Bitter Brine
I – Summer On Vai
I should have chosen speechlore, I thought as another gust of wind whipped snow under my hood. Folklore would have been an excellent choice as well. Perhaps mathematics, or meteorology. Only a few months ago, I had been more than content with my specialization. After several weeks in the frozen monotony of the Asundrian wilderness, however, even the history of Hishan arts struck me as far more appealing.
My research intersected with a variety of disciplines, and Iluma Aator – the Serpentine Academy’s oldest and most prestigious house of learning – was renowned for its wealth of mentors in every field a scholar could ever want. I therefore found myself confronted with an almost impossible choice when I had to select a specialization after earning the rank of adept.
Augur Kassan made a strong case for speechlore, the study of symbols, scriptures, and tongues. My familiarity with Ghevanese dialects worked in my favor and all but guaranteed me success in this field. However, Augur Kassan wasn’t known to be a pleasant man to work with. For years, I had heard fellow initiates whisper about petty quarrels between him and his peers, and getting caught up in such matters certainly wouldn’t have been conducive to my career.
The suggestion of history and political matters was made by Augur Lessego, and he had almost convinced me. He had spent his younger years at the court of Hish and tutored no less than six princes. With his silver tongue and penchant for diplomacy, Lessego surely wouldn’t have dragged his students into any rivalries. However, his ongoing campaign to be named an enigma of his field made me think he paid too much attention to his own politics to be a good mentor.
In the end, I followed the advice of Augur Wabald. Geography was an odd choice, considering it only tangentially touched upon my studies, but I was confident it would pay off in the end. Not many paths led to the Vai Isles, Wabald said. Too remote, too insignificant to be of interest to the enigmas, and the mysteries I found myself so enthralled by did not spark the same curiosity in them. As far as they were concerned, my fearless explorers and kings of legend were little more than pesky buccaneers; an insignificant nuisance, unworthy of academic attention. There was only one reason for the Academy to fund an expedition, Wabald explained. The unusual geography of the isles. If I hoped to set foot on the subject of my studies, I stood the best chance as a geographer.
Wabald was a friendly and patient man, and during our conversations he always struck me as honest. “Naturally, you’ll have to accept a few lesser assignments in the first years,” he had said. “Geography may not appeal to you as much as history or folklore, but it should not be neglected altogether. A land shapes its people, after all.” Between Kassan’s moody, sometimes outright rude demeanor and Lessego’s preoccupation with his campaign, I was certain to make the right choice with Wabald at the time.
I had been prepared to take on unpleasant tasks, yet when the first assignment was given to me I almost felt lucky. Adept Ellarian had fallen ill, I was told, and somebody had to take his place in the planned expedition to the Asundrian tundra. Shrouded in perpetual twilight, the vast and untamed lands had many mysteries to offer, and the Academy’s interest had steadily increased in recent years.
“This expedition concerns the native tribes first and foremost,” Wabald explained. “Little is known about these savages. Yet the Academy is aware of their presence, and knowing next to nothing about them is a bother to the enigmas.” He regarded me for a long moment, then turned back to the stained glass window of his solar. “Fortunately for you, their interest extends to the peculiar geography of the region.”
I had dreaded the prospect of being stuck in the cartography archives for months, therefore I was overjoyed that my mentor had secured this assignment for me. Although I was more accustomed to warmer climates, the thought of venturing to the harsh tundra was no cause for concern. Ellarian had already made arrangements before falling ill. Scouts, trackers, and heavers would join the expedition at Siedem Fort, the last bastion of civilization in those cold, lonely lands. In the company of seasoned sentinels, we’d have nothing to worry about, Wabald assured me. And I agreed – until I entered the uncharted lands of Asunder.
“Adept Mauro!”
I still hadn’t gotten used to my title, but I turned around when I heard it called nonetheless. It was Darek who had addressed me, one of Siedem Fort’s scouts. His stature and gruff voice almost comically matched his bear fur cloak; a tall, broad-shouldered man who always sounded as if he had a bad cold.
“The hunters have found a promising trail along the Icevein River,” Darek informed me when I joined his group by the fire. “Promising for your people anyway.” He made no secret of his dislike for our mission, a notion most of the men from Siedem Fort shared. Nosy scholars were a nuisance to them, a disruption to their routines. They put up with us because the Academy rewarded their cooperation with donations, but fine ale and cured meats couldn’t buy geniality in the end.
“Believe me, I’d rather pursue my own studies elsewhere,” I assured him. “In recent years, some of my peers have theorized that the Vai Isles were once fertile, much like the tropical coasts of Nybane. Had I gone there, we’d both be spared from this insufferable weather.”
“The cold ain’t no bother.” That was Buras; a short, burly trapper. His companions called him ‘the fox’ for his supposed copper mane, but I only saw an unremarkable shade of reddish blond under his hood. “It’s the savages you came to study. We’re about to enter the lands they inhabit. The last place a sane man would want to be.” He sat down on a large boulder and turned the skewers over the fire, making sure the snow hares would roast evenly from all sides. “They won’t be as welcoming as the moose men we met near the coast. The tribes you seek, they’re the true savages. They cook their slain foes into stews. Did you know that?”
“I have heard about such customs,” I admitted. There were many rumors about the remote peoples of Asunder; some outrageous, others mundane, none observed by scholars. “However, most of these claims were made by moose men, and they are known to war against any and all neighbors. You said so yourself. They might exaggerate to justify their quarrels and…”
“If you’ve heard such things, why do you still want to go there?” It was a statement. Buras called my sanity into question, but he didn’t truly expect an answer to that. “Aye, I know, your precious studies.” He looked up from the skewers, slightly shaking his head. “Do you people really have nothing better to do? Why don’t you study flowers in Nesh instead? Some lady might be interested in the pretty colors. All one needs to know about the savages is how to keep them away from our lands.”
To be frank, I agreed with the scouts and their disdain of our mission. I hated the cold, I hated the wind, I hated the snow, and I hated the isolation. The prospect of observing and documenting man-eating rites didn’t make things any better. But as appalling as the thought was, this was my first assignment as an adept. I could hardly turn around and tell the enigmas that I considered their task to be a waste of my time. Furthermore, my mentor had surely called in a favor or two to spare me the archives. No matter how much I disliked the reality of this once exciting assignment, I had to set an example for the initiates that accompanied us. They were not far behind myself in their respective studies. Many would likely receive the rank of adept upon our return, and we all wanted to remain in good standing with our mentors.
And so we marched on through ice and snow, along the banks of the frozen river, through the mountain pass known as Dusk’s Maw, into the uncharted expanse of eternal twilight. Our sleds were well-stocked for the laborious journey, my companions were pleasant enough, but the tristesse of the barren landscape got to me nonetheless. Grey rivers, grey hillscapes, grey mountains, grey ground, and above us the endless grey monotony of the sky. Why did people choose to live here? Certainly a more hospitable place could be found without angering neighboring tribes. And yet we hadn’t come across any inhabitants of these wildlands, except for two encampments near the shore – one belonging to the strangely disfigured moose men, the other to their wolf-worshipping brethren.
I had read about the uncanny looks of the remote tribes, but seeing them with my own eyes still left me baffled. The few depictions in Augur Ellarian’s journal hadn’t done justice to the queerness of their ghostly pale skin, the horn-like growths on their faces, or the presence of too many fingers on their hands. However, neither tribe practiced customs unusual enough to be of interest to the folklorists, therefore we had moved on from their territories after a brief stay.
Unfortunately, the lack of sightings extended to the tribes we had been sent to observe. After almost seven weeks of travel along the Icevein we still hadn’t located a settlement, although the scouts and trackers had finally picked up traces of life. In the foothills of a mountainous area Darek had spotted the remains of several does; slain by arrows, not the claws of wild beasts. Holes carved into the ice of the river and a nearby lake suggested somebody had been fishing, yet the frequent snowfall made tracking the fisher’s path impossible even for our seasoned scouts. However, we were confident that the savages would return here sooner or later. The lake was located in a small valley, surrounded by a fir grove, and we discovered that some of the trees had been cut; often a telltale sign of a nearby village. Furthermore, our own fishing efforts yielded an unexpectedly good catch. It seemed unlikely such rich fishing grounds had been abandoned.
We made camp higher up in the mountains where tall cliffs sheltered a plateau from the worst winds. From the lake and the valley we couldn’t be seen. Darek and his scouts made sure of that for our safety. On the other hand, we had an excellent view from above and would be able to spot approaching savages from the distance. Once we knew the direction of their settlement we’d send scouts to learn about its size and population. Should the sentinels think it safe to approach, we’d try to make contact – without giving away the position of our own camp.
Almost a week passed without further sightings. Stronger storms and heavier snowfall plagued the desolate landscape, therefore we rarely left the shelter the tall cliffs provided. The moose men – who I considered a marginally more reliable source than the wolf men – had been certain that the Icevein tribes were not truly nomadic. If a camp was attacked, they might erect the next one in a more secure location, but they’d stay close to the river banks, I was told. Halmat Wise Moose Brother, the queerly named chieftain of the tribe, had drawn a crude map for us in exchange for binoculars. According to him, the river branched off in two different directions beyond the mountains, both of which led to entirely uncharted regions. Therefore, Darek had deemed moving on too great of a risk, and I firmly agreed with his assessment.
It was the nadir of the fifth night in the mountains when our long, shivering wait on the plateau paid off. I sat by the fire with one of the initiates, Paskal, and passed the tedium of the night watch shift with daydreams of more fulfilling studies.
“Geography has always been my passion,” Paskal said with a sigh. “Coastal geography, island formations, the currents that shape them. The Aghast Straits, of course, and the islands of the Vapourian Sea. There’s nothing I can learn from a frozen river.”
I nodded in resigned agreement. There was nothing here for me either, and his words served as a painful reminder that it was summer on Vai. Barren or not, the isles seemed far more pleasant than the biting cold of these unexplored wildlands. “Between you and me, I did not volunteer for this expedition either,” I said, glancing to the stack of tomes I had taken with me. “I’d much rather pursue my own studies of Vai culture. Not much is written about the early history of the isles, and unsolved mysteries of that kind tempt me. We’d both find more insights on Vai, I presume. Once I get to plan my own expeditions I’ll make sure to take you along.”
“Why are you giving a shit about the Vai Isles anyway?” the not-so-copper fox barged into our quiet conversation. “Don’t give me that trite line about ‘the will of the serpent’. I doubt your snake god dreams of barren rocks and buccaneers.”
Piqued, I glared up to him from under my hood, but ignored the presumptuous thought that a mere adept could fathom the will of the serpent. “It’s the barren nature of the ‘rocks’ that intrigues me. There is no logical explanation why the Vai Isles aren’t as fertile as the tropical coasts of Nybane or Ghevan. Old texts mention…” I broke off and sighed to myself. There was no point in telling a man without a single scholarly bone in his body about this fascinating mystery. “Is our shift over?” I inquired instead and pulled the cloak tighter around my shoulders although the night was windless and calm for once. It certainly felt as if Paskal and I had sat here for hours.
“Don’t know,” Buras gave back with an indifferent shrug. “But there’s movement in the valley. Thought you’d want to know about that.”
II – Darker Gods
We put out the fire in a hurry. Our camp was unlikely to be noticed in its hidden location, but we did not want to take any risks. Even other tribes of the white wasteland feared the people we had come to observe, and we found it prudent to heed their warnings. Halmat Wise Moose Brother had described the remote tribes as ‘worse than the wolves’. Their chieftain, Tengat Seven Claws, had made the same comparison, saying they were ‘even more terrible than the moose men’. Neither of them had been particularly hostile toward us, but that the rivaling factions agreed about their mysterious neighbors was reason enough to practice caution.
“They don’t burn their dead,” Halmat had told me, visibly appalled by the notion. “They feast upon corpses, even those of their own kin. The dead should feed the land, not the living.”
“The winds whisper no prayers out there.” Tengat Seven Claws had sounded just as disturbed as his rival chieftain when he spoke about lands along the banks of the Icevein. “Those mountains belong to gods darker than ours.”
Both had hinted at unspeakable rites; hideous practices neither of them dared describe. And yet here I was with my small expedition; tasked with the recording of these savage customs to satisfy the idle curiosity of old men.
“Find my binoculars,” I whispered to Paskal. “And be quiet! Don’t wake the others just yet. The noise would only increase the risk of being discovered.” Hurriedly, the youth snuck to the tents and I followed Buras to our outlook on the ledge. The rock formations were advantageous here, granting us an excellent view while hiding us from sight at the same time. Our cloaks, made of grey bear pelts, further helped us blend in with the terrain. Despite my confidence in our concealment I still held my breath when I peered down to the valley.
The shine of fire illuminated the night as a procession of forty, perhaps fifty figures emerged from the fir grove. Some carried torches, others weapons or fur-wrapped bundles, but I couldn’t make out the precise nature of either from the distance. “There must be a cavern or tunnel somewhere in the forest,” Buras whispered. “Probably leads out of the valley and connects with the pass beyond the steep ridges.” I silently nodded and kept watching the figures, trying to memorize the scene I’d later have to describe in my notes.
Although the full moon and their torches provided ample lighting, it was still hard to make out details. The figures were clad in several layers of fur and bleached leather, adorned with skulls and bones of various sizes. I couldn’t tell whether there were men, women, or both in the valley as the queer attire made them all look the same. I’d have to look more closely once Paskal brought me the binoculars, I decided, and therefore only tried to commit their actions to memory for the moment. The group had gathered on the shore of the frozen lake, and a few had begun to chisel holes into the ice. Only the pounding of their stone axes echoed through the valley and I became keenly aware of the eerie silence down there. Whatever they were doing, it apparently didn’t require any communication. Nobody gave orders or instructions, nobody gestured. Those who were not chiseling waited silently, motionlessly for the completion of the task.
Five holes had been cut, in no obvious pattern, and now the tribesmen carrying the unidentified bundles stepped out of the mass of silent spectators. There were five of them as well, and they placed their mysterious bundles on the icy ground. When they unwrapped them the eerie silence in the valley was broken. Faint cries echoed across the frozen lake and through the forest, and a moment later I saw them. Five babes, no older than a few weeks at most, lay on the furs they had been wrapped in.
“What are they doing?” I heard Buras mutter, disgust and disbelief in his voice. “Those babes will fall ill or die if they’re exposed to the cold any longer! If nothing else, the savages should know how to take care of their own.”
“An initiation rite, I presume,” I quietly replied. “There are similar customs in other parts of the world. In the deserts of Hish, for instance, sun priests bathe newborns in the warm waters of an oasis. The Hishan believe it bestows the sun god’s favor upon the child. This tribe may do the same with ice water from the lake – a blessing meant to harden their children for life in this inhospitable region.” I jumped at the tap on my shoulder, but immediate relief followed when Paskal held the binoculars under my nose. “Cutting one hole for each child might be a matter of purity, or symbolize that every man must face the cold all alone.”
What I now saw through the binoculars seemed to confirm my assumption. The babes had been picked up and were carried toward the holes in the ice. However, just one moment later my theory fell apart. My heart skipped a beat, Buras and Paskal gasped in horror. The savages simply dropped the babes through the holes in the ice, and watched them sink into the freezing water of the lake! We were not witnessing an initiation of new members into their tribe. It was a sacrifice.
Captivated by the horrific realization we stared into the valley in disquiet silence; unable to move, unable to speak. Watched the fur-clad figures return to the shore, to the empty wrappings. Not one of the spectators had moved or made a sound. I had read about a fair amount of strange foreign customs, but never come across anything as alien as this. Why were there no chants, no gestures or pleas to their gods? What was the purpose of this abhorrent rite? How could the onlookers be so indifferent to the gruesome fate of these babes? I directed my binoculars to the nearest torch bearer, trying to make out the expression on his or her face, unwilling to believe there was no stirring of emotion at all.
Had I not been breathless already, my breath would have been taken by what I saw under the fur-clad hood. A man’s face, old and furrowed by storms and sea salt. Two long scars ran across it, as if an archer had marked his target to place a precise shot right between the man’s eyes. Skin darker than my own; certainly not the complexion of an Asundrian tribesman. Strands of greying black hair, a scruffy long beard of the same mishmash color, and eyes bulging and black as the eastern sea completed this grim visage. Neither the layers of fur nor the years in his features could hide the man’s true nature from me. I gasped in disbelief although I already knew the impossible to be true.
“Bitterbrine.”
“What?” Paskal and Buras woke from their motionless state at the same time, irritated by the single word I had muttered.
“Yemun Torgai,” I whispered, still struggling to make sense of my discovery in the valley. “The ‘Lost King of Vai’ as scholars call him.”
Buras grunted to himself, then tore the binoculars from my hand and peered through them. “Those savages all look the same,” he concluded. “Maybe you wish there was some legendary buccaneer down there, so the journey feels less like a waste of your time.” He gave the binoculars up without protest when I took them back.
“There are few depictions of him,” I whispered, awe-struck by my discovery. “However, the Academy houses several of them in the archives. I have seen them many times.” In the valley the tribesmen had left the banks of the lake, and I watched closely as they stomped back into the forest. “The years were not kind to Yemun Torgai, but time cannot disguise him altogether. I’m certain it is him, the man who inspired me to take a scholar’s path.”
“Why would a pirate king be here, so far from the sea?” Paskal gestured for the binoculars. I let him have them for the moment as there was not much left to see. “We’re two months from the nearest coast. No ship could travel this far on an icy river.” He paused, lowered the binoculars, and thoughtfully regarded me from the side. “And how would he inspire you if you never met him? You told me you never set foot on Vai.”
“My uncle was a Ghevanese sailor,” I explained as we had rekindled our fire and sat around it, mulling wine in a small iron kettle. “He told me about the Lost King when I was only a boy, and the mystery of his disappearance has occupied my thoughts ever since. My uncle had just signed on as a ship boy when Yemun Torgai was crowned. People spoke of this dashing, young king in every port. During the coronation great promises had been made. Bitterbrine, as they called him, revealed that his ancestors had discovered lands in the east; fertile islands in the unexplored Vast he promised to conquer. Two years into his reign he set out to claim these new shores and…” I paused and stirred the wine, and Buras took the chance to interject.
“And never came back from his fabled voyage. Isn’t that how all legends go? A raving lunatic sets out to conquer the world, and he’s never heard from again because his ship turned out to be less sturdy than he thought?”
I cut him off. “He came back. Three years later, the Black Hydra returned to Vai.” I left the kettle to Paskal who had fetched mugs from his tent, and pulled my cloak tighter. “But you are not entirely wrong,” I then admitted, glancing to Buras. “Lunatics they were, if the rumors are to be believed. More than half of the crew had lost their lives, and those who came back alive lost their minds instead. All but the captain died by their own hand within weeks.”
Paskal filled the mugs, and the scent of spiced wine in the air grew stronger. “What happened to them on their voyage?” he asked. “And why didn’t the same thing happen to their captain?”
“It probably did,” Buras barked as he took his mug. “They just won’t admit that their king took his own life because it makes them look weak.”
“Possible,” I conceded with some hesitation. “Some even say he went back to the east, to the islands his ancestors supposedly discovered. However, Augur Nurash – a man without ulterior motives – believes neither theory. He was studying the sea life near the shores of Vai at the time, and witnessed the events after Bitterbrine’s return in person. I discussed them with him many times, and he is certain there is much more to the king’s disappearance. A fortnight after Yemun Torgai’s return his crown was found on the Riptide Throne, and the Black Hydra had disappeared from the harbor. There was no note, no letter, and nobody had seen the ship leave in the night.” I took the mug Paskal held out to me and blew the delicious steam away before drinking a sip. “A search was launched immediately, but neither the Black Hydra nor any trace of her captain were ever found. Scholars, poets, priests, and of course the inhabitants of Vai are still searching for answers to the day.”
“I hadn’t heard about this,” Paskal interjected. “It is not a subject I’d expect to come up in my field, but I attended some of Augur Nurash’s lectures. He likes the sounds of his own voice quite a bit, therefore I find it surprising he never shared such an intriguing tale with his students.”
“Augur Nurash shared his observations with me because he knew of my interest in the Vai Isles,” I replied. “Shortly after Bitterbrine’s disappearance Vassar Amaan – the scion of a lesser line – was crowned the new king, and he strongly discouraged any further search for his predecessor. Since his death a handful of scholars have taken a new interest in the matter, but it remains difficult to research due to the lack of new information. Naturally, the power of the Torgai line declined, no further voyages have been made to the west, and many witnesses of the original accounts were silenced during the Amaan reign.”
Buras sloshed his mulled wine around, warming his hands on the mug. “These scoundrels may not be the brightest, but this Amaan lad had the right idea,” he said. “Losing a king is embarrassing enough as it is, but finding him among savages who sacrifice their own kin is a whole different story.”
“It is,” I responded, thoughtfully sipping from my mug. “A story that cannot be left untold. It is my duty as a scholar to find out what happened, why a king left his throne behind and went to the end of the world.”
III – The Bitter Taste Of Distant Waters
“Aren’t you scholars supposed to be smart?” Darek and the scouts standing behind him stared at me in disbelief. I couldn’t blame them for thinking I had lost my mind. My proposed course of action did seem insane. Had one of them said the same thing to me only a few days before, I would have called him a madman as well.
“I am not asking you to go with me,” I said, my tone calm and deliberate to ease the tension. “Nor you.” I shot a glance to the initiates and scribes, cowering by the tents. “I will go alone. If need be I will say my party left me behind as to not alert the tribesmen to your presence. You can observe from above, and I will not hold it against you if you leave at the first sign of danger.” I paused and took a deep breath, then continued. “Even if it means you’ll truly abandon me here, among savages and snow. I cannot leave without at least trying to uncover the truth. This might be the only chance to learn what happened to Yemun Torgai. I know, the fate of a pirate king is not important to any of you, but I also know that I would regret not doing what I’m about to do for the rest of my life.”
I also regretted descending to the lake as soon as I heard my voice echo in the valley. What, in the name of the serpent, was I doing? Calling out for a lost king who had taken refuge with a savage clan that sacrificed its own babes… Darek was right. This was utter madness. And yet I had done it, and I did again.
“Bitterbrine! Yemun Torgai!”
This time I omitted the fact that I was unarmed, although I doubted the lost king or the tribesmen would care either way. I was evidently alone on the shores of the lake. With or without a weapon, a lone man was no threat to anyone who could survive in these frozen wildlands. Admittedly, I had felt some measure of relief when my first shouts had received no answer, but my pride as a scholar refused to leave it at that. Yemun Torgai had been in his thirties when he disappeared, and several decades had passed since. Not even a hardy captain like him would live forever. There would not be another chance to find out what he had discovered beyond the eastern horizon, what had taken the sanity of his crew. His tale would be lost to the ravages of time; shrouded in mystery, buried under half-truths and legends. No, I could not leave. The truth was just out of arm’s reach, hiding somewhere in these snowy mountains. If I didn’t uncover it now, nobody ever would.
“Yemun Torgai! I only wish to speak to you! I have no hostile intentions!”
The fir trees rustled, shaking off snow and icicles from their branches, and I instinctively took a step back. Closer to the icy grave of five infants. I shuddered at the thought, but I kept my eyes on the movement in the forest. Somebody was coming to answer my calls, no doubt.
Despite age and hardship, he still looked imposing. Clad in several layers of fur and leather, he appeared bulkier and taller than he probably was underneath. A cloak patched together from various beasts dragged behind him; the white of snow bears and hares, the silvery brown of seals, the darker shades of wolves. Most disturbingly, his pauldrons appeared to be made from tanned human skin as I spotted the stretched proportions of a face on his left shoulder. He carried his infamous ornate war axe, although the blades had been replaced with crude shards of stone. Wild, shaggy hair stuck out from under his fur-lined hood; stringy and greying like the long beard. His features were even more rugged than I had expected. Scars deep as canyons, gaunt cheeks, skin tough like leather. The most frightening detail of all, however, was the lack of madness in his eyes.
“Who tracked me down at the edge of the world?”
I had never heard his voice, never even met him in person, but it felt as if I recognized the timbre at once. Creaking like an old tree under the weight of its years, coarse like the sea wind, haunted like the deepest dungeon of a long abandoned ruin.
“Mauro,” I got out, still incredulous that the lost king stood in front of me. “Adept Mauro,” I then hastily clarified. Maybe, a part of me hoped, identifying myself as a scholar would ease the tension in the cold air.
“I don’t know you.” Bitterbrine took the axe off his shoulder, rammed its strange stone blade into the snow, and folded his hands over the handle. “And you’re too young to know me,” he added after scrutinizing my face for a while.
“I’m a scholar,” I blurted out. “My studies concern the history of your homelands. This expedition…” I paused and took a deep breath to regain my composure. “One of my peers was supposed to lead it. His expertise lies with the customs of remote tribes of Asunder. However, he fell ill shortly before our departure, and I was assigned to take his place. A lucky coincidence, really. Most of my peers would not have recognized…”
“Very lucky.” Bitterbrine scoffed and spit into the snow. “If I wanted to be pestered by the likes of you, do you think I’d be here?”
“I suppose not.” I stifled the urge to take another step back. “Though it bears the question… Why are you here? This is not a place where one just happens to find himself stranded. The Black Hydra was last seen in the port of…”
“She sank near the Cliffs of Nere,” Bitterbrine cut me off. “And no, she did not run ashore. You got that right, scholar. My own hand steered her against the sharp rocks.” He paused and absently regarded the ledge I had come from. “Not even the sentinels ever venture past Dusk’s Maw. So I deliberately sailed even farther down the coast, then made my way inland on foot. Away from the forsaken seas. Away from all your ‘civilized’ ignorance and deceit.” He scoffed and glared to the hillside again, this time more overtly. “You do not belong here, you and your little party up there. These are savage lands. They belong to savage people who do not avert their eyes from the primordial truths of the world.”
It didn’t surprise me that he knew where our camp was. The harsh reality of my situation had finally sunk in. We were out of our element; ingenuous visitors to a place wilder and older and more hostile than we could have ever imagined. Upon our departure from Iluma Aator, even from Siedem Fort, we had considered the expedition to be well-prepared. But we had not made it here due to preparation, luck, or skill. We were alive because the peoples of these wildlands showed us a strange kind of mercy. They had decided to leave us be. They hadn’t confronted us, hoping we’d leave after witnessing their cruel rite. Maybe a part of me had already accepted this truth when I had begun my descent into the valley.
“Here, look.” I fumbled to make my collar visible under the thick layers of my coat and show Bitterbrine the lone rune embroidered on it. “Geography. I earned it because of you. Your tale sparked my interest in the Vai Isles. Their customs, culture, and history.” He didn’t seem impressed by my words, and only regarded my anxious efforts with narrowed eyes. “You are right. I do not belong here. I don’t know a thing about the greater truths you apparently found. But there’s a small truth here for me; one that has shaped my life and guided my choices. I have only my gratitude to offer in exchange for your story, and it probably means nothing to you, but perhaps…”
I broke off when Bitterbrine quietly chuckled; amusement or pity, I could not tell. “I, too, once sailed beyond the known horizons, ” he said. “Searching for something I had heard of in legends, not knowing if it truly existed at all. And I, too, found a truth that had better been left undiscovered.” He nodded over his shoulder to the edge of the forest. “Not a soul believed me when I returned, instead they called me insane. It won’t be any different for you, should you make it back to your civilized lands. I can as well let you take that ‘small truth’ with you on your way to a cold grave.”
A small campfire awaited us behind the first lines of trees. I assumed Bitterbrine had been watching me for a while from this place. There was a large boulder that had apparently served him as a seat, and next to it on the ground lay the remains of a laughably small meal. A bird of some sort that had probably been roasted, each tiny bone stripped perfectly clean of the little flesh it once held.
“You know of the claims my ancestors made.” Bitterbrine sat down on his boulder and nodded to a snow-covered stack of timber I had not noticed at first. “Everyone knew what they said. Only few believed them. They spoke of green shores in the east, fertile lands for my people to conquer and settle.” He waited for me to brush the snow off the timber and sit down on the wonky stack. “I believed it. Of course I did. Ever since I was a boy my grandfather told me those stories. ‘It is our prerogative to tame the vast beast known in the east!’ he used to say. And this is what I told my people once I ascended to the throne. They, too, believed it. At the time, there was little else to believe in.”
I silently nodded, still trying to find a somewhat comfortable position on my wobbly seat. Yemun Torgai’s predecessor was widely considered one of the worst kings in the history of the Vai Isles; a misguided man who lacked foresight and vision. Years of ill-fated voyages and failed invasions of Umin and Nybenese colonies had culminated in his inglorious death when his own guard had stabbed him to death in a tavern. The resulting disarray allowed the Torgai line to press a claim and crown Yemon Torgai, already an accomplished captain at the time. The young, bold successor with big dreams of new shores inspired the people, gave them direction, rekindled their ambitions, promised great things – and put an end to the quarrels that had emerged during years of discontent.
“And what you believed turned out to be false?” I surmised. “You knew you couldn’t keep your promise because there were no green islands in the east?”
Bitterbrine laughed, but the sound lacked any notion of amusement. “There were islands, but green they were not.” He poked the fire with the blade of his axe, then leaned the weapon against the nearest tree. “We had come across a number of islands in our year at sea. Most were much smaller than Vai Si or Tange Var, but they were enough to allow us to gather some supplies. Timber, fruit, and once we found a colony of seabirds with plenty of eggs.” He sighed and gestured to my seat, beckoning me to put more wood into the fire. “But the farther we sailed, the more scarce and barren the islands became,” he continued while I fed a handful of twigs to the flames. “Hadn’t seen any land in weeks when my outlook finally spotted an ‘archipelago’ on the horizon. That’s what he called it anyway. In truth it was more of a sandbank. Flat, bleak, partially flooded, no telling how far the shoal extended under the waves. We’d have changed course and sailed around it in a safe distance if it hadn’t been for the black stones…”
“Black stones?” I echoed, but the lost king didn’t need a prompt to go on.
“Have you ever seen the Riptide Throne?” There was scorn in his eyes, yet still no hint of madness. “This dreadful thing, carved from lies and deceit… But back then, I didn’t know that. I thought destiny was within reach when I saw the ruins. A fractured piece of an enormous column, made from the same black stone as the cursed liar’s chair. It had to be what my ancestors had seen! The promised lands, waiting for me to finally claim them!” He scoffed and rummaged around under his gruesome coat, then produced a waterskin which he opened with his yellow, crooked teeth. “My crew was ecstatic,” he continued after taking a pull. “Our long, strenuous voyage had not been in vain. Their new king had not led them astray.”
I coughed after taking a sip from the waterskin he had offered to me. Never before or after have I tasted something as repugnant as this bizarre brew; a blend of mosses, lichen, herbs, and fermented fish. “They didn’t doubt you when the ‘green shores’ were merely a sandbank?” I got out, handing the waterskin back to the lost king.
“They did not see a sandbank,” he said, ignoring my apparent disgust with his swill. “They saw a promise kept against insurmountable odds. The column was a beacon my ancestors had left behind! That was their unanimous conclusion. The archipelago we were looking for couldn’t be far, and the inscriptions in the ruins would show us the way.”
“But they didn’t?”
Bitterbrine nodded, gloom in his eyes. “They didn’t.”
IV – The Liar’s Chair
“The tales my ancestors told spoke of ancient times. Centuries had passed since these things supposedly happened.” Bitterbrine took another swig from his brew. “The sea is a vast beast, moody and erratic, constantly shaping and changing the world. It carves new paths through rock and sand. Islands emerge and are swallowed again. We assumed we had reached the outermost islands of an archipelago, that the green shores were only a few days or weeks away.”
“A reasonable assumption,” I responded. “Islands surrounded by shoals and shallow waters would necessitate a beacon or lighthouse. I’d have drawn the same conclusion from the presence of man-made debris.”
Bitterbrine dismissively scoffed into his beard. The agreement of a landlubber meant nothing to him, but he didn’t dwell on it. “We took a boat,” he continued his story. “The Black Hydra remained anchored at a safe distance.” He seemed far away in his mind, perhaps trying to visualize the moment and recall all the details. “I remember Balgun, the outlook, saying the eerie calm concerned him, just before I climbed down to the dinghy. Not the slightest breeze, a taste of imminent thunder in the air… I knew what he meant, but I wasn’t worried. ‘It’s been like this for days,’ I told him. ‘The storm waited this long. It will wait a day longer.'” Another pull from the waterskin, then Bitterbrine put it back under the layers of fur and leather. “The sandbank and its ruins weren’t far from the ship. Had the storm come, we’d have noticed the first signs right away. We’d have had enough time to make it safely back to the Black Hydra.” He paused and sighed to himself. “The storm never came, and not all of us made it back. Only two out of the six men in the dinghy did.”
His description painted an eerie image in my mind. A thousand questions emerged, but I refrained from interrupting and let him continue.
“We soon found the water too shallow to row any closer, so we left one man behind with the boat.” His hands rummaged around under his layered cloak, and this time they produced a leather bundle from a pouch. “Trudged through the murky water and mud, always wary for hidden currents or sudden declines.” The bundle contained a stack of seal blubber, something I had eaten during our stay with the wolf men at the coast. I accepted when Bitterbrine wordlessly offered a piece, relieved it was something at least vaguely familiar. “We didn’t speak. Looking back, we probably couldn’t put our thoughts into words. The strange sense of foreboding in the air and the water around us. The awe when we realized just how enormous the black column was. We hadn’t seen another soul in almost a year, and maybe the remains of the structure reminded us how incredibly alone we were so far beyond known horizons.”
“Almost a year…” I echoed, talking more to myself. To my knowledge, no man had ever sailed that far to the east and returned. Regardless of outcome, Bitterbrine’s feat was impressive.
He wasn’t paying attention to me or the words I had muttered. “That cursed column… I have never seen anything like it before or after…” His gaze jumped to me; alert and piercing, for the moment not clouded by the fog of time. “I’ve seen giants out here. I know what I’m talking about when I say not even their kind could have carved it. Tall as a tower, cut from one piece of stone. Days are dreary in the eastern sea, but when I stood in front of the column…” The fog returned as his gaze drifted back through the years. “The stone devoured the light. I could feel its insatiable, unnatural hunger.” He placed the blubber on a small rock between us without taking a piece for himself. “Didn’t deter us from going closer, blinded by ‘destiny’ as we were… No, we had to read the inscriptions. Had to touch the queer, iridescent surface.” A storm above distant waters rose in his eyes, and a flood of contempt almost swallowed the following hoarse whisper. “Had to see those things, those terrible things…”
“You were able to read the inscriptions?” I blurted out. As harrowing as the recount was, I found it hard to stifle my excitement about this particular detail. “They were written in your script? You understood the language? What did the text say? Was it written by your ancestors as you suspected?”
The lost king returned to the here and now for a moment, looking straight into my eyes as he answered. “Couldn’t read a thing,” he grunted with an air of irritation. “No, what I have seen was not written on the black stone…” He lazily lifted his arm, pointed to his temple. “Here. That’s where I’ve seen it. The ghastly truth I can never unsee, never unknow.” He wheezed as if the slight motion had been exhausting, then reached for the waterskin under his coat. “Gabret and Yarfin must have seen it as well, but I cannot say for certain. Yarfin, he pulled his dagger and cut his own throat right then and there. One hand on the hilt, the other still resting on the column.” After a swig he offered the dreadful brew to me, but this time I had the wits to decline. “Gabret was screaming without making a sound. That’s the only way I can explain it. A grimace of terror and pain, mouth open wide, yet nothing came out. He wouldn’t move either, just stood there like a statue…”
The gruesome description made me choke on my words, and nothing came of my attempt to inquire further.
“Yentar and Naxin had gone around the column.” Bitterbrine placed the waterskin next to the blubber, and his gaze got lost in the flames of the meager fire. “Found their corpses in the shallow water, surrounded by blood. Could be they took their own lives. Could be they killed each other. I’ll never know.” His voice was absent, almost indifferent, although he didn’t try to hide that the memory moved him. “Don’t know how I made it back to the boat either. I reckon Gabret dragged me there or I dragged him. Whichever it was, it didn’t matter. He went overboard before we reached the Black Hydra. Deliberately drowned himself. At least that’s what Mondar told me, and I had no reason to doubt it. In the following days half the crew did the same.” He lifted his head, but although our eyes met, his gaze went through me as if I was air. “The voices told them to do it, they said. I still hear their screams, their deranged babble and haunted whispers…”
“What have you seen?” I urgently inquired. “What made you give up your crown and your people?”
The fog cleared from his eyes almost in an instant, and it felt as if he was staring right into my soul. “The terrible truth that slumbers beneath distant waves. The great lie.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled little clouds from the depths of his lungs. “I gazed back through time when I touched the black column. Back to the dark day when doom came upon us.” Another pause, another deep breath. “Or perhaps I should say ‘when we forged our own demise’.”
“We?” I echoed, not sure I followed his story. “You think something your crew did sparked the madness?”
“No.” Bitterbrine’s voice was firm and foreboding. “We, the people of Vai. We who foolishly pray to those that betrayed us. I saw ancient days; when the shores of our home were still green and fertile. I saw our harvests destroyed by the wrath of storms and the ravenous sea. I saw the pact we made, thinking it would be our salvation.”
“A pact?” I interjected. “With whom? I read every historical record that pertains to the Vai Isles, and I never came across mentions of a pact.” In fact, the records exclusively spoke of hostile encounters; raids of coastal towns, attacks on merchant vessels, kidnapped colonial governors during Ghevan’s attempted expansion to the north-eastern archipelagos. There were dozens of documented reasons, dating back centuries, why neither the Ghevanese nor the Umini thought highly of Vai. Could it be that Bitterbrine’s ancestors had made contact with a people yet unknown to the civilized world? If this was the case, I’d return to Iluma Aator with a discovery grander than I could ever have dreamed of!
“They came from the sea,” the lost king poured oil onto the fires of my imagination.
“Where was the homeland of these people?” I couldn’t help but interrupt once more. The thought of returning to my mentors with insights regarding the mysterious eastern sea made me throw caution to the winds. “Did they come from the east?”
“They were not people.” Bitterbrine glared at me from underneath bushy brows. “Things. Fish things. Weird, leathery skin. Webbed hands, and those disgusting black, bulging eyes… I saw them crawl ashore when I touched the black column. Heard them claim to be spawns of a god that dwells beneath the waves. That they could give us power, make us kings of all seas.” The sanity was drained from his eyes the longer he spoke, and in its place an oddly calm kind of madness surfaced. “And my foolish ancestors believed them.”
My dreams of making a noted discovery dissipated as quickly as they had taken form, and the sudden disenchantment momentarily left me speechless.
“And they kept their promise!” the lost king cried out, oblivious to my bewilderment. “They kept their promise!” His laughter echoed in the valley; unhinged and desperate at the same time. “They brought gifts of pearls and precious metal, and they gave us the accursed chair.” The words turned into a whisper now, the rushing of a distant ocean. “Made us kings to rule all of the seas!” A mad giggle followed. “In truth, they bound us to their forsaken domain. Yet the early sea kings believed the Vai people had been chosen, elevated above lesser men. They adorned themselves with the foul gifts from the sea, erected temples in our new god’s honor, and punished anyone who refused to worship in them.”
His madness had a sobering effect on me, and I became keenly aware of the perilous situation I found myself in. Alone in the frozen wildlands of Asunder, far from civilization, listening to the deranged ramblings of a once fearsome pirate whose axe was only one arm’s length away. “You saw all this on the sandbank, when you touched the black column?” I asked after a while. Humoring him and playing along with the absurd tale struck me as the wisest course of action if I wanted to get out of this grove alive.
“I did. I saw it all.” Bitterbrine stared into the fire. “I saw our green lands wither and wilt in the coming years. The more my people worshipped these dreadful half-beasts, the more the isles changed. The fields became salty and barren, our livestock brought forth strange, fish-like traits. Goats covered in scales, chickens with gashes that resembled gills on their necks.” A long pause, a deep sigh. “The fish things visited our shores less and less, and when our hopes and prayers were all we had left to give, they stayed away altogether.” He glowered at me as if he expected an answer, but continued to speak before I had sorted my thoughts. “This is the truth. This is what the black column showed me. This is why I couldn’t stay on the cursed isles. Because I refused to live anymore among the ignorance and the arrogance my ancestors had sown.” He abruptly got up from his boulder, grabbed the waterskin, then shouldered his axe. “Out here, we understand that gods are not to be worshipped. We distract them with sacrifices, soothe them with rituals, divert their attention – but we never pray. Indifference is the only true blessing gods can bestow upon mortal men. And this is the only lesson I can teach you, scholar.”
Confused and disturbed, I returned to the camp, long after the lost king had disappeared into the snowy forest. Had I really risked my life to listen to a madman’s ramblings? The tale simply sounded too fantastical, too absurd, yet I couldn’t help thinking there might be a kernel of truth in it either. I certainly believed Bitterbrine had sailed to the far east, farther than any sailor before him. Of all the things he had told me, this was the least outlandish claim. I even thought it was possible that he had discovered a sunken land out there. However, the black column that had shown him the distant past had to be a product of his imagination. Maybe, upon realizing the promise to his people had been broken, his mind had turned the barren sandbank into a sinister, mad place. Maybe he couldn’t bear the shame of returning home empty-handed, and thought his mysterious disappearance would make for a more worthwhile legacy to his reign. Maybe the years in isolation had simply jumbled his memories. Maybe he had told this strange lie to himself for so long that he finally came to believe it.
I didn’t tell my companions what had truly transpired. Of course, Darek and the initiates had observed the conversation by the lake. They had seen me follow a fur-clad savage into the small forest, and emerge unscathed a while later. I had to tell them something, and I chose to concede that the risk I took hadn’t been worth it. There was no telling whether Bitterbrine had lost his mind on the fabled voyage or after leaving the Vai Isles, I said, but I had no doubt that he was as insane as any man could ever be.
“There was no spark of recognition in his eyes when I called him by his name,” I lied. “He didn’t remember the names or places I mentioned, and kept asking why I thought of him as a king. Since I had no proof for my claim and couldn’t offer an explanation how he had wound up at the end of the world either, he called me a liar and told me to get lost.”
The initiates agreed to omit my encounter in the valley from the records. The foolish risk I had taken would reflect unfavorably on the expedition, and nobody wanted to tarnish their good standing with the mentors at the Academy. We wrote our reports about the rite we had observed, mentioned our stay with the wolf men and the moose men, and left it at that.
Yet some days, when I watch ships depart from my window on Iluma Aator, I wonder what truly lies out in the eastern sea. Try to reconcile Yemun Torgai’s demeanor with the evident absurdity of his tale. Had the madness been there all along and I just hadn’t seen it? Was his terrible chronicle, in fact, true? Had he clung to the last shreds of sanity in hopes of convincing me to believe him? And whenever I ponder these questions for too long, I hear the lost king’s voice whisper in the back of my mind. “Indifference,” he says, “the only true blessing.” And I turn away, return to my comfortable chambers, disperse dangerous contemplations in the archives. Let sleeping gods lie beneath the black waves, undisturbed.