Dreamsurfer: Warhound Series

By Catrina Prager

Though individual loyalties have rearranged and shifted, the battle for Amagiraea rages on.

 

There is tell of raids across the Amagiraean coast; an army waxes and wanes to the south, while the capital's defenders sleep under a tempestuous kylight. Long-limbed, and strange-bodied, Seadwellers roam the plains, serving their own masters, to bring home a great sacrifice.

 

Across the Long Sea, a wizened, old woman and a young girl pass their days together in bitterness and confinement, their fates impossibly entwined.

 

One man faces the waters with a foreign face, another, the ardent heat. his weary face much the same, but donning a new robe.

 

Of our initial cast of eight, none goes forth in their original place. Adelras of Amagiraea, a brave prince, but green and unripe, must navigate new alliances with Amagiraea's once-masters. Will the young prince stand his ground, or walking in the footsteps of his ancestors, kneel?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catrina Prager
• Release date: Dec 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223034261

Catrina Prager

Catrina Prager is a 25-year-old fantasy author, freelance journalist, and avid traveler. Her short stories have been published in journals and magazines, including Bridge: The Bluffton University Literary Journal, The Rush Magazine, Montana Mouthful, Coffin Bell Journal, and others. Hearthender is her first novel.

Book preview

Prelude

Their children learned to cower under glint of dusk. To trace their linage in the desert’s trails, for often enough, only the wind still hearkened the memory of some long-lost aunt or brother. The folk of the desert did not speak their dead, wearing them embroidered in heart, but not in song. Too many had died under the unforgiving sun to be remembered. So the Seadwelling folk wore them woven around their necks, and tucked under their hearts, and walked into every dawning night unburdened by all they’d let kill in their carelessness.

He’d warned Tilly he couldn’t linger too long by the stable. The fillies looked at him all wrong, and though Sjen had told her many times, Tilly just laughed. Tilly laughed at a great many things, except for when her father took a whip to her back. Tilly’s father hit Tilly harder than he did the fillies, and that was alright, ‘cause Tilly didn’t tell, either.

Sjen was a coward. He was scared of the horses, but worse, he was scared Tilly’s father would step out. He’d warned the boy what would happen if he caught him, yet against his better judgment, here Sjen was. He’d promised Tilly they’d go together, and if suddenly there wasn’t Tilly in his life to hold him to his promises, then what good could come of his word?

When the side door to their hut cracked open, Sjen bolted and didn’t look back for half a street. He knew the old, fat horsemaster wouldn’t give chase, even if he did hate Sjen. Tilly, however, would and when she caught him, she boxed him round the ears. Sjen yelped, but this time, he couldn’t really argue.

He never could, though he knew it wasn’t right, the way Tilly sometimes hurt him for stupid reasons. This time, though, he’d broken a promise, and that was worth getting boxed over. He cried out for her to stop, and Tilly did, because unlike her father, she never went on hitting after she’d made her point.

You were gonna go off without me, and the hurt in her voice was real. Tilly was scared of her father’s temper, especially when he was in his cups, but even more, she was scared of Sjen leaving. No one else saw her. No one else was likely to, either.

I know I’m not likable, she’d told him once, when she’d been particularly mean, and Sjen had been thinking about maybe not coming anymore. That was all she’d said. It was all she needed to.

Only because you took so bloody long, Sjen shot back, and Tilly shrugged him off, like it wasn’t his business. Didn’t need to clarify that, either. They both knew Tilly’s father kept only her as stablehand. It wasn’t right, and folk in the village had told him.

Sjen didn’t think it was right, either, though not on account of Tilly being a girl. He thought Tilly could maybe do more, but that would’ve been an unpopular opinion, so he kept it to himself. There wasn’t much shine to the horsemaster’s get. She was awkward, and pudgy, where other girls of an age were lean, and growing pretty. Even worse, she had her father’s temper.

I came just as fast as I could, a’ight?

Sjen nodded, rubbing his left ear with the back of his hand. Behind them, the last of the dying sunlight lapped like fire-scorch at their heels. And against that, children ran, too quick, too proud to know, like their elders, that you can’t outrun the sun.

The children gathered on the outskirts of their village. One by one, they emerged from the enveloping dark. The brave ones were already waiting, having dared the daylight to get here first. It was a standing game, one that occasionally ended in death. Twice now, since they’d arrived in the village, Sjen had ran past the corpses of playmates, caught out too early, when the sun still hung low and scorching. Had they been dead? Sjen hadn’t stopped to check. He worried if he did, the light would claim him next.

Then, came the slow ones and the cowards, the careful children who knew better than to leave the house before dusk. They came in hurdles of twos and threes, many of them pairing up like Sjen and Tilly. So that, in case the sun heat wore them down, there’d be someone to carry back word to their families.

Tilly would’ve never admitted it, but she was afeared of the night, more than she was her father. She couldn’t have explained it, and had made Sjen swear not to tell. It was rare, but not unheard of, on the island, for children to be born fearful of the dark. Though when pressed by a concerned parent or neighbor, they couldn’t have told what it was so much that worried them, for monsters, they knew, emerged in the daylight, not by cover of night.

They gathered by the edge of the water to dip their toes in, and soak their shins. The test of bravery after a scorching day, for there were plenty had drowned in those waters, under dark, but no one spoke of them, either.

Are you going in, then? he heard Tilly challenge by his left ear.

Sjen, made small and tender at the sound of beating waves, shook his head no.

Scared. Chicken, lousy boy, Tilly spat, droning on her nonsense words, a tinge of affection in her voice. Pressing herself to his back, Sjen felt her peeling off her tunic. The hard shell of her body suddenly soft in the furtive dark. Instinctively, Sjen pressed his back to her, but even as he did, Tilly had begun walking off. It was a game she’d taught herself, and practiced with him in secret, and whenever Sjen got too close, Tilly took her cue to walk out. Tilly couldn’t bear it when others pushed themselves up close. It ticked off an alarm inside her body, and something screamed, screamed, screamed inside her mind.

Without looking, Sjen knew she’d disappeared into the water. They did this every night, and he’d let her go off a while, while he stayed on shore with all the other scaredy kids.

My mama says it’s not long now, said one of the younger boys, whose family hadn’t lived by the water long. Neither had Sjen’s folk, not really. They’d only come down when his father had gone, and that couldn’t be so long now.

Not long till what?

Till the eastward cattails erupt.

Grown tall and greedy, the weeds drew up too much sun, more than was good for them. It was common enough for them to burst into flames, and it might’ve been a spectacle, were it not for the voracious speed with which fires typically advanced.

Even the young among them knew that, when the cattails finally caught alight, so might their homes, and their feet, and their sisters.

Well, how does she know? Sjen challenged, more forcefully than he’d need to.

Even the young among them knew if it happened in the daytime, when none were about, they had no chance of putting the fire out. And then, it would depend on the windmasters, if they willed the flames towards the children, or spared them.

They spoke with reverence of the fires that may be, with all the respect one owes a king, except kings in the desert, there were none. Only tribeheads, men and women brave enough to face the windmasters in the name of their people. And clever enough to return home.

There was chatter, and under the dark, wondrous skylights of the night, there was peace among the children in a way there could never be among the adults. The water was their place. The water was safe, even when a grandmother rushed to call someone back home. A father, raising the back of his hand, threatening, wishing to control the little he could.

But tonight, no calls came to hail the children back, and Sjen stood by the side of the water as if on top of the world. And even he, this boy of kind soul and quick feet, did not notice the sand shift underneath him. When next he blinked, the chatter around the water had grown louder, and more agitated. It took Sjen a moment to focus on the sounds, and then, as he did and recognized in them the syllables of terror and worry, a scream crawled up his throat.

Till!

But it was too late.

Blindly, he started running towards the water, forgetting his fear, and with it, discarding his old name. Waddling into the water on clumsy feet, and flinching at the cold. That’s not right, no. The heat, even tepid night heat, should’ve made the water a pleasant alteration, but no. That’s ‘cause there was no heat, but there were, to his surprise, voices calling him back out of the water. Now. Funny, Sjen hadn’t thought the children in the village paid him much mind. To them, he was still essentially a newcomer, and if they tolerated him, they only did so on account of Tilly, who’d kick their teeth in if they pushed too far. Tilly!

But again, no answer came, and as the water bubbled and pushed against the fronts of his thighs, Sjen became aware of the storm building around him. And storms meant wind. Sjen froze. He could remember his mother warning him, saying the windmasters were at their cruelest near the seashore, because with people here, you never knew if they were trying to sail away or not. There were stories of folk who had tried, though none could agree what had happened to them. In Sjen’s small world, in the world of now, nobody tried anymore.

Tilly! Come back now, please!

His voice, a plea, a struggle not to cry, because as he scoured the horizon and the rumbling waters, swaying angrily under the bitter wind, Sjen could recognize no one coming towards him. No Tilly swimming clumsily against the tide. Or was there? Even now, struggling to keep her head above the water, as the wind pushed her viciously, ever farther?

Tilly! Sjen roared, by now tasting fully the tears seeping into his mouth, but before she could reply, all the stars above Sjen’s head had gone full dark.

When next he woke, Sjen was home, swaddled in his mat on the floor, in spite of the daylight and the warmth. He kicked off the coverings, at once, angry like a boy of eight had all reason to be.

You were shivering, even when the sun came up.

He looked to find his mother huddled in the far corner of the room. Their room, which was now his room, for Sjen was a man, who no longer needed to bed by his mother.

When the winds began to blow, Matra came to find you, she said, and even as she spoke, Sjen could feel himself growing embarrassed at her pride. Angry. That he’d stood on the brink of the afterworld, and his mother seemed more interested in her lover’s attentions. Her tone, almost vindictive, in the face of Sjen’s disapproval, as if to say, you see, we can rely on this one.

What about Tilly? She was in the water.

At this, he saw his mother’s face freeze up as he spoke, followed by one brief, utilitarian shake of her head. Her father never came out.

It was not in Sjen to fault it. The way things were, to be accepted, not challenged. He knew it wasn’t cruelty on the part of their people, just that they’d learned where playing the valiant hero got you. More often than not, the person who ran out even after his own family was safe, ended up not saving anyone, and losing himself in the process.

She’s of the wind, now, Sjen’s mother said, and in the moment, Sjen hated her for it with a wrath that burned in him like fire. Vicious and angry, and eight years old. And utterly, impossibly alone in the world, again.

Towards early morning, they were allowed out of the huts, the children who, the night before, had almost been lost. Trailed by parents, and aunts, and grandfathers that loved them, they came to the waterside bearing no gifts, for it was not the way of their people. No gifts, nor tears, with the exception of one solitary, inconsolable boy. Tilly hadn’t been the only one who died, and if there were those who mourned the others as intensely, Sjen did not know.

OVER THE NEXT WEEKS, the story of the folk they’d lost waned rapidly. It had been the will of the windmasters to take them, otherwise the water would’ve spared them. And the desert-dwelling folk knew better than to pit themselves against the will of the windmasters. They let it pass, and by the time a full moonnight had come and gone, the memory of Tilly, Cliere, and all the others lost was just that, a banal memory.

Only Sjen carried her face, and the sound of her voice, awkward and mannish, inside him, alive, as it had no right to be. Tilly’s father, the stablemaster, appeared generally unperturbed. And if he, too, carried his daughter’s face woven inside his heart, he gave no indication of it.

Days wore on, but they were generally the same, until one night, something extraordinary happened. It was early in the day, when all the other children had gone back to their homes. After that night, Sjen had been surprised how easily the other children had returned to their nighttime routine. Until he’d realized that, to them, it was nothing unusual. There was terror, each night the winds took someone dear to you, sure, but they’d all been through that exact same night before. And if they’d lost someone as important as Tilly in their own understanding of the world, they hid it remarkably.

In the night that was almost day, Sjen stood struck by a vengeful hand a long moment. Watching the sea, where the movement had caught his eye, then knew, in the next, it was she. That Tilly had come back to him, that it had all been some grand mistake. A collective delusion, under the burrowing heat.

Excited, the boy waddled into the water, then stopped. About knee-high this time, he stood, looking out at the shape that could not be a seven-year-old girl. It was too large, too afar to be a child, yet what else it might be, Sjen knew not. All through that day, Sjen couldn’t shake the sensation of seeing her again, the terrible hope swelling inside his chest. when he finally managed to fall asleep, it was almost dark again outside. Soon, the village would wake, but not, as it turned out, soon enough.

They’d heard about raids, too, when they first started traveling toward the coast. Southern Traveling tribes, docking cool and merciless, unafraid of the heat or the windmasters. To take, to burn, to destroy what was foreign to their own. Yet to Sjen and his mother, as to most Seadwelling folk, the concept had been foreign. The idea of men coming to destroy what others had built, anathema in a world where only the windmasters and the skylight could deem destruction.

Sjen, as most eight-year-old boys, had been mildly enticed by the idea. Something in him might’ve liked to know more, which made it all the more unfortunate that he fell asleep just as the raiders he’d spotted on the water docked. By the time he next woke, in screaming and terror, there was no part of his brain that could be made to focus, and to take in objectively the events as they unfolded around him. Sjen, in his mind, had the makings of a great historian, with all the fear necessary not to take part in any major event, yet all the curiosity needed to document it.

As the windmasters willed it, however, it was his first and last Traveler raid, and by next nightfall, the boy’s body, as well as his mother’s, Matra’s, and those of most of the village were lost to the water, and to history. The boy Sjen, who might’ve been a great innovator of history in another life, was of the wind.

Part I

1. Fyrsten / Eife

The Commander’s once fierce eyes rocked hollow, to the rhythm of the ship-shape salvation boat. They drilled holes into the sturdy boat-bottom wood. He blinked, and the holes were vanished. Then he began again, and pretended no one expected more of him. They did. They would. It had been Fyrsten who’d enlisted the men on this ill-fated journey. It was Fyrsten who had now rendered their children orphaned, and their wives alone and forgotten in the dead of night.

He knew they expected some kind of reaction from him. Sorrow, there was a-plenty, but also guilt, and that, he could not give them. For him to regret what had happened would mean to bemoan their setting out, and Fyrsten could not do that. For the many drowned, he couldn’t quell in his heart the rush of excitement at finally reaching Veshini shores.

He’d dreamed of her again this past night, in as much as the rocking boat and biting cold had allowed him to sleep. They had been in her bedroom, but not as it was now, as it had been when, as a young blushing girl, Mei had only begun noticing him. Her eye, even then, bold like no other. Where all others looked away like embarrassed children, Mei always held his gaze. He’d told at their wedding feast it was her eyes that first charmed him, but that had been misleading. When she’d first looked at him, Mei’s eyes had shot a look of pure-bladed ice. And he’d known, in them, a promise of fierceness and loyalty.

Lord Commander, a voice low to his right dragged Fyrsten out of his reverie. The Commander blinked his reality once more into place, forsaking the sinking holes.

Wayfarer’s Port.

He’d meant it as a question. In his head, he’d heard the words humble, a little lost, yet from the Commander’s throat came a voice as steadfast as molten lead.

I have been this way before, he said quietly, to the men’s surprise. Had they guessed their Commander deep in a dream, or was that just Fyrsten’s private impression? Did any know how far he’d wandered, at all? Or was he, to them, as ever, simply commander?

I wasn’t much older than yourselves, he said, and surveying the men in his boat at a glance, Fyrsten felt himself ancient. We passed through Wayfarer’s Port on our way to the untamed lands, some years ago. Even then, it was a dangerous crossing, with Veshna forces at every step, ready to apprehend us. I’ll tell no lie, the crossing saw many of us worried. Scared, for these were strange men with stranger customs. Walking across Veshini plains, we knew, might leave us strangled. Only one in our ranks walked on, heedless, undaunted. When I asked her why, she told me those people over the border needed us. That even then, as we trembled like frightened mice, they prayed for our arrival and our strength. We can’t disappoint them, she says, for else how will we live with ourselves?

He paused a moment, looked at the soldiers, young and ragged, then continued. This time, it’ll be three times as dangerous. For the journey  from Wayfarer’s Port into the untamed lands was but little. Now, we must cross the entire country, and know well that these men are not our friends. They will not allow us lightly into their homes.

In the before, his little speech might’ve given rise to cheers. Applause, some kind of riling in the face of the enemy. Now, the gaunt faces around him peered, as specters. Had he finished? Looked like. They waited another moment, stuck thus between the moment that was and the moment that had been, then one by one returned to their own thoughts.

They were not here to be roused, or stirred into battle. Speeches such as the Commander’s were engineered to give one strength when one floundered, when one risked tactfully wrapping his belongings in a blanket, and scampering in the dead of night.

Only the men in Fyrsten’s boat no longer had choice. The moment they’d crossed the water, they’d announced themselves deserters to the world. They knew, all of them, that those who did not die on the voyage back would receive a traitor’s welcome in Amagiraea. Their wives would be jeered at in the market, their children taunted, for even though they were many, Fyrsten’s men were now far. In truth, they’d made their choice the moment they’d set sail with the Lord Commander, though now, few could recall their reasoning. It seemed the waters that had drowned their brothers had also drowned their reason.

You disagree? Fyrsten asked openly, the slightest concealed edge to his voice. Once, too, he would’ve known to let matters lie, but now, he gravitated from complete, cavernous silence, to an incessant need to chatter. He felt himself growing unhinged, frayed at the edges, unstable.

Not at all, sir, the woman he’d been eyeing said honestly. Of the other ten souls in the boat with him, only this one gave actual signs of listening. The rest merely let the Commander drone on.

You’re new, Fyrsten remarked, and to her, this new, ill-prepared soldier, the hurt in his voice was not evident, at all.

I wish you’d known the army as it was before, he thought, but didn’t say, for that would’ve been a step too far. I wish you’d known these men when they could walk back to their wives with head held proud.

I am.

And you wish you’d stayed back? Taken your chances out west, perhaps? Hidden like a coward in the Eimere Swamps?

No, sir. Instant, to his surprise, leaving room for no consideration, as if the reply had been waiting ready on her tongue since they’d sailed.

Oh? Then you’ve got an advantage over most men in these boats. Why’s that?

I’m looking for someone, too, sir, Eife replied. And I wasn’t gonna find him standing around back home.

Standing before his assembled men, the Lord Commander might’ve wept. He counted now, in his inexpert, jumping eye, more than a third of their men lost, and even then, they’d hardly been enough. They’d sailed the underdog, and now transformed themselves into a mouse, having freshly disembarked into the lion’s gaping mouth.

Learning from his failure in the dingy, Fyrsten offered no word of encouragement, knowing it’d only be met with scorn. Instead, he watched, in silence, as the men disembarked, and quietly began setting up what was left of their camp. Two ships of their fleet had survived, and by some miracle, so had most of their gear.

During the long voyage out of the storm, Fyrsten had wondered if he would’ve rather taken the provisions, the tents, and medicines, and so on, or the men? In the end, he’d abandoned the question unresolved, for it was hardly a question, really. The men were already long grown cold on the sea-bottom, as he thought this.

They’d docked outside Wayfarer’s Port, far enough not to immediately endanger themselves, but not so much that word wouldn’t spread. It wouldn’t have been Fyrsten’s first choice. For all his words of bravery, the memory of Wayfarer’s Port hung like a dark cloud of foreboding in his mind. He would’ve sooner avoided it, but the waters had given him little choice.

Still, they’d move as fast as they could, once the men were rested and fed. He sent into town for supplies, discreetly. Even more so, he changed himself into his simple, hunter’s garb, peeling off the torn, mulched clothes he’d worn so long, they felt like second skin.

There was no looking glass in their makeshift camp, it being considered bad luck to sail with one. For that, Fyrsten was grateful. In his soldier’s life, he’d been bloodied a-plenty, but he’d never been as utterly lost as he was now. It was a sight he could do without.

I would take a trusty companion with me into town, he said briefly, not looking up as she entered.

Sir?

Her bravado from the dingy now gone. When he finally looked up, he saw not all had been as fortunate. Eife stood in the same dirty, raggedy clothes she’d worn in the dingy, hanging loose off her gaunt, wind-bitten frame.

Was there something misunderstood?

Er, no, sir. It’s just, I meant there’s better men to accompany you. I’m not even a soldier.

Of course not. You’re a medic, I can see that. A healer. These men might take to that. Besides, you’ve got something most of my soldiers unfortunately lack.

What’s that? Eife’s voice trembled, tired, yet her eyes mirrored the same feverish, hallucinated excitement Fyrsten felt in his own.

Someone worth bringing back.

In the streets of Wayfarer’s Port, children ran naked and marvelous, a sight to behold. They looked on them openly, these stranded, forgotten men, as they stepped once more onto dry land, with neither shame nor curiosity in their eye. There had been, briefly, land. Without it, many more of Fyrsten’s men would’ve perished in the storm. Except now, that land got remembered unsteady in their collective mind, a treacherous landing, more than a safe harbor in the dark.

It was all Fyrsten’s men could do not to kneel and kiss the ground, crying. These, the Commander had to remind himself were no sailing men, but warriors. Many of them having never been aboard a ship, let alone survived a vengeful, almost otherworldly storm in the dark and the cold. They were terrified, and one must handle terrified men with care.

Sir?

Fyrsten sighed. You don’t have to ask permission every time you talk.

It wasn’t, technically, true. All the soldiers did, and the new recruits certainly. Yet suddenly, he couldn’t bear anymore this distance between himself and the men. Which was perhaps why he welcomed this random woman so heedlessly into his confidence.

I just wondered, expecting you are as exhausted as all the rest–

Why we didn’t stay behind and have a wee kip. Yes, I’d wondered that myself. Except we didn’t come here to dawdle, and already our voyage’s taken longer than I’d hoped. We came to find someone who might, even now, be moving further away from us. I will not rest while she is living in captivity, he said simply, inviting no further argument.

Yet even as he spoke this, the Lord Commander expertly steered her into a nearby doorway which, it turned out, gave way to a tavern. A busy, lively, too-loud pub that hurt their shipwrecked ears.

I never said I would travel on an empty stomach, he said with a grin, and gestured to a small, empty table at the very back. Fyrsten stood in the doorway a moment, watching the woman amble gratefully towards the seat, and plop herself down.

Tried to feel her in the earth, in the salt of the air, in the songs that hummed all about his ears. Hold fast, little love.

Eife struggled to get her eyes to stop seeing spots. She’d been seeing them on and off, though mostly on, ever since the shipwreck. In the shipwreck, in the biting cold, there had been hands. Rough. Holding her in a way she’d never been held before, in a way as to drown her, or keep her from. Eife didn’t know. She’d known in those arms  an impression of safety and emotion as she’d never experienced in Eryk’s arms, or in her father’s house.

Neither of them spoke as they ate. There was no need. She felt, and saw mirrored in the Commander, an easy understanding that harbored no need for words. His was a stern, sturdy presence that allowed her to just breathe, her breath unhurried, and easy as she’d ever known it. Even as a little girl, Eife had had to struggle for each lungful of air, yet now, suddenly, oxygen cascaded into her throat unbeckoned. She wondered, absurdly, if it had been the Commander himself had dragged her out of the water, then banished the thought away.

Salted fish tastes the same anywhere in the world, and there were taters, and strong, bitter ale, though no water. A meal as befit a king, a meal that almost made Eife cry with relief.

She ate hurried, watching Fyrsten at every bite, not to dawdle or appear slovenly, and made sure that when he finally wiped with the back of his hand, his mouth, she’d already finished and pushed away her plate.

The Lord Commander looked on, a quiet glimmer of approval in his eye, then motioned her to get up and follow him. He made her heart anxious, the way he moved through the crowd, a shackled wolf, preparing to pounce. Ever since the shipwreck, he’d drifted amiably, his mind as if caged in a dream, yet Eife knew that was not the man she’d seen on the battlefield.

She remembered, more clear than her own father’s face, the way his eyes had glinted off each falling blade. The way his limbs moved, claw-like, into the chests of fellow men.

Yet even a man like that, exhausted and broken, could not face an entire village alone.

Fyrsten moved with grace, hesitating every now and again, listening in on conversations. Whom to ask?

Finally, after a couple of false starts, he settled himself in a chair. A table twice their size, and stared benevolent but steel-like, at a man until he stood up, and offered his seat to Eife.

The man beside Fyrsten was old, by Amagiraean count almost ancient, and when he spoke, he did so in a tongue Eife could not understand.

I may well be, Fyrsten replied after a moment, in clear Amagiraean. And if my own reasoning proves me folly, then I shall it take my fate as I must.

The old man nodded, and when next he spoke, he did so in kind.

Not everyone takes so kindly to Amagiraean folk here.

He spoke with an inflection of Veshini accent, but with the natural ease of one of their own.

So far, none have jumped at my throat.

The old man nodded. Clever of you. I expect you had spies, to know Wayfarer’s Port is no friend to the Oracle.

Eife kept her eyes firm on the Commander’s face, more for the fear of this constant hum of this place, than for curiosity. Where other men might’ve faltered, Fyrsten betrayed nothing.

Perhaps we were just lucky, he replied, evenly.

Aye, that was always your stride.

And to Eife’s surprise, the old man grinned, and nodded, first to himself, then ever so briefly, knowingly, to her.

What’s this between Wayfarer’s Port and the Oracle?

Eife’s heart began to thrum. The old man’s casual shrug made almost unbearable in her excitement.

There are those here who feel the Oracle’s leading our people down a wrong path. There is much anger, at taking arms up against their own. And many here, he raised his voice, to override Fyrsten’s opposition, consider Amagiraean folk to still be Traveler-folk at heart. We were, after, all one people, not so long ago.

Fyrsten nodded, but let it pass by. So Wayfarer’s Port opposes this Oracle?

Not in as many words, but they’ve made it known that warships headed for our shores would do better to sail from elsewhere.

Eife looked on the old man, and in the strange, blueish marking around his eyes, tried to guess one of their own. He spoke with all the ease of an Amagiraean man, yet his garb and his appearance all betrayed Veshini influence.

Must be why no one’s come to harangue us, then.

At this, Fyrsten’s interlocutor frowned. Must be, he agreed, after a moment of thought. Yet I wouldn’t outstay my welcome, Commander. The people here, they will not join the war effort. That also means cavorting with the enemy.

Fyrsten nodded. We’ve no intention of lingering, you have my word.

And in his words, one could hear his suffering clearly. Here was a man who thought only of his beloved. For whom, one woman was inscribed in every scar on his pale skin, and in the blueish circles under his eyes.

Where can I find this Oracle, then?

This was a considerate man, who liked to turn his words on all sides, and ensure them a safe landing.

I can’t promise you you’ll find her there.

Fyrsten nodded, to hide the defeat rising in his throat. Where else?

But the old man shrugged, and spoke as one might of easier matters. I don’t know.

A nod. Then tell me where the Oracle is.

Fiddler’s Fall. The last of the sinking isles. You’ll have to cross the entire plain, or sail around.

One terrible moment, in which Fyrsten’s eyes met Eife’s, and both in turn met the memory of that night.

We can’t. We can’t sail around.

The old man nodded thoughtfully, but didn’t ask. Then I wish you safe travels, my friend. Many have returned from the battle on edge, and the land is well-defended.

They stayed another moment, and though they had much to say to each other, the two soldiers said nothing. With all the exhaustion and aching that had marooned itself to his bones, Fyrsten stood up, and squeezing the old man’s shoulder a final time, made his way out of the tavern.

It was not Eife’s place to speak, and as she followed him through the dark, she worked her damnedest to hold back her tongue. She couldn’t recognize herself, this woman who spoke her mind