The morning dawned dimly with a steady drizzle. Sixday. Of course. Though tired from the evening’s exertions, I was eager to be up and gone from here. Who knows what sort of repercussions last night’s activities would cause in a society like this? That temple, though vile, was an accepted part of this city and it was impossible to know how people would react. It was best to be ready for anything when we emerged.
I used the chamber pot, then started putting my leg armor on as Bran was stirring in his bed. When he cracked open an eye and saw me, he squinted at the window, then rolled out of bed and started doing the same. I knocked on the wall separating our room with Elle and Mira’s, then started helping Bran with his armor. He helped me with my cuirass and pauldrons when we were done with his armor, then we packed up and stepped into the hallway. I heard the girls moving around, so we waited patiently outside their room. It wasn’t a long wait. After saying good morning, we all went downstairs together to the common room, which was empty. Not even Bomar was present to tend his inn.
“Strange. It’s unlike an innkeeper to be sleeping at this time of the morning.” I said.
“They all know it was us,” Mira said. “When we got back last night, there was no one in the common room. If the regulars aren’t here, then trouble’s coming. We need to get out of town right now.”
“It’s probably best to eat on the boat anyway,” Bran grumbled.
“Would’ve been nice to have one more hot meal, but it’ll be nicer to be alive and free,” Mira said.
We were already paid up, so we set our keys on the counter and left. The Sixday rain would continue all day long, and the wind may be a problem for us. I didn’t know what the conditions were like on the sea yet. We weren’t even novice sailors, and we would be attempting our maiden voyage in foul weather. I hoped that Bran and Elle would be praying a lot.
Mira led us to the docks, then all the way to the end where the dry dock was. We passed the damaged cog as we entered the woodshop where the old sailor emerged from yesterday. He was there at a workbench, drilling a peg hole in a plank that looked like it would be a railing before long. Mira knocked politely at the open door.
“Ah, good morning,” the sailor said. “I was wondering if yesterday’s offer was a prank.” He set his auger down. “Come in, come in.”
“Thanks,” Mira said brightly as we entered the shop. Rainwater was still running down her helm, but she was determined to make the best of it. “We’re here to make the purchase as promised.”
Mira produced the bag of coins we had assembled last night before going to bed and set it on the workbench. It made a substantial jingle. She indicated that he should count the coins with a little gesture towards the bag. We waited as patiently as we could as he started making little stacks of coins. It takes a long time to count out a thousand coins, it turns out. It seemed even longer when you hadn’t had breakfast. He handed three gold royals back to Mira that we must have miscounted.
“All right, then. She’s all yours,” the sailor said. “I’ll get my boys together and we’ll help you get her into the water. Hope you brought some pitch.” He left the coins on the table without any sign of worry and stepped outside.
We followed him outside to wait in the rain. He went inside a house next door and came back outside with six men. They didn’t look happy to be out in the rain, but they all took up ropes around perimeter of the cog on the pier to pull it back all the way into the water. Bran and I moved to the front of the boat to help push. While I was out of sight of the men, I used my ability with mending objects to repair the damage. The magic I used surrounded the keel in a sparkling aura, and it pressed itself back out and into its normal shape, settling in place like the thick beam had never been broken. I worked on the broken planks around the keel next. In a few moments, the cog was as good as new.
“All, right, boys!” the old man said. “Heave!”
The group of us strained at the hull. Slowly, the ship was pulled back into the ocean. It was a real struggle with the waves, even though they were lower inside the harbor, but we managed. The wind was blowing to the northwest, so we had to fight that force, also. Two men on the pier had a rope tied to the stern, with which they pulled the ship alongside the pier and secured it there. Watching carefully, I tried to remember the knot they used.
Mira waved to the men who were even now walking to our pier with our provisions from Fisher and Son. Their shop was right down the street, and they must have seen us pushing the ship back into the ocean. They pulled a gang plank from the pier, set it between the ship and the pier, and started loading everything in the cargo hold. I thought they would surely slip with the heaving sea and slippery wood, but they made it look easy. Mira watched them work and when the last of the supplies were loaded on, she nodded in satisfaction. I embarked with Bran, Elle and Mira, and looked for a place to put my pack in the hold. It wasn’t a big ship by any means, but there was a place in the hold for the crew to sleep in hammocks in the stern. I set my pack in there, then went to check on the provisions to see how well they were secured. Everything looked all right to my unpracticed eye, but what did I know? The others were in the hold also.
“Bandit, are you here?” Mira asked in a low voice.
“Yep. Right over here!” Bandit’s disembodied little voice sounded like it was coming from on top of one of our two water barrels.
“Good. Just checking,” Mira said. “Let’s see how they plan to get us out of the harbor.”
We all went topside and saw the old sailor looking at the repaired planks at the front of the ship, scratching his head. I looked at the harbor and noticed that there was a jetty of big rocks built into the sea that partially enclosed the harbor and kept the worst of the waves from the docks.
“We’re ready to go now!” Mira called to the old sailor.
“All right, then, lass. My boys will be in the rowboat to tug you into the harbor straight away. Give us a few minutes to set up!” he called out.
“I don’t see any signs of trouble from shore,” Bran said. “I think it’s time to store our armor below. Let’s hurry.”
When we got back above deck in the civilian clothes we had under the armor, the rowboat was in position with the six young men in it, and they had a line attached to the stern already. One gave his father a thumbs up sign. The old sailor loosed the lines tying us to the pier, and then we were adrift. Bran had already thought to station himself at the rudder, which looked like a wagon wheel without the circular part on the outside edge. There were four spokes that stuck out horizontally from the center pole that must have been directly fixed to the rudder below it.
The men in the rowboat started pulling on the oars and were able to get us into the middle of the harbor without trouble. Bran untied the line going to the rowboat and tossed it to them. He and I went over to the mast and started pulling on the lines attached to the sail, raising it little by little. The wind caught in the sail, and Mira grabbed the rudder. She angled us to the west as we raised the sail the rest of the way. Thankfully, the wind was light right then, and was blowing mostly to the west and northwest. We fastened the sail’s ropes in place, and away we went.
“See? This is easy,” Mira said with her eye on the entrance to the harbor.
The waves were very small still because we had not gotten out of our protected harbor yet. That changed once we got into open water. The waves had a gentle eight-foot swell to them, and I was very glad I didn’t have breakfast that morning. We were all pretty nervous about our journey so far, and I, for one, kept a tight hold on the railing in the stern as the ship crashed through the waves. We were drenched from the rain, our shirts stuck to us, and our boots were already full of water. I didn’t want my feet to suffer, so I went down to the hold to put my socks and boots next to my pack and armor. I wrung my socks out on the floor and hung them on a hammock.
I walked outside into the rain again. The cog listed a little bit to starboard as Mira cut the rudder a little too hard to get us away from the coastline, and I grabbed the rail to steady myself.
“Hey, watch it!” I warned.
“Whoops,” Mira muttered.
“It’s better to be in bare feet on a day like this. Why don’t you let me take the rudder and get out of your wet boots?” I suggested to Mira.
“Yeah, you just don’t like my piloting,” Mira said. “I think you’re right about the boots, though. I’m going below for shelter and to dry off our armor. I’ll do yours, too.”
“Thanks. I owe you one,” I said as I took the spokes in hand. I tried not to look at the way her shirt clung to her. Despite the linen shift she wore underneath, it was definitely a bit too transparent.
Elle went below deck with Mira leaving Bran and me in the stern.
“Hey, Bran, did you see how the knots were done?” I asked. “I may have messed mine up.”
“I think I got mine right. I’ll go check it against some others,” Bran stated.
He went over and retied my rope. The sail caught a bit more wind when he was done. I remembered the view of the continent I had while using the Amber Throne, and I knew the coastline would be curving to the northwest. We had to go west by southwest to get to the Sunset Islands, so I modified our course a little bit to the left. I wasn’t a sailor, but I knew they had terms for stuff like left and right, and front and back. I only knew the words stern and fore. They had to have navigational instruments also, but all we had was the sun. As it was currently behind the thick, gray clouds, I could only give it my best guess. Sailing today was like the blind leading the blind while both were drunk.
-----
We all took turns at the rudder or at the mast in the days that followed, but it got pretty boring nonetheless. We were going in the right direction as far as we could determine, but we really didn’t know how long it would take to get to the Sunset Isles. Someone had to be at the rudder at all times, day or night, and with only four of us, our sleep schedule was going to be interrupted for certain.
I had just awoken from a nap, and I swung out of my hammock to see what time it was. As I stepped outside, I saw it was early afternoon. The others were on deck. Bran and Elle were talking in the fore of the ship, and Mira was at the rudder.
I had a thought. My mace had other runes on it besides those that I knew were fire and force. I had never learned to control the other runes like frost and lightning. Come to think of it, I hadn’t learned much of anything new in the last couple of years except better control over what little I could already do. Secrecy demanded I never had the time or opportunity to practice or learn anything since I was in a city with people around me all of the time. If I were found out, someone could report me to the Executors, and that would be the end of it. Not that I even wanted to practice using magic. Using magic was always painful, and that pain was a pretty effective deterrent. Out here on the open ocean, I realized I had the perfect opportunity to practice the skills granted me by my Mordonian heritage if I wanted to. The problem was that I didn’t want to, but successfully landing on the Pirate King’s island and finding his treasure while fighting off relentless assaults by undead would be impossible even with Vengeance in Bran’s hand. We were only human, after all. We’d get tired, or someone would slip, or we’d be wounded, then we’d be overwhelmed. No matter how good we were at fighting, we needed to be better if we wanted to get out of this alive.
I walked down to my bunk and picked up my mace. I put the thong around my wrist just in case I accidentally dropped it, then walked back outside and to the stern.
“I’m sorry!” Mira exclaimed, looking terrified at me. “I’ll take the waves at an angle! I promise!”
Bandit, who was lounging on the top of the rudder, laughed at Mira’s joke.
I laughed, too. “The mace isn’t for you, Mira,” I said. “I just want to learn this better. It occurred to me that now I have plenty of time and space to practice, and not a prying eye in sight.”
“Makes sense,” Mira said lightly. “That whole thing about certain execution if someone found out is a pretty heavy burden to bear, I’d guess. What are you going to do?”
“Fire came easiest to me for obvious reasons, but I think there’s more that I can do. I need to learn to conjure other elements first, though,” I said. “I think my mace will help with that since I can channel small amounts of power into it without it destroying everything.” Now that I thought of it, I would bet anything that the mace was left there at the throne for me to find and learn with. It was a very practical gift, now that I thought about it, and finding it couldn’t have been a coincidence.
“And there’s that. Watch it with that thing,” Mira joked. Well, maybe she wasn’t really joking, but I chose to take it that way.
I stationed myself at the rear railing in the corner for added stability. I closed my eyes and took some power from the source, focusing my thoughts on the lightning that I had seen hurled about recently. Nothing happened. I tried again, thinking about how the magic felt when that high priest hurled lightning at us from the altar. A couple sparks shot out of my mace. I was on the right track, but I couldn’t find the way to form the magic into what I wanted. After an hour of failures, I tried again to get a feeling for the lightning itself, and channeled magic into the mace as I formed it into lightning. My mace generated a lightning bolt that rapidly orbited the head of the mace. Success! It was really interesting to look at, too. I stopped the flow of magic to the mace, then tried it again to make sure I had it right. The lightning circled around the mace, buzzing with power. I thought of the golems’ magical attack and had the feeling that this attack would have an added bonus of stunning things if the lightning or impact didn’t kill it immediately. Just out of curiosity, I tapped the head of the mace on the railing, and it burned a sphere in the railing the size of a couple coins with a zapping noise. I ceased the magic and examined the hole, but thankfully it didn’t set the railing on fire.
“That was stupid,” Mira said. “Are you trying to set the ship on fire?”
“I didn’t know that would happen,” I said. “Um, sorry about that.”
It was time to try to learn how to use cold. I concentrated this time on extreme cold, but I didn’t have much of a reference to work with. I’d never felt cold before, only a little chilly in Kurgh Rhamot. Hamot said the tops of the Flamecrest Mountains were covered in ice, but I’d never been up there to feel them. I tried channeling cold, but nothing happened with the mace. This was a lot harder than channeling lightning, and it took a long time to find any measure of success. Eventually I thought of an extreme lack of heat, and focusing on that, I channeled power into the mace. It worked a little bit. I felt how the magic flowed with the cold and tried again. This time an aura of freezing cold enveloped the head of the mace. I ceased the magic, then tried it again. It worked. I tried it a few more times, remembering how the magic felt as I formed it into cold, and I thought I had it down now. I practiced for a long time, alternating channeling lightning, cold and fire a few times each to make sure I could quickly transition between the elements as needed.
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“I think I’ve got it,” I said.
“Jeron, have you ever thought of combining the effects of certain magic? Whizzbang knows how to throw a little ball of fire and then make it explode when he wants it to. Can you do that?” Mira asked.
That was a new thought. “I dunno, let’s find out.”
“Carefully, please!” Mira said.
“I’ll think about it before I do anything, and I’ll start small,” I said to her.
It was a good plan. I did consider carefully how an effect like that would be created. I would have to cram a lot of fire into a very small space, combine it with a blast of force, then fling it away from me in a direction and range that I controlled. I thoroughly imagined the entire process before I channeled even the smallest spark into my effort. Then I thought about doing it again from scratch. And again. I thought I knew what I needed to do, so I tried channeling a little power that I took from the source as I focused my will on the spell. A pea-sized ball of fire took shape in front of me, and I hurled it away from us in our wake. It exploded with a little popping noise exactly where I thought it would, and it did so in a little ball of fire about three feet in diameter. Success! And on my first try, too!
“Yes!” I pumped my fist in the air in celebration.
“Oh, that was a nice one, Jeron!” Bandit cried out. She clapped happily. “You didn’t even blow yourself up the first time!”
“Hooray!” Mira cheered unenthusiastically. She only sounded a little bit sarcastic this time. “With the sheer power you now command, I dub thee ‘The Slayer of Cockroaches.’”
“You’re just jealous. I bet I can do better,” I said.
I focused my will, imagining what I wanted to do and how, then drew a considerable amount of power from the source. A ball of fire the size of my fist formed in the air in front of me, then hurtled through the air a hundred yards behind us where it exploded with a loud boom. I could actually see the air compress in a rapidly expanding sphere as the explosion unfolded. It briefly made a crater in the water from which a large cloud of steam arose.
“Everything all right back there?” Bran called.
I laughed. “Yeah, everything’s great! I just learned a new trick! Watch this!” I did it again, and the explosion was very satisfying. I could feel the heat from here.
“Nice one!” Elle called out. “Now don’t get cocky and set that off too close!”
I waved and nodded in a “don’t worry about it” gesture. I could have really used that spell when dealing with the priests. Something else I had never thought of before came to mind. Why should I seize power from the source with every spell? What if I could draw a lot of power at once and hold it inside me until I needed it? Would I burn myself out or something? I didn’t think I would, but the source was immensely powerful, and I was very afraid of making a mistake. Letting a fraction of that kind of power run through me at all times could lead to a really devastating mistake, too. I imagined what would happen if I had a nightmare while holding a lot of magic and shuddered. Nothing good would come of that, but I had to know. I seized as much power as I could safely handle and just kept it. I could feel the power in me, and I could feel it strengthening my body. Unfortunately, it hurt to draw the magic in, and it hurt to use it, but keeping the power this way would work out well in a dangerous situation where I would need to be ready at all times. The power felt good once I had it, too, like it was a part of me. Or maybe I was a part of it. I considered that for a while as I stared at our wake.
The next day, I decided it was time to try out some other things. I started off by channeling a small amount of each element into my mace, alternating what kind of power it held at any one time. I couldn’t made it hold more than one element at a time, but since I could do it with the raw magic, maybe I would figure it out eventually. Then I imagined what it would be like to harness the power of lightning as that high priest did. I remembered the way it felt to conjure some of that energy with my mace. I focused my will, then used some of the power I had in me. A spear of lightning formed before me and launched it through the air behind us. It went straight through the air without an arc at all. I think it just eventually diffused in power and dissipated, but I couldn’t see it happen. I tried it again and hurled it downward a little bit, so it hit the water around a hundred feet behind us. I could see the lightning diffuse into the water with a small flash of light as soon as it hit it. Another success! It had already been a really good day, and the day was still young. I took a moment to remember how I did it and savored my victory. Then I practiced it several more times in varying ways to make sure I could conjure that magic at any moment.
What if I could do the same thing with the lightning that I did with the fire? I imagined I could make an exploding stun ball of some sort. I thought it through very carefully, but I was learning things quickly, and these skills all built on each other. I knew I could do it. I focused my will and used some of the power I had already drawn from the source and formed the magic into a small glowing white ball. Then I mentally hurled the ball behind us a hundred yards, where it exploded and hurled a hundred little lightning bolts in all directions. It looked like the lightning only traveled outwards twenty or thirty feet from the blast point before dissipating. That was handy to know.
“Oooo! Do it again!” Bandit said happily, clapping her little hands. I didn’t see her where she was sitting on that railing now, nor did I see her get there, but I thought nothing of it. She was the ultimate Bandit, after all. Being a pixie, she knew more about sneaking than I knew about breathing. “Do it again!”
I smiled at her and did it again. It went off just like the first one did. This was really handy thing to be able to do. It would really mess up a group of warriors, and it might be a good trick to use against a group of Xerith. It would probably stun them or slow them down quite a bit. Maybe if I stunned them, they would be still long enough for me to eradicate them with a cone of fire. Xerith were slightly resistant to magic, so it was hard to say.
Since I was having such a good day with fire, force and lightning explosions, I just had to master cold the same way. I thought about how the cold magic felt when I channeled it through the mace. Because of my lack of experience with cold in any form, this one was going to be more difficult. Still, if I could channel it into the mace, I could do it on my own. It was definitely worth learning. Maybe I’d be able to put out fires with it if I set the forest on fire again, or maybe I’d have to use it against a fire monster like Cuddles. They couldn’t all be nice monsters. I thought about how I formed the magic into cold energy and imagined how it felt to hurl elemental fire through the air. Combining the two disciplines, I channeled a tiny amount of power and all that was conjured was a little puff of air. It was almost like breaking wind, but without the smell. It wasn’t even very cold.
“Oh, you learned to fart! A marvelous mastery of magic, I say! Congratulations!” Mira said.
“It’s amazing how much sarcasm you can put into one breath,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m learning without a teacher, here. Give me a break.” I wasn’t really discouraged at all, though. Yesterday I couldn’t even produce that fart without a serving of beans.
I thought it through, then tried again. Nothing. I tried over and over. Finally, I produced a little puff of cold air next to my hand. It didn’t rush away from me, but this was progress. I tried a couple more times without much success, but I thought I was getting the hang of it. I tried again, and it worked. A rush of freezing cold air whooshed away for three feet before it dissipated. I took a breath, remembering what it felt like to do that. I would have to do it on a much larger scale for it to be at all effective. I seized more power from the source to replenish that power that I had used up, then focused my will and released the magic. A cone of incredible cold rushed from my hand, extending about fifty feet. Where it touched the ocean, the water turned solid.
“Good one, Jeron!” Bandit clapped.
“Hey, what is that?” Mira asked, looking at the white ocean water we left behind.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before, either. Wait, maybe I have. I wonder if that’s the white stuff on top of the Flamecrest Mountains?” I thought out loud.
“There’s white stuff on mountain tops?” Mira asked.
“Yeah. Sorry, I forgot you weren’t there. The highest mountains are all white at the peaks. I’ve never climbed up there to see, so I don’t really know. I thought it was just a different color of rock or something,” I said.
“So, it must be really cold very high up,” Mira said. “Do you think the rain clouds freeze up there?”
“It stands to reason. I’d like to try a little more of this,” I said.
I went into the hold to get a bucket. While I was there, I put my mace down with the rest of my gear. The bucket I thought of was the one we used to wash up in, which already had a rope tied to it so we could get sea water for bathing. The water wasn’t especially clean, but at least we didn’t stink too badly. We couldn’t use the fresh water for this purpose because we had a limited supply and needed it for drinking and cooking. We didn’t know how long it would be before finding another source of fresh water, either, so we had to be careful.
I returned to the deck with the bucket and lowered it over the side. I brought the bucket back up when it was full. Then I focused my will as I did last time but only used a fraction of the power. I directed the cold at the bucket on the deck, and the magic I conjured froze the sea water solid. I touched it, and I felt the cold for the first time. Bran and Elle had come over to look at it also. I handed them the bucket. They each handled it with wonder.
“Hey, let me see!” Mira called out from the stern.
Bran turned the bucket upside down, then dropped it on the deck with a solid “thunk.” The frozen water broke loose from the bucket and sat there on the deck, still in the shape of the bucket. He picked it up and carried it over to Mira at the rudder. She felt it and shivered.
“You know, a little chunk of that would be pretty refreshing right now,” Mira said.
Bran dropped it on the deck, but it didn’t break. He looked at the top of the rudder, which looked pretty solid.
“Excuse me, Bandit,” Bran said.
Bandit flew up out of the way and hovered close by. Bran took the circle of frozen water in his hands and smashed it down on the corner of the rudder. It broke into a hundred pieces, but several of them were still fist sized or bigger. He reached down and picked one up, which he handed to Mira. She held onto the rudder with one hand but placed the frozen water on the back of her neck. She did it on her forehead, too.
“Jeron, you’re a hero,” Mira said. “I take back the cockroach thing.”
“Hey, I want some of that, too,” Elle said with a smile.
We all got a little piece of it and experimented. Bandit mischievously put a small chunk of it in the back of Elle’s pants. She yelped and slapped at it for a few seconds, then stopped. She smiled contentedly after she got used to it.
“You know, that feels pretty good. It was getting pretty hot down there,” Elle said.
Mira snickered, and Bran cleared his throat. Elle seemed pretty embarrassed at her accidental double entendre, much to Bandit’s delight, who laughed loud and long.
“Still tastes like sea water, not like rain,” Bran said, trying to change the subject. “I think Hamot called this ice when he spoke of the mountains that one time. Snow was another word he used, but he said that snow was less substantial than this, I think. Like dust.”
Pretty soon the ice from the bucket was all gone, melted in the sunlight. I tested out the cold blasting spell again from the back railing just to make sure I had the process memorized. Like the other elements, I thought it would be best to learn to make it explode a long way from wherever I was standing. I began to think about how I would do that, step by step. I tried it out with a small bit of magical power, conjuring a pea-sized piece of ice and hurling it away from me in the wake of the ship. It flew about fifty paces and then exploded into a little puff of ice. I was on the right track. I tried it again, this time with a lot more power. I hurled a fist-sized chunk of ice about a hundred paces away, and it exploded with lethal force. The ocean froze when the explosion rang out, and there were a few chunks of ice that arced up, then landed on the deck of the ship. I was going to have to be careful with that one. It looked like the other explosive spells released their energy quickly and in a short distance, but when chunks of solid ice were involved, the pieces would be flung a long way away. I was glad that I didn’t make it explode closer to the ship, or someone could have been hurt.
Over the next couple of days, when I wasn’t at the rudder, I spent time practicing the new skills I learned. I made a lot of discoveries at once, and I needed time to practice them, so I wouldn’t hurt anyone friendly in a real battle. We were sailing right into a battle, too. I thought the explosive fire would do the best against the undead, so I practiced that a little bit more than the other spells. I tried stringing spells together very quickly, too. If I was ever attacked again by Xerith assassins, I had to be able to protect myself, move, and blast something very quickly. After a few days, whooshing around, raising a shield, and hurling a blast of concussive force became like second nature to me.
In years past, I’d made the accidental discovery that when I was holding in the magical power, I was physically stronger and had greater stamina than I normally did. While on the ship I was able to test out how much stronger I could actually get. I practiced drawing in the magical power quickly and safely. I didn’t want to draw in too much and risk burning myself up, if that was a thing that could happen, so I learned how much I could handle by feeling when it started to get constantly painful. I could do a number of things with that much power at my disposal, too. It all tied in together with my other combat abilities, and I learned to exercise my powers very quickly and fluidly.
When she wasn’t piloting the cog, Mira was gracious enough to volunteer her services in flinging objects at me to simulate arrows or knives. Personally, I thought she just liked to throw things at me for some reason. Bran and Elle took some swings at me so I could practice hand-to-hand combat and using spells at the same time, but we were all careful not to actually put any weight behind the blows. Even with a soft touch, it was helpful to practice this way. Concentrating on using magic while fighting was a difficult thing to master, but I was determined to do it. Our lives would depend on it.
-----
The day finally came when we spotted land in the distance to the southwest. At first, it looked like a single spire of rock jutting up out of the ocean, but through the haze, we started seeing more of them. It took half a day to draw close to them, and there were only a few hours of daylight left. We were finally nearing the Sunset Isles! Bran, Elle and I stayed close to the sail in case it needed to be trimmed, and Mira was at the rudder.
The first islands we approached were spires of gray rock a hundred feet tall with flat tops. They went straight down into the ocean with no way to dock there and nothing but rock and a few scraggly looking cypress trees clinging to the cliff sides and tops. There were more islands after the first, varying in size from a single tower to islands as big as cities. We kept going, but the wind was very treacherous the way it funneled through the islands. Sometimes it pushed the ship strongly enough to almost capsize. We thought better about going in there with a full sail, so Bran and I brought the sail down to half its normal size. It was safer but slower, and it looked like these islands went on for a long way.
“From the view the Throne gave me, the island we’re looking for is almost at the edge of the world, in the very corner. Remember, Mira?” I asked, trying to be helpful.
“Yeah, I remember,” Mira said. “We’re running out of daylight. Whatever we do, we would have to be out of our minds to try to navigate this archipelago in the nighttime. I’m looking for a good place to anchor for the night.”
“Always one step ahead of me,” I said. “I don’t think we should be anywhere near that island in the nighttime, either.”
“Yes, dear,” Mira mocked.
In another hour of sailing, we came across a bigger island with a lighter shade of blue water around it. Mira steered for that. We got there with only half of the sun peeking over the islands to the north of us. Bran and I lowered and secured the sail, and as we drifted a little bit closer, we tossed the anchor overboard. I breathed a sigh of relief. The water was very calm here and the breeze was light. Beyond this island to the southwest, there seemed to be a huge, strange cloud that hung over the area. It didn’t move like normal clouds did, either. It stayed in one place, almost like it was created solely to shade an area for all time. The fact that I didn’t see it while spying the islands out with the Throne bothered me.
“That’s really ominous,” Elle said, looking to the south.
“You’re telling me,” Bran said. “That place makes my head hurt.”
“We definitely don’t want to go in there in the dark of night,” Elle said.
“You think we’ll be all right if we don’t set a watch tonight, Bran? We all need the rest, and we won’t hit an island if we’re not moving,” I said.
“I don’t sense anything evil there,” Bran said, pointing at the nearby island.
“I could take a look! I like seeing new places!” Bandit offered.
“That’s a great idea. Don’t try to fight a render by yourself,” Mira said sarcastically.
Bandit blew her a raspberry and fluttered off, crossing the two hundred paces of water between us and the island and disappeared into the trees. They looked like cypress trees, and they were pretty dense. I decided dinner was in order and went into the hold. The others weren’t far behind me. I looked at our supplies. We had a little more than half of it left, which meant we had to take care of business in the islands without wasting time. We were careful to eat the food evenly, so we still had plenty of it: beef jerky, hard biscuits, dried fruit, nuts, beans, dried oatmeal, and fresh water. It wasn’t so different from the food the militia gave us to eat while on an extended patrol, really. It was times like this when I missed mom’s cooking. I took my turn cooking dinner, and we ate. I did my exercise routine on deck as usual, during which Bandit reported that the coast was clear, then settled into my hammock. It was a peaceful night, but sleep was more difficult to find. I was always like this when I knew a battle was coming, though. I’d live. Maybe.
