Water (The Six Elements Book 3)

by Rosie Scott

  An Alderi man stood against the side of a cabin on the quarterdeck, appearing studious as he read a book in one hand, and nursed from an ale bottle with the other. Long black hair was pulled back in a lazy ponytail, which laid softly over his shoulder. Two black eyes glanced up over the book as he heard us board, before he stood straighter, a smile developing on his face.

  “Calder! Son of a bitch!” Still holding his book and ale, he pulled Calder in for a hug.

  “Jaecar, these are my friends.” Calder introduced us all next, giving his former sailor a rundown of the events of the past half year.

  “I heard of the war,” Jaecar admitted. “Was in Llyr when King Adar's messengers came requesting support for T'ahal. They made it sound like the city would be taken.” He smiled over at me. “Evidently it wasn't.”

  “It's stronger than ever,” I replied, because it was. With our victory and T'ahal's budding magic school, it was arguably stronger than it had ever been, save for the casualties of the Battle of the Dead.

  “So...” Jaecar glanced to Calder. “This war with our sisters...what does it have to do with me?”

  “We need a message sent to the prince of Nahara,” Calder replied. Motioning to the rest of us, he added, “I was supposed to take them to Scirocco by now, and their progress and updated plans need to be sent to their ally.”

  Jaecar glanced down the harbor, looking for the Galleon Stallion. When he didn't find it, he looked back to the other man in horror. “Calder, for fuck's sake, what did you do? That ship was dwarven!”

  Despite the reality of his situation, Calder only chuckled.

  Jaecar took us into his captain's quarters, where he let me sit at his desk and use his quill to write my letter to Hasani. Calder and Jaecar talked over the details as I did so, ensuring to write everything I could to help my ally understand the developments and my progress. I couldn't help but wonder as I wrote if this letter would one day be kept behind glass, like my father's had been in the history museum in Kilgor. Perhaps one day people would read this and try to understand the events of a history which had developed their future. Then, things would have truly come full circle, for children would be reading about me in awe much like I had always read about the battle generals and rulers of centuries past.

  86th of Dark Star, 419

  Hasani:

  Brother, I hope you are doing well. I have both bad news and good news. It seems my plans have taken a detour. Sirius has come to an agreement with the gods against me, and there have been assassination attempts on my life. Based on what little I have found of this agreement, I have reason to believe some of them may be in Nahara looking for me. Their only concern is killing me, but I can't be completely certain that they wouldn't do something to hurt or sabotage you and your army. Please be careful. Their powers are varied and unique. Be on the lookout for golden eyes. Each of them has golden eyes, and each of them can be killed by “mortals.” During our journey thus far, both Cerin and Nyx have killed gods just as easily as if they were human, so do not fear them.

  Thanks to these pursuers, our ship lost its way and wrecked on the shores of the southern wildlands in early Red Moon. Suffice it to say, we are far off course. I have met an Alderi man by the name of Calder Cerberius who has offered me an alliance if we can win an impending underground civil war. As I write this, we are in Silvi with four hundred beastmen, and we will be taking the fight to the underground within the fortnight. As you know, the Alderi enslave their males. Our plan is to free and liberate them in exchange for their help in the War of Necromancers. The others and I will be leading these armies and helping Calder take the underground up to Quellden. If we take the queen's city, the rest of the underground will fall. Then, if all goes according to plan, we will have allies with access to the entire world of Arrayis.

  I understand this is a lot to think about and contemplate. Just know that while our trip to Eteri has been put on hold, we are still working on our goals and a new alliance. In the future, if male Alderi reach out to you, please open your ears to their messages. They will most likely have news of the war underground and our endeavors. Also: you once said the tunnels of the Alderi are not connected to Nahara, but they are. I have since been informed there is an entrance to the underground amongst the Dhahab Canyons. It is seldom used due to its location, but keep your eyes peeled.

  Eteri is next on my list, I promise you. Given the monumental task before me, I may not see it for another year or two, but I will update you as often as I am able. I hope you understand this decision and agree it will be of a mutual benefit for us. For now, I must go to recruit as many soldiers as I can in Silvi before we breach the depths. Be safe, and know that we all miss your jovial presence. Keep a bottle of expensive Naharan ale on a shelf for me, brother.

  With love and valor,

  Kai Sera

  I took my time folding the letter to be put into an envelope for safekeeping, which I then sealed. Jaecar put the letter in a safe behind his desk, before locking it and turning to me.

  “Your letter is safe with me,” the captain promised. “I will ensure its safe delivery to T'ahal. I wouldn't want anything to inhibit vengeance against my sisters.”

  “Tell your messenger to beware of golden eyes,” I informed him.

  Jaecar's brow furrowed as he took in my words, connecting them to my own eyes. “Ah. The gods are after you due to the Battle of the Gods?”

  Battle of the Gods. So that is what the people were calling my fight with Malgor. It must have already cemented its place in history if it had a name and Jaecar had heard of it while in Llyr.

  “Among other things,” I nodded.

  “Will do. Thanks for the heads up.” Jaecar turned back to Calder. “How long are you staying in Silvi? Long enough to hit the tavern?”

  Calder smiled. “I'll spare a few hours tonight for you. We'll be recruiting in Silvi for a few days, and preparing to head underground. We need to make sure we're ready. We're taking dozens and dozens of non-Alderi to the underground. I want to avoid any problems before they begin.”

  Jaecar nodded. “Make sure to stock up on dried mushrooms while you're here, in case you don't have access to the rivers underground.”

  I frowned and turned to him. “Why?”

  “Alderi don't need the sun's nutrients,” the captain replied. “You all do. You can get sick without it. Fish keeps the sickness away, and the underground's rivers are many, but in the case you can't access them, you'll need mushrooms. And the mushrooms of the underground are poisonous.”

  “All of them?” I asked.

  Jaecar shrugged. “Most of them. The poisonous ones are the ones which light up the underground. The safe ones will be impossible for any of you to see, since they're tiny and hidden in the crevasses of the rock.”

  “If it gives a glow, just say no,” Calder quipped. Nyx chuckled.

  Learning even the smallest bits about the underground fascinated me. The fact that I would be one of the few non-Alderi to see the depths excited me, for everything I'd ever heard of Nyx's homeland made it sound vastly different than anywhere else on Arrayis. I could only hope that I would survive its mysteries.

  *

  Calder planted a world map down on the table before us, before digging in a pocket and retrieving a quill and inkwell. He unscrewed the cap of the inkwell, before placing both on the table, and plopped himself down on the bench opposite me.

  Calder, Vallen, Jayce, Cerin, Nyx, Jakan, Anto and I were meeting together at Silvi's largest tavern to discuss the attack plans for the underground. Once we were below the surface, we couldn't be sure how often we could risk talking and planning, so we needed to make sure we were all on the same page before we even ventured into the tunnel.

  At this point, we had stayed in Silvi for close to a week, gathering supplies and recruits. Silvi was the largest city in the wildlands by far, and the results were fruitful. Because Silvi was so close to the only Alderi tunnel of the wildlands, the populace here was fed up with fe
nding off constant assassination attempts on escaped slaves, so they jumped at the chance to retaliate. All in all, we had over five hundred recruits from Silvi alone, bringing our total to nearly one thousand. It was a daunting number, almost matching that of Terran's army from the Battle of the Dead the year before. The underground had thousands upon thousands, however, so it would be up to us to use strategy to our advantage. Calder claimed to have found a recently escaped Alderi who would be meeting us soon, so we wouldn't have to rely completely on his memory from many decades before.

  “Let's start off by marking the entrances,” Calder said, dipping the quill in the ink before he marked a dot along the edge of the ocean on the map just north of Silvi. “This is our tunnel. For the sake of accuracy, I'll mark the rest so we can figure out where the tunnels are from there.” He went on to mark eight more entrances, and Nyx helped him with the locations. The next was a tunnel on the western coast of Eteri. In Chairel alone, there were four entrances; one in the Golden Peaks near Narangar, the Seran Peaks, the Cel Mountains beneath Brognel, and the Firn Caps, which was the mountain range along the northeastern coast of Chairel, just outside the border of Hammerton. There was only one entrance in Nahara which tunneled up through the Dhahab Canyons. Finally, in Hammerton there were two entrances. One tunneled up through the Quakes, which was a mountain range which covered nearly half of the entire country. The other was along the edge of the Border Mounts, a string of mountains which served as a natural barrier between Hammerton and the beastlands just below it.

  “What's up with the obsession with mountains?” Jakan asked, his gray eyes scanning over the map and noting the placement of the tunnels.

  “Those entrances are easier to keep hidden,” Nyx explained. “As far as I know, only two entries to the underground have ever been found. The one we'll be using, since so many escape there and then tell others about it, and the tunnel beneath Brognel.”

  “To be fair,” Calder said, lifting up a finger. “The Brognel entrance wasn't even there until two decades ago.”

  “Because the dwarven miners broke through to it unintentionally,” I stated, remembering Theron telling us that before we reached Whispermere over two years before.

  “Precisely,” Calder agreed. “The entrance was only discovered because the dwarves were the ones who created it.”

  The tavern door squeaked open then, calling our attention to the Alderi man who walked in. He was a tad shorter than normal for an Alderi, and his black hair was shoulder-length and more than a little greasy. His black eyes looked wily from between eyelids which were closer together than normal, giving him an almost tired or crafty appearance. The man had a face full of black stubble over dark gray skin; facial hair was uncommon for an Alderi to wear, as all of them I'd seen thus far were smooth-faced. A scar puffed outward from the hairline above his left eye to the lower right jaw, slicing across the entirety of his face. A ferris cigarette hung slack between two lips, smoke drifting to the ceiling of the tavern as he locked eyes with Calder. The man lumbered over to us as Calder stood.

  “Everyone, this is Ricco,” he introduced, nodding toward the new man. Each of us greeted him, and he nodded slowly as he listened.

  Ricco pulled the cigarette from his lips. “Pleased to meet you all,” he greeted, smoke puffing outward with every word. His voice was raspy but light, almost as if he were whispering. With a glance toward his boots, I noticed they were frayed, leather pieces of them flapping freely. When my eyes moved back up to our new companion, I found Ricco was staring at me, having noticed my gaze. “I'm poor,” he said to me in monotone.

  “We all are,” I replied, both because it was mostly true after the shipwreck, and to make him feel more comfortable. “If you come to the underground with us, we can change that.”

  “I'm thinkin' about it,” he acknowledged roughly, before shoving the cigarette back in his mouth.

  Ricco took a seat between Calder and Vallen. I watched him carefully whenever he couldn't see me, trying to figure him out. Not every person in the world needed to be optimistic and friendly, but Ricco's standoffish demeanor stuck out like a sore thumb in our group, so I was curious as to the man's personality. Of course, Calder had said he'd just escaped, so it was possible that mistreatment and trauma were still in his most recent memories.

  “All right,” Calder began, pulling the map closer to where Ricco could also see it. “We've marked all the entrances on this map—”

  “Why?” Ricco asked dryly around his cigarette.

  “Well, we're trying to get an idea for the layout,” Calder explained.

  Ricco adjusted in his seat, reaching into his upper pant pocket, before he pulled out folded parchment. He tossed it on the table before Calder without another word, waiting until it was finally opened.

  “How did you get a map of the underground?” Calder asked, eyeing it.

  “Stole it,” Ricco replied.

  Calder frowned. “From who? When I was last there, maps of the underground were few and far between.”

  “Yeah, but they're expanding it,” Ricco said, reaching out with an arm to point at various places on the map as Calder held it. As he reached, his long sleeve shirt pulled back from his wrist, unveiling a multitude of scars.

  “Ah. They sure are. Shit,” Calder murmured, before he glanced toward Ricco, repeating his earlier question. “Who'd you say you got this from?”

  Ricco shrugged. “Didn't know her name. Some bitch who was leading a whole group of men to the lake in Thanati. A prospector of sorts, I guess. They're lookin' to expand Thanati. Apparently they found a second lake south of the first and want to include it in their plans, so she had a group of men there starting to dig.”

  “Did you kill her?” Calder questioned.

  “'Course.”

  Calder laid the map out on the table, moving his finger around the drawn tunnels. “This wasn't here, last I knew,” he said, his finger moving along the tunnels and caves drawn beneath the beastlands and Hammerton. “Why are they digging here?” The question was once again directed to Ricco.

  “Hammerton's evidently hiring assassins at triple the rate as they did just a half century ago,” Ricco replied. “There were always tunnels in Hammerton, but there was no reason for settlements there until recently.”

  I frowned. “Why is Hammerton hiring so many assassins?”

  Ricco held up two fingers to count off of. “They hate the Vhiri but aren't at war with them, so they're trying to harm them discreetly, and they're tired of Chairel's dominance.”

  That fascinated me. “Is their relationship with Chairel straining?”

  Ricco shook his head. “Not outwardly. They've been biding their time. They aren't nearly prepared to go up against Chairel. And now with your little war occupying Chairel's time, who knows what they'll do?”

  I nodded, thinking. Hammerton may have been tired of Chairel's dominance, but now that the war had started, they needed Chairel as an ally to take me out. If I were in charge of Hammerton and held the dwarven ideals, I would wait out the war to try anything else. After all, they viewed necromancy as an abomination, so that would most likely be their greatest concern. As a bonus, Chairel would waste men and precious resources on the war, which would benefit Hammerton in the long run.

  “This doesn't change anything, Calder,” I said. “More tunnels or not, our plan is the same.”

  “It might be helpful to know that this tunnel is useless,” Ricco pointed out, motioning to the tunnel which ran beneath the beastlands.

  “Why?” Calder asked.

  “It collapsed. It was a risk to build, anyway. They know the beasts travel underground there.”

  “When was this?” Cerin inquired.

  “Just over a year ago,” Ricco replied.

  Cerin and I exchanged glances. That coincided with our presence in Nahara. I wondered if it was Mantus or the giant tortoise which was to blame.

  Calder brought our attention back to the map with a wave of his hand. “Okay.
If this tunnel is useless, then assassins are more likely to travel from Quellden to Hazarmaveth, and then to Thanati. The other route is too long.”

  “If they travel at all,” Ricco said. “They send assassins on jobs nearest their locale. There'd be no reason for them to go from one city to the next.”

  “If they're simply traveling for leisure, there is,” Calder argued, to which Ricco shrugged.

  “Thanati is our first goal, right?” Nyx asked, getting back to the plans.

  “Yes,” Calder answered. “The tunnel we'll be using drops us between Thanati and Hazarmaveth. Thanati is closer, and it is smaller. We already have an army of beastmen. The city is losing slaves all the time, because the tunnels are so easily reached. It would be relatively simple to take over, I think.”

  I leaned over the table to draw a line from Thanati to Hazarmaveth. “Then move on to the next, assuming enough of the slaves will follow our lead.”

  Calder nodded. “That's what I was thinking. Thanati, then Hazarmaveth, then Quellden.”

  “Moving up the food chain,” Ricco mused.

  “I know Quellden almost by heart,” Nyx said. “Calder knows Hazarmaveth. Ricco, where are you from?”

  “Thanati.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Jakan quipped.

  “If I was going with you it would be,” said Ricco.

  Calder's red eyes flicked toward him. “What's stopping you?”

  “A simple question,” Ricco replied, before he leaned back in his chair. “How do you all feel about war crimes?”

  “War crimes?” I chuckled dryly. “Depends on what you mean by that.”

  “Will anyone here take offense if I start to enjoy myself?” Ricco clarified.

  A few seconds of silence ticked by. Nyx was the first to breach it. “Just kill the enemies and accept surrender if it's given, Ricco. All of us Alderi here have no love for the underground or its ways. That doesn't mean we need to stoop to their level to beat them.”