by James Duvall
Christopher's voice carried from the other side of the hold where he hotly debated the second mate concerning how the cargo had been arranged. The argument crescendoed and died like a single strong gust of wind on an otherwise still summer evening. It ended with Christopher stomping up the stairs to the upper decks, fuming as he went.
“It's all about weight distribution around the glidestone engine, you know,” Willoughby chimed in.
“I know,” Timothy answered mechanically. His attention remained focused on Willoughby's lockpicks as they probed into the keyhole and made quiet clicking sounds against the tumblers inside. Christopher was a problem for later. After the chest was open.
“Can't just sort it all alphabetically or by type. The load would be uneven then,” Willoughby said, nodding to himself in an accord of one.
“Yes...”
Willoughby continued as though he hadn't heard. “The ship would be flyin' lopsided like a drunken man stumblin' home in the dark hour.”
“Are you quite finished?” Timothy asked, exasperated. He knew full well where the first mate's mind was headed.
Willoughby gave a good-natured shrug. “What I'm sayin' is, any airman knows that.”
“Too far, Willoughby,” Timothy warned.
A loud click announced the conclusion of Willoughby's work. The lid popped loose and a latch on the front tumbled forward like a felled tree and clanged against the lower banding. Willoughby stood up and rubbed his palms together.
“Shall we see what we have then, Mr. Binks?”
Chapter 2
The Shattered Survivor
Beronn, Telluria Shard
While it is tempting to describe shardwalls as impassible, they are not wholly unyielding. One must only look to the uncommon craft of the Bridgers Guild to see a well-known exception to their oft-impervious nature.
From Shardwalls, A History
In cradle at the Beronn skyport, Stormbreaker crewmen brought aboard Kentian spices packed in tight, unmarked kegs under Willoughby's close supervision. An assortment of cargo of more certain origin followed soon after, slowly filling the hold with wines, cheeses, and crate upon crate of glass jars and ceramic bowls that would no doubt do better floating aloft on the cushion of glidestone magic than bouncing along in the back of a horse-drawn wagon for days on end.
Timothy stood on the deck, overseeing. Aebyn's presence made the work easy; the crew needed no instruction and the gryphon's sharp gaze stifled any urge to filch one of the bottles of deep amber spirits, an otherwise very tempting target. Relieved of this small duty, Timothy looked out over the prow. In the failing light the shardwalls encompassed the horizon in every direction with their soft, reddish purple hue, made darker by the setting of the sun. By nightfall they would look as black as fortress walls, thinning as they soared above the clouds until they at last became transparent and let through the light of the stars. The bridge glowed in the distance, a shimmering vortex of silver and blue light which allowed the only passage through the magical shardwalls.
The Stormbreaker set sail early the next morning. She following the trade routes up the river and joined the caravan of airships waiting for their turn to pass through the bridge. Timothy felt some concern for how Aebyn might handle the trip, but the gryphon had little to say and simply looked forward into the swirling light as it engulfed him. The ship spilled out the other side as though they had simply passed through a tunnel, and now the open plains of Lethwin Shard lay before them, tall stalks of grain waving in the cool morning breeze. Far to the west lay a dense forest of evergreen, at the foot of a mountain range divided in half by a shimmering shardwall, deep purple in the morning sun.
"How much do you think he's worth?" Christopher asked over a plate of eggs and toast. He sipped from a steaming mug of coffee while he looked to Timothy for an answer.
“Much more than a luminarian, if that's what you're thinking. He'll stick around.”
Christopher snorted. “Outrageous. You've no heart for business, Timothy.”
“Fine then, what do you think we should do?”
“Put him off at the next port. Deliver him and all that rubbish from his old master's chest to the Bridger's Guild and collect whatever reward they offer for it. We can be done with the whole matter and have it behind us. We've very little use for a gryphon to begin with. Much less a lighthound. Better to leave him with the bridgers. Better to not have the bridgers come looking for him.”
“He wants to join the crew,” Timothy said. “He's better security for the ale than Willoughby. Not a single bottle unaccounted for. Aebyn feels it his personal duty to see to that. Says he's going to make honorable men of us all."
The first mate's typical mode of protecting tempting cargo was to drowse off in front of it with a loaded pistol in his lap. Unfortunately the practice had turned it into a bit of a game for the crew. They had quickly taken to paying the younger men for the risk and then gambling on who could sneak the most bottles away from Willoughby before getting caught.
“Yes and they'll probably all desert when we make Aduro,” Christopher said, dourly. “Which is where we'll leave that gryphon if we have any sense. We have business to attend to that I don't want bridgers poking around at.”
Christopher pushed his plate aside; his eggs had gone cold. To Timothy's surprise he rose silently from the table and peeked out through the keyhole, then stepped into the hall and returned a moment later, locking the door behind him.
“Chris...?”
“There was a book in Raimes' chest,” he said in hushed tones. “An old one. Older than all the rest you found. Oldest I've seen.”
“I'm listening...”
“It's from the Lost Islands. Isla Merindi, best I can tell. I know what you're thinking. The Lost Islands have been picked over and it's a fool's errand.”
Timothy was thinking exactly that. There were thousands of mysteries surrounding the Lost Islands and just as many stories that circulated in skyport pubs. The most infamous was of course the destruction of the university on what had come to be known as the Island of Glory. Excavation had failed to uncover the magical artifact that most scholars contended caused the creation of the shardwalls and the utter ruin of the university. Merindi was the closest neighboring island and, in the days following the rediscovery of these shards, had become the launching point of hundreds of expeditions into the Glory Shard and other ruins of the fabled Forrander University.
Most alluring to treasure hunters was the Mistwood Vault, an unassuming building that had been an object of curiosity for some time until surveys of the region showed the vault did not exist prior to the university's destruction. Protective charms had turned away every attempt to open it or otherwise breach the small building. At the height of the frenzy a contingent of dwarven soldiers and their captain marched to the vault with siege engines, intending to knock the door in. On the very first swing the battering ram split down the middle and fell to pieces. So incensed was the captain that he climbed atop the vault and landed one hardy blow with his war hammer. The vault answered with a counter pulse of magic, sending the captain hurtling through the air. He did not wake for several days. The event had come to exemplify the folly of such expeditions and had introduced into the common vernacular the phrase “hammering the vault.”
Christopher's plans were nearly always well-conceived, so Timothy motioned for him to continue. Christopher checked the keyhole again, stepping lightly across the floor.
“It's the personal journal of an archmage called Faralon. He was a lecturer in herbology and alchemical arts at the university before the Arclorus blew up and created all the shardwalls. I checked him out while we were in port; shows up in the official records. His name's on the monument and everything.”
Christopher hurried to his desk and hefted all of the letters out of his top drawer. Once emptied, he reached in and found the subtle latch that released the false bottom that usually concealed the ship's unadulterated cargo manifest. Timothy was glad that
Aebyn was not present to see the hidden compartment. He had no doubt the gryphon would want to know why it was there and again he would have to offer a weak explanation that daintily skirted the bald truth, all beneath Aebyn's convicting gaze.
This time the compartment also contained a leather-bound journal with a wrinkled cover and a number of colorful ribbons marking pages. Mixed among the dozens of books, letters, bridger's uniforms, and spare changes of clothing, Christopher had somehow found a treasure after all.
“Listen, Chris, it's been 600 years since the shardwalls came up and the book made it all the way back to the Bridgers Guild. Surely someone looked into it.”
“They haven't,” Christopher said confidently. He thrust the book into Timothy's hands. “Read it. You'll see. Just keep quiet about it. I don't want the crew to think we're up to anything special.”
“Won't they think that when they see me reading?” Timothy asked dryly.
Christopher rolled his eyes. “Tell them it's for the gryphon, might as well put him to use if you're intent on keeping him. You don't have to read the whole thing. Just the marked sections. You'll see."
That evening in the privacy of his quarters he thumbed to the first section Christopher had marked. Curled up on the foot of the bed, Aebyn lifted his head when the book came open.
“Is that from the salvage?” Aebyn asked. He had picked up the term quickly from Willoughby. Items like the chest, abandoned by their owner on a downed vessel, could be considered salvage given that they had been abandoned. Normally this would have required the chest to be abandoned for upwards of a year, but Willoughby was quick to point out that in a year they would've been muddy ashes at the foot of the Beronn Mountains. Aebyn had been reluctant to agree to that particular stipulation, but came around quickly when the alternative – returning the chest to Raimes – was presented. They were all in agreement that if there was anyone that did not deserve the chest it was Samuel Raimes.
“It is,” Timothy said. “I am surprised a bridger would leave something like this behind.”
Aebyn's demeanor darkened at the mention of his former master. Several weeks aboard the Stormbreaker had done much to lift his spirits but the wounds were still there. He spoke often of the man's betrayal, abandoning him and the precious chest of books to the fire.
Timothy turned the pages slowly, scanning the dates handwritten at the top of each entry while the lighthound sulked. Eventually curiosity lured Aebyn to the head of the bed where he could lay and see the book laid out on Timothy's desk. Timothy's secretive nature got the better of him for a heartbeat and he nearly snapped the book shut to hide it from Aebyn's prying eyes.
"Can you read?" he asked instead.
Aebyn's ears drooped. “I cannot. The Bridger's Guild has not had much time to train me.”
"I am no tutor, but I can probably teach you a little, if you like."
The offer sounded ludicrous as he voiced it, but Timothy found he knew next to nothing about gryphons. Were they always so curious? Was it abnormal for a gryphon to read? It probably was, but he could find no reason to deny the skill to Aebyn.
"I would," Aebyn said, brightening almost immediately.
"This is the journal of a dead man," Timothy explained, giving it a dramatic flair. "It contains the private thoughts and experiences of a mage that lived in the time before the Shattering, before the shardwalls came up."
Aebyn squinted at him and tilted his head a little to one side. “How do you know he was from before the Shattering?”
“He died at the university. He was a lecturer there. Potions or something like that.”
Aebyn stretched out on his belly and studied the letters, trying to make sense of them. "Does he have anything interesting to say about it? I heard they've never really found out what happened. Is that true?"
"Well let's see, shall we?" Timothy asked and started to read from the first marked passage.
Timothy turned each page with a careful hand but found the paper was not at all brittle as he had expected from something so old. Instead it was smooth and waxy. The ink, which normally would have turned a reddish brown by now, was still bold and black as the day it had been penned.
The writer called himself Isaac Faralon and described himself as a lecturer in Herbology and Alchemy. His claim found legitimacy by the frequent appearance of alchemic formulae throughout the text. Timothy, having only the most cursory knowledge of the subject could do little more than pronounce the names of the various tinctures and draughts. Aebyn would nod along as though he understood, regardless of how unpronounceable and strange the formulae became.
Most of the entries were marked with dates, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the days leading up to the disaster that had changed the face of the world so drastically. It would be nearly four hundred years after the university's destruction before mages learned how to cross the shardwalls and reconnect the fragmented kingdoms through bridges and took on their namesake title, the bridgers.
On the day before the Shattering, Isaac Faralon had a quiet afternoon assessing alchemy exams by diluting his students' elixirs with water until they lost their potency. The strongest went to a young girl named Evelyn Thatch, whose Tincture of Tranquility continued to sedate a test subject after diluted four parts to one.
Much to Timothy's disappointment, the journal had no direct account of the Shattering. The next page bore the title 'Survivors' and a date nearly three weeks after the Shattering. A small mark by the date indicated that it was an estimation.
"Were there many?" Aebyn asked.
"Eighty-seven," Timothy noted, scanning to the bottom of the page. Each survivor's name was accompanied by their year in school and any non-magical skills they possessed that might have proved valuable to surviving on the Island of Glory. "Masonry, Carpentry, Fishing, Hunting, Farming..." Timothy listed a few of them off for Aebyn's benefit before turning to the next page. The casualties list spanned two pages and multiple columns. Starting with full familial names, the list dwindled to first names and nicknames until arriving at a particularly sad end in the form of brief descriptions of the deceased whom none could identify. These Timothy did not mention to Aebyn, feeling him rather young. Another page enumerated those that could not be found, alive or not. Someone had come back later and crossed out many of those names.
From then on the journal became a ledger of supplies and manpower with sparing accounts of excavations of the collapsed portions of the university. Timothy skipped over most of them until he reached Christopher's next bookmark.
"I have escaped through the wall born of the Arclorus's destruction and am safe on Isla Merindi. I daresay I cannot be followed here," Timothy read aloud. If true, this meant that Faralon had managed to cross the shardwall from the Glory Shard into Pendric Shard.
"He was a bridger?" Aebyn asked.
Timothy shrugged helplessly. "If he was, then he was the first. It was almost four hundred years after the Shattering before someone figured it out. I wonder why he didn't bridge all the way to Cahen if that were the case."
"Maybe he had reason to stay in Merindi?"
Each subsequent bookmark drew attention to expeditions the elderly mage had taken into the island's interior. Christopher had called out four of them for closer scrutiny, and unlike the others, these ended in a small block of random letters, which Christopher had deciphered into plain text.
"Bruskwood Chest, Keyhole in Alchemy Lab Floor."
A little more reading had awakened Aebyn's youthful sense of adventure. "Oh, we should go! We can find this, I am sure. We'll go won't we?" he asked, his feathery tail flicking in excited sweeps that threatened to blow all of the papers off of Timothy's desk. Timothy was not thoroughly convinced that the trip would yield a host of long-lost treasures, but reasoned that the book's account of the aftermath of the Shattering would fetch a price more than enough to cover the cost of the excursion.
In the morning Christopher sent Willoughby into town to fetch the rest of the crew. T
imothy accompanied him as far as market road, then peeled off to collect supplies of his own. His shopping errands kept him out until after dark, and he returned to the Stormbreaker with a new compass and a harness for Aebyn. It was too large for him at first, but the bosun was able to adjust the buckles to fit snugly about the gryphon's chest and back without impinging on his wings.
"I'm sure you'll grow into it soon," Timothy said, patting Aebyn's head. "It's not too tight, is it?"
"It fits nicely," Aebyn said, stretching out his wings to test it. The harness was not cheap. The straps were made of fine strips of dark leather and the buckles a well-polished brass. They would need regular upkeep to stave off tarnish, but Timothy felt it was worth it for the gryphon's continued good humor. Aebyn seemed more than pleased with the equipment. There was a satchel on either side of him, threaded into the harness.
"What are they for?" Aebyn asked, tilting his head so that he could look directly at his reflection in the glossy surface of one of the satchel buckles.
"Our expedition to Merindi.”
Chapter 3
The Stowaway Dragon
Coast of Isla Merindi, Pendric Shard
After the breaking of the world, many scholars posited theories as to what had brought the shardwalls. Naturally the isolation of the old university was a great hindrance to this effort, and the question was not settled until Nicholas Darenvar's expedition in the year 524 A.S.
From Shardwalls, A History
Secluded in the rafters over the kitchen, Sapphire watched the cook stir the evening's stew pot, waiting for her opportunity to strike. Potatoes, carrots, diced onions already simmered in the broth while the cook cut chunks of salted pork and added them by the handful to the bubbling cauldron. When his back was turned, Sapphire sprinkled two handfuls of crushed herbs into the stew, making the broth foam a little. Rising steam greeted her with a savory aroma that made her mouth water. Content with her work, she curled up in the rafters and used the thick tuft of fur at the tip of her tail as a pillow. If she was going to go to the trouble of stealing food, it was going to at least taste half-decent. Now she only need wait.