When my fingers touched the glowing blue crystal, it left tiny bits of luminous liquid on my skin. I knew immediately that it was an Illdricyte crystal. These days, the Magisterium is in complete control of all sources of Illdricyte. They use the crystals to power their machinery—airships, weapons, etc. They were strictly controlled and regulated, and finding one in the middle of nowhere was unheard of. Yet, here it was.
I turned the chunk of crystal around, peering at it with a magnifying glass. I noticed small Deific markings running along the base of the crystal. All at once, I realized why Tiffin had been so excited. This was it. This was what we’d been looking for.
I can’t say we sprang into action and went right to the wreckage. After I learned of the exact location of the ship, I began making preparations for the long ride to the mountains. Scaling Mount Glavos, even partially, was no simple feat. I also learned that the ship was called the Shao Zhu, and was Shian in origin, only adding to the mystery, as the continent of Shin was two thousand miles to the south.
All told, it was two weeks before I was able to find time to leave the Acamedria, my other duties being too pressing to put on hold with no notice. Tiffin and I travelled by horse and cart to the base of Mount Glavos, where we met up with the overseer of the aqueduct project: a toad-faced man who called himself Marcus Decius.
There was an encampment set up on the eastern side of the mountain. Fourteen tents sat beside a limestone quarry, and further on were workers cutting down trees, presumably to use as braces for the aqueduct construction. After speaking with one of the workers and confirming I was at the right place, I pulled the wagon closer. We stopped only once on the way there, and had been riding for two days. Tiffin and I took the time to stretch our legs and take stock of our supplies and equipment.
The wagon was bursting with an unwise amount of supplies, and it was a wonder we hadn’t been robbed on the road. Some of it was quite expensive: maps and magnifying glasses, telescopes and translation wheels, and piles of books. I had so little information on what to expect, I had to plan for any eventuality.
Overseer Decius must’ve seen us right away, because while I was looking for the base to my brass telescope, the tiny, red-faced man charged at me. He was a full foot shorter than myself, and I’m of no great stature.
“I assume you lot are from the Acamedria,” he said, stepping within arm’s reach of me and tapping his foot on the loose earth. “How nice of you to finally join us.”
I realized he was being insincere, but shook his hand anyway and introduced myself. “Professor Caiden Rycroft, at your service, sir. This is my assistant, Tiffin Langdon. We’re looking forward to working with you.”
Decius pulled his hand away. “I’m not interested in working with you. Unfortunately, the Senate has made it clear to me that I have no choice.” He took a hard breath, and muttered to himself, “They want the aqueduct completed in one year, but every time we stumble across an old clay pot, we’ve got to halt construction until one of you intellectual pansies can come up and tell us we can continue. What a crock of shit.”
“The Senate wants to ensure that our heritage is protected,” I said placatingly. “We can’t go around destroying ancient sites.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a four-year-old. We both know the Senate is just afraid of an Old God device going unclaimed. But in all these years, nobody has ever found one in Celosa. Do you know why? Because there are none in Celosa. We’re not Endra, and we never will be.”
“But,” Tiffin said before I could respond, “the ship is Shian. It could have something valuable on it. We have to be sure.”
Decius rolled his eyes. “I suppose it’s a moot point. You lot are in charge, and we can’t continue the project until you give us the go-ahead.”
I smiled at that. “I’m glad you understand the situation so well,” I said, more than a little glibly. “And I’m sure you’re going to give me full cooperation, and do your very best to not be an obstacle. It’d be a shame if we had to postpone the aqueduct another six months, wouldn’t it?”
Overseer Decius stared daggers into me, but nodded. “You’ll have my full cooperation.”
I patted him on the shoulder like one might pat a dog. “Marvelous. Now, if your men wouldn’t mind, we’ve quite a bit of equipment to carry. A bit of help would speed things up tremendously.”
Chapter Four
Mount Glavos
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not an outdoorsy sort of person. Therefore, let it be no surprise when I say the hike up Mount Glavos was, in a word, horrendous. Mosquitos the size of grapefruits, snakes hanging from vines, and the “path” to the top was littered with broken branches and overturned trees. I expected it to get colder as we climbed the mountain, but it got curiously warmer.
Tiffin was dressed in a light gray shirt and shorts, her hair was tied up, and she had a cloth band around her forehead. She seemed to be approaching our trek as a challenge or exercise.
Meanwhile, I was sweating like a pig. I shot a look at her. “At least you dressed right,” I said, tugging at my thick collar.
“Glavos is an active volcano,” Tiffin said, adjusting the pack on her shoulder. She leaned down and scooped up a handful of sooty, black soil. “See? It’s very warm.”
She poured the volcanic soil into my upright palm, and I sifted it through my fingers. “Building an aqueduct on a volcano…gods below.”
During our conversation, the six workers who’d accompanied us had gotten far ahead, and looked annoyed by our languid pace. They motioned for us to hurry, and we obliged. Overseer Decius didn’t follow us up the mountainside, and instead left us to the care of his men. I took it as a blessing, as I didn’t care much for the man.
All said, it took nine hours to reach the site of the Shao Zhu wreckage, and I must say that even knowing what we’d find, I was not adequately prepared for it.
In short, it was incredible.
It was as Tiffin had described: an ancient Shian sailing ship, composed all of greenish wood and bits of iron. The sails were tattered and worn to the barest of shredded fibers. Once white, they were now so weathered and worn that they were a dark brown. The ship was on its side, exposing the underbelly. The hull was caked with barnacles and sea mussels. Much of the wooden exterior was so old, it had begun to dissolve under the elements.
The forest had begun the process of reclaiming the area. Vines had crept over the wood and begun to eat away at it. Moss covered the wood grain, but somehow, the ship was still (mostly) in one piece.
The end of the aqueduct construction was fifty yards off. It cut through a swath of land that had once been dense foliage, but had been cleared recently. The aqueduct itself was about the height of three men, and as wide as my outstretched arms. It was composed all of gray carved stones, the base arranged in a never-ending series of arches that ran all the way to the fresh water of Lake Ellandrae, at the very heart of the continent.
Not far from where we were, just over the bend in the rocks, was a large encampment of tents and workers. At least one hundred and fifty men, none of them working. In fact, they were doing everything except working. They played cards, talked, sang, and drank themselves into a stupor. While the overseer may have been eager to restart work, it seemed that the workers themselves were enjoying the downtime.
“Are we going in?” Tiffin said excitedly.
“Slow down, now,” I said, pulling the pack off my back and rolling my shoulder. My body ached, but the excitement overshadowed it completely.
Tiffin pointed to the sun dipping over the tree line. “We don’t have much daylight left. Come on, I know you’re as curious as me. Probably more.”
I couldn’t deny that. “Fine, all right. But let’s take it slow. We don’t want to miss anything.” I looked back at our escorts. “Take it easy, boys, we’re going to get a look at the inside.”
The workers nodded to me, and took a seat beside an overturned boulder.
Tiffin made a cheerin
g motion, and rummaged through her packs. Moments later, she fished out a small handheld lantern. When she turned the rheostat on the top, the glass in the middle glowed softly.
“A magistry lantern,” I said with some surprise. “I must be paying you a bit too much if you can afford one of those.”
Tiffin made a face. “I’ll have you know this was a gift from my uncle. He lives in Endra, where they’re not so expensive. And you don’t pay me.”
“I don’t? Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. I do the job for credit toward my archaeology degree, but by all means, paying me sounds like a great idea. I was thinking you could start me at—”
I cleared my throat, and motioned toward the Shao Zhu. “Look at these markings here, very peculiar, don’t you think?”
Tiffin gave me a knowing look, and we began by inspecting the outer hull, beginning at the stern of the ship and working our way around. Around the rim were found Shian markings. They were long, curved pictographs, which I couldn’t read. That’s where Tiffin came in. Though I spoke three languages—Illithûn, Deific, and Amínnic—Tiffin was on another level entirely. Linguistically, she had a mind like a diamond. That was one of the primary reasons I brought her on as my assistant. She was fluent in seven languages, and dabbled in over a dozen others.
She happened to speak Shian, which was more than slightly impressive. Modern-day Shians are xenophobes; they’d never teach an outsider their language. Nevertheless, she’d managed to piece it together from a great many books stored in the Magisterium and the Acamedria.
The Shian letters on the hull were covered in grime and dirt. Tiffin took a hunting knife from her side and scraped the muck off, and tilted her head sideways to look at the slanted words properly.
Tiffin read them out loud, with some pauses as she tried to get the words right. “Li Shao Zhu. Liming din...digu chuan, zai long shiban nian jin-xing…yanchu.” She thought for a minute, then repeated the phrase in Amínnic. “The Shao Zhu. Imperial Ship of Shindo, commissioned in the Eighteenth Year of the Dragon.
My eyes lit up. “The eighteenth year of the dragon? That means…”
Tiffin nodded excitedly. “That means this ship is older than the country it’s in.”
“Brilliant! Get me a copy of that, if you would.”
“On it, Professor.” Tiffin unfurled a long bit of rolled parchment on a spool and a thick chunk of graphite and made a rubbing of the markings.
Meanwhile, I continued to circle around the ship, taking note of some of the smaller details. Miraculously, the frayed ropes tying the mast to the deck were still intact. Around the edges of the hull were detailed engravings of dragons of various shapes and sizes. Each was once brightly colored, but the years had long-ago stripped the paint.
The figurehead on the bow was an intricate, hand-carved dragon head with eyes of solid jade. It was in magnificent condition, and when Tiffin finished her rubbing and came around to meet me, her stunned reaction was marvelous to behold.
“How in all the gods below did this ship get here?” Tiffin said.
“That’s a good question,” I said. “It doesn’t seem possible.”
A voice called from behind us. “Doesn’t make any sense at all.”
We glanced back to see that it was one of the workers. He was a young, well-built lad in his late teens. His face was dirty with cement mix, and his clothes were ragged, and probably older than himself. From his thick lowland accent, I could tell he wasn’t from the city. He nodded to Tiffin, looking her over briefly, before turning his attention to me.
The boy reached to shake my hand. “Oi there, pleased to meet you.”
Not wanting to seem impolite, I returned the shake. “Do I know you?”
“You should, I’m the one you’re going to be payin’ for findin’ this,” the boy said with such confidence and certainty that I just had to smile.
I raised an eyebrow, and glanced back at Tiffin, who was smiling, too. “Are we?”
“Aye, I found it, and I turned in that glowin’ rock like an honest man. Coulda stole it, but I didn’t. Coulda stole those jade eyes off the masthead, but I didn’t. I deserve a reward, I think. The overseer wanted us to bash this thing down in secret, but I made sure that didn’t happen.” He crossed his arms.
I nodded appreciatively. “Then it sounds like you do deserve a reward.” I patted my pockets absentmindedly. “I’m afraid I didn’t bring any money with me, but I’ll tell you what, help us out here, and I’ll see you to your reward as soon as I can.”
The boy bit his lip, clearly not happy about not getting his reward right away. Still, after some thought, and more than a few glances in Tiffin’s direction, he finally nodded. “All right then, I’ll do it your way. But don’t forget, you promised me a reward.”
“A reward,” I echoed.
“A fair reward!” he added.
“Fair, I understand. I wouldn’t try to cheat a smart lad like you,” I said.
“What’s your name?” Tiffin asked brightly.
The boy took a few steps toward her and lifted her hand up, kissing the back of it. “Decan, love. At your service.”
“Are you now?” Tiffin said. She slipped the pack off her back and handed it to him. “Then you can start by carrying this. And it’s Tiffin.”
Decan took the pack eagerly.
“You found the Illdricyte in the ship itself?” I asked, breaking their staring contest.
“Illdri-what?” Decan said dumbly.
I held my thumb and forefinger up, approximating the size of the Illdricyte crystal. “The chunk of quartzite about this big.”
“Oh, yes sir. I found it inside the ship. I can show you.”
I gestured toward the opening in the top of the ship. “Please.”
Decan started toward the opening, kicking aside some splintered beams of wood littering the ground. The ship was so perfectly on its side, that the opening, which was little more than a hatch on the top of the deck that had blown off, looked like a door.
The inside of the lidless hatch was pitch-black. Decan entered first, and I motioned to follow, but Tiffin stopped me momentarily. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“A ship on a mountainside? No, it doesn’t. Not a lick. Isn’t it great?”
“I mean the crystal. Illdricyte is used to power machinery. Magisterium machinery or Old God constructs. Things like that. This is just an old sailing ship. No motors. No mechanism. And the Shians aren’t exactly known for their artificery. What possible reason could they have for a chunk of Illdricyte that large? I’m no expert, but it’s pure, too.”
“It is,” I said. “One of the purest, most flawless crystals in existence. I sent the specifications on it to Magister Ross of the Magisterium. She seemed excited, and wrote back immediately, wanting to know more of where we’d found it. Don’t let our new friend know, but Ross offered to purchase it for eighty thousand silver crowns.”
Tiffin turned pale. “Eighty… thousand…”
“I know, she might as well have offered me a castle and servants.”
“And you’re still here? Sorry, if someone offered me that much money, I’d be sipping wine on a Caerdis beach.”
I crossed my arms, and gave her a disappointed look.
“Kidding!” she said impishly, then shrugged. “Mostly kidding. Honestly, I’m surprised you let the Magisterium know about all this.”
“This is a find that belongs to everyone,” I said. “Show goodwill to others, and receive it in return. We’re all men and women of science, we’re not in this for the money. Right?”
“Right…” she said unenthusiastically.
“Right?” I asked again, nudging her.
“Okay, okay, you’re right. History, science, and all that.”
Decan’s voice called from inside the dark ship. “Are you sods coming? It’s dark as a landlord’s heart in here.”
“Coming,” Tiffin called back.
Together, me and Tiffin climbed inside the sh
ip. What we found inside challenged everything I ever thought I knew about the Old World. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the beginning of my expedition to find the Corelight.
Chapter Five
Shao Zhu, The Ghost Ship
Nothing adequately prepares you for the stench of a rotting, millennia-old sailing ship. The mold and fermenting matter pooled up into what I could only describe as a “foam” bursting through cracks in the splintered wood. Rancid would’ve been too nice a word for it. I pulled my scarf up over my nose, and pressed on despite the assault on my senses.
As I’ve said, the ship was completely on its side. This was a bit disorienting, as it meant we were walking on the walls. The wood was so damp with mold, more than once it would give way and my foot would push through as if I were stepping through a rotten pumpkin.
While I wiped the muck off my boot, Tiffin turned up the intensity of her magistry lantern, and the entire inner hull of the ship came into view. It was at that moment I realized we’d stumbled upon the greatest archeological find of the century.
This wasn’t some fishing boat, or a merchant ship. This was a military vessel. The skeletal remains of thirty ancient Shian soldiers were strewn across the ship, most of them severely damaged. A few of the bodies, however, were in one piece. Their beaded, ceramic armor was undamaged, and even still held speckles of the original, vibrant colors: hues of jade green and a rich brown.
Despite my better judgement, I ran my bare fingers along one of the laced breastplates, awestruck. It was like touching history itself. These were the uniforms that would’ve been worn during the Age of Nuruthil and the battle of Halric Tor. Extraordinary.
“Hey boss,” Decan said, his voice showing definite reproach. “I don’t think you should be doin’ that. It’s bad luck to be disturbing the dead, isn’t it?”
“It’s a fair bit better than tearing it down to build an aqueduct,” I said, but took my hand off the skeletal soldier. “Still, you’re quite right. Can you show us where, exactly, you found the crystal?”
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