Guild Wars: Sea of Sorrows

by Ree Soesbee

  A shiver ran down Cobiah’s spine, but he laughed it off. He’d heard such rumors before. Sailors were notoriously superstitious and had an irrational trust in everything from the number of knots used on the sail ropes to coins thrown into stormy seas to appease the god of death before a voyage. A mere whisper of bad luck could make the swabs turn white and start muttering about curses and evil eyes. Nothing more than sailors’ talk.

  “Look there.” One hand clutching the crossbar between his legs, Sethus raised his other to point toward the ship’s bow. From their vantage at the top of the Indomitable’s mast, Cobiah could see a darkness on the horizon, a place where the waters turned into moving shadows beneath the storm. The sky there was green with sickly storms and black with clouds, and lightning flashed in the depths like twisting eels fighting in clouded waters. Where they reached down to touch the water, Cobiah could see shapes illuminated beneath the waves. At first he thought these were merely rocks, bits of island, or coral formations just below the white-foamed surface. As he peered longer, he began to pick out regular and oddly distinct edges, the features taking strangely familiar form.

  Spires. Pointed stone rooftops, like the high pointed tops of churches and meeting halls in Lion’s Arch, but standing beneath the surface of the sea. Startled, Cobiah narrowed his eyes and tried to see more. “What are those?”

  “Those are the ruins of one of the great cathedrals of Orr. Legend doesn’t say which one. Sailors call them Malchor’s Fingertips.” Sethus shivered, pulling himself back up onto the spar to stare out over the sea. “Ships don’t cross that threshold. When the pilot sees those black spires, you turn back.”

  “Malchor?”

  “An old legend,” Sethus said. “Malchor was a great artist who carved statues of the gods. After he was done carving their statues, the gods shut themselves away from mankind. But Malchor had fallen in love with Dwayna. He couldn’t stand thinking that he’d never see her again, so he threw himself into the ocean and drowned. Sailors say those steeples are Malchor’s hands reaching out of the sea toward the heavens, trying to touch the gods that left him behind so long ago.”

  Cobiah looked at the faint pillars of stone at the edge of the horizon’s curve. They did look a little like fingers. “That’s where the seas of Orr begin?”

  “Yeah. Right at that line of stones.”

  “What’s beyond?”

  “Orr itself. They say the water there is as black as night, like ink’s been poured into the waves. It never gets lighter, and the sun never warms it. Sailors have used Orrian water to freeze things even in the Maguuma Jungle’s heat. Just one drop turns meat into jerky. A canteen could ice over even the fires of Sorrow’s Furnace!”

  “Superstition,” Cobiah snorted, but he didn’t take his eyes off the sea. In his time as a sailor, Cobiah’s stomach had never given him an inch of trouble. Come smooth seas or rolling winds, he’d never been seasick and he’d never offered a “sailor’s prayer” over the side of the deck. Suddenly, thinking about sailing over the depths of a land abandoned by the gods and cursed by haunts, Cobiah felt his belly roll over. He’d been excited before, when Orr was a figment of his imagination. Now that he could see black stone fingers reaching up out of the ocean’s murky depths, he suddenly felt the tang of fear.

  “Do you think we’ll find the monster that the king is looking for?” Cobiah whispered, coiling salt-roughed rope around his elbow and wrist. “Does it live in Orr?”

  “I don’t know,” Sethus answered in a somber tone. “But I do know that no ship that sails beyond Malchor’s Fingers”—Sethus gulped, suddenly looking down at his net—“ever comes back.”

  The next morning dawned crisp and cold, wintry enough to drive away the warmth of early autumn they’d known only the day before. Last night at sunset, the slender spines of Malchor’s Fingers had been barely a jagged line against the horizon. In the soft gleam of morning, the spines were much closer, clawing their way up from the depths through rings of thick sea-foam.

  “Eyes on the rocks, lads!” Vost shouted from the bow. The ship’s bosun seemed ill at ease, one foot planted atop the bulwark near the Indomitable’s six-armed figurehead. He kept his bosun’s whistle clenched in one hand, the other holding fast to a mainstay rope as wind buffeted his crisp white shirt. Captain Whiting and his first mate stood on the forecastle with him, staring past the cutting waves at the front of the ship toward the sea ahead where rocky stanchions loomed. The captain fidgeted with his sleeve cuffs as he stared into the wind, but the bosun and the first mate were as still as statues.

  Ice-cold water splashed up onto the deck as the galleon made her way bravely forward. She barely rocked at all in the tow of the waves, cresting fluidly over each ripple and valley of the sea. Her topsail was wrapped against the crossbar; the jibs were lowered, and her long, pointed bowsprit was bare of white muslin sail. Only the two central wind catchers, the foresail to the front and the mainsail at the rear, remained aloft, shivering in the heavy winds that buffeted ocean froth around the tall jagged rocks.

  “Were those stones really the top of an ancient church?” Cobiah whispered to one of the other sailors as they folded netting. He tucked the wrapped cords into wooden caskets below the railing of the forecastle.

  “Who told you that old chestnut?” Urim scoffed, tightening the knot of a bright red bandanna wrapped about his neck in hopes of warmth. “They’re just salt pillars. A rock somewhere below started breaking the water, and the salt of the sea’s gathered up layer on layer ’til the whole thing sticks up above the waves. S’nothing to be afeared of.”

  Tosh snorted mockingly as he walked past, twisting a long skein of rope between his thumb and his elbow. “Church towers? Fell for that one, did you, whey face? I heard it when I was six—and I didn’t believe it even then. You always fall for those toothless jawers’ yapping. You should’ve been a priest, Cobiah. At least then you’d get paid to listen to fools.” Although the jibes were rough, Tosh snorted and moved on without staying to pick a fight. That much, at least, had changed in the last half year.

  “Cock of the walk, he is,” Cobiah spat under his breath.

  “Tosh’s just ribbing you, as always. Don’t pay him any mind,” Sethus said as he trotted up with a grin. “And Urim’s as glazed as Lyssa’s mirror.” Sethus pointed at the sailor and mimicked taking a swig of brandy. “Just salt rocks? What’s under that salt, I ask you? Orrian church towers. Now c’mon, Coby, and help me shove this heavy lot after that gun.” Sethus grabbed Cobiah’s sleeve and dragged him toward the hatch nearby. Below, they could see four sailors dragging one of the ship’s big guns to its firing post. The captain had given orders that the cannons as well as the smoothbore carronades were to be kept loaded and ready at all times. The top-deck carronades were bolted to the frame of the ship and were always in place, with firepower and shot nearby, but the cannons on the lower deck were too large to shot-pack without need. It was the first time that Cobiah had seen the big guns freed of their moorings, and he watched with great interest.

  Sethus and Cobiah dropped down to the lower deck and moved to help the gunners, pushing pallets of cannonballs and small burlap bags of powder into place beside each cannon at its porthole. Although the work was hard, Cobiah couldn’t help being pleased that he was helping with the gunnery while Tosh was saddled with the everyday task of gaffing ropes.

  “Ho, there!” The voice was crisp, the vowels rounded, and the tone one of immutable authority. Aubrey Chernock leaned over to peer down through the hatch opening. The Indomitable’s first mate cut a fine figure, brown ponytail dancing against her shoulders, fists on her hips, golden coat flaring in the wind. “The captain left his astrolabe in the chart room.” She pointed at Cobiah, hand striking out like a shark. “You there. Run back and retrieve it. Ask Pilot Damran—he’ll know what I mean.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Cobiah leapt up from the pallet he’d been loading and clambered back to the top deck, giving her a fumbling salute. He rushed toward
the rear of the ship without a second thought, pausing only when he’d reached the mainsail. Damran? That was the pilot’s name. Chart room? Astral what? Neither of those terms made any sense to him. Cobiah considered asking, but the first mate of the Indomitable had already turned and headed back to the captain’s side on the forecastle. Oh, well, he thought. I’ll just have to figure it out on my own. Cobiah ducked to avoid hanging shrouds of net as he jogged under the main boom. The captain’s cabin was at the rear of the ship beneath the quarterdeck. That seemed like the best place to start looking for the pilot, and the captain’s astral . . . laboratory . . . thing.

  He climbed the stairs to the heavy oak doors of the captain’s cabin, hesitantly pushing them open. “Hello?” Cobiah’s voice wavered uncertainly. He slipped inside, hoping to be in and out before anyone noticed him there.

  His eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light inside the cabin. The room inside felt as far away from the deck of the ship as Lion’s Arch was from Cantha, and for a moment, Cobiah thought he’d been transported to the king’s palace. Huge glass windows covered the rear wall, surrounded by velvet curtains the color of ripe tomatoes, spread wide to let in the sun. Gilding twinkled from the window frames, the ceiling, and even the chairs arrayed around a long oak table. The table itself was sturdily fastened to the floor with bolts through the clawed brass feet. On one side of the cabin, a soft down mattress was piled high with fluffy pillows in the same deep-red tone, each decorated with fine golden embroidery.

  The wooden walls had been polished to a high shine. Small unlit candles hung in delicate ornate sconces every few feet. A rug in shades of blue and purple lay across the floor’s open area, worth far more than the house Cobiah grew up in back at Lion’s Arch. “Anyone here?” The sentence died on his lips as he noticed an old man sitting in a chair by the bay window, reading a thick leather-bound book. “Oh. You must be . . .” He struggled to remember the pilot’s name. “Dargan . . . um . . . Darran?”

  “Damran. Pilot Damran. And you are, boy?” Shifting his wire-rimmed spectacles down his thin nose, the old man stared at Cobiah with a disapproving smirk.

  “Cobiah. Sir. I mean, I’m Cobiah, sir. I’m here because the mate—First Mate Chernock. She sent me.”

  The two men stared at one another for a long awkward moment before Damran finally snapped, “And?”

  “Oh!” Cobiah blinked. “She wanted me to bring the captain his astro thing?”

  Damran shut the book in his lap, blinking owlishly. “His what?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.” Cobiah faltered. “She only said it once, and she was talking really fast, but Chernock said the captain’d left something in his chart room, and I was to bring it to him right away.”

  “Did she, now?” Damran began to chuckle. “It’s his astrolabe, of course. Captain Whiting wants his astrolabe.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “Come here, boy.” Damran rose from his seat and stepped to the big table in the center of the room, lifting a metal instrument from a pile of papers there. It was a flat circle of metal within a thin frame. The frame was ornate, almost delicate, over the platterlike base. Much of it had been cut through to show the etching on the plate below. A second, smaller inner circle perched on top of the other one, both bolted through the center to the circular base plate. “You’re new aboard ship, aren’t you?” The old pilot raised an eyebrow at Cobiah’s obvious interest.

  “Not so new, sir. I’ve done three passages to Cantha.”

  “Barely got your sea legs under you, then. Now, look at this. The astrolabe is the most important instrument on the ship. Do you know what it does?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It tells us what our eyes cannot. Namely . . .” Damran turned the brass frame, sending the circles spinning around and around over the etching of the under plate. “This little fellow can tell us where the ship is located even when it’s on the open sea.”

  “It can?” Cobiah frowned. “But that’s impossible. The sea is featureless. You can’t tell where you are unless you can see the coast.” Even as he said it, he realized that it couldn’t be true. How did the ship find Kaineng City each time? It had to cross months of open ocean. The idea’d never occurred to Cobiah before, but now that he thought about it, he had no idea how the Indomitable found its way across the Sea of Sorrows.

  “This instrument allows the captain to look at the stars and see our position—more or less.”

  Feeling brave, Cobiah ventured to say, “He can tell by the stars?”

  The pilot pushed his glasses up on his nose. He took the instrument in both hands and raised the frame off the bottom plate. “This is the mater.” He gestured to the solid brass platter, pronouncing the strange word “mayter.” “Look at those etchings. Do they seem familiar?”

  Cobiah stared down at it, trying to place the odd shapes. When he shook his head no, Damran harrumphed. “The sky, my boy. These are the constellations of the stars above us, you see? This one is the Vizier’s Tower, and these are the four spokes of Grenth’s Eye.” Damran reached out and lightly rapped Cobiah’s head. “Pay more attention to the things around you, and you’ll solve half your problems.

  “Now, this piece—it’s called the rete—goes over the mater and spins. Like so.” He placed the frame back on the mater and let it spin around.

  “Why?”

  “This lets you see how far apart the stars are, and how high over the horizon. With that, you can measure them against the height of the sun to tell your ship’s latitude. Latitude,” he said, noting Cobiah’s confused stare, “is the measurement of how far north or south you are at sea. To use the astrolabe, you must look along this line”—he indicated a straight slice of brass that spun through the center—“and sight either the sun or Dwayna’s Heart. That’s the one star in the sky that never wavers or alters its place. By finding the altitude of that star—how high it is in the sky in relation to the horizon—you can tell if you are north or south of center. Center being Arah, you see?”

  “Arah?” Cobiah asked.

  “Arah is the city at the heart of ancient Orr. The city that the gods themselves created, at the center of the world. We judge everything’s location by its distance north or south of Arah. When the astrolabe was invented, Arah was still alive and well, with a thriving society and a prominent armada of ships. The Orrian people were seafarers . . .” The old pilot cleared his throat and left off tale-telling to finish his thought. “Ahem, sorry, not important, not important.

  “So, we find out how far north or south we are. We go to Cantha by heading steadily south and bearing west when we find the Canthan coast. We find Lion’s Arch by heading north and bearing east when we see Kryta. North and south by the stars.” Damran tapped the instrument proudly. “The captain will take our latitude at Malchor’s Fingers so he knows how far into Orr we’ve gone. That way, he’ll know how far we’ll have to go to come back out. You see?”

  This was a revelation to Cobiah. “That’s amazing! How do we use it to tell if the ship has gone too far east or west?”

  Damran sighed, brows knitting together over his wire-framed spectacles. “I’m afraid we can’t. The sun only goes in one direction, and thus, so does the astrolabe. There’s no marker to tell how far east or west we’ve gone. Perhaps one day, some enterprising young sailor will discover a way to tell.” Damran patted the astrolabe and laid it down on a soft cloth from the table. Gently, he wrapped the brass instrument inside.

  “That’s fascinating. Thank you, Pilot.”

  Damran smiled. “It’s not often that an old man like me gets to share his craft. Now hurry along and take the astrolabe to the captain. Shoo, pup.” The old pilot settled down in his chair again and nodded toward the cabin door.

  Cobiah managed a shuffling bow, making the pilot smile. He crossed the cabin and then the main deck toward the forecastle. He cradled the little bundle against his chest, fearing he might break the precious instrument.

  He was halfway across th
e deck when the ship jolted beneath his feet. Caught by surprise, Cobiah fell toward the gunwale and skidded precariously toward the Indomitable’s edge. With one arm wrapped around the bundle, he grabbed desperately for the central mast. The ship was shuddering violently, boards protesting in high-pitched shrieks, and there was a horrible crunching sound from the rudder at her stern.

  The ship pitched again, and Cobiah’s hand slipped on the damp wood. Toppling down across the deck, Cobiah crashed painfully into the butt of one of the massive cannons. He desperately grabbed its iron cap, wrapping his legs around the gun and holding on for dear life. Other sailors, not so lucky, were cast into the icy sea. Cobiah could hear men screaming beyond the gunwale.

  With a lurch and a groan of her arched keel, the Indomitable righted herself in the waves. Water splashed onto the deck in huge swells, toppling over the sides of the ship as the galleon settled into the ocean once more. Cobiah lifted his head and tried to ascertain what had happened. Had the ship hit the rocks? Was the bottom of the ship torn, taking on water that would drown them all?

  Fingers of stone towered above the ship to either side, pointed tips clawing toward a gray, boiling sky. Yet they were still distant. The ship couldn’t have struck one. Cobiah glanced over the lip of the deck and saw deep blue ocean—no sign of reef or coral. That left only one answer.

  If they hadn’t hit anything, then something—something big—must have hit them.

  A shudder raked the Indomitable from stem to stern. There was a resounding crash of wood, the sound of splintering keel and hull, and the screams of wounded men echoed across the writhing face of the sea—and still, Cobiah could see nothing beneath the dark waves.