by L J Chappell
‘I’ll take them now, and get them out your way. What do I owe you for them?’ Lanvik knew they had talked about “no more than three Crowns”, but since then he’d been reflecting on whether that amount was only to cover the new garments or whether it had been implied to cover the repairs as well.
‘That’s fine. You’re a friend of Limenith’s. You can settle up this evening, if you’re happy. When do you want to come back? If you can give me a time, I’ll have them ready by then.’
Lanvik was a little ashamed of what he had been thinking earlier: the man had been true to his word, and clearly the various garments were now virtually finished. ‘I have nothing to do this evening,’ he said, ‘so I can come round any time you prefer.’
‘Well, let’s say around sixth watch. That will give us enough time for any little alterations.’
‘I’ll see you then.’ Lanvik picked up the paper-wrapped parcel by the string and left. He walked back down to the harbour, where the workmen were still laying cobbles on the new quay wall. Apart from them, the place was largely deserted.
Lanvik walked over and asked the nearest, ‘Has the mage gone now?’
‘Oh yes, ages ago. If you wanted to see him, you missed him.’
‘Where did he go?’ If the mage was relying on the local ferries, he had been cutting his timing very tight. Or perhaps he came with his own boat.
‘Back into the jungle; didn’t even stop for something to eat.’
‘Is that where he came from? The jungle?’
‘Yes, he just walked out along the road. Maybe he lives on the other side of the Isthmus.’
‘Have you heard anything about mages living on that side? Or in the jungle?’
‘No. But where else could he come from?’ the man shrugged.
Back at The Dragon, Lanvik unwrapped the package and tried his old clothes on. They felt good and fitted him nicely, perhaps a touch on the loose side – he’d presumably lost a little weight. The repairs were not invisible, but they were subtle and likely to be missed if you weren’t particularly looking for them.
A number of the others were at the hotel, and he asked for their opinions.
‘Very smart,’ Menska congratulated him. ‘I’d got used to you looking shabby, but you look much more like a mage now.’
‘Do I?’ Lanvik was worried.
‘Oh yes,’ Thawn agreed. ‘Whoever heard of a shabby mage?’
‘Talking of mages, I heard there was a mage here doing work on the harbour,’ Kiergard Slorn said. ‘I missed him.’
‘How in the Three Lands did you miss him?’ Magda asked. ‘Half the town was there, including most of us.’
Kiergard Slorn had been barely visible for much of the last two days, neither wandering the streets of Sherron nor sitting idly at their lodgings. Lanvik assumed that he had found somewhere quiet to practice with the Emerald Crown: to try to get a response out of it.
‘Has he left now, or is he still here?’
‘They say he walked back into the jungle,’ Lanvik said.
‘Yes, they don’t tend to linger. And then they normally just walk off. Did you get a chance to talk to him?’
‘I decided not to,’ Lanvik admitted.
‘The opportunity to meet a mage will not arise very often,’ Slorn commented. ‘You have no idea when you might have another chance.’
‘I know, but I didn’t want to: not before I know more.’ At the moment he had only questions, so no – he was confident that he didn’t want to talk to any mage. Not yet, at least.
He had avoided revealing his ignorance to the local townsfolk earlier, but over their meal that evening he asked the rest of the Company how mages were summoned if you had a job for them.
‘Well, for a start, you don’t “summon” a mage,’ Garran laughed at his choice of words. ‘You ask for help from a mage and if you’re lucky then one might come.’
‘They have Missions: sort of like embassies, or guildhouses, or local offices,’ Vrosko Din told him.
‘The closest one to here is probably in Port Evendar,’ Kiergard Slorn offered.
‘It’s like the way the Assassins work,’ Magda said. ‘You put in a request, with all the details: time, place, what’s it for, how much money you’re offering. And a mage might answer, or might not.’
‘And where do they come from, these mages? Where do they go back to?’
‘I don’t think anyone knows,’ she admitted. She looked around the table, but everyone else was shrugging or shaking their heads. ‘They probably travel around by magecraft,’ she guessed, ‘but you only ever see them walking. So maybe they actually walk everywhere.’
‘I’ve heard they sometimes ride,’ Menska said. ‘On horseback.’
‘I’ve never seen one on a boat, like a ferry,’ Tremano said. ‘So I don’t know how they leave Ceran’Don.’ The Land of Mists was entirely surrounded by water.
‘They do work all around the Inner Sea as well,’ Vander said. ‘So maybe they have their own boats.’
‘Or maybe they travel alongside everyone else,’ Ethryk suggested, ‘but in disguise. Like with your wig. Maybe they just pop on a wig. It would stop them being pestered for tricks and things.’
‘Well, how would they carry their staff?’ Karuin asked. ‘Everyone would notice.’
‘Maybe they fold up,’ Ethryk said, ‘or come apart into pieces. Or maybe they can use magecraft to make the staff invisible.’
‘They could just make it much smaller,’ Thawn suggested, ‘so it fitted in a pocket. That would be easier than invisible, wouldn’t it?’ she asked Lanvik.
‘I have no idea,’ he told her. ‘Maybe.’
Behind him, the hotel clock rang the eighth hour – that was sixth watch, so he was going to be late for his appointment with Vask. He made his excuses and hurried away. Fortunately, Sherron was a small place, and nowhere was very far from anywhere else once you’d found your way around. It only took a few minutes to reach the tailor’s shop.
Everything was neatly folded, waiting for him: the top items were still warm from being pressed. Based on his earlier experience, Lanvik was confident that his new clothes would fit nicely, but he tried everything on anyway, for form’s sake. That gave Vask an opportunity to brush them and to examine each item one final time, using an impossibly long pair of scissors to snip off occasional threads.
‘How do they feel?’
Lanvik had no idea how to appear as if he was checking the fit, no idea if there was an accepted or proper way to do it. He lifted his arms out to the sides, and folded them across his chest, pulled down the cuffs, walked around in the trousers, and examined himself as best he could in the shop’s full-length mirror.
‘These are great, perfect. How much do I owe you in total?’ he asked, after trying on the final shirt. He was still feeling a little awkward, unsure whether the three Crowns he’d mentioned earlier was likely to cover both the new clothes and the repairs. Since he had no real idea of an appropriate price for things, he was effectively relying on Vask to be decent and honest with him. And that, in turn, was dependent on how well he’d read the man’s character and how much he trusted him as a relative of Panat, Limenith and Geitar … although, of course, he barely knew them either.
‘Well,’ Vask wrapped up the new items with paper and string: ‘we said three Crowns for these. As for the other things, I know you have limited means so I trust you to pay whatever you think is a fair price for the repairs.’
Lanvik stared into his open purse and deliberated. Eventually he brought out a half Crown together with the three full Crowns – if the new items had cost three Crowns, then repairs on older but quality items were surely worth a half Crown. If that was less than expected, then it would confirm his poverty – he’d already warned the man about how little he could pay. If it was more than expected, then the extra was to thank the man for both the quality and quantity of his work over these days, even to the extent of missing the chance to see a mage at work.
; Vask dropped the coins into an inside pocket and continued: ‘If you’re happy with these, I have all your measurements in my book here. If you’re ever passing through this way again then you can send an order ahead, describing what you want, and I can have it made up waiting for you. Or I can ship finished articles out to you.’
‘Thank-you,’ Lanvik said. And because that didn’t sound like enough, he added: ‘I’ll remember that.’
The whole transaction had only taken around half an hour. When he returned to The Dragon, most of the others were sitting at the same table where he’d left them.
‘Well?’ they prompted. ‘Let’s see what you ended up with.’
So he spent ten minutes modelling his new clothes for them, to generally neutral or favourable comments: “They’re fine”, “they suit you”, “I like the other one better”, and so on.
As he tried them on this time, he noticed a few tiny chalk marks that he brushed off, and Vask had stitched a little label inside each of the larger items with his name and address: he described himself as a “Gentleman’s Outfitter”.
‘Three and a half Crowns, including the repairs,’ he volunteered. ‘I thought that was a fair price.’
‘Yes, that’s a fair price,’ Vorrigan said.
Lanvik didn’t know if Vorrigan was just saying that to make him feel good, but none of the others contradicted or questioned him: those words and the others’ positive comments had settled his anxiety and removed any lingering doubts. Throughout the transaction, he had felt that he was going in blind. He had surely bought clothes before, but without access to those memories he had no real idea about what was expensive or inexpensive, or even what would look good when he wore it.
‘You’re looking more like one of us,’ Slorn commented. ‘All you need now is to learn an instrument … and develop some weapons skills … and get stronger and fitter … and recover your knowledge of magecraft, of course.’
‘Next week, then,’ Lanvik laughed.
‘Next week,’ Slorn nodded. ‘And then we’ll finally have to decide which one of the others you’re going to replace.’
Now the rest of the Company laughed, and started nominating each other.
4
It was only when they boarded the ferry that Lanvik appreciated how generous their accommodation had been on the Night Princess. This boat had twelve cabins for passengers, about the same size as those on Captain Redwolf’s ship, but each hosted eight beds in four bunks. There was very little space between these beds, and no other furniture.
As if to deliberately separate the Company, they were originally assigned bunks across five different cabins. After some discussion and negotiation with their fellow travellers, the fifteen of them arranged to travel in two adjacent cabins instead. That left a single empty berth in one cabin and, after further discussion with the ship’s crew, they agreed to pay for that as well, to avoid anyone else being placed there and disturbing their privacy. After that, the crew reluctantly agreed to give them a key for each cabin.
The twelve passenger cabins shared a deck with two cabins for the crew, two open rooms with hammocks, the ship’s toilets and a small galley. There was a hold below, divided by bulkheads into three compartments for the ship’s own provisions, livestock, and other cargo. Each of these areas was subdivided vertically into levels only a few feet high, in order to fit as much as possible onboard. The narrow floors for the cramped livestock pens were spread with straw, and seemed to be only occasionally sluiced. The whole boat, including the cabins, stank of animal dung, sweat, stale vomit and tar.
The ferry had arrived in Sherron mid-morning, and dockworkers spent half the day loading and unloading cargo. A relay of wagons first took each shipment away and then brought new cargo to replace it: after watching their own trunks being stowed onboard, the Company didn’t stay to watch the rest of the operation. Two or three of the ferry’s officers oversaw the work, but most of her crew went ashore for a few hours leave: they could be seen sitting and drinking all around the town.
In retrospect, the tailor could have had another half day to finish Lanvik’s clothes: he could have seen the mage.
Eventually, about seven hours after docking, the ferry slipped her moorings and sailed out in the late afternoon. She was busy with people – the passenger cabins were mostly full and the upper decks were crowded – but the cargo space lay half-empty. At this time of year, as Panat had said, it seemed that trade was quiet.
As they headed east into the Inner Sea, Lanvik found a space on deck to watch the Isthmus recede behind them. Off to the left, was a faint purple glow along the horizon, just as there had been at the jungle fort. It was the Spoiled Land, barely visible in the daylight: the sight of it still made him feel uneasy.
Over the next few days, the ferry rolled and bobbed her achingly slow way eastwards. With her wide hull and her large square sails, she mostly seemed to ride the top of what few waves there were, rather than cutting through them.
Almost as soon as they were under way, it quickly became obvious that there was no space aboard to do anything: no-one played music or performed, and there were no public areas to stand or sit in. There was plenty of room on the cargo decks, but those were largely off-limits for normal passengers: besides, the smell was difficult to tolerate, even from some distance.
If he could have, Lanvik would have sat out on deck all day under the glorious sun and gazed out at the crystal clear blue sky and the sparkling sea that reflected it. But the deck was packed with those who had not paid for cabin space. There wasn’t even enough room for most of them to lie down: at night, they slept in heaps on top of each other or hunched, with their backs propped up against whatever they could find.
It was an uncomfortable and miserable journey, but at least the Company had their own cabins. They spent most of their time inside, playing card games or board games, or reading, or writing. On the second day out from Sherron, Lanvik finally won his first game of Fugitive against Karuin: he had been beating some of the weaker players among them for a few days already.
He also spent time studying Kiergard Slorn’s map, trying to learn the shapes, natures and names of places. But without any memories of the thousands of conversations and references that everyone else had, it was difficult knowing what was important. Which places he should be familiar with, and which were backwaters that no-one would expect him to know. The map covered the various Elven Lands: all of the great northern continent, Mehan’Gir, together with the Evallian Sea, the Inner Sea and the Dragon Sea to the south of it, plus a handful of places along the northern shore of Qassiq’Gir.
There, off to the east, was the Land of Mists, Ceran’Don. Or parts of it.
As with the desert lands of Qassiq’Gir further south, the map’s depiction of Ceran’Don had no place names on it: no towns, no rivers or lakes, no mountains or other features. If Lanvik came from Ceran’Don then those missing names might have been ones that prompted his memory. But the map showed only an empty space: it may as well have been the Spoiled Land.
By contrast, the Inner Sea was full of names and labels.
Carissola – where they were taking Vander – was the largest island and lay roughly in the centre, due south of Corvak and the delta: he could see Perastia marked there, together with a number of other towns. Arrento was directly south of Carissola. Their current destination, Marsalea, lay about half-way between the Isthmus and Carissola. There were a handful of other large islands, all with names that he didn’t recognise: Comarenza, Orianti, Tirassa, Murallo, Astierta and so on. Dozens of smaller islands lay strung out through the Inner Sea, together with innumerable tiny places that were little more than specks on the map.
Ceran’Don was in the south-east, beyond the Dragon Sea and at the very opposite corner of the Three Lands from Darkfall. Lanvik could see that by the time they reached Carissola they would have travelled at least two-thirds of the distance between them. He might already be two-thirds of the way back home.
In fa
ct, from the map, Carissola and Ceran’Don might only be three or four weeks apart by boat.
That thought weighed uncomfortably on his mind.
Chapter Four
Secondary Destinations
1
Every day for the past two weeks, the Initiate Pireon of Kiritas had to fight an instinct that they were travelling in the wrong direction.
He had always known that the cardinal points of the compass were relative rather than absolute, but until now that knowledge had been entirely abstract. In common with everyone else in Corvak, he had never desired nor planned to travel: “North”, “South”, “East” and “West” were effectively fixed attributes. Compass points, he presumed, must be equally useless in a place like Darkfall or, indeed, anywhere else in the little kingdoms of Tremark and Urthgard. From there, everything lay South. He had no idea if people from those lands ever travelled.
In his mind, Emindur lay to the North: if they were travelling south, then they must be travelling away from Emindur. Equally, Emindur lay to the West: it was simply not possible to take a route “east” to Emindur.
When the delegation from the Mother Temple on Elagion had finally left Darkfall and its last handful of lingering pilgrims, their three ships had taken them south to the Imperial port of Ariste. Now, they were travelling along the Imperial highway towards the Imperial Capital, Emindur. The highway was lined with regular mileposts, each marked with both the direction of travel and notable destinations. On every milepost they passed since leaving Ariste, the word “East” was inscribed at the top: the first three or four that they passed every day caused an instant, instinctive and immediate reaction within Pireon that they were travelling along the road in the wrong direction.
He was surprised at how stubborn his own mind was.
He hadn’t mentioned this curious perception to any of the others, assuming that it was unique to him, but he made a note of it in a sheaf of papers that he had started writing for Iera. “Go out and be my eyes,” she had told him, because she could never travel like this. During the last days they spent in Darkfall, he took to writing down anything he saw that struck him as unusual as soon as possible: he seemed to stop noticing things once he’d seen them a few times – forgot that they were surprising.