Exiles of Forlorn

by Sean T. Poindexter

  Of course, Claster told a different tale. Standing there before the magister, he sounded hilarious with his broken nose and hot temper, all nasal and slimy. To his telling, it was they who interfered with Antioc being ungallant with the young maid, and in the course of subduing him, he assaulted all three. His story didn’t make any sense. Antioc was arrested hours later and went voluntarily. If he were the mad dog Claster claimed, why would he pummel one set of superiors but submit to another?

  Unfortunately, Claster’s tale had two advantages over Antioc’s: it was the word of a noble verses a common born, and there were witnesses. Two witnesses, actually. Claster’s severely beaten minions, who appeared before the magister with the kind assistance of several healer’s aides—one in a wheeled chair, no less.

  This could have been cleared up by the watermaid, but alas she was nowhere to be found—doubtless, one of Claster’s friends in the officers’ barracks had her moved to another fort or sent her off for labor. Lacking any obvious way to prove his innocence, Antioc was in for a beheading. Yet, there he stood, no sign of fear or apprehension, as if he’d accepted his fate was set long before he stepped into court. I found him admirable, and not just for his bravery in the face of the inevitable. I also admired his handiwork with the three snotlings. There was no disagreement about one thing: Antioc had single-handedly subdued three enemies, unarmed, without taking a scratch to his own person. In fact, Claster had likely exaggerated the fighter’s prowess to sugar the sting of his humiliation at losing a fight three-to-one, and to demonstrate how dangerous it would be to allow Antioc to live.

  “Are there any here who can verify this young man’s claim?” the magister had called, looking about the court. “Are there any who witnessed these events willing to come forward now?” Everyone but the accused scanned the room, waiting to see if anyone had the will to challenge a nobleman and his two broken accomplices.

  Well, what did I have to lose?

  “I was there,” I called, stepping forward. That got Antioc’s attention. He turned and looked at me for the first time, in shock. I gave him a quick look and shrugged.

  “Lew Standwell,” said the magister, his fat cheeks jiggling under his chin as he spoke. He likely remembered my name because I’d flippantly accepted exile before him earlier that session. “You claim to bear witness to the events that transpired?”

  “Indeed, good sir!” I bowed a little. “If it so please your grace . . .”

  “He’s lying!” Claster roared, waving a finger at me. “He’s lying, he wasn’t there. He didn’t see anything.”

  I crooked an eyebrow at him. “How would you know where I was or what I saw?” He was right though; I was lying, and I hadn’t seen a thing. I was sound asleep in my quarters when all this happened, but more importantly, I was alone. For all I or anyone else knew, I could have been there. His anger was telling; if his account was the truth, what did he have to fear from a witness?

  “I’ll hear your testimony, thirdson of Standwell,” said the magister, pointing his stone-tipped gavel at me. “You are still sworn by the Daevas of justice to speak the truth in this court, are you not? Do you intend to tell the truth?”

  “I certainly do, your grace,” I lied with a smile. I was already exiled, the worst they could do to me now was . . . oh, I suppose they could have killed me. I hadn’t thought of that—probably better that I didn’t.

  “Then you will relay to the court what you saw that night.”

  Everyone watched me, anxious, except Antioc. He just looked surprised. I took a moment to enjoy being the center of attention before I shrugged toward the common-born fighter. “It is just as the accused has said, your grace.” I had to finish over a room full of gasps. “The big one has the right of it.”

  Well, that spared Antioc’s life. It was worth it just to infuriate Claster. I’d never liked the little pig, always pretending to be a big war hero when all he ever did was ride past men who were going to do the real fighting and nod them on to die. He no doubt was jealous of men like Antioc for having courage and strength where he had neither.

  He came to me after, Antioc did. I was making my way across the yard to collect my things and begin my exile when he caught up to me. They’d freed him, both from bondage and his service. They couldn’t have a fighter willing to strike an officer, so he was of little use to them. He could probably get on with a mercenary company or join the auxiliary, but his service in arms to the crown was at an end.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked, his brow furrowed. “Why did you lie in court for me?”

  “How do you know I was lying?”

  He shook his head. “You were not there. I’d have seen you. I’ve seen you before, directing men working on the towers. You’re Lew the Builder.”

  I crooked an eyebrow at him. “You always know who is around you at all times, then?” He nodded. That made sense, actually. Fighters lived in a hostile world, and needed to be aware to survive. “Fair then; I lied.” He still looked puzzled. “I don’t like Claster, and I don’t like men like him.”

  “But, you’re a noble. The magister called you . . .”

  “Thirdson of Standwell, yes, I know.” I snorted. “I don’t like men who pretend to be what they are not.” I shrugged. “He needed to learn a lesson. I didn’t think you deserved to lose your head for being the one to teach it to him.”

  “But you took a risk,” he said, puzzled. “For a stranger?”

  “What did I have to lose?”

  He hesitated then lowered his head. “Thank you, Lord Standwell.”

  I laughed. “Don’t start that, now, I’m no lord, especially now that I’m an exile. I’ve forsaken all claims to my father’s name and title . . . such as they were. So, now I’m just Lew.”

  “Very well, Lew.” He grinned a little. “And I’m your man.”

  “My what?”

  “Your man. You have saved my life, so I will devote it to your service. I can swear an oath, if you like.” He started to kneel, but I stopped him.

  “No, that’s fine. You really don’t have to. The look on Claster’s face was payment enough.” I chucked and waved my hand before my face. “The broken nose and all that was magnificent.” Still, having him around would be helpful. He was awfully big. “You don’t want to ‘service’ me anyway, I’m bound for exile. You’ll be stuck riding to the ends of the world with me to the Daevas know where!”

  “Then that’s where I’ll go,” he said with a shrug of his big shoulders. “I have no business here anymore. I owe you my life, Lord Stand . . . Lew.” He nodded once. “Just Lew.”

  So that’s how I got, my man, Antioc. Though the first thing I did was insist that he no longer refer to himself, publicly or privately, as my man. If we were going to travel together, we would travel as friends. Nothing more, nothing less. I didn’t need a servant, but I could always use a friend.

  3.

  “It’s not an island,” Uller explained, interrupting someone for the fifth time today—Blackfoot, in fact.

  “Then why do they call it an island?” asked Blackfoot.

  It was a good question, but that didn’t keep Uller from getting irritated with him. “It’s just a figure of speech,” he explained dismissively.

  This was all going on as my fellow exiles and I floated through a treacherous labyrinth of twisted black rocks that shot up from the shallow sea, piercing the surface like overlong screws through a big green board. We had those rocks to thank for our placement in this leaky little skiff. The barge couldn’t get any closer to land because of them, so it anchored in the sea beyond the breaks. The exiles on board were loaded into smaller boats and rowed ashore by crewmen. There were five of the boats, four for passengers and one for cargo. Each passenger skiff had six exiles and two oarsmen. That put one stranger in the boat with us, a nervous little Brontish cityman named Stree, missing an eye and most of his teeth. He could have been Blackfoot’s father. He mostly ignored us, especially Reiwyn, who had threatened to relie
ve him of his remaining eye if he didn’t stop looking at her chest.

  Blackfoot twisted his head at Uller. “What’s that?”

  Uller gave him a dry look. “What’s what?”

  “That thing you said, a finger of speech?”

  “No . . .” Uller closed his eyes and pressed the top his fist to his forehead. “A figure of speech, Blackfoot.”

  I had to laugh at that. At least he wasn’t gurging anymore. Being on a smaller, slower moving craft in peaceful water had calmed his belly.

  “What does that mean? What does it have to do with this island?”

  Uller’s blue eyes opened wide at Blackfoot. He was close to shaking. “It’s an expression?” he tried; Blackfoot shook his head slowly. “It’s like when you say something that means something else to make a point.” More confused looks. Reiwyn and I laughed. Antioc cracked a grin.

  “Blackfoot,” said Reiwyn, leaning forward to pat the little urchin on the knee. She gave Uller a look that begged his indulgence. Lost for words, he obliged. She turned her eyes back to Blackfoot with a smile. “You’ve heard the story, when you were young, of the serpent and the sloth?”

  “Yes!” he nodded, excited. “Where the serpent challenges the sloth to a race, but the sloth wins because the serpent was stupid and proud and didn’t want to admit he couldn’t tell one sloth from another?”

  “You see how the serpent and the sloth are meant to be people, because they talk? The storyteller replaces animals with people to make the story make more sense. That’s like a figure of speech.”

  Blackfoot’s mouth opened and he let out a high squeal. “I see now!” He looked at Uller. “They call it an island because it’s in the middle of nowhere . . . like an island is in the middle of the sea.”

  “Yes!” Reiwyn brought her hands together and laughed with him as she leaned back against the boat. Uller didn’t seem so excited for him, but he could barely be mad at the river girl for explaining it better than he could. He gave Blackfoot a sarcastic grin then went back to glowering as he looked away.

  Uller wasn’t entirely correct. They didn’t know Forlorn wasn’t an island. No one had been all the way around it or crossed the mountains to the other side. Since it had only been found by sea, it didn’t seem likely that it connected with any of the known continents; they’d been rather exhaustedly explored and no one had ever stumbled upon a ring of dead volcanoes flanked by temperate forests and humid swamps. So, in all likelihood, if some adventurous explorer deigned to follow the land long enough around, they would likely discover what oceans lie beyond. No one ever had—or at least, they never had and come back.

  As obnoxious as I found it, Uller’s arrogance was understandable. Before his exile, he’d been a top apprentice to Cortis the Undaunted, High Sorcerer of the Hagorium in the magocratic republic of Magespire. He would have someday been a great wizard, were it not for the scheming of a jealous rival. It would have been hard, training all his life and coming so close to having that much power, only to lose it to the malfeasance of another.

  All the same, he didn’t have to be such a beast to Blackfoot; he was only thirteen, after all.

  “Can’t they scry?” I asked, thinking that maybe letting him talk about things he knew would cheer him up a little. I did like him; not as much as the others, but he was still my friend. He was the closest thing to a wizard our group had, making him useful. “I’ve heard of wizards scrying for hundreds of miles.”

  “They’ve tried,” he explained, his pale face lighting up a bit at the chance to exposit knowledge. He was so predictable. “But scrying has range limits, and it’s affected by things like ley-line points and phantasmal conduits.” My face betrayed my befuddlement. He launched into an explanation of different kinds of mystical energy, and how the common plane was ribboned by them. He even laced his fingers together to demonstrate what happened when they touched.

  “So . . . why can’t they scry past the mountains?”

  He took a breath and explained it to us like we were five. I knew he was loving every second of this. “Scrying can only go so far into uncharted territory. A diviner can take it out as far as he can without knowing the paths of the lines and conduits, but once he goes too far it stops. It’s like . . . um, following a path?”

  “You lost me.” I wasn’t pretending. I really didn’t get it.

  Uller clenched his teeth. “It’s hard to explain to someone lacking the proper education—”

  “The lines are like rivers,” offered Reiwyn. Uller and I looked at her. She went on, “You need a map to plot a course over water. If you’re just following rivers and streams without knowing where they are going, you get lost and have to keep turning around. Scrying is like cruising down a river and looking at what’s ashore.”

  Uller stared at her. “That’s . . . exactly.” He nodded. “You’re so smart!” She smiled and gave him a little nod as he continued to shower her with awkward praise.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Port,” said Antioc, his deep voice tipped with excitement. We followed his pointed finger ahead, where a tiny, wooden dock jutted into the green bay. We were still quite far from it, despite it being within sight. Nonetheless, Blackfoot became restless.

  “Row faster!” he growled, almost like he could bite the oarsman. “I have to piss!”

  “Piss off side of boat,” the oarsman replied. His voice was thick with a Wesdentish accent. I should have known by the curve of his eye that he was at least partially of Wesden. It was his tan that threw me off; Wesdens had an almost yellow skin tone. Doubtless he’d lost that from being out in the open sun so long.

  Blackfoot looked oddly sheepish. “I uh . . . can’t.” He glanced around at the others. “I can’t go when people are watching.”

  “Daevas!” I laughed. “We’re not going to watch you pee.”

  “You say that,” he replied, pointing a dirty finger at me. “They always say that. Then as soon as you find a corner and think, hey, I’ll just piss right here . . .” He forked two fingers at his squinty brown eyes. “They watch! Weirdoes!” He looked at Stree, who pretended not to notice.

  “So what have they seen?” asked Antioc. It took Uller a moment to figure out he was talking to him. Antioc didn’t say much to anyone, and even less to Uller. They just never had much to discuss. “When they’ve tried to scry, how far in do they get?”

  Uller pointed at the mountains as the skiff narrowly curved around a thin, sharp rock jutting up from the surface. I understood now why they’d made us wait a full day after arriving before sending us to shore. Had the tide been wrong, the small boats would have risked scraping against the rocks. “The forests south of the volcanoes have been explored,” he explained, “On foot and by scrying. Past the volcanoes are valleys full of dead water.”

  Antioc nodded, interested. I looked up at the mountains, finally come into full view from the water. Much I would imagine to Blackfoot’s disappointment, up close, they looked far less zit-like. The dark sides had lent to the illusion of one huge mountain with gently curving slopes and one snow-capped peak. Instead, Uller explained, there were several mountains, clustered together in a rough ring around the tallest of them.

  “They call that one Sentinel Peak,” said one of the oarsmen.

  “Anyone ever climb it?” asked Blackfoot. The oarsmen both laughed. Blackfoot slumped against the side of the boat and threw them dirty looks.

  “It’s too tall to climb,” said Uller, with uncharacteristic patience. Maybe he just didn’t like his friend, obnoxious as he may be, getting mocked by a couple of rabble oarsmen. “It’s beyond freezing at that height, and there’s no atmos─” He paused. “You wouldn’t be able to breathe.”

  “So, nothing lives up there, then?” asked Blackfoot, intrigued again. Uller shook his head.

  “Well,” I put in, “nothing that breathes, anyway.” Blackfoot’s eyes widened and a little grin played across his dirty, cracked lips. That evoked a smile from Antioc and a chuckle from
Reiwyn.

  Uller went on. “Past the swamp, the altitude climbs fast. Some of that has been explored on foot, but it gets so cold that they can’t go any farther, and the ley lines must be mapped out by a walker. The waters are full of icebergs, some the size of cities, and there are stories of dangerous creatures living under them . . . and on them.”

  “Are they true?” asked Antioc.

  Uller shrugged. “True or not, the ice alone is enough to keep the ships from going in to explore.” He raised his head as if he were looking beyond the mountains. Beyond anywhere we could see. “And there are stories of people who live in the ice.”

  “How could anyone live on ice?” asked Reiwyn. “How would they grow food? They can’t even fish!”

  Uller looked back at her fast. I thought for a moment he might snap at her for doubting him, but he didn’t. “I didn’t say they live on the ice,” he explained, “I said they live in the ice. In caves carved in rock and ice, thousands of fathoms, where they catch fish and live off melted seawater.”

  “No one can drink seawater,” Reiwyn said, rolling her eyes. “They’d go mad.”

  “Well,” I interjected, glancing across the boat at her with a grin. “They do live under ice already. How much more mad can they get?”

  “They’re called the Do’noai,” continued Uller. “They’ve adapted to life in the ice, and drinking saltwater doesn’t bother them. They may have been human once. Or ice-fish that learned to walk. They even rather look like fish, at least from the drawings I’ve seen. Hard to tell how accurate they were, as they were drawn from memory based on a story. The Do’noai aren’t the social type.”

  Blackfoot rolled to his knees and advanced on Uller. The former wizard’s apprentice almost fell off the boat backing away from him. “Is Forlorn part of Eios?”