The Dawn of a Desperate War (The Godlanders War) (12 page)

T
he Isle of Mists was scarcely more than legend to most, but pirates knew it well. Like the Wildlands further south, it was a haven safe from Godlander authorities. And like the Wildlands, it was an unforgiving place. Fog hung thick and heavy over all its shores, and treacherous currents fought along its rocky coasts.

But the inlands were a mystery. No man who ventured out upon its moors returned alive. Pirates only sheltered in its hidden coves when desperate times demanded it. They’d travel in large groups to fetch timber or fresh water near the shore, and always they went armed to the teeth.

Corin had never been driven to that extreme, but he’d heard all the tales from men who had. Still, no pirate he had ever met could name the dangers of the island. Man or beast, arcane or natural, whatever roamed this land kept hidden in the choking fog and left no survivors to tell its secrets.

But as Corin lay gasping on the rocky beach, he had some clue what lurked there. He’d laughed when Tesyn said the Isle was haunted, but on the howling ocean wind he could hear the sound of ghastly voices. Not just wailing moans, but words in an ancient language.
“Begone from here and leave our shores. No manling’s welcome on these moors!”

Over and over, the ghostly whispers whorled around him. He struggled to his feet, head whipping left and right as he searched for some sign of the threat, but it was just the wind.

The wind and the voices of the elves of old Gesoelig. Corin shuddered. He’d heard those voices once before, when his crew had put Gesoelig’s tomb to the torch. The memories of all those elves had gone up in flames, and something in that moment had transported Corin back into Oberon’s sad memory.

But though that cavern had contained the record of those lives, this island had become their final refuge. Corin licked his lips and gripped the hilts of his weapons. Would they welcome Oberon’s manling scion? He’d never guessed he might end up like the numberless, nameless dead who’d disappeared across the Isle’s moors.

He shivered at the thought. This was a dreadful place. The whispering wind still rolled around him, tugging at his cloak and stinging in his eyes.
“Begone from here and leave our shores. No manling’s welcome on these moors!” “Begone from here and leave our shores. No manling’s welcome on these moors!”

He drew a ragged breath and answered in their language. “I am the emissary of your rightful king. I am Corin Hugh, the manling out of time. I’ve come to beg your aid in fighting Ephitel.”

The wind went still, and Corin’s heartbeat seemed to hammer in the sudden silence. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t dare to move. But his eyes darted left and right, searching for some sign of the source of those ancient voices.

Had he stilled them? Had he earned an audience? Or had he merely shouted to the wind?

Farther down the shore, Tesyn stirred. Corin held out a hand to still him, but the scholar didn’t notice. He groaned loudly, then rolled up onto his knees. “What was that nonsense?” he called, his voice hoarse. “Something about a king and a diplomat? And Ephitel?” He groaned again and then heaved a stomachful of seawater and bile across the stones.

“Be still!” Corin hissed. “The elves of old Gesoelig are
watching
us.”

The scholar coughed and wiped his mouth before he rose unsteadily to his feet. “And you laughed at me,” Tesyn sneered. “You think the ghosts can hear you? You think they’ll listen to your lies? You’re no diplomat. You’re a devil and a rogue!”

As if in answer, the winds sprang up again—not howling this time, but whispering:
“A rogue! A devil. Begone from here. Begone.”

“He’s wrong! He lies,” Corin shouted. “I am Oberon’s adopted heir. I’ve seen Gesoelig underneath the mountain. I know the bitter taste of Ephitel’s betrayal.”

“Betrayal and lies,”
the ghosts answered, still savage.
“Gesoelig lies beneath the mountain. Begone from here and trouble us no more.”

Corin turned on Tesyn, brows drawn down, and the young
scholar went pale. “You can’t believe I had anything to do
wit
h that.”

“You
said
this place was haunted, and then you interfered when I had calmed the angry spirits!”

“Angry!”
wailed the wind.
“Spirits leave this place. Begone!”

Tesyn drew himself up tall and stomped across the rocky beach to Corin. “I didn’t do this to us! Your stinking pirates did it. They crashed their ship! What kind of captain crashes into rocks within sight of land?”

“What?” Corin gasped. “Where else would . . . That is no matter now. These are deadly waters, no matter who is at the helm. You should be grateful you’re alive.”

“Alive,”
the wind whispered, ominous.
“Begone alive. Or die.”

Corin shook his head, trying to dislodge the voices. They were barely at the edge of hearing. If he focused hard enough on something else, he could forget them altogether. But whenever silence fell, he heard the whispered words, always taunting.

He raised his voice and jabbed a finger at the scholar’s chest. “Well? What do we do now?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Of course! You said you’d studied this place. You said you knew the way. You knew how to handle the ghosts. You have everything prepared—”

“Indeed I did,” Tesyn shouted back. “Would you like to know some of the things that I discovered? It isn’t safe to eat any food in this place or accept a gift if offered. That’s why I brought so many crates of rations! It isn’t safe to stay an hour in darkness, so I brought oil and torches by the dozens. Iron can fend off the angry spirits, and holy water disperses them altogether, so I brought along a hearty stock of both.”

Corin rolled his eyes. “All of that is lost.”

“Because your stinking pirate captain tried to sail through a pile of rocks! I spent a fortune setting up this expedition, and now we’re stranded all alone in the second most godsforsaken place in all Hurope. And you ask me what to do next?”

“Aye,” Corin answered. “Aye, and I will ask again. If we had all those precious things, our mission would be easier. But we have just our wits and each other. And everything you know. You claimed you’d memorized your map. If this place is so dangerous, then we cannot afford to waste a moment. Let us find the elves and pray Fortune they’ll protect us from t
he rest.”

Tesyn shook his head. “You aren’t listening. We won’t survive to find the elves. The shrouded city—even if it’s real—is
easily
a hundred miles inland.”

“This is your destination, then? There is a place on the Isle called the shrouded city?” A slow grin touched his lips. “A city! I told you there was more than one man here.”

“It doesn’t matter! We’ll never make it there.”

“How can you know that?”

“My family spent generations hunting for the ruins of Jezeeli. They chased down more than one false trail in that time, and with the aid of the book you sold to me in Jepta—with some of the language cues it offered—I was able to tease out new meaning from some of my uncle’s oldest texts.”

“Remarkable,” Corin said. “I’d like to see these texts.”

“Remarkable? It is our doom. We have to find our way across a hundred miles of this wilderness without supplies! How many hours will we have to spend in darkness? How many angry
spirits
will we face along the way? What will we eat? It’s madness to proceed. We’ll have to go back home and start over from the beginning.”

Corin thought of Ephitel already hunting him and shook his head. “There is no time to start over. We must press on.”

“It’s suicide! Perhaps you have heard tales, but I’m the one who’s read all the literature there is concerning this island, and I assure you that if we leave this beach, we’re dead men.”

“And what would you suggest? Wait here and hope some passing vessel puts in at this lovely quay?”

“Don’t be a fool. I think we should light a signal fire.”

Corin smiled, though it didn’t touch his eyes. “A signal fire. To summon aid?”

“Just so.”

“And have you forgotten the righteous fury hunting us?”

“The what?”

“The justicar! She’s hunting for our hides. If we wait here, there is no one in the world more likely to discover us than her. I’d rather take my chances with the ghosts.”

“But . . . we lost her. I saw her on the pier in Baillon. She can’t have followed us this far.”

Corin laughed. “What do you think a justicar is for? She’ll track her target past the edges of the world if it’s required. She certainly would not give up on us because we left a port just as she was arriving.”

Tesyn stared. “You think she’s still on our trail?”

“I’m counting on it,” Corin said. “If she didn’t follow us, then she went back to that miserable little village, because that was her last solid lead.”

“Gods on Attos,” Tesyn breathed.

“Aye,” Corin said. “She followed us. I’d stake your life on it. The harbormaster must have known where your merchant ship was heading, and I made our intentions loud and clear across Rauchel.”

“You did?” Tesyn snapped. “Why?”

“To keep her on our trail,” Corin said. “For Auric’s sake. After all, we had all the secret wisdom necessary to survive the horrors of the Isle. I hoped that if she dared to follow us this far, she’d disappear forever on the moors.”

“A grim thing to hope.”

Corin barked a laugh. “Unlikely too. She seems far too smart to take the risk. Instead, she’ll search out our beachhead and drop anchor somewhere safe offshore, then wait for us to leave.”

Tesyn whistled in appreciation. “You have a devious mind, Corin Hugh.”

“It’s why I’m still alive.”

“And how will we escape her?”

“With the assistance of the elves,” Corin said. He had another option up his sleeve—he could step through dream and return to Raentz or Aerome, and leave the justicar fixated on an empty stretch of beach—but now he’d come this far, he wanted to find the elves. He laid a hand on Tesyn’s shoulder and caught his eye. “It’s time to venture out upon the moors.”

Tesyn whimpered, a low, animal sound, but Corin squeezed his shoulder in comfort and said more strongly, “It’s time to have a grand adventure.”

“I don’t have adventures,” Tesyn mumbled. “I only tell about them.”

“You explored the Wildlands with Auric!”

“Twelve days! Twelve days I camped with him and his mad followers, and they were some of the most terrifying days of my life.” He looked Corin up and down dismissively. “And at least then I traveled with a hero.”

Corin clapped him on the shoulder. “Today
you
are the hero. If we linger here, we’re dead men, sure as sunshine. But if you can find us a way across the moors, we will be legends.”

Still Tesyn hesitated. Corin felt an urge to slap him, but instead he displayed all the genuine sincerity he could muster and asked, “Would Auric falter now? Can you truly bear to disappoint him?”

That did the trick. The scholar recoiled as though he’d been hit, but then he shook himself. He straightened his spine and stared Corin in the eye.

“I’m not a coward!”

“You’ll be a hero,” Corin said. “The farmboy will tell the world
your
tale.”

Tesyn laughed at that, but it was in amusement. He still stood tall, and now he turned his gaze toward the distant hills.

Corin stepped up beside him. “You know the way?”

“I know the beginning of the way,” Tesyn answered. “Pray the gods that is enough.”

Even without the eerie voices of the dead, without the fear of unknown terrors lurking in every shadow, every twist of the land, it still would have been a taxing journey. The pirate and the scholar moved from a rocky beach into a fetid march. The plants there looked fat and greasy, overripe and sharp with thorns. The marsh sucked at their boots and burped up noxious gasses in their wake. An icy wind blew through it all, not strong enough to dispel the odor, but sharp enough to cut through cloak and clothes and steal a body’s heat.

Long, curling tendrils of mist rolled across the land like breakers, endless waves rising up from the beach behind them and crashing against the distant highlands. The tendrils seemed almost alive, twin to the unreal mist that Corin ever saw in the presence of Oberon’s strange magic. But if these mists bespoke some vast enchantment cloaking this whole land, he could not readily determine its purpose. It was nothing immediate, nothing obvious, but an otherworldly malevolence lay thick and heavy everywhere across this land.

Corin watched and waited, hopeful that at need he would be able to thwart this spell as he had done with others. In the meantime, he did everything he could to ignore the itch it placed between his shoulder blades. He toiled ever onward, pressing hard for higher ground, but every pace he went wore at him. And those voices never once relented.
“Begone! Foul manling, leave our shores! We’ve seen enough of senseless wars.”

Corin shook his head at that and muttered to himself, “This one is different. This time we will win. I swear by Fortune and by Oberon, I’ll find a way.”