by Aaron Pogue
“Why?” Tesyn screamed. “Why would a justicar care about me or Auric?”
“Are you mad?” Corin asked. “She’s an agent of Ephitel.”
“And we’re Ithalians! Ephitel’s justicars exist to serve us. Gods favor, she owes her loyalty to Sera’s family. All we’d have had to do was say her name—”
Corin snorted. “I do forget how noblemen are taught to see the world. But you know about the plots that we contrived in order to steal the princess from Aerome. Don’t you see? Sera isn’t one of them anymore. She’s fled Ithale. She’s living with a Raentzian farmboy. I don’t know how much they’ve told you, but she’s in hiding from her family. And this justicar would love to lay her hands on the misplaced princess. They might even reinstate her—against her will—but they could not allow to live any witnesses to her little embarrassment. Not you. Not me. And certainly not Auric.”
Tesyn shook his head, stunned. “They wouldn’t go so far.”
“They have,” Corin said. “Why do you think Auric has shown such faith in me? I’ve already saved him from one assassination attempt by Sera’s family. And Sera from another. I stole the carriage and sent the justicar chasing after it as a diversion, to lead her away from Auric and Sera.”
“Then we must go to them! We have to warn them what has happened.”
Corin looked south, imagining the distance to the farmhouse. By the roads it would take half a day, but he didn’t trust his strange powers to keep him safe from the justicar if she stumbled on him again. Not now that he had shown his hand. They’d have to go cross-country, and that would take a day at least.
He shook his head. “We’d do no good, and risk ourselves besides. No, I’ve already given Auric instructions for a situation such as this. He should be able to escape her notice with the time we’ve bought him. But we may not be so lucky. We need to move.”
“Where? How?”
“Just as you had intended. We press on to Baillon to catch your ship there, then sail for the Isle of Mists. I doubt even a justicar can follow that trail, and if she does, we’ll lose her in the wilderness. Meanwhile, Auric and Sera will slip away to safety among the druids, and Ephitel’s bloodhound will ultimately return to her master empty-handed.”
Tesyn stared. “We’ll do all that? We’ll best a justicar?”
“All that and more,” Corin said. “Don’t forget the damsel in distress. Or the ancient elves we plan to meet upon the Isle. They’ll write legends about us if we accomplish half so much.”
Tesyn shook his head. “I never meant to be a hero.”
“It’s going to happen anyway,” Corin said. He clapped the scholar on the shoulder and drew him to his feet. “Now come! We must get moving before the justicar sends her men to search the countryside.”
The scholar paled. “You think she’ll do that?”
“I do. But she won’t find us.” He closed his eyes and rebuilt the glamours that concealed him and Tesyn from prying eyes. The scholar gasped anew at that, but Corin caught his arm and started him moving.
There was no path beneath the verge. The ground was uneven and treacherous, and both men were sorely beaten from their tumble down the hill, so they made slow going. The sun fell halfway to the horizon before they even caught up with the coach.
They came around a wide, slow bend in the terrain, and there before them the highway dipped down into a little dell. The coach stood motionless on the road, its horses loosed to graze and drink from the stream while the justicar and her soldiers stood clustered around the furious, flustered driver.
Tesyn gasped in horror at the sight of them, and Corin breathed a prayer of gratitude to Fortune that the glamour hanging over him would stifle all his little gasps and cries. It was a quiet mercy.
Corin didn’t slow. He dragged Tesyn on ahead, though he swung out wide around the spot where the justicar was interviewing the driver. They moved a mile or two in the shadows on the forest’s edge, until they’d left the coach and riders far behind. Then they moved right up onto the highway, still hidden from any prying eyes, and pressed harder still along the smooth-packed road.
Even so, it took them half the night to reach the coast, and dawn was breaking when at last they saw the high walls of Baillon. Tesyn whooped in victory, but Corin fixed his gaze upon the waves. An hour yet. Perhaps an hour before the tide turned. How long would a merchant ship wait for passengers when the coach had failed to come? How long would they risk the trade goods in their hold sitting idle? Exhausted though they both were, hungry and dehydrated though the night’s journey had made them, he pressed harder still. Behind him, Tesyn almost protested. But then he mumbled, “Heroes in a story,” and stomped along behind him.
Corin grinned at that. Perhaps he would make something useful of the scholar after all.
They reached the town as mid-morning prayers were tolling, but to Corin’s great surprise, Tesyn’s hired ship was still waiting at the dock. Corin let Tesyn’s glamour fade away and listened while the scholar spun a brief tale of hardship and woe that smoothed the angry lines from the captain’s brow and filled his eyes with sympathy. Still, he was anxious to put off, and Tesyn didn’t argue for a moment. They hurried up the gangplank, Corin scampering unseen behind them. Then the sailors cast off lines and pulled hard for open waters.
Corin breathed deeply the salty air, and when he exhaled, he felt an enormous wave of old anxiety ebb away. The water rolled beneath him, deep and patient, unforgiving but also undemanding. The sea had never been his home, but it had always been his freedom, and now he reveled in it like a serpent in the sunlight.
As they slipped out past the breakers, Corin turned and cast a glance back to the port. He saw a score of soldiers darting down the piers, searching ships and sailors while their justicar went straight to find the harbormaster. Too late. She’d come too late. Corin laughed into the ocean breeze and then settled down to rest his aching bones.
He’d made it free and clear. Let her chase him all the way across the world—she wouldn’t catch him. Corin Hugh was smart enough to best a justicar.
Now all he had to do was find the elves. And win their favor. And lead them in a war on Ephitel and all the lands of men. He sighed and shut his eyes and started planning.
Corin was not surprised to learn that Tesyn’s merchant ship had no intention of carrying them to the haunted Isle of Mists. Instead, the scholar had used this ship to carry his supplies for the expedition and then booked passage from Port Baillon in southwest Raentz to Rauchel in the northwest—one of the closest ports to the Isle. He had assumed that the proximity would make it easier to find a willing captain there.
Along the way, the little merchant ship made excellent time. She coasted in some wild waters, but her captain knew his way. Corin and Tesyn both spent the better part of the four-day voyage sleeping—recovering from their adventure on the Baillon highway—and devouring whatever travel rations Tesyn could demand from the ship’s stores.
When they arrived in Port Rauchel, Corin started counting hours. Tesyn’s late arrival at the docks—and for a ship he had commissioned back in Aerome—would not have gone unnoticed. The blasted man had also made arrangements to take the post carriage to Baillon. It would be a wonder if he hadn’t left a hand-drawn map to Auric’s cabin with the gendarmes in the village there.
No, Corin had to assume that the justicar had found their trail in Baillon. He counted on it. If not for Auric and Sera, he could have grabbed Tesyn’s shoulder and flung them both through dream to the Isle of Mists. He’d considered it back at the tavern, and then again before he’d hurled himself from a racing carriage, but that would leave the justicar without a trail. Her only choice would be to backtrack, and that would inevitably lead her to the farmboy and the princess.
Corin cursed. He’d come to that again and again as he had fashioned and discarded plans, but in the end, he couldn’t sacrifice those two. Not yet. Not without a better reason. It was a dicey game he played, but if he could string the justi
car along, staying just outside her reach, then everyone might get away clean.
It was a dicey game indeed. And so he counted hours while Tesyn searched for a willing captain in Rauchel. The justicar might have followed them by boat. He’d gotten a good look at all the other ships in harbor there, and he doubted any one of them could have followed close behind the one they’d ridden. A storm had blown up on the second day, just a little thing when they passed through, but it had still been a-brewing then, and anyone more than an hour behind them would have sailed straight into an ugly tempest. That bought him half a day at least—and likely more—if she had come by sea. She might have docked somewhere along the coast to hire a faster ship, but that too would have cost her time. He called it twenty hours on open water.
If she had come by land, things grew somewhat trickier. In her haste to capture Corin in Baillon, she’d risked showing her men openly there. Was that her new intention? Would she risk starting a war between Ithale and Raentz just to capture him? It would certainly slow her down if some minor lord along the way decided to confront her on his own. But even with a glamour hiding them, such a large force would require room and board within a day or two. So keeping them hidden would slow her too. Either way, leading her private army across the length of Raentz would cost her a week. No question.
But she didn’t have to bring them. If she left them to find their own way, she could travel quickly. A justicar was never warmly welcomed outside her god’s domain, but only a crowned king would dare to challenge her authority in pursuit of a wanted criminal. It was the soldiers that made Jessamine an exception.
If she left the soldiers behind, she could travel fast and light. Without them to slow her, she could hire post horses to carry her from Baillon to Rauchel in four days flat. She wouldn’t, though. Not directly. She’d be expecting Corin to try something clever, after all, especially after the trick he’d pulled with the carriage. So she would take the coastal roads instead of the overland highway. She’d stop in every port along the way to make sure he hadn’t deviated from the travel plans she’d found in Baillon.
Six days, then. If she pressed her horse and herself she might have made it five. Barely better than the ocean voyage. Either way, he figured twenty hours was the most he dared to spend here before moving on. He had to leave the port before she reached it, but he also had to plant a trail for her here.
So as he trailed Tesyn through the murky sailors’ dens, he dropped his glamour too. He let himself be seen, and that was likely all the effort required to keep the justicar on his trail. After all, he was something of a legend here.
He’d been a successful pirate captain, but more importantly, he had been an interesting one. Far and wide, they knew the tale of the man who’d led his crew on a three-month expedition into the Jepta desert. No one really knew what had happened there, but they knew the ship’s first mate had come back the captain, and Corin Hugh had been left for dead.
Then he had come back with a vengeance. He’d left the traitors’ corpses littering the breadth of Hurope, reclaimed Marzelle from his own mutinous crewmen and delivered it back to the Nimble Fingers, and in the process made himself a hero among the very organization that had raised him.
The pirates of Rauchel knew Corin Hugh, and when he showed himself, he caused a stir. He spent an hour being feasted and another hour drinking. He spent an hour telling tales of all his exploits through the years and another hour asking questions. By then the crowd of his admirers had grown large enough to offer a wealth of options—mates and even officers from more than a dozen active crews—and all but Corin had enjoyed enough of beer or rum to get them talking.
By five hours in he had everything he needed. Captain Crowe was not a friendly man, but he knew his way to half the secret grottos that lined the treacherous coasts of the Isle of Mists, and he ran an honorable crew.
It took more time still to convince Crowe to take new passengers, though. His ship was slated for repairs and he’d promised his crew three days’ leave while the work was done. He would not deny them that, even for the famous Corin Hugh, so it fell to Corin to track them down, to rouse them from their drinks, and to convince them he was worth the sacrifice.
Somehow he managed that. It took the afternoon and evening, and he’d almost despaired of finding the first mate at all when he discovered the man smoking a quiet pipe in the peaceful solitude of a shady little cemetery.
“I know you’ve earned your leave,” Corin said, “but will you sail for me?”
“There’s other ships. There’s other crews.”
“But none I’d trust to carry me safe out of the clutches of a justicar.”
That got the man’s attention. He raised his eyebrows and tapped out his pipe, then asked the question. “Whose justicar?”
“Ephitel’s. She’s tracked me all the way here from Aerome.”
The first mate whistled. “I’d call that a lie if you were anyone but Corin Hugh.” Then he thought a moment, shrugged, and stuck out his hand. “Honor to serve ye, Captain. How long till we sail?”
“An hour, Fortune favor. If it takes much more than that, your whole crew will get to watch me fight a justicar. It won’t be pretty.”
He nodded, thoughtful. “No. I think it wouldn’t be. But you won’t fight that fight alone. There’s more’n a few men in Raentz who’d tussle Ephitel himself if they could say they’d fought alongside Corin Hugh.”
“I won’t forget that,” Corin said. “But let’s none of us get killed tonight. Just hurry.”
“That I will. Have you found everyone?”
“I still need Slade and Joe and Cameron.”
“I’ll round ’em up. You get back to the ship and hide your face.”
“Aye aye.” Corin said. “And thank you.”
The first mate gave a laugh. “You kiddin’? They’ll be buying me beers all winter if I can say I sailed with Corin Hugh. Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
Somehow he had Slade and Cameron to the ship even before Corin reached it, and it took less than half an hour before the last man showed up. But still they needed to load the ship with rations and equipment for the voyage. Tesyn’s chests were brought up from the dock house and loaded in the hold, and then finally the crew piled on the ship and raised the gangplank. Corin threw in beside the other sailors, hauling lines and heaving to like a common deckhand. It was honest work, and it felt good. The clock he’d been counting in his head expired as they slipped into the channel, and Corin went once more to stand at the stern and stare back at the docks, expecting to see the lovely justicar dashing to the end of the pier, shaking her fist at him in anger.
But there was no one. It should have been no surprise. He’d made a thousand guesses to predict when she’d arrive, and this had been the very earliest he’d imagined. She wasn’t there. That only proved he’d made good assumptions.
Unless she’d lost his trail. Unless she’d doubled back from Baillon and gone after Auric anyway. He tried not to think about that. He’d made enough of a stir in Rauchel to send rumors to her anywhere in Raentz. That would have to be enough. It had to be.
Still, he couldn’t shake the fear. So he found a mop and bucket and started swabbing the deck. He worked himself weary, then finally fell asleep right there on the deck. When he woke at dawn, out in the middle of the open sea, he strained his eyes for some sign of a distant ship trailing in their wake, but they were all alone. No one sailed for the Isle of Mists.
An hour later, while the captain was easing the ship toward a hidden inlet the scholar had described, a mighty wind kicked up and dashed the ship against the rocks. Crushing waves rose up from a still sea and lifted men and debris into the air, then smashed them against each other or dragged them down into the icy depths. Corin and Tesyn were the only two who reached the shore alive.
Alone.
Then the wind began howling while both men lay shivering and exhausted beneath a pale blue sky, and that wind brought the whispers of the dead.
There were worse things than justicars, Corin decided, and all of them were out to kill him.
The Isle of Mists was scarcely more than legend to most, but pirates knew it well. Like the Wildlands further south, it was a haven safe from Godlander authorities. And like the Wildlands, it was an unforgiving place. Fog hung thick and heavy over all its shores, and treacherous currents fought along its rocky coasts.
But the inlands were a mystery. No man who ventured out upon its moors returned alive. Pirates only sheltered in its hidden coves when desperate times demanded it. They’d travel in large groups to fetch timber or fresh water near the shore, and always they went armed to the teeth.
Corin had never been driven to that extreme, but he’d heard all the tales from men who had. Still, no pirate he had ever met could name the dangers of the island. Man or beast, arcane or natural, whatever roamed this land kept hidden in the choking fog and left no survivors to tell its secrets.
But as Corin lay gasping on the rocky beach, he had some clue what lurked there. He’d laughed when Tesyn said the Isle was haunted, but on the howling ocean wind he could hear the sound of ghastly voices. Not just wailing moans, but words in an ancient language. “Begone from here and leave our shores. No manling’s welcome on these moors!”
Over and over, the ghostly whispers whorled around him. He struggled to his feet, head whipping left and right as he searched for some sign of the threat, but it was just the wind.
The wind and the voices of the elves of old Gesoelig. Corin shuddered. He’d heard those voices once before, when his crew had put Gesoelig’s tomb to the torch. The memories of all those elves had gone up in flames, and something in that moment had transported Corin back into Oberon’s sad memory.