Windpaint
Selena awoke with a miserable headache; the result of sleeping with her jaw clenched tight and every muscle in her body rigid. She healed herself to dispel the aches and pains, but the exhaustion of a fitful night lay heavy on her.
No, she thought, sitting up. A Bazira was here. I heard it. The god is testing me and I must answer.
The window revealed a sky was flat and gray, but still. The storm had ended and the moon would soon be full. She thought those good omens, both.
Even so, climbing out from under the bundle of blankets took effort. She moved like an old woman of ninety summers. Ilior was at the fire, stoking it with a poker. He met her eye, his brow ridges raised.
“I’m fine,” she told him, and he nodded. His silence was worth more to her, at times, than his words. “What is the hour?”
“Nearly noon,” he said and held up a hand when she would protest that she’d stayed abed too long. “You tossed and turned until the wee hours. It wasn’t until dawn that you actually slept. I was not about to wake you.”
“Thank you.” Selena rose to her feet to peer into the mirror. She still wore her bulky seal fur coat and her hair was a tangled mess. “I heard a man speak of a Bazira last night.”
Ilior nodded. “I heard the same.”
Selena flexed her stiff fingers and combed them through her hair. “My first teacher, High Reverent Coronus, once told me that the Two-Faced God’s intentions were like the phases of the moon. That at times, there is darkness and pain. That is the Shadow face’s new moon—black and cold. But if one serves faithfully, patiently, the blessings of the Shining face appear, like the waxing moon in the night sky.”
Ilior said nothing.
Selena tamed her hair into a smooth, tight braid. “The sky has been black a very long time but with Skye’s decree about my wound, finding Captain Tergus to take us off Uago, and now this…” She nodded at her reflection. “The moon is waxing. Accora was the Bazira they spoke of. I can feel it. Our fortunes are turning.”
They have to, don’t they? At long last…
They descended the stairs to a full common room. Nearly all the whalers were home from the season’s last catches and the celebratory carousing would last until the merchant packets from Isle of Lords arrived, and then start again when the coin and goods had been exchanged. Julian sat at a table with the whaler captain from the night before. He waved her over.
“Captain, this is Selena Koren and Ilior,” Julian said. “This is Captain Tunney. He was kind enough to let us sail past yesterday morning.”
“I remember.” Selena sat across from the captain; grateful Julian had been thoughtful enough to pick a table nearest the roaring hearth. She took a chair and set her back to the fire. “Well met, and thank you.”
Captain Tunney waved a hand. “T’warn’t nothin.’” His face was free of paint, revealing a warm, broad face of middle years shielded by a scraggly beard and bushy brows. “After what you did for Boris…well, I might be in the god’s good graces fer letting you pass so you were there when he needed you.” He looked her up and down. “I heard you was taken ill yerself last night. I hope this day finds you well?”
“Well enough,” Selena said, forcing a smile.
Tunney pushed a plate of grilled fish and turnips toward her. There was a bowl of warm bread and a pot of tea as well. “Eat up, then! Takes a fair ton of hearty food to keep yer inner fires burning against our cold winds.”
Selena cleared her throat. “Again, thank you.” She took up her fork as a serving girl brought a similar plate—with much larger portions—to Ilior.
“Captain Tunney was just telling me about a strange visitor to Isle Nanokar,” Julian said pointedly.
“Strange visitors, indeed!” Tunney said with a nod at Ilior. “An’ here methought our little oasis in the snow was hidden away from the gen’ral excitements o’ Lunos. But we’ve now seen Aluren Paladins and dragonmen—”
“And Bazira?” Selena said with a reproachful glance, but Ilior shrugged off the slur and concentrated on his food.
“Aye, them too.” The captain wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “I understand yer after one such this very moment; the self-same witch who lived among us for two years.”
“Two years?” Selena felt her heartbeat quicken.
“Aye, two years though I couldn’t even recollect her name until young Tergus here reminded me.”
“Accora,” Selena said. “Her name was Accora, wasn’t it?”
“Aye, that was it,” he agreed.
The moon is waxing. She exchanged gladdened looks with Ilior, but Julian shook his head at her and jerked his head at the whaler captain.
Tunney swallowed a forkful of turnips and washed them down with his tea that smelled strongly of tree bark. He wiped his beard with a cloth and said, “But like I told yer Cap’n Tergus, me tale won’t be so much good to you, seeing as it’s nigh twenty years old.”
Selena dropped her fork with a clank. “Twenty?”
“Aye, lady.”
Julian made a face as if to say, “I warned you,” and leaned back in his chair with his mulled wine.
Ilior glowered at him. “But even so there might be something useful in your recollections that will help us,” he told Tunney.
“Aye, I hope that be true. I hate to see a beautiful lass look so aggrieved.”
Selena forced a smile. “Anything you remember will be helpful.”
“Well, lessee.” Tunney leaned back in his own chair and ran his hand down his beard. “I’d just seen my thirtieth winter, already wearin’ in me first schooner. This Bazira, she came on a dark tide, it seems. Like she was up to no good fer her faith. I seem to recall her doing some preaching ‘bout the Shadow face an’ the like but it didn’t last.”
“Why not?”
“Likely she was shunned for being a Bazira,” Ilior said, forking the last of his fish. “Can’t blame you for that.”
“Nay, Master Ilior,” Tunney said, “that’s not how we do things here. The Shadow face and the Shining are two halves of the same coin. And a coin’s value ain’t found but on one side or t’other, but in the whole.” He waved his spoon in the air. “Here, we got the wind an’ sea an’ snow to fret ‘bout. We hafta wrastle the oceans’ giants for our livelihoods. Angering the god be a foolish risk when we got risk enough.”
“Why did Accora cease her proselytizing?” Selena asked.
“It seemed like her heart warn’t in it. Or even like she were scairt. That’s what Byric down in the library thinks anyhow. Don’t know what the likes o’ her had to be scairt about, but there t’is. You should seek out old Byric. He spent more time’n anyone with since she spent most days perusing our library.”
“What was she looking for?”
“That I cain’t say neither. Byric be the man t’ask.”
“Very well. Byric it is,” Selena said, pushing back her plate. “Where can I find him?”
“In the library, o’ course. He’s there most time. Protective he is, of our strange li’l treasure trove.” The captain finished off his tea and set the mug down with a thunk. “I’ll take you there meself, if yer up to go.”
“Yes, now please,” Selena said.
Ilior shook his head. “After last night—”
“I will go,” she insisted. “The god did not send us here without purpose.”
“It’s not near,” Tunney said, “but we can take me dogs. I know they be itching for a run.”
“Why would we take your dogs?” Selena asked. “Is the way dangerous?”
“Nay, t’isn’t. My dogs be fer pulling the sled.”
“Very well,” Selena nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Not yet, lady,” he said. He swiveled in his chair. “Oi! Hilka! You got any windpaint?”
The innkeeper’s voice called back from the storeroom behind the bar. “Not if yer to use it in me room an’ make a holy mess o’ me tables n’ floors!”
Captain Tunney chuckled. “Pardons. I’ll acquire our necessities an’ meet you in the cask house, out back.”
“Captain Tunney told me about the library last night,” Julian said after the whaler had left their table. “It’s tucked in a wind-swept canyon underground, reachable only after a two-league trek.”
“Then Ilior, you must remain here,” Selena said. “The cold won’t kill me, but it can you,” she told her friend. She gentled her tone. “You can’t protect me from it.”
Vai’Ensai pressed his lips together. “Twice now, you’ve tried to leave me behind.”
Selena took his hand. “For your own health. I don’t want to see you suffer needlessly.”
“And what of your suffering?”
“Accora is a means to its end,” Selena said. “Its final end. I can’t falter now.”
She was relieved when Ilior finally nodded, albeit slowly, stiffly, as if it took everything he had to let her go. He turned to Julian, his eyes hard. “You will go and watch over her.”
Julian snorted a laugh into his wine cup. “As you command.”
“I’ll come too.”
All three glanced up to see Niven, bundled in a fur-lined cloak. He drew himself up. “It is an Aluren matter, after all, and I am a devoted adherent to the Shining face.”
Selena was about to protest but thought better of it. If there is an injury along the way, I may be too weak to heal it.
“Yes, of course. Let’s go.” She paused to lay her hand on Ilior’s arm. “Stay warm.”
He rumbled deep in his throat, like stones rolling down a hill. “Stay safe.”
“I will,” she said, and left him at the fire; the Vai’Ensai’s face dark and grim as he watched them depart.
Behind the White Sail sat the cask house, a large, squat, stone building that reminded Selena of the Guild for its plain, square shape. Inside, the walls were lined with barrels, stacked atop one another and the floor was strewn with pine needles that whispered underfoot. By the light of Captain Tunney’s oil lantern, Selena counted seven or eight long wooden tables with benches. They were shielded from the wind in here but the air was crisp and cold.
“Sometimes, the carousing gets to be a bit much when the merchantmen come to buy and sell,” the captain said, “and the Sail be full to bursting. The overflow comes here.” He set the lantern on the nearest table along with his other burden: two small buckets, one splattered with white mud, the other dark brown. “There be other inns an’ taverns on Nanokar, but Hilka an’ her old man run the best o’ the bunch. Merchants from Isle o’ Lords, especially, prefer her lodgings. They be used to the finer things.” He thumbed his nose and gave Selena a wink.
“Is this where the oil is stored?” Niven asked, looking at the casks.
“No, young sir,” Captain Tunney said. “That treasure be kept elsewheres, far away from flame and hearth fires, and drunken men with their pipes and smokes. And I cain’t be saying where so don’t ask,” he said with a laugh. “These here hold wine and mead. Now then. The trek be long and the wind be biting, as we like to say. Paint up.”
Selena watched as the man dipped his hand into the bucket of white mud and smeared it on the lower half of his face.
“It’s to protect the skin,” Julian told Selena, “from wind and sleet and the like.”
“Aye, how else you think I keeps me youthful looks?” Tunney laughed.
“Does each person wear the same designs?” Selena said, thinking back on the elaborate designs she’d seen some of the sailors wear.
“You can paint yerself however you please, but most men end up choosing something meaningful to them.” He gave them all a stern eye. “An’ you cain’t be asking ‘bout a man’s choosing, neither. T’is bad luck.”
Niven dipped a finger in the dark brown. “Every man wearing the…windpaint, was it? Must they wear both colors?”
“Respect!” Captain Tunney thundered. “To honor the Two-Faced God, a ‘course. It’s bad luck to wear one color; you never know which mood the god be taking: Shadow face, or Shining, as the shape o’ the moon don’t always tell the truth.” He rose from the bench. “Sit tight, me friends, an’ I’ll fetch my team an’ be back afore yer paint is dry.”
Niven frowned and Selena knew the pious young man didn’t like the idea of paying any sort of fealty to the Shadow face of the god. He wiped the brown mud onto his cloak and dipped into the white bucket instead.
While he and Julian painted their faces Selena slipped off her gloves. Her fingers were stiff and trembled. She reached for the white mud and cracked her knuckles on the side of the bucket trying to reach inside.
“Let me,” Julian said.
Selena nodded and whispered a thank you that turned into a gasp when she saw his face. He had painted one side, from brow to chin in white, the other in brown; a perfect line dividing the two that ran straight down the center. He had artfully added small dots of alternating colors to outline the whole. But it was the shadow and light that sent her heart to pounding.
Trickster…Selena thought of An-Lan’s reading, and her hand went to her pocket where the coin of Oshkat lay, forgotten until now. The coin and the seer’s reading were irrevocably linked in her mind.
Julian sat back. “What’s the matter?”
“N-nothing,” Selena said. She released the coin in her pocket. Superstitious foolishness. “It’s nothing,” she said again. “I’m sorry, your design…it just gave me a start. An old memory…nothing more.”
“I see.”
Again, she tried to glean the tiniest idea of what her captain might be thinking and again her attempt yielded nothing. It’s nonsense to put stock into a seer’s words, she told herself. Let it go.
“I’ll do my own paint,” she said. “Probably bad luck not to.”
Julian maintained his stare a heartbeat longer and then shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Conscience of her trembling hands, she started to paint. The mud was thick and smelled strongly of soil, but it adhered fast and Selena thought she sensed a bit of relief from the cold wherever it touched her skin. She did her best to cover her face in white and render a crescent moon on her left cheek. “Is it very terrible?” she asked Niven.
Niven inspected Selena’s face. He had smeared a copious amount of white mud over his face and marked only his chin with the smallest smudge of dark brown, giving him a ghostly mien. “It’s fine. Though none of us can hold a candle to Captain Tergus.”
Julian waved a hand and Selena heard him mutter, “Oh, bugger me,” when Captain Tunney appeared at the door of the cask house and whistled between his teeth when he saw Julian’s face. “Now, Cap’n Tergus, I ne’er woulda pegged ye for an artist!”
“It’s nothing,” Julian snapped, rising off the bench. “We still have a long ride, yes?”
Captain Tunney laughed. “Aye, we do. Come, me lady, young adherent, an’ modest cap’n. The library awaits.”
Tunney’s dogs—eight beautiful animals, with thick gray and white fur and piercing blue eyes— barked and struggled against their harnesses when Selena and her companions emerged from the cask house. The four of the climbed onto a long sled made of smooth wood and leather straps. Tunney assured them that the dogs could handle their weight.
“They’re used to hauling blubber,” the captain said. “Us? We be light as a feather.”
Selena doubted that was true but the dogs seemed eager to run. Tunney stood at the year of the sled while Selena, Julian and Niven huddled beneath him. The captain’s whip cracked high above and the sound set the dogs to running. Once they found their momentum, they dragged the sled along the icy path that ran parallel to the beach with ease. The whale skinning and boiling of blubber was still going on in an endless stretch of smoking tryworks, bloody carcasses, and a cloud of stench that made Selena’s stomach clench.
Selena huddled deep into her seal coat and concentrated on what she saw around her, to distract from the biting cold within. On the right, the barrier of icebergs that created the bay around Isle Nanokar’s township looked like the lower jaw of some great beast. To the left, the township was bustling with people, and the smoke was the clean smoke of home fires. Beyond the township, a rise of dark green pine trees covered the landscape, brushed with snow in feathery strokes. Svoz was in there, somewhere, making a meal from the deer and elk Tunney told them inhabited the woods.
“The first snows haven’t come down yet,” the captain shouted from behind them. He stood, whip in hand, guiding the sled. “With good luck, it won’t fall ‘til the trading be done. The packets from the Lords sail in first, and that’s a sight that gladdens our hearts, I can tell you. We trade with all sorts o’ nations, but them’s our best customer and vicey-versy.”
Selena listened intently as Tunney described some of Nanokar’s history, its settlement some eight hundred years ago in the Age of Discovery, and the tight-knit bond of its inhabitants.
“We ain’t got no quarrel with no one,” he said. “The elements, they’s who we must respect and give our energies to. Ain’t no sense in fretting o’er nothing else.”
Niven craned around. “Don’t you worry about attack? It seems whale oil is lucrative. I would think a hostile island would be interested in a share of the spoils. Or pirates?”
Tunney laughed. He gestured to the ‘burning beach’ as Julian had called it.
“No easy business, that! Hunting a whale is a right good way to get yerself kilt. An’ if it don’t, there be the sharks, the cutting o’ the blubber, the boiling oil…Well, you saw yerself what happened to ole Boris. He got lucky on account on yer ladyship being here, but accidents like that happen a dozen times e’ry turn o’ the moon. Who wants that? Not pirates. They be a lazy lot,” he laughed again and then grew serious.
“We make a fine living, that’s true, but we come by it with hard work an’ sacrifice. We ain’t lost no man this season so far—bless the Shining face for its mercy—but that’s a rare season in which we don’t give a good man t’ the sea. E’ry ‘bloon is well-earned, I can assure you.”
“Oh, aye. Yes, absolutely. I believe you,” Niven said. “I just worried over your safety when I saw no signs of armed militia or the like.”
“Nah,” Tunney said. “Anyways, anyone mess with us an’ they be bringing down the wrath o’ the Isle o’ Lords and their mighty powerful armada.”
“They’re loyal friends,” Niven said.
The captain burst out laughing. “O they be loyal all right: to the ‘bloons we spend on foodstuffs an’ mead from their isles. An’ fer our oil a’course. See, we don’t do the distributing. The Lords does that…after a healthy mark-up on prices, you can be sure. We just want enough coin to live comfortable. We’re simple folk.”
“Not simple,” Selena said, her jaw tight with cold. “You have a rich history and you have a library. Only two other isles can boast the latter.”
The township’s buildings and shops tapered away to storage shacks and then gave way altogether to a sheer rock wall of pale stone. The cliff towered over them and extended down the length of the shore until it was lost to sight. Glyphs of rough whorls and letters in faded paint covered the lower portions of the cliff for more than half a league.
“What are these?” Niven asked. “They look very old. Are they historical?”
Tunney laughed. “They look old on account of the wind an’ the cold. These here are the markings of our townships youngin’s, an’ about as historical as last night’s dinner.”
“Oh. It’s…vandalism.”
Selena heard the chagrin in Niven’s voice, but Captain Tunney was a good man. “Iffen you want to see something good ‘an historical, me friend, just you wait.”
Selena hunched deeper into her coat. She hoped Tunney meant the library. The windpaint kept the worst of the cold off her face but she was beginning to wish she had bathed in it.
The sled slid along the snow-swept beach for another few minutes when Captain Tunney called a halt at a huge wooden door set into the stone wall. It stood ten spans high and was braced by huge iron hinges that were somehow locked into the cliff.
The dogs slowed to a jog and then lay down, tongues lolling. Steam chugged out of their open mouths as they panted for breath. The captain tossed each dog some dried meat from a satchel at his waist and bade them to remain put. Satisfied that that was enough to keep the dogs from running off with the sled, Tunney turned to the door. Grunting and straining, he managed to lift the latch up—it squealed on the icy hinge—and let it fall to the other side. The crash was deafening and Selena glanced up, sure that snow would come barreling down on them. The sound was torn away by the wind and the door swung open after Tunney gave it a hard tug. A cold, biting wind swirled out of the gap and Tunney jumped back as the gust slammed the heavy iron door open as if it were made of paper. Selena cringed as another thunderous clang resounded.
Tunney squinted hard against the wind and gestured for them to enter. “Welcome to Dragon’s Breath Canyon.”
They stepped through the door and into the cliff that Selena had thought was made of solid rock. Instead, a canyon spread out before them in long stretches of pathways, around and through immense pillars, caverns, and tunnels of pale stone. A fierce wind howled and whistled like a trapped spirit, swirling around the companions’ feet and stinging their eyes with gritty sand.
“How did the canyon get its name?” Niven asked, shouting to be heard.
Captain Tunney smiled. “I’m certain it’ll come to you, lad.”
Selena walked along the canyon floor and realized the immense bulging stone before her was not rounded by wind, but was carved in the likeness of a dragon’s belly, complete with scales and folded wings. And that the stony boulder she passed was not naturally smooth and then sharpened at the end, but a dragon’s talon.
The canyon was made of dragons.
Selena almost forgot her cold in marveling at the craftsmanship that seemed impossible. She craned her neck to where the rock smoothed into curves of dragons’ necks, then higher, to four huge dragon faces. The stony faces were dulled by time and the elements, but Selena could still see the different aspects to each. One bore an intelligent, gentle bearing. Another wore a ferocious, almost maddened expression of hate. A third’s face was unreadable as its head craned upward, to the sky. The last, at the end of the canyon, was taller than the rest and seemed to glare at the others with an air of superiority. The superior-looking dragon had suffered damage. Half of its body was scored off where part of the cavern had caved in. The floor around its clawed feet was strewn with rubble.
“Who did this?” Selena asked.
Captain Tunney guided them to the superior-looking dragon. The debris from its fallen brethren had obscured a door set beside its remaining clawed foot.
“Too much wind fer talk. Let ole Byric tell it. He don’t get many visitors an’ yet his greatest joy is yapping ‘bout the canyon and the library.” Tunney hauled open the heavy oaken door. “This be his lucky day!”
Selena gave a final glance to the dragons, a strange longing in her heart. Just curiosity, she thought, and then hurried inside, out of the wind that made her eyes stream.
It was pitch black until Tunney, muttering a complaint about letting lanterns burn out, struck flint to tinder over a scrap of oil-soaked rag. This he used to light a lantern that hung just inside the door, and the space around them was infused with a dim yellow glow.
“This is a library?” Niven asked, glancing fearfully upward, and jumping when the door slammed shut behind them.
Selena understood his unease; a tunnel lay before them, like a black mouth where no light lived save what they brought with them. The weight of the entire canyon seemed to hang over their heads.
“Down, down, youngin’,” Tunney said, moving ahead of them to take point. “Down where the wind and snow cain’t distress our little treasure trove.”
Julian followed, and Selena clutched his arm. She gave her other hand to Niven, which he clung to like a piece of driftwood after a shipwreck. The group labored down into the airless black tunnel, the little glow of Tunney’s lantern kept the dark from swallowing them whole.
Selena could hear the breaths of her companions; they sounded sharp as her own. Their shuffling feet were a welcome sound as well for she thought that if they stopped moving, the silence would suffocate her. She could smell the stone; smell its age and its weight, and she held on to both Julian and Niven tighter as they walked. Captain Tunney didn’t seem at ease anymore either but kept up a constant chatter of cursing and grumbling under his breath.
It seemed they had been walking down the winding, downward sloping path for hours but was surely no more than a few minutes. Selena thought she would go mad if Tunney’s lantern gave out and she directed her gaze at its light and nothing else. She wished to weave her own light but Niven held her fast and she was too afraid to let go of Julian, even for a moment.
“Godsdammit,” Julian breathed and when he put his hand on Tunney’s shoulder in front of him, the older captain didn’t complain.
“Byric lives down here?” Niven burst out after a while, his voice sounding high and on the edge of panic. Selena tried to give his hand a reassuring squeeze but she realized she was already holding it as tightly as she could.
“It oft feels so,” Tunney said, his voice flat and low now where outside it had been boisterous. “We believe he’s half mole, he is.”
“He’s half cracked, you mean,” Julian muttered.
“Aye, that too,” Tunney groused. But then another door, also of oak with burnished brass hinges loomed in the darkness. “Aha! Gods be praised.” He pounded on the door three times. “Byric! Ye got guests, ye limey bastard.”
He didn’t wait for an answer but pushed open the door and ushered the others inside, into Isle Nanokar’s library.