by John Bierce
Talia curled up a little more.
“There is absolutely no chance I’m letting that happen,” Sabae said. “You’ve seen me drag Hugh out of his rooms, do you think I won’t do the same for you too?”
“Hugh’s not going to be attracted to this,” Talia said, pointing at her scalp. “I doubt he’ll even want to look at me.”
Godrick rolled his eyes at her. “Who exactly was it that sat holdin’ yer hand ta’ comfort yeh for a half-hour just now?”
“That’s different,” Talia said, in a tiny voice.
Sabae rolled her eyes now. “What would one of the characters from your ridiculous novels do in this situation?”
Talia considered that for a moment. “Repeatedly try and fail to work up the nerve to confess their feelings to their love interest over and over again, with lots of amusing accidents and misunderstandings between them that make things seem impossible, only to finally find their courage during the final battle?”
Sabae and Godrick exchanged glances.
“First off,” Sabae said, “you are absolutely not going to confess your feelings to Hugh during a battle. That’s a good way to get both of you distracted and killed.”
“But—” Talia started.
“Ah’ve got ta agree with Sabae on this one,” Godrick said. “That’s a terrible idea.”
Talia sniffed, but nodded.
“Second,” Sabae said, “that sounds like it would be absolutely exhausting and annoying for everyone involved. Especially me and Godrick.”
Godrick just nodded at that.
“So what then?” Talia said.
Sabae shrugged. “Do you think you could actually just, you know, work up your nerve and tell Hugh how you feel?”
Talia just shrugged.
“Ah mean, we’re on this whole expedition with the future of the continent at stake,” Godrick said. “Ah think it might help if yeh just get it over with one way or another, so yeh can keep focused on the mission.”
Talia eyed him oddly. “Isn’t the usual advice here to avoid complicating things altogether when you’re in the middle of a crisis like this?”
Godrick shrugged. “Do yeh seriously see us ever not bein’ in the middle of some crisis or another?”
Sabae chuckled at that, and even Talia snorted in amusement.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Listener in the Silent Straits
The Radhan held a funeral for the deceased two evenings after the sea serpent attack.
The crew of the Rising Cormorant had been lavish with praise over the past couple days, and Hugh couldn’t even count the number of times they’d been thanked by crewmembers. Most of the attention was reserved for Sabae and Alustin, thankfully. Hugh and Talia were occasionally congratulated for killing one sea serpent each, but for the most part, he, Artur, and Godrick were left out of the praise. That being said, the crew had begun treating all of them as though they belonged to one of the families on the ship.
For all that warmth, however, they weren’t allowed to attend the funeral. The group from Skyhold was asked to stay belowdecks, and the mess hall was made available to them during the funeral. The Radhan religion was, apparently, as secretive as their language. All Alustin would say about it, as he poked at Hugh’s spellbook, was that he was fairly sure it was an invisible cult— the only stable one he knew of— and that he had absolutely no interest in using his magic to spy upon the mourners.
The atmosphere the next morning was somber, but not just because of the funeral the night before.
“There are four rules for traveling through the Silent Straits,” Alustin said. “First, your ship must not be built of cedar, and you must be carrying as little as possible on board. Second, you must use as little magic as possible. Third, you do not stare towards the demesne of the Listener for sustained periods. Quick glances and panoramic sweeps of the mountains are fine, but no staring. And fourth, and most importantly, you must not speak. No casual greetings, no muffled curse words, nothing. It is called the Listener for a reason. The Silent Straits are called such not because they are silent, but because you need to be silent to pass through it safely. The Listener’s demesne isn’t currently blooming, so we shouldn’t attract its interest if everyone obeys the rules, most especially the fourth. No matter what you do, stay silent.”
Hugh raised his hand. “Sir, I could construct a noise ward around the ship to make it quieter?”
Alustin shook his head. “What’s rule two, Hugh?”
“Don’t, uh, use magic, sir?” Hugh said. He was somewhat taken aback by Alustin’s intensity. He hadn’t even told Hugh not to call him sir like he usually did.
“Use as little magic as possible,” Alustin said. “Using small amounts is safe enough, but we’ll be restricting that to the ship’s mages. And our concern isn’t noise, it’s spoken words. The Listener doesn’t pay attention to non-speech sounds like footsteps, the creaking of the ship, or coughing. Unusually loud noises sometimes cause it to stir, but a full-ship noise ward would draw its attention far more swiftly. If you don’t think you can follow these rules, the ship’s healer has prepared sleeping draughts so you can sleep through the transit. All of the young children on board will be taking it, as well as several of the more… gossipy crewmembers.”
“And me,” Artur said. “Ah’ve got no intention ta’ ever be awake for another transit through the Silent Straits again.”
Hugh shot Artur a curious look. He’d always assumed Artur got seasick or something, but it was becoming clear that Artur had a history with sailing ships. He didn’t want to pry, though.
“What is the Listener?” Talia asked in a quiet, subdued voice from where she was sitting tucked between Godrick and the mess hall bulkhead. She’d barely spoken since the sea serpent attack, and wrapped a patterned cloth around her head on the rare occasions she left her cabin. When Hugh had asked, she’d just told him she was reading the books Alustin had assigned her.
Alustin shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “I suspect Kanderon might know, but she’s never told me what the Listener is, save that she believes its borders to be stable, and unlikely to expand anytime soon. Galvachren likely knows what it is as well, though he’s never admitted as much in any of his writings.”
“My grandmother might know as well,” Sabae volunteered. “I’m not sure, though. She dislikes admitting ignorance about things like that.”
Alustin nodded at that. “What I do know is that the Listener is a strong contender for the single mightiest great power on the continent. It’s laid waste to countless fleets, dragon flights, and great powers. The only real rival it has is the Sleeper in the Sand.”
“The what?” Godrick asked.
“A giant sunmaw the size of a town,” Alustin said. “It’s buried under the sand of the western Endless Erg somewhere. So far as we can tell, it’s essentially unkillable, and could probably devour Indris in a few bites. Remember how difficult it was to hit the normal sunmaw we faced with spells, thanks to the way it distorted the aether around it and made spells fail?”
Talia, Sabae, and Godrick nodded.
“The sleeper’s mana disruption field extends hundreds of feet away from its body. It’s older than human civilization on Anastis, and it’s been imprisoned and kept asleep beneath the sands for over a millennium now.”
“It tries to awaken every century or two,” Sabae said. “My family is among those who help force it back to sleep every time.”
Alustin nodded. “As are Kanderon, Indris, Chelys Mot, the rulers of most of the city-states of the Endless Erg, and countless wandering dragons and the like. Nobody wants that thing to awaken again.”
Their teacher took a bite of his breakfast— one of the curries that the Radhan seemed to enjoy for most of their meals— before continuing.
“There’s one other thing you need to know along with the four rules,” Alustin said. “Which are, by the way?”
“Your ship mustn’t be built of cedar,” Sabae said. “Th
ough that one’s really weird.”
“They’re all weird,” Alustin said. “Next.”
“As little magic as possible,” Talia said quietly.
“Don’t stare at the Listener’s demesne,” Hugh said. “Just glances.”
“And no speaking at all,” Sabae finished.
“Right,” Alustin said. “So the other thing you need to know is about the Listener’s demesne’s blooms.”
“Is the Listener a lich?” Sabae asked.
Alustin shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We just call its territory a demesne because it never leaves and because of, well, the massive changes it has made to it. I was telling you about the blooms, though. Normally, the demesne is an ugly, dusty grey-brown. When it blooms, huge patches of yellow, red, and orange appear. When the blooms are dense and wide enough, it is absolutely unsafe to venture anywhere near. It’s guaranteed death to do so, even more surely than if you break the four rules.”
“A gruesome one,” Artur said, an uncharacteristically gloomy look on his face.
Alustin nodded. “The Listener’s demesne is in bloom now, but not nearly enough to be a danger.”
“Why does anyone sail through the Silent Straits?” Hugh asked. “This seems insane.”
“It’s the fastest route past the Skyreach Range by sea, for one,” Alustin said. “For another, it’s far safer in many regards— you won’t find any kraken, sea serpents, or anything else dangerous enough to threaten a ship. Even in the depths of winter, when the serpents come closest to shore, they avoid the straits. That’s a big part of why we’re taking this route— the southern routes through the islands are more dangerous when serpent infested.”
“Ah’m still worried about why the serpents came so close in summer,” Artur said. “Ah’ve not heard of that happening before.”
“Maybe the storm-paths have shifted?” Sabae suggested. “I know my grandmother sometimes shifts storms to alter serpent migrations.”
“Best not repeat that too loud,” Alustin said, glancing around. They were eating breakfast late, so the mess hall was half empty. “I don’t think that’s a possibility that would endear you to the crew, even with how grateful they are to you for saving Dell.”
Sabae nodded seriously at that.
“We’ve got another few hours before we reach the straits,” Alustin said. “Once we’re there, the actual trip through the dangerous section, where the strait is narrowest, should only take four to six hours, depending on how much the winds want to cooperate. Decide soon whether you want to sleep or not.”
Hugh already knew he’d be staying awake. Terrifying unknowable monsters aside, it wasn’t often you had daylight hours where you were guaranteed that nobody would try and start a conversation with you.
The narrowest section of the Silent Straits, where the demesne of the Listener bordered on the sea, was only a little bit over a league in width. It stretched perfectly east and west along the southern shore of the continent, and was bordered by the first of the mountainous Shattered Isles to the south.
Before taking the sleeping draught, Artur had told them how the Shattered Isles had once been a part of the Skyreach Range, in eons past when the world was colder and the seas were lower, long before humanity had come to the world of Anastis. The Silent Straits had been a great pass then, where a river ran straight through the mountains. Powerful earth or stone mages could still feel the ancient riverbed below the seafloor with their affinity senses.
The summer heat’s grip on the sea air struggled against the fierce winds that blew between the mountains to either side of them. The wind raised whitecaps on the waves, and the Rising Cormorant lurched and shuddered without the magic of its wind and water mages to steady its course through the center of the channel.
To the south, the Shattered Isles loomed, far bigger than the mountains Hugh had known in Emblin. Even at the height of summer, with the sun nearly directly overhead, he could see snow and ice at their peaks. The sky held only scattered clouds that seemed to mirror the whitecaps on the waves.
Sparse, scrubby forests speckled their slopes, and drakes and seabirds, including the ship’s namesake black cormorants, hunted fish in the waters below them, noisily squabbling over their catches. They hardly even had to put forth any effort to capture fish, however— schools of boarfish thick enough to walk on hunted swarms of arm-length basking squid. Flying fish escaped predators in the water below, only to be seized on the wing by flying predators above. Seals rested on cliff ledges twenty feet above the water, waiting sleepily for high tide to lift the ocean up to them once more so they could hunt and play in the water. Wild gryphons and mountain goats watched their ship pass by from great boulders and clifftops.
If that had been all the scene, it would have been one of the most beautiful sights Hugh had ever seen. He could have lived happily in such a place.
It wasn’t the whole scene, however, and no matter how wondrous he found the Straits, his eyes kept being drawn inevitably northward, as though pulled by hooks.
He made sure not to look for more than a few breaths at a time. He’d worried, at first, that he wouldn’t know how long it was safe to look at the Listener’s demesne, but he found no difficulty with that. More than a few moments, and his vision began to waver, his stomach twisted, and even his heart began to stutter, as though some arrhythmic patternless cacophony tried to impose itself over his heartbeat.
Those brief glances, however, unsettled him deeply.
He hadn’t known what, exactly, he’d been expecting. Mysterious structures, bizarre growths, or maybe shadowy movement. Twisted, demonic wildflowers for the blooms Alustin had spoken of, perhaps.
The Listener’s demesne, however, contained none of that.
Instead, the great mountains of the southern edge of the Skyreach Range seemed to be covered in a dull grey-brown blanket. Not a tightly woven, well-made blanket, but a loose, fuzzy, dusty mass, slumping over boulders and cliffs, covering everything, even the peaks that would normally be bare far above the tree line. Great streaks of vivid yellow, angry chains of red specks, and misshapen rosettes of orange were all scattered about the blanket, but other than their garish colors, seemed no different than the rest of the surface. A gently shifting haze of dust seemed to drift above the cloying blanket that was the Listener’s demesne.
These few leagues of the Silent Straits were the only place the demesne touched the sea, but Hugh could easily see the enormity of it, as it covered mountains that stretched past the horizon, widening as it extended northward. The Silent Straits were only the narrowest tip of its reach.
The Radhan worked in absolute silence, communicating only by gesture and carried note. The captain, stationed by the helmsman’s ornate wheel, carried with her a pad that she jotted quick orders on to be carried by runners. Some of the Radhan had improvised thick veils over half their face that blocked the view to their left, to limit their glimpses of the Listener’s demesne.
For all the noise of wind and birds, of leaping fish and irritable seals, and even of the creaking ship itself, the human silence was shockingly oppressive. Hugh could feel it weighing on him like silence had never done before. The fear and nervousness of the crew combined with the horrible, unmistakable feeling of being watched. As though the Listener knew perfectly well they were on its doorstep, yet simply had no reason to care yet.
Hugh kept waiting for some sort of crisis to occur— a broken mast, a sailor overboard, something. Anything to break the awful monotony and pressure. But the ship just kept plowing through the choppy seas, and the silence beat against them all constantly.
The crew, his friends, and Alustin took frequent rests belowdecks, where the awful sense of being watched was lessened a little. Hugh felt strangely compelled to stay on deck, spending most of his time at the prow or at the starboard railing, watching the pristine, life-filled wilderness of the Shattered Isles drift by. The only communication he had came in the forms of the comforting touches everyon
e on deck began to give each other as the hours drifted by— a hand rested on a back or a quick squeeze of the shoulder.
The only other person who stayed on deck the whole time was Captain Grepha, who looked more tired and worn out with each passing mile. Near the end of the third hour, she locked glances with Hugh and gave him a single approving nod, and Hugh felt as though he had passed some sort of test.
It was a quarter of the way through the fourth hour when the sense of being watched lessened. Another quarter of an hour after that, it broke entirely.
No one spoke just yet, however. They all kept casting glances backwards, as though the Listener’s demesne demanded their attention still.
Hugh cast one, final glance backwards as they rounded a curve in the strait. There, halfway up a mountain, rested a great cancerous splotch of bloom, the reds and oranges and yellows following a winding curve that looked like nothing so much as a great, malformed eye.
He shuddered, and the eye passed silently, blindly behind a cliff.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
First Site
The Rising Cormorant anchored in a sheltered cove an hour after exiting the Silent Straits. A token watch was set, and the rest of the crew collapsed in their bunks and hammocks, as though they hadn’t slept in days. It was only midafternoon, but Hugh slept in well into the next morning, far after he normally would have risen.
As the ship prepared to leave the cove, he found himself, of all things, wondering if Avah had ever passed through the Silent Straits. He knew she’d voyaged on water a few times, though she’d spent most of her life sailing the sand. She’d told him stories of hidden oases in the far west of the desert, and of an abandoned city carved into canyon walls. She’d told him a few scattered stories of her time on the water, but it simply never seemed to hold her attention in the way the sand did.
If she had sailed the Straits, would she have told them? Hugh couldn’t ever imagine bragging about sailing the straits. Just a day later, it seemed akin to a fever dream, not some daring feat. He didn’t know if he’d ever find the words to really explain what it had felt like. Both Alustin and Artur had sailed the Straits before, and their descriptions beforehand had utterly failed to do it justice. Would Avah have even tried?