't hold the thing down and stop the bleeding of his hand at the same time, and he felt as good as dead. He imagined the dark gods or wizards who had fashioned this demented thing were laughing at him, but it might have been just his own crazed laugh he heard. He didn't know.

He saw a swelling beneath the sand, a few inches away, as though something was crawling under the beach. The white snake neck of the bottle came out of the ground, a good three feet from where his hands struggled to keep the thing's mouth buried. It had stretched beneath the beach! The bottle head shook off the sand clinging to it, and the horrible little mouth chewed at the air. Spider swore it was staring at him, even though it had no eyes.

Spider knew it was going to stretch again and snatch at his face. He screamed and rolled and rolled and screamed.

His head hit something hard, and he stopped rolling. There in front of his face was the weird hard cork, right where he'd left it when the thing started eating Ezra. He clutched at it, desperate.

The bottle came at him.

He grabbed its neck, as the damned thing twisted and hissed and sucked at the air. He crammed the cork into its mouth.

The bottle stopped writhing, and it froze still. It was in a new shape now, the neck having kind of a curl to it, but it was just a bottle again and not a hungry demon.

Spider wrapped his shirt around his hand to stop the bleeding. He was as dizzy as a dervish.

He thought about hurling the bottle into the sea. He wondered what it was, maybe something the gods had made to punish men for their sins. Ezra's only real sin was stupidity, but that seemed to Spider to be the one sin the gods always punished.

Some sins don't ever get punished, though. Like the sins of Captain Petris. The gods don't pay that much attention, Spider guessed.

That got Spider to thinking, though. Corked, the bottle seemed to be no immediate danger. He tucked the bottle into a pocket of his great blue coat.

A few days later, he shipped with some Norsicans. He kept the bottle locked away in his new sea chest. It might take years, he knew, before he met up with Captain Petris again. It might never even happen.

But if the sea did bring him and Petris together again, Spider would send a bottle of wine -- a pot-bellied white bottle with a long skinny neck and a hungry mouth -- to the captain’s table. He would send it with a note, “With regards from an old shipmate.”

And he would sign the note with Ezra’s name.

-#-

Steve Goble, 44, is an Ohio journalist living near Amish Country and lucky enough to be married to a woman who writes good fantasy stories, too. His sword-and-sorcery work has appeared Flashing Swords e-zine, Amazing Journeys Magazine, the "Freehold" books from Carnifex Press and "The Goblin Market," a CD-ROM anthology produced by Eggplant Literary Productions. He has more work scheduled to appear at Flashing Swords, and a story coming in the "Lords of Swords 2" anthology from Pitch-Black Books. He is shopping a fantasy novel around to publishers while working on a second novel. Feel free to e-mail Steve at steve_goble@excite.com or visit his web site, www.stevegoble.com.