The beast passed straight over their heads and landed a dozen meters away. Aurelius frowned. Why hadn't it attacked them? Why hadn't his shot brought it out of the sky in a tangled heap? Aurelius took aim once more.
And then he saw the rider dismount, the tip of his staff glowing and aimed at them like an extension of his finger. “Elder!” The rider bellowed. His long white hair was frizzed by the wind, but he was still perfectly recognizable. “You deserted me! Prepare to pay the price of your betrayal!”
“Wait!” Aurelius held up his hands. “We didn't abandon you; we looked everywhere for you! We thought we found you flying off on a gryphon, so we followed you here.”
A blast of blue fire shot out from Gabrian's staff and exploded in the sand at Aurelius's feet. The shockwave blew him into the air and he landed with a jarring
thud
half a dozen feet away. “Lies!” Gabrian shouted, suddenly looming over him. He thrust his staff in Aurelius's face, casting the elder's features in a deep, sapphire blue. Reven appeared beside the wizard and pushed the staff away. “The human speaks truth. I searched with him, but you were not to be found. We followed one we thought to be you, but lost him over the Misty Sea,” Reven finished, gesturing expansively to the roaring waves.
Gabrian gave Reven a narrow-eyed scowl while Gral appeared on his other side with a gleeful grin.
“Gral eat human now?”
Gabrian held Reven's gaze a moment longer, then raised his staff and shook his head. “No, Gral. We still need him.”
The troll's grin faded and he stomped away with a petulant grunt.
Gabrian offered him a hand up and Aurelius eyed it as though it were a snake about to bite him. “No hard feelings,” the wizard said with a decaying smile.
Aurelius took Gabrian’s hand and was promptly yanked to his feet. He brushed the sand off his flight suit and said, “Of course not. Glad to have you back, Wrinkles.” But he wasn't glad at all. Reven was right. There was something off about the old man.
“Tell me what happened to the relic,” Gabrian demanded.
Aurelius gave a brief account of how they'd followed Malgore to the Misty Sea and then out over it, only to find that he'd mysteriously disappeared from his mount.
“So,” Gabrian said, toying with his tangled beard. “He's entrusted his fate to a legend.”
“Legend?” Aurelius asked.
Gabrian shook his head. “There are rumors of an ancient city, sunken below the waves. Tales told by drunken sailors. Men falling overboard only to be sucked under by something, never to be seen again. Some say they escaped, that they were taken captive.”
“Taken captive? By what?”
“Mermaids,” Reven growled.
Aurelius shook his head. He didn't bother to ask any more about it. He knew better. The more he asked, the more he needed to ask. He was done trying to process the sheer strangeness of this new world. “Are you sure Malgore didn't just use magic to disappear again?”
Gabrian shook his head. “I would have sensed it, and he cannot be sure of where that spell will take him. One could disappear only to reappear in the middle of a mountain, or in open air, falling a thousand feet above the ground. It is very risky, only for the desperate. And Malgore is studiously avoiding magic now in order to better conceal himself.”
“Well,” Aurelius regarded Gabrian curiously. “Where to, then?”
“The port of Telan. Come.” With a swirl of his voluminous robes, Gabrian turned and led the way. Aurelius looked around for the gryphon Gabrian had flown in on, but it had apparently flown off during the commotion.
They trudged along the beach in the ever-yielding sand for more than half an hour before they began to see signs of civilization: the white tips of masts poking out above the water. Fishing boats. Another half an hour later and they saw long jetties and docks appearing along the misty horizon. Much larger ships were docked there, with multiple masts and billowing white sails that towered high above their decks. A bustle of activity surrounded those ships, but rather than head for them, Gabrian walked up the beach onto harder ground, angling for the distant walls of Telan itself. Covering the ground between city and shore was a sprawl of tents, huts, and adobe buildings with crowds of people milling between.
The port of Telan.
“It's time for us to find some food,” Gabrian said.
“Food!” Gral grunted cheerily.
“And a ship.”
“A ship?” Aurelius echoed, coming up beside the wizard. “What do we need that for?”
“To search for Malgore.”
“It would be more efficient to search for him from the air.”
“Ah, but we require a vehicle to search below the waves, not skim over them.”
Aurelius gaped at the wizard. “You have such vehicles in your time?”
“Don't you?”
“Of course, but—”
“Not all the secrets of the elders have been lost.”
* * *
Gabrian led them through the bustling port, following the smell of fresh fish and the rising smoke from a dozen different fires. The passersby were a motley assortment of men and the occasional lumbering troll carrying a massive burden across his shoulders, but women and children were conspicuously absent. Aurelius suspected that said something about how dangerous the place was. They caught a few passing glances and stares. With Aurelius wearing his flight suit, complete with helmet tucked under his arm, and Reven, a hairy giant clothed in a glimmering silver thermal blanket, they were a conspicuous sight.
Gabrian walked up to a large, lumpy-faced man with a scruffy blonde beard. He held a butcher's knife in one hand, and a giant fish in the other. As they watched, he positioned the one over the other and lopped off the fish's head with a heavy
whomp
of steel. He tossed the head in a bin and passed the fish down to another man for cleaning.
“We'd like to purchase some fish,” Gabrian said.
“How many?”
“A dozen.”
The fishmonger heaved a large wooden basket onto his table, took a few fish out, and then weighed it on a scale. “That will be ten silver.”
Gabrian offered six, and the fishmonger began shaking his giant knife in the wizard's face. Gral stepped up to the table and offered a wicked smile, to which the fishmonger shrank back and counter-offered nine silver. Aurelius tuned out the haggling and looked around, absently wondering why Gabrian didn't just use magic to get the fish for free. Perhaps his conscience was getting the better of him.
Aurelius watched the milling crowds a moment, his gaze passing over the surly-looking men. Almost all of them were armed with swords dangling from their belts or held wicked-looking harpoons in hand. They all wore their hair long, under elaborate, wide-brimmed hats, and all of them looked desperately in need of a shower and a shave.
Then the crowd parted just long enough for Aurelius to see the odd one out. With a jolt of surprise, he realized that she was looking straight back at him. She was the most beautiful woman Aurelius had ever seen. Long black hair flowed like silk around a pale but flawless face with sharp angles and fine, delicate features. Her beauty was as alluring as it was exotic. She smiled, and suddenly he was no longer conscious of time passing; it could have been an instant or a decade. Then she turned and began walking away. He felt his heart sink. He'd chased her off with his bold staring! Then she threw a quick glance over her shoulder, catching his eye once more. She wanted him to follow her!
He was sure of it.
He felt his feet moving of their own accord, and he almost tripped over a rock in his hurry to catch up. He shoved through the crowds, oblivious to the annoyed looks he was drawing from those he recklessly pushed out of his way. Now she was just a few feet away.
Suddenly a strong hand caught his shoulder and spun him around. He found himself blinking into a familiar pair of cold blue eyes.
“Have a care, elder!” Gabrian said. Aurelius looked confused, so Gabrian slapped him across the cheek, and suddenly he snapped out of his daze with a scowl. Gabrian went on, shaking a withered finger in his face, “Not all that sparkles is worthy of your eye! This is
not
your world. For all you know, she could be a gremlin witch! She'd lure you to her bed and charm the very breath from your lungs, cackling as you drew your last.” Gabrian thrust a warm bundle of cloth into his hands. It smelled delicious. “Eat it while we walk.” With that, Gabrian stalked away.
Aurelius followed, unwrapping the bundle to find a smoked fish within. He began picking at it with his hands, idly wondering what he had been thinking to follow that strange woman. He realized that he hadn't been thinking. Somehow just the sight of her and was all it had taken to compel him to follow. It wasn't at all like him to do something like that. Perhaps Gabrian was right about her being a witch. He shivered and pushed the dark thoughts from his mind.
As he looked up from eating his fish, Aurelius noticed Gral and Reven walking on up ahead, fighting over a basket full of uncooked fish. They seemed to be competing with each other to see who could eat them the fastest. As he watched, Gral opened his massive jaws to swallow one of the fish whole. Reven snarled and stole another two fish from the bucket while Gral wasn't looking. He hid them in his makeshift robes and grinned wolfishly up at the troll.
“Where are we going?” Aurelius called out.
“To find a captain and a ship,” Gabrian called back.
* * *
It wasn't long before they were bargaining with a ship's captain to take them below the Misty Sea in search of “lost treasure” as Gabrian put it. The captain was a shifty-looking man with a thin black mustache and long dreadlocks draped over one shoulder. His sailor's hat was tilted at an odd angle and he wore not one but two swords dangling from his belt. His crew could be seen carrying crates to and from their vessel, a rusty, barrel-shaped submarine which lurked just below the surface. It was a large vessel, almost the size of Aurelius's own ship, but it didn't inspire much confidence, and Aurelius had more questions about how it might work than he cared to ask.
“What be ye offerin’ for the use of me ship?” The captain demanded, snapping Aurelius out of his musings.
“Four hundred silver now and a quarter of the treasure should we find it,” Gabrian replied.
The captain licked his lips. “Ye 'ave that kind of wherewithwhatall on ye?”
“Only a fool would travel with so much money. We'll bring it to you before we disembark.”
“Well, very well then; ye have yerselves a deal!” the captain said and thrust his hand out. Gabrian reluctantly accepted the handshake.
As they were walking back down the docks, Aurelius asked, “You have four hundred . . . silver?”
“No.”
“Then what—”
“We'll have the money soon enough.”
Gabrian led them down to a secluded part of the shore and then gestured to Gral to come forward. The old man pointed to the bucket of fish still dangling from the troll's hand. “Empty it.”
The troll flipped it upside down and one small fish flopped out onto the sand. Between Gral and Reven they had already finished the rest.
“Now fill it with sand,” Gabrian instructed.
The troll scooped up half a bucket of sand and left it sitting on the beach. Gabrian shooed him away and loomed over the basket. Aurelius heard the old man muttering under his breath. Curious, he approached the basket. When he looked inside, he was startled to see it full of silver coins rather than sand. “How the . . .”
Gabrian stepped back with a smile. “Yes. That should do it.”
“You just turned sand into money!”
“Indeed. Let us go pay our esteemed captain with it before it turns back to sand.”