“Brace the wheel!” he finally managed to hear, and he did, just as the ship smashed past the crest of another titan of a wave, almost airborne before the bow began to dip, and dip, till a barrel broke free of its confines and went careening down the deck, taking two men with it as it crushed through the starboard rail and disappeared almost instantly into the frothing, unfathomable waters.

Somewhere amidships, the last lantern swung madly from its rafters, the flickering flame within casting a feeble glow through the sheets of rain to shine down upon the river that had become the weatherdeck.

All around him, his men fought the tempest, reduced to indistinct shapes in the violent murk. Between himself and the helmsman, the great wheel was tamed and frantically brought to heel as the ship angled into another swell. A loose line of shorn rigging raggedly danced in the air, like a forlorn banner unfurling from the main mast.

“She can’t take much more of this, Cap’n,” Bors, the helmsman, yelled into his ear. “The sea’s taken Dubner and three others, we’re short-handed, can’t-”

A thunderous crack rent the sky and drowned out the man’s words. Adler didn’t think it mattered, he knew what the man had to say, and he had no answers to yell back. So he did the only thing that he could, and with a brief signal of warning, heaved against the spokes. He imagined he heard the chains groaning beneath the deck.

* * *

It ran through the heart of the ship like a slender vein. In the moist darkness between the lengths of wood, it was colorless, but by light of day it might have been rusty red, or a darkened gold. Copper, scuffed here and scratched there, but copper nonetheless. From the highest point of the main mast it ran, in an unbroken line into the planks of the weatherdeck. Diving ever deeper, encased always by wood, it burrowed, past the hold, and past the bilge, it emerged like the slender tail of the serpent, into the great sea below.

It was the hidden guardian, the secret defender, against the worst of nature’s terrors. The walls that encased it were scorched, but never burned. Every ship that braved the deeps had a serpent such as this. Those that did not had been burned, had blistered, and had sunk.

It might have prided itself on this guardianship, if it were aware of itself.

But unknown, and unseen, it had found its failure. At that point where the mast meets the deck, the juncture of timber and plank, it had proved too frail. It had been rent.

It was broken.

* * *

In that half moment in which the lightning came, Adler could see everything. He could see the sky, bright as any day, could see the majesty of the sea as it roiled all around him, towering above his ship like the hand of a wrathful god. He could see the raindrops, as if frozen in perfect clarity in the air before him, each tiny sphere distinct from the others to his widened pupils.

And then it struck, and a jagged line of white fire danced from the heavens to smash through the main mast, running through it like the air through his lungs. The wood exploded outwards in a rain of shards, and the great mast began a violent fall, crashing through snagged rigging and snapping through tangled lines, its base nothing more than a burning stump and a memory.

The madness that followed was difficult for Adler to remember. He could recall the sounds of screaming men, shouted curses, and the roar of fire and sea. He could recall the great groaning crash as the proud mast fell to the deck, smashing all that stood between it and the wooden floor.

All this Adler could later recall, if only vaguely. But he could not see. There was a bright light blinding him. Dully, as if from afar, he realized that his face was on fire.

* * *

Adler woke in a familiar hammock, staring at a familiar ceiling, tilted at an unfamiliar angle. Even as this realization passed through his mind, the pain came gleefully to greet him. He groaned, lifting a hand to touch at the burning mass that was his face. The entire left side of his head was swathed in bandage and the flesh beneath it burned like nothing in the world.

With a pained hiss, his breath feverishly hot, he managed his feet. The deck was tilted too far, he knew, and the roll of the waves didn’t right it. But in that at least there was some solace. The sounds of storm and sea were but memory now, and there was only the gentle motion of a ship in calm waters beneath his feet.

Slowly, on unsteady legs, he made his way from the almost-cramped cabin, down the gangway to the stern ladder. Above him, he could hear the murmur of men’s voices, but could not make out the words. Significantly, sunlight, bright and clean, filtered down the open hatch to bathe his face in its glow.

Emerging onto the deck, his relief quickly began to fade. The wrecked remains of the deck angled unnaturally towards port. All around him was a mass of ruined timber and smashed rail. Broken crates and the remnants of barrel, sail, rigging lay strewn upon the scarred and broken planks. A seared hole large enough swallow a crate gaped up from the place from which the main mast had once challenged the winds. Of the fore mast, only half remained, ending in a jagged spine of broken wood where the timber had broken clean away.

The ship was lost.

“The hull’s holding out, at least,” Bors spoke from behind. “She’s listing badly to port, Cap’n. I’ve got some boys pumping water out of the crew deck, took a beating to it when the mast went down. But the bilges are clean as they’re ever like to be after that storm. She’ll hold.”

Adler took in a breath. The air was as he had always liked it best: Crisp with the scent of the sea. “She’ll hold. What about jury rigging-“

The crusty seaman shook his head, grizzled hair as salty as the sea, “No sir. Can’t do it. The mast’s gone, blown clean into the water. Rudder’s gone too, best as I can figure. Wheel’s spinning free. Can rig something up for that, given time, but I reckon the best we can do right now is put some sheets on what’s left on the fore. Keep her sliding on best as we can.”

Somehow Adler felt like smiling. Or he did until the motion caused his face to split into another wave of agony. “Hells. She’s a grand old lady.”

Bors chuckled, nodding. “That she is. Ain’t done yet, I reckon. If we can limp her into port, she’ll be seaworthy in a month.”

“But she’s not seaworthy. And we’re at sea, Mister Bors,” said Adler.

“Aye, Cap’n, that’s the song.”

Adler studied that familiar face, with its graying beard and glass eye and pockmarked features. He wasn’t a comely man, Sander Bors, never was. Even as the corpse of the ship shifted lazily beneath the two of them, his face remained as calm and as stoic as ever it had been. And damn the pain, but that made Adler smile.

“Report on the crew, Mister Bors.”

“Aye, Cap’n. Seven dead, sir, including the cook. Three unfit for duty, and five hands able, though all willing. And we’ve still got the Marshal. Took a knock to his head, but seems to be holding out alright.”

“Good,” said Adler, turning to take stock of this broken craft, his vessel, “Supplies?”

“Lost most of the tar to breakage, sir. Barrels split ship wide. We’ve enough of the salted stuff for a month, and fewer mouths to feed. We’d stuffed half the load of lamp oil in the bilge and most of its survived the battering. Most of the liquor’s beat too, though we got lucky on the water. We’ve enough in rigging and sheets to man the mast, sir.”

Adler nodded to the broken half-mast, “I want that thing rigged with enough sail to keep us moving, Mister Bors. Shore it up as best as you can. Tear up the deck if you have to. And I want to know exactly where we are and how far that storm blew us off. I want this ship pointed towards the nearest port by sundown. Send a crew down to patch up a rudder.”

Bors might have been smiling. “Aye aye, Cap’n.”

“Ration out whatever ale you’ve left, tell the men we’re going home. Where’s the Marshal?”

“In the cabin, sir. He’s been asking after you.”

“I’ll look in on him then,” said Adler. “And Sander?”

“Aye, Cap’n?” asked the other man.

Adler clapped the man’s shoulder lightly, “We’ll be alright.”

Adler saw Bors’ hazel eye flicker to the ruin of the main mast. But the old man simply smiled, “Aye, Cap’n. ‘Course we will.”

Adler watched the man go. Half his face was afire and his head still hadn’t quite stopped spinning. He wished he had the surety of his words as he made his way towards the Marshal’s cabin.

Inside, he found the Marshal seated at a table, drinking from a metal flask. The cabin was the best the ship boasted, which was not much. It was roomy, as such things went, and had a proper seafaring bed, privy, chest of drawers, all bolted, and the table at which the ship’s only passenger now sat.

Aros of Ellend, First Marshal of Angranost was a large man. To Adler’s eye, it was not a largeness of flesh or bone, as some men had. It was a largeness of the man himself, and the long roads he’d traveled. And who’d not heard at least some of those journeys? Mercenary, soldier, general, and savior. He’d spent a lifetime at winning, and for it all seemed not so different from old Bors.

“I see you’re up and about,” said Aros, as Adler entered, “Good, thought you weren’t going to make it, from the fever.”

Adler pulled up a seat and accepted the flask as it was passed to him, taking a long swallow, “The sea wants me bad, she does. But she’ll have to wait a little longer.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Aros chuckled. “So… how bad are we, Captain?”

“Honest truth? We’re in a bad way, Marshal. Fucked proper, actually.”

Aros nodded, “Tell me.”

“We’ve got no sails and we’ve got no rudder,” Adler shrugged, “Half the crew’s gone or hurt too bad to work. We’re a few hundred leagues from the nearest port at best, and we’ve got no way of getting from here to there. Food’ll last a while but… well.”

It felt good to say it. It felt good to get it off his chest. This man did not look to him for guidance, for a way out, when there wasn’t one. For that, Adler was thankful.

“Might want to tell Bors, then,” Aros said, after a reflective silence, “He was in here earlier telling me something about rations.”

“He knows,” said Adler, shaking his head, “No fool, that man.”

“Well, Captain. I’m not one for last stands. What do we do now?”

Adler laughed, though the pain in his face made him feel like crying, “Not a gods damned clue. Any ideas?”

“Well, the usual thing to do at this point is kill whoever’s idea it was in the first place.” Aros smiled, though his eyes didn’t share in the gesture.

“That would be you, unless I’m off.”

“Aye,” said Aros, “That would be me. I’m so-“

A seaman burst into the cabin, interrupting, and the sheer excitement of life dripping off his features brightened the room even before he had a chance to speak his message.

“Sails to starboard, Cap’n! We’re saved!”

“What?” snapped Aros.

“You sure, man?” asked Adler.

“Seen it myself, Cap’n,” said the man, grinning wide. “Mister Bors has the glass, sir.”

Adler grinned back at Aros, “Save your apologies. The man says we’re saved.”

* * *

“She’s getting further away, Cap’n,” said Bors, his stoic features grim as he handed the looking-glass to Adler.

“How can they not see us? How?” Aros smouldered beside Adler on the starboard rail. Half the crew had gathered at starboard, of those that remained, and two or three were perched precariously on the fore-mast, holding the ties to a loose white sail.

Adler peered again through his looking-glass at the distant set of sails that marred the seam of the horizon. His jaw was clenched. Aros was right. His ship had no mast, a bare scant sheet of a sail fluttering between the grip of three men and a coil of rope, but any half-decent crow should have spied them out hours ago.

“In less than an hour, it’ll be dark,” said Adler, unable to keep the grimness from his voice. He had played the brave captain. His crew had needed it of him and he had delivered it. But the strain was beginning to show. The burning in his face had not subsided and his one eye was irritable and watered often.

“And then we’re done,” finished Aros, seeming more angry than grim even now.

Adler’s eye was drawn to the fluttering sheet, gleaming white in the last light of day. All of their hopes now rested on that slender fabric. Gone now was the pretense of order, the busying of hands with a purpose to fill the minds of men. Here was hope, real, a chance in the miracle of those sails on the horizon. And all of it turned on that one sheet.

“No,” said Adler, suddenly sure. “Then we’re saved.”

* * *

For Torrin it had been an uneventful day. The sun had been beating hotter than ever and since they’d skirted that storm two nights past, even the breeze seemed to have been fitful and tired. And then they’d caught a bad crop in the night’s fish stew. Half the crew had taken to unhitching their trousers over the rail at the slightest provocation, and they now lay down below in the sun, sipping the vile concoction the Ballentine’s physician had cooked up for them.

Torrin had been one of the lucky ones, he’d not gotten sick. And of course, the lucky ones got double shift to make up for the slackabout bastards sunning themselves on the deck below. That made Torrin feel sick in a different kind of way. Torrin had always been good at nursing his resentments, and let’s face it, up in the crow’s nest, there isn’t much in the way of things to do anyway, and how many times will a man spin his head in circles staring out at a nearly flat, featureless sea?

Torrin had done that. For a while. For a whole shift. Then he’d done the sensible thing

Torrin had fallen asleep.

* * *

“These words, you have spoken them before, you speak them again. I am fat. But not deaf. I have heard you,” said Mashal, as he leaned against the bow railing, admiring how the setting sun set ablaze the golden pain beneath his fingers.

“And you’ll hear them again, sir,” said Jordan Sulpher, tossing his head to clear the blond curls from his eyes, “You’ll hear them till you find a captain that’s lost either his tongue or the wits to use it. You were there, you saw. The man’s dangerous, and you’re putting my life at risk, and the life of every man aboard, by harboring that man aboard this ship.”

Mashal snorted, “You have the soul of a pirate, Sulpher. Can you not understand that we are bound?”

“Yes, yes, bound as tight as a virgin’s skirts, I’m sure,” said Jordan, “But are these men bound as well? Am I? I’m your Captain, Master Angranosti. Your best captain. Listen to what I say. No good will come of this, and frankly, we’ve made decent money as it is, the diamonds alone are worth the weight of this vessel. Take your winnings, and cut loose.”

“We have one dead man, by my mother’s eyes, you weep like the virgins you are so fond of! Are there no men left in the world?” Mashal spat into the ocean.

“Men we have in plenty, but few of them are fools,” Sulpher replied, more heated than he intended, “It’s an ill trip, I tell you. Just look over your shoulder, half the crew lies sick. Must the seas catch fire before you see?”

Mashal started an angry retort, but it died in his throat, replaced with sudden laughter. The man lifted a hand to point off to port, “Mashal Angranosti is unmoved. But look, the seas, it seems, have caught fire.”

Sulpher gritted his teeth and turned to look. He struggled for something intelligent to say.

Amid clouds of smoke, the blackness contrasting sharply against the growing grey of the encroaching twilight, the telltale glow of fire licked at the horizon.

. . .

Previous: Part 4: Sepherrin

I’ve always been able to lose myself in the moment, whether its the book, the movie, the show, the music, or the company in which I’m immersing myself. And in these moments, my worries and my troubles (we all have a few) recede into the background, leaving me free to dive into pleasant waters.

This, perhaps, has come to bite me, just a little bit.

The process of writing, even for people who are supposedly good at injecting meaning into words, is not easy to describe. For me, writing is immersing myself into a vision, a reality, almost as if I step into another world, and the fact that I am the creator of this world becomes irrelevant. I’ll have music playing that puts me in the right mood. I might read through the previous continuity to remind me of the flow. Ultimately, it becomes a process in which I see things through the eyes of the characters I am writing, feel their emotions and resonate with the imagery that surrounds them.

And my writing has very often led into melancholy places.

Increasingly, I find myself emotionally and mentally drained after writing. Yesterday’s work on Genesis was a case in point. It put me in such a strange, black mood, and it took several hours for me to recover my normal mental buoyancy.

I didn’t want to go back and read it over, I didn’t bother working through the first draft to make corrections. Simply couldn’t muster the energy. Reading it now is a different experience, and altogether a more pleasant one, but the writing of it, and many other pieces, is difficult.

I wonder if this is the way it is for many writers, or whether it’s a problem unique to my perspective.

When I was younger, and I’m still young – I know, I could write for hours at a time. The writing wasn’t as good, the drama was overblown (some would suggest it still is), the prose was unpalatable. But it was easy, and the quality of my work doesn’t make it more difficult to write. It’s not easy anymore.

Vaguely, this troubles me.

The men behind him were of a finer ilk, or so they appeared. Upon their robes gleamed thread of gold and silver, and their soft, clean hands were held up in prayer, each bearing a ring of iron.

Before them the hallway extended, as if forever. In the distance a tall sliver of light cut through the dimness, shining down upon the grey and red patterns on the marble floor, filtering through tall, slender windows of intricately stained glass.

Iron, it was all around them, tortured and twisted into shapes that defied the mind, like curling tendrils of smoke captured and made into immutable metal. It formed the braziers in which the coals smoldered. Of iron were wrought the arches that framed the hundred passages they passed on their way.

He paused, to catch his breath, to steel his spirit. He laid a hand upon a curving spiral of iron, feeling the cold metal, hard and undeniable under his too-frail flesh. It was iron. All of it was iron. Of iron and stone and blood was this house built.

But mostly, it was iron.

* * *

The world was reduced to the point of his nose, and the drop of sweat that threatened to fall from the tip of it. His face was parched, dry, his lips swollen and bleeding. All around him, the wind danced, sometimes slow, sometimes gusting. Beneath his hardened soles, the ground was stony and hot – too hot.

He had discarded his furs a while ago, and stood naked, with only his crude spear to defend himself from the dogs, or the men of the other tribes. The sun beat down upon his brow, the brown skin burning and cracked, with precious little moisture to offer in a sacrifice of sweat.

He stumbled. A thirst was in him. For life-giving water, yes. But also for life itself. He stumbled again, nearly fell, but always, the thirst pushed him on, made him rise, made him struggle.

Beyond was a grove. It meant water. Or another fantasy. The thirst pushed him towards it.

* * *

With careful, efficient hands, he unrolled the leather onto the tabletop. Steel gleamed back at him, bright, clear, clean. Cruel, cold, steel, wrought in edges keen enough to cut air. Knives, blades, of a dozen shapes and sizes, some unmarred, others serrated. A cleaver’s bulk to one, a needle’s point to another, they all shared a common acquaintance: Pain.

She lay upon the table, young, and healthy, and frightened. And yes, beautiful, in her own way, in her humanity. They all seemed so to him. Beautiful and frightened. When they looked upon his face, sometimes a ray of hope would emerge from within the pale terror. That was the hardest, and it never got any easier: To see hope. He had never seen anything but the promise of pain in the cold mirror that was the steel he now held in his hand. He had tried, many a time. It made it easier, less maddening, perhaps. If only they could see the same clarity in his face, it might be easier, less maddening.

They rarely did.

When she began to scream, he reached for that place of stillness within his mind, that place that was with him from the beginning. Fumbling, at first, he found it.

He retreated into the stillness.

* * *

The sun did not burn so hot. The swaying of his body did not seem to matter. The wrenching agony in his limbs seemed to call to him only from a distance. His eyes had become dilated, his pupils dark before the glare of the light reflecting into his face from the rocks beneath his leather-like feet.

He had found the stillness.

In the protective daze, he stumbled forward, a shambling corpse with a faint spark of consciousness. He had lost even his spear somewhere along the way. All he could see was the grove, the trees. He could make them out now, standing there like guardians of the tribe, the totems they had erected to the animal spirits, to guard them from the terrors of night and sickness and war and famine. The tribe was lost now, as was he, he did not see them.

He saw only the trees.

They parted before him like the skins from his tent, bidding him enter. Limping-stumbling-falling, he shouldered his way from one to the other, letting them bear his weight. The ground was softer beneath his toes, he could feel earth, feel moisture. It tempted him, called for him to emerge from his shell, to see.

He did not listen, never too quick to trust. He ventured deeper. Perhaps it was that the water had dried in his eyes, perhaps his spirit was speaking to the trees, he did not know, but he could see the world change. He did not trust in visions, he never had – the Shamans had lied too often.

But now, he saw a vision, and trust it or no, he could not help but see it, even from within the stillness. The sky had darkened, and a grey shade, deep and cool, slipped over the world. The colors in his eyes began to bleed into one another and he saw leaves of blue and air that was green and yellow, and water that was gleaming silver.

Water. He saw it then, shining like the sun spirit himself, a great fountain, a roaring torrent, rushing past.

* * *

The body was almost cold now. In his stillness he referred to her as ‘the body’. The name that had once belonged to it was, in this state, impossible to recall. The eyes, he did not see them as blue, he did not see the terror forever frozen in the azure depths. He saw only irises lacking significant pigmentation, resulting in a blue color, a sign of susceptibility to degradation as age progresses.

The scribes behind him had almost finished cleaning the parchments, complete with every precise slice of information that he had fed them. He rested two bloody fingers on her nakedness, just above where the growth of hair obscured vision. There was little there that had not been cut, that had not been bled, measured, studied.

She had died a virgin. The thought smashed at his wall with the force of a great hammer. He felt it bend, threaten to crack, to break. With a desperation borne of the threat of insanity, he braced his will against it. The wave passed. The body had not undergone intercourse with a male specimen, and had not borne offspring.

With mechanical precision, he began the process of cleaning and putting away the steel.

* * *

The Great Spirit stood before him. He could see it but not see it, it was both there and not. It had no shape yet he could define it, if not in words that men would understand. It commanded his awe, and he stared, the thickness of his beard white with the froth hanging from his open mouth.

And then it spoke, that voice like no other.

“Is this what you needed, son of Man?”

It was a strange voice, inquisitive, and almost hesitant, unsure. Yet for all that, it was the voice of the mountains and the air and the sea, and the river and the lion, all of that and greater. He knew then, that it was the voice of the One Spirit, the Great Spirit, of which the Shamans spoke. It was the voice that brought him to his knees.

“Why do you kneel?” it asked.

“Because you are the Lord of Spirits, and I am your servant.”

“Am I? What do you call me?”

“Amernath.”

“Amernath,” it said, “Yes. You will serve me?”

“Forever.” He whispered.

“Forever,” it replied, the strange light flaring brighter. “Then rise. Drink of this water. I give you Eternity.”

* * *

“Your servant, Eternal,” he whispered into air, “As you have commanded, so I have done. My spirit, my hands, I surrender, Amernath, Lord of Spirits.”

The scribes murmured their own chants, more ritualized, more elaborate than his own, less whispered, more spoken. Then they gathered their things and with a whisper of cloth and the rustle of parchment, they made their way from the chamber.

Grim-faced, he stood there, arms clasped before him till even the last sounds of their presence had been swallowed by the vastness of the Cathedral. Then, he allowed himself to look.

He looked, and he looked and he looked, and in the looking, he stepped away from the stillness, not like a man that has his shield shorn from his arm, no, more like a man stepping forward into an inferno that awaits him.

The body became a girl, the odd assortment of facts became a pair of blue eyes, and the empty womb became a mother that was never to be. His hands began to tremble first, then his shoulders, then his chest.

It was a slow thing, when the shaking took over his body, the breath grew more ragged in his lungs. He did not remember when he fell to his knees, head bowed by heavier burdens than any man ought to bear. He pressed his face into the naked feet and he wept.

Weeping, he reached for her feet, for her hands, for her face. As always, it was no use. He could never bring them back to life.

And so he wept. It was all the apology he could ever offer.

Sepherrin did not run from the memories as they reached out to him from the yawning mouth of the spire, like lovers from long ago, come to greet him with arms extended. Or like the phantoms of days gone by, grasping for him with wicked, curling fingers and bared teeth. Instead, he stood at the prow of the boat, like a stoic martyr out of some bard’s fable, braving the rigors of remembrance.

A long flight of stairs rose up from the lapping water to the familiar archway, with the rose graven upon its face. Against these white stones, the oarsmen braced the boat, and a rope was cast around the head of a nearby statue.

“I like this not at all,” Sulpher was whispering to Mashal, as the party disembarked. “This is madness, and your friend is a sorcerer, or worse.”

Madness, Sepherrin agreed in the vast silence of his mind. Madness and grief.

He stepped off the boat and, hesitant, the men followed. There were no whispers now, as his footsteps began the long ascent to the great arch that waited, opening into the dark within. Of the six behind him, four bore torches. Others clutched nervously at the hilts of their swords.

“What…” began Mashal, his round features glistening with sweat, despite the cool breeze that buffeted his cloak. “What shall we be finding within? Is there danger?”

“Hold fast to your light and hold fast to me. Keep your weapons at the ready. You will not be harmed.”

The men followed on as he led them higher, step after step. Somewhere along the way, Sulpher spat in disgust. Eventually, the portal was upon him.

From the ship, the archway might have been a small window in the face of seemingly endless stone and marble. From up close, it was a towering gateway, fit for a giant, tall enough to dwarf even the greatest of men. Beyond its graceful edges, the darkness was complete: Not a flicker, not a glimmer, not even the faintest of memory of light lingered within the expanse beyond, a vastness of space felt and not seen.

At the portal’s edge, even the wind seemed hesitant, unwilling to venture further. Where the torches strove at the overbearing darkness, the marble floor continued seamlessly. Yet there was a seam of sorts there, Sepherrin knew, a line drawn across the very fabric of reality. The stone beneath their feet was wet from the kiss of the sea. But beyond the cusp of the portal, in a straight line, end to end, the water dried, leaving the stones beyond untouched, dry with the dust of centuries.

* * *

The Ballentine was silent as she lay upon the glass like waters, save for the odd creak of contracting wood that would rise out of the hull to disturb the stillness. The woman lingered in Sulpher’s cabin as she’d been bid. On the deck above her, men spoke in hushed whispers, or not at all, some crowding the starboard rail, others finding the bridge, and one or two taking vantage from upon the crow’s nest. The waiting had begun.

She wrapped a cloak about her nakedness and took up her own vigil by the porthole. Out there, the monstrosity rose out from the sea like a mythic kraken out of legend, but it had a different terror. It was unknown, dark and beautiful. Its mystery held a seduction.

Yet she was not contented by it. She could spy the little boat with its precious cargo, rocking gently by the stair column, four bright sparks of light marking it out through the gloom of the night. As she watched the distant figures ascend, watched the four brands wink out as they passed into the shadow within, she felt a stab in the base of her spine.

It was fear.

* * *

He walked in two worlds. The one was dark and foreboding, with only dust and silence to fill the cavernous spaces. There was no laughter here, no sparkle in the fountains they passed along the way, no songs ringing softly from the benches where lovers would sit, their words and shy glances making music of a different sort.

The other world was as it had once been, as he saw it in his mind’s eye. It was bright, filled with light and hope and laughter. He could see the young women as they passed along the broad roads, like wisps in the forest, in their summer dresses, with their spring time smiles. He saw the children as they ran and played, spinning circles around their mothers, whose soft hands even now seemed familiar.

But in this world he was the phantom, and not they. This was the world before grief had taken it, and he could not bear to look upon all that was lost. He imagined he saw the accusation in the eyes of those he passed. The lovers on the benches, the women in the streets, the sages in the balconies. He imagined he saw them, looking to him, blaming him for the death of all that was beautiful in the world.

”Forgive me,” he whispered to the phantoms, in a tongue that only they could understand.

But they did not hear, and they did not care, and they did not see him. There was only one world, after all. One world, from which the beauty had gone, and only memories lingered in Sepherrin’s mind.

For his companions, those darkened halls brought different struggles. Even as he contended with his quiet demons, they contended with the guardians of the Spire. Like moths drawn to the flames of their torches, the guardians came to them, singly or in groups. But they were behind them now, save for one, save for the last. He had crossed all doors and broken all seals. There remained now only one: The place where he had lied to a generation.

And look now, he had lied again. He had promised these men safety, as they followed him into this great crypt, all that was left of the best of the world. But already, Grady was dead. Of the six that had followed him, only four remained. They always died, Sepherrin reflected, almost bitter. But it was a bitter road he walked and one man’s death would not stop him

Before him, the great vault extended: a passage without end, lit by torches that never died. By his side, Angranosti paced wild-eyed, his gaze furiously scanning the countless arches that opened into the vault, searching for any sign of the ever-present threat.

“Turn back, by my mother’s eyes, I beg you! This is not the place we agreed upon.” Mashal said.

“We agreed upon a journey. I spoke of waysides,” he replied, sure of his man. “Do you wish to renege upon your word?”

“Never! But one is dead… at least… let us return for more men. Or woe upon the children of Mashal Angranosti, for his grave shall be unmarked!”

“Leave it lie, Master,” a voice spoke. It was Sulpher. Of them all, this man had seemed to harden the most through the trek, accepting, and ready, with his sword in his hand. “He could give a piss about whether we live or die. And the men won’t come, not when they see Grady’s not with us. There’ll be mutiny if you tell me to force them.”

But Sepherrin barely heard him. His step had faltered. They had come upon the place he had been dreading the most.

It stood before him like a monument to his guilt. Like the first, this door was tall, taller than any door ought to be, and arched. The wood was unstained, unmarked; it might have been laid yesterday.  The final door, the final seal.

His companions could sense, in a crude, primitive way, the majesty and the significance of this last of portals. But they did not understand it, and how could they? How could anyone? Save for Sepherrin, whose hand had wrought it.

“Wait for me here,” he said. “You have passed the last of your trials in this place. Beyond is for me alone.”

“Good fucking riddance,” muttered Sulpher, as he let his sword clatter to the floor, soon joining it himself, cross-legged.

Mashal was less eager, less certain, “I know nothing in this terrible place. Who will say if the shadows will come again?”

“Soon,” said Sepherrin, as he parted the final seal, opened the final door, “There will be an end to all shadows.”

Soon, he thought to himself,  there will be an end.

* * *

The chamber was circular, and not so vast as the others. Tier upon tier, balconies of grey marble ringed its perimeter, rising one upon the other, higher and higher, till they became lost in the darkness that was the roof. In the center, a simple coffin of stone lay upon the floor, a rose graven upon it, in full bloom, etched with the most exquisite of care.

Before this edifice, Sepherrin stood, in silence, and in mourning. At length, he spoke, his voice ringing hollow as it echoed through the chamber, “I have come for the key.”

Behind him, from a balcony, a silver circlet came clattering to the floor. He turned.

“Tesepherrinthias Arandaemos Curinae,” a voice called from the shadows, the figure behind it shifting forward into the light. This voice, at last, was real, “I know why you have come. You shall not have it.”

“You would defy your king?” Sepherrin asked the other, willing the iron to return to his words, but he could not feel it.

“King?” the other asked. His features were slender, and fine, his eyes grey, his hair dark. They could have brothers, this strange man and he. They might have been, but that day had passed. “I see no King. Only a betrayer.”

“And your friend?” Sepherrin asked.

The man upon the balcony leapt from it to find the floor. “My friend was the greatest man who ever lived. He defied a God and won life for a world that did not deserve it. He bore his burdens well. You? You are just a shell, a phantom come to this city of ghosts, to undo all that he did.”

“You don’t understand!” Sepherrin said, fingers clenching into fists, “You were not there!”

The memory rose up unbidden, and as the rising tide, it would not be denied. He saw her in his mind’s eye, as beautiful as any creature that ever was, and more precious. He saw the look on her face, the fear, the hurt of betrayal. He watched as the tears grew great in the green of her eyes. And after all these years, he heard her pleas again.

Please, I beg you… not this. Please?

He felt a stab at his chest like a fist crushing around his heart, pain lancing through all that was decent in him, all that had the capacity to care. More quietly, he said, “She was your daughter.”

“Yes,” said the other, his own eyes more subdued. “This is as true today as it was then. Your choice was the right one, when you made it. Why do you falter now, after all this time?”

Sepherrin shook his head, “The price was too high, even then. But we were resolute… I’ve had enough, Teresin. I am… tired. I want peace. For her, for you, for all of us.”

“And for all the rest? Those that live under the sun and know nothing of what guards them, those that have lives and dreams and hopes enough to fill a world?” Teresin asked.

“For them, I have given all I could. I can endure this no longer.”

For a long moment, Teresin was silent, but then he shook his head, “Forgive me old friend. I cannot give you your release. You may have forgotten, but I still remember. I remember the Sun. Not for you, not for her, will I lay down my shield.”

* * *

“It’s been hours. He’s dead or gone. Either way, we should quit this place before we join the corpses.” Sulpher said. He felt his contempt for his employer rise like bile in his throat. The man was sweating like a pig, and he kept licking his lips and searching the shadows. But the stubborn bastard would not leave.

The men too had almost had enough. There was something about this place that was unhealthy, unwholesome, like a weight hanging over all their shoulders, pressing them down. He was about to open his mouth again when behind them, the great door parted once again, and the skeletal man emerged from within.

Sulpher didn’t know whether to be relieved or dismayed. Certainly, he felt a bit of both as he found his feet. There was an odd look on Sepherrin’s normally unreadable face. Haunted, someone might have said. In one hand, he held a small wooden case, and in the other, a silver circlet, glittering with precious stones set in a straight line.

The others too rose at the man’s approach, and Mashal seemed almost ready to kiss the man’s boots. But he said not a word when he arrived, stopping to stare at each of their faces.

“For your troubles,” he said, in a dull voice, as he tossed the circlet to the floor by Mashal’s feet. It glittered there, the bright fire of diamonds.

Sulpher tore his eyes from the thing on the floor and looked to his companions. Mashal’s eyes had gone as wide as saucers, and the greed writ plain on his fat lipped face. The others simply stared with open mouths. “What is it?” Sulpher found himself asking.

Sepherrin’s voice was definitely bitter, strangely strangled, even as he began to walk away, down the passage from which they had come. “It is the crown of the greatest man who ever lived.”

…

Previous: Part 3 – Jordan

Next: Part 5 – Adler

That thought made him smile. He’d done well since he’d taken on running Mashal Angranosti’s flagship vessel – better by far than he’d ever done for himself in his brief career as a privateer. His belly was full, his purse fuller, and for this voyage he’d managed to find a particularly feisty brown-haired whore to keep his bed warm.

The mantle of Captain suited him just fine, gold tassels and all.

It was a light run, an easy one, the course they were on. Not much in the way of cargo, and the ship ran almost weightless on the water, cutting through the waves like a dirk might pierce a soft belly. Already, they’d spent three nights on the seas, racing down the eastern coast of Arjun, towards the Pike. Another four days and they’ll have turned the southern tip of that sword shaped expanse of land, turning north towards the port of Arrabor. It had been a strange voyage Mashal had charted for them, him and his sole companion, but it wasn’t a poor one at that.

To the west, along the jagged line of cliffs that marks the coast of Arjun, the sun had begun to set, and the first of the stars revealed themselves. One of them might have been green. With a smile, Jordan Sulpher turned towards his cabin below the bridge. There was a young lady waiting there. And Sulpher was never one to disappoint the ladies.

* * *

A fist banged on his door, breaking the stillness of the darkened cabin. Irritated, Sulpher’s eyes flickered open, roused from the half stupor he had allowed himself to drift into. Beside him, in the dark, a soft shape stirred.

“Shh,” he said, laying a finger upon her hidden lips, “Let me-“

“Captain!” someone boomed from beyond his door, banging hard enough to make the door shake in its hinges. He could see the flickering of torches from under the portal.

“What?” he shouted back, already pulling on his breeches and boots, a scowl forming on his face in the darkness.

“We need you on the bridge, sir, there’s… Gods, it’s in the sky, you’ve got to see this!” the voice was shrill, frantic. Frowning, Sulpher realized the ship was not moving.

His companion stirred beneath the sheets, “Maybe I should-“

“No,” he said, pulling on a clean white shirt by light of the stars through his porthole, “Stay. I’ll see to whatever this is. Get some sleep, don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“Alright,” she said, and he might have heard a faint sigh preceding the words. Or it might have been the swell of water against the hull.

When he let himself out into the narrow gangway, he found three of his men whispering nervously amongst each other. That concerned him more than he would allow them to see; these men had earned their sea legs, he knew them all. They did not scare easily.

“Show me,” he said, cutting through their murmurings, in a voice as calm and controlled as he could make it.

On the bridge, damned near the entirety of the crew were assembled in a cacophony of heated voices, and even Angranosti was there to be found, silent, but worrying his fat fingers. So intense was the chaos of words on the deck of the Ballentine that night that it took several moments for Jordan to see and understand the cause of it.

“Fuck,” he was compelled to whisper, when he finally saw.

His first thought was a mountain, and it wasn’t that far from the truth. It rose out of the sea before them like a great peak, higher and higher, till it hurt his neck to find its crown. The sheer size of it dwarfed the ship and all the men upon it, together no more than an ant at the feet of this behemoth.

Slowly, as his eyes grew accustomed to the raw immensity of the thing, he began to make out the details. Vertical ledges became fluted pillars, soaked in water and green with seaweed. Shapeless rocks manifested themselves more truthfully as sculpted figures, ancient and graceful. Terraces and balconies, graven in stone all, they made their presence felt, and Sulpher realized that his mouth was hanging open.

“Caster. Caster!” he yelled, turning to the crew, looking for the navigator, “Speak up man! Where are we?”

“Pike’s End, Captain. We’re at Pike’s End,” the man said, shaking his head. “Pike’s End and I’ll be damned, begging your pardon sir, but there weren’t never no bloody mountain here.”

“What is it? Would you look at the thing?” and a hundred other questions spilled out of the mouths of the men, most of them fearful, some of them terrified. Sailors, by and large, had always been a superstitious group, their lives too fickle, and too fragile when stacked against the vastness of the oceans.

“It is a tomb,” said a voice, calm as still water, silent as the day after the storm, “And it is waiting for us.”

With the others of his men, Sulpher turned to see Sepherrin standing by the hatch. The captain’s lips twisted into a silent snarl that did nothing at all for his too-bright smile and rakish charm. Sulpher had not liked this man, but Sulpher was practiced at ignoring the things he had to endure. He had almost managed to forget entirely the presence of this creature.

“How do you know anything about it?” asked Sulpher, his tone barely bordering on polite.

“I know,” said the strange, skeletal man, as he stepped forward to the rail, looking up at the glistening immensity with an eye oddly unmoved by either its splendor, or its majesty, “Because I helped build it.”

“Well,” said Jordan, in mounting annoyance as his men fell dutifully silent at Sepherrin’s words, “Fuck this, and let’s get out of here. Caster, set a course-“

“Assemble a landing party. Six men. We enter the monolith.” Sepherrin interrupted.

“Now you look here, you twisted bastard,” Jordan found himself saying, “This is – my – ship and I’m telling you my men are going nowhere near that thing.”

“Captain Sulpher,” a voice said. The color rising in his cheeks, Jordan turned to find Mashal, standing quite close by.

“This ship belongs to Mashal Angranosti still, no?” said Mashal.

“Yes, sir,” snapped Sulpher.

“Then Mashal Angranosti says that we go.”

Red faced, Jordan stared at his employer. He felt as if his eyes might bulge right out of their sockets. The men were all silent now, all watching. But he was a sensible man, and he valued Mashal’s gold more than he valued his own pride. “Butcher and Pierce,” he snapped off crisply, “Ready the longboat. We’re going in, curse the seas to the whores.”

“Aye, sir!” came the loud retort, as strong arms and resolute men bent to the task.

* * *

Previous: Part 2 – Aros

Next: Part 4 – Sepherrin

And by now, most anyone that’s visited here will realize that this little corner of the internets is my personal publishing post.

So why am I here, and not busy pursuing a career as a giant among fantasy fiction writers? Why don’t I try to get my works into print and my name in the bright, shining light. Why blog, you ask, why not write?

Well, for those of you unfamiliar with it, let me offer a brief introduction to the steps involved in becoming a published writer:

1. Finish your project, short story, novel, whatever format it may be in.
2. Revise your first draft, polish, polish, polish.
3. Format this into standard manuscript form.
4. Research various agents that may fit what you’re looking for and for whom you too may be a fit. This is a requisite as most major publishing houses do not accept unsolicited manuscripts (simply put: If you send your stuff to them, they’ll send it back to you, in a fun little game of pass the parcel). There are still exceptions like the aforementioned Tor that still consider unsolicited manuscripts, and in fantasy writing the Agent requirement does not seem to be as stringent as in other genres.
5. Based on your research you create and modify your submission package (cover letter/query letter/manuscript/sample/S.A.S.E/etc) designed to fit the requirements of each Agent you are submitting to. If you are submitting to a publisher directly, you will need to have done your research on them and submitted to their requirements.
6. Wait.
7. Wait some more.
8. Try not to let your soul be crushed by the invariable rejection slips.
9. Try not to let your head explode in the extremely unlikely event that your manuscript is accepted.

A word of warning to the wise: Writing, finishing and polishing your novel is without doubt the most difficult (though possibly not the most emotionally damaging) aspect of any writer’s career.

Moving on though, assuming you can write well, and obviously I do assume as much, considering that I’ve started a blog to glorify that same prose, the rest of the process doesn’t sound too difficult, does it? It really isn’t. You just need to be diligent, patient, and keep your wits about you so editors and prospective agents don’t think you’re complete idiot.

The real difficulty comes in afterwards. Statistically speaking, the numbers involved are staggering. Major publishing houses can receive as many as twenty manuscripts in a single day. That’s in excess of 7000 submissions annually. The stringent guidelines for submission exist largely to cut down this number, by immediately eliminating those would-be writers that cannot follow the explicit instructions on the publisher or agent’s website.

The really telling figure however, is that among the 3000 odd manuscripts that are left after the filtration process of immediately rejecting those that don’t fit the submission guidelines, around 10 manuscripts will be accepted for that year. 10 manuscripts, out of 3000 odd. I’ll let that number sink in.

Furthermore, those 10 are not necessarily the best books out of the 3000 we discussed earlier. They just happen to be the ones that passed through various hands and reached approval at various stages. There are a thousand and one factors that could go into the decision to accept any given book or story. Including whether or not the very first reader to pick up your manuscript at the agency/publisher was feeling receptive to your story/writingstyle/concept/market potential/etc.

And editors and editorial staff get it wrong frequently enough for it to not surprise anyone. I don’t think they pretend otherwise either. Good books will slip through the cracks. Bad ones will slip through the wrong crack. Misjudgments will be made.

To bring this to point, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling’s jaw dropping success, was rejected by more or less every major publisher in London before being signed on by Bloomsbury. Harry Potter. Which is more widely read than the Christian bible. This clearly shows that editors and readers of the ‘slushpile’ (which is the mountainous stack of manuscripts piled in the offices at my favorite publisher Tor, and others like them all over the world) are not infallible and do make mistakes.

And that illustrates another point as well: The published books, and the successful ones (note: published is not the same as successful) have very little to do with talent. That is not to say that it takes not talent to publish a book, or that there is no talent involved in books being successful.

Just that, in my opinion, there are hundreds of better writers and thousands of better books than J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, with not even a tenth of the success. Some things are just hard to predict.

Ultimately, the point of all of this is that in order to be a published novelist (not a successful one, merely a published one), one needs to beat a hugely stacked deck. Publishers have more material going to them than they can possibly handle, and will always be reluctant to take risks on unknown writers. They make their money off the bestsellers, and in the vast majority of cases, big names fill those list. Names that are already established.

Life, in short, is hard for a fledgling writer. The odds of some kind of success, terribly long.

And I personally don’t have the time or patience to wait up to six months for various people to reject me for reasons both valid and invalid, I don’t have five years of my time to put into writing and polishing ten books till one of them hits the lucky zone on the lucky day and fits just right in whatever the publisher needs at that point in time. And this isn’t pessimism. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a writer that hasn’t been rejected a dozen times over before finally making it to some admittance.

Hence this.

As a musician (yes, I’m a musician), I have struggled through an industry with a similar design. The breakthrough of talent, the exposure it requires, the dynamics between record labels and artists (publishers and writers), is all very familiar to me. And in this day of music piracy and hard economic times, musicians need to adapt and show a flexibility they never dreamed they’d need when they started off with dreams of bright lights and a multitude of screaming sycophants.

So too, perhaps, does the writer.

I’ll write more on this some other day.

“Deceived, I was!” Mashal exclaimed, “Tricked! The lure of gold. Aros, Aros, my greatest friend, he offered me a hundred and fifty SOLONS! I poured him wine. It was done.”

“Gods burn you, he spilled a little gold and you let your brains leak out your arse.” Aros snapped.

Mashal drew himself up, protesting. “A little gold? A little gold, you say? A hundred and fifty solons will buy half this wretched kingdom, you old sand-bitch! And it is so: If I had known, if I had even imagined…”

“It didn’t occur to you to – ask – before you took the money?”

Mashal’s immense girth shifted uncomfortably at that. “It was hot. The sun would have driven any man blind. And the gold, we must not be forgetting the gold.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever known you to forget that, Uncle,” smiled Feren, then, turning to her father, “I thought the place was a myth? Another one of those travelers’ tales, maybe a glorified ruin somewhere.”

Aros stared at his daughter. In his mind’s eye, he could see the stand of willows upon the hill, could hear the clip of iron-clad hooves upon stony ground. Beyond the grove, he remembered, lay the valley, and in the valley, Ellemond. He shook his head free of the memory.

“No, no myth,” he found himself saying.

“It is so,” agreed Mashal, “Together, we gazed upon the place of ruin. Ellemond is real, sweetling. Too real. And that is why he has come to us, this Sepherrin. ‘You have gazed upon Ellemond,’ he says to me, and by your mother’s eyes, it is so. But Mashal was young then, and great. Now he is old, and only his belly remains great.”

“Aye,” Aros said, growing wearier by the minute. “That, and his greed.”

Mashal leaned forward, spreading his hands before Aros, “Your friend is not perfect, truth-speaker. He is frail like all men. He is not so brave as you, nor so admired. But he will go to this place, he is bound. For our friendship, let him not go alone!”

Feren touched his arm, “Is it truly so bad?”

“It is,” said Aros, rubbing his thumbs against his temples, “A bloody nightmare. We turned back before we could even hail the barren walls.”

“It is a place of sorrow, little one,” said Mashal, his eye lingering on Aros, “A place it seems, that I will venture alone. Oh, Aros, old friend. This place is distant and frightening. Do not refuse me, else It may be my last refusal.”

“He’s paid you a hundred and fifty bloody solons,” said Aros, letting his weary hand fall to the tabletop. “I don’t think this time, there will be a turning back.”

Mashal blanched, but shook his head, “You are a mercenary still, Aros. Your honor is a corpse! But not Mashal Angranosti. The wine was poured. I go.”

“You great fool of an ox, don’t you remember?” cried Aros, a sinking feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. He hated that feeling. It always meant bad things to come. “How can you go back?”

Stiff backed, Mashal rose. Aros had seen that mulish look on his face before. The large man would not be persuaded. “I can and I will. On these two feet that the gods saw fit to give me. Goodnight, Aros Allendi.”

Gritting his teeth, Aros could only watch as the big man lumbered away. Mashal was a fool, ten times over. He was a fool Aros did not wish to lose. But for all the affection Aros bore the great pig of a man, he was fonder still of his own life, his own sanity. He did not follow Mashal as he stalked from the marble terrace.

Feren’s voice was detached, curious, as if nothing in the world were the matter. “Will he go, do you think?”

“Aye, that he will,” said Aros, feeling the bile rise in his throat, “The wine has been poured.”

“He’s your friend,” she said simply, brown eyes studying her father.

“One I’ll surely miss, but I’ll not have you orphaned before your wedding for Mashal’s sake. He’s a fool. Thrice damn the man, he’s a fool.”

“Father-“ she began.

He banged his fist onto the table, rattling the crystal goblets. “I said I’m not going, Feren. That’s all.”

She studied him with those cool brown eyes, and perhaps he might have caught a glint of reproach there. Or maybe it was just the little seed of a thought that was already growing in him. The troubling thought that he might just have abandoned his oldest friend to that terrible place.

“Excuse me,” said Feren, as she rose from her seat. Aros nodded, quiet.

He watched her disappear past the struggling hedge, dying now for want of water in this blistering heat. And then he was alone, save for the oppressive weight of a cloudy sky above him, and not a star to mar the inky blackness.

So many years ago, Aros remembered, the night that party crested the hill before Ellemond.

That night too had been forsaken by the stars.

. . .

Previous: Part 1: Mashal

Next: Part 3: Jordan

It was summer in Angranost, and wise things kept well into the shade. Even here, beneath the shelter of his sturdy canvas roof, Mashal’s sweat soaked rivers through the thin fabric of his silken shirt. A stale wind blew at his form, propelled by the fan-wielding slave to his left. The wretch had been laboring steadily since dawn brought the accursed summer sun. Mashal could have sent him away, for all the good it did him.

Heaving a huge sigh, Mashal squinted out into the afternoon haze, as he had done a hundred times before. The wide street was barren, and only heat-swollen faces stared back at him from awnings across the road. Not a bird flew overhead, and not even the scuff of a worn slipper could be heard marring the stillness of the road.

Cursed summer. Damned cursed summer. How was a man to ply his trade when the sun drove away all custom? Mashal had risen late this morning, and missed the traffic that braved the cooler hours. Now, he had only the flies, the scribes, and the slaves to keep him company.

Flies, scribes, and slaves did not run a caravan. They did not fill Mashal’s coffers with gold. They did not send his ships and his horses and his sand-beasts reaching out to distant cities. And what would the world do without trade? What would the world do without Mashal Angranosti?

“By my mother’s eyes,” said he, “This summer will be the death of us all. Why, even the whores do not prosper.”

“The Crones say that the Golden Summer has come at last, Master,” said the man that plied the peacock-feather fan. “They say they have seen the omens.”

“So they have said,” agreed Mashal. “As they had said the year before. And the year before that. And the one before that. And so they shall say till they are dust and I am a poor man, but the Golden Summer does not come. This one too, shall pass.”

“As you say, Master,” said the slave, uncertainty tainting his voice. Mashal glanced at the man, irritated. This nonsense had been doing the rounds, as it did every year. The fabled Golden Summer, the season to end all seasons, and as the sun grew hotter in the sky, the whispers of it would rise from the thirsty mouths of the Angranosti.

This year, the sun had been particularly hot, and the whispers had been particularly loud. It was common to see prophets of doom on the broad avenues, crying warnings and urging piety before the end.

Fools and swindlers, the lot of them. The Golden Summer would never come.

No, that it would not, but glancing out at the gleam of the sun on the stones of the vacant plaza, even the memory of moisture having been burned from their rough surfaces, Mashal had to wonder. Seventeen men had died the day before, and a sand-beast as well. A sand-beast! True, the fool of a handler had left it confined too long, but still. There was something vicious about this season. Perhaps a trip to the Green Isles might not be so terrible. Business was horrendous, this late in the season, and it was unlikely to pick up before the summer waned.

“Mashal Angranosti.”

Mashal looked up. He must have fallen asleep, lulled by the afternoon’s haze. He had not heard the man’s approach. He was tall, and rail thin, this pale stranger. His hair was dark in the Ardal fashion, black as pitch, worn long. He bore no hood, though a cloak hung from his body like a sheet hung out to dry.

“Mashal Angranosti,” he agreed, rising to his feet, “Master of Horse and Sail. Be welcome in my house.”

The stranger stepped past the awning and into the blessed shade. He did not seem to notice the heat, his pale features did not bear the burn of the sun. Deeper into the shade he ventured, before seating himself, almost abruptly.

Grey eyes, Mashal noticed. The clothing the trader could not place, which was odd. There were few places under the sun (or the shade) where Mashal had not traveled, few people with which he was unfamiliar. This man could have been a pauper or a prince, Mashal did not know. And so, as in all things business, he proceeded with courtesy, and caution.

He beckoned a slave, and the man rose from his work at the back, bearing a fan for this new visitor. “Tell me! What is your name? What do you wish to move, and where do you wish it taken? My caravans run the world corner to corner, and there are no waters that my ships do not sail. Speak the name, Mashal Angranosti will see to your shipments as if they were his own.”

“I have no goods that you must ship,” said the stranger, without pause.

“What?” Mashal’s smile froze, then vanished, beady eyes squinting at the man. There would be no business this day. The Green Isles, he thought, seemed more pleasing every moment. “Then why have you come? Speak quickly! The sun is hot.”

“There is a place I must visit. I wish for you to take me.”

“So!” Mashal snorted, turning to the awning to gesture the man out. The slave had already stopped waving the fan, moving back to his work. “You think me a Sand-guide. Not so. Now, if you will-“

The sound of the bag falling to the wooden floor interrupted him. It was a sound Mashal knew well, had heard often. It was the sound of gold. As if to hammer the point, a single golden disc spilled from the open top to spin askew on the floorboards before coming to a halt.

“A hundred and fifty golden solons,” the pale stranger said, the sweatless.

Slowly, warily, Mashal lowered himself into a chair, looking from the coin on the floor to the man who had dropped it. Unbidden, the fan-bearer returned, sweeping the peacock feathers not far from the dark-haired head.

“A thousand pardons, good master,” said Mashal, cautious, licking his lips, “But that is quite a sum. For this gold, Mashal Angranosti’s fleet could sail from here to the shores of Akaba.”

“There will be only one ship. And I shall be its cargo,” said the other man.

“Yes! Yes, of course,” said Mashal, golden teeth glittering in the too-bright sunlight reflected off the road beyond the awning, “We shall sail together in my own vessel. Ah, but she is a fine ship, gilt in the trim and velvet in the cabins. We shall have the best, the best of foods, the best of wine, and the best of women! Her captain is a Sonaren pirate – now reformed of course – but a swifter boat you will not find.”

A hundred and fifty golden solons! A king’s ransom; no! A queen’s.

“Wine!” Mashal cried, flapping his large, ring-infested hands at his servants, “Wine, I say! And fruit. I have a crate of blood peels from Jurani. They will redden your tongue and enliven your senses. Wine for Master…” Mashal paused, looking to the stranger, “Master…?”

“Sepherrin.”

“Master Sepherrin. Good. Good!” he said, as a goblet appeared in his hand, glistening with life-giving moisture. “And where are we going? Dunwick? Arstan? Name a city! Mashal Angranosti’s banner flies there!”

For the first time, the mask that was Sepherrin’s face cracked, enough to allow a smile. He uttered but one word.

“Ellemond.”

Mashal’s cup made a hollow sound as it fell to the ground.

. . .

Next Part 2: Aros