“Vengeance is an unstoppable force. You may obtain yours in this life, if you are fortunate. But even if you are, someone… somewhere… will pay you back. It might not be you, but your children. I ask you two, why do children have to bear the sins of their fathers? And their fathers the sins of their fathers and their fathers’ sins before them?” He paused, waiting for an answer, but none came. He didn’t seem like he expected one. “This is my true treasure, my lovely guests.”
The lord continued with a different voice, a knowing voice, as he opened the glass doors of his humble library. “Here in these books lies great knowledge. The knowledge of history, mathematics, and the natural sciences. I have pages filled with poetry and prose, copies of religious texts and treaties, as well as forbidden texts... texts of heretical creeds and blasphemous revelations.” The pirate lord gave both of them a wicked smile.
A smile of hidden meaning, she thought. Akilah did not smile back. Instead, she looked at the things. Some of the books were big, others small, but all were thick and leather-bound. And they smelled queer to her nose. She saw one with a particular symbol on its cover; it was on the third shelf. She could not reach for it, so the pirate lord grabbed the book and offered it to her. The symbol was painted in white and black – a simple eye, elegantly drawn and enclosed by a triangle. When she opened the book, she saw only letters, letters and more letters, but no drawings. The peculiar smell felt stronger with each page she turned, but Akilah found she liked the paper’s scent.
“That symbol, little one, represents... many things to many different cultures; but all of them share one particular trait. It is the eye of providence, the eye of the gods. And to those with the right knowledge, it denotes the realm of possibilities; and the greatest ambition of any mortal man – ”
“Ascension to godhood,” Sycarus intervened.
Akilah saw him as profoundly disturbed. She envied his knowledge, and she cursed her lack thereof. Nevertheless, she kept her silence – staring at the beautiful symbol of black and white upon the book’s cover. Knowing now what it represented, the leather-bound thing in her hands seemed a little heavier.
“Yes, boy,” said the pirate lord. “Deification of mortal flesh, intellect, and soul.”
“With all respect, my lord. Though I’m not a religious man, talk of mysticism and magic brings a chill to my spine. Especially since I’m far away from the Old World and my gods.”
“The Sun Father and Moon Mothers?” The lord asked with a grin. “The Three are everywhere, Sycarus. All people worship the sun and moons, in their own way; but all of them do. Have no fear of words and thoughts, but respect. That is what you need to possess when confronting matters of politics, nature, and spirit.” Then the pirate lord turned to Akilah. “Do you know how to read, little one?”
She shook her head and said, “I know Galinthean and some parts of the dialects of the Lowlands. But as for writing, I know few letters and I can read some words; but I know few of them.”
“Don’t worry. When I was your age, I could barely write mine own name. Heh, I was slow to bloom. You’ll learn in time. Sycarus, my good lad. No doubt you’ll teach your sister, hmm?”
But before her half-brother could reply, a shout from outside the deck interrupted them. “Crayers! Crayers off the port bow!”
Akilah ran out of the cabin swift as a cat, leaving the other two behind. Back when she lived on the streets of Sand’s Port, whenever she could spare time between the begging and stealing, she liked to stare at the ships and sea for as long as she could, before returning home. Akilah used to climb a rock peak, which stood tall overlooking the harbor. And from there she could admire the ships in all their splendour. She remembered that the towers rang their bells twice for when a ship docked, and thrice for when a ship undocked and left for the open waters. She saw galleys, crayers, cogs, caravels, and carracks. Akilah was excited to see the many oars again.
“Crayers! Crayers off the port bow!” The lookout shouted once more.
“How many!? And what colours are they flying!?” Asked the pirate lord, making his way to the helm – the alacrity of his armored bulk a surprise to her and Sycarus.
“There’s five of them, lord! And they fly the scarlet all-seeing eye of Zjialaa!”
“Huh. Speak of the devil.” The pirate lord said with a grin. “The nation of Zjialaa is a place of great culture, Sycarus, with many an old bloodline claiming divine ancestry. But at the end of the day, they are simple priests and politicians.”
And they are ruthless, Akilah said to herself, glaring at the zjialaan sigil. She’d seen a couple of ships displaying the scarlet eye back in Sand’s Port, but only on rare occasions. When she did though, the foreign ships unloaded slaves and in return bought spices and wyvern fangs.
The merchants of Zjialaa, Akilah remembered, wore long tunics, made of scarlet cloth. The all-seeing eye was embroidered in gold thread on their chests. She and the other children had tried once to pickpocket one of those traders in the lower districts, in which there were no guards about. They had failed to do so, and Scrub had managed to get himself caught. The children called him thus on account of his scrubby stature. Poor little Scrub. I’m so sorry. One of the scarlet tunics had pulled out a dagger and had cut the boy’s ears off; right then and there, with the crowds silent and staring. That was the last time Akilah had seen the boy, her friend.
“My lord!” Sycarus shouted. “Why are we changing course to follow them!? I thought we were heading for land!”
“Fear not, boy. I promised to see you and your sister safe back in Sun’s Helm; and I mean to do so. However, I cannot pass up this opportunity.”
“But they’re five ships, and we are but one,” Sycarus insisted. “This is madness, my lord.”
“We are more than one ship. My raider caravels are trailing us. But they are not the moment’s intrigue. Cast your eyes at the shadow that follows our prey! Can you see it, boy!? No!? Keep watching!”
Akilah, on the other hand, saw it clearly. Long and thick the shadow was, and strange ripples went over it. What could it be? Then she saw the water rise like a giant mound behind the crayers. Monster. Monster. Akilah repeated the word but failed to give it voice, as she stared in disbelief at the awe-inspiring creature.
“Leviathan!” The lookout cried. “Leviathan! Turn away, my lord! Turn away!” The man’s voice was filled with dread. Even the odd silent thralls, who were toiling on the deck with rope and sail, appeared dismayed – yet they didn’t share the lookout’s terror. When the long oars of the Prodigious splashed the water, the sound they gave was loud and feral; as if the ship was some kind of wooden giant, trying to smash its way across the immensity of heavy waters. The ones below, the rowers can’t see the best. They have no holes or windows through which to look and see.
“Cursed old fool!” Akilah heard the pirate lord say in disgust. “Hold your tongue, you scared land rat, unless you want me to hold it for you!” The lord turned then to his silent crew of obedient thralls. “Fear not my pets; I am the one true monarch of the waters! No sea creature can harm my ship, for within its hold beats the dreaded heart of fallen giants!” His voice grew dark and solemn. “The spoils of these wretches, all the spoils on all the seas… are mine to take!”
Akilah looked at him in awe and wonderment. His green eyes seemed to burn the air before him. They gave out radiating heat, as if from the sun, but only clouds filled the sky. His pale skin had a strange glow about it; not a cold glow and not a warm one either. In his gold and crimson breastplate, and with the green cloak about him, the pirate lord was a splendour of a figure – towering, imposing, majestic. Akilah was more intrigued with him, rather than the monster.
“Look, my guests! Look!”
The leviathan was a large and dark and gruesome thing. To her, it looked like some horrible crossing between a fish, a snake, a crab, a whale, a shark, and an elephant. The great beast engulfed one of the crayers and sank it in a long heartbeat. A huge splash of grey and white
followed, and all that remained of the ship was the loud and angry lament of the waters. Sycarus touched her on the shoulder then, and squeezed. Akilah looked at him. His face was strange. His mouth seemed to arch into a smile, and he frowned at it all; but his brown eyes seemed sad, almost content. But with what? She knew how people seemed, how they looked and even smelled, when despair gripped their minds.
Despair is the gravest of sins, she said to herself. That was what Jorro had thought them, her and the other children. She didn’t know whether Jorro had made up the saying himself, or if he’d heard it from the mouth of some wise priest, bearing the wisdom of some old religion. Whatever the truth, that was what the man had taught them. A good thief could not afford to give in to fear, for his very life depended on it. Somehow, that saying had remained with her. Akilah didn’t approve of his fear, so she kicked him in the knee.
“Auh! What the…“ Then she kicked him in the other knee. “Bloody hell! Stop it!”
“No, you stop it! You stop being afraid! I know you are afraid. I know you are, brother. If the lord captain says it will be alright, alright it will be.”
Sycarus rubbed his knees, then made to grab hold of her. “You little shi – ”
She evaded his hands, kicked him in the leg once more, then ran toward the shrouds of the mainmast. The lookout was climbing down. He was quivering with fear, and he smelled of piss. Akilah paid him no mind. She began to climb the shrouds. To her, this was another adventure, the greatest adventure so far... And mayhaps, not the last one I’ll ever know. Her aim was to climb all the way up to reach the crow’s nest. From there she would see everything. From there she would be a true all-seeing eye.
Sycarus shouted at her, begged her to come back down, but she wouldn’t think of it. She liked climbing. She enjoyed the feeling of the ropes inside her palms – the fiber strong and secure. Akilah was close to her goal, when a strong wind appeared from out of nowhere. It blew furiously against her, almost making her legs and hands slip the ropes. She held as best she could. The wind was blowing so hard she could barely catch any air with her nostrils. Her eyes were shut tight, but dust had entered them all the same – they stung, and the wind blew away her tears as fast as she produced them.
In the distance, Akilah heard a meager sound of thunder. Slowly that sound came closer, and the closer it came, the louder the sky trembled. The cursed wind had stopped. Her half-opened eyes stung even more, but nonetheless she continued, one arm at a time; until she finally bested the shrouds and claimed the crow’s nest for herself. She felt as if she had conquered the very elements. If she was to play her part in the farce thought up by Sycarus – of pretending to be the daughter of an Aharo chieftain – she had to remember to act like one. Sycarus had told her all that he learnt about the warrior desert tribes, about their legends and their god.
“I am the blood of the Aharo”, she reminded herself then, “the blood of great warriors, the children of the Sky Father, the Shepherd of birds and clouds. Their blood runs through my veins.” If only those lies were true. Akilah would have loved such ancestry. “A warrior wouldn’t be afraid. I’m no longer pitch mouse. I can’t be afraid. I won’t be afraid.” But she was; her hands trembled and her feet felt like ghosts. Her eyes were wet and they still stung as she rubbed at them.
Only three ships remained afloat; she had missed the fourth one’s demise. Stupid wind, Akilah frowned with spite. Its vicious breath robbed me of it.
As the lightning appeared thicker and longer, so too the thunder grew. The pirate lord’s ship came closer with each wave. Above her, the colours of the Prodigious fluttered in their own peculiar rhythm, one of anger, duty, and pride... And also of freedom. The colours depicted in crimson a demon’s head with its tongue hanging out above two crossed scimitars, white on black – the grim saltire of Arrtrofis.
When Akilah looked down, the deck was flanked by angry waves, and each hit sent spray into the air. She couldn’t see Sycarus anywhere out, but it didn’t matter. The waters, the rainless storm, the ships, and the great beast, those were truly important. The leviathan grew larger with every broken wave. “Larger and uglier,” she murmured, as she coiled her fists over the wooden lip of the crow’s nest.
Torn sails, barrels, and corpses floating on broken boards were all that remained of the two sunken crayers. The sight of the floating things was a sad one. The water mounds pushed some pieces up, others down, and the strong lower wind shrieked as if in mourning. The Prodigious was now right behind the awesome beast. Lightning and thunder came both at once, curved spears of raw power veining the sky – sounding heavenly rage. The air left a sweet moisture on her lips. The clouds were ready to rain; she knew. But then the leviathan rose far above the furious waters, towering over everyone and everything – matching even the bright spear veins of lightning, which flickered from the unbounded maw of the sky. The huge beast gave out a sound, a terrible loudness that seemed to dwarf the thunder.
Akilah fell on her ass and curled herself inside the crow’s nest, covering her ears as hard as she could. What she heard was something beyond any worldly beast. It had to be godly for certain, or demonic, or both. She remembered what the pirate lord had said. “No sea creature can harm my ship, for within its hold beats the dreaded heart of fallen giants.” Of what giants was he speaking of? After the monster’s terrible loudness came a short but deafening silence. It was as if the very elements stood in awe. The leviathan will destroy everything, all the ships, including ours. Big rain drops fell. They fell straight, for the wind had vanished. And all the waters, as far as she could tell, seemed to be at rest. Left without the wind’s breath, only the oars carried them forth.
Akilah looked down on the deck and saw the pirate lord – the strange glow still about him, like a wraith attached to his skin. It was plain to the eye even from this distance. He drew his scimitar above his head and shouted, “Great dweller of the underworld! I am the holder! I am the keeper and master of his heart by blood pact! I am Neezor of house Arrtrofis, first of my name! I am your master, and you are bound to my will until the promised hour! Until the Great Annihilator conquers the entirety of hell, and his servants prepare the earth for his glorious and terrible coming!”
Those words echoed unnaturally in that overbearing silence which had become the sea. Akilah wasn’t sure she understood them right, let alone what they meant. Of what is he speaking of? And isn’t hell another world altogether? A torment world for the lost and the damned? Who could conquer hell? Her head was full of questions, questions that would remain unanswered until she would eventually speak with the man… this pirate lord who bore the name, Neezor Arrtrofis.
The leviathan gave out some last words in that unnatural beastly tongue, then retreated into the water. The pirate caravels, which had quietly followed the Prodigious, were now advancing on the three crayers that remained unscathed.
After Akilah came down the shrouds and reached the deck, she saw her half-brother. Sycarus no longer appeared to be fearful. Instead, he seemed rather annoyed. She went to him to apologize for the kicks she had inflicted upon his knees. But Sycarus paid her no mind; he was addressing the lord... in quite the bold tongue.
“You’ve promised to take us to the Old World’s shores, captain. But you’ve other plans on your mind, do you not?”
Neezor Arrtrofis gave him a snide smile. “I am in need of able bodies. The Prodigious is in need of fresh thralls to be turned into silent ones – by courtesy of the necromancers. And my men are in need of treasure and drink.” He chuckled, as the raiding caravels came about the surviving ships to board them. The bewildered crewmen made no efforts to resist.
“I promised to take both of you to the Old World, and so I will. But first I have another promise to honor, a duty of mine own. We are to travel far into the west, well beyond the Desertlands. We are going to visit the thing which lies hidden at the bottom of the Great Maelstrom... We are to visit the grave of a sun.”
Chapter XXVI: Birus
Here of all places he felt sick to his stomach. As promised, Birus Mandon was ready to swallow his pride and bend his knee to the usurper. Or kill him, if my senses abandon me to righteous anger. The real man he wanted to kill was Maynard Tychos, but the devil was nowhere in sight. Birus was behind the walls of Castle Spire, under the eyes of foreign sellswords as well as those of turncloaks. One of the latter elements was standing next to him, head lowered and loathing.
“Why didn’t you ride south with us? If you would have done so there would have been no need for me to split my forces. You could have taken care of the eastern invaders who outflanked us. If you would have honored your oath… there would have been no parley – only battle.”
“Is that so?” Kalafar Sodomis said defiantly with narrowed eyes. “Then mayhaps lord Bellworth the traitor would have driven that dagger inside your neck, instead of lord Wolfgar’s. From the moment I heard the usurper managed to land on imperial soil, I knew that a powerful faction inside the realm had betrayed the emperor. Powerful men, ambitious men. The same men who killed my father; of that I have no doubt.” The young warden held his chin high as he spoke. Clearly he was not ashamed of anything. That sentiment was well reflected in his ornate armor.
“And now, lord Mandon, here we stand. About to swear our oaths of fealty not to a new emperor, but to a previous one. Amarius Soronius, first born of Zygar Ferus, brother to the overthrown Hagyai Rovines. It seems to me that years ago, the same thing happened to the Mero brothers. Only the sides were reversed. Fate is quite ironic.”
“So you chose neutrality because you feared betrayal? Hmph. Craven – ”
“I am no craven!” The young Sodomis replied in a sharp tone. “I didn’t know who was truly bought, nor how many they were. I couldn’t be certain of mine own bannermen. Surely you can understand that, my lord. I had to think of possible traitors in my realm as well. As wardens, we all have enemies. And all enemies wait to exploit the faintest of faults. They act when you least expect it.” Kalafar shook his head.
An Empire Of Traitors (Of Hate And Laughter Book 1) Page 30