1.2 Hommes Optare
Curling her fingers around Amurisil’s silver wire-wrapped ivory hilt, Eltera lifted the sword from its sheath and found the weight of it reassuring. The incredibly honed edge of its eog-forged blade shone a fierce silver in the dappled moonlight streaming through the uneven glass of the latticed windows. No blood was to be found at all upon the cool metal. The dark aelf heard the weapon’s disembodied voice whispering within her soul, it seemed, the experience of it soothing yet edged with doubt and something akin to fear, or so she thought. Backlash, she perceived the word soundlessly.
Eltera pondered its meaning, at first puzzled when Amurisil flashed a mental image to its wielder. Within her mind’s eye, she saw a holy aura of silver light, the ethereal glow of it softly illuminating the eog-forged blade while Amurisil began to channel its healing magic upon her wounds as she had seen it done many times before. Only in this instance, the normally pristine light faltered and shifted to a hideous shade of dark crimson that seemed to hunger for her blood instead, siphoning life rather than restoring it. As quickly as the dream-like vision appeared before her, it faded and Eltera once again found herself standing within the unfamiliar ship’s cabin.
Disquieted by what the sword had just shown her, the dark aelf replaced Amurisil back upon the table gently, appearing lost amidst a sea of troubled thought. Eltera took a moment to wash her face over the brass basin, letting the cool water wash over slightly feverish skin and allowing the disturbing memories of it all to sluice away as well. It was too hot in the room, she supposed.
After drying herself with a clean cloth left beside the basin, Eltera moved toward the latticed windows and tried to peer out the smoky, wavering glass. Outside she could make out the jagged shoreline of the Dracian harbor as it ringed its way into the shadowed distance. Eluna was a waxing, imperfect orb of pure white silver, appearing very much like a sleepy half-lidded eye as it hung in the darkened sky. It wouldn’t be long before it was full in a few nights’ time, though Eltera couldn’t say exactly how much time had passed since she fell into unconsciousness. Clouds shrouded much of the celestial heavens, and were too much of a match for the weak twinkling light of stars to shine through.
The alabaster towers and arching spires of the Dracian capital seemed to defy gravity itself, their windows lit by a myriad sea of hearth fires that burned brightly against the twilight. How eerily beautiful the cityscape was by night, she thought with idle wonder.
The ship was still anchored at the Ebontine, that much Eltera could see. Inky black waves crested below and splashed against the hull, foaming as they did. The gentle sound they made was somehow relaxing. Her quiet reverie was shattered when the coarse, muffled voices of the men outside the cabin’s doors broke into another vulgar song, this time accompanied by what sounded like rustic panpipes. Sailors were wont to throw themselves into their leisure as much as their work, Eltera surmised.
Leaving the windows, the dark aelf crossed over the rushes upon the wooden floor and took closer note of the cabin she now found herself in. Strange, eerie masks carved of dark wood hung upon one wall, their elongated faces painted garishly to resemble nothing so much as goblins, trolls, and exotic animals. Multicolored beads and plumed feathers adorned many of them, lending an even more alien appearance than normal. The tanned skins of various beasts were draped close by, bearing intricately striped patterns, some in orange and black, others in black and white. A few bore fashionable dark black spots against tawny yellow fur.
A ceramic globe was located in one corner, suspended within a gyroscopic frame of expertly carved mahogany. Its detailed surface was painted with land masses and oceans Eltera supposed were representative of the whole of the world, though she couldn’t make out the strange script that labeled each sea or nation upon it.
Lacking anything that resembled a flume much less a chimney, the cozy stone hearth in the opposite corner of the room did indeed house a small, crackling fire. Although the flames gave off light and warmth, the dark aelf noted that there was no smoke and no dangerous embers to spark a fire that could spread to the rest of the ship.
Continuing to scan the cabin, Eltera passed by a compact bookcase that stood off on the opposite wall, most of the tomes bound in leather and bearing titles written in equally mystifying languages. Those mundane few she could read were in Common and appeared to be nothing more than simple texts or baffling technical manuals pertaining to units of measure and weights of scale as they dealt with cargo. Though it appeared that she may be able to speak and understand any tongue she happens to hear, reading and writing is a different matter entirely.
A tidy writing desk lay against another corner near the bed’s alcove, an unlit lantern hanging over the somewhat cramped quarters. Despite the darkness present there, Eltera could make out various metal instruments that she guessed were integral to navigation and charting a ship’s course at sea. Having never claimed to be much of a sailor herself, she could not say what most of the tools were called by name nor each of its intended purpose exactly, though she did recognize a compass and a telescoping spyglass when she saw them. Scrolls were neatly bundled in the desk’s cubby holes, tagged and filed in order. Accompanied by feathered quill pens and stoppered bottles of ink, charts bearing stars and constellations were spread over the desk’s surface, along with a large map that bore the likeness of the vast northern reaches of the surface world as far as she knew it. The language written upon the unrolled parchment was unfamiliar, much to her disappointment.
Eltera noticed a necklace fashioned of ivory-white bones from some strange, exotic animal was piled over the map, the weight of it perhaps helping to keep the charts from being blown away by an errant breeze should the latched windows be open. Sharp, jagged ribs hung in a brilliant corona under the thong which in itself was made from the creature’s vertebrae. At the center of the macabre piece of jewelry was the beasty’s skull, its pitted snout baring long, wicked fangs that could have once held a potent venom. A snake, she guessed, and a fairly large one at that. Eltera realized that the necklace was the same one Rentiki had worn when she first saw him, though most of it had been hidden beneath the fabric of his colorful vest at the time.
Just as the dark aelf started to turn away from the desk, she heard a softly hollow clattering, as if of tiny bones. Whirling, Eltera’s breath caught in her throat as the necklace that had moments before been lying as dead and lifeless as the animal’s skeleton from which it was made began to stir on its own accord. Abruptly, the bones split apart from each other and veered off in all directions, taking to the air with surprising speed.
Startled, the dark aelf weaved and ducked about to evade the small projectiles, the blanket she had been clutching against her slender shoulders dropping to the floor in her haste to lay forgotten in a heap at her feet as Eltera threw up her arms to shield her face. The flying pieces of bone narrowly missed as she managed to avoid being hit, nimble as the dark aelf was. Still, her eyes widened all the same when the animated necklace, seemingly possessed of a mind of its own, reformed itself into the very likeness it once bore in life, that of a sinuous skeletal serpent that floated before her as light as a feather caught in the wind.
Staring at her with eyeless sockets as it coiled through the air, the creature bared its sharp fangs in a silent hiss, and seemed poised to strike at the first sign of movement on Eltera’s part. The dark aelf warrior froze, her breathing short and rapid as thoughts of action raced through her mind.