Chapter IV:
The Burning of Dominas
Into The South
Without warning the great horn of the Magic Tower blared again, deafening the elves and men alike, though the Lapulians were certainly more accustomed to the experience. A great host of Fireships then appeared from within the port, as if to say that the City of Magic could, if it so pleased, make an end of them. Between the horn and the ships the elves could do very little, and the Lapulian fleet made an easy retreat. Some ships remained to search the water for any who may have survived. The elves, also, seeing that their enemies had departed, made a reckoning of their losses and gathered what could be saved from those ships that had been damaged. Altogether they had lost a hundred and thirty vessels beneath the surface of the water. Another dozen ships would have to be abandoned, being too damaged to sail. Of those that remained some forty vessels would need major repairs.
'We must find a port quickly,' Aebral said to his father, as they finally began sailing into the south. The bright watch light of the Tower shone upon the Fatewind relentlessly, as if the Magi hoped the light itself would drive the elves away. Shielding his eyes, Bralohi said, 'Indeed, but not here, and not for another hundred leagues.'
'All the land of Dominas is loyal to the Magi,' Aebral said glumly, 'We shall not have an easy time finding help.'
'We shall make our own help, then,' Pelas interrupted. 'There are many ports along the coast, as the men of Inklas had reported. One of these cities shall assist us.'
'But surely they will not help the enemies of the Tower!' Aebral said with amazement.
'They will; but they will not will to,' Pelas snorted, pleased with his own humor.
Oblis chuckled fiercely.
By nightfall they had rescued who they could from the water. 'If there are more,' Falruvis said, 'then we shall not find them in this darkness.'
When the battle had ended, and the rescue had been halted by the coming of night, Dalia vanished beneath the deck, finding her way through the dark to her bunk. There she vanished into her blankets and wept. Falruvis sought her out, but Ghastin stood in his path. 'Let her rest,' he said, not as a request.
'I mean to thank her; she saved more than the Dadiiron this day.'
'And thank her you shall. But remember, she did not come to become a warrior, but rather a sailor and a treasure hunter. If any violence was expected, it was in the hunt of the Sea Monster itself, and not in warfare with men.'
'But these were mere mortals,' Falruvis said, as if one oughtn't concern themselves with such things.
'Indeed,' Ghastin sniffed, 'Mere mortals! Never again shall the elves call the men of Lapulia THAT!'
Falruvis nodded.
Ghastin explained, 'Let her rest; she saw more blood and fire and heard more anguish and terror today than one such as she ought ever to encounter with ears and eyes. She did a mighty thing today, and by her cunning spared many souls, both among the Knariss and among the elves. But she has no taste for such things.'
'Very well,' Falruvis said, 'But I shall not neglect to reward her duly for what she has done.
'Don't forget, but leave her in peace nonetheless. If ever we return to Sunlan, there will be time a plenty for rewards. And if not, then such rewards will be meaningless.'
When Amro came to his bunk late in the night he found Dalia still weeping silently beneath her blankets. He drew close and moved the covers away from her face. Her eyes were lidless and dry; she seemed to stare out into the void of the sky itself, though she was in a narrow bunk in the cramped quarters of a ship.
'Why did you come with us, Dalele?' Amro said gently, though with all the signs of demand.
She said nothing for a while and then turned to face the wall. She sighed deeply, and her whole frame seemed to diminish as her breath passed from her. 'It is for Thuruvis,' she said in a whisper. 'My beloved is a servant in the city of my father. When it was reported that Pelas would be sailing he asked of my father that he might send him. But my father tested him with the blade. Thuruvis was not willing to humiliate his master, however, and my father took advantage of him, wounding him so that he would not be able to sail. The price he set upon my hand is such that only the hope of glory and gold that accompanies such a journey as this could possibly hope to pay for it. Thus, here I am, in my beloved's stead.'
Amro stared in awe at the girl, and shook his head in disbelief. 'I am bound to these people, Dalele,' he said at last. 'But I am not loyal to them. I will see to it that you attain such glory and gold as to make Dalta's eyes blind by the splendor of it!'
'No, uncle!' she said, turning again to face him. 'I cannot ask any to help me in this.'
'Think nothing of it, brave Dalele,' he said. 'I shall see to it whether you ask it or not - even to the point of paying the gold of my own purse. I told you already, Dalele,' he smiled, 'I am bound to this life, but not loyal to it. If I can seek your good in my service to Pelas, then that only shall bring me joy.'
'And I too,' Ghastin said, as he walked into the quarters. He looked around to see whether there were any others awake.
'Brother, you have the ears of a wolf!' Amro smiled.
Ghastin laughed, 'I too remember our old life, brother, and I have no great love for any but our own kin.'
'But I am the daughter of Dalta, an elf of Ilvas, now lord of Centan in Sunlan.'
Both of the brothers laughed as she spoke, 'Indeed, but you are the daughter of Ele - and is there any on this world more deserving than she? And how shall we serve her if we serve not her daughter, whose beauty and grace is equal to her mother's?'
'I can never repay you, my dear uncles!' she said, still barely above a whisper.
'If we succeed, and I can promise no such thing, then your happiness shall be our reward,' Amro said.
Ghastin nodded, and slapped his brother's shoulder. Surely there was no elf or man more noble than his brother, he thought.
Pirates
The winds were good as the fleet made its way south. When first they had the opportunity they made land and, felling many trees, wrought upon their ships what repairs they deemed to be most necessary. Scouts were sent inland to see if any rumor had reached the people concerning the battle at Lapulia's port, but the scouts returned all saying the same thing, 'The people of the land have heard nothing.'
When they had finished their repairs they set out once again, passing several small ports as they made their way south. After two weeks they came within sight of a small fishing village. 'The houses look well kept,' Pelas said, pondering the sight as though something lay hidden beneath what he and his captains beheld.
'It is well kept,' Aebral said, not imagining what had so captured the attention of his lord.
'They have wealth, but they fear nothing. But we have taught even their protectors to fear.'
Having no hope of reaching a friendly port or finding a city along the coast of Dominas that was not loyal to Lapulia, Pelas ordered his servants aground, sending them to plunder what goods they might from the fishermen. Some of his servants protested; Bralohi and Kolohi both advised against it. Falruvis, also, objected, but none of these men refused to obey. Led by the sons of Sol, a party of three hundred was sent ashore in boats, armed with chain mail and swords. The men of the village had nothing in the way of weapons, ever having trusted in the Tower for safety by sea. They were quickly overrun, their guards slain and their goods stolen. Barrel after barrel of fruit and ale were carried aboard the ships, each vessel taking a portion of the plunder.
The sun rose over the western shore of Dominas to find the elves hard at work making repairs to their ships, making captives of the young men of the village and otherwise taking what they wished or needed from the village.
Dalia remained below decks through it all, having little stomach for what was being done ashore.
Amro helped Falruvis where he was needed, but did nothing more than he was commanded to do.
Ghastin did nothing at all. He
went ashore the morning after the raid and disappeared into the northern woodlands, saying only that he was hunting and should return ere they departed. He returned with a wolf pelt and the body of a large stag slung over his shoulders.
'You shall not vanish from this ship again,' Falruvis said harshly. 'Or from your duty to its captain!'
'How have I done any such thing?' Ghastin said coldly. 'Lord Pelas commanded us to restore the ship's stores by going ashore and taking what we needed from the people of Dominas. Your men have taken from the fishermen, and I have taken what would otherwise have belonged to its hunters. My lord Pelas should speak more clearly, if he wishes our actions to be of one sort rather than another.'
Amro stood nearby, watching his brother nervously. When he was a boy Ghastin had come home to the forge with the strange doctrines of one of the Essene prophets pouring from his mouth. Amro ignored him at first, but when he saw that the boy truly believed the words of the mortals, he ridiculed him into silence, and then forbid him to even speak of the Essene teacher he had seen.
The doctrines of the elves, he knew, were quite false. As long as one was aware of this, they could live quite peacefully, knowing that they were made only to control the mortals. But the doctrines that arose among the mortals themselves, he thought, were especially dangerous, for they were born of an impatient despair the elves, having all the time they could desire, could never truly fathom.
'This man spoke such truth!' Ghastin had argued.
'Mortals live but a day, little brother,' he had said, smirking at the thought that a mere man could know what the elves themselves but struggled with. 'The oldest elf could not tell you the truth; how then should he know it?'
Ghastin breathed heavily, his chest rising and falling. He was confused, yet impassioned beyond anything Amro had seen in a child his age. He sighed and said, 'Just get back to your work, brother, we shall not discover the truth if we do not earn a living.'
It was partly because of what Ghastin had said during that time that Amro felt obliged to submit to the captivity of Pelas. Now his brother seemed to remember nothing of those strange doctrines - doctrines about gentleness, unity, kindness and the like. He was a bow bent hard, ready to pierce whoever stood in its path. Once he attempted to ask Ghastin about those days, but Ghastin only laughed and muttered something about being a child. Now Amro longed for that childishness. It seemed there scarcely remained anything within his brother's heart, except a mad protectiveness toward Amro, Ele and Dalele, the three souls he did not utterly despise.
Falruvis noticed Amro's gaze, and nodded sternly at Ghastin. 'Do not think that I am without distress over what has come to be. But it is not our place to question Lord Pelas' commands.'
'No, it is not. Thus, not having questioned them, I could not have known that he meant me to steal dried meat from the village, rather than fresh meat from the forest.'
Ghastin, seeing Falruvis nervously looking at Amro, turned and walked away, looking for a place to clean and skin his prey.
The Serpent Seen
For the next ten months the elves lived essentially as pirates. They sailed south around the land of Dominas, coming to the open waters from whence the Dawn itself was born anew each morning. They were careful to avoid the east, where the navy of Lapulia was strong. They built a small fortress on the eastern shores of Dominas in a harbor called Grenost, where they could safeguard their treasure and provisions.
In their raids they acquired an additional thirty warships, and trained their own sailors to captain them. The greater part of their fleet now settled in Grenost, remaining behind while smaller fleets would sail against the southernmost cities of Dominas.
On several occasions they encountered Lapulians, sometimes being driven away, sometimes driving the Lapulians back into the north. They did not face the Magi in force again. It was only when their raids fell within three hundred leagues or so of the Magic City that any effort was made to confront them. 'The scourge shall not endure forever,' Thann informed Captain Proud, who was eager to sail against the elves in force. 'In three years time they shall vanish away, and you shall hear not a whisper of them for the rest of your days.'
'Is this also 'Foretold'?' he asked shaking his head.
'Such is not your concern, Captain,' Thann replied imperiously.
Along the eastern shores of Dominas there were many ports and villages that either had no dealings with the Lapulians or who themselves also hated the people of the Magic Tower. Among these people dwelt the Lakil and the Snakil, the former of whom dwelt upon the shores of a great lake surrounded by a dense jungle. The Snakil, whose skin is said to be dark as coal, dwelt within the jungle itself, and also, to some extent, upon the shores of the sea. Among the Lakil the Lapulians were regarded with disdain. They were worshippers of the Ancient Dragon, the elves came to learn, and it was their belief that the world would be restored by Thiatt Tottwon (clearly a derivative of Thaeton) when at last the Magic Tower was brought down. Against the sorcerers of Lapulia, however, the dragon worshippers had very little success. The Snakil hated the magicians of western Dominas, but they were also distrustful of the men of Lakil.
The coming of the elves was received by both of these people as a sign of some great turning. For the Snakil it meant only that there were still some in the world with might enough to resist the Tower. But for the Lakemen, it was the hand of Fate itself. This, of course, was well received by Lord Pelas, who made no effort to dispel their expectations. He never claimed to be a god, but if they said it of him of their own accord, who was he to deny their perceptions?
The weather in that land was calm and warm, regardless of the season. The elves spent a great deal of effort preparing to winter in the harbor, but nothing resembling that cruel season so much as touched the southern shores of Dominas. 'I could live out my days here,' many an elf and man said as they spent the winter months wearing little more than they did in the summer.
As the fourteenth month from their departure approached, a group of Snakil fishermen came rowing into the harbor, their small boat battered and broken. Two of their oarsmen paddled with little more than broken stumps of wood, but they were so frantic that, though their efforts did very little to move the boat, they nevertheless gave it their all. Fear hung over them, and their eyes shone from their dark faces bright and clear.
Recognizing them, the watchmen hurried out to meet them. The men rowed past them, however, and did not stop until their feet were firmly planted on the ground. When they had been fed and warmed near a roaring fire, and given some ale to calm their nerves, they explained the cause of their sudden and strange appearance. As soon as they had spoken they were brought before Pelas, to repeat their tale in full.
There were six men altogether. Their leader was a strange sight to behold for the elves: an old man with hair as white as his skin was black. 'The Worm came to breathe,' he rasped.
'To breathe?' Pelas said, surprised. 'You mean, then, that this beast is a whale? One of the air breathers of the deep?'
'No, my sir, for the whale is pig skinned; this one was dragon-skinned.'
'You mean it had scales?' Bralohi asked.
'Armor over every inch of its body,' the man said. We saw its snout rise from the depths, and the spray of his nostrils was a rainstorm. And when he took in breath it was as though he swallowed the west wind itself. Two boats we lost down his throat, and seven more were battered together in the tumult. We were separated from our companions - Galmod help them!' The man grasped his white hair in his fists and pulled hard against his scalp. 'My son was among them, Galmod help him!'
Pelas looked compassionately upon him, kneeling so that he could look the man in the eyes. 'Fear not, old father, we shall see to it. For it is to this end that we have come to this harbor - to slay the Serpent.'
The old man looked at him with anger, but when he saw that Pelas was not mocking him, his face became fearful. With his eyes held wide open he said, 'You cannot kill the
Worm,' he stated flatly. A great resignation seemed to fill his voice as he spoke, 'If my son has fallen below the waves, so be it. Let not his fate trouble you, my lord. If my people are swallowed whole, so let it be, but do not let it trouble you. If the Worm comes for my flesh in the night, as I rest upon the seashore, or if he come during the day, when I gather fish from the sea, so be it; do not let that trouble you, my lord.'
'Nonetheless,' Pelas said confidently, 'I shall slay the Worm, and your people will feast upon his flesh for a hundred years.'
By the following morning a fleet of thirty vessels was sailing out of the harbor of Grenost with full crews and as many harpoons as they could store. The old man of the Snakil, a chieftain named Jarot, accompanied them, saying, 'I have seen the Worm - and the Worm has seen me.' It was a held among the Snakil that the once a man has seen the Worm it was his fate to perish thereby, unless he avoided the ocean altogether. Some of their legends even recounted stories about men who, seeing the Worm, kept to the land altogether, only to be swallowed up when the monster crept up the river and devoured their villages. 'But the Worm comes not onto the land,' Jarot explained. 'For he fears the Beast.'
'The Beast?' Pelas asked, wondering if he meant the monster that Agonas sought. 'You mean the Beast of the Earth?'
'Indeed,' Jarot said, 'the Beast who rules over the land even as the Worm rules the sea.'
'Who rules over the air?' Aebral asked, overhearing their conversation.
Jarot shook his head to indicate that this was not something fit to be spoken of, and continued speaking of the Beast of the Earth as though the son of Bralohi had said nothing. 'The Beast fears the Serpent, and the Serpent fears the Beast. It is said that it is for this reason that the land itself does not fall into the sea, and the sea does not transgress its boundary.'
'Then oughtn't we leave them be?' Bralohi asked thoughtfully. 'We would not want such a thing to happen.'
'No,' Jarot said somberly. 'That is just a story of my people.'
Bralohi nodded with a look of embarrassment on his face, his lips curled into a very slight grin. 'Of course,' he said, annoyed that he had begun to take the man's stories seriously.
'How do you know that it is not also legend,' Aebral asked, 'that the Worm seeks those who escape his jaws?'
'How does a man know anything?' the man asked fiercely, and the elves made no answer.
They sailed east for three days. Pelas followed Jarot's whims as though they were the dictates of an oracle or a seer. If Jarot said, 'Turn north for bit,' or, 'we must sail south of the Ruguna Isles,' then so Pelas commanded.
Bralohi watched all this with concern, thinking, 'Is this what his fatefulness has brought him? Credulity unparalleled?'
Ruguna was a place of clear blue seas and golden shores. There were almost fifty little islands sprawled about, some with smoking volcanos threatening them at every moment. As the fleet passed them by Dalia, from the deck of the Dadiiron, saw three tiny children running along the shores, wearing almost nothing, their sun blackened skin almost indistinguishable from their shadows.
'Who are those children?' she asked Amro. 'Of what tribe are they?'
He shrugged. 'Who can say?'
'Is there any place in the world that is not filled to the brim with men?' Dalia asked.
'Indeed; but we are still very near to Dominas. They say that in Kharku there are lands unseen by mortal and immortal alike. And south of Kharku, they say, is a land of ice and frost.' He laughed again, 'and then there are some who say that this frozen land of the south is the very same land we call the Far North - so that the further south you go, the closer you are to the north. They say that the whole world is wrapped around a great wheel.'
She laughed also, her spirits lifting a little. She had faced every danger thus far with courage and grace, but she could not have, from her comfortable upbringing, have imagined just how long a journey like this would feel. She felt old, if ever elves could feel such a thing, and she longed for the company of her beloved. 'Thuruvis,' she whispered into the cool sea air. She laughed, 'If it were not for the dangers I would wish that you were here with me. As for the dangers, I know you would brave them all for my sake. And so I shall brave them for you.'
The main fleet of the elves remained in Grenost. Sol had taken his ships on a raid in Dominas. After his son was killed during the battle at Lapulia harbor, he fought relentlessly against the people of Dominas, his son Duesol ever at his side. Seven times he had come within sight of the Magic City itself, hoping to draw from its gates the ship of Captain Proud. But Lapulia remained silent and impregnable, never answering his challenge. Almost every port now kept a fleet of warships at the ready, so the battles grew more and more difficult as time passed. Sol was now the only elf willing to face the fireships of Lapulia in battle. The rest had taken to raiding fishing villages or attacking merchants at sea.
The Fatewind and the Dadiiron were now almost inseparable. That Falruvis' ship had saved all their lives when the Tower assailed them was no secret, and Pelas promised Falruvis and its crew great rewards upon their victorious return to Sunlan. He kept Falruvis close at all times, in council upon the land, and when sailing upon the water. They raided together, fished together, and traded goods along the eastern coast of Dominas as if their ships were bound together by cords. 'Fate it was that stayed my hand,' Pelas said with godlike confidence, 'when in the dark of night I spared the life of Ruvis' son.'
Cheru and Oblis remained ever at Pelas' side, standing beside him as though they were the two wings of a great eagle. Far from being bothered by their attention, he accepted it as a sign of the honor he would someday receive from all creatures.
Ginat had grown tired of waiting in Grenost, and had therefore asked leave to sail with Sol in his raids.
The elves were not the only pirates on the eastern coast of Dominas. There were some pirates who sailed the treacherous waters near the Vestron coast. These were strong men and brave sailors for risking such waters, but they met no success against Pelas and his fleet of immortals. But Pelas was not willing to leave Grenost wholly unprotected while he investigated the tales of Jarot. Thus the greater part of his fleet remained in the harbor while he and a select few ships pursued the Monster of the Sea.
When at last Pelas found what he sought, however, he wished he had brought with him, not only those ships he had left behind in Grenost, but also those he had sacrificed to his pride in the battle against the Magic Tower of Lapulia. His fleet of three hundred ships had seemed to him a matter of pomp and ceremony, as if they would, by sending such a fleet, demonstrate the splendor and might of Sunlan to the people of Dominas. But the people of Dominas had halved their fleet, and he was soon to learn that even the full three hundred ships would not have been sufficient.