The Seascape Tattoo Read Online Free Page A

and sleepy but gained confidence and purpose as it crawled across the desk and to the cylinder.
    For a minute the tattoo had been rounded and corporeal, but, as it crawled up on the cylinder, it lost dimension again, became flat, and slipped into a crack through which no earthly insect could have passed.
    Neoloth pressed his ear against the cylinder. He heard soft scraping sounds, as if someone was drawing a pen against the inside, scratching it about. Then … something that might have been a gasp or cry of dismay, on the tiniest possible scale.
    Then … a tiny click, and a door opened on the smooth part of the cylinder. The entire machine seemed to blossom.
    The spider tattoo was waiting as patiently as a trained dog. It crawled out of the cylinder and back onto his arm, where it sank into his skin again, sinking into a well-deserved rest.
    Neoloth peered into the workings. Yes, there had been a trap. The inside of the cylinder was covered with engravings, miniature hieroglyphs. One of them had peeled away, a brass equivalent of the tattoo. Something poisonous no doubt, and native to the jungles of Azteca. The battle between it, and the spider, must have been exciting, and he was sorry to have missed it.
    But now he wanted to look at the workings. Other than a few small gears, the compartment was largely occupied by a scroll constructed of beaten gold, gold so fine it was almost translucent. Never had he seen gold beaten that finely. And like the interior of the talisman it was covered by minute, hand-graven glyphs. The result might have taken an army of miniature artisans months to produce. The scroll was wound onto a spindle. How long was the entire thing? A hundred feet, perhaps. And the thing was designed so that it wound from one spindle to another, perhaps at the movement of the tiny gears.
    â€œBrilliant,” he whispered. A watchmaker’s precision in service to a sorcerer’s secrets. He bowed his head in respect to the unknown Aztec craftsman, and the wizard who must have paid dearly for the device.
    Two important questions remained: Was there still power in it? And if not, could it be charged up once again?
    Neoloth carefully folded the device back together again into its cylinder form and ran his fingers along the outside edge. Closed his eyes. Yes, a slight sensation of warmth.
    He held his arm next to the device, slowing his breathing so that he contributed no mana to the process to come. Neoloth’s right arm was inscribed with countless tattoos, symbolic of adventures, or memories, or simple magical designs … but hidden among them were patterns of greater significance. And two of them were small butterfly-like creatures the size of gnats, tattoos that could only have been created by the smallest of hands. Fairy tats, earned in a far-off land, performing favors to a dying kingdom of the little people.
    He could withdraw his own mana, his own natural life force, but by placing his arm close, if there was anything left at all …
    He held his breath.
    There.
    The slightest twitch of a wing. Oh, yes. The little creatures, sealed to his flesh, were stirring to life. Rousing from long slumber and death-like dream. They seemed to yawn, scratch themselves, and pull up away from his skin like little inchworms, thin as hairs, fragile as cobwebs.
    He pulled his arm away. The butterflies sank back into his flesh and were still.
    So. Even after decades beneath the waves, magic remained. Not much, but enough to convince him the device still worked …
    A knock at his door.
    Neoloth looked up at once. Sunlight streamed through his window. His contemplations had lasted hours longer than he had intended.
    â€œYes?” he asked, opening the door.
    A red-bearded member of the royal guard stood there, head high, quite appropriately respectful of the court’s grand vizier. The guard clicked his heels. “Her majesty the queen requests your presence.”
    â€œTell her