Karadra's Shipwreck

The Ship - Chapter 13

“De Rois?” she echoed wonderingly.

She was sitting up on the mattress, spine straight as a candle. Arsik was resting on his back, naked, his legs entangled with hers.

“Yes,” he said. “Son of Perko De Rois and Jael Ysor, both complete nobodies, from the House of Cesspool in the Castle of Pitifulness.”

Maestra laughed out loud, covering her mouth with her hand. Dawn had intruded in their private space, gracing their bodies and faces with new shadows and angles.

Only a few people knew his name and those of his parents. No important legacy was associated with them. His father was from Ayaton and his mother from Saraport. When he died, she moved to his little house in Ayaton and stayed there – a wise choice in Arsik’s opinion. The only thing that didn’t make sense was that he never joined her there.

“Play a little,” he said, nodding to the violin.

“Alright,” she picked up the brown leather case from the floor.

She undid the straps and pulled the musical instrument out. Arsik propped himself up on his elbows to take a better look at it. Something about this violin fascinated him. The wood was black; timeworn but pitch black. He’d never seen anything like it. The instrument’s main body curved oddly where the “soul” would be, near the engraved key – quite the unusual shape for a violin.

Maestra’s hand masterly raised the bow. She set the violin against her neck and locked it in place with her chin. Feather-light, she touched the strings with her fingertips to determine if it was tuned; the sound pleased her. “I hope everyone else is already awake.” They both smiled.

The bow’s horsehair touched the strings; the melody slipped out of them and traveled through the violin’s body, her fingers and, ultimately, Maestra’s body – a soft melody, discreet, perfect for a dawn. No sorrow or joy did it contain, but slowly, it swept Arsik away to more mysterious places.

Her hands fluttered in a sharp staccato. The melody changed and evolved, like a story progressing into its main theme. The sound now resembled weeping mountains, untouched lands and ridges and bare mountaintops. The notes brimmed with landscapes – Arsik could see them, like his vision on the cross. He felt he knew those places, or he would in the future; he was certain Maestra knew them, had visited them. He shivered from his toes to the roots of his hair.

The melody destroyed his world and replaced it with a new one, infinitely more beautiful, worthy of protecting and caring and fighting for. The woman had already been beautiful, as nearly all Elves were, but now she dawned in front of him like a goddess – a goddess that toyed with the souls of mortals.

When she finished the song, silence reigned for a long time. A hesitant smile of hers broke the ice.

“I’ve never heard or felt anything like this,” he confessed, his words welling up from a raw place of honesty.

“Such lies!” she exclaimed. “I don’t deserve the praise. Be aware that part of those feelings you are experiencing are due to the violin itself and not the violinist.” Her cheeks had reddened with embarrassment at his compliment.

“What do you mean ‘due to the violin itself’? Is there something special about it?”

“Yes.”

“Magic?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

Maestra narrowed her eyes. “Better another time,” she said, putting it back in the case.

“Alright,” he answered, assailed by sudden anxiety. He didn’t want to make a mistake – ever again. Mistakes would drive her away from him. “I’m sorry…” he ventured, and she immediately smiled at him.

“Why apologize? You did nothing wrong.” Her assurance brought him relief. “Arsik…” Her tone changed. “There is something you need to know.”

“There is a lot I need to know,” added he who normally forgot loose ends.

“Let us start with this one thing.”

She sat next to him again and took his hand in hers. “There is something we want from you,” she announced guiltily, and he nodded, not minding. Nothing in his world came for free and, besides, she had saved his life – there were only a very few things she couldn’t ask of him.

“Your rescue wasn’t exactly a selfless act. We have found ourselves in a predicament.”

Arsik waited patiently for her to explain things at her own pace.

“We are on a mission and we are going to need your help.”

This sounded like a piece from his very recent past. Everyone wanted something from him. What did he want? He had no clue, but from the Shaman to Golderim and now to Maestra, the same cycle repeated itself.

“Who are you people?” he exasperated. “This ship isn’t the kingdom’s, is it?” Maestra confirmed this. “The captain’s name is Elya but he’s not part of the Royal Fleet and you’re not pirates either.” With a nod, Maestra affirmed this too. “So, the captain has a powerful name but also his own vendetta? How is that possible?”

Maestra looked around the room, searching for the right words. “The captain doesn’t belong to the Royal Fleet, that is true. But this ship doesn’t belong to the captain. It belongs to his wife.”

Arsik frowned. He remembered the unmanned steering wheel last night. “To Karadra?”

“Yes. The ship also bears her name. All of us here, consequently you now as well, are members of Karadra’s crew.”

Arsik couldn’t tell how he felt about this. Never before had he heard of such a case. Many seamen –countless, even– named their vessels after their wives, mistresses, daughters, even their mothers or sisters, but the ship always belonged to them; that’s why they were captains, after all. In no island of the South had this been done before. Not only was the captain the master of the ship, but he also had legal authority over the vessel and its crew, granted by imperial decree, as the Trident’s law commanded. Each captain was pronounced the acting king of his ship, and that was one of the main differences separating their Empire from the feudal communities of the continental nations.

“Where does Karadra belong then?” he asked, lacing his fingers.

“Nowhere. Karadra is Karadra. I will tell you about her.”

“What is wrong with her?” Arsik interjected. “Is she sick?”

“Yes.” Maestra’s face grew serious. “Very sick.”

Arsik pondered on his next words carefully. “What do you need me for? Where exactly are we going and where do I fit in?”

Maestra’s eyes foreboded a storm. “We are heading west,” she said and waited.

Arsik studied her thoughtfully and then shot to his feet like a coil suddenly released. “When you say west, you mean…” His arms hung at his sides like boneless tentacles.

“I mean west, Arsik.”

Suddenly dizzy, he sat back down and tried to talk slowly and clearly, as if speaking to a child. “Maestra, dear…” He took her hands. “The only thing west is the Vespia Sea. You know that, right?”

Maestra closed her eyes and Arsik got his answer. “You do know it then…” She nodded. “That is where you’re coming from?” he asked desperately, and she nodded again.

Arsik buried his face in his palms. His forehead felt horribly heavy. Pangs of pain struck his head and body, while an itch started torturing his injured hand. He rubbed his eyes and surrendered to his memories, just for a moment; enough to remember why the Vespia Sea was the entire South’s forbidden destination, why the four Sealords had banned ships coming from there, why even pirates avoided that route… Why it was considered a black stain in Vitallia’s oceans.

Vespia was the largest naval gravesite that ever existed. Thousands of vessels had been lost in its waves, for reasons unknown. Tempests, the Sentinel’s extreme phenomena, rumors, curses, seamen tales – all carried a seed of truth in them. Over the years, a few ships had attempted this voyage and all of them had earned their place in its legend. The laws of Nature didn’t apply to this place, and neither did the laws of magic as those could be interpreted by the wizards, the Druids and the Geomancers.

Everyone whispered about a shadow in the West, flaying ships and mortal souls, deeper than the monsters of the sea and darker than the depths of the ocean. No one wanted to find out more, and no one could.

“What business could you possibly have at the Vespia Sea, Maestra?” Arsik asked her, slowly and earnestly.

The woman took a deep breath. By the changing of her posture, an important story was about to be recounted. “I will try to explain, Arsik, because you do need to know everything before we get there. It is crucial for us, for you and for our mission as well. We need you in good health and strong, and for that to happen, you need to know everything.”

Arsik nodded.

“But for you to know everything, you must first be able to accept it without being overwhelmed by madness or anger. Therefore, I will do whatever I can to explain it in measured parts, and I pray the risk I took with you pays off, for me as well as for the others. I will talk to you about Karadra and about me if you like, but it is best if Sentrik is the one who speaks to you about the mission.”

He didn’t like this special treatment; it made him feel like a small child. The intensity in her voice showed how important this was to her, however, therefore it immediately became his priority.

“Karadra is a gifted woman. She has magical powers, psionic powers.” She waited to see if Arsik could follow but wasn’t sure. A nod assured her he could. “It means she can control things with her mind, both material and immaterial, Arsik. She is a telepath. The Core’s power is immense inside her, so vast that only a very few people in the world possess this gift.”

Arsik listened carefully.

“People like her have telepathic and telekinetic powers and other gifts. They can read people’s thoughts, control their emotions, affect their reality, alter or shape it, alleviate or magnify their pain. They are manipulators, mages with incredible power, that threaten the very fabric of the universe we live in.”

Arsik began losing her. He understood the words, sure, but missed the meaning. He could comprehend the basic principles of magic – after all, his knife did have a rune. According to Maestra, in fact, this rune offered Arsik some kind of telekinesis over the blade, which was why it always returned to his hand. But between that and altering reality and the fabric of the universe lay miles and miles he had to cross, and he certainly couldn’t do it on his own.

“Karadra has such powers. As awful or dangerous as this may seem –and I can see it in your eyes that you feel this way–, she is a wonderful woman that has kept a large part of her innocence intact. That is a very rare thing in our world, Arsik.” She held his hands again. “But for a person with such gifts, it’s more than rare: it is a treasure. A treasure we ought to protect, do you understand?”

Arsik nodded, bewitched by her kindness. It made him want her even more.

“She is more precious and more valuable than all the kings in all the lands. She is a person of tremendous abilities, Arsik, I cannot stress this enough.”

With each sentence, she clenched his hands, shaking him a little. “I understand,” he said lamely but convinced no one.

Maestra stared at him, weighing if she should continue. “Along with those powers though, come problems.”

Ah, there it was. That was when Arsik started feeling more comfortable. Each time someone cut to the chase, it was a way to drop every pretense and start getting to the bottom of things – a place everyone understood, from the most cultivated person to the lowest of criminals.

“What kind of problems?” Arsik asked casually, to test her.

Maestra gave him a strict look. “As I told you, people as rare as Karadra are strong telepaths. They can read thoughts and control emotions. Consequently, as you can guess, they are very, very sensitive. They receive thousands of stimuli, absorb it all like sponges and are drenched in them, drowning, suffocating because they can’t fix everything. They shoulder both the good and the bad of humanity and drag it along like a burden, an inconceivable curse, necessary though to form their power.”

Arsik tried to imagine how it would be, living with other people’s pain. He could hardly bear his own –without rum, he would have ended his life long ago– but experiencing twice or thrice that weight, let alone due to other people’s choices, was unthinkable. What god, demon or power had devised such a cruel manner of living and had induced mortals to it and why?

The thought angered him. He considered how it would be to carry the accumulated rage of a number of people at the same time and froze.

“This sensitivity of theirs acts like a compass,” Maestra continued. “When a great event is underway, like a horrible tragedy or a disaster with many victims; when a lot of people pray for the same cause or warriors hope for the same victory; when a common fight is born or collective thoughts are being materialized; when people’s prayers long to be heard; then the minds of the Core’s people, people like Karadra, attune to those signals and are drawn to them. They share their burden, feel their emotions, empathize with their needs, identify with their fight, unite with their collective existence. They are compelled to help them.”

Her last words echoed stronger, heavier, colored differently. Arsik heard something strange in her voice: a much richer quality he hadn’t spotted before, as if there’d been two voices for a moment, and both terribly commanding.

However, inside the maze of his mind he understood – or thought he did; he certainly felt it though. One didn’t need to be a telepath or a person of the Core for that. Arsik felt he was now involved in something significant, and that relieved his head from some weight, awarding his moral compass with a sense of peace. What’s more, he felt good with himself for being able to follow this conversation, a subject so far away from the pettiness of other people – a conversation that laid courses on uncharted territories.

A beautiful feeling it was, familiar. Like a seafarer eager for adventures, as if he had been created for such a fight, Arsik sensed its rightness; perhaps, it even was his destiny.

A few moments of silence later, he felt incredibly tired. He had forgotten how exhausted and battered he was – it had all faded in the adrenaline of the past few hours. Now, however, he began feeling the familiar imbalance, the hunger in his body and the pain in his bones. His back suffered from pangs of pain caused by the lack of rum and all that entailed. His misery gathered like a black cloud over his head.

Maestra was quick to notice. “Why don’t we take a break?” she suggested. “Let’s get something to eat and we can finish this another time, what do you say?”

Not eager to end up being carried by her again, Arsik nodded his agreement, pale and weak.