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The Lumaril flew through frigid waters, her membranous sails billowing in the Atmoran blast. Captain Lylanwe held fast to her wheel, charting their course by the scattered stars above, ever wary of the jutting blades of ice marching through the waves. She checked her compass. They were heading steadily north-east, the distant shadows of Skyrim cutting into the sky.
Lylanwe breathed deeply of the salted air and turned her gaze upon the mast. There hung what remained of her would-be usurper. They had suspended him upside-down to be food for the gulls and a reminder to all others who might harbour secret thoughts of mutiny. The rest of them were thrown overboard.
But time was running out. The crew whispered in the night, restless and irritable. She glared at the quartermaster as he ground a blade on stone, an endless, grating scrape.
It all started when they passed through the ice fields between the sunken shoals of Yokuda and the southernmost peninsula of Atmora. First Mate Valaran warned her, but it was either that or sail east of Yokuda – and likely be swallowed by the Maelstrom of Bal and stuck in Coldharbour for eternity, or else end up ensnared in the reefs of Thras and play prey to the slug-men.
Lylanwe’s face hardened as she looked back at the sky. They all agreed to this. No one was forced to come with her. They signed up in droves – too many to bring, enough that fights broke out in the taverns of Orotinga over who was fit to follow her and who was not. ‘The first great raid in centuries’, King Orgnum announced as he presented her with the cutlass that sat against her thigh, imbued with ancient magic only he remembered.
All the fruitless weeks of searching the southern ice fields of Atmora, shattering sea ice with shockwaves to allow the Lumaril to approach its hidden shores. But even after the relentless breaking and pushing, day and night, they had found craggy rocks encased in snow and nothing else. They scoured the unforgiving coast of the forgotten continent, with no sign of any ruins or the frozen corpse of a city. It was as though the Elder Wood had been wiped clean. Now, they were to go further east, towards the ancient port of Jylkurfyk, in hope that some treasure of the fabled days of Ysgramor remained, ripe for ironic plunder. But the crew had long since lost their spirit.
Soon they would enter the Atmoran Strait. The distant southern horizon betrayed the very faintest glimmers of a strange light, almost lost through the frigid blur of the winds. By Atakai, Lylanwe was cold. Colder than she ever knew possible. She rubbed her gloves together – fire salts had been stitched into the lining, activated by the friction, sending warm relief up her arms.
Lylanwe drew out her map. The lights must be coming from the old Nordic capital of Winterhold, she reasoned. She frowned at the unintelligible notes scribbled beside the marker of the city – the map had been dug out of King Orgnum’s own library, collected treasures from thousands of years of tributes from her pirate predecessors. Though he was learned enough to read whatever the Tamrielic words said, she was not. At least he had written the names of all the major coastal cities in Maormeri for her.
Scrape. Scrape. Lylanwe turned and glowered at the quartermaster again. This time he seemed to take note of her disapproval. ‘All well, captain?’ he grumbled.
Lylanwe scowled. ‘It is past eleven. You should be in bed.’
‘Got work to do, captain.’
‘You may work in the morning when it doesn’t disturb me or the rest of the crew. Go.’
The quartermaster frowned, but obediently dragged himself below deck to his bed. Lylanwe, alone at last, took another deep breath. The frigid air was refreshing, at least. The eerie blue lights of Winterhold grew clearer as the ship cut through the waves. Shadows of mountains formed behind it, nothing but silhouettes against the star-bright night, and a cloud rose far beyond, choking the holes in the firmament. An ash cloud from Red Mountain, perhaps.
Her grip tightened on the ship’s wheel. The old familiar rungs gave her comfort, the groaning bones of the Lumaril a melody she knew as well as her own heartbeat. Her people’s ancient rituals bound the spirit of the captain to the ship. The mutineers knew that when they revolted. But then, Lylanwe still had the best of her crew on side. If they should mutiny again, what would she do? They wouldn’t give her the chance to sink the ship and take them all down to Mora’s Locker with her rather than hand her beloved vessel over to traitors. That creaking song only she could hear, the lullaby that sung her to sleep like a mother with her child, would fall on deaf ears. The Lumaril couldn’t belong to anyone else. The profanity of it sickened the captain. Back home, a mutineer was the lowest kind of scum, doomed to exile in the swampy jungles or southern ice fields with the rest of the undesirables, or else, hang from the gallows of Kalume Rock.
Rhythmic stomps drew near. First Mate Valaran came to her side and looked to the unearthly light of Winterhold.
‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘You should rest. I can steer until sunup.’
Lylanwe fought to hide her irritation at the interruption. For a captain to be alone with the ship, listening to her sounds, was a rare intimacy. But Valaran wouldn’t understand – he’d never had a ship of his own. She made herself smile at him. ‘I don’t think I’ll get much sleep tonight.’ She glanced up at the dead mutineer on the mast again. ‘Things have changed. The crew is against me.’
‘They are only frustrated,’ Valaran assured her. ‘Rations are low. We’ve all been on the hardtack for two weeks, with barely enough grog to soften it. Perhaps it would be wise to lay over?’
Lylanwe shook her head. ‘This isn’t Akavir, Valaran. We can’t just lay over in Tamriel.’
Valaran snorted. ‘I’m not sure the Nords would have the sense to attack. Most of them would probably turn at the sight of us. We could use that to our advantage…go in and raid a fishing town and dine like kings the rest of the way to Jyl-kur-fyk.’ He struggled on the foreign word, so alien in their tongue.
‘It’s too risky and we’re already down to skeleton crew. We make use of our stocks and carry on casting nets. There will be ice fields with seabirds and those things we saw before – the tusked ones, whatever they are.’
Valaran wrinkled his nose. ‘The beast was blubbery and chewy.’
‘It’s still meat. The poor creature gave its life. You should be grateful. We should all be grateful to have made it this far.’
‘But with no treasure to show for it,’ Valaran argued. ‘Not a gem, not a coin, not even a dull rock to show for it. Only frostbite and ill feelings. This lot are superstitious even by the standards of sailors – old Hross saw an albatross land on him – ‘ He pointed to the body on the mast. ‘ - yesterday. When it took off, the bird fell from the sky. Dead. They believe this voyage is cursed.’
Lylanwe huffed. ‘Superstition ought to be left in the past where it belongs. The king gave me a charge to restore the stolen treasures of our people. These men trust old wives’ tales over the word of their king and god? What is truly unlucky is to be accompanied by a faithless crew.’
‘Don’t ignore the wisdom of elder sailors, Lylanwe,’ he scolded her.
‘I’m the captain of this ship. I earned the right through years of successful raids. I have the blessing of our lord. He cannot be wrong.’
Valaran raised a brow. ‘You can ignore superstitions when it suits you, but I heard you berating Matagi for whistling on deck the other night.’
‘Because the stupid bastard was riling me up!’ she argued. ‘Not because I believe he’s challenging the damn winds.’
Valaran chuckled. ‘Alright, Captain.’ Lylanwe sighed, then yawned, and wiped at her bleary eyes. The First Mate raised his brow at her. ‘Keeping you up?’
‘Oh, damn you,’ Lylanwe grumbled, surrendering to her aching back at last. ‘Have the watchman wake us the second the eastern horizon starts to lighten.’
As she made her way below deck to the captain’s cabin, Lylanwe heard hushed whispers from past the door to the crew’s quarters.
‘ – on the day we left Orotinga?’
‘The palmwine failed to break upon the boat,’ old Erhen muttered. ‘T’was cursed ere the day we left port.’
‘Cursed?’
‘Aye, cursed. The captain’s marked. The evil eye be upon us all. Nought but ruin shall come of this – ‘
Lylanwe threw the door open and glowered at the crewmen gathered around rickety table. Erhen cringed. ‘Lights out was over an hour ago,’ she snapped. ‘What’s more important than your rest?’ Before they could grasp for an answer, she lowered her voice to a growl and said, ‘The only thing cursing this voyage is lazy, slothish, irresponsible sailors who would rather sit up exchanging tales than resting for the day’s work ahead. The next man I hear talk of curses and ‘evil eyes’ will be taking a long walk off a short plank!’
She slammed the door and stormed into her quarters, tearing off her belt and cutlass with it, and collapsed onto her bed. With a heavy sigh she reached for her tattered and overstuffed sketchbook in the bedside drawer, full of a lifetime of memories. The earliest sketches were the unrefined scribblings of an unpracticed, young hand – mostly of her pet ornaug, Ukko. As the entries went on, they grew in skill. Her parents beamed back at her from an old, yellowed page, full of pride, just like they were the day she set sail. Something had twinged in her heart as she watched them wave her off from the docks. Doubt and fear. As the veil of mist swallowed them behind the stormy shoals, she had wondered if she would ever see them again.
It was no good musing on ill feelings, she reasoned. She turned to one of the last few blank pages in the sketchbook and began to trace an outline. At first, she pictured a sea serpent with its silver head reared up to the sky. But as her eyes grew heavy, and the creaking bones of the Lumaril sang her the sweet lullaby only she could hear, her hand traced idly, as though she were in a trance. The serpent grew wings, and a hot glow burned deep in the pit of its belly, flames spurting out of its jagged maw. A low chant echoed in her mind, distant and unfamiliar.
A shout shuddered through the ship and jolted her back to her senses. She flew out of her room and paused to look in on the crew’s quarters. They were all asleep. They hadn’t heard it. Lylanwe rubbed at her temples. It had sounded like a thunderclap spitting a single word in a language she couldn’t understand, ancient and strange and dark.
The ship’s song soothed her spirit, and she slinked back to her cabin, glaring at the sketch of the beast. Not a sea serpent. A dragon. Her people had stories of them, tyrants of the Elder Wood, splinters of Atakai conquering great swathes of land across Tamriel. When such a beast came to Falesami in the early days of their land, King Orgnum tore it from the sky, disfiguring its wings and imprisoning it in a mound of stone in the deep dark of the ocean.
Lylanwe ripped out the sketch and crumpled the paper in her fist. She climbed into bed and let the Lumaril lilt her lullaby.
**********
She startled awake to a rag held over her mouth and nose. Against the iron grip of her own crew, she struggled in vain as they dragged her out of bed in only her shift, bare-footed and exposed to the cruel Atmoran wind. Up on deck, the rest of the crew flanked a grim-faced Valaran.
‘Let her breathe,’ Valaran snapped at her captor. The pirate tore away the rag with a grunt and threw her to the deck.
Lylanwe heaved for breath. ‘What in Mora’s name is this?!’
‘This is a mutiny,’ Valaran answered coldly.
Lylanwe’s heart sunk, though she’d guessed as much from the second she awoke. ‘After all these years?’ she croaked.
Valaran pressed his lips into a thin line. ‘The crew no longer have faith in your leadership.’
‘The king chose me for this!’ she hissed. ‘Our king.Our salvation. The soul of our people. Does that mean nothing to any of you?’
‘I didn’t think you believed in old superstitions.’
Lylanwe struggled for words. To deny the divinity of King Orgnum, avatar of Atakai, was more than treason, worse than heresy. It defiled the spirit of the Maormer and all their ancestors. She saw the ghosts of doubt in some of the crew’s eyes and made a desperate plea.
‘Those who turn against this traitor now will be forgiven for their part in this,’ she offered. The sailors remained silent, exchanging looks with one another. She grasped for more reasoning. ‘You think King Orgnum will give you absolution on your return, even if you do find the treasures that were stolen? Even if you bring him every rock and jewel and vein of gold in the Elder Wood? The rape of the Lumaril is a sin that cannot be forgiven. You will hang from the gallows of Kalume Rock!’
‘No,’ Valaran interrupted, sensing the unease among the crew. ‘We will not; Orgnum will never hear of your fate, and we won’t bring the ship home to tell tales to shipwrights and fishwives.’ He thumped towards her, an attempt at intimidation. She felt like spitting on his boots. ‘I intend to commandeer an Altmeri trade vessel on our return to the southern waters and hand the Lumaril over to the Wretched Abyss.’ He smirked wickedly at her wide-eyed distress. ‘Orgnum will hear the tragic tale of how the Altmer attacked and fatally wounded our captain, heir of the mighty Clan Taranar, who could not bear to be parted from her beloved vessel. He will praise us for letting you go down with her, as all good captains should, and he’ll exalt you for letting your crew escape with the treasure. Everyone’s a winner, hm?’
Lylanwe shook her head. ‘You’re a bigger fool than I had you for. You’d never make it past the storm barrier in an Altmeri naval battleship, let alone a merchant vessel. The tempest will tear you apart.’
Valaran ignored her and turned to one of the sailors. ‘Rip out her heart.’
‘No,’ Lylanwe pleaded. ‘Valaran, please, no! Don’t do this! Please!’ She screamed, writhing helplessly in the grasp of her suppressors, as the deckhand stomped over to the serpentine totem on the bow. There, a red crystal pulsed in time to the blood rushing through Lylanwe’s veins. The Lumaril’s heart, bound to her own in the sacred marriage of ship and captain. That bond was not meant to be broken. She kicked, she squirmed, she bit, and she cried, knowing she would rather die than be severed from her Blue Pearl.
It was helpless. The deckhand tore the heart from the totem. The snake’s eyes blackened, dead and cold. As Lylanwe screamed, so did her ship. One last echoing wail of the Lumaril’s voice, never to be heard again. Forever silent, forever tortured. Cursed, the men had called her – and cursed forevermore she would be.
The deckhand held the ship’s heart aloft, dagger at the ready.
‘What do you think you’re doing?!’ Valaran yelled.
The sailor stopped and stuttered, ‘I thought – I assumed – I – ‘
‘She is to be marooned,’ Valaran snapped. He plucked the crystal heart from the sailor’s grasp and handed it to Lylanwe. The disgraced and overthrown captain held off a storm of tears and sobs as she glared at her usurper. ‘What do you wish to take on land?’
Lylanwe spat in his face. ‘I would rather die.’
He cringed and wiped away her saliva with a huff. ‘Fine, then. Take nothing but the heart and the clothes on your back. The cold will soon grant your wish.’
Valaran turned away from her. A thousand thoughts flickered through her mind, all of them deafening, all of them contradictory.
‘Wait,’ she sighed. Valaran smirked over his shoulder. ‘My dagger, jacket, compass, and sketchbook.’
Valaran waved to one of the men to fetch her things. He pulled a red crystal from his pocket, and it pulsed to the tune of his own heartbeat. Lylanwe’s blood ran cold.
‘You planned this from the start,’ she hissed, the realisation sitting heavy in her gut. ‘Why not join the first mutiny?’
‘The first one had nothing to do with me,’ he said, tossing the heart into the air and catching it in his other hand. Reckless, careless, playing with his poor substitute of a ship’s heart like it was nothing. ‘They were ready to dump me on the nearest island with you.’
‘Tell me why,’ she demanded. ‘We have been as close as kin since we were children. Why?’
Valaran whistled between his teeth and braced his leg up on the railing. ‘For too long I’ve stood in your shadow. Captain Lylanwe, eldest daughter of the great Clan Taranar, a family of soul-splitters and sky-tamers. Not so great now, are you?’ He chuckled to himself at her scornful expression. ‘You took the credit and lapped up the praise heaped upon you with no thought to speak of my deeds. Why was that, hm? Because I’m the lowborn son of an Altmer whore, barely better than a slave, and considerably lower in the social order than the pirate clans’ favourite reef vipers?’
Lylanwe laughed coldly. ‘If you think you can steal the right to bear the title of captain, you’ve only proven how pathetic you are.’
Valaran flared with fury and struck her hard around the face. ‘Steer to that islet!’ he bellowed at the men, pointing to the bleak cluster of rocks and ice nearby. ‘Let us be rid of this sorry excuse for a captain once and for all!’
They scrambled to their stations and left Valaran and Lylanwe alone together amid the chaos. Valaran leaned in close and tucked a strand of silver-white hair behind her ear, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘There was a time I would have followed you into the eye of a maelstrom. But you made your choice.’
Lylanwe remembered – it was burned into her mind every time she looked at him. How one heady, tropical night, alone together on the black volcanic sands, the winds perfumed with hibiscus, Valaran kissed her. Her childhood friend, the lowborn boy her family had grown to love as their own, as good as her brother. The taste of him was wrong, his scent too familiar.
‘Then you never did love me,’ Lylanwe breathed. ‘If you can do this to me now.’
Valaran twisted a lock of her hair in his fingers and inhaled deeply of her scent, then shoved her down on the deck. Her marched up to the totem and thrust his own heart crystal into the gaping void within. The serpent flickered back to life, its eyes glowing with unnatural fire, dark and red, as though deprived of air. Choking flames for a meagre replacement.
The Lumaril, sluggish and reluctant, drew close to the isle of her abandonment. The familiar silver-green light of nirnroot glowed faintly through the icy mists. A long swim through the frigid water might just finish Lylanwe off.
Matsu hurried along the deck and crouched reverently before Lylanwe. An Akaviri woman and youngest of the crew, born into slavery and freed by fighting her way to glory in Orotinga’s arena, offered her disgraced captain an ointment of fire salts to protect her in the waters. ‘I didn’t want to join the mutiny,’ Matsu whispered. ‘But there were too many of them. Forgive me.’
‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Lylanwe croaked. ‘You have fought all your life – I would not expect you to throw it away now for my sake.’ She accepted the ointment gratefully and rubbed it on her arms and legs, into her hair, on her face.
‘I’ll make sure the king knows what really happened here,’ Matsu said.
Lylanwe tried to muster a weak smile, but it only formed a grimace at the thought of her ship far beneath the waves, and the crew trying to make it through sorcerous tempests, thick mangroves, and vines teeming with serpents in a fragile Altmeri merchant galleon.
The time had come. Lylanwe rose to her feet, donning her jacket with the leather-bound sketchbook tucked into one pocket and the heart crystal and compass in the other. She clutched her dagger as the crew formed a gangway leading to the plank. She moved carefully, slowly, head held high with dignity. Waiting beside the plank, Valaran kept his cutlass pointed at her.
‘Farewell, tokuhoa. This islet is part of a chain leading towards the island of Solstheim. You might just have a chance of seeing another sunset. If you can bear the cold.’
At the wave of his blade, she stepped up to the plank and shuffled towards the edge, a coil of fear constricting her breath. As she approached the tentative precipice, she looked back at her traitorous crew, a mix of glad and uncertain faces. She glared up at the mutinous traitor on the mast, then at Valaran. Then she gazed down into the sea, invitingly cold, the tingle of the fire salt ointment intense and unbearably itchy on her skin.
She cast herself in.
The paralysing chill sank into her bones. Her milky translucent eyelids closed, a sheen over her vision, and gills opened on her neck, webs forming between her fingers and toes. A Maormer was made for the seas, but the sheer cold of these icy depths was unbearable. The fire salt lotion sizzled against her skin, sharp and febrile, and jolted her to her senses. She righted herself and swam towards the swell of land to her left. The water was faintly tinged with ash, sticking in her gills, sapping her of strength. But she powered on until her hand sank into mud and clay. Lylanwe scrambled up the muddy banks of the islet and clawed her way onto its icy shores, shivering against the wind.
The Lumaril, her anchor ripped from the seabed, violated and undead, sailed away northward without her. An awful stretching sensation pulled at Lylanwe’s spirit from the ship she was bonded to, a ship she helped build, a ship without its own heart, still beating in her pocket. Soon, she disappeared into the lightening horizon with a final glimmer of early sunlight on her chitinous hull. A part of Lylanwe’s soul vanished with her.
Desperately cold, Lylnwe looked for shelter. Valaran spoke the truth – there was a chain of little isles leading to a larger mainland, but with treacherous stretches of water between. Ice jutted out of the water, jagged and cruel. She huddled into a stony ledge; the tips of her fingers already numb. Soon, frostbite would set in. Hypothermia would shut down her limbs, then steal her last waking hours, then at last the cold would freeze over her heart.
The incessant ringing of nirnroot was maddening.
The rush of survival instinct faded. Her heart slowed. Lylanwe lay her head against the damp wall of her grave, clutching the heart crystal in her hand, its faint warmth just enough to stop her fingers turning blue. It thrummed, ever more slowly, as her vision wavered.
She became vaguely aware of tall shadows crossing before her, clustering like branches around the rock shelf. They glowed with a light like fireflies, and the scent of sap drifted on the wicked winds, sweet and clear. Her vision cleared a little as something leaned towards her. A wooden face drew close to her own. The creature, some combination of woman and tree, appeared to cock its head, and ran a long twiggy finger along Lylanwe’s jaw.
It whispered something, a whisper which sounded like wind through the branches, or birdsong on a bright morning, or bubbling springs deep in the ground. All those things at once. The others stretched out their arms and formed a lattice, sprouting new shoots to entwine together, blocking the blast of the wind. Lylanwe whimpered uncertainly, quaking from cold, her teeth slamming together. The strange tree-women gathered into one, giving her shelter. She couldn’t fathom why. All she knew was death.
Lylanwe slumped weakly on the ground and gave in to her aching desire to close her eyes.
**********
Time melted into nothing. The void glimmered to life with millions of stars, clouds of dust swirling in the distant skies, realms veiled in their own varliant storms. Just like home. Realms of Oblivion, their churning depths of fire and long libraries of hidden knowledge, worlds of perfumed winds and halls of madness. Realms of Aetherius, where war was only a pastime and never a threat, where there was no bitter cold or burning heat. The shining scales of the Worldskin. Here she was, in neither the above nor the below, but in the heart of the great serpent, swimming in the sea between worlds. Was she dead?
A ship sailed towards her, still and silent, gliding through the waters of memory. Perhaps if she were to board it, it could take her to new places. She would sail to the Trenches of the Wretched Abyss, the depths of Mora’s Locker, for the knowledge he hoarded in his unending halls of coral and kelp. Or perhaps dock in the orbit of the Silver City and pluck crimson shards from the Palace of Roses. Or maybe they would fly through the holes of Aetherius and land upon the Sands Behind the Stars.
Before the vessel could reach her, the light of its sails blindingly brilliant, she felt a tug deep in her soul. Something yanked on her, cold and hard, physical, restricted. She resisted it, but still it held fast to her like a parasite. The ship was so close. She could see the captain…no, she could see herself. She was the captain. Freedom, so close. To sail the oceans of the Aurbis until the end of days.
Lylanwe stared at the captain, so certain. But she faltered. A harsh wind blew through the void. Impossible. So cold, so bitter. Lylanwe struggled as the vision flickered into nothing, grasping onto it to no avail. Darkness swallowed her.
Voices. Strange, foreign voices, shouting urgently. She tried to open her eyes, but her lashes were frozen together. She tried to lift her arms and legs, but she couldn’t feel them. A gloved hand stuffed something into her mouth and pinched her airways until she swallowed. Another panicked muttering as a gentle warmth burned in her belly, and another was forced into her mouth, and another. Lylanwe swallowed them until flaming heat burned in her guts, in her veins, in her heart, flowing to every extremity in her body. She jerked awake, suddenly alert, full of fear. Her eyes watered as she scrambled away from the strange men who surrounded her, covered in thick furs. Sweat boiled out of her pores - she threw herself against the snow, rolling in it, stripping layers off herself.
As the burning subsided, she glowered at the hunters and drew her dagger. The one who was approaching her stopped and held up his hands. He said something in a language she could not understand. Lylanwe whipped her head around, confused and frightened. She was still on the island of nirnroots, and the wretched things still sang their taunting song. The day was up now, and the tree-women had disappeared. There were only the three men.
‘Who are you?’ she asked them, but they only regarded her blankly. She asked them again in Aldmeris, but no luck. Lylanwe searched her mind for the only Tamrielic words she could recall. ‘Ship…go…Valaran.’ The man with his hands held up gradually lowered them and took another slow step towards her. He said something about a ship back to her. ‘Ship go Valaran!’ she snapped again, knowing she probably made no sense to them. ‘Ship go!’
The man knelt before her and lowered the scarf obscuring his face. Lylanwe studied him. He had long brown hair, decorated with small braids strung with metal beads, and a short beard framing his young face. It was a good face, soft in the eyes, but strong in the jaw. She pointed at him. ‘Nord?’
He nodded, placing his hand on his chest. ‘Nord. Skaal.’ He tapped his palm against his chest again. ‘Eyvind.’
Lylanwe narrowed her eyes at him as he reached out and she waved the dagger again. He stopped short and formed his hand into a pointing finger instead. ‘You?’
Was he asking for her name? Was Eyvind his name? Lylanwe sighed and placed her own hand against her chest. It must be some unusual Tamrielic greeting, she reasoned. ‘Lylanwe.’
Eyvind beamed at her. ‘Lylanwe,’ he echoed. He stood and stretched his hand out once more, as if in offering. Scrutinising the stranger again, her grip tightened on her dagger. Then she glanced at their little boat. She could steal it and get off this islet on her own. But something in Eyvind’s eyes intrigued her. They were warm, soft grey, like a thundercloud. Like the skies her clan was named for.
So she took his hand, and he took her home.