With the dawn came the storm.
I had risen, in keeping with my custom, as the eastern sky lightened, to read from the Holy Word—a copy of which had survived our ruin—and meditate. From the mouth of the cave in the northern cliffs above the beach, I stood and watched our fortune unravel.
Between one heartbeat and the next, a calamitous wind rose to drive towering black clouds across the skies, which swallowed the sanguine sun as it peeked over the restless seas. Full of salt and spray, the sou’easter gathered strength with frightening speed. The quiet daybreak became howling dusk. Using the rocky wall for support, I limped to the brink in the vain hope of calling down some warning, but the squall shrieked; my voice did not even carry to my own ears. Surging swells pummeled the strand into submission while lightnings ripped and thunder crackled. Sheets of rain, driven nearly horizontal by the wind, added to the cacophony.
Below, I could dimly see, through my whipping hair, the crew running from the huts along the base of the cliffs; so suddenly did the tempest beset us that some had not the chance to dress.
Callan raced from one outrigger to the next, his great blond beard twisting in the wind as if it had a life of its own, and directed the crew as they labored to pull the boats out of the reach of the pounding waves. Those four slender hulls represented a season of toil and our only hope. Hampered by gale, blinded by rain and spray and stinging sand, they contended valiantly, and it seemed as though they would, at the last, bring the craft safely away.
Then a fiercer gust caught one of the boats and spun it end over end like a toy, crushing two men and dashing itself to pieces. I could not recognize the fallen men, but pain incised me. Two shipmates, partners. Gone. Those struggling with a second vessel scattered as the mast splintered. I watched in horror and impotent rage as a shard impaled a man—Aleric!—through the back, his scream swallowed by the remorseless tumult. Genevas went down, entangled in the flailing rigging. Callan and some others rushed to free her. While they worked, an immense breaker rose up, implacable, irresistible, and engulfed them all. I gaped at the spot where they last breathed, straining to catch some glimpse; I beheld but sand, smooth and grey.
Callan, my friend!
My tears mingled with the rain on my face as I pounded my fist bloody on the rocks in frustration and grief.
All-Lord, why him of us all?
Bereft of their captain, the rest of the crew lost heart. They abandoned the fight, surrendered to the final fate, and scurried to the shelter of the rocks below me. There they huddled, as the cyclone—ominously analogous to the storm that had deposited us here—obliterated our enterprise. I, too, sat at the lip of my high coign, sodden, and succumbed to weariness more than physical. My splinted leg throbbed in rhythm with the booming sea.
I am responsible. To whom this report might ever pass, I say: my folly and mine alone has brought these loyal stalwarts to this low estate. These men and women, from whom I have learned the meaning of fraternity independent of caste or station, deserve better than I have dispensed. Their loyalty has brought them suffering beyond endurance, to a foreign coast, thousands of leagues from their homes and families, lost, and now leaderless.
Completely absorbed in my own desolation, the storm abated without my awareness. Only when the midday sun pierced the retreating clouds with a ray that touched my brow did I realize the sea and breeze had calmed. I gawped at a beach wiped clean of inhabitation—neither the outriggers, nor the huts, nor the bodies of the dead remained—devoured by the incurious brine. Had our presence been predicated upon the evidence at hand, one could believe we had never wrecked on this lonely, tropical shore. Or that we had never existed at all, except as a dream of the deep.
I could forgive myself for indulging in this senseless geas, for wasting my life in a fatuous pursuit. But to have caused the death of so many good souls—there is no absolution.
I roused from my dreary musings as the crew came through the tunnel at the recess of my cave, murmuring and scuffling forward. The rest hung back in the shadows uneasily, while one of their number came forward. In the diffuse light I could see Olsten, ship’s surgeon, coming near, head bowed, hands behind his back.
“Beg pardon, Sar,” he mumbled.
“Yes, Olsten?”
“We was thinkin’ you might want to see this.”
He handed me a scrap of vellum, an endpage from the Holy Word, stained and tattered. I could make out thirteen names crudely written; the names of those who had died attempting to save our boats.
Some I knew only a little: Socardym, lorcraen pilot and diver without peer; the cabin boy, Little Red; Big Red, the bosun; Dik and One-Thumb; Ven and Genevas, female mariners equal to any man; the brothers Ewald and Flynt. The bluster of Baerl gone forever. A considerable burden of guilt mixed with my sense of loss. Why had I not endeavored to know them better? In the months of our voyage, the aloofness schooled in me since youth had melted in the crucible of our shared adventures. Notwithstanding, I saw my efforts as less than wholehearted, for my memories of these men and women were perfunctory at best. My listing herein represents an entirely deficient memorial for such courageous companions as these.
By comparison, my affliction as I perused the remainder of that odious list nearly vanquished me. Callan, good man and peerless captain, my pragmatic alter-ego. Samuel, first mate and kindred soul, his passion for the answers we sought nearly matched my own. And Aleric. The carpenter who taught me how to laugh and live, to look for joy in everything. What amusement, henceforth, would the world hold for me?
Olsten cleared his throat. “Me and the crew, I mean, we’re of one mind. All voted on and proper done, Sar.” Distracted, I took the bit of barrel slat he offered without glancing at it.
“All proper done and by the code, Sar Lannen,” he repeated. There came a rumbling of agreement from the rear of the cave.
I peered at the plank more closely and dread filled me. Two words were scratched on the wood: “Aye” and “Nay.” The marks beneath “Aye” numbered nine. There were no “Nays.” I stared at Olsten, who quickly became uncomfortable under my searching gaze, but stood his ground. I peered into the gloom to pick out the faces in the forefront of the surviving sailors. Beneath their nervousness, determination glinted; their evident embarrassment, however, disconcerted me until I perceived the context.
The crew had impeached me.
“I see,” I said, more calmly than I felt. “And the terms?”
“What wi’ the Cap’n—All-Lord rest ’im—bein’ gone, well, we got the notion t’head inland.” He paused and glanced back. Amid mutters of support, he pressed on with confidence.
“It’s a fact that Master Callan were the truest sailor amongst us all. I don’t mean no offense Sar, but it’s the truth. And e’en if we was to set to and rebuild—and how that would be done with the tools all gone to the bottom of the salty is a knot itself—why, where would we go? Without charts and the tools—what’re we goin’ to do?”
“What is my part in this accord?”
His hesitancy renewed. “We’d leave the last o’ the salt fish, sure enow, and gather up some of that yellow fruit from the jungle and set it close t’hand. We’d haul up a barrel from below, and fill it from the spring. And Troma could lend yer his cutlass along with some blankets and a bit o’ cable—”
I held up my hand and he stopped, relieved.
Plainly, they proposed the most prudent policy, though there was little doubt that the rest of the company would meet fatal disaster somewhere in the dark, hazy interior. The leafy labyrinth, the sharp volcanic mountains and the strange twilight cries all bode naught but ill for unfamiliar travelers. On the other hand, to stay would mean stagnation, a renunciation of life by slow, tormented degrees. Whereas they unquestionably understood the risk, these hardies were nothing if not men of action.
Equally evident, I would hinder them. Weeks would pass before my shattered leg had knit enough to carry my weight, if it ever would again. I conciliated myself with the thought that it was a terrible decision to have to make. I began our voyage a self-righteous fool. I ended it a comrade, having at last learned the meaning of friendship. I presumed little in ascertaining they abhorred leaving me behind. Still, only fools would carry a crippled man into the perilous unknown. In their position, I would have done the same.
With the aforesaid sound reasoning to fortify me, why did I feel so hollow? There welled up in me a stark dismay, which threatened to break my composure. I yearned to shout: “You cannot leave me! We are mates! Let us take this final great adventure together! Let me lead you to the glory I once pledged would be ours!”
I said nothing.
I am, after all, Aeden Lannen, Crown Prince of Piaras, heir to the Seat of the Western Kingdom, the final bastion of the long lost Arrygethel Empire.
Therefore, I sat at the lip of my lofty prison, on a stool Aleric had fashioned from stanchions, and watched my first and last command file slowly into the green.
When I began this account later, I reasoned thus—regardless of the failure of the expedition to uncover the ancient settlement of our forebears, the Aldrech, others might follow my course to this remote littoral. You who read this are a testament to that hope.
I have a stylus from before the Sundering with its inexhaustible supply of ink and several incorruptible manuscripts from the same source. Intended at first to record the knowledge I would glean from the archives of our ancestors, these pages would now document my narrative. A nobler purpose, perhaps.
As to beginnings, I can recall precisely the moment that marked the genesis of this chronicle…
