Authors: Licia Troisi
Ido complained the entire way home, going on and on about how boring the meeting had been. Nihal, still plagued by her thoughts of the Tear, listened distractedly. Laio, on the other hand, weighed down with the vials and herbs he’d bought at the market, was too busy trying not to fall off his horse.
When they arrived, the base was quiet, as usual. Nothing seemed to have changed in their brief absence. Yet they’d barely stepped through the gate when a guard called out: “Halt! There’s a message for the squire.”
Laio took the scroll from the guard in disbelief. When he saw the seal stamped on the parchment, his face turned pale and he let out a weak groan.
“What is it?” Nihal asked.
“My father,” he replied, in the faintest of voices.
Sennar felt only the plush softness of a blanket. It was like being wrapped in cotton wool, and the warmth brought him back to his infancy. He half-opened his eyes, expecting to see his mother bowed over him, leaning down to wake him with a kiss on the forehead, just like when he was little. But it was a much different image that fluttered between his eyelashes: a low-cut neckline, the slope of a milk-white breast, a pair of dark eyes.
The sorcerer woke with a start and sat up.
“About time,” said Aires, smiling.
While she went to open the curtains, Sennar discovered himself to be, of all places, in the captain’s quarters.
“Two full days of sleep.” She walked back over and sat on the bed. “Aren’t you ashamed?”
Sennar rubbed his eyes. “Where are we?” he asked in a scratchy voice.
Aires bowed slightly. “Welcome to the Vaneries, my dear sorcerer.”
“The Vaneries?” Sennar repeated back, confused.
“Yes. We’ve reached the unknown islands from the map. That’s what the inhabitants here call them. There are four islands in all. The largest, where we are now, is populated. The other three are mere islets, basically just oversized rocks. Wait until you see the way they look at us. We’re the first people they’ve ever seen from the Overworld,” Aires boasted.
Sennar collapsed back onto his pillow.
“That bad, huh?” she chuckled.
Sennar nodded. “That’s the way it always is. Spells that difficult completely sap a sorcerer’s energy.”
“You scared us there, you know? When I climbed up to the lookout tower you were white as a corpse. Then when I realized you were sleeping … I was ready to slap you across the face.”
“Exactly what I needed then …” Sennar sighed.
Aires pushed his hair out of his face. Her expression turned serious. “I owe you a thanks. We all do. If it wasn’t for you, we’d all be dead, Sennar. Of course, if it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t have come here in the first place, but …”
The sorcerer caught himself blushing.
“You just worry about getting some rest for now,” Aires said as she got to her feet. “The ship’s in pretty bad shape. It will be another few days before we sail again. Once it’s fixed, we’ll take stock of the situation.” When she’d reached the door, however, she stopped and turned around. “Ah, I almost forgot,” she said, with an odd smile on her face. “So, is she beautiful?”
Sennar was caught off guard. “Who?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered.
Aires burst into laughter. “Our sorcerer’s a liar! For two days now you’ve been repeating the same name. So who is this Nihal?”
His heart sunk.
“Come on, don’t make me ask a third time,” Aires insisted. “If a man calls out a woman’s name in his sleep, it can mean only one thing—he’s in love.”
Sennar could hardly contain his embarrassment. “I … I mean, it’s not …”
She sat back down on the edge of the bed and looked mischievously down at him. “Don’t worry, I’m not the jealous type.”
“She’s a friend,” Sennar let out.
Aires raised an eyebrow. “What sort of friend?”
“A friend, that’s all,” he replied, trying hard to keep an even tone.
Aires wasn’t fooled. “Am I mistaken, or did I hear a touch of regret when you said ‘that’s all’?”
“She’s a childhood friend,” Sennar spluttered. “We studied sorcery with the same teacher. That’s the whole story.”
“Is she a sorceress?”
“No. Soon she’ll be a Dragon Knight.”
“A woman knight,” Aires said with interest. “I like this girl. And she’s beautiful?”
Sennar lowered his gaze. “I don’t know. I mean, I think she’s beautiful. Yes, she’s beautiful. Can we end this little interrogation, now?”
Aires paid him no mind. “And does she love you? Because it’s obvious you love her.”
Sennar tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “Aires, I’m begging you …”
“So does she?”
“No, she doesn’t love me. She’s in love with someone else, a knight who died in battle. Are you happy?”
“A dead man’s not much competition, when it comes to love,” Aires teased. “You know what your problem is, Sennar? You sell yourself short.” Then she stood and slapped him playfully on the cheek. “Give it some thought.”
For the next couple of days, a visit to the captain’s quarters became a sort of pilgrimage. The entire crew, one pirate after another, stopped in to see Sennar and thank him personally. The most eager to shower him in gratitude was Dodi, who now considered him a hero. He brought lunch and dinner to Sennar’s bedside, gazed at him with admiration, served him as if he were his master.
The only one who never came to visit was Benares. According to Dodi, he’d blown up at Aires more than once, but Sennar paid no mind. He’d managed to hold off an apocalyptic storm, after all; he could handle a jealous boyfriend.
Once he’d regained enough strength, the sorcerer decided it was time to finish what he’d started. He got to his feet and made for the deck. The Vaneries awaited him.
The island where they’d docked was cloaked in a thick forest. There was only one large village, clinging to the side of a dead volcano that rose at the island’s center. Sennar had done his share of traveling, but he’d never seen any place like it. In the middle of the village was a tower, much like the towers in the Land of the Wind, while the massive, ornate governor’s palace seemed to have come from the Land of the Sun. Yet another part of the village, extending down to the edge of a small lake, bore stilt houses identical to those in the Land of Water. Up toward the volcano’s peak, a peculiar series of buildings had been carved into the rock face.
As a whole, the village was something of a mosaic, and yet it seemed to have its own, unique style. To take a walk through its streets was like traversing the entire Overworld. And the people, too, were as various as the village itself, all coexisting in peace. The equilibrium they’d managed to establish seemed perfect and serene.
Sennar was on the lookout for information. He needed all the help he could get to carry out his mission.
In the end, it was Rool who led him to the person who could help him most. He took him to a tavern, whose host pointed them toward the house of Moni, the village elder.
Sennar was expecting to meet an old, wrinkled lady with a fading memory, but instead found himself standing before a woman with golden skin as smooth as a baby’s and in complete control of her faculties. A single band of grey hair was all that betrayed her age.
The woman asked them to take a seat at a table just behind her small stone house, under the shade of an arbor. The kind expression on her face won Sennar’s confidence immediately.
“So this is the young man who wants to die,” Moni commenced as she took Sennar’s hand in hers.
The language she spoke was familiar, but with an ancient-sounding accent. The way she pronounced her words, the cadence of her sentences, reminded Sennar of the ancient ballads sung by storytellers on festival days. It was the language of the Overworld, but as it had been spoken two centuries prior.
“It’s not that I want to die. I have a mission to complete,” Sennar responded, somewhat ashamed.
The woman smiled. “I know. I see. Your heart is an open book, young sorcerer.”
“What makes you think I’m a sorcerer?”
She let go of his hand. “I have the gift of clairvoyance. Or, perhaps I should say, the curse. For as long as I can remember, time and space have opened their doors to me, revealing traces of the past and future as they please.” Moni leaned toward Sennar and looked intently into his eyes. “When we arrived on this island, three hundred years ago, the horrors we’d witnessed were still vivid in our eyes. But hope led us onward.”
“Were you among those who abandoned the Overworld?” Sennar asked, stunned.
“We
are
the ones who abandoned the Overworld. You’re young, too young to know how it was in those years—a living hell, every Land consumed by greed for power. We were still children. The war drained our will to live, robbed us of our youth. The struggle for power nauseated us. We were sick of battle, sick of seeing others die. We came from different Lands, divided by race, by war, and yet we were united by one profound desire: peace. We were convinced the Overworld was doomed, that it would sink into an abyss of pain and death. We craved another world.” She paused and Sennar nodded his head, filled with thought. “We left our Lands, our belongings, and crossed the war-torn Overworld. It was a horrifying voyage. Many died along the way, but we were driven on by the certainty that a better world existed and that one day we would inhabit it. Having reached the Land of the Sea, we pushed onward into the unknown.”
Moni stopped speaking for a long while. Specks of gold flashed in her grey eyes, the same stone grey as the walls of her house. Sennar and Rool waited silently for her to begin again.
“Our ships were undersized, our pantries under-stocked. None of us knew for sure what awaited us that far out in the ocean, whether there was even land to be found, but we set out all the same. I know you and your crew risked your lives to reach this island, but it wasn’t always that way—the sea welcomed us as family and carried us peacefully on our voyage. Still, there were troubling moments. Who knows, perhaps it was the gods, testing the resilience of our spirit, ensuring that we were fit to begin a new world. When we finally arrived here, we were at the end of our strength. The islands seemed a miraculous discovery. Nature itself, we felt, was inviting us to stay. So we stayed, and we began a new life. For many years we lived at peace, we built our city, we raised our children and labored to realize our dreams. And then, the ships began to arrive.
“Ships?” Sennar echoed.
“Yes. Armed vessels, loaded with greedy, violent men, eager to steal what we’d worked so hard to create. We defended ourselves. We fought with all our strength. We stained our hands with blood. Once again, we lived the very life we’d fled. It was then that we created the storm.”
“You were right, Sennar. That storm was the work of sorcery,” Rool muttered.
“Precisely, Captain. A powerful sorcerer helped us to protect ourselves from a potential invasion. He freed us from having to arm ourselves.” Moni closed her eyes, as if it were too painful a memory. “By then, though, hate had spread its poison among our people. Many were convinced these islands were no longer sufficient, that we needed to build an empire far away from the rapacious people of the Overworld. An empire with its own army, prepared to defend itself. And thus the kingdom you call the Underworld was born.”
Sennar shook his head. “I don’t understand. How did they build it? How did they manage—?”
Moni silenced him with a wave of her hand. “Let me finish, young sorcerer,” she murmured. “As a group, they left the island and set back out to sea, no longer driven by the hope of peace, as they once were, but filled with hate and resentment. In the middle of their voyage, a storm took them by surprise, sinking one of their ships. That was how they came to know the people of the sea, who’d lived for centuries in the farthest depths of the ocean. It was they who rescued our old companions from the fury of the waves, showing them new islands to inhabit. For a short while, these islands seemed a good solution, but soon they came to fear invasion by the Overworld again. No place was remote enough for them to feel safe. And so they began to consider the sea. If they could settle under water, no one would be able to harass them ever again. The ocean, the one safe place … It was the people of the sea who helped them to build their kingdom, I know, but as for how they built it, I’ve heard only vague legends and conflicting accounts. These days, we no longer think of our old companions. For us, the Underworld represents our failure as a people. A dark episode in our past that we’re happy to forget.”
“Can you tell me anything about the attempt of the Overworld to seize their kingdom?” Sennar asked.
The old woman smiled. “There’s not much to say, except that not even the ocean’s depths are safe from harm. All I know is that, at around the same time as their attempted invasion, the sea’s inhabitants flared up with anger. They increased the storm’s intensity and created an enormous whirlpool to defend the entrance to their kingdom. And then …” Moni paused.
“And then, what?” Sennar asked.
“They say there’s some sort of guardian, some obscure being that lives along the path to the whirlpool. But that’s all I can say. My vision permits me nothing else. Who or what it is, I don’t know. All I know is that in the past one hundred and fifty years, not a single one of your people has reached the Underworld, or the Vaneries, alive. For decades, the sea has washed up the corpses of men who thought themselves capable of conquering us.”
The old woman turned to Sennar. “Our people have never found peace. We were forced to build it upon blood. Our dream never came true. That’s all there is to it, young sorcerer.”
“The Overworld isn’t the way you remember it anymore,” Sennar muttered. “At the end of the Two Hundred Years War, a magnanimous king, Nammen, ruled us for many years in peace. It’s because of the Tyrant that—”
Moni cut him short again. “There are many things you don’t know, Sennar, but it’s not my place to reveal them to you. Go back to your Land.”
Sennar shook his head. “I can’t.”