by P D Ceanneir
‘What will be our new heading when we have finished gathering supplies at Tenk, my Lord?’ said Orlam.
‘I’m not sure at this moment,’ said the Ri absent-mindedly dunking a dry biscuit into his soup. Havoc looked up at his old master, it had never occurred to him to ask where they were heading, if Lord Ness knew where the Gredligg Orrinn was then that was good enough for him. However, the look of confusion on the young Orlam’s face made him wonder.
‘I have an old friend in Tenk who will send me in the right direction,’ explained Lord Ness as if that would suffice.
‘Anyone we know?’ asked Danyil, ‘I have many contacts on the oasis.’
‘Well, he does own the oasis,’ informed the Ri.
Danyil spluttered his mouthful of bread and stared at Lord Ness. ‘The High Sultan himself owns the oasis,’ he said in a high-pitched voice.
‘That’s him.’ Lord Ness ignored the reactions of those around him.
‘The Sultan is a despot!’ said Zabel in his thick accent. ‘He kills his wives through torture if they do not obey him, he has bleached the bones of his enemies and used them as foundations for his precious temples, subjugated much of the desert and stolen ancient relics of religious importance!’ The doctor’s face twisted in rage as he spoke. Clearly, he was no admirer of the Sultan’s.
‘And those are just his good points,’ added the captain.
‘I admit he was a little hard to handle in his youth,’ shrugged Lord Ness.
‘“Hard to handle”, the man’s psychotic!’ said Orlam.
‘What is the information you require, master?’ Havoc asked, realising that a positive attitude would aid the conversation. The captain and his officers may have reservations about the Sultan of Tenk of Mubea and vent their frustration at the mention of his name, but none would dare upset the Ri.
‘The Sultan Bar Mach has been to an ancient citadel with his father in his youth, somewhere in the desert interior. Within the ruins he found a stone inscribed in Skrol.’ Havoc was interested; Skrol was the ancient language of the Old Gods and only the Rawns used it now.
‘Luckily they had a Ri with them to translate,’ went on Lord Ness, ‘no, it was not me. The Ri is a lost member of the Ri Order, his name is Gonliss and he never returned from the ruins. His translations, however, noted the location of the Gredligg Orrinn.’
‘I thought you knew where the Gredligg Orrinn was, master?’ Havoc frowned, ‘your dreams told you where it is.’
‘Yes, your Majesty, my dreams guide me up to a point, but they cannot be relied on to find the Hall of Whispers.’
‘How is that so?’ Danyil asked.
‘My dreams tell me where it is, but not how to find it.’
Everyone looked very confused.
‘So where, exactly, is the Gredligg Orrinn?’ Orlam tentatively queried.
‘It is on the Isle of Mortkraxnoss,’ said Lord Ness in an off-hand way.
Captain Danyil smiled, thinking he misheard the Ri. However, the silence around the table, and the surprised stares aimed at Lord Ness, told him that he had heard right. Lord Ness placed his spoon into his bowl of broth and reached for another bread roll, oblivious to the reaction his answer had on everyone at the table.
It was the musical lilting voice of Lung who spoke next, ‘no-one has ever found Mortkraxnoss, and those who seek it never returned.’
‘Great! This just keeps getting better and better,’ moaned Furran.
‘I take it this Mortkraxnoss is not a nice place then?’ said Foxe, who had never heard of it.
‘No one knows, Sir Foxe,’ said Tyban, speaking for the first time, ‘because it never stays in one place long enough for anyone to find out.’
‘Huh?’ said Foxe.
‘The Isle of Mortkraxnoss, my friend,’ explained Gunach, who was the only one still eating, ‘is the mythical floating island. I understand now why Lord Ness would think it’s difficult to find.’
‘Correct, Master Dwarf. Gonliss Ri knew how to find it, or more precisely, where it would be at a certain time.’
Foxe coughed to get a piece of bread down, ‘all right, so we just find the sea it floats on and…’ several in the group were sadly shaking their heads at him, so he stopped talking.
‘Foxe,’ explained Gunach, ‘the Floating Isle is so named because it floats in the air. Why do you think the Ri commissioned the Falesti to make a Sky Ship in the first place?’
‘Ah…right, but how does an island float in the air?’
No-one seemed to have an answer to that. Gunach shrugged and went back to eating his soup.
Hexor answered his brother, ‘only the Gods have the answer.’ This got a few murmurs of agreement.
The captain sighed as he broke another piece of bread from the crusty loaf on his side plate. ‘I don’t take much stock in the Gods. A strong wind and calm waters are all I have ever wished for in my life at sea.’ He glanced at the Ri, ‘so, if this Gonliss knew where Mortkraxnoss would be at a certain time, we don’t have to look for it, because it will come to us, correct?’
Lord Ness nodded, albeit reluctantly. ‘Finding the Floating Isle is the least of our worries, captain, for it once went by another, older name.’
Everyone waited on tenterhooks for the Ri’s answer.
‘The Isle of the Dead.’
As promised, the captain took Havoc on a tour of the batteries after their meal. Because of the Cybeleion’s teardrop shape, her horizontal sling catapults could fire front, side and rear, they could also pivot left and right and up and down on their brackets to give them a larger field of fire. With a row of five port and starboard on the main deck and two other batteries in the hull, one below the other, the Sky Ship had some serious firepower. However, the captain’s pride and joy were the ten new cannons on the bottom level, these were a new invention, thin barrels with a bulb-shaped rear and a flintlock firing mechanism. They fired a heavy ball of wolfram at incredible speed and at a great distance.
‘With these babies we can fire at the enemy before they are in range,’ said Danyil, slapping one of the black iron cannons, ‘all because of this.’ He hefted a sausage-shaped bag, ‘pig bladder with a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur; one of Lung’s many inventions, he calls it gunpowder. Once lit it will fire the round for about half a mile accurately. We can also load with shot like the catapults and exploding grenades as well’.
Havoc did not have to ask about the exploding grenades, having been on the receiving end of them before. All around him the gun crews ran dry run drills, each man sweated profusely at the physical exertions they had to endure. The young drill officers shouted out orders through dry mouths as they kept time.
‘Have you tried out the cannons, captain?’ Havoc asked.
‘Yes, all of them, they work fine but one is cracked at the rear of the barrel, that is one of the reasons we asked for the Master Smith, he may be able to repair it. Havoc nodded, he had seen the hearth and forge, which was Gunach’s makeshift smithy, in the lower decks of the ship at the stern. The forge was actually used as a heater, it had ducts and metal conduits that stretched around the ship’s hull, designed to keep the Choylorran tree at an even temperature in cold weather and at chilly altitudes. It also had the added bonus of warming the crew quarters.
‘So, Mortkraxnoss,’ said Danyil, ‘were you as shocked as I?’
Havoc thought for a second then shrugged, ‘to be honest, no, I can’t say I was. Knowing Lord Ness as long as I have conditions one to his more unusually shocking comments.’
The captain grinned, ‘but the Isle of the Dead, my Lord, it’s not for anyone living to set foot on. It is a place of…well…. death. No one living can enter.’
‘That is probably why I am here, captain, I have dealt with death before.’ He said this with a wistful smile.
Danyil watched him with a sad frown, ‘I dare say you have, your majesty, what the Nithi and the Vallkytes did to your sisters and cousins was…’ he left the sentence unfinish
ed and instead shook his head. For some strange reason Havoc felt that he should be comforting the captain, who, he had to admit to himself, he was warming to in such a short space of time. Instead, he patted him on the arm.
‘Someone once said to not dwell on the losses of the past, but to make sure you never lose any more in the future.’
‘Wise words, who said them?’
‘Duke Rett said it to my father when I was very young. It was just after Prince Magnus was born and the duke’s sister died.’
The captain nodded, ‘wise words indeed.’
They exited the batteries by climbing up the central stairs and through a deck hatch. On deck the Wyvern Filial, now better dressed in furs, helped members of the crew with their chores, some of the male Falesti were crowding around the forward mast and looking up.
The leader of the infantrymen, a stocky man called Garnet was also one of Barnum’s Thanes, which was the Falesti title for a minor noble who owned some land in the Eldom, had started a betting pool. Members of the crew and the Paladins had raced each other to the crows-nest at the top of the forward mast. The current champion at this was, strangely enough, Gunach. The extra strength in the dwarf's arms and legs aided him in climbing through the ropes at breathless speed.
‘Getting the dwarf up there is easy,’ said the captain with a chuckle as he looked up, ‘but he likes it so much that we can’t get him down.’
Pylarsius was the second largest continent in the southern hemisphere and the vast Mubean Desert covered half of it. Massive, sharp-peaked mountains zigzagged through the centre to split the landscape of soft wavy sand dunes to the west, with some dunes reaching as high as the mountains slopes, and tropical forests to the east. Though the scorching sun baked the Mubean sands during the day, temperatures fell to below freezing at night, there were still people living in this inhospitable climate. They lived mainly on the many oases that were scattered around the desert plains. Some of these lush watering holes never lasted long, as the desert climate reclaimed it or the water table below ground dried up and shifted to another location to start new life elsewhere.
The largest oasis was Tenk of Mubea. This oasis was about seventy-five miles long and half as wide. It stretched along the south-west coast of the continent and was lucky enough to be fed by the seasonal rainwater that trickled into its underground water table from the high Plyars Mountains to the east. It's capital, Tenk, was the seat of the Bar Mach Dynasty of High Sultans.
As the Cybeleion hugged the coast Havoc got a sense of the great size of the oasis, with its palm trees, clear freshwater rivers with vegetation flowering along their banks. Animals, of so many varieties that Havoc and his friends had never seen before, grazed the grass plains that skirted the desert - it was truly a wondrous place. Thousands of tents of various sizes and colours festooned a wide area of the city itself, all laid out in an orderly pattern with roads criss-crossing the structures. Lord Ness explained to Havoc that the only stone built buildings in Tenk of Mubea was the town-sized palace, while the tents made up the rest of the city.
‘Each tent belongs to nomadic families who come each year to trade in the Great Bazaar which sits to the west of the palace walls. After the people leave, more arrive, so the tent layout is never the same, this is why Tenk of Mubea is always known as the “Shifting City”’, explained the Ri.
The Sky Ship landed with a loud, thunderous splash in Tenk’s huge harbour, looking majestic and huge against the smaller ships as she bobbed on the water. They quickly found an area off to one side to dock, mainly because other ships quickly got out of the way. Captain Danyil ordered his crew to barge though the hundreds of tiny single-mast fishing smacks that littered the harbour. Other large ships were here also. Lord Ness pointed out several that had red sails and many oars. The sails depicted the forms of mythical animals that were unknown to the prince.
‘Hinterlander warships,’ he remarked. ‘The Hinterland is a chain of mountainous islands to the north east, close to the temperate area of East Plysarus. The people there are fearsome warriors that have fought in the Ancarryn in the past, though they sail all around the Plysarus to trade. Those look like Marauder Doom ships.’
‘I’ve heard of the Hinterlanders. Did they not side with Telmar during the War of Pyromancer?’ asked Havoc.
The Ri nodded, ‘yes, the Berserker Clans did. The Hinterlanders usually get a bad reputation because they raid vulnerable and unguarded lands, but they are predominately farmers and are very welcome in Tenk to trade.’
They both readied themselves to go ashore. Walking into the Sultan’s palace grounds was not allowed unless the Sultan’s authorities granted permission. Lord Ness was aware of the procedure and paid a local messenger to run to the palace and announce his and the prince’s presence. As the messenger ran off, Tia appeared at the prince’s side with no sword - weapons were forbidden inside the main palace, though this rule did not apply to any member of the Ri Order. Havoc had left SinDex in his room, with Little Kith guarding the door - she was looking cool in her woollen cloak even though the heat of the morning sun was forcing most people to seek out shade.
‘I will accompany you both,’ it was not a question but a statement.
Lord Ness rounded on her, slamming the end of his sword-staff hard onto the decking to emphasise his annoyance. ‘Women are not permitted inside the Sultan's private chambers unless they are servants, members of his family or married to him!’ he snapped.
‘I am well aware of Tenk Palace regulations, Master Ri. They also do mention permitted admittance to any religious order's priesthood that has met with the State Authorities Religious Tolerance Act of 2693 YOA, in which Article seventeen states that…’
‘Alright! Alright, I know of the Act,’ Lord Ness sighed. ‘You can come, but! Only speak when I say. The rules about females in Tenk are very strict.’ He gave a slow look over her clothing, ‘at least you have covered yourself up.’
Havoc looked from Tia to the Ri, ‘Covered up. Why?’
Tia answered, ‘no female flesh is allowed to be shown in Tenk, and even the face must be veiled. A silly rule, but one that is as old as it is rigorously maintained.’
‘I see,’ sniffed the prince, ‘pity.’
Havoc could have sworn that she actually blushed under her hood.
Tenk of Mubea was crowded. Everywhere one looked there were people of various cultures in an assortment of clothing. Lord Ness pointed out several of the Marauder Dooms, hardened warriors in black leathers and carrying lethal looking double-headed axes, Shako Monks in orange togas, Fyrandian Merchants in embroidered silk tabards and flat caps and rich nobles being carried in sedans or peak-roofed pagodas concealed behind silk drapes. The streets were full of paupers also; most sat along the rows of the drainage cambers holding out bowls and begging with pleading eyes and chanting in some obscure language.
Havoc, Tia and Lord Ness did not evade scrutinising eyes either. The Ri, in his hooded white robe, was instantly recognisable as one from the famous order, but Havoc had decided to don his smart green officers uniform instead of his Raider armour. Many passers- by noticed the golden cap at the end of his ponytail representing Rogun nobility which brought about many questioning murmurs as people walked past them.
The city was a hubbub of noise and smells. The smell of seawater mixed with the stink of raw sewage underlain with a sweet aroma of perfume given off by the many flowering shrubs that fringed the walkway towards the palace entrance. The roar of noise from the Great Bazaar to the west was horrendous and Havoc was glad that the walls of the palaces inner courtyard blocked out some of the racket.
At the main entrance to Tenk Palace stood a small company of Scarabaeidae Guards, or the Scarab Guards as they were more commonly known. They wore black leather jerkins with pantaloons tucked into their felt boots and white turbans. At the front and centre of the turbans were a jewel encrusted Scarab Beetle; the gems flickered in the sunlight. Only one of the guards wore a red turban, obviously a form of h
igher rank. Lord Ness bowed to him and spoke Desert Coptic, an old language and one used throughout the nomadic tribes. Havoc and Tia knew enough of the language to note that the Ri was introducing them to the Captain of the Guard. The tall captain bowed to all three of them and voiced for them to follow him and his men. Their escort flanked them as they marched into the Palace Popular, which was an immense courtyard entrance that had various paths leading off into several directions. The inner surroundings were lush with trees and flowery shrubs. Hundreds of gardeners tended the plants and servants in blue togas bustled around them as they carried out their many errands. A walled pond and fountain, depicting a naked woman holding up a water urn, took up the centre of the courtyard.
Tia grunted at the statue and shook her head. ‘Female flesh has to be covered up and yet they show this!’ she jabbed a finger at the statue. Water trickled from the urn and cascaded down the supine body of the woman. The stream formed into a thicker flow as it passed between the stone breasts on its cascade towards its groin.
‘It is a representation of the Water Goddess, Kwi-Aqua,’ explained Lord Ness.
‘So it is alright for gods to be naked?’ snapped the Havant. Her faith was obviously seeing the fault in another country's religious philosophy.
Havoc chuckled, ‘apparently, but I don’t see a naked woman, I see a wonderful work of art.’
Tia hissed and remained silent for the remainder of the journey through the palace.
They veered off from the fountain and took a path to the east. Most of the palace grounds had streets and deep-stepped paths that led up to open-roofed inner courts where men would lounge on blankets and bolsters while veiled women served them mint tea and trays of dried fruit. The living quarters were two-storied and flat-roofed and seemed to interconnect with other buildings. Scarab Guards prowled the rooftops passing one another as they criss-crossed patrol routes. In the distance Havoc could just make out those tall white towers he saw when the Cybeleion landed. Each tower was topped with a golden roof, shaped like a plant bulb. There were dozens of them along the outer walls of the palace.