by Rye Sobo
I saw a drill that my father once showed me to help train. I would stand in the library conjuring illusions of a ship sailing on the sea.
“Our agoti is only so strong,” he said. “Every arcanist can only control the Fabric for so long before the agoti breaks. The process of using the arcane arts is draining on a person.”
I would conjure the ship for hours. Sometimes it would sail past beautiful islands, others thrashed by the winds. Sometimes, the ship beset by creatures of the deep, would fight to stay afloat.
When I held my illusion, as real as the world around me, he had me stand nude in the library, to force me to maintain my focus. When I held my sebi while nude in a crowded room, he would have me juggle while maintaining my illusion, strengthening the sebi and the agoti. When I had mastered juggling five balls amid a raging tempest, he brought out a wire-thin birch branch and beat me with it.
The first time the switch broke my skin, my illusion collapsed. He would have me refocus and create the illusion again. Again he would strike me with the branch until he crossed my back with welts.
After I could control my sebi with the branch, he brought three of his apprentices. Each apprentice had a wooden training sword to swing at me while I maintained the illusion and juggled the five balls.
Every span he added another apprentice with a sword. After ten apprentices with wooded swords attacked and I could maintain my focus, he brought in the archmage of battle magic. Master Nami was a beast of a dwarven warrior, trained in a thousand ways to kill a person. Master Nami swung at me with a cat-o’-nine-tails as the apprentices stuck me with the wooden swords. My sebi was a rock. My agoti was iron. They bloodied my body but could not touch my mind.
I asked my father what it would take to meet his approval.
The ethereal gnome with silver-gray hair and sparkling blue eyes said, “My son, I’ve never trained an arcanist who juggled three balls and maintained an illusion.”
I gathered my clothes, and too bruised and bloody to dress without the sting of a thousand wounds, walked naked from the library. I stepped through the large stone gates of the University and looked up to see the Black Keep in front of me. Then I collapsed.
***
“Sweet Mother!” I heard Cort say. It startled me awake. “The streets, you were—can you—create anything like that?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You had created a vision—a thing. It was a city street. I saw the black castle and the white castle.”
“You saw that?”
“That was amazing!” Cort said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
In my slumber I had cast an illusion of my dreams, filling the room with the shapes in my mind.
“It’s not something I always do,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done it before. I’m sorry.”
After a moment I added, “could you do me a favor, not tell anyone I was casting illusions in my sleep. The other arcanists will not have the same reaction you did.”
“Yeah sure,” Cort said as he climbed into his rack. “Can you make anything appear?”
“If I know what it looks like,” I said. “Otherwise I would just have to create something.”
“Like a dragon?”
“I’ve seen those before.”
“You have?”
“Sure, they fly over the city.”
“I guess I haven’t spent much time in the city.”
“You’ll see them some day.”
“Hey, Ferrin?” Cort said, his voice slid toward slumber.
“Yeah.”
“Why were you bleeding in your dream?”
“That’s a long story.”
I stared at the overhead as it swayed back and forth. After a few moments I heard Cort snore.
I didn’t understand what the dream meant. I never trained like that. Sure, I practiced illusions, but the juggling, and the fighting? None of that ever happened. I never could control my sebi for longer than a few minutes. I had trouble pulling the yili from the proper sources; it was the reason I stuck with illusory magic. As for agoti? I think my time on the ship already proved how weak that trait was.
I lie in my hammock and swayed in time with the heaving ship. I wondered what would happen when we reached port. Captain Azpa believed me, but would the Watch? Would anyone else?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Life aboard the ship was one of routine. The hammock I slept in helped improve my tolerance of the sway of the ship and after a full day of labor I found sleep easy. So when the crewman on duty overnight pounded on the cabin door in the morning to announce dawn I was not pleased.
The Captain expected both Cort and me to be in the officers’ mess within a mark past reveille. It helped that young Cort didn’t have a hair on his chin, so I could shave while he dressed. It was several days before I felt comfortable with a blade to my face while the Fritzbink pitched about.
Cort would leave to use the head while I cleaned and dressed. If I was lucky, I could scrape the previous day’s stubble off, don the dark blue tunic of the company officer corps, and make it to the head before Sergeant Leon could unleash an unholy conjuration in the small, cramped space.
Once dressed, it was up the ladder and across the main deck to the large cabin that took up the whole of the stern main deck, composed of the officers’ mess and the Captain’s quarters. The officers used the opportunity to discuss the operations of the day, where we were along our course, and what tasks to do by the end of the day. Between the meal and the discussion, breakfast lasted a full turn. The slow pace of the morning breakfast allowed an added turn to get my bearings. I don’t believe in my entire life I had ever awoken at dawn though I had heard passing tale of its existence.
After our morning meal and daily briefing, I spent two turns with Claudio as he tried to teach basic navigation to Cort and me. While I had a comfortable understanding of the charts and could plot a course with some competence, I soon discovered that I was useless beyond hope with a sextant.
At the third turn past dawn, Sergeant Leon worked with the junior officers on sword fighting.
That’s an oversimplification of what happened. It’s more correct to say Sergeant Leon batted us around like a bored cat does to a mouse he intended to devour.
Since I was half the size of anyone on the crew, weapon choices were straight forward for me. I couldn’t even raise a cutlass, let alone swing one; that left me to use a small dagger for weapons training. With the smaller weapon, and almost no reach, I had to move to a perilous distance to fight Reno. Close enough, in fact, to allow the Master-at-Arms’ large boot to connect with my chest and sent me sprawled on the deck. Each time either Cort or I would plant on the deck, Reno would let out his deep, menacing laugh. When he felt he had wiped the deck with the two small men, the Master-at-Arms called for Jabnit, the orcish deckhand, who worked with us on fighting stances and blade technique.
Midday meant a much-needed break for meals. The twelve members of the crew, save whoever had the watch, ate in the crew’s galley below deck. The officers gathered in the mess on the main deck for a quick meal and an update of the day’s tasks. As Cort promised, the early days of the voyage the meals included bread, fruits, and something that could pass as a stew or chowder. A tankard of ale was common at each meal. On occasion, a crewman would catch fish which they would add to the menu for both crew and officers alike.
After the meal, I reported to Lieutenant Bitar on the quarterdeck. While she gained no joy in my inability to determine directions, I think she enjoyed having someone join her for watch on the quarterdeck. After two or three days, I could tell larboard from starboard and bow from stern. As long as she was there to correct my constant mistakes, I was a competent sailor. Almost.
My watch on the quarterdeck was two turns under the midday sun. After that much time in the sun, a trip below deck to study Biomancy with Flores was a blissful reprieve.
A skilled healer on a ship the size of the Delilah F
ritzbink was unheard of outside of the Southern Empire Trading Company. If I had to guess, I’d wager the doctor got a cut of the earnings at least equal to the Captain. But a crew with few injuries or illness was well worth the costs, according to my mother.
Burns, cuts, and food illness were common ailments aboard the ship. Cort told me that in rough seas and high winds a sailor could fall from the rigging and break his legs, and a snapped line could sever a limb. This time of year severe storms were an unheard-of occurrence in this part of the Azurean Sea.
Tomas tried to teach me the mechanics of Biomancy. The trick of life magic, as he explained it, was that you had to use the yili of the patient to manipulate the Fabric. He said the life energy of the patient was better for tending to wounds because there was a stronger connection with the body than an external source. He then spent a mark explaining how an external yili, if not controlled, could cause worse injuries. If a healer used an external energy source, the caster risked overpowering the spell, a mistake that could rip the patient’s flesh from the bone.
Doctor Flores explained that if I focused, I could sense the yili of the person. He said it was like a ball of energy inside their chest. This was the yili the healer could tap into, the yili of the patient.
“This is all there is to healing,” he said. “You find the patient’s yili, and you remove their ailment, provided you have the correct spell to focus your agoti.”
He handed me a large, leather-bound tome. On the cover was the word Medela and the outstretched hand within a circle, symbol of Carnum, the god of health and patron of healers.
“I expect you to study this during your time here and in the evenings,” Tomas said.
Before I could protest, Fawz Khouri knocked on the door to the doctor’s cabin. Fawz was an accomplished angler and ship’s cook, Majid, often him assigned to catch the fish that extended our fresh stores. Embedded into meat of his right hand, just below the thumb, he had a large, barbed fishing hook.
The doctor bid him enter and offered him the chair. As Fawz took a seat, Flores motioned to tend to the crewman’s wound.
“Remember to find his yili. Too much energy could rip his hand from his body,” the doctor said as he took the book he had handed me and thumbed through to a wound closure incantation.
Fawz sat straight in the chair, eyes wide as a dinner plate.
“You know, I feel much better,” Fawz said. He stood up to leave. “Thank you for your time.”
I encouraged him to sit back down. As he did, I yanked the hook from his hand.
“Not anymore,” he screamed.
I concentrated on Fawz’s breathing, on the blood running down his hand. His yili surged bright and warm in his chest. It pulsed with each beat of his heart. I concentrated on the pulsing energy and set my sebi on his hand. With a quick look over to the tome Tomas had placed on the bed, I recited the incantation and willed the wound closed. Fawz breathed faster as the skin pulled together, the Fabric sealed his injury.
“Perhaps he will have a small scar,” Tomas said. “But very good.”
I did that. I willed his wound close and it closed. It was an immense rush.
The peace of Tomas’ cabin was a welcome respite from the constant action of the crew on deck, the taunts and beatings Reno administered every morning and the hours in the sun.
Except for the few moments when asked to help tend to a wound, I sat quiet on a rum barrel in the corner of the cabin and read the Medela.
Three turns in the infirmary always seemed to pass faster than my watch on the quarterdeck. After my medical training, Tomas and I would climb the ladder to the main deck, the sky a mix of deep reds shifting to purples and blue, and head to the officers’ mess for supper and another briefing.
***
After dinner, Cort and I joined Claudio on the quarterdeck for navigation by the stars. Back home in Drakkas Port, there was always some form of activity no matter the hour of the night. Ships arrived and departed, stevedores loaded and unloaded the ships, shepherds herded sheep through town from farms south of town to the harbor, and prostitutes and priests were busy with their trades.
The constant state of activity meant there were always arcane lamps, often known as mage lamps, burning throughout the city, casting a warm golden glow on the residents. In the middle of the Azurean Sea, the dim red deck lamps were the only light visible to the horizon.
Without the wash golden light from the city, a thousand stars joined the few I knew, more than I had ever seen before. For the first time in my life, I saw the night sky as it was, studded with countless stars and two fat, oblong moons, Pateran and Matera.
I wish I could tell you that as I stood on the quarterdeck of the Delilah Fritzbink, under the light of countless stars, I understood what it means to be a sailor, that I took up the astrolabe with a mastery unseen on the seas. But I was far worse with the astrolabe than I was with the sextant. And more than anything I wanted to perch next to the hearth at the Rusty Sextant and tell stories stolen from old sailors and flirt with merchants’ daughters.
After two turns of trying to figure out which plates to use in the astrolabe, Captain Azpa dismissed Cort and I. After a day of honest work, the kind I tried to avoid at all costs in my life, I found the soothing sway of the hammock comforting and quickly fell asleep. The morning knock would soon start the process all over again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the dark of my cabin, I dreamed of home, my family’s home. It was a palatial manor-house my mother gained after the collapse of the empire, where I was reared by a dwarven governess.
I dreamed of when I was a child, how I loved to sit on my father’s lap in his study and listen to tales of the heroes in the Age of Legend. He would pull out his meerschaum pipe, carved into the shape of a dragon and toasted to a golden hue from decades of use.
Ignis would stuff the pipe with the tobacco Duk brought him from Merrywood. He would puff on the pipe as he thumbed through a tome looking for the right page as a thick cloud of sweet-smelling smoke circled his head. When he found his place, he would nod his head and say, “right then.”
While my passion for adventure came from my mother, the stories I learned from my father fueled it. Father seemed to take pride in teaching. As with many children of five summers, teaching came in the form of stories with hidden lessons. Other children heard moral stories, like the dog that refused to help his friend and was scorned by the gods—a feeble attempt to instill obedience at a young age. Ignis read for me the histories of legendary heroes and their heroic deeds. I would sit in rapt silence as he told me about the orphan who killed a king, the many bloody wars of the dragon lords, and the slave that became a hero to his people. I loved the story of the young woman with the white hair, how she saved the gods and brought magic back to her people.
But my favorite story was the story of Pallum the Gnome.
***
Pallum was a farmer who was the son of a farmer in a small village on the southern side of what we now know as Greater Auster. This was long before they founded Drakkas Port, when Fortis was still a small fishing village.
After long days of toiling in the fields, Pallum would sit at the door of his hut and watch as the dragons returned from their hunting to their roosts in the Stormreach Mountains. He often thought about how wonderful it would be to fly great distances like the dragons, see beyond the farms and fields, across the sea, where they had to have gone.
One day, as he sat watching the dragons, he said to himself, “If I could catch one of those dragons, I could fly beyond the farmlands and the ocean and see where the dragons go when they fly away.”
The next morning, Pallum filled a small sack with a fistful of nuts, three apples, a wedge of cheese, and half a loaf of bread and set off not to the fields but toward the mountains. He had no idea how far the mountains were from his home, or how long it would take him to get there, or even what he was to do once he got to wherever it was he headed.
He had known no one
to have gone to the Stormreach and returned, no one foolish enough to attempt it. The mountains were towering peaks of craggy, red stone that reached from where the sun rose in the east to where it set in the west. On most days they could not see the tops of the mountains through the clouds. When they could, ice and snow capped the mountains.
Among the craggy, red cliffs lived a colony of red dragons. In the spring the dragons would fly down from their peaks and devour an entire flock of sheep in a pasture. Often the dragon would devour the shepherd. Shepherding was never a popular job in those times as a result, relegated to thieves and captured raiders.
The towering peaks that reached the sky and the gnome-eating beasts were not the worst part of the mountains. The Stormreach Mountains were also home to a fearsome warrior race of people known as the dwarves.
Dwarves are born to be combatants. It is said they leave their infants on a cliff face and only those strong enough to crawl their way back to the Enclave are raised to be warriors, the rest considered too weak for the tribe. As soon as the dwarven young are old enough to hold a stick, they train. Battlemasters then rank boys and girls, both expected to become warriors, based on their ability. At the top of the ranking was the king of the Enclave. Any dwarf that felt they had a better claim to a rank could challenge the occupant to a blood duel for the honor.
If the ferocity of the dwarves was ever questioned, suffice it to say the dragons found the gnomes in the valley far below a better prospect for a meal than the dwarves on the next cliff over.
Despite the dwarven warriors, and the cloud piercing cliffs, and the dragons’ appetite for gnomes, Pallum set out for the mountains. After two spans of walking through fields and forests, past villages and farms, he arrived at the foot of the Stormreach Mountains. Looming above him, the red, craggy cliffs stretched up into the clouds.
