Interlude Ten: Far Away

Balam looked out across glassy, black water, delicately laced with white foam. There were clouds on the horizon. They were the heavy, iron coloured ones that always rumbled of rain.

Three days before, the sailors had cried. Look! Look! They had shouted. And Balam had looked. A gold pepperfish, grand and fat, bobbed lifelessly on the waves.

They had reeled it in with their long poles, dragged it on deck. The sailors had been in an uproar. Such a weight of pepperfish -gold, no less- would have sold for exorbitant prices in any port.

They had all dined until they were sated. They had rarely had such a luxurious meal. Even the bosun’s familiar, the big tabby Gom, had eaten until his stomach was round and full like a barrel.

It was a good omen.

Balam wrinkled her nose at the auspicious memory. Usually, they would have kept the fish, carefully stowing the meat on refrigerating enchantments until they could sell it at port. They had no such concerns now; they were a long way from any harbour. Perhaps the farthest anyone had ever been.

She had spent her entire life on ships, just like her father. She had spent years doing the same commercial runs from her home in Tusan to distant Safe Harbour, down the coast, taking jade and cinnamon, peanuts and silk, and returning with docile sheep, Rust Iron for enchanting, honey from Wayrest, sometimes even marble quarried at Horizon.

It was inadequate.

Her father had always wanted to sail for adventure, but he had made the same run from Tusan to Safe Harbour and back. Balam always thought that sounded like a fine thing: adventure. She was sad that her father never got to pursue it.

He had done the commercial runs, and been successful, but he could not stop. He had a wife and children to feed. Even so, he never resented them, though Balam could see how much he wanted to chase his heart out to the seas. Truly chase them, as the stories told.

Her mother had always thought it foolish. No one ever came back from the sea! The stories of a second continent, on the other side of the world, were a lie to lure young and stupid people. There were land masses out there, but no other continents. Everyone knew there was just the one! The only thing out there were lonely little islands where pirates lurked, to prey on the shipping lanes. And beyond those? Nothing.

Her mother had hated it then, when Balam spent so much time on her father’s ships. She had hated it more when she had grown of age, and started going with him on shipping runs, and learning the trade.

When she manifested Winds, her mother was furious. She forbade her from sailing again. Her father was indulgent, and he overruled her. She manifested Water, then, and her mother grew cold. Perhaps she thought it would stop her sailing, make her think twice. It did not. She loved the wind, and the waves, she loved sailing, and she loved spending time with her father.

When she manifested Weather, her father practically radiated love and joy at her for the entire months-long trip home. Balam knew that it would mean her mother would never talk to her again. She made her peace with it.

The next years had been the best of her life. She sailed, and the seas and the winds were one with her. Her father grew older, and her mother too.

One summer, barely a day’s journey from home, his heart had stopped in the night. Balam was distraught. Her father had been her guiding light, and now he was gone! It was unbearable!

But her mother was worse. They were sea elves, in Tusan, and their culture dictated that once a body was given its proper rites, they were laid to rest at sea. Her mother had her father’s body burned.

It was her right, as his widow, but it was shameful. A scandal. It denied her father the rest with the spirits that he had earned.

Balam had struck her down. This too was her right, as aggrieved daughter of the improperly buried. She knew it would not put his spirit to rest. As much as their mother was troublesome, she wanted the best for their family, in her own way.

Balam inherited her father’s shipping business. It meant nothing to her. She kept thinking of her father’s restless spirit, doomed never to find peace in The World.

So she sold all his ships. She sold all his cargo. She sold all their warehouses, and sold all their contracts.

Then she hired the best shipwright in Tusan. She made clear exactly what she wanted.

Every port, in every coastal city worth one, claimed they built the best ships. From the bearded, dwarven raiders in the north with their long, low ships, to the great, junk flotillas of the humid southern archipelagos, they all thought they knew best. Balam was sure that those on the west coast of The World were the same.

They were wrong.

The sea elves wore salt in their blood. They were born to the waves, and they returned to their spirits to them to sleep. So, when Balam contracted the greatest shipwright in Tusan, she contracted the greatest shipwright in The World.

And he built her the greatest ship.

She was staggered when she saw it. It had taken over a year to build, and only the spirits knew how many countless hours of labour under countless hands. It was large, larger than any ship she had sailed before, but not the largest she had ever seen.

Every line of it was perfect, from bow to stern. Every plank was perfectly cut, and perfectly laid. It had three masts towering above the deck. Sailcloth snug and furled, coloured in gold, trimmed in black: her father’s colours.

The hull cut a sleek, elegant line, standing proud in the dock as it hung gently in the harbour swell. The figurehead was a turtledragon, her father’s own motif. He had hoped to see one, one day. Balam hoped she could too.

She had wasted no time, then. She had spent the last year finding not the most talented crew, necessarily, but the right one. They were all experienced sailors, of course, her father would have tolerated no less. But they were each picked not for a thirst for profit, but for adventure.

A week later, fully loaded and provisioned, they set out. The Turtle’s Smile stepped out of the harbour, graceful on the waves, and made east. For the horizon, and beyond. For the fabled second continent. And for her father’s honour.

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Barely a week into the journey they ran into their first troubles. They had just passed beyond the shipping lanes when they spotted sails on the horizon.

Pirates.

Balam gave orders, stern and unhurried, and the Turtle’s Smile easily outpaced their pursuit. The wondrous ship moved like the wind itself, leaping to her every command. She wished her father could have seen it.

They were half a day away from the pirates, when a sudden cry went up among the sailors. Ship to starboard!

Another pirate ship had snuck up on them. It must have been cloaked by skills or enchantments.

Honourless dogs! Balam thought, and spat over the railing.

The ship was approaching fast. Its hull was heavily reinforced. A single man, dressed all in loose black clothes, stood at the port side of the ship. Balam could feel the fluctuations in the wind from where she stood.

Not good, she thought.

It was a common tactic for ship combat. Any sailor that manifested a surge skill was worth their weight in gold. If they could hit an opposing ship broadside, they could take it for their own, or loot it and burn it.

Balam was no fool, though. She had been sailing all her life. This was not her first encounter with piracy. She had prepared.

She gave the signal to the barrelman, and he swiftly strung an enormous recurve bow. He stood still for a long moment, apparently doing nothing. Balam knew he would be judging distance, adjusting for wind speed, the relative speed of each ship, performing minute calculations in his head. He had come highly recommended.

In one smooth motion, he nocked an arrow, drew, and fired. A crack like a mast breaking echoed across the water. The man in black folded in half, and rocketed backwards as if slapped by an angry spirit.

The pirates lost interest in them after that, slinking away back to whichever barren islet they had made home. The barrelman unstrung his bow, and gave Balam a brief bow.

They sailed for months more, and by and large, it was uneventful. Balam, and a few others, sped their way with Winds and Water. Sailors with Water, or Salt, replenished their barrels. Those with Fish, or the Sea, caught food for them. The barrelman, who had Birds, kept a wary eye trained on the horizon.

They saw astounding luminescence, larger than any Balam had ever seen. It seemed the entire ocean was alight. The next night, the sky took its turn, and shimmering curtains of green and blue and purple cascaded before a backdrop of velvety black.

It was not all fun and games, though.

Early one morning, a sailor was dragged overboard by a long, sucking tentacle. The first mate only just saw him disappear over the railing. They passed several sleepless nights after that. Leviathans were rare, but never to be trifled with.

Those ancient, hoary creatures of the sea were feared by every sailor, and every citizen of every coastal city. They came in a staggering array of permutations, but one and all, they were gargantuan. Balam privately counted herself lucky it had only taken the one crewman.

Another month passed, and they had seen no land. Not so much as a barren rock poking out of the waves. They had seen no seabirds, either: a bad omen. Where there were no birds, there was no land.

The crew, picked for adventurous spirits though they might have been, were beginning to doubt the auspiciousness of their journey. They began to grumble. Just whispers here, a complaint there. All readily stamped out, for now. But Balam knew if this continued, sooner or later she would have a mutiny to deal with.

She prayed to her father’s spirit for guidance, and hoped he would light their way.

She was thinking about him, standing tall on the quarterdeck, as she looked out towards the clouds boiling on the horizon. She wondered whether this was what her father had in mind when he thought of the adventures he had been denied.

Her Ideal of Weather had been whispering warnings to her for hours now. There was a storm coming: a big one. She had never gotten such an ominous feeling from Weather about clouds before.

The crew could feel it too. They moved about frenetically, one moment ensuring something was tied down with frantic speed, the next, staring blankly at the dark, leaden sky. They knew. They were in for a big one.

The rain came not minutes later, the first curtains peeling off the vanguard of the cloudbank. The swell began to rise, casting them higher and lower with each wave. Sailors called to each other over the growing wind.

Lightning flashed in the distance, and thunder rumbled a gravelly rejoinder. It was here.

Tension grew on the ship as the minutes passed and the storm grew closer. The snapping of cloth in the wind raised a staccato beat. An almost electric feel permeated the air. The rain began to pelt.

Within seconds, it became difficult to see. Balam reached out with her skills and sought for calm; tried to find them a path through. Lightning struck, lancing into the ocean off port, too close to the ship. Thunder was a mountain crumbling just overhead.

Balam had weathered many storms, but even she could not say how long they battled this one. The lightning broke vision into fractured snatches. Gale winds drove rain sideways, made a constant pressure against her body. It turned every surface greasy and treacherous. The ship bucked and lurched under her feet as it rode titanic waves.

She could do nothing. She reached out with her skills, all of them, any that would make the slightest difference, and felt like a child against the storm’s fury. She could make no appreciable difference, and yet she could not do nothing.

She prayed to her father’s spirit to give her strength, prayed to him for her crew’s safety. They could only ride it out, hope that the storm would break before the ship did.

Lightning shattered the skies, and Balam glanced out to port. She could not say why she chose to, at the moment. Perhaps she felt something. But she swore she saw an apparition. Another ship.

It was gargantuan, as utterly unlike their superbly crafted vessel as could be. It must have been at least three times their size, bigger than any seafaring vessel she had ever heard of. It was almost criminally ugly, not even just utilitarian, but as if someone had purposely made the lines of the ship as offensive as possible.

Lightning flashed again, wind driving stinging rain directly into her eyes, and by the time she looked about, the ship was gone.

They battled the storm for hours more, but Balam could sense that its fury was winding down. She saw no more signs of terrifyingly huge ships, and chalked the sight up to vengeful ocean spirits playing tricks. They were known to do so.

Exhausted, bedraggled, they sailed free of the storm. They had lost some five crew members overboard, though no one could say how. One of the sails was ruined. The railing was broken in one place, deep scars in a line on the deck like claw marks leading from it.

Another leviathan, in a storm, no less. Balam shivered.

They made an offering of the last of the pepperfish to the sea spirits, wrapping it up with boiled rice and seaweed, and dropping the neat parcel overboard. They hoped it would appease the sea spirits, this small thanks for allowing their passage.

Balam liked to believe it was enough for that, and then some.

The very next day, the barrelman cried, “Ahoy! Land ho!”

And so it was.

What was first just a smudge on the horizon quickly grew. And grew some more. Soon, it became apparent that this was no mere island. It was far too large for that. Far, far too large.

In the distance, they could see the shapes of towering mountains, looming like giants, miles and miles inland from the coast.

They had done it. They had found the second continent.

As the sailors’ cries went up, and they broke out the fortified wine, Balam felt a weight lift in her soul.

She smiled, and thought of her father’s spirit. She knew exactly what it was.