Ramagar yawned, rubbed at his tired eyes. “Haven’t you slept yet?” he asked, looking at the captain slouched over his table, his brow furrowed with his work.
“Not yet, Ramagar. Later. I haven’t time to rest now; at least not until I set our new course and make certain of just where we’re heading.”
The thief stood up moodily, scratching at his matted beard, feeling the burning sensation come back to his shoulder. Looking about, he took note for the first time of the stacks of delicate equipment the sailor kept: tools housed in a leather chest, books stacked in boxes and atop wooden shelves, specially constructed brass casings for his more private possessions.
“And where does it seem like we are?” asked the thief, breaking a long silence in which Osari had eagerly returned to his charts. The captain replied by running his finger along the crude but easily recognizable lines of the coast far north of Kalimar and the East.
“See this?” said Osari, tapping his finger at some peninsula wedged between two large islands. “With a good wind, and if our single remaining mast holds, we can make Tarta by week’s end.”
Ramagar pursed his dry lips and nodded. “I’ve heard of it,” he said. “A rugged land, they say. Poor and backward —”
“Yes,” the captain agreed. “But Tarta has a port. A good one, if I recall. There we can at least berth and,” he shrugged, “I can sell my ship for scrap. As for you and your companions, I’m afraid you’ll have to find another ship to take you on to Cenulam. As much as I hate to say it, I fear I cannot complete the journey. But you’ll have no trouble. Tarta abounds with vessels headed for Cenulam. In fact, I have many friends there. I’ll have you placed aboard a fine boat. One better than mine, at any rate.” He sighed wistfully and frowned.
Ramagar felt the silence between them, a silence often found when friends are forced to part and never see one another again. He peered at the map beneath Osari’s hand, glanced at the numerous charts placed at either side. “And what land is this?” he asked suddenly, referring to a coast hundreds of leagues from where Cenulam lay.
“That? Oh, it has no name anymore, Ramagar. It’s nothing but desolate waste. Once, a long, long time ago, men called it Brittany, I believe. What became of it, I cannot say. But why do you ask? Your aim was to reach Cenulam, and that forsaken place is nowhere near …”
The two men looked at each other evenly, and Ramagar sighed. “May I be honest with you, Captain? In all truth I must tell that Cenulam is not, nor has it ever been, our true destination. Only a stopping place in the North from where our true goal can be reached.”
The captain looked at the thief with some surprise. ‘Then you’re not traveling with the haj to purchase stallions for breeding?”
Ramagar smiled thinly. “Hardly,” he replied. “Our real adventure barely begins at Cenulam. Or Tarta. Or any place for that matter.”
Captain Osari scratched his hair and shook his head. “Then where?”
“Have you ever heard of … Speca?”
The stare Ramagar received was one of astonishment. And then the mariner began to laugh. “My dear fellow, you must be joking! Speca? The Lost Kingdom?”
Ramagar moved his head slowly from side to side, eyes narrowed and face taut. “No, Captain. I’m not …”
“But there’s no such place, man! Surely you know that! It — it’s a fable. Like Atlantis, like so many other mysterious isles that men speak of at night to while away the hours.”
“You’re wrong,” said Ramagar firmly. “It does exist. As surely as Cenulam exists. As real as Kalimar.”
Captain Osari threw up his hands. “All right, you can believe it if you want — but listen to me, Ramagar. You’re wasting your time on a fool’s errand. Look here —” And he pulled out a different map from under the others, old and well worn around the edges. It claimed to show all of the Northern lands, indeed all of the globe in the Northern Hemisphere. “Here is Cenulam,” said Captain Osari, pointing to a finger-shaped peninsula set at the top of a broad continent “And here is the waste of Brittany to the west. See?”
Ramagar nodded. “I follow you. What about it?”
Osari moved his hand swiftly to the extreme North. “These are the Ice Lands,” he said, sweeping the pole of the top of the world. “Speca is said to be somewhere in between. But as you can see for yourself, there is nothing. Only the frozen sea for a thousand leagues on either side. Barren, Ramagar. No land at all, save perhaps for a few uncharted small islands inhabited by pelicans and seals. Cenulamian fishermen used to chart these waters often. Believe me, I know. My own father was such a fisherman … He stopped his speech abruptly and frowned.
“What’s the matter?” said Ramagar.
The captain closed his eyes, a saddened look upon his weatherbeaten features. “My father,” he said slowly, measuring his words. “My father used to sail those waters as I said.
And they tell me he died in them during an expedition twenty years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ramagar, moved by Captain Osari’s grief. “You must have loved him very dearly.”
The mariner nodded. “I did. But why even mention it? It bears no import to what I’ve been telling you.”
“Perhaps it does,” came a voice, and they both turned to see the yellow-haired Prince standing in the open doorway. “Forgive me,” he said. “I did not mean to overhear, but I woke up and came to look for you.”
The captain dismissed the matter with a quick gesture. “Come in, please,” he said. “You may as well listen to what I’ve been saying. This quest of yours to Speca —”
“How did your father die?” asked the Prince, cutting the captain off curtly and making the mariner feel somehow uncomfortable.
“When the other ships came home they said my father’s ship was lost,” said Osari. “They searched for a week, I’m told. But the ice was thickening and winter was near; they had to return. In the black they could see nothing …”
Ramagar’s eyes widened; he shared a knowing look with the Prince. “What do you mean by ‘the black’?” he asked.
The sailor from Cenulam shrugged. “No mariner can properly explain it,” he conceded. “But in those waters, some hundreds of leagues from Brittany, there is a vast unknown darkness. Some ships have tried to master it, sail past to the Western Continents, but none have ever succeeded.” Osari tugged nervously at his earlobe. “It’s as if, as if …”
“As if the night never recedes?” questioned the Prince. “As if even in summer that place remains cold and dismal and a ship cannot see past its own bow?”
“Why, yes!” Captain Osari was both startled and shaken at what the Prince had said. “But how did you know. Surely you’ve never been there — ?”
“No man can go there,” replied the Prince darkly. “Those who try will never return. It is obvious to me now that your father must have tried.”
Osari nodded sadly. “Tried and failed, yes. You’re right. But I still don’t understand how you know all this. Who told you of this darkness in the middle of the ocean? This abyss where the boldest sea captain will not dare to trespass?”
The Prince folded his arms and gazed at the small pools of dark water which still lay at his feet. “I know because it is my home — the home to which I must return.”
Osari was incredulous. But then he recalled the flaming blue dagger and its secret powers, and knew that the man who possessed it was no common man. He was either a devil or a saint, and the captain had frankly not yet decided which.
“Home?” he queried at last. “You would call that misbegotten black ocean your home?”
The Prince shifted his gaze to the map, saying, “Point out the area of black ocean.” The captain was quick to comply with the request, circling a broad area with the palm of his hand, an area that encompassed virtually a quarter of the Western Sea. “All this,” he said soberly, “is where even our best ships must circumnavigate. Where, as you said a moment ago, the night never recedes.”
“And th
is is the very place where I and my companions are compelled to journey,” the Prince told him sharply. “You see, your maps cannot detail it because no mapmaker has been able to chart it — nor will it be charted until the Dark is forever removed and the evil it brings destroyed once and for all. Under those grim tides of Darkness lies the fair and gentle land of my fathers: the Lost Kingdom of Speca.”
The captain noticeably paled. “It can’t be!” he protested. “It — it isn’t possible. Our ships would have found it!”
The Prince shook his head. “The conquerors of Speca will not allow it. They will destroy any who try.”
“But Speca cannot exist! Maybe once —”
“Scholars never denied its existence,” the Prince was quick to point out. “And ancient artifacts believed to be Specian are highly valued throughout the world.”
The captain fell silent, reflecting on these truths. The broken ship was creaking, but creaking with the soft reassurance of its sturdiness. This, the wind against the sails, and the lapping of waves against the prow were all that could be heard as the Prince drew the scimitar and held it out in his open hand. “Here is Speca,” he whispered. “Here is the very embodiment of a proud nation bound by chains that must at last be broken.” He looked down at the map the captain had provided and stared gloomily at the configuration of emptiness set west of the isle called Brittany. “The sailing directions for Speca are quite clear,” he observed. “First west, then north. Past Cenulam, past Brittany. Until the cold prevailing winds are reached and the eternal night shrouds our ship like a blanket.”
Captain Osari drew a breath. “Then you really are serious about this venture?” he asked. For a moment he studied the stern faces of the men beside him and realized that his question need never have been asked. “Of course you know that finding a ship to take you there will not be easy,” he added. “None that I know of, either from Cenulam or other faring lands, will dare the risk.”
The Prince clasped his hands behind his back and nodded glumly. “Unfortunately, you’re probably right, even though I would offer every single sailor who accompanied us a healthy share of Speca’s great wealth.”
It was then that Ramagar put his hand on the captain’s shoulder, and said, “My friend and I discussed the matter earlier, Captain Osari, and we are agreed. We want to ask you to join forces with us; help guide us to this foul blackness that slowly spreads over the world. Make our quest your own …”
Osari’s jaw hung. “Me?” he stammered. “Come with you to Speca?”
Both men nodded seriously as the mariner stared. And then the captain broke into loud laughter. “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Please! I am flattered you would ask — but look about you. I am a ruined man. My ship could never make such a voyage, and even if she were repaired, where will I find a crew to sail her? A dozen creditors already demand all I have — if not my head. You see, going with you, even if I wanted to, is totally out of the question.”
“Think,” said the Prince, “what you could do with the fortune I offer for your help. You would have enough for a fleet of ships, Captain. A port full of them. And I do not ask you to die for my cause; only take us there and wait for our return.”
Osari seemed to mull it over for a time, then he shook his head. “It … wouldn’t be possible. I am a mariner, gentlemen. I know the sea and the wind. I navigate by the stars at night and the azimuth of the sun by day. And I also know that certain death awaits anyone who enters the blackness of the Western Sea.”
“Yet your own father was bold enough to try,” said the Prince. “Daring enough to sail where few men have been before, to win both fame and glory, honor to his name and wealth enough to make a king envious.”
“My father is dead,” remarked the sailor dryly.
Ramagar’s face tightened. “Then aid us if only to avenge him. Believe me, he died an untimely death, murdered no doubt by those who possess the very evil we seek to destroy. Would not your father want as much?”
There was quiet as Captain Osari slowly lifted his gaze heavenward, his eyes smoldering with bitter memory of the day he received the shattering news. “Yes,” he whispered. “My father would want it so, I think …” Then he frowned and shook his head again. “But how can I even consider it? The Vulture is a broken ship. It would take a king’s ransom right now to repair her properly for such a monumental voyage. And frankly, my friends, I haven’t a single copper to my name. Not to mention the difficulty I would have in enlisting a crew with no money to offer.”
“Your ship will be repaired to your satisfaction,” assured the Prince. “We’ll see to it in Tarta.”
Osari looked at him curiously. “How? With what? A hold full of spoiled spices?”
Ramagar smiled, gaining great satisfaction from what he was about to say. “Have you forgotten your cook, Captain?” he said. “Oro left a small chest filled with gold on board, to pay for the mutineers. But now the hunchback must be as dead as the others, swept away during the storm, I assume. But his gold remains intact somewhere near his quarters. All we have to do is find it and it will be ours for the taking.”
The captain from Cenulam was amazed. As mad as this whole scheme seemed, he was on the verge of agreeing heart and soul. The thought of a newly fitted ship excited him as much as the chance for adventure — the kind he had never known. Add to that a full crew of the best sailors, Cenulamian mariners, the finest in the world, and how could he refuse?
He sucked in air and grinned. “Count me in,” he said. “We’ll lay anchor at Tarta and have the ship repaired there. Then we’ll be on our way.”
Ramagar pursed his lips and nodded. “Fine. Then it’s agreed. But first, I think we had better locate that gold.”
It was close to dawn and the sky in the east was turning from a soft shade of wine to a golden crown capped with red. The seas were smooth, a few morning stars still shining in the west. The only sounds were those of mild breezes against the sails and the soft lapping of white-capped waves.
It was Ramagar’s turn to stand watch over the helm, and he did so sleepily, thinking of days to come with Mariana, peaceful days of sharing their lives, when all this was finally behind. He glanced up at the waning stars, recognized a few of the signs that Captain Osari had taught him: Orion, Polaris, landmarks to a sailor, well-greeted friends to help show the way. Ramagar stood fascinated and transfixed, with the wind rushing warmly against him and the taste of salt mildly upon his lips. On such a glorious and peaceful morning nothing disturbed him, not the throbbing in his bandaged shoulder nor the dreaded threat of Druid black magic. At this moment he was unafraid, in love, content to sail forever if need be with his good friends and constant companions.
Yes, on a morning like this, what could go wrong? What could possibly ruin his day? Ramagar tingled with the feel of the breeze and chuckled to himself, certain that the answer was nothing.
And then the helmsman suddenly appeared, making his way from the smashed hatchway and climbing to the bridge. He waved at young Homer, who was tackling with the halyards, then turned to greet the thief. “I’m to relieve you, Ramagar,” he said.
“Why? What’s the matter? I was supposed to be on duty until eight bells …”
The helmsman, a stout good-natured fellow with bright, intelligent eyes that attracted many a wench, pulled a face. “Captain’s orders. He wants you to report below right away.”
Ramagar’s brows furrowed deeply. “Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong,” replied the sailor with a shrug. “But maybe you’d better see for yourself. You’ll find everyone in the galley.” And with that, he took over the wheel, leaving the thief puzzled and a bit perturbed.
Ramagar made his way quickly down the splintery steps, splashing into shallow pools of seawater left over from the storm. At length he came to the end of the narrow corridor and found his companions gathered together as the helmsman had said. They stood in a half-circle, speaking in low, subdued tones. His first thought was that they had discovered th
e hidden gold. For two days they had turned the ship upside down in search of the chest, but all their efforts had been fruitless. Oro’s riches remained as elusive as ever. And there were few places left to look.
As he reached the door he heard the sound of sniveling, a familiar sound that unbalanced his calm. Bursting into the kitchen, he tripped over a disarray of pots and pans, then regained his balance and stood transfixed. To his total shock and chagrin he found himself face to face with Oro — the little hunchback standing rigid, his knees knocking together and his mouth twitching uncontrollably. At the sight of the thief, the cunning trader of stolen goods almost fainted. He cringed toward Captain Osari, tugging harshly at the mariner’s sleeve. “Please,” he wailed. “Don’t let him kill me! Don’t let the thief kill me!”
Ramagar stood livid, his face darkening and his eyes glowing like a cat’s.
“We found him hiding behind a wall,” muttered the haj distastefully, gesturing to the spot. “Evidently he fled and hid when the fight began and hoped we’d think him dead.” Ramagar sneered bemusedly at the ragged little man. “Playing possum, eh?”
Captain Osari sighed. “He’s posed a dilemma for us, Ramagar. By the laws of the sea I could have him hanged for his mutiny.” Here the hunchback began to whimper. “But seeing as he’s caused you more trouble than he has me, I thought I would let you decide what we should do.”
Ramagar’s reply was brief and curt. “Kill him. Slowly …”
Oro’s shoulders shook and tears formed in his beady eyes. He looked to Mariana, who was standing quietly against the counter, and pleaded, “Don’t let them do this! It’s not fair!”
The Thief of Kalimar; Captain Sinbad; Cinnabar Page 23
