The Arkanist

The City of Exiles

         “Let us pray he still draws breath,” Eller said.

         “He is good with a blade, death will not find him easily as it will others. I have faith he still dwells there, repairing ships and weapons day and night.” He laughed. “He never met a girl that he liked more than his weapons that one.”

         “Land hoe!” shouted Hawkeye from his watchtower. “Tarhtun lies to the distance due east, steer to starboard!”

         Eller looked across deck to the east as the ship slowly moaned along the crashing grey sea. A shadowed splotch dotted the hazy horizon, rising until it met the steamy grey clouds overhead. He hoped Tarhtun was different than the books said.

         The great grey sails rippled limply in the small breaths of wind and carried them slowly towards the island. A bell chimed as a blast of cool, smoky air bloated the triangular cloth and shoved them forward, until a large shadow lurched in the faint haze. Eller’s eyes widened as it came into focus. The stories were true! Shaalad was true! Look at it!

            Rising from the sea floor like a stone fist, a jagged rock skull sat on the water. Stampeding white waves thundered against the stone, but the skull held strong and warded off the attacks. The rock spire was round, but gaunt, with two great gaping holes for eyes and a long, triangular one for a nose. Underneath the nose, a yawning mouth drunk the salty water, with long, straggly teeth of seaweed. It was the Skull of Tarhtun, one of the Seven Wonders of the New World. The ones of ancient times have all unfortunately been destroyed by the mighty Aandors of the East when they invaded so long ago.

         The tide dragged them closer to the mouth, where on either side, wooden watchtowers were built into the stone, with pirates cloaked in red guarding the pass into their city, holding wooden longbows and a quiver slung across their backs. Great braziers blazed red in the skull’s eyes, and on the wooden towers, puffing out coiling black bands of smoke that slunk forebodingly across the stone. Up close, Eller could see the skull splotched with stains of pale lichen and cloaked in moss, with white dots of bird droppings running down the grey face. Where the water chomped on the irregular rock chin and jaws, shells scaled the skull and seaweed infested it like a beard.

         The winds grew colder once they were underneath the massive skull, the dripping roof some fifty feet above the main mast. A deep and eerie shade was thrown over them as they slunk under with the current and a faint whisper echoed off the stone like an ancient, dead voice.

         “They say it’s my father that speaks to those who pass through,” Shaalad said. “You’d probably know why, serpent.”

          “Because he died here, his ship sacked by my grandfather, King Shaenn.” Eller looked down into the murky black water to see oily green ribbons curling like mist under the surface.

         “Indeed,” Shaalad continued. “Right on that outcropping there, that sticks out the water. My father’s men though never brought him back. They decided it was Gallows End who should take him, for it was Gallows End he had taken.”

         Eller did want to argue with Shaalad and the wars between the Serpents and the Pirates. Instead, he continued to watch the ship creak by, until it snuck out the back and the shade was flung off and replaced by a grey sunlight. The winds faded again and the current ebbed until the wind ceased completely and the long wooden oars shot out of the belly of the ship and dragged them towards the city.

         The mist had abated so that it only crawled along the grey watery floor and the clear sun hung in the center of the sky, where great white puffs of cloud arced by and churned with the faint winds up into the atmosphere. The rest of the sky was an azure blue expanse, vanishing from view farther out to sea as it hid behind the misty horizon.