Journey to the Water Chapter XII: The Lady of Osona

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The first night I spent on board the ship, I dreamed.

I floated in the abyss before the gate of bone, with blackness pressing around me and the shape of the goddess Nashurru moving in the depths below. The water was cold, and my body ached with it, my limbs stiff and shivering. I kicked my legs and reached my arms toward the gate, but the chill pierced my bones and filled my belly with ice no matter how much I moved. In the vision, I had felt no need to breathe, but now my chest contracted painfully, sucking against nothing. The bright white of the bones blurred as my vision faded. At last, I could withstand no more, and I inhaled frigid water. It burned my chest and stole away the last of my sight.

I would die here, I thought, and my bones would join the gate as Nashurru looked on, indifferent. I would never see Khalim again.

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A strong hand gripped mine, and I was hauled out of the darkness. I coughed and spat seawater onto the deck of a ship—not the pirate’s ship, with its three masts and crimson sails, but a longship. It was my longship, the one I had wrecked on the far northern sea so long ago. Its oars sat still, its benches empty, and its figurehead, the carved imitation of the sea serpent I had sailed out to hunt, gazed out over a flat gray horizon.

In the bow sat Fearghus.

He was exactly as I remembered him: copper hair cut short and caressed by the wind, freckles across his nose, a cloak of deep blue around his strong shoulders. To me, he looked young. It was I who had grown older.

“The eye is open,” he said.

The sky stretched out, dark as iron, over the calm sea. We were so far from land that not even a bird moved in that gray expanse.

“I don’t understand,” I told him.

Fearghus only shook his head. “You should wake up, Eske,” he said, “before you no longer remember how.”

And wake I did, in my rope hammock hung belowdecks, beside where Bran slept between two bales of hay and in the company of a pair of goats. He lifted his head and sniffed at my offered hand. Satisfied that I was not in danger, he returned to his uneasy sleep. The motion of the ship unnerved him, and neither the view of the surrounding water nor his confinement below gave him any comfort.

He was no longer ill, but I wondered if I should have left him with Kala on the priestesses’ island, to spare him the discomfort and the bewildered fear of a long voyage. I could not explain to him that dry land would come soon enough, and that he had no reason to be afraid.

For better or worse, I would not give Bran up. If I lost him, I would once again be alone. The sailors slept around me, their hammocks clustered like tropical fruit hanging from one of the tall trees that grew on the islands, swaying with the motion of the sea. Even surrounded by other people, I felt as though a wall separated me from them, and only Bran and I were within it.

I got up and climbed the ladder to the upper deck. Even at night, the wind was warm, and the clear sky glittered with its strange southern stars. The bright point of Noa’s silver boat neared the western horizon; it was nearly dawn.

The eye is open.

I did not know why I had dreamed of Fearghus, and I did not know what his cryptic words had meant, though the weight of them was heavy on my mind. The gods sent dreams to their servants, yes, but I was a warrior, not a shaman or a prophet—and now, I served no gods. Khalim had experienced such dreams, and each night that he woke up shaking and sobbing, I wished that I could have taken that burden from him.

Fearghus had been lost at sea, and I had only myself and my own hubris to blame. It was a small comfort that he would hunt and fight with his ancestors and their gods, and be given an honored place for his death in the struggle against the lind-worm. I spent the months alone, after, wishing I’d had the good fortune to join him. Perhaps I still did.

Here I was, on a strange ship in stranger waters, meaning to defy the gods and the order of the cosmos for Khalim, and not for Fearghus. Maybe I was a stronger man now than I had been then. Maybe I was weaker.

The night sky gave me no answers. I returned to my hammock, and the sea lulled me back to sleep, this time without dreams.

One of the walls between myself and the crew of the ship, that of language, was quick to crumble. In a stroke of good luck, I spent the next morning’s shift on the oars seated beside the broad, red-haired fellow I had drunk with on the island before our departure.

“You once rowed a longship, didn’t you?” he asked, and to my great surprise, I understood him.

His name was Halvor, and he was once a raider of the North—though not as far north as I had come from. At the edge of the tundra, on the harsh western coast, where storms brought rain and snow in equal measure, stood the halls of his people. He spoke my mother tongue with a strange but parsible accent.

What misadventure brought him here, to this ship on the vast southern seas, he did not say, but he gladly told me of the ship itself. She was called the Lady of Osona, though she had never seen the distant city for which she was named, and her captain went by the name of Hamilcar the Great. He had won the ship in a game of chance on one of the islands in the southern sea, and had been plying his trade as a pirate ever since. His crew numbered forty strong, twelve of them women, and they ate well and shared both their ill-gotten gains and legitimate earnings in equal portions. Hamilcar’s native language spread to the crew and mixed with the tongues of the isles and the nations of the South. It was this combined language that I learned from Halvor.

We rowed from island to island, trading with the fishers and craftsmen. The ship carried silks and spices from the vast Xao empire, whose border I had crossed when I left the Dragon Temple. Their soldiers did not pursue us west. If they had, they would not have followed for long, as the Lady’s oars and her high triangular sails made her the fastest ship of her size in those waters.

When my mastery of the ship’s tongue proved sufficient, I met with the captain. Despite his small stature, his presence commanded the ship. His gestures were expansive, often involving sweeps of his feathered hat, and his wardrobe consisted of fine silks in garish colors. He slept in a tiny cabin at the boat’s stern, and what space was not taken up by his cot and a small desk was packed with maps and charts of the stars.

“It’s good to meet you properly at last, Eske,” he said. “Tell me, where do you intend to go?”

I told him all I could. “I seek a vast green country, south of the citadel of Phyreios. I’m looking for a particular village—Nagara, it is called, though I doubt any here would know of it. It would take a man six months to walk from there to Phyreios, crossing the desert.”

Hamilcar pulled a rolled map from a shelf behind his desk and spread it out on the tabletop. Lines of red ink marked islands and coastlines, and rows of cramped black lettering filled the spaces between them.

He gestured to the empty space at the top of the map with an open hand. “It could be anywhere here. I’m afraid I can’t help you find it. I’ve heard of Phyreios, though I’ve never had the opportunity to see it myself.” He placed a finger on a peninsula reaching down into the sea. “If you wish to stay with us, we’ll reach the nearest port by the end of the year.”

“If you’ll have me that long, then I will stay,” I said.

He grinned, showing bright white teeth. “The grandmothers of Ewandar saw fit to help you. I could do no less.”

“You know of their temple? And the Dreaming Eye?”

“I do.” He placed his hands flat on the map, and his eyes grew distant. “I took part in their ritual, once, years ago.”

“What did you see?” I asked.

Hamilcar held up an admonishing finger. “I cannot tell you, and I will not ask it of you, either. The visions of the Dreaming Eye are only for those who see them.” He rolled up the map and returned it to its place on the wall. “So, Eske, you will sail with us to the port of Hali, and until then, a share of our supplies and our treasure is yours.”

I thanked him, and I returned to my bench to row. I had to work enough to justify feeding both myself and Bran, and I was no stranger to the oar. The work exhausted me, and I was thankful for it, as I slept without dreaming. When I knew the stars well enough to navigate, I was given a reprieve from rowing. Hamilcar offered to let me read his star charts, but the points of ink and lines of text meant nothing to me. Besides, should the ship sink or a fire catch in his cabin, all that knowledge would be lost. It was better for me to learn the skies myself.

Our next port was to be the island of Salmacha, the largest in this vast archipelago, and home to a lady by the name of Kannura, whom Hamilcar was eager to see. Kannura, he said, was as tall as a tree, and her hair shone like fine silk. He had among his belongings a comb of jade, wrapped in a cloth to keep it safe from salt and sand, that he intended to give her.

He also intended to gain some treasure on the island. A rival captain, Abraxas of Lore, had hidden a vast store of coin and jewels somewhere in Salmacha’s jungle. Among the riches, the rumors went, was an enchanted weapon. One version said it was a spear, another a single-edged sword, and still another a curved bow—word traveled fast between islands, and each teller added their own embellishments.

Whatever the weapon was, I was eager to find it, more so than all the promised wealth. I had seen but two enchanted swords in my life of adventure, and both now resided at the Dragon Temple, in the care of the warrior Jin. I feared I would find myself directly opposed by a god or demon, and I would need a weapon that could do harm to a being greater than I.

Two months after I left the isle of the priestesses, a great wave lifted the ship in the middle of the night, waking the sleepers and rousing me from where I dozed on my watch. The storm we anticipated following it did not come, and the following morning was clear and bright as a sapphire jewel. The next day, Salmacha loomed upon the western horizon. Its city shone in the sun, crowning a tall hill at the center of the island. It was not as vast as Phyreios was beneath the Iron Mountain, but the sight of it still impressed me; Halvor said it was home to ten thousand people within its walls alone. Another ten thousand, more or less, dwelled in the surrounding villages. As we drew nearer, the shapes of thatched roofs emerged from the mist and the thick forest that separated the city from the beach.

“The people here have plenty to trade, and they welcome visitors,” Halvor explained. “We’ll drink in their company tonight.”

But when we arrived in Salmacha’s harbor and threw a plank down to their wooden dock, no one emerged from the houses to greet us. The nearest village stood empty and silent. Though the people of the island were said to be great sailors and successful fishermen, our ship was alone.

Back to Chapter XI: Ashinya Waters

Forward to Chapter XIII: Empty Salmacha

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Thanks for reading! I’m excited to start this next arc of Eske’s journey with you. Special thanks to Ian Pozdol, who lent me Captain Hamilcar for this story.

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