The Arkanist

The City of Exiles

Eller glared down at his clenched fist, white as bone, his nails digging into his soft pink flesh. Illyr… What am I turning into? Over the past day and late into the darkness of night, Eller reread the letter, looming over the last sentence. The Qurossi are dead. Each time he read it silently, he repeated it aloud, harder and stronger. He had emblazoned the message into his mind so that he could recite the entire thing perfectly. Eller stared down at the curled piece of parchment, the black waves of ink glistening into the candlelight of his cabin. Darkness cloaked the world outside, the two moons of Eariea glowing with an opalescent twinge as their feeble white-red light swam across the ripples of Gallows End in flashes of rosy pink.

         His eyes bulged from lack of sleep and deep bags drooped solemnly beneath them, wrinkling his pale skin. A pain rung up his right arm continually, as if a knife was scraping against the tendons; but never sliced through. As the ship rocked, his head swayed, sometimes thudding against the wooden wall behind him. Eller felt his strength ebb slowly ever since his amputation. His body wept with fatigue and enervation, until his limps screamed every time he moved them. Damn this world! Eller cursed. My life has been terrible, my entire family is dead, and I am lost at sea with a pirate. What could be worse?

         Eller did not want to answer that question. Instead, he picked up the corner of the letter with his left hand and read it one last time, slowly and deeply. As his hand quivered, he looked at it blankly, glaring into the paper itself. He gulped, and dangled it over the candle and watched the flames engulf the words and curl up into a ball of writhing red. The dancing light reflected off his eyes as he watched the paper burn.

         The next morning, he greeted Shaalad on the decks, the haze weaker than most days. His vision spanned much farther and the sun blazed through the fog until it’s heat cloaked Eller in sweat. The salty winds cooled him and shivered his bones as they wicked at his glistening skin. Today, he was garbed in a lighter, cotton tunic of blue with a leather rope strung about his hip fastened with his dirk, Betrayer. He couldn’t bare to look at it, for it still wore the blood of Illyr, but Porrel convinced him to keep it near, in case of anything.

         Shaalad was draped in dark, worn brown leather robes with great cuffs glinting with a gilded button in the likeness of an astraci. The buttons along the breast were the same, but hung loose where underneath the beige cloth ruffled down to meet his leather belt that gleamed with a golden astraci buckle. A dark black hood tumbled down his back and he held a triangular hat in his hand.

         “Hawkeye informs me that Tarhtun shall be close in the distance soon.” He glanced up the height of the main mast, draped with ropes of horsehair where perched atop a wooden watchtower a small silhouette looked out east with a telescope set at his eye. “Soon we will arrive and pass under the Skull.”

         “I have read stories of the Skull,” Eller said, remembering the days back in O'ea. “They say it reaches out of the water like a claw, and eats up wary travelers.”

         “The stories you have heard do the Skull no justice.” Shaalad grinned. “When we near, you shall see the greatness of it first hand.” He said as if he had built the stone structure himself, with a sense of pride. “Common misconception is that people believe the exiles of Tarhtun built it to ward off unwelcome pirates, but the truth is that when they came to the island, it was already there, and so they named it the Skull.”

         “Are we welcomed?” Eller had been contemplating the question.

         “Aye,” Shaalad said. “Of course Shaalad Shoh is welcomed. I have been there nearly a dozen times, and I have an old friend who will fix my galley there.”