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Journal Entry

Twenty-ninth day on Hystzos


I must make haste to record the events of my journey to Agpetkop, the Sarmese trade station on the far northeast coast of the Sea of Hystzos. It is concluding much sooner than the Vizierate presumed.

Whereas their mariners allot five to eight weeks for this voyage, Lorgan’s ship has covered that distance in only two and a half. We did have fine weather, fair winds, and a following sea. Also, Lorgan and his officers proved to be expert navigators and were delighted to learn that I, too, had reasonable proficiency in those skills. But it was that innocent camaraderie among mariners that revealed that I was not merely an outlander; I was an outworlder.

On one of our first days a-sea, they noticed me eyeing their instruments, and, unasked, presented them for my inspection. I remarked on their distinct superiority to Sarmese equivalents. In turn, the Tyrmcysan officers remarked on my easy and familiar handling of them. I derived such pleasure from the conversation that arose, and such relief at being freed from the perpetual weighing of words by which I concealed my otherworldly origins, that I eagerly and unthinkingly accepted their offer to join them for that night’s triangulation of our position. And in the very next moment, I realized that I had undone all my efforts to obscure my identity.

Because, as I’ve already recorded but forgot in that moment, the stars on Hystzos are not those of Arrdanc. I have been aware of the difference since the second night; in place of Arrdanc’s three moons were two very small ones, so when the stars came out, I was hardly surprised to discover that they were not those beneath which I had been born. And I had already been expecting those differences, not merely because the Shimmer was said to connect different worlds, but because I had noticed the slight difference in the color of Hystzos’ sun.

It was probably the lack of surprise and the ready acceptance of my new circumstances that ultimately undid me—that and the distraction of the far more pressing matters with which I had been preoccupied. Learning a local language; finding food and shelter; avoiding other travelers (and remaining innocuous if I did); and finally, wondering at the attack of the purple-robed strangers and their strange equipment and artifacts: I had no want of concerns that demanded my undivided attention. And so, inasmuch as they were not essential to my immediate survival, I paid no further attention to the stars above my head.

Of course, having accepted the Tyrmcysans’ congenial offer to shoot the stars that evening, the only plausible excuse to avoid doing so was to plead a sudden illness. But I could hardly claim infirmity every night of our voyage, so that would have only postponed the inevitable. So, when they offered me the astrolabe that night, I demurred, saying it had been so long since I’d actually used one that I was unwilling to embarrass myself in the company of true mariners. They were perplexed but remained undeterred; they made the same offer the very next night. I declined, citing my resolve to redouble my devotion to learning the local languages, which I could only undertake in the evenings. They accepted this explanation, albeit with long and dubious stares.

However, there is no fooling Lorgan or either of his officers, Talac and Rysth. They clearly perceived my excuses as pure fabrications, but by that time, they had almost embraced me as one of their own. In retrospect, sharing their humbler quarters and meals had established me as trustworthy before this incident arose. So my strange demurrals did not make me an object of suspicion, but rather, a mysterious traveler who evidently had some secret to keep.

So after turning north into the Sea of Hystzos and breezing along the coast of Kaande, we began to pass the shores of the Broken Lands: first Bronseca, then Rulam, and finally those that are too small and too many to name, each one less populated than the last. After that, the eastern horizon was simply a wild, rolling coast that had once been cleared for farming but was now almost wholly overgrown. A few fortified trade stations marked our progress, located near, but not on the site of, ruined cities. When I asked why they had not been established where they could make use of the old piers and anchorages, I received a one-word answer: “abominations.” As if to underscore the monstrosities’ tendency to descend upon points of habitation, one out of every two hamlets we encountered after that were nothing but clusters of weather-savaged shells: not burnt, simply depopulated and abandoned. Further north, the only signs of life were our constant companions the gulls, which often labored to keep up with us.

Their doggedness was probably a product of desperation. From the time the coastline of Rulam disappeared behind us until this very day, we have only seen one ship. It was so large and so far out in the Sea of Hystzos that it was unlikely to be a fisher-boat, and so, unlikely to attract seabirds that follow the smell of bait. And with no storms to cause a bounty of dead fish, and no towns producing scraps, “our” gulls hung on our stern for the scant leavings from our humble galley.

I have wondered if at least some of our extraordinary speed is due to the singular design of the ship, which has an equally singular name: Fur-Drake’s Oath. In addition to a longer, narrower hull than most high-weather ships, it apparently has a centerboard, although the trunk that houses it down in the bilges is peculiarly wide and shallow. The hull and decks have also been rebuilt so many times, and with so many kinds of wood that every surface bears a faint similarity to a patchwork quilt. This is particularly strange, since captains and shipwrights alike prefer to avoid mixing woods; the innate differences in strength, pliability, and weight can cause problems at those moments when stresses are greatest.

And finally, although it does not impact the performance of Fur-Drake’s Oath, I would be remiss not to mention the truly bizarre figurehead. In addition to its impressive size and the peculiar detail of the carving, it has large metal eyes, which I imagine to be glaring in defiance of the credo by which any good shipwright lives and works: a hull should not be burdened with unnecessary weight. (Which is why so many shipwrights rail against figureheads to begin with.)

But it is the figurehead’s form that is most memorable. It is a large, sinuous combination of a wide-finned eel and a narrow-faced otter, made surprisingly feral by the inclusion of long fangs. Forever frozen in the act of striving forward, it is easy to imagine that it is perpetually determined to detach itself from the prow.

One night, as Lorgan was measuring the height of the brightest object in the sky—the purportedly immense planet of Mag-Orr—I joined him in the bows to ask about that fantastical creature. He smiled and cocked his head. “Well, sure that you are a stranger to the Sea of Hystzos, if you do not know the legends of the fur-drake!” Whereupon he regaled me with fanciful tales of these vanished beasts, which had favored sea-faring peoples but deeply hated those that hunted them—as would be expected. “And it’s said some fur-drakes still exist,” Lorgan finished with a wink.

“A fine tale,” I nodded.

He smiled, patted the head of the fur-drake and left his hand there. While he always wore a ring on that hand, I had not realized until that moment that it too was made in the likeness of a fur-drake, albeit coiled upon itself. I returned his smile. “Asking them for fair seas?” Ever mindful of the sea’s pitilessness, almost all mariners leaven their fatalism with just such superstitious rituals.

His smile became thoughtful. “Something like that,” he murmured, and said no more.

Perhaps the fur-drakes smiled upon our journey, too. Something certainly did. In addition to the following seas and the pilot’s mastery of always calling for the best set of the sails, we invariably made our best time when ships typically make their worst: during the dark hours of the night. Every morning, I was stunned anew by our progress. In all my years as a Courier I never saw such swift sailing, let alone consistently over the course of two weeks. Having arrived at our destination in less than half the time projected by those who provisioned and readied me in the citadel of the Hazdrabar, I shall investigate this discrepancy when I return to Sarmasid.

As we scudded further north along the eastern boundary of the Sea of Hystzos, conversation among the crew paradoxically turned ever more back to the southern lands from which we sailed. And as the trust that had been so quickly conferred by Lorgan and his lieutenants took hold more gradually among their crew, I learned why they had spent so much time in the Straight Sea, and why their ship was more rigged for blockade-running than trade. They had become peripherally involved in incidents consequent to a recent civil war in Kaande, typically the most stable of all the Lost Lands.

Or had been, until the king, queen, and two of their three children perished under mysterious, and highly questionable, circumstances. The contending factions predictably accused each other, despite the lack of details emerging from the closed capital of Kaande: the fortified port in which the nation’s war galleys were berthed. But rather than set aside their ambitions long enough to retake the capital and secure the nation’s fleet, the contenders fell to warring with each other, plunging Kaande into a war of succession that spread like wildfire.

The best claim lay with the almost-adult third child: a son who might have been unanimously supported if he was not known for moods that even his supporters described as “extremely erratic.” Among various rumored misdeeds, two had been so widely seen or reported that even the royal family had been unable to smother the reports. Specifically, at the age of eleven, he had set fire to his cat, and, mere days after reaching age of majority, he attempted to poison his sister. The throne insisted that the latter had been merely a foolish prank gone spectacularly awry. The people of Kaande merely nodded their heads and remained utterly unconvinced.

The other faction was led, somewhat reluctantly, by the dead king’s two younger brothers. They had been passionately importuned by the gentry and commons alike to ensure stable rule at any cost, including violating the laws of succession. There were only two legitimate paths to the throne; the death of the last son, or the declaration that he was insane. But the Mad Princeling was surrounded by bodyguards, and the royal physicians who could legally rule on his competence had (conveniently or otherwise) died along with the royal family.

All of which I found quite interesting, but was at pains to point out to the crew that they had yet to explain how the Fur-Drake’s Oath had profited from this sad state of affairs. Anticipating a recounting of typical, apolitical wartime profiteering, I was completely unprepared for the extraordinary tale they unfolded, but even more so for the unnerving obliquity with which they told it. As a Courier, I learned that stories become vague when the details are unsafe to share or even know.

As is frequently the case along the coast of the Straight Seas, the opportunity arose from Sarmese scheming, which (as usual) involved plots within plots, which were ultimately undone by the greed and jealousy that prevailed among the Merchant Princes. In this case, the agents of one of those families had approached Lorgan and his crew to reduce Tharn’s ability to send galleys along the western, which was to say Kaandean, part of the Straight Sea’s northern coast. This stretch—known as Seareach—had not yet been touched by the expanding civil war, but the Sarmese did not want competitors for the profits to be realized when it did.

I remember looking around the faces of the many contributors to the tale. “Fur-Drake’s Oath must have a reputation for being an extremely formidable ship,” I commented. It was the most tactful way to point out that the hull beneath us was barely half as long as a monoreme.

Talac, who was effectively second-in-command, grinned. “Who said anything about fighting their ships? ‘Removing’ them seemed far more prudent.”

Rysth saw the uncertainty on my face. “Tharn’s a small nation. They’ve only one good port: the capital at Pasbigt. That’s where they keep their galleys. Since becoming allies of Sarma, they don’t give much thought to protecting the wharves, as Trawn and Pecthin are too small to try cases with them.” Although third-in-command, Rysth was in charge of both boarding and shore parties; as seems common among such officers, it was his habit to speak in short, declarative sentences.

I nodded. “So, you slipped in and, er, removed, a galley.”

“Two, actually,” corrected Haqtor, a respected sergeant and exiled Tharnan. “Biremes, both. Waited for the right wind, put our prize crews aboard. A few guards later, and we were on our way, as easy as you please. And wouldn’t you know, the wind also fanned a mysterious fire that started on the wharf, just moments before we cast off.” There were grins all around… but then they noticed I wasn’t grinning.

“You don’t believe us?” asked Marselsar, a Rulami.

“Oh, I believe you,” I answered, wondering how to broach a subject that might prove even more touchy. “But I’m not exactly sure how you managed to make all that happen in the order you did.”

“Eh?” asked Az-apit, whose name was Sarmese but whose parentage was from all the lands that bordered on the Straight Sea.

“Well, you say you waited for the right wind.”

“We did.”

“But even under the cover of night, you had to be far enough offshore not to be seen beforehand. Yet you were close enough to arrive in time to make use of that wind. It seems extremely fortunate that the wind didn’t turn on you.” The winds are notoriously fickle in the Straight Sea, hence the prevalence of lateen-rigged ships that can sail very close-hauled.

Lorgan looked at Talac.

I wasn’t done. “But then there’s another matter, isn’t there? The prize crews. I’ve seen the biremes in these waters, and a prize crew for the sails and tiller alone would be at least twenty. But you ‘removed’ two of the galleys, so that means you had to deposit forty able hands on the docks at the very last minute. Again, without attracting the attention of any patrols.”

“Ah,” put in Woght, the crew’s inveterate prankster, “but the Oath didn’t have to unload us. We were already in the water near the wharves, waiting.”

I nodded. “I wondered if that was the case. It makes a great deal of sense, except for this:”—Lorgan and Talac were now smiling at each other; Rysth was frowning—“how did you get in the water around the wharf without being spotted? It must have been a very long swim.”

Woght looked like he was about to swallow his tongue, or at least like he wanted to. “It was. Very long indeed.”

“Very impressive,” I replied with an encouraging nod, “particularly given all the sharks in these waters.”

“Oh,” Lorgan said with a grin, “the sharks are old friends of ours. Besides, we ‘foreigners’ taste odd to them.”

“I’m sure you do,” I grinned back. “But now that you’ve cleared up all my misconceptions,” I added, looking around the faces again, “I am now confused not by the way you ‘removed’ those two biremes, but that the crew of this ship, let alone its officers, would agree to the single factor upon which success clearly depended.”

“Which is?” Talac asked.

“Luck. Absolute, unmitigated, outrageous luck.” I pressed on, seeing encouragement rather than discomfiture in the officers’ eyes. “After all, you may have waited for the right wind, but you had to trust Dame Luck that it would remain strong and steady long enough for you to approach, crew the biremes, and then make off. Likewise, you had to hope that you’d find the hulls prepared to sail, canvas at the ready, and no anchor watch to object to your presence. Also, however friendly the local sharks might be, you had to hope that none of them would forget, take a quick nibble, and start a feeding frenzy. And finally, you had to trust that the wind would hold steady long enough to fan that mysterious fire on the wharf, which happily made pursuit quite unlikely and damage to other galleys quite likely.” I let my gaze return to Lorgan as I concluded, “It’s almost as though you can make your own luck. Because if you could, then every step of this plan is not only feasible, but logical.”

Rysth crossed his arms. “Seems you have a conjecture. Let’s hear it.”

I shrugged. “The conditions of the ships and the presence of patrols—I suppose that could be observed and signaled. But the hinge upon which the plan turns is whether or not the wind will turn. From the moment you begin your approach to the time that the Tharnan coast is falling well behind, you must know that the wind will remain in your favor.

“That would also allow you to come so close to the wharves that two prize crews could slip over the Oath’s extremely crowded side and reach the biremes, without any visit from sharks, friendly or otherwise.”

“And most importantly of all, as the Fur-Drake’s Oath continued to stand off and out of sight, those crews could hoist the sails in the certainty of having enough wind to carry them away from their berths without any rowers. And as for the fire?” I shrugged. “You said it yourself, regardless of the blaze’s ‘mysterious’ origins, you knew there’d be wind enough to turn a broken oil lamp or two into a full-blown conflagration.”

Lorgan brought out a bottle, called for everyone’s cups. “We are so very lucky, indeed,” he assured me. “Or”—he winked—“we can bend the wind itself to our will!”

Dour Rysth let out a howl of laughter before he could stop himself.

I smiled back at Lorgan. “You don’t rely on luck. But you don’t have to control the wind to know how it will blow. Or even have a knack for prophesy.”

“Eh?” said Az-apit. It seemed to be his favorite response to almost anything.

Talac pointed at me after taking a sip. “So tell us how that would work.”

I shrugged. “I’ve seen enough wyrdwarding to know that animals can report at great distance to those who are bonded to them. So if I was bonded to birds soaring in circles along the direction from which I was awaiting a stiff breeze, they could alert me when it began blowing past them and how long it lasted.”

Rysth grunted. “Now a question to you.”

“Certainly.”

“Sure you’re not a wyrdward yourself?” About half of the crew leaned forward to hear my reply.

I shook my head. “No, but I’ve had the acquaintance of a few. Now a question back at you: How did you turn a profit on this?”

The officers looked at each other. “Would you believe us if I told you we sold the biremes?”

I shook my head again. “Any buyer in the Straight Sea would be marked for revenge by Tharn. Maybe your prize crews were from the Sea of Hystzos, but that kind of exchange would have required more lead time than you’ve had, if the troubles in Kaande are as recent as you say.”

Lorgan winked. “Well, that’s a tale for another day, perhaps. And here’s supper, just in the nick of time!”

The role of cook rotated aboard the Oath, and this day it had fallen to Ertran, who was one of the better ones. Libations were topped off, the table was cleared, and the cook’s mate (also the closest thing the ship had to a purser) threw wide a fresh tablecloth. I helped straighten it out, surprised to see that it was gray, and noticed threads of another color in it.

I leaned away sharply before I could stop myself.

Half the compartment had noticed my sudden, backward posture. Talac was closest. “You act as if you’d seen a rat.”

“Or worse,” Rysth added darkly.

“Worse,” I answered, hardly knowing I had because of the question that kept hammering between my ears:

Why does this crew have a tablecloth in the same purple-tinted pattern of the Nightfall cult?

“Peace, now, Druadaen,” Lorgan’s voice urged calmly. “You seem disturbed by our new ‘tablecloth.’”

His emphasis upon the last word sounded facetious, sardonic—but I knew Lorgan might be shrewd enough to effect disregard or disdain that he did not feel. On the other hand, I strongly doubted that I could have wandered into a ship full of Nightfall cultists without having had reservations about at least one of the officers or the crew. So, because all my instincts were to trust them, and because there had been no warnings from either the velene or the sword, I finally answered, “I do not associate that pattern with congenial company.”

A moment of silence…

Then Rysth emitted an even louder bark of laughter. I felt a wave of relief so great that I would have liked to sit down and rest for a moment. But the rest of the compartment was laughing or chuckling, and Lorgan was shaking his head. “This rag we use to cover our table was one of the prizes from the galleys… or aren’t you aware of the connections between Tharn and the Nightfall cult?”

My stunned stare elicited an explanation which has given me a great deal of food for thought. In short, the Nightfall cult had long been a poorly organized extremist sect of the larger Temple of Disfa, a god associated with fertility and death rites. However, in the last two generations, it had displaced the more moderate ritualists by producing an increasing number of monks and priests who actually performed miracles and demonstrated other unusual powers. Tharn’s monarch had shown interest in this unusual development, if for no other reason than the growing power of the nation’s largest temple made it either a more important ally or more worrisome rival.

The Kaandean civil war had been the catalyst for a dramatic shift in that delicate balance. Without seeking the permission of the throne, the Temple of Disfa’s recently installed Herald of Heaven (whose demonstrated powers implied a considerable facility with either miracles or mancery) promptly led a popular crusade over Tharn’s northern border into Morba.

Morba is not just Tharn’s hereditary foe; it is, as Aleasha intimated, Kaande’s oldest ally. So while Disfa’s Herald couched his crusade as being religious in nature, it was also blatant national opportunism. Regardless of pretexts, it excited considerable popular support, thereby putting the monarchy on the back foot as it hastened to associate itself with (and contribute to) the campaign. This involved sharing an increasing amount of prerogatives and responsibilities with the temple.

So when Rysth led the prize crews aboard the biremes tied up along Pasbigt’s military wharf, they’d run into anchor watches comprised equally of soldiers of the realm and temple guards—whose officers had been garbed in “tablecloths” such as the one just spread out.

They went on to show me some of the other holy garb they’d taken from Disfa’s followers. “Useful if we need to walk among ’em,” Haqtor muttered with a small, canny smile.

The most unusual item of clothing was a shift of simple cut but striking color: the same purple as that which was woven into the gray of the tablecloth, but far brighter. I asked them why that one was so different from the others. “Because,” Rysth explained, “it marks its wearer as one of their berserkers, or sfadulm.”

I was able to control my reaction this time. “Sfadulm. Is that how they say ‘death-vowed’?”

He nodded. “Why? Do you think you may have run into one?”

“I think one tried to kill me, on my way to Pakobsid.”

I had told them about the ambush in general, but now I provided whatever details they asked for. By the time it was over, our supper was only half-done but completely cold.

Talac shook his head. “You had a busy time of it in Sarma, didn’t you, Druadaen?”

I agreed that I had and let the conversation drift to other, more casual topics. I was too busy weaving together disparate bits of information into my own, growing pattern.

Specifically, it seemed the twinned threads of the Nightfall cult and the dreaded “sorcerers of the east” had insinuated themselves throughout the greater tapestry of the Last Lands. I wondered if they had agents among the Merchant Princes, pondered the possibility that they might have been behind the massacre of Kaande’s royal family, wondered if they were promoting the rise of the abominations. The connections were tentative, but had all been implied in one conversation or another and, if accurate, suggested a plot as invisible, intricate, and yet expansive as a spider web stretched across a lightless passage.

I started this journey hoping to determine why the S’Dyxoi traveled to these remote shores at the northeast end of the Sea of Hystzos. But now, a vague foreboding arises along with my newest question: Are their actions wholly independent (and ignorant) of the web being spun, or have Dunarra’s oldest foes imposed their own, otherworldly influences and changes upon it?


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