The Dawn of a Desperate War (The Godlanders War)

by Aaron Pogue

  But though that cavern had contained the record of those lives, this island had become their final refuge. Corin licked his lips and gripped the hilts of his weapons. Would they welcome Oberon’s manling scion? He’d never guessed he might end up like the numberless, nameless dead who’d disappeared across the Isle’s moors.

  He shivered at the thought. This was a dreadful place. The whispering wind still rolled around him, tugging at his cloak and stinging in his eyes. “Begone from here and leave our shores. No manling’s welcome on these moors!” “Begone from here and leave our shores. No manling’s welcome on these moors!”

  He drew a ragged breath and answered in their language. “I am the emissary of your rightful king. I am Corin Hugh, the manling out of time. I’ve come to beg your aid in fighting Ephitel.”

  The wind went still, and Corin’s heartbeat seemed to hammer in the sudden silence. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t dare to move. But his eyes darted left and right, searching for some sign of the source of those ancient voices.

  Had he stilled them? Had he earned an audience? Or had he merely shouted to the wind?

  Farther down the shore, Tesyn stirred. Corin held out a hand to still him, but the scholar didn’t notice. He groaned loudly, then rolled up onto his knees. “What was that nonsense?” he called, his voice hoarse. “Something about a king and a diplomat? And Ephitel?” He groaned again and then heaved a stomachful of seawater and bile across the stones.

  “Be still!” Corin hissed. “The elves of old Gesoelig are watching us.”

  The scholar coughed and wiped his mouth before he rose unsteadily to his feet. “And you laughed at me,” Tesyn sneered. “You think the ghosts can hear you? You think they’ll listen to your lies? You’re no diplomat. You’re a devil and a rogue!”

  As if in answer, the winds sprang up again—not howling this time, but whispering: “A rogue! A devil. Begone from here. Begone.”

  “He’s wrong! He lies,” Corin shouted. “I am Oberon’s adopted heir. I’ve seen Gesoelig underneath the mountain. I know the bitter taste of Ephitel’s betrayal.”

  “Betrayal and lies,” the ghosts answered, still savage. “Gesoelig lies beneath the mountain. Begone from here and trouble us no more.”

  Corin turned on Tesyn, brows drawn down, and the young scholar went pale. “You can’t believe I had anything to do with that.”

  “You said this place was haunted, and then you interfered when I had calmed the angry spirits!”

  “Angry!” wailed the wind. “Spirits leave this place. Begone!”

  Tesyn drew himself up tall and stomped across the rocky beach to Corin. “I didn’t do this to us! Your stinking pirates did it. They crashed their ship! What kind of captain crashes into rocks within sight of land?”

  “What?” Corin gasped. “Where else would . . . That is no matter now. These are deadly waters, no matter who is at the helm. You should be grateful you’re alive.”

  “Alive,” the wind whispered, ominous. “Begone alive. Or die.”

  Corin shook his head, trying to dislodge the voices. They were barely at the edge of hearing. If he focused hard enough on something else, he could forget them altogether. But whenever silence fell, he heard the whispered words, always taunting.

  He raised his voice and jabbed a finger at the scholar’s chest. “Well? What do we do now?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Of course! You said you’d studied this place. You said you knew the way. You knew how to handle the ghosts. You have everything prepared—”

  “Indeed I did,” Tesyn shouted back. “Would you like to know some of the things that I discovered? It isn’t safe to eat any food in this place or accept a gift if offered. That’s why I brought so many crates of rations! It isn’t safe to stay an hour in darkness, so I brought oil and torches by the dozens. Iron can fend off the angry spirits, and holy water disperses them altogether, so I brought along a hearty stock of both.”

  Corin rolled his eyes. “All of that is lost.”

  “Because your stinking pirate captain tried to sail through a pile of rocks! I spent a fortune setting up this expedition, and now we’re stranded all alone in the second most godsforsaken place in all Hurope. And you ask me what to do next?”

  “Aye,” Corin answered. “Aye, and I will ask again. If we had all those precious things, our mission would be easier. But we have just our wits and each other. And everything you know. You claimed you’d memorized your map. If this place is so dangerous, then we cannot afford to waste a moment. Let us find the elves and pray Fortune they’ll protect us from the rest.”

  Tesyn shook his head. “You aren’t listening. We won’t survive to find the elves. The shrouded city—even if it’s real—is easily a hundred miles inland.”

  “This is your destination, then? There is a place on the Isle called the shrouded city?” A slow grin touched his lips. “A city! I told you there was more than one man here.”

  “It doesn’t matter! We’ll never make it there.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “My family spent generations hunting for the ruins of Jezeeli. They chased down more than one false trail in that time, and with the aid of the book you sold to me in Jepta—with some of the language cues it offered—I was able to tease out new meaning from some of my uncle’s oldest texts.”

  “Remarkable,” Corin said. “I’d like to see these texts.”

  “Remarkable? It is our doom. We have to find our way across a hundred miles of this wilderness without supplies! How many hours will we have to spend in darkness? How many angry spirits will we face along the way? What will we eat? It’s madness to proceed. We’ll have to go back home and start over from the beginning.”

  Corin thought of Ephitel already hunting him and shook his head. “There is no time to start over. We must press on.”

  “It’s suicide! Perhaps you have heard tales, but I’m the one who’s read all the literature there is concerning this island, and I assure you that if we leave this beach, we’re dead men.”

  “And what would you suggest? Wait here and hope some passing vessel puts in at this lovely quay?”

  “Don’t be a fool. I think we should light a signal fire.”

  Corin smiled, though it didn’t touch his eyes. “A signal fire. To summon aid?”

  “Just so.”

  “And have you forgotten the righteous fury hunting us?”

  “The what?”

  “The justicar! She’s hunting for our hides. If we wait here, there is no one in the world more likely to discover us than her. I’d rather take my chances with the ghosts.”

  “But . . . we lost her. I saw her on the pier in Baillon. She can’t have followed us this far.”

  Corin laughed. “What do you think a justicar is for? She’ll track her target past the edges of the world if it’s required. She certainly would not give up on us because we left a port just as she was arriving.”

  Tesyn stared. “You think she’s still on our trail?”

  “I’m counting on it,” Corin said. “If she didn’t follow us, then she went back to that miserable little village, because that was her last solid lead.”

  “Gods on Attos,” Tesyn breathed.

  “Aye,” Corin said. “She followed us. I’d stake your life on it. The harbormaster must have known where your merchant ship was heading, and I made our intentions loud and clear across Rauchel.”

  “You did?” Tesyn snapped. “Why?”

  “To keep her on our trail,” Corin said. “For Auric’s sake. After all, we had all the secret wisdom necessary to survive the horrors of the Isle. I hoped that if she dared to follow us this far, she’d disappear forever on the moors.”

  “A grim thing to hope.”

  Corin barked a laugh. “Unlikely too. She seems far too smart to take the risk. Instead, she’ll search out our beachhead and drop anchor somewhere safe offshore, then wait for us to leave.”

  Tesyn whistled in appreciation. “You
have a devious mind, Corin Hugh.”

  “It’s why I’m still alive.”

  “And how will we escape her?”

  “With the assistance of the elves,” Corin said. He had another option up his sleeve—he could step through dream and return to Raentz or Aerome, and leave the justicar fixated on an empty stretch of beach—but now he’d come this far, he wanted to find the elves. He laid a hand on Tesyn’s shoulder and caught his eye. “It’s time to venture out upon the moors.”

  Tesyn whimpered, a low, animal sound, but Corin squeezed his shoulder in comfort and said more strongly, “It’s time to have a grand adventure.”

  “I don’t have adventures,” Tesyn mumbled. “I only tell about them.”

  “You explored the Wildlands with Auric!”

  “Twelve days! Twelve days I camped with him and his mad followers, and they were some of the most terrifying days of my life.” He looked Corin up and down dismissively. “And at least then I traveled with a hero.”

  Corin clapped him on the shoulder. “Today you are the hero. If we linger here, we’re dead men, sure as sunshine. But if you can find us a way across the moors, we will be legends.”

  Still Tesyn hesitated. Corin felt an urge to slap him, but instead he displayed all the genuine sincerity he could muster and asked, “Would Auric falter now? Can you truly bear to disappoint him?”

  That did the trick. The scholar recoiled as though he’d been hit, but then he shook himself. He straightened his spine and stared Corin in the eye.

  “I’m not a coward!”

  “You’ll be a hero,” Corin said. “The farmboy will tell the world your tale.”

  Tesyn laughed at that, but it was in amusement. He still stood tall, and now he turned his gaze toward the distant hills.

  Corin stepped up beside him. “You know the way?”

  “I know the beginning of the way,” Tesyn answered. “Pray the gods that is enough.”

  Even without the eerie voices of the dead, without the fear of unknown terrors lurking in every shadow, every twist of the land, it still would have been a taxing journey. The pirate and the scholar moved from a rocky beach into a fetid march. The plants there looked fat and greasy, overripe and sharp with thorns. The marsh sucked at their boots and burped up noxious gasses in their wake. An icy wind blew through it all, not strong enough to dispel the odor, but sharp enough to cut through cloak and clothes and steal a body’s heat.

  Long, curling tendrils of mist rolled across the land like breakers, endless waves rising up from the beach behind them and crashing against the distant highlands. The tendrils seemed almost alive, twin to the unreal mist that Corin ever saw in the presence of Oberon’s strange magic. But if these mists bespoke some vast enchantment cloaking this whole land, he could not readily determine its purpose. It was nothing immediate, nothing obvious, but an otherworldly malevolence lay thick and heavy everywhere across this land.

  Corin watched and waited, hopeful that at need he would be able to thwart this spell as he had done with others. In the meantime, he did everything he could to ignore the itch it placed between his shoulder blades. He toiled ever onward, pressing hard for higher ground, but every pace he went wore at him. And those voices never once relented. “Begone! Foul manling, leave our shores! We’ve seen enough of senseless wars.”

  Corin shook his head at that and muttered to himself, “This one is different. This time we will win. I swear by Fortune and by Oberon, I’ll find a way.”

  That marsh cost them hours, but Corin took some comfort in the trackless ground. It would leave no trail for the justicar to follow. She’d find hints enough that they had left the beach, but naught to tell her where they’d traveled through this sodden land.

  And then near midday they finally broke free. They left the marsh for higher ground, but that was its own struggle. The hills that bordered the wetlands rose up high and steep, smooth but for the occasional boulder on their sides. Tired as his aching legs were, Corin bent near double and tried to scramble up the slope, catching fistfuls of damp grass when he could brace himself again a stone. Three times he went too fast and lost his footing. Each time he slipped a dozen paces down the slope and had to recover what he’d lost before he could press on.

  At last they reached the top, and from there they saw what seemed the whole of the Isle spread before them. It was a vast and changing land—an island nearly as large as all of Raentz—but everywhere below these peaks, the fog that gave the Isle its name lay thick and roiling. If Corin strained his eyes, he could just make out the shape of distant hills, the shadow of a sprawling forest, and the slow, sinuous brown curves of a lazy river.

  “There,” Tesyn shouted, pointing to the river. “Across the bogs and to the highlands, then down the moors to river’s side. Retrace her path into the heartland, where sun and moon almost collide.”

  Corin frowned. “Your map is a bit of verse?”

  “It helps me remember,” Tesyn said. “And there is more, lest you’re thinking you can leave me behind.”

  Corin shook his head. “What would I gain from that? At this point, you’re near as likely to save my hide as you are to put it in danger. Tell me another verse, and maybe I can help you choose an easier path for the next leg of our journey.”

  Tesyn sighed. “There is no easy path. I’ve pieced together fragmentary maps drawn by men who’d made it this far before. There’s no more detail in all the library at Rikkeborh than you can see at a glance from here.”

  “But you said you had read some ancient text—”

  “From my uncle’s private library. It was set down in a time before this place was called the Isle of Mists, so no one had ever made the connection before.”

  Corin stared. “It told you all the secrets of this place?”

  Tesyn shook his head. “Alas. No. It was also before this place became the nightmare that it is now. In fact, it said little of the land itself, but it made mention of the shrouded city, and I have pieced together everything I could from the fragmentary maps.”

  “And you know how to get us there?”

  “I . . . well, I know how to get us close enough to find it. If we survive the moors. But everything I’ve read suggests we won’t. Not without our supplies. And seeing this . . .”

  “Aye?”

  “It’s worse than I believed. It’s everything they said it was. I think we should go back and search for some wreckage from the ship.”

  “You can search until you die of thirst, or until the justicar finds you. That’s the best you could hope for.”

  “We washed ashore!” Tesyn cried. “Surely some of the wreckage did too. There must be something we could salvage.”

  “We didn’t wash ashore. I dragged us ashore, against one of the most fearsome rip currents I’ve ever seen. I cannot guess how far away the wreckage might have landed.”

  The scholar’s shoulders slumped. “Then we are doomed. Everything I’ve ever read suggests this terrain is worse than anything the Wildlands can boast.”

  “Aye. I’ve heard much the same from other pirates.” Corin clapped Tesyn on the shoulder. “Still, we’ve come this far. We might as well see what we can discover before we die, eh? You say we’re heading for the river and then tracking it back north?”

  Tesyn nodded, mute.

  Corin nodded back. “Then I recommend we start out slightly to the west”—he waved toward the distant shadow of the woods—“and do our best to avoid that forest altogether.”

  “Why?”

  Corin shook his head. It was no more than instinct, but he feared the close confines and creeping shadows of a forest. He’d have preferred the clean cobblestones of a city’s streets or the open waves of a sea, but even the rolling moors seemed less sinister than the forest.

  Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to admit any of that to the scholar, so he shrugged one shoulder and answered, “Predators.”

  Tesyn considered it a moment, before nodding. “Very well. I’d planned to joi
n the river as far downstream as possible and track it up, since this vantage doesn’t tell us where on its length the shrouded city lies. But I can’t believe it’s that far downstream, or someone would have found it long before. So we will go northwest as you’ve suggested, and then bend back to the east as soon as we have passed the woods.”

  It seemed a solid plan, so they set out. They left the highland ridges for the fog-shrouded moors. And here, despite everything Tesyn had said, they at last found easy going. The wind still whispered vicious threats of murder in their ears, but the earth was smooth and solid, the grass soft and springy underfoot. Here and there, low-lying flowers bloomed, white or pale purple. Corin set a hard pace, taking advantage of the easy terrain, and Tesyn gave no complaint. They hurried north and west, deep into the heart of this strange land.

  For hours they trekked across the earth and through the swirling mists. The sun was no more than an angry orange patch off to their left, the sky a slightly darker shade of gray, the world around them roiling fog in all directions.

  Then Corin understood the true danger of this land. He drew his knife and slung its tip into the earth a pace ahead of him—at his best guess for north—then he turned in a slow circle, searching the horizon for the hills they’d left before.

  But there was no horizon. He turned in the direction he thought was east and strained his eyes, but he could not discern the distant shadow of the woods. Everything was fog.

  Sometimes ships lost were at sea in much the same conditions. No ordinary fog would even give a sailor pause, but on rare occasions a fog bank might rise up so thick, a steersman couldn’t tell his up from down, let alone his east from west. A man’s best hope in times like that was often to spread full sails and pull the oars and hold a steady course straight on, and hope to clear the fog before he drifted too far from his plot. Before he ran aground. Guessing could betray a man in fog like this, and instincts could mislead. Rumors told of crews who’d starved to death, sailing in circles for days and never more than hours from land. But they had lost their bearings.