“I’m a wizard and a Bonelord of Aita.” Pancras laid his maul on the desk so the relief skull faced up, visible to the harbormaster. “My companions can fight with blades, maybe bows.”
Wiping his nose again, the harbormaster sniffed. “Wizard, huh? Well, that’s not useless.” He grunted, pushed himself away from the desk, and clomped over to a shelf in front of the window that overlooked the docks.
“Had an elf mystic come through here a few months back. He could talk to trees and sing to birds. Wanted to hire on a ship to see the sea.” The harbormaster flipped open one of the books sitting on the shelf and ran his finger across the lines.
“Here she is: the Maiden of the High Seas. Selene’s Pier up at the north end of the harbor.” The harbormaster pointed out the window to a ship mostly obscured by warehouses. “The captain’s a Watchman called Eingvar Salt-Wind.”
“Thank you, Harbormaster.”
The minotaur grunted and flipped shut his book. He stood and stared out the window, offering nothing further. Pancras descended the stairs and found Gisella and Qaliah waiting with the horses across the street, ignoring the catcalls and off-color comments the sailors in line made about them.
“Found a ship. The Maiden of the High Seas at Selene’s Pier at the north end.”
Qaliah regarded Pancras with wide eyes. “That was easier than I expected.”
Pancras took Stormheart’s reins from Gisella. “It’s a possibility. We haven’t booked passage yet.”
With a bit of Dolios’s luck and a few coins, perhaps we can depart this place sooner, rather than later. “Have you heard of Eingvar Salt-Wind?”
“Who’s that?” Gisella shook her head.
“The captain. He’s a Watchman.”
“Many people live in the Four Watches. I know only a handful. Many of my people on the coasts have ships.”
“Yes, of course. I hoped, perhaps, you’d heard of him by reputation. No matter.” As they reached the road that ran along the piers, Pancras noticed each pier was named for a god and featured a statue of that god at the street corner. The sun hung low on the horizon by the time they made their way with three horses across the Docks District to Selene’s Pier.
The Maiden of the High Seas bobbed up and down as sailors carried cargo up her gangplanks. A three-masted sailing vessel, she was fit for a voyage from the south to the northern ports of Vlorey and beyond. The captain stood on her poop deck and shouted orders to the rabble hustling about on the main deck. He was a stout man with a wild mane of blonde hair and a braided beard, which hung down to his chest.
Pancras stopped one of the sailors loading cargo and inquired how they could book their passage. The sailor pointed to a wiry man standing at the top of the gangplank.
“The quartermaster handles that.” The sailor returned to his work as Pancras handed his reins to Qaliah. Gisella did the same and together they walked up the gangplank. It creaked and bowed under their weight.
The quartermaster pointed at them when they neared the top. “Here now! What’s this about?”
“We’re looking to buy passage.” Pancras stopped at the top of the plank. “Permission to come aboard?”
“Yes, yes. Get out of the way.” The quartermaster waved them on board. Pancras grabbed the rail to steady himself as the deck heaved under a wave.
“Now then, we’re not going to Vlorey. Nearest we go is Port-of-Dogs. It’s about a week overland to Vlorey from there.”
“I don’t understand. Isn’t Vlorey a port?” Gisella clung to the rigging to maintain her balance. “The harbormaster said this ship goes to Vlorey.”
“Yeah, but to make it to Vlorey, we got to sail up and around Verdant Point and back down the length of it.” The quartermaster raised his eyebrows. His tone and cadence was similar to that of a parent speaking to a willful child. “Takes near a month sailing against the wind. It’s much faster for all to unload at Port-of-Dogs. Only ships from the Elven Empire or from the west sail into the Bay of Vlorey.”
“Fine then. There are three of us and our horses.” Pancras gestured down the gangplank at Qaliah.
The quartermaster pursed his lips. “Livestock is extra. If the womenfolk want privacy, they’ll have to negotiate with one of the officers for their cabin. One of the women officers might let them stay with her, but it’s up to you to find a berth.”
He reached over and squeezed Pancras’s arm. “Minotaurs have strong backs. What work do you do?” He nodded at Gisella. “And you? The other woman?”
Pancras rubbed his arm where the quartermaster touched him. The man’s grip was like an iron vise. “I’m Bonelord of Aita and a wizard.”
“Yeah?” The quartermaster raised his eyebrows. “Can you control the winds?”
“No.” Pancras shook his head. One downside of spending most of his life practicing necromancy was that he had little opportunity to study any sort of elemental magic.
“What about you, girly?”
Gisella pursed her lips. “I am a slayer of the Arcane University.”
“She fights,” Pancras added in reply to the quartermaster’s blank stare. “So does the fiendling.”
The quartermaster peered over the rail at Qaliah and the horses. He grunted. “A hundred and fifty crowns, for the lot of you. Sleep where you find space, unless you can negotiate something better and”—he punctuated his statement by poking Pancras in the chest—“expect to work. This ain’t a pleasure cruise.”
Pancras and Gisella returned to the dock where Qaliah waited for them. They explained the arrangement to her.
“That seems expensive.” The fiendling shielded her eyes with her hand and squinted as she regarded the heaving ship. The seas became rougher as the tides rose and storm clouds moved in.
“No more than I expected.” Pancras glanced into his money pouch. “It shouldn’t be a problem. I might be able to help with your negotiations for private quarters. How are your funds?”
“Not enough for private quarters.” Qaliah bit her lip and glanced at Gisella. “Blondie might want to pony up for some privacy though.”
Gisella frowned. “I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“Fine.”
They pooled their coin, and Pancras returned to the quartermaster. He paid the man and listened as he instructed him on where to take their horses to be loaded. The minotaur returned to his companions. Within the hour, they were aboard the Maiden, peering over the rails on the forecastle.
He was aware it was likely the last time he’d step foot on dry land for several months. Pancras turned to glance at Cliffport. The sailors scurried over the Maiden’s decks like insects, responding to overlapping, shouted instructions from the deck officers and prepared the ship for launch.
From his vantage point on deck, Pancras hardly noticed a rise in the tide on the Docks District. The district was built to withstand the highest tides of a double full moon. At present, the King waxed while the Queen waned. Neither was visible through the heavy, grey clouds that moved in over the last few hours.
Enchanted lanterns illuminated the sea in front of the Maiden as she cleared her moorings and navigated the harbor. The buildings and the land shrank into the distance, and once the Maiden passed underneath Nethun’s Arch, Pancras turned to gaze at the sea once more.
The minotaur thought of his friends, half a continent away in Muncifer and Drak-Anor, and hoped they were well. Aita was with him, and though he feared he would never see them again, he acknowledged he was about to embark on a new segment of his life. A new life. A new purpose. Onward to Vlorey.
* * *
Kale knelt by the ruined head of the dragon. The odor was almost unbearable, but he forced himself to tolerate it. His sister stood behind him, hugging herself. The light from her staff cast long shadows over the carcass.
“What do we do now, Deli?” Kale stood and wiped his hands on his legs. “I didn’t even know a Firstborne could die.”
Delilah rested her hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“She’s too big for us to bury, but we might as well search around. Maybe there’s something we can take back with us, you know, to settle this business with the archmage and archduke?”
After sending a boggin message to Kali and Katka explaining the situation, Delilah and Kale picked their way through the rubble. This side of the chasm was littered with more fallen and shattered crystals than the other side.
Kale thought, perhaps, it was from the earthquake Delilah told them about earlier. He didn’t understand how a mighty Firstborne dragon, a literal child of a god, could be brought low by something as mundane as a blow to the head, but he supposed if a crystal the size of a building landed on Terrakaptis, it would injure him.
“Kale, over here!” Delilah increased her pace, jumping over a fallen monolith. She skidded to a halt, flailing her arms at the edge of an area that resembled a crystal eruption. Small crystals of every shape and color jutted from a larger crystal in a circular pattern. The crystals formed a ring around a flat, textured area.
The two draks climbed over the outer ring. The surface of the crystals below them felt almost like pebbles beneath their feet. Kale found they were much less slick than the other surfaces in the geode chamber. The surface was still slanted, however, and Kale flapped his wings to aid his balance.
“Watch out over there.” Delilah pointed to a dip in the surface of the textured area. Kale shuffled toward it and noticed it was an area that appeared to have been scooped out. The surface of the dip was smooth, like an ordinary crystal, but it was concave and sloped toward one of the cracks that opened over the lava river. He saw an oblong object perched at the edge of the crack.
“Hold my hand, Deli.” Kale stretched toward the object. “Don’t let me fall!”
From his position, it was out of reach, so he lay prone. His fingers brushed the surface of the leathery object, and the sigil on his chest burned. With a final lunge, he snatched the object and then scooted away from the edge.
“What is it? Treasure?”
Kale turned the object over in his hands. It was almost as large as he was, albeit minus arms and legs. Its surface possessed a pebbly texture and was almost translucent. It seemed to glow from within, but Kale supposed it might be a trick of the light. The closer he held it to him, the more the sigil on his chest burned. His own body was unchanged.
“I think… I think it’s an egg, Deli.”
His sister whistled. “A dragon egg.”
He glanced at the scooped area. “She must have been trying to save it and nearly knocked it into the crack when she died.”
“We can’t let the archmage know about this, Kale.” Delilah crouched down, placing a hand on the egg. Kale felt movement within. He ran his hand along the egg’s surface. Terrakaptis wanted to wake his siblings and trusted Kale to help with that task, but the Earth Dragon’s sister was now dead.
“This egg is all that’s left of Pyraclannaseous.” He furrowed his brow and clenched his jaw. “We need to bring it to Terrakaptis.”
Delilah placed her hand on top of his. “We will. We have to deal with Manless, first, and keep this secret.”
Kale nodded. His sister was right. If they fled for Drak-Anor with the egg, they still needed to worry about Katka, and if the human returned to Muncifer without them, eventually Boss Steelhand, the archduke, and Archmage Vilkan would discover that the draks fled. He pulled the egg close to his chest. The burning was a steady heat, but not painful. He swore he would guard the egg with his life and find a way to reunite the life within with its kin.
By Hans Cummings
The Foundation of Drak-Anor
Wings of Twilight
Iron Fist of the Oroqs
Scars of the Sundering
Malediction
Lament
Salvation (Coming Soon!)
The Zack Jackson Series
Zack Jackson & The Cult of Athos
Zack Jackson & The Cytherean Academy
Zack Jackson & The Hives of Valtra
Seven Galaxies (formerly published in the Sojourn Speculative Fiction anthologies)
Forgotten Dreams
The Pleasure Pools of Persiphia
Scars of the Sundering
Book 1 – Malediction
Book2 – Lament
Book 3 - Salvation
Hans Cummings
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Hans Cummings
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
Edited by Cynthia Shepp
https://cynthiashepp.wordpress.com/
Cover design by Eric Hubbel
http://hubbelcreative.deviantart.com/
Cover Art by Lily Yang
http://www.lilyyangart.com/
Heraldy by
Axel Löfving
Cartography by Anna B. Meyer
http://http://ghmaps.net/
World of Calliome Logo by Gwyneth Ravenscraft of G-Sharp Productions
http://www.g-sharpproductions.com/
Acknowledgements
For Tink, without whom this would not have been possible.
To Steven D. Russell, your encouragement and enthusiasm was more helpful and inspirational than you can ever know. R.I.P, my friend.
Thanks to Michael R. Hicks, J.A. Konrath, Chuck Wendig, and Michael A. Stackpole for encouragement, advice, and inspiration. You all help give me the drive to make this possible.
Special thanks to Mike Wolff, Craig Majors, John Adamus, Sam Halpern, Lillian K, KE Casey, and the fine folk in the Fear the Boot message board community for all their encouragement and feedback.
Hans Cummings
Author/Publisher
Author of the fantasy duology: The Foundation of Drak-Anor: Wings of Twilight and Iron Fist of the Oroqs as well as the Zack Jackson science fiction series, Hans Cummings published his first novel in 2011. Three of his short stories appear in Fear the Boot’s Sojourn speculative fiction anthologies. He is Nuvo’s Best of Indy — Best Local Author 3rd place Honoree for 2014 and 2015.
Hans is a volunteer for the tabletop gaming industry ENnie Awards and maintains a gaming blog http://doctorstrangeroll.wordpress.com in addition to his writing blog http://vffpublishing.com.
Hans earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Indiana University in 2006. He grew up in Indiana, Germany, and Virginia and returned to Indiana when he was 21. He currently lives in Indianapolis with his wife. Hans’s hobbies include tabletop and computer gaming, cooking and smoking meat, and igniting young people’s curiosity and passion for science and exploration.
Learn more about this and other works by the author at: http://vffpublishing.com/
Use Twitter? Follow the author @hccummings
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgements
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Lament (Scars of the Sundering Book 2) Page 37
