L J Chappell [Chappell - Islands of the Inner Sea

Islands of the Inner Sea

L J Chappell

ISLANDS OF THE INNER SEA

Kindle Edition

Copyright 2018 L J Chappell

All rights reserved.

Cover Design by Diana Buidoso

Published by Asquith Publishing

Contents

A Map of the Inner Sea

showing some places mentioned in the text

Chapter One

Night Princess

The Night Princess was a pirate ship: lean, fast andmanoeuvrable. With full sails, the wind behind her and three crew shifts shewas making over two hundred miles south each day, down the Western Reach fromStormhaven.

It was winter midwinter: there were only a few hours ofdaylight and night fell early.

The man they called Lanvik stood on deck, gazing at the darkshore as it slipped silently past. From time to time he spotted an occasionallight: the regular shape of a window, sketched out in bright yellow. He would watchas the ship gradually drew level with the light and then passed it, and itbecame smaller and smaller until he wasnt sure that the speck he could still makeout was real or only in his imagination.

They sailed through the night without stopping so therewere normally lamps around the ship, lamps that would have been visible fromthe shore. But not visible for long. He imagined people on the shore lookingout to sea, looking back at him, and tracking their little cluster of lightsfrom one side of the horizon to the other.

His eyes were adjusted to the darkness, so even under theheavy clouds he could make out different shades and details on the shore cliffs, mountains, fields, walls. On the other side of the ship, to the west,lay the Durrandir Spine: a hundred narrow, jagged islands that accompanied thecoast for a thousand miles down to West Durrant. There were sometimes lights onthe larger islands, but normally rock and snow was all that was visible.

Apparently the prevailing wind was from the north, so theywere making good time. Even so, it would take days to sail along the WesternReach, and that was only the first part of their journey to the Inner Sea.

Lanvik rubbed his hands together, and then rammed them backinto his pockets: although they were heading south, it was still cold. Everyoneelse, except the crew working the evening shift, was under cover down below,or in one of the cabins of the quarterdeck. But despite the temperature, heenjoyed being in the open: simply standing, with no company but the stars abovehim.

His earliest memories were of prison, a small stone cellthat was far darker and far colder than where he stood now. Those earliestmemories only stretched back ten days. Ten days ago he had been in prison for amurder that he didnt even know if hed committed, because he couldntremember.

His rescuers, his new travelling companions, were a companyof thieves and brigands and mercenaries. A Dark Elf called Kiergard Slorn was indisputablytheir leader: everyone had their own ideas and opinions, but he made all thedecisions that mattered.

Lanvik had no memories of his time before the prison, and noidea why those memories were missing. He had no memory of anyone except thepeople he had met over the last few days. In prison, they had called himwizard, but he had no memory of any magecraft. He couldnt even remember hisreal name Lanvik was what the Company called him: the name of the placethey had rescued him from.

Since being rescued, he had scaled the mountains they calledthe Black Dragons Teeth; he had seen the Festival of the Emerald Crown atDarkfall and there, he had assisted with the kidnap of one of the Empiressacrifices Vander of Arrento. Kidnap, or rescue, depending how you looked atit Lanvik was still unsure. Even Vander of Arrento seemed unsure for much ofthe time.

His journey had been a frantic dash, filled with strangesights and smells and people, but now it had come to an abrupt halt as therealities of a long sea voyage manifested themselves onboard the NightPrincess. This was their second day aboard.

Vander of Arrento seemed far happier aboard the ship than hehad been on land, in Tremark, perhaps because he had no choice about what to door where to go: struggling, resisting, or trying to get away would have beenpointless. His relationship with Kiergard Slorns Company began to look morelike a rescue than a kidnap, though Lanvik couldnt forget that theyd had todrug Vander and tie him up in order to get him this far. This journey south,away from Darkfall, was not one that he had wanted to make.

Not for the first time, Lanvik wondered about KiergardSlorns motives for his own rescue.

Had someone paid the Company to collect him, as they had withVander? If he had his memories, would he be fighting and struggling againstbeing taken south? Was he actually being kidnapped as well, but wasgoing along with it because he couldnt remember?

If that was the case, then everyone in the Company knew andnone of them wanted him to recover his memories at all. Perhaps theyd eveninduced his memory loss somehow: after all, the easiest way to kidnap someone,as with Vander, would be if they went along with it.

It was an uncomfortable thought which had occurred to himbefore but there didnt seem any way he could establish the truth, one way orthe other. Without his memories, the best he could hope to do was judge eventsby what people told him, what they did and how much he felt he trusted them:his judgement of their character.

The ships crew all seemed to be busy: when their duties werenot occupying them, they had training routines. Kiergard Slorns Company hadspent much of the first day on deck, but rapidly became bored with themonotonous repetition of the landscape. After that, they had joined the crew,exercising and training with weapons, or else stayed below decks, snoozing orreading or playing games of chance with cards or dice.

Menska had advised Lanvik to learn to fight, to learn toplay an instrument and to become stronger. Then he would be more useful to theCompany even if his magecraft didnt return, if it had ever existed. He hadasked the others, and Thawn had offered to teach him basic swordcraft. It wasinstantly obvious that he had no fluency with the blade and little naturalability, so they concluded that he had likely never held one before. Nevertheless,he was determined to learn, at least to a level where he could defend himself.

During the day, the crew flung open the shutters on thecargo deck to let in plenty of light and they exercised: they had bars,weights, ladders and ropes. They also organised bouts of physical combat, withor without weapons, and some of Slorns Company joined in, cheered on by theircomrades. Bane was magnificent, defeated only through guile or accident. Thawn,Ubrik and his brother Garran, together with Kiergard Slorn himself were largelyable to hold their own. The others were shown to be not nearly as skilled as thecrew of the Night Princess.

That was not the only way that Lanvik had been surprised bythe crew: they were not at all what he had expected on a pirate vessel. Notonly did they train rigorously, but they were well-drilled and disciplined:there were no fights, no sudden outbursts of anger or violence, barely anyraised voices. And oddly, there were no young men the crew were fit, strongand skilful with weapons but they were not young. He wasnt completelyconfident, but he would have been surprised if any one of them was under thirtyyears old.

There were a few Madarinn in their number, but they were almostall Light Elves Terevarna. From their fighting prowess he guessed they wereDog clan rather than Black Rat, the traditional clan of sailors. Lanvik was theonly Human aboard.

There were well over a hundred crew, far more than had beenobvious at Stormhaven. But then, a lot about the ship had not been obvious atStormhaven. She had been docked under the name