by Tim Pratt
Vellumis: The oldest and largest city of Lastwall.
Vudra: Massive nation far to the east of the Inner Sea.
Vudrani: Someone or something from Vudra.
Watcher-Lord: The ruler of Lastwall.
Whispering Tyrant: Incredibly powerful lich who terrorized Avistan for hundreds of years before being sealed beneath his fortress of Gallowspire a millennium ago.
White Dragons: Savage, evils dragons with a mastery over cold and ice magic.
Wizards: People who casts spells through careful study and rigorous scientific methods rather than faith or innate talent, recording the necessary incantations in spellbooks.
Worldwound: Constantly expanding region overrun by demons a century ago. Held at bay by the efforts of the Mendevian crusaders.
Read on for a sneak peek at
by Wendy N. Wagner
Available August 2016
Copyright © 2016 Paizo, Inc.
3
TALL CLIFFS AND SEA CAVES
Jendara lowered the spyglass. “So that’s our island.” She brought the glass back up to her eye. The island looked small, maybe four or five miles across, and every inch of it was covered by the ancient city. She had visited a dozen cities on the mainland, even Absalom, the largest and most beautiful city of all the Inner Sea, but she’d never seen a city like this. It grew from the sea like a spiky sea urchin that winked and glittered under the sun.
“We’re going to complete a full circuit of it,” Vorrin said. “I want to get a sense of the place.” He walked away to go talk to Zuna at the bow.
Jendara lowered the glass again. Even without magnification, the island looked spectacular. She couldn’t wait to begin exploring the ruins. Hearing about the island back on Sorind, she’d daydreamed about finding gold, but now that she was in sight of the thing, she found herself more curious than greedy. Who had built this place and where had they gone? How long had all of this lain beneath the sea?
Sarni paused at the railing beside Jendara. “It’s something else,” Sarni sighed. She glanced pointedly at the spyglass. “Mind if I use your glass for a better look?”
Jendara handed it to the girl. “The more eyes, the better.”
“Look at all those statues. That one over there has got to be as tall as the Milady.” Sarni turned to grin at Jendara. “It’s got a lot of seaweed on it, but I’m pretty sure it’s got wings and boobies.” She went back to scanning the island. “Oh wait, those might be a pair of krakens. Boobies are funnier.”
Jendara shook her head. It was good to know that thieves had the same breed of humor as sailors.
Sarni handed the spyglass back to Jendara, her face suddenly serious. “I’ve never seen anything like this place,” she said. “I feel weird about it.”
“Well, it’s old and it’s in pretty rough shape. It’s going to be an adventure for all of us.”
Sarni shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s … all the gold and the decorations and stuff?” She turned to put the railing at her back and folded her arms around herself. “Can you imagine living like that? The palace in Halgrim ain’t even half that fancy.”
Jendara shrugged. “We’re islanders. If we have money to spare, we find ways to give it back to the community. Not that most of us have money to spare.”
“Ain’t that right. Down by the harbor, where I grew up, nobody had shit.” She rolled her eyes. “Well, shit we had, but that was about it. If we got lucky, there was enough fish to eat and the ice sealed up the hole in the roof.”
Jendara searched for the right answer. There had been hard times in her life—more than enough—but at least her family had always been able to live off their land. Her clan had always been able to pull together during hard times, and no one had to suffer on their own.
“The first pair of shoes I ever had? Stolen,” Sarni admitted. “My mama wouldn’t steal, but I would, and damn it felt good not to walk on ice down by the harbor. Stealing was the only way I ever had anything good.”
Jendara put a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “That’s behind you now, Sarni. You’re not living on the docks and running with gangs. You’ve got us.”
Sarni glanced back over her shoulder at the island. This side didn’t look nearly as fancy as the west side of the island. There were no golden towers, but only boxy stone buildings packed in beside each other. “If we get rich, I want to help people living like I used to. I don’t know how, but I want to.”
Jendara just smiled. That was why she’d taken in Sarni. Beneath the foul mouth and loud voice and the history of trouble, there was a warm, kind human. She had no doubt Sarni would use all of her funds from this mission to help others.
Vorrin returned to Jendara’s side. “We’ve almost circled the island. How in all hells are we going to land and start exploring?”
Jendara took another long look at this side of the island. Beneath the structures, the ground looked hilly and rough, turning into steep cliffs that ran straight down into the sea. She lowered the glass. “Not a harbor or entrance in sight.”
“I can only guess the island must have been taller when the city was first built,” Vorrin said. “They couldn’t make a city like that without a way to load and unload cargo. Let’s circle the island again and see if we’ve missed some kind of cove or sea cave. I don’t want to climb the cliffs if I don’t have to.”
Jendara imagined what a long, muscle-eating climb that would be, and rapped her left hand on the wood deck rail. It was her private good luck ritual, a tiny nod to the ancestor spirits she’d witnessed firsthand last summer. She didn’t keep a shipboard shrine or even make offerings to them, but she knew the ancestors were out there, watching over her people. The silver scar was a mark they’d left behind when they’d driven out from her hand both a nasty spell and a tattoo devoted to the pirate goddess Besmara.
The thought made her stretch out her right hand. Besmara’s other jolly roger tattoo had faded over the years. The ink was beginning to seep into the white spaces, running the skull’s teeth together into a solid bar of gray. Jendara wasn’t troubled by the reminder of her old life, but she was glad all that was behind her.
A heavy hand clapped on her shoulder. She glanced up with a ready smile. “Boruc. You look ready for business.”
The big man adjusted the sword in his belt. “The sea doesn’t usually give up what she swallows. I doubt we’ll get our treasure without some kind of fight.”
“Then it’s a good thing I have my new handaxe.” Jendara eased the creation out of the straps that held it on her belt. “Who made the axe head?”
“Corwin, the smith. He’s damn good at what he does. I did the etching.”
Jendara let the sunlight play over the blade. She’d admired the etching before, a light tracery of brighter steel, but now she could see more clearly how the knotwork formed a stylized wolf running toward the handle. The handle itself was high-polished ironwood. Despite the axe’s weight—significantly heavier than the axe she’d carried for years before losing it a summer ago—the weapon balanced perfectly in her hand. “This is the finest weapon I’ve ever carried.”
“It’s an honor to have made it for you.” The red-headed man looked unusually solemn. Boruc usually played the clown, but Jendara knew there were few keener minds in all these islands. Behind the surface mirth hid a fine mind and a remarkable aesthetic.
“Jendara, Boruc! Come look!”
They quickly joined Vorrin at the front of the ship. He leaned out, pointing at the cliffs ahead. They were close enough now to make out details in the rocks: a waterfall tumbling down from a jutting ridge of stone, a fine seam of some white stone Jendara could not name, and there, down by the waterline and off to the right, the dark maw of what might just be a sea cave.
“That looks big enough to sail inside,” Boruc wondered.
“Do you think that’s natural or man-made?” Jendara narrowed her eyes at the cave opening, but they were too far away to make out any details. If it had be
en constructed by anything approaching human size, it must have taken years to chisel out of the rock.
“Why don’t you and Boruc take a dinghy and find out? I don’t want to risk getting the Milady too close until I’ve got a sense of what’s under all this.” Vorrin frowned down at the water. “I don’t see rocks, but I’d lay money there’s plenty down there.”
“We’ll do a sounding and check out that cave. Might at least offer a place to camp.” Jendara gave her husband a quick kiss and then hurried to ready the dinghy.
As she lowered herself into the small craft, she caught herself grinning. It had been months since she’d done anything more exciting than negotiating a trade agreement, and while some of the craftspeople she knew drafted rather severe contracts, it was work that called for wits and pen, not a sword. Now here she was, rowing toward a cave, a new handaxe in her belt, and an unexplored island beckoning at her. It almost felt like a vacation.
“Six fathoms here,” Boruc said, dropping their sounding line back into the bottom of the dingy. “Water’s clean and clear as far as I can see. No rocks.”
On the Milady, the others would be taking their own soundings, but the ship was anchored and waiting patiently for Jendara’s final verdict. She looked back over her shoulder at the oncoming island. Only a few boat lengths away now—she could no longer make out the tops of the nearest towers, which leaned backward from the cliff’s edge.
“Strange buildings, aren’t they?” Boruc mused. “None of them look square from here.”
“Well, they’re old.” Jendara grunted as she yanked on the oars. It had been a while since she’d done any serious rowing.
“Slow down now, we’re almost inside.” Boruc reached for the lantern cached in the bottom of the boat and lit it with his flint striker. Jendara twisted around in her seat, no longer rowing, but just letting the obliging current pull the vessel inside the great mouth of the cave.
“Merciful Desna,” Boruc breathed.
Jendara stared around the space. Vast darkness surrounded them. Their little lantern cast a golden circle around them, but it was a firefly’s glow inside the enormous blackness, and for a moment, direction became meaningless. The dinghy floated in a bubble of brightness like a star in a limitless sky. A thin keening whistle came from nowhere and everywhere. Jendara’s ears hurt from the sound of it.
She lowered her oars to slow the boat. “Can you make out anything? Rocks? Walls?”
Boruc put the light on the seat beside him and reached for the sounding line. The lead made a solemn plunking as it broke the surface of the water, and then silence prevailed, save for that faint whistle.
“Do you hear that?” Jendara asked.
“That wind? Damned annoying, ain’t it?” He retrieved the sounding line. “Five fathoms. The Milady could sail all the way inside if Vorrin wanted.”
He lifted the light again, and this time the flame reflected on something besides the deep waters of the grotto: the amber light flickered on something shiny off to Jendara’s right. She began to row toward it.
“Look at that, Dara.” Boruc shook his head. “You ever see anything like it?”
She shook her head. The water ran up to what looked like a broad white beach, made of the same strange pale stone she had seen running up the side of the cliff. It could have been granite, she supposed, but it had none of the stains granite showed when exposed to the elements. The stone beach was only about as wide as the Milady was long, with either end running into a ridge of darker stone that framed it like the cheeks of some great gaping-mouth fish.
“How in all hells is that dock still whole?” Boruc wondered.
Jendara had to twist to see the dock that stuck out alongside the farthest of the two dark cheeks. She couldn’t make out what kind of wood the thing had been made of, but it floated neatly enough. The docks in Sorind had been mangled by a small tsunami, and this creation had been submerged for what had to be centuries. It made no sense.
“Sometimes the salt water preserves wood,” she began, and stopped. She couldn’t find an excuse for this. However the dock had stayed in one piece over the course of the years was unexplainable, the stuff of mystery. She didn’t even want to know. “It may only look safe,” she mused. “We should check it before we tie up to it.”
“The water’s deep enough to dock the Milady,” Boruc agreed. “We can tell Vorrin that much.”
Jendara hesitated. She could go back and tell Vorrin they’d found a safe docking spot—but then what? How could they get from this cavern to the treasures above? She eyed the white beach in its gullet of stone. Did it go anywhere? She had to find out.
“Let’s do a little exploring.” She turned the dinghy so it slid up beside the dock. They tied the mooring rope to the nearest mooring cleat. She gave the rope a sharp tug and was pleased to feel the dock hold up to the treatment. “You stay in the boat while I take a quick look around.”
Boruc did not argue with her, but let her scramble up onto the pier alone. She held out her hand for the lantern and he hesitated a moment before passing her the lantern with reluctance. She wouldn’t want to be left waiting alone in the dark, either.
“I’ll just be a moment,” she reassured him. She bounced on her toes a second and then squatted down on the pier to rap on the decking. Jendara frowned. It felt strong enough, but it didn’t sound or feel right. She scraped it with her fingernail. “I think it’s bone,” she called back to her friend. “Whale, maybe? Only thing big enough I can think of.”
Whale bone. It made more sense than wood, she supposed. The entire island was covered by construction, leaving no room for crops or forest. What they needed they had taken from the sea.
She took a few careful steps forward. The pier groaned, a sad tenor to the wind’s whistling descant. But it held. She raised the lantern higher and tried to make out the beach ahead.
At first, she saw only darkness. She took a few more steps, still slowly, but more confidently, and then strode faster to reach the end of the dock. The beach proved to be reassuringly ordinary stone. Its surface looked smooth, but time had worn it down in places. Patches were still slick with water, and clumps of weed and foam floated in the deeper puddles. The white stone climbed at a comfortable angle until it met a set of stone stairs.
Jendara paused to study the staircase. It ran inside a narrow tube carved into the dull gray stone wall. Jendara stepped up onto the first stair, and then took another halting step upward. While nearly broad enough for two people to walk side by side, the risers were ridiculously short and strangely deep. Whoever had built this place certainly hadn’t walked like a human.
She craned her neck, trying to make out the end of the strange staircase, but it snaked around a curve. It looked sturdy enough. No broken stone to warn of cave-ins ahead, and no debris piled up at the curve. If there was a better way to ascend to the gleaming city, she hadn’t seen it.
Jendara ran back to the dock and hurried back on board the dinghy. Boruc snatched the lantern from her.
“Well?”
“Looks like there’s a way up,” she answered. “Let’s get the others and find our fortune.”
The wind’s whistle grew louder as Jendara rowed toward daylight. She tried not to think of the sound as unfriendly, but found herself rowing faster anyway.
* * *
Vorrin passed Jendara a lantern and then lit his own. “This cave was a lucky find. We won’t even notice if it rains.”
Jendara looked past him to the dock, where the crew milled around sorting out exploratory gear, and then beyond that to the mouth of the staircase. With all their lanterns lit, she could see the neat stonework outlining the opening in the cave wall. Whoever had lived here hadn’t simply taken advantage of natural cracks and seams in the rocks; they had crafted this place with care and artistry. She’d never heard of any great cities in the Ironbound Archipelago, though. This place must have been built years before any human set foot on the islands.
History had never
been Jendara’s strong point. The legends of ancient empires with their secret wealth, the kinds of stories that Vorrin loved, had always just sounded farfetched to her. Here he was, beaming like a kid with a new crossbow, ready to hunt treasure and rob graves. This kind of thing was a dream come true for Vorrin, and she wouldn’t let him down.
She checked her belt pouch, and on second thought, rooted in her pack to make sure she had her spyglass. She usually left it on the ship for safekeeping, but it might come in handy. She heaved her pack up on her back and walked down the pier.
She paused a moment when she noticed Zuna standing at the end of the dock. She’d hoped to take point with Sarni or Boruc, somebody she’d fought with and trusted to the ends of Golarion. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the others were busy with gear and lanterns. Vorrin thought Zuna was good, Jendara reminded herself. They’ve worked together for years.
“Hey, Zuna!” she called out. “Want to help me clear the staircase?”
“Sounds more interesting than helping these slowpokes.” Zuna adjusted the straps on her own pack and grabbed up the nearest lantern.
Jendara waited for the Zuna to catch up and then strode up the beach. Zuna didn’t bother with small talk as they walked. Her hair bells tinkled softly, a much pleasanter sound than the keening wind.
She stomped on the second riser. “Seems sturdy enough.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jendara agreed.
Zuna moved ahead of her, peering up into the vaulted ceiling. Unlike the grotto outside, this space was a reasonable size, the ceiling only a few feet taller than the women’s heads. Zuna stroked the wall. “Barely discernible chisel marks here. And this rock is harder than the rock outside. I’d guess these slabs were brought from someplace else and set into some naturally occurring crack in the bedrock.”
Jendara squinted at the staircase wall. “You can tell all of this from one look?”