The galley moaned as a wave rose under its belly, crowned in white as it seethed along the wood. “Let us hope the winds are in our favor,” said Eller, shaking hands with Illyr. The Lietheen’s tan skin was masked in the shadow of Eller as the blazing sun scorched upon his velvety back.
“Shaalad says the winds will be in our favor, thankfully,” said Illyr in his misty voice. “We shall need them.”
“And if they do not blow?” inquired Eller. “There are seamen to man the oars, I am told.”
“Truth has found your ears,” said Illyr. “But you won’t find much more in the coming months. You would do well to trust only yourself, if anyone. They say Gallows End bears some of the most treacherous waters known to this Endless Sea, both in tides and people. It is a dangerous place.”
The quarterdeck was broad and wide, paneled with pale elm with a dark grain lacing like thin string. Thick, horsehair ropes hung loose from the mainmast in the heart of the galley, and more draped down like bars all down the sides in a maze. Seamen garbed in faded linen and rough sewn cloth manned the decks, brushing the deck clean with buckets of foaming water and began to tie the ropes and raise the sails.
The grey mist had parted and only thin fingers brushed against the belly where the grey-blue sea crashed against the bobbing ship. The rungs of the heavy iron anchor plunged into the depths of the glistering water and clutched the rocky floor with tenacious talons. Eller shielded his eyes from the burning white sun as he turned to the port, rimmed with a fiery red ring. It was strong, and would be no such friend of his.
Eller gazed out at the prancing glimmers of light skipping across the churning ocean, a glint in his pale eyes. “Let us venture into the bowels of the ship, Eller,” Illyr said. “Shaalad is eager to meet you.”
“They say he was once a pirate, Shaalad,” said Eller, warily. “Bred in the heart of Gallows End to the Gallowking himself. A prince he was, a pirate prince.”
“A pirate he still is,” said Illyr. “The greatest to have ever taken up sails on this Endless Sea, some say.”
“And what is it you say?” asked Eller. “It was you who contacted him, was it not.”
“I say he is still the greatest, and still the pirate he once was all those years ago,” Illyr said. “We are taking a risk, Eller, with Shaalad, but risks rule this world. And those who are not willing to take that risk end up dead.”
Shaalad’s quarters were large, for being on a ship. They were dark even in the day, and the stained glass windows looked as if tinted with blood, keeping the light out. Long tails of flame danced on the ends of red candles, drooping with wet tears of wax. The ruddy light splashed across the floor like water, and the wooden chairs, plush with padded leather and riveted with gold, creaked across the wood with the intense bobs of the sea.
Shaalad sat coolly before the blood red windows, seated in an oaken chair much grander than those before it. It was coated with a fine sheeny finish and the back was beaded with gold that shone in the candlelight. The pirate leaned back on the gold with a gilded coin in his jaws, biting it as if he expected it would make it worth more. He threw the coin away into a great mound of gold coins—asstraci, the ancient coin of the pirates of Gallows End—where it hit with a ring and a trickle.
He leaned forward as Illyr ushered Eller into a seat before the captain’s desk fashioned of mahogany, scattered with sheaves of parchment and mountains of asstraci, glinting beside a waxen candle. The pirate was garbed in heavy grey, gold, and blue cloth, frayed and distressed with billowy sleeves that tied at the waist with a dirty brown rope for a belt. His face was dark, like charcoal, with a wide bent nose and a necklace of thin silver string. His ears drooped with heavy medallions gleaming with gold and his fat lip was pierced with a thin gilded ring. A thick straggly black beard hugged his face and his short, matted brown hair was flat from being under his leather hat all the day before. He smells of salt, Eller reflected, wrinkling his nose.
“Is this the Serpent’s son?” asked Shaalad in a thick and heavy Lysseni accent. His wrists were clad in singing bands of gold and silver as he rested his arms on his wooden desk. “Surely it must be, for Shaalad Shoh has never seen one so pale in all my years.”
“I am glad I am the first,” said Eller. “And yes, I’m the wretched Serpent’s son so infamously tagged. And you are the notorious pirate Shaalad, the darkest man I have ever seen.”
The pirate leaned back into his seat, resting his heavy leather boots across the desk as the ship moaned to port. “A man who plays with words, I see. They will do you not good here, serpent. Your words are no weapon, only the steel in your hand and the gold in your pocket can protect you, nothing else.”
“Then I shall be the first to die,” said Eller. “With a sword in my hand I am weaker than I am with a quill.”
Shaalad did not inquire further. “And how is one with the seas, be it that they are rather rough this time of the year. Shaalad will not have men puking on his galley. He will not.”
“I have sailed before,” said Eller. “I know the tides of the sea, the current, the way they dance. You forget I am a serpent, however much I dread it. We were born with the sea in our blood, they say.”
“Few know the true sea as it was created to be,” said Shaalad in his accent. “Fewer know how to survive it. I am one of those few.”
“Then we have chosen the right captain,” assured Eller.
“None better,” the pirate praised himself. “The Grey Wind is the fastest and greatest galley to ever sail these seas, and there is a reason why it has never left my hands.”
“You say it is fast…how fast,” asked Eller.
“Fast enough that Shallad Shoh can sail around Qethos and down past the Forgotten Isles and back up to O'eas in under a year.”
Eller wrestled for comfort. “Impressive, but you say we sail through Gallows End, that is different than the open sea, is it not?”
“If you know where to sail,” said Shallad. “The shattered isles of the bay, of most Nye, are easily evaded.”
“You say it as if you own it.”
“That is because Shaalad Shoh does,” said the pirate confidently. “There is no other captain who knows those waters better than I and no better navigator than the one you see before your ghostly face.”
“What way would you have us go, why not go around the Gallows and swing back again the Lieth?” asked Eller.
“You speak like an Osposi,” Shaalad said. “Like you’ve never sailed before.” The pirate chuckled as he rummaged through his sheaves of parchment until his dark, pink fingers found a long scroll at the bottom and unrolled it and laid it flat across his desk. The burned and charred corners were held by fluttering candles and glasses of ink, sliding across the table with the tides. It was a map.
Shaalad touched the painted blue just beneath the island of O'eas. “We are here…” He slid his finger down to the many islands of Lieth. “…We need to get there.” He slid his finger back north. “This stands in our way.” His fingers were parted, pointing to Gallows End and the mouth of the Long Sea. “Though you are in luck, for Shaalad Shoh knows the secrets of the sea, the secrets that only a pirate would know.”
“I am not fond of secrets,” said Eller.
“Secrets are nothing, really,” said Shaalad. “It is merely the truth that people are frightened of.”
“Then if it is truth that people fear, why is it that they seek?” asked Eller smoothly, Illyr raising his eyebrow beside him.
The pirate leaned forward from his chair as the dark room groaned. “Because people are weak.”
Not all people are weak. “And Gallows End, who rules those isles now?” asked Eller, moving on. “It has been long since I have heard news from the pirate isles.”
“Nobody rules the isles,” said Shaalad. “There is no king anymore, as there once was. Might be you would remember why?”
“The Serpent’s Reign,” said Eller, remembering the tales his father told his older brother. Those wretched tales kept me awake in the wee hours of the night, haunting me. I hated them.
“Indeed,” said Shaalad. “The times of the Gallowking failed when the Serpents invaded the Gallows, overthrowing the pirates and driving them off to take refuge in the deserts of Hhad or the southern Isles of Qethos and farther, the Forgotten Isles.”
“Only in the last hundred years have the Serpents retreated back to O'eas,” said Eller, remembering his nurse speaking to him with the stars twinkling overhead. “Though for many centuries, Gallows End was controlled by the serpents, my bloody ancestors. They overthrew the pirates and took the isles for their own, claiming everything and plundering all the gold. The Serpent’s Reign lasted long, but the pirates revenge would come sooner than they thought.”
“Indeed,” said Shaalad, “my father, the self-proclaimed Gallowking led the battles of the seas and eventually drove out the serpents until they hid again under their Seastone Keep. Shaalad Shoh will never forget those times.”
The room fell silent, the candles dancing and the gold shimmering. Eller sat with a cool, icy smirk, staring at Shaalad. He could not make the pirate feel that he was smarter. The pirate reached over to another coin and began biting it like a dog would a bone, the sickly taste soaking into his mouth.
“You owe me still,” said the pirate. “You owe me the gold. Shaalad Shoh does not give men ships and passage for free. There must be coin involved. There must be gold.”
“I remember your price,” said Illyr. “I remember well. Did you think I would forget?”
“I thought you would fail to pay,” said Shaalad. “And it looks as though I am right, for I see not gold in your pockets, but linen.”
“Why should I give you the money now?” asked Illyr, “before your side of the deal is done? If we gave you the gold now, you would take it and slit our throats and feed us to he sharks.”
“Shaalad will uphold his side of the deal, if you do as well. It is a long voyage to Lieth, and the price will rise each day.”
“As you stated while we traveled here,” said Illyr. “Once it is over and we have reached Lieth safely then the gold is yours.”
“The gold will be Shaalad’s soon then, but first, Shaalad must warn you.” The pirate grabbed a dull glass of rum and poured it down his throat. He set it down with a thud and a sparkle of ruby. “The seas around Lieth and the Long Sea, and even Gallows End are more dangerous than ever at this moment. The war has stirred bad salt in the waters and turned them murky. Before even Lieth’s switch it was bad, but now it will be worse. Rumors have traveled across the great salt sea to reach my cunning ears that Aegos has entered the war, a city of pirates.”
“Pirates fighting in the war?” said Eller. “What madness is this? Never have the pirates fought a war outside their own wars in the Gallows.”
“I presume they were given a pretty price, for the pirates of Aegos have a great lust for gold, more so than even mine, and will do anything for it.” Shaalad said.
“And will more pirates join?” asked Eller. “Which side have Aegos gone to?”
“Which side do you think?” asked Shaalad. “The Three, the ones who are said to sit on pure gold and drink molten silver.”
“Why would Qethos want pirates on their side?” asked Illyr. “They’re treacherous beyond even the Mountains of Rodh.”
“There is a plot we do not yet know,” said Shaalad, “The King of Gold will have a plan, and the prates are just part of the puzzle.”
“A large puzzle, yes,” said Eller. “A game even; a game of gold. One where the players can never win and never loose.”
“Your riddles are beyond the knowledge of my mottled brain,” said the pirate. “Though there is still another rumor that has reached my ears. One such as yourself would most desire to hear, if truth be good.”
“Speak it, for whispers are rather fond of my ears, if truth be good,” Eller said.
“The Isles of Eliann have—“
“Captain Shaalad,” a pirate draped in loose brown cloth with a leather belt, and a braided beard said as he raced down the stairs. “You would do well to come and see this.”
Visir stood with his hands bound behind his back with a grinding rope, the sun beating on his face. He was on the Grey Wind, along with Arstain, his hands bound in the same. Pirates surrounded them, staring strangely or sailing the galley, adjusting the sails and the manning the wheel. They were all garbed in loose, ratty robes, and a tight cloth around their head with glinting medallions running through their braided and dreaded hair like jewels. The ship had taken up anchor and the sails were bulging with the steady gusts of wind and the great blue ocean surrounded them.
Drifting away into a hazy distance, the City of Serpents looked a grey splotch beneath the island. O'eas stretched out into grey mist and its heart rose up in great brown folds, shaded with heavy shadow with rivers of fine white snow trickling down the folds to meet the wide feet, dark with green sock. The thin wispy clouds veiled the peaks as the ship roared across the breaking white teeth, chomping at the wood.
The winds were strong and salty, filling the black, triangular sails with power. From below the quarterdeck the captain met them, his skin black as night with a braided beard and gold glimmering in the blazing sunlight. His heeled leather boots thudded across the planks of wood and stepped before the pair of them, a glass of rum in his hand. Visir could smell it curl off his flesh and billow out of his mouth as he spoke. He smells of a dead animal.
“What have we here?” the pirate said. “What be your names, if you are so generous to give them.”
Why does everybody want names, Visir thought. “What need of names might you have, pirate?” said Visir. “What if I told you I don’t have one?”
The pirate smirked and took a long draught of deep red rum, his lips gleaming with the sheen, “Why are you on my ship, Nameless? I do not recall the permission granted.”
“We were escaping the O'eaneese,” said Visir truthfully. “We were imprisoned deep under the Seastone Keep as prisoners of Dreados when O'eas invaded and sacked the city.”
“You were in Dreados during the sacking,” the pirate took a long draught, and staggered. “You don’t look a Dreadeen.”
“We are no men from Dreados, but from the North,” said Visir. My pride, Visir cursed.
“Northmen,” said the pirate. “And what would such men from the North be in Hhad?”
Visir was quiet for a while, “We are Darkdwellers, and we wanted to be free.” The world is built on lies, why can’t add to the foundations?
“Well you won’t find it here,” said the pirate. “For now, you on my ship and anything but free.”
The crew laughed with the captain, the crisp winds ripe with stinging salt. Visir brought his hand to the pommel of his sword, and gloved his hand around the iron, his binding prohibiting his movement. Arstain gave him a quick glance. I have to try. Visir drew Frostbite in a screech of steel as the silver flat glimmered as if wrought of diamonds in the streaming sunlight. The glare sliced Shaalad in the face, and as Visir thrust a blow at the pirate, he stepped aside smoothly. Drawling his own blade, he jabbed its teeth down at Frostbite, and twirled, knocking it away easily. Visir watched as it clattered to the wood floor with a dull thud, aghast.
“Never cross blades with a pirate, Nameless, or it may just be the last thing you ever do.” Shaalad sheathed his curved blade into its worn leather sheathe, the pommel wrought in the likeness of an asstraci, gleaming in the light. “Take his sword down to the tiller, Salteye, and set it with the others.” Another pirate, smaller in size, with a long head and scruffy hair and a grizzly beard kneeled to take the steel. He had no right eye, but left it bare for all to see. Visir cringed as he saw the empty socket. “Do well to search the other as well, ought it,” Shaalad continued. The pirate followed orders, unbuckling Arstain’s sword from his waist and carried them off down the way Shaalad had come.
From the depths, two more men came, but pirates they were not. One looked familiar, vaguely. The sun was playing tricks on Visir, playing him for a fool, but a fool he was not. He recognized him, and so too did the other, garbed in his velvet and his tumbling blue cloak. His pale skin seemed whiter in the sunlight and the shadows across his face seemed dark as night, and so too did his hair, greasy and running over his face.
“Say they were prisoners of yours, these ones,” said Shaalad. “Might be good to have a look at them.”
“My father’s captives, might you be reminded,” the man said, striding closer to Visir and Arstain. His face narrowed and cringed as if he swallowed a lime. “Look eerily familiar they do.”
“You’re the Serpent’s son,” Visir breathed, his eyes like glass. “You’re Eller.”
“Aye, and you’re the Dreadeen my father took down to the Serpent’s Stomach,” Eller said. “Vile place that is. Murky and dark and lonely and foul.”
“These lot aren’t Dreadeen,” said Shaalad, “They’re Darkdwellers from the North.”
“Runir, aye,” said Eller. “A foul and ghastly place these days, I have heard from the traders of Eaxos. Though down here, well, does it look dark?”
“I saw you,” said Visir, “You passed by our cell under the Seastone Keep. You didn’t help us, you left us to die.”
“And I would do so again,” said Eller. “There are two places in this world, a realm of the living and a realm of the dead. I don’t fancy the land of the dead, wherever it is, and I plan not to be there for a while longer.” Eller took a long hard draught of summerwine from a silvery goblet in his right hand, his lips glistening like rubies in the sunlight as the liquid kissed his lips. “Though… how did you escape? Be it you were locked in a cell, the Serpent’s Stomach to be exact.”
Arstain kept looking down, the poison still eating at his body. “After you left, O'eaneese guards came chasing after you, and still behind them was another lot, bannerless they were. They were clothed in all black with wicked blades. They got into a quarrel before us and the bannerless folk freed us right out. One of their greatswords cut right through the iron and we escaped through the tiny crack. There was talk amongst the fighting. Talk of strange things.”
“The world is filled with strange things,” said Eller. “Each day they grow stranger and stranger until they fade away like the rest of us with the turning of the sun.”
“They spoke of King Elliae,” Visir said. “They said…they said he was killed. They said he was assassinated, as were the rest of his family, but they couldn’t find…you.”
“And they never will,” said Eller.
“O'eas was in utter chaos when we left, burning in a great flame licking with smoke black as pitch,” Visir said. “We only escaped after following the bannerless out of the keep and raiding a galley of O'eaneese and stealing one of their rescue boats.”
“Then you were found floating beside the Grey Wind,” assumed Eller.
“I have heard enough of this,” said Shaalad, draining his glass of rum. “Bind their mouths so they cannot utter another word and take them into the lower holds where they can meet again with their somber darkness.”
Illyr slithered abreast of Eller as Visir and Arstain were thrust away under the decks with a mumbled shout of mercy. His words whispered into Eller’s ear like a hiss as they were kissed. “The plan succeeded. Your father’s dead; O'eas burns, your family with it; and you are thought to be dead. My side of the deal is done, where is my gold?”
“You shall have it when we reach the gilded shores of Lieth,” said Eller. “This plan is far from over. It has only been set in motion.”