Stormlands ( Book 2 of the Torrent Skies Saga)

Chapter Six: Errant Souls

The library in Rastridge was clean, quiet, and not very busy: all that Katerin had been hoping for. Where as Typhon would have taken her directly to the subject she was searching for, the elderly man here only offered her a cup of tea, and good luck.

No one bothered her as she sat in a corner, barricaded in by stacks upon stacks of books and scrolls. Wooden bound, leather bound, fancy scroll cases and plain ones. In the few hours time she did have, she found more than expected. Almost enough formulate a plan. It hinged on finding a boat and captain willing to take them, but that was Fykes' task.

The Stormlands were not explored or populated for two main reasons: One was, of course, the Currents—the unexplained and powerful magic that made the waters a death trap for all but the most skilled sailors.

And two was the fact that the place was aptly named. Constant storms plagued Neuavia, or the Stormlands, as it was more commonly named. More lightning struck there than any other place in the world, and the rains never stopped. And nor were they small summer rains. Which likely meant the coasts were plagued with stronger storms near constantly. Mudslides and any other number of natural disasters would assail this place, no matter the season.

The Currents were not so strong in some places, like the routes now used to sail to Itrea. But they were not something you could go around, and no one truly understood how the magic that controlled the Currents functioned. From the charts she found, there were no such tranquil stretches around the Stormlands. She found four accounts of successful travel to the place, and those were questionable at best. One was written in almost illegible dwarven hand, another just snippets in Elvish that hinted to its whereabouts.

It was also rumored to be a place of exile. The greatest mention of it was in ships logs, and criminal records. Sailors would maroon criminals and thieves—putting them in a boat bound for its shores and leaving them to live or die, at the hands of the sea and the storms. Others who committed heinous crimes were treated the same way in the histories of certain coastal cities, and simply shipped away. It was a terrible form of exile, one that was written to be the worst punishment ever concocted.

Most scholars who  studied said it was very unlikely that many of those criminals ever made it to Neuavia. It was presumed that most had died, or had found land to survive on before such fantastical and mythical places had ever been involved.

A land of outcasts surely, if any had survived to find it. Nothing about the place seemed even close to mundane, or peaceful, and Katerin felt that she should be terrified. But there was only excitement as she scraped together every snippet of information she could find. She was not even tired as she left the library behind her, pulling her cloak a little tighter against her shoulders as the evening wind blew up from the river.

She turned away from the library, and wound down the foggy streets, headed away from her true destination for the moment. Donovar had insisted that she had to come and get him, before moving on to the tavern.

She took her time on the cobbled streets, and smiled as children rushed past her on their way home for dinner. Even at her meandering pace, it was not long until she saw the familiar shop. No sign hung above its door, and within the windows a menagerie of things were displayed. Strange hats, paper tassels and other decorations, most of which were dyed in bright and distracting colors. 

She opened the door and heard the loud chiming of a bell, that was nowhere to be seen. The small room was packed to the ceiling with all manner of items on display. Costumes, firecrackers, potions, knick-knacks and other oddities filled the shelves in a haphazard way. A large counter full of gaudy jewelry sat to one side and the sensation of magic hit her as though she had walked into a brick, along with a pungent herbal smell. She often wondered if anything inside here was mundane.