It is here I vanish from the histories for a time. Even my most persistent biographers assume that
The Burning Knave
, the ship that took me from Axichis, was taken as a prize by the Kharsoomian corsairs that ply the Lapis Ocean. They believe I was taken from there to the slave markets at Dezsu, and sold immediately to the Clan Sesamhat, where I toiled for some time before effecting my release. They have found what remain of the records, and I am still under a death sentence by that clan, albeit under a different name. These assumptions are false, and eliminate perhaps the most important parts of the time I think of as my exile.
It is for this reason that I will provide more context to this phase of my life. I hope you will indulge an old man and forgive me if I linger upon details with which you are familiar. No doubt some of you hail from far Obai or even Uazica and know of the peculiar custom of the regions.
The truth is that I spent many years between the voyage from Axichis and my sale in Dezsu. In the darkness of the war, I was gripped by a powerful wanderlust that I could not deny. I did not truly understand my motives at the time. As I said, I thought of this as my exile, some kind of punishment, and I still carry that label for this time even now. The truth was that I needed time to heal, and soon, it was to cope with the shame that would soon dog me throughout. I could not return home until I was once again complete, a task that took much longer than expected.
I would shortly take the name Ashuz, and become known as the Blackspear. This was who emerged from the decadent wastes of Kharsoom. I would return with the hand of my wife, the incomparable beauty Tanyth of Clan Abibaal. I would be a prince. And I would be master of Fate itself. These tales will come in time.
When I left the amazons, the wounds of the war were too raw to even probe. For the first weeks of my journey, I sat upon the deck as we sailed first west, and then south, heading for the Strait of Trelyr that would spill us into the Lapis Ocean. Each moment upon the sea took me farther from home, but I did not care. It was farther from the pain I'd left on the Turquoise Isles.
I rested at the prow, feeling the roll of the waves beneath me and trying to forget that I'd felt the same thing nearly every day during the war. Oddrin sat in my lap, and I stroked his glabrous surface, trying to find peace that would not come. Even the sight of dolphins frolicking in the waves did little to rouse me from my melancholy.
"Are you enjoying the view?" The question was from Jerrika Grendel, in her honey-smooth contralto. The captain of the vessel, she could not have been much older than I and I was still a few months shy of my third decade.
She was only a bit shorter than me, with a lean figure sculpted by a life on the waves. She wore breeches, cinched below her knees, her legs bare below. A golden ring sparkled from one toe, and a sea serpent tattoo twining about her other ankle. Her skin was a light brown, with luminous golden undertones.
She wore a loose tunic with a waistcoat. Her brown jacket, a common sight on deck, was not on her now. It was treated leather, water running off its stiff surface. Her wide-brimmed hat was treated I the same way, and that never left her head when she was outdoors.
She had wide cheekbones, dusted with fetching brown freckles that went over the bridge of her upturned nose. Her eyes, large with a touch of a slant, were a bright tawny brown. Her long, curly red hair was bound in a tail. Her lips always held a tiny smirk.
"I love this part of the Turquoise," she mused when I didn't respond. "Closer to the Lapis, the water has the prettiest hue. Quiet too."
I almost didn't respond again but the bait was too tempting. "Quiet?"
"We're not far from the strait now. The coast," she pointed to the south, where great cliffs rose from the sea, "is too rocky. The islands are small and barren here. And, of course, there is the Heavenfall."
My gaze went to the east. Though shrouded by its clinging webs of fog, the purplish shape of the Heavenfall was visible on the horizon. Though it nearly formed a land bridge between Aucor and Chassudor, it was utterly impassable, and that was before the legends that stuck to it like its funereal wrap of mist.
"Are the legends true?'
"All legends are true, wizard. And false. The seas are hungrier there, but access to the Lapis makes the danger worthwhile." She shrugged. "For those with the stomach for it."
I was quiet, watching the looming presence of the Heavenfall, its peak disappearing into the sky.
"I am curious about something," she said. "You are far from the only charter I've taken from Axichis, but you are the first man. What were you doing there?"
"Killing," I said.
Now it was her turn to be silent for a time. "A lot of that happening lately." She was quiet for a little longer, and I listened to the waves slosh against the ship. "Watch for when the water of the Lapis mixes with that of the Turquoise."
She left me at the gunwale, and I turned my attention to the water.
I stopped wearing my elven robes. That was a decision I would regret, but at the time, I could not bear to have them on me. I wore my old robes, the ones that had wrapped Zhahllaia's lamp in my pack. A foolish, sentimental act, but I longed to be close to her and this was the only way I could think to do it. I did not care that they collected the water from the air the way the elven robes did not, and could be at turns too warm and not warm enough. The phantom touch of my djinn was what I craved.
I wondered what she would think of her great conqueror, knowing that I had left a war half fought. What had old Qammuz thought of unwinnable wars? Perhaps that had been their doom. They had been like the Heacharids in their time, but Qammuz had brought with it art and culture, and they were far more keen to adopt what they found than replace it. It had not mattered in the end. They had passed into history in the way that Axichis soon would.
My quarters, such that they were, was a hammock strung in the hold. It smelled of wet wood, old produce, and the ghosts of spice. I spent just as many nights up on the deck under the stars. Sleep was more often than not an absent friend.
As we drew close to the Strait of Trelyr, we neared the Heavenfall as well. Something about it filled me with dread, a drone at the edge of hearing that drove me mad. Shapes soared through the fog high above, silhouettes of creatures I did not recognize. I had never seen this thing, though Rhadoviel had mentioned it in his lectures. All considered it to be an ill omen, and I knew now why. The fascinating thing about the Heavenfall is that its name is entirely wrong, but it would be many years before I learned its true origins.
For the moment, I could only watch it warily, as though this mammoth stone would suddenly betray a sinister purpose and start to move. We slipped through the strait, spilling us out into the Lapis, the western coast of Aucor off our port side. Captain Grendel, Jerrika, had been right. The mixing of the bright water of the Turquoise with the deep and subtle color of the Lapis was breathtaking. I watched the tendrils of each reaching into one another, but never quite mixing. It made me long for the Castelpont, where my home and my concubines waited. That was at the mixing of the Turquoise and the Azure, a similar enough sight to fill me with longing.
I began to make myself useful. Over two years spent on
Naeri's Revenge
had made an able seaman of me and such toil took my mind off the war. That first night, when I went to my hammock after a day of labor, it was with the pleasing exhaustion of work. The next day, the captain approached me.
"Were you not a wizard, I would ask you to join my crew," she said.
"Perhaps that is what I will do next."
"It is an honest trade." Her smirk widened. "Unless you do it right."
"I spent the bulk of the last two years at sea."
"It shows. It is my custom to invite charters to my quarters for supper. An evening of conversation to break the monotony of travel."
"We've been at sea for a month."
"You have not seemed amenable to company until now."
She was not wrong. "Yes, I will join you." She nodded and returned to her command. I too worked, my robes clinging uncomfortably to my skin, but I did not care. Work, honest work, was good for my soul.
I went to the captain's quarters after sundown. She answered after a knock. Her quarters were modest, a small room at the aft port side of the ship. Her hammock hung near the portholes, a small desk nearby. A dining table, fit for four, sat in the middle of the room, a chair at either end. Hers was marked with her her jacket and hat hanging over the back. "Welcome, wizard. And here I must ask your name. Manners and all that."
I opened my mouth and found my name would not leave my tongue. It was stuck in my throat, stubbornly refusing to be dislodged. Belromanazar of Thunderhead had been the Butcher of the Wooden Bay. He had been the one to slay his tent sisters, to use their corpses in an attempt to win an unwinnable war. I would not be him. I would be someone else. Or I would be no one else. "Ashuz," I said. A word in Abbih, the language of Old Qammuz. It meant, simply,
No one
.
"Ashuz. An unusual name. Doesn't sound Rhandic, and your coloring, your accent..." she paused, her keen eyes searching my face. "...it's not important. Captain Jerrika Grendel at your service. Please, sit and eat your fill. I've opened a bottle of Axichan wine in your honor. A fine vintage from what I understand."
I swallowed on a dry throat. The idea of drinking their wine while their homeland was falling turned my stomach. "Thank you."
