Novels2Search

Ch. 006

The ship, or N’kieran’s ship as A’Ferun had begun thinking of it, was designed along the lines of a sea-landing star glider, a popular design before the Dragon Wars. Now, only the reckless and those who had no need of cargo-carrying vessels dared the skies. Star gliders, though now sea-bound, were still considered a good ship design, but without the expensive lift wood used for air ships, they were slower than galleons. With lift wood — and an experienced Arcane Arts Officer manipulating the ballasts and filling the sails — they had a better-than-even chance to out run the frigates that the pirates of the Crystal Ocean favored.

Star gliders often pulled duty as passenger ships, as well as cargo haulers. They were designed to have permanent passenger quarters. The best such was called the owner’s suite, which A’Ferun had co-opted for his own use. According to the new registry papers, he was the owner. Naming the ship had caused him some grief, and in the end he had settled on the name Light of Volmar as a nod to N’kieran’s maternal family.

The captain, first mate, and AAO had quarters among the noble cabins along with the owner’s suite, while the rest of the ship’s officers were quartered with the merchant cabins. Except for Kinser, A’Ferun’s boundsman. Kinser was the acting Steward for the Light of Volmar, but he was still A’Ferun’s boundsman and refused to sleep where he could would be prevented from seeing to his lord’s comfort.

Kinser was acting under the guidance of Captain desh Shalante’s Steward, as were most of the acting officers of the Light of Volmar. They were nearly all the cadets from Captain desh Shalante’s Wave Breaker, and the two ships were splitting the crew of the Wave Breaker to ensure senior hands were around to guide the new crew they had taken on. The two ships were sailing back to Lusfal together. The Wave Breaker’s First Mate was the Light of Volmar’s Acting Captain Goryven.

Outfitting the Light and getting her registered had taken about a week’s time, with the exception of finding enough of a mix of cannon and war mages to defend the ships against sea monsters and pirates. While recruiting the war mages, A’Ferun had also managed to attract four well respected scholar mages of Port Kaleen to help him uncover the oddities of N’kieran’s ship. Every delay bothered A’Ferun, but bringing on the scholar mages had some potential to be worth it.

As cheap as outfitting a ship of the Light of Volmar’s size was compared to, say, commissioning a new hull entirely, it still had cost A’Ferun most of the funds he had brought along in the event he had to set up in Belloria to free N’kieran from those traitorous dogs. On Captain desh Shalante’s recommendation, they secured cargo contracts and accepted passengers onto the Wave Breaker to help defray the costs.

The first cargo contract that the Wave Breaker’s captain secured was the transport of slaves. A’Ferun had realized he needed to be a bit more involved at that point. While he personally saw no great harm in the slave trade, N’kieran had a strong aversion to even boundsmen, let alone out and out slavery. She had claimed that it was an aversion based on the lack of loyalty one could expect from someone forced into service, but A’Ferun know it was his light’s gentle heart that truly objected. He had no desire for N’kieran to look down upon his own capacity for compassion so he had already pushed his father the Hiralt to convert their holdings so that they could function smoothly with only oathed servants.

The transport contract had already been signed by the time A’Ferun found out about it, so he had few realistic options but to carry the slaves along. What he could and did do was dictate that the slaves be treated with at least the dignity granted to laboring passengers. Captain desh Shalante had told A’Ferun he was being foolish, but stopped complaining at A’Ferun’s simple, “Lady desh Idahl would require no less.”

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On the morning of the third day to sea, A’Ferun woke from yet another restless night with the brightening of the light spilling into his cabin. He moved quietly so as not to disturb his boundsman, splashing water on his face to clear away the crust of sleep, and then holding a cool, damp cloth over his eyes for a moment to help ease the irritation of insomnia. He changed from his sleeping robes into a training outfit and retrieved his cane sword in preparation for moving through his sword forms.

By habit now, he glanced at the soul tracker hanging from a neck chain on the night-clothes hook of his sleeping platform. He expected it to point down and aft, to the hidden room by the ship’s rudder. Instead, it pointed horizontally seaward and fore.

A’Ferun froze, shocked. He hand squeezed down on the hilt of his cane sword while the significance of the change rocketed through him. N’kieran had moved. With an effort, he relaxed enough to move again, snapping up the soul tracker.

“Kinser!” he shouted, startling the boundsman awake.

“Hu-wha-ah! Lord?” Kinser babbled out as he leapt to untangle himself from his hammock.

“Inform the scholars that Lady desh Idahl has moved! I’m tracking her!”

“Moved, Lord?” Kinser asked to A’Ferun’s back. The boundsman scrambled to his feet and rubbed the stubble on his head into order as he trotted to follow his liege.

“Moved! Once I locate her new position, I’ll meet them in the ward room!”

“Yes, Lord!” Kinser scurried off. His gait smoothed to a hurried rush by the time he reached the first turn of the hall.

Perhaps promising to meet in the ward room had been a bit of prescience on A’Ferun’s part because the soul tracker led him there, to a door that A’Ferun would have sworn hadn’t been there just the night before, and which he had difficulty remembering existed when he wasn’t looking right at it. Even when A’Ferun unlatched the door and opened it to behold a silver mirror filled with rainbows, light spilling off it to illuminate the ward room bright as noon, the door itself was almost impossible to remember.

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The first of the scholar mages, a cat-eyed, fox-eared elf, showed up before A’Ferun had worked up the resolve to touch the rainbow mirror.

“Step back!” the elf ordered, alarm ringing in his voice.

A’Ferun obeyed the command in that voice, letting go of the door and leaping back even as he whipped his cane sword around to an on guard position. The door banged shut, the latch falling into place.

“Where—? It’s an Oblivion Rune!” the elf exclaimed, suddenly shoving his way in front of A’Ferun. “High leveled one at that! Maybe even at the divine tier!”

“Lady desh Idahl is beyond that door!” A’Ferun snapped.

“Is she moving now?” the elf asked, some of his awe at the door sharpening as he took in A’Ferun.

A’Ferun glanced back at the soul tracker. It still pointed steady at the hidden door. Grudgingly, he admitted, “Not right now.”

“Then give us enough time to figure out the dangers before you go running into them, lad! Also, wait for Corbent. With a divine tier rune guarding the way, there are likely to be traps or other kinds of defenses between us and the lady.”

While the elf reminded A’Ferun of why he had hired the scholar mages to begin with, two more showed up. Both were human and both were still belting their robes, though they had their bandoleers on.

“Greetings, sa’desh Hiralt, Ep’hram,” the blue robed mage said, his companion in green robes nodding quietly beside him.

Kinser came up behind them. “The life mage, Corbent, he’ll be just a moment, Lord. Takes a bit longer to get out of the sea folk’s tub beds.”

A’Ferun nodded at the message, and Kinser faded into the background.

Ep’hram gestured the two mages forward. “Can you see this?” he asked.

“The wall?” the green robed woman asked.

“The door,” the elf said, tracing his finger in the air around the door’s frame.

The blue robed man clicked his tongue, then whistled. “That is quite the potent Oblivion Rune!” he said, pulling odds and ends from the pouches of his bandoleer.

The matu mage Corbent arrived wearing healer’s yellows and a pair of bandoleers crossing his chest, with more pouches strapped to his hips and thighs. He hung back from the trio at the door to check the soul tracker in A’Ferun’s hands.

After a moment’s study, he said, “Perhaps sa’desh should gather arms and rations, because it appears your tracker points to a portal. If sa’desh has any Pendants of Greater Adaptation, these too may prove of use for who knows what lies beyond a new portal’s shine?”

The elf might as well have teleported beside them at Corbent’s words, he moved that fast. He traced a few bits of mage script in the air, his mana glowing with a silvery light and his pupils dominating his eyes. “Oh, that is a portal pointing!” he crowed. Then to A’Ferun, Ep’hram added, “We think it’s safe to take the door off the hinges, but it will likely be lost due to that rune — until rough seas make it bounce into someone or turn it into a tripping hazard.”

“Do it,” A’Ferun ordered, then turned to his boundsman.

“Already on it, Lord,” Kinser said, hurrying out of the room.

Not even twenty minutes later, Kinser had assembled in the ward room: two more (human) sailors kitted for combat, A’Ferun’s combat kit, supply packs for the mages and combatants, and was fitted with his own delving kit. He had also informed the Acting First Mate, who would in turn inform Acting Captain Goryven of the situation.

The mages, however, had run into troubles. Like the rest of the ship’s “bones”, the leather hinges of the hidden door proved indestructible. They had to settle for tying the door open and hoping for the best.

Kinser insisted on scouting the portal himself. He started by advancing a trap prod through the silvery mirror surface, finding it only minimally resistant. They could find no discernible changes to the trap prod when Kinser pulled it back, so he stuck a hand through, brought it back unharmed, and proceeded to work his way up to poking his head through.

Pulling back from that last test, he reported, “The only light I saw was from the portal. There’s what looks like more ship’s hallways on the other side, and a split ahead. It feels like when we’ve had to delve a dungeon, Lord, only without any blood lust tainting the air.”

The mages wanted to ask more questions, but A’Ferun had held back long enough. “Let’s go.”

Kinser nodded and led the way through.

A’Ferun ordered, “Any mages coming with us, follow me. Sailors, you guard their backs.” Then he went through the portal.

Corbent shrugged at Ep’hram and followed A’Ferun, with the elf mage practically stepping on the matu’s heels.

“You’re safer closer to the center, Della,” the mage in blue robes said, gesturing the green robed mage ahead of him. She grimaced, but didn’t object, stepping through next with the last of the scholar mages quick to follow.

The two sailors argued with their expressions long enough that one of them lost patience and shoved the other into the portal before himself. “Pox baited coward,” the last sailor grumbled before stepping through the mirrored surface, leaving not even a ripple to mark his passage.

On the other side, things were as Kinser had reports. The floor, ceiling, and walls looked to be made of planked wood of a similar color to the lift wood of the Light of Volmar. Stepping on the wood, though, did not make the same sound as stepping on the ship’s decking. There was a resonance to the sounds of stepping on the ship’s deck that was muted and muffled in this hallway. The temperature was cool for the tropics, but pleasant to human sensibilities. Though their inner oracles did not blare out a warning, the intangible tingle of having entered a dungeon itched along the same senses.

the hall was wide enough to walk squarely forward, but a grown man couldn’t hold out his elbows without tapping the walls. They went far enough for everyone to stand without crowding before coming to the first of the four doors. That door was to their right, the second and the third on their left, and the fourth door directly before them. Beside the fourth door hung a simple key.

“All the doors are locked, Lord. Which do you want opened first?” Kinser asked.

A’Ferun checked the tracker. It moved in strange arcs. “Corbent, do you know what this means?” he asked.

The matu mage’s wide eyes grew wider. “We are within the diffusion of the soul that sa’desh tracks. This is a sign of great strength and potential. The readings will become more erratic, I believe, the closer we are to the lady you seek. From the arcs, I think she is forward and left, but who knows where the doors will take us?”

“Then let’s see if the key opens the door in front of us, Kinser,” A’Ferun decided.

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I do better when I have maps, and since I'm making it for me, here's the current rough worked out in Wonderdraft.

[https://i.imgur.com/qIE8IxT.jpg]