I’ve come to land, he thought.
He wasn’t certain if he should be pleased or not.
He allowed the surf to drag him onto the shore and vomit him up on a sandy beach strewn with shells and pebbles, rolling his body in the long drapes of his veils and robes to keep his sensitive skin from being shredded by the shards of rock and the husks of sea creatures. After he had lain for several moments on the slippery but undeniably solid ground, he unrolled himself slowly and brought his head up, opening his eyes fully for the first time in so long that the salty crust of the lids made it difficult.
He gave himself a moment to focus, then looked at what lay before him.
Then he swore in the ugliest manner he ever remembered undertaking.
Rising ahead of him in the distance was a city of gleaming buildings, polished in the colors of mother-of-pearl, and far away, a tall, slender tower made of what looked even more like shell, twisting like an enormous conch, rising into the low-hanging clouds.
Achmed put his head down on his soaking wet sleeves and contemplated what he had done to offend the Universe.
Gaematria, he thought in disgust. I’m on the Isle of the Sea Mages.
A moment later his fears were confirmed by the arrival of a guard unit dressed in the colors of the academics who had made this place their home since the sundering of the Second Fleet at the Prime Meridian.
He rose slowly to a stand and stretched out a hand in a gesture of warning as the regiment slowed to a halt before him. A strange heaviness, like a coating of seaweed, was hanging on him, light but tangibly there.
Achmed looked down at his body.
He had come into the water in simple clothing, a shirt and trousers, his cloak, robes, and veils.
Now, in addition to those garments, he was attired in a hauberk, a mail shirt of a sort, a coif, also seemingly of mail but a hood, and a mantle, a protective collar on his neck and shoulders. They were all comprised of the same strange carapace-like material that the scabbard of Kirsdarke was made of.
Before he could examine this new armor, the regiment came to a halt.
“I am the king of Ylorc,” he said in a voice cracking from exposure to salt. “Tell Edwyn Griffyth I am here.”
Then, overwhelmed with exhaustion and the beating he had taken in the sea, he collapsed on the sand again.
GAEMATRIA
When Achmed awoke he was, to his fury, lying outstretched not on the beach but in a comfortable bed, most likely in a hospice ward from the looks of the equipment around him.
Hovering near him was a hook-nosed man with a solid build, soft around the middle but still upright despite what the Bolg king knew to be advanced age.
“You carried me?” he demanded.
Edwyn Griffyth, the High Sea Mage, looked down at him with severe displeasure.
“The wind carried you, Majesty,” he retorted dryly. “I make it a rule never to touch anything I suspect might be poisonous. I merely provided the elevation of your body and the direction of your journey into the bed you currently inhabit through the arts. To what do we owe the extreme pleasure of your company, unannounced?”
Achmed sat up shakily.
“I need to meet in council with some of your odious academicians.”
“Ah, you came under the auspices of diplomacy.” Edwyn Griffyth shook his head and sighed. “I should have guessed, given your polite address and graciousness. A thousand years in Alliance, and it’s still a fulsome pleasure to speak with you.”
The Bolg king noted that none of his weapons had been touched or removed, nor had his clothing, which apparently had been dried of seawater by some sort of magical means. He also concluded that news of Ashe’s death or the buildup for war had not reached the isolated Isle.
He decided to allow that state of ignorance of both issues to remain in place for the time being.
“Given that you have known me for a millennium, I assume you understand that I would never have come here, especially through the sea, had it not been a matter of extraordinary urgency,” he said, struggling to keep his voice from cracking, either from anger or salt exposure. “Kindly summon your experts in the subjects of tidal or other oceanic impacts of the Cataclysm that ensued with the rise of the Sleeping Child, as well as anyone familiar with the area of the sea that lies above what was once the Island of Serendair and the northern islands of Balatron, Briala, and Querel. Additionally, I need to speak to any scholar who knows anything of the lore of what sleeps within the Earth.”
Edwyn Griffyth’s jaw dropped open so violently that Achmed could hear it click.
“Surely you are joking,” he said after he recovered the use of his tongue.
“I don’t believe I yet know or like you well enough to joke with you, Edwyn,” said the Bolg king testily. “Once again, let me reiterate the severe necessity of my task and the extraordinary patience I have already demonstrated. Now, for the last time, kindly summon the experts I have requested.”
The High Sea Mage’s jaw clicked shut violently.
He turned without another word and left the room, whereupon the Bolg king dropped back onto the pillows of his bed and closed his eyes.
* * *
Within the turn of an hour, Achmed found himself seated at a table in the Hall of Scholars, the central building in the academic complex that had long served as the seat of knowledge for the Known World.
Around the table was a gathering of some of the most brilliant minds in that same world, including the High Sea Mage and a number of other scholars unknown to Achmed.
And, to his consummate disgust, also in attendance was Jal’asee, the Ancient Seren ambassador whom he had hated on both sides of Time for millennia.
The tall, golden-skinned man had maintained a pleasant expression in spite of what could only have been interpreted as seething hatred coming his way from the Firbolg king, Achmed thought darkly. In his own pack a vial existed, packed carefully as he was making his preparations to travel, containing an elixir that he had brewed using the Lightcatcher in Gurgus Peak with this very scholar in mind.
It was one of the only experiments he had ever undertaken in the study of the ancient instrumentality, built from brittle drawings and schematics rendered two thousand years before by Gwylliam the Visionary, Edwyn Griffyth’s father, that, in addition to the ability to focus the elemental power of the light spectrum as he had in the protection of Ylorc, was able to render certain conceptual or abstract entities into a liquid form of unsurpassed purity.
The abstract entity that Achmed had sought to render into utterly pure and potent liquid form was that of silence. It was a black potion, thick and unadulterated, that he had yet to test, but even in the very bottling of it, with just the faintest essence of it escaping into the air, the entire upper part of the Cauldron had been bathed in a lack of sound so encompassing that it was feared for a while that the soldiers guarding the entrance to the throne room almost half a mile away from Gurgus Peak had been struck deaf.
The pleasure that Achmed had experienced in contemplating Jal’asee’s potential inability to ever utter another sound had been profound.
And yet, in a wry twist for Fate’s amusement, the Ancient Seren ambassador was seated at the table, obviously selected as one of the experts he had requested.
In addition to the hated ambassador and the High Sea Mage, the seats at the council table were occupied by three other scholars.
The first seat held a silver-haired woman of Liringlas blood, aged but bright-eyed, who had been introduced as Aurelia, the historian with an expertise in the annals and accounts of Serendair, the exodus from it, and the rare and minimal records of its last days.
Another chair was occupied by a nervous oceanographer named Kasthien, a dark-skinned bald man who Achmed had recognized as being of the race of the Gwenen, some of the rarest among the Cymrian population.
The final chair held a monk named Fralwell whom Edwyn Griffyth had said was an esteemed geologist.
Edwyn Gr
iffyth cleared his throat.
“Though I am aware that either you do not realize or do not care about the devastating imposition your lack of notice and demands for a meeting have put upon the research of these scientists and experts, I would like to bring to your attention the severity of that impact, Majesty,” he said, his tone bordering on unpleasant. “I would ask that you would, therefore, make your inquiries brief and direct so that they may return to their important work.”
Achmed swallowed the throatful of bile that had collected since he had arrived in Gaematria. He was suddenly visited by an image of Rhapsody from centuries before attempting to maintain a civil discourse between him and Jal’asee and failing utterly.
For her sake, he took a deep breath and addressed Aurelia first as politely as he was able.
“I need to know whatever you can tell me about the last days of Serendair, and specifically about the area of the Northern Islands, Balatron, Briala, and Querel,” he said, struggling to keep his tone civil. “I have not traveled back to the gravesite of the Island of Serendair, but the Lady Cymrian apparently did, in the company of her family, and said that there is something different about the sea over the place where the Island once was. She noted that sailing over it, especially in the northern areas where the three islands are, was treacherous, even though the sea is no longer boiling there as it was at the time we lived on the Island. I am, by the way, not interested in hearing any nonsensical folktales about Gwylliam and his visions, and his brilliant plan to ferry the residents of Serendair across the world to places of nonviolence or sacrosanctity. Please spare me the heroic hrekin; I want a true reckoning and an accurate description of what happened to the northern part of the Island.”
“Gwylliam deserved credit for all the lives he saved, yes,” said Aurelia with a hint of nervousness in her voice. “But there was innocent blood on his hands as well.”
“Would you care to elaborate on that?” Achmed asked politely.
She glanced to the side at Edwyn Griffyth, who sighed and signaled for her to continue.
“One of the things that Gwylliam did not account for in deciding that the entire population of Serendair needed to be evacuated before the Sleeping Child rose was the possibility that there might be people, individuals, certainly, but moreover tribes, clans, or whole races, that were reluctant to leave on his say-so, or because they accepted the upcoming cataclysm as an act of God, the One, the All.”
“Morons,” said Edwin Griffyth flatly.
“Perhaps. But in a situation where only a vision informs such a massively important decision, people can be forgiven for balking at the word of an as-yet-uncrowned monarch,” Aurelia said. “And, particularly once it became clear that the Sleeping Child was, in fact, rising, those whose insistence on denying the reality or living with it should have been granted their decisions as their own self-determination. The responsibility of the Crown to attend to them becomes null at that point.”
“Indeed,” said Edwyn. “You cannot save a fool from himself.”
“Gained,” said Aurelia. “But Gwylliam decreed that there needed to be a volunteer to do just that—someone to stand in his stead as king and hold the right of succession. It is my adjudged opinion, and that of history, that this choice was more about Gwylliam doubting his own vision than about needing to ‘maintain order in the last days.’ Any tribe or race of people who had decided that they wished to remain behind—such as the Lirin with the Oak of Deep Roots, Sagia—were well prepared to care for themselves. They understood the risks and the consequences and accepted them.
“But Gwylliam himself was not entirely certain that the vision his vizier had granted him, as the man had granted each new monarch upon his or her coronation, would come to pass. History records him as a, well, a mercurial personality, steady and stalwart one moment, insecure and filled with nagging doubt the next.” She paused and glanced at Edwyn Griffyth, mindful that she was describing the High Sea Mage’s father, but Edwyn merely nodded for her to continue.
“It was Gwylliam’s greatest fear that he had decimated the forests of his land, had pulled up every root that had been established, to accomplish one of the greatest feats of population movement ever recorded—only to discover that it had all been a trick, or a mistake, that the Sleeping Child would not, in fact, rise from the depths to destroy the Island. He feared he would have surrendered his throne, and his birthright, for nothing.”
“Which is why he condemned a man to a needless death to watch over that birthright,” Achmed said coldly. “Hector Monodiere.” He had heard the tale from MacQuieth, from the iconic soldier’s very tongue as the major part of the explanation of why he hated Gwylliam.
“Yes,” said Aurelia, “but Hector did not stay alone. Four others volunteered to remain behind with him, three of whom ultimately are believed to have perished with the Island.”
Achmed sat up straighter, having never heard this part of the story.
“Continue,” he said, undoubtedly violating academic protocol and not giving a damn that he was.
“Much of what is known about the final days of the Island comes from the writings of the only one of those who stayed that survived,” Aurelia went on. “That man was the youngest of the five, including Hector, a recently dubbed knight named Sevirym. He was apparently the idealist in the group who felt that there was something they could do to avert or minimize the upcoming Cataclysm, such as the endless sandbagging duty Hector continuously ordered, apparently to the dismay and good-natured grousing of the others.
“At the very last possible window, a rescue ship from Marincaer showed up unexpectedly, and Hector ordered Sevirym, against his will, or so he says frequently in his journals, to go with the ship, because its arrival had enabled them to secure passage for several dozen residents of the Gated City, a population Gwylliam had not accounted for when planning the exodus.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Achmed humorously. “That was a rough crowd.”
“By the time the exodus had passed, and the final rescue ships had stopped coming over the now-boiling sea, all that apparently remained in the Gated City were some starving men, women, and children who became Sevirym’s responsibility on the Stormrider, the ship that had come at the request of the king of Marincaer. The king had heard the tales of MacQuieth Monodiere standing in the surf, holding vigil for his son, and sent a last-minute rescue attempt to save Hector. All the ship returned with was the contents of the Gated City and a very traumatized, disappointed soldier whom Hector had chosen to send with them because of the youth’s oft-expressed hopes that there would be a good ending to the situation—and, for him at least, there was. But anyone who knew MacQuieth, and apparently his son was a great deal like him, knew that he would never let something as petty as certain death take him from his post.”
“I see,” said the Bolg king. “Pray go on.”
“Another one of Gwylliam’s most valued knights and, apparently, one of MacQuieth’s dearest friends, a Kith woman named Cantha, volunteered to stay, as did an army captain named Jarmon, about whom very little is known. Finally, Hector’s best friend, a Liringlas soldier and knight named Anaias, remained behind as well. Their families—wives and children—traveled together to Manosse with MacQuieth. All three of these people are believed to have died with Hector when the Island was taken down in volcanic fire.”
Achmed looked impatiently at Kasthien, the scholar noted as the expert on the oceanic impacts of the Cataclysm.
“What I want to know is this—there used to be a failed land bridge of a sort to the north of Serendair, east of the islands of Balatron, Briala, and Querel,” he said, glancing in annoyance at Jal’asee. “Is it still there? Or did it disappear when the Sleeping Child rose?”
“I’ve heard nothing of a failed land bridge, Majesty,” said Kasthien. “The entire underwater topography was reset as a result of the Cataclysm; as for the islands to the north of Serendair, Balatron and Briala lost leagues of coastline, and Querel for a lon
g time was totally submerged.”
Jal’asee cleared his throat quietly.
“The failed land bridge was, at least in part, a result of the attempt we made in the Third Age to cool the underwater grave of the Sleeping Child,” he said quietly, not meeting Achmed’s furious gaze. “The most recent reports of sailors is that it is occasionally seen, shallow below the surface, in the southern hemisphere’s spring to summer, which is approaching. Storms or undersea activity of moderate to heavy strength can occasionally even partially reveal it.”
Achmed nodded to Kasthien and Aurelia. “Thank you,” he said as pleasantly as he could. “I believe I am done with questions for you.”
The two scholars rose immediately and hurried out of the room. Achmed then turned to Fralwell.
“I seek your expertise and your opinion regarding the consequences of entombment of living matter within the Earth’s mantle,” he said, watching the monk’s eyes gleam nervously. “If something that lives in geologic strata, taking up considerable space, were to die and decay, would it shrink, as it would in the air of the upworld? Or would it maintain its heft and mass, due to a lack of exposure to that air?”
Edwyn Griffyth and Jal’asee exchanged a glance of alarm.
The monk, however, did not seem to notice.
“That is hard to say, Majesty,” he said, his voice low and musical. “Can you be more specific about the type of animal and geologic strata?”
“No.” Achmed’s voice stripped the air from the room.
The monk exhaled. “It would depend on the type of strata or substrate surrounding it, primarily. We have seen entire animals and trees maintain their mass if they perished in tar, for instance. So, without specifics, I would guess that an animal or plant, like a large root, that had great heft in life, but perished away from the decaying reach of the air, it would likely maintain a great deal of its mass.