Seaborn

A Distant Tale

Breakfast was served sometime after daybreak crept over the city walls and daylight touched the wet brick of the Crimson Shore. It was, as it often dawned, a pale morning with gusts of wind and light drizzles all through the early hours before sunrise, which lessened once the sun was firmly set by fast-dispersing clouds. The food itself was rather plain—warm milk with honey, berry jam on sweetened bread, figs, and beer—but it was good and heartened the spirit. Seated by the fire of the brazier in his room, Lord Palfrey listened to the chatter of his companions and wove a complex weave with thread and needle.

His latest project—a labrys embroidered in bronze and silver thread upon an ivory pennant, circled by emerald-green laurels and rubies sewn in blood-red crimson—was a gift for his mother. He’d made one for Shimmershield and Lancer too, and though he’d put his heart into each one, Lady Glowspur’s demanded a particular level of care...

“...of course I refused,” Lord Lapis huffed, though his voice seemed far away. “I had told mother before and I wasn’t afraid to tell her twice, Topaz, but Lady Firecrown’s daughter is absolutely not whom I want to marry. I did consider it, too, just as I promised!”

“And?” Lord Topaz asked, at the edge of his seat, eyes lively and lips parted.

“No! A thousand times no! You surely remember the tourney...”

Topaz nodded sagely and Palfrey, too, had to absently agree as he drove the needle into the pennant. Lady Firecrown was a worthy mare and a mighty champion of the eastern holds, but her daughter was no Shimmershield. Hardly! The mare had a gait like a wood-horn cow and the wits to match, all of it brought to a laughably embarrassing display not three years past.

“I still can’t believe she would do such a thing,” Topaz whistled, eyes on his project while his mind drifted back to the tourney grounds, now deserted, but once so full of life and excitement. At least until Lady Firecrown’s daughter tried to pass a household slave for herself when asked to a duel. Then it turned to uproar.

“A coward and a fool!” Palfrey said as he finished his current chain stitch. “A charming combination, Lapis.”

“Is it not?” Lapis groaned. “I do dearly love my mother and I would do much for my family, you both must understand, but I can’t imagine marrying that imbecile... not even for her!”

“Truly!” Topaz beamed. “Wouldn’t you say, Palfrey?”

The needle stopped midway through the pennant and the silver thread hung limply from its eye. Palfrey glanced at his companions from his project to find two pairs of eager eyes set firmly on him. Too late he realized he’d been cornered into yet another one of their games.

“I would say,” he licked his lips and measured his words, “that it certainly is a very unfortunate situation, and I’m glad it’s been so readily resolved. I’m certain your mother or sisters will soon find a better wife for you, Lapis.”

They edged even closer to the edge of their seats, close enough that they all but dangled on their very tailbones.

“And?” said Lapis.

“Aaand?” said Topaz.

Memories of the tourney crossed Palfrey’s mind. Firecrown’s daughter had choked on her wine when called to duel on the tourney field, her face turned to pallor, and pupils shrunk to little black dots. She shivered, plainly, and the reason was clear to all. Firecrown herself was not a large mare and her daughter had taken after her—minus a hoof or two in height—and by cursed luck her opponent for the day was Bronzehammer. Bronzehammer! Who lived to see such a thing that did not pity the mare? Palfrey certainly felt compassion and thought to intercede... until the ruse was uncovered and all good intention was soured to bitter disgust.

Impossibly, both colts edged even closer to him.

To take the creature born of Lady Firecrown for a wife! What a horrid thought indeed, and yet the obvious answer wouldn’t come out of his lips. How he envied Shimmershield then, for the chance to prove his loyalty on a field of battle where death might be swift and victory sweet. Instead, he pictured that future offered to him, not to die but to live for his family, at the side of a creature worth less than the slave she put in that armor.

Knock! Knock!

He blinked. Celestia above! Mercy!

“That’d be the door, Lapis,” Palfrey said and returned to his project, though his spirits were dampened. His companions stepped from their chairs and headed towards the entrance; the sounds of polite conversation reached back to Palfrey’s ears, and already he knew whom they spoke of with the guard outside. A curious flick of his ear was the only tell that his attention was no longer solely set on his embroidery.

“It’s him!” Topaz cried. The colt half-trotted in place, eyes wide as he returned to the room and trembled despite the fiery warmth of the living brazier. “Luna’s shadow, but it’s him out that door!”

“Palfrey! Sweet Palfrey,” Lapis muttered through quivering lips. “Why does the guard say you’ve invited him? Please tell me she lies!”

“I will tell no such thing, Lapis,” Palfrey said, with only the faintest shadow of a masculine crease on his brow to show his distaste at their behavior. “In truth, I admit it; I have invited the Lord of Brine to join us this morning, though rest assured, I’ve done so with every certainty from both my sister and mother that it is safe. The one was much easier to get than the other, I should mention!”

Palfrey’s visage softened some, though it was a difficult thing to further soften the delicate features of his fair countenance. Still, the gentle curve of his lips did much to calm the colts.

“My dear companions, you know your value in my eyes, and you know too that I’m no fool to invite danger or undue risk to myself, much less without good reason. So trust me, I say, and let the lord come in!”

They did, against their own judgment and after a few more seconds of wordless pleading, but they did. The door slid open by the aura of the royal guardsmare outside, and a long shadow fell across the room. Palfrey felt the temperature drop and found that he had no further attention to spare for his project; not while the frightening width of the creature struggled through the narrow doorway.

“Forgive me if I’m late,” the being called Saul said as his shoulders cleared the threshold into Palfrey’s bedroom. “I’m afraid I can’t seem to get used to reading the time just from the position of the sun, and one hour is very much like the next to me. It’s made me miss a meal or two, I’ll admit.”

“Welcome and may the sun shine on you!” Lord Palfrey said after a moment’s hesitation. He offered the human a smile, as sincere as he could manage, though he had little reason to hate the creature. Truly his coming had been an odd blessing in disguise, whether mother wished to admit it or not. Shimmershield’s victory still echoed in the minds and hearts of noble and commoner alike, and if Palfrey’s guess was any good, even the princess looked on his sister with kinder eyes.

“Please sit wherever you please, Lord of Brine. You've found us at a most crucial moment, it seems.” He could only hope Lapis and Topaz would behave themselves...

“We’re busy with festival preparations!” Topaz butted in. Muzzle held high, the colt sat his rump on his seat and held his project in his aura. The cerulean threads dangled from the half-formed shape of the ribbons wreathed through the soft, violet banner he'd taken to decorate.

“Just so!” added Lapis. “There is much to be done and too little time. Sun’s warmth, but it’s nearly April!”

“I see,” the creature said, and took his seat opposite Palfrey, by the fire and, much to the discomfort of his companions, on Topaz's right. “I hope I'm not intruding.”

“Not at all!” Palfrey answered quickly, careful not to leave his friends a chance. “It was I who wished to see you, of course. There’s much we of the court now wonder, ever since you came to us from the sea...”

“The whereabouts of Lady Arrow’s left molar, for one...” Lapis muttered, much too low for most ponies to hear. Topaz’s lip curled ever so slightly, an invisible gesture but to Lapis and Palfrey. He said nothing but shot them the swiftest shadow of a glance. Discrete nods, as falling specks of dust in the dark, were his answer.

“I will answer as best I can,” the human said, but raised a digit, a claw, a strange appendage the likes of which Palfrey had never seen before. “Of course, I have questions of my own. I’d be most grateful if you would answer them.”

A trade! Who might barter when invited to the chamber of a noble lord? Moreso one of such low status—if status it was, in the creature’s case—as a mere knight of the realm? A male knight alone would have been odd, and in truth, Palfrey might not have suffered such a request had Saul been a unicorn... but he wasn’t. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with rough features and rougher manners, and not a pony at all. Unequine, foreign as foreign could be, and intriguing for it. Curiosity had him, truth be told.

“Very well, good lord.” Palfrey smiled. Lapis’ and Topaz’s faces were alight with bewilderment. “I will commence.”

“Please do,” he said.

They gave him a small ribbon, needle, and thread so that he might join them as they talked. ‘Can you sew?’ they asked him, ‘Some,’ he replied, ‘though I haven’t my grandmother’s skill, I picked up a thing or two under her care.’ The sun was low above the walls when he first pierced the ribbon, and soon their chatter carried them through the morning and a good number of stitches.

“You mentioned your grandmother,” Palfrey asked once most mundane topics had been exhausted. “She knew how to embroider?”

“She did,” the Lord of Brine spoke with a distant look in his eyes. “Truly this is a strange land—or stranger still is mine—where everything seems to be reversed. My grandmother may have been more akin to your grandfathers if anything. She was a kind woman, always willing to listen though she spoke little, forever bent over a stove or basket of laundry. The smell of her kitchen at noon will remain with me until the day I die.

“Ten years she cared for me and my brother, though we weren’t easy to bear. Those were good years, even if my memory has sweetened them some. Easy? Not quite. But the house was warm and the three of us smiled more often than not. It was a simpler time of my life. Moreso compared to, well...”

He grinned and waved his claw with a light flourish. It took them all a moment to realize that, truly, to him their world must be odd.

“How strange indeed!” Topaz murmured over a particularly difficult turn of the needle. “My grandmother knew little else but how best to cleave stuff atwain, and she was mighty proficient at the task! Have I told you all how she once got frustrated over a rather tough nut to crack? Well, she had a slave fetch her warhammer, but the slave couldn’t find it! She brought grandmother her axe instead, and by the time she was done we were in need of a new table... and a new slave!”

“Indeed, Topaz,” Lapis giggled, “but you’ve told us that story aplenty!”

“Well, it’s a good story!”

“Narrated with ill-intent!” Palfrey rolled his eyes and apologized to the Lord of Brine, whose face—oddly stoic and stiff—had shifted some at the tale. “The slave was sold off, good lord. Nothing more. Topaz revels in fright and scandal!”

The conversation continued at length and soon all discomfort seemed to be dispelled. Words flowed freely, worries lessened, and curiosity flourished where mistrust began to wither. With thread and needle in his claws, even the human was difficult to fear.

“Saaay, Lord of Brine...” Topaz said after a brief period of silence. “Is it true what they say around court?”

“Topaz...” But Palfrey’s objection went unnoticed. The colt’s question had roused Lapis’ attention and now both had their eyes stuck to the human. To his credit, the creature took their prying in stride.

“I couldn’t say,” he answered with a lighthearted grin. “I’ve been much too busy to remain in court. There’s too much to do.”

“Ah! So you are moving forward with that project of yours?” Seated as he was, Topaz all but shook with anticipation. “You wouldn’t mind sharing some of the details, would you, lord? It’s been the topic for days now!”

“Of course, the Lord of Brine is continuing his project, Topaz...” Palfrey said, and it was equal parts a statement and a question, though he tried to mask it well. It was after all, as Topaz said, the topic of the week. “As per his oath of service.”

“Indeed.” The human’s attention was fixed on the embroidery now, a pensive look in his stony eyes. “The process goes well, though I don’t suppose any of you have heard of a volcano...”

Palfrey and Lapis exchanged a look. A what? Yet in his chair Topaz seemed to pause.

“A volcano, lord?” he asked. The human nodded his head, as though resigned to some impending disappointment.

“Yes, we- I have reason to believe that there exists one somewhere beyond the Bay of Mangoes, just North and West past the sea. But though I’ve searched and asked everyone I might think to...” he shrugged his massive shoulders, a heavy sigh on his chest, “well, it’s no matter. A delay, nothing more.”

“Just what is a ‘volcano’, though?” Lapis wondered, head cocked to the side, his embroidery forgotten. “It sounds rather dreadful!”

“Truly,” Palfrey said. “There’s something familiar about the word, but I can’t quite name it. Is it a place, lord?”

“And quite the place!” Topaz beamed. All eyes fell on him and he seemed to glow under the attention. “Forgive me, mayhaps I’ve spoken too much?”

“You know what it is?” Saul asked, and by that point everypony but Palfrey had forgotten about their projects. “How?”

“Oh! I wouldn’t want to further disrupt today’s work, my lord...” He grinned. Palfrey arched his brow and allowed himself the briefest moment of plain expressiveness.

“Oh, just get on with it, Topaz...”

With a graceful hop, Topaz left his chair and levitated his project gently down onto the empty seat. A smug grin on his muzzle, the colt lightly trotted away towards the adjoining door that opened into his own room, next to Palfrey’s.

“Follow me, if it please you, gentlecolts...”

With some reluctance and no small degree of curiosity, Palfrey laid down his project and followed after the others into Topaz’s quarters... a relatively smaller room to his, but not by much and nicely furnished—his bed was covered by a flowing white canopy, though it was a single bed with simple linen sheets—and beside it was a chest that he knew Topaz treasured above all else.

“Behold!” Topaz’s aura pulled the lid open to reveal a small stack of baked clay tablets, neatly arranged and tucked away from prying eyes. “My stuff!”

He turned and sat before the chest, and promptly began to rummage through its contents with certainty. The gentle clack! of hardened clay against wood or itself was barely audible, so careful was the unicorn as he dug deep to find his quarry.

“So!” he said as his hooves and aura worked in tandem to gut the chest of its innards. “Tell me about this volcano, Lord Saul...”

So he did. A mysterious mention of a rock that spewed living fire and displaced an entire population of unknown creatures, maybe ponies.

“Certainly unicorns,” Lapis assured them. “No other beings exist with the faculties needed to read and write!”

“You can’t read, Lapis!”

“But I can write! I get points for that!”

Deeper into the chest Topaz went, until at last something old and hidden crinkled in his aura. With a satisfied cry, the unicorn pulled a very old papyrus scroll into the sunlight, perhaps for the first time in years. Dust fell away like a thick coat of fresh-fallen snow. Topaz braved a quick glance at Palfrey, but he was careful not to meet his gaze.

It had been a foolish thing to gift him that scroll... but it had been his birthday and Palfrey knew how much he loved stories of all sorts and dusty bits of lore, like those that rotted away in the ancient library of the Sapphire Tower by their thousands. When this one piece of papyrus made itself so readily available while visiting once, many years ago... Palfrey had been a younger colt then.

Now the human knelt before Topaz and his scroll, and the unicorn unfurled it with something close to reverence. Within were scribbled many an ancient thing—long-since abandoned to the tides of time—that now resurfaced to claim life once more in the eyes of a curious colt and a creature from some unknowable world...

“A living mountain, you said?” Topaz beamed proudly as he held the scroll out before him. “Ahem! So writes Sister Seawake on the matter of the lands beyond what is good and holy...

‘...where the Earth Ponies speak of a scarred land beyond the Bay of Mangoes, where the ample jungles and the riverlands fade away to rolling hills and steep rises of the ground. Here inhabit many savage tribes of little consequence, though I should name the greatest of them... they call themselves the ‘Loaimiruu Loautarre’ in their own savage tongue, and this means ‘tribe of the bloody yellow fruit’, as the unicorn speaks...’

“Eww! You said mudpony words!” Lapis made a face and turned aside, as though the words themselves had a smell to them. “Can’t you skip all that and get to this ‘volcano’ already?”

With a roll of his eyes, Topaz complied.

‘...and there the land rises further beyond reach of the common mare, like a great mast of rock and snow that touches the clouds above. This territory they call ‘Ebetemei’ because it is a place of mountains. Here they...’

“No, wait...” Topaz frowned and skipped ahead in the scroll. “I was sure it was... No, that’s not it... I can’t read this paragraph... Ah!”

‘...but there is another, hidden, within the Ebetemei. This is a mountain unlike all others, seen by but a few of the eldest mares of the Loaimiruu, and they call it ‘Boaebete’ because fire lives within it... these are the things the Earth Ponies speak of and the extent of their lore, if it can be called such.’

Topaz rolled up his scroll with a contented grin.

“Pretty neat, huh?”

“Well, so what?” Lapis frowned. “That doesn’t help at all! It’s just a bunch of silly names and words in your silly little scroll!”

“Not quite,” Saul muttered. His heavy claw was about his jaw and his digits moved through the coarse hairs that grew there. “I knew that the volcano must be in Verdant, but where? Now I know... This Land of Mountains is the place the stones spoke of, and the creatures that carved them raised the temples that were felled...

“Lord Topaz,” he added with little gentleness, and the colt ceased glowering at Lapis as a fright shot through him. He turned to face the human and everypony there felt small beneath the fierceness that burned in his eyes.

“How do I reach this place?”

And Topaz spoke.

There lay the land of conquests past... Verdant! How the sea stretched before that Crimson Shore; it spoke softly of distant fields where blood had flowed with abandon, and ancient peaks once witnessed endless slaughter beyond horror and imagination... wonders of an age vaguely remembered, best left forgotten in the mists of history... such things were in the thoughts of Shimmershield that afternoon, with a gentle sun barely visible past a thin sheet of woolen clouds.

“What interest has the Lord of Brine,” she asked, “that turns his gaze to lands beyond the edge of the known world?”

“My interests are those of the princess, my lady. My search has been long and fruitless, but for this one trail... this one chance that the power I promise may yet be accomplished. I must follow it.”

Lady Shimmershield shifted her weight under her heavy iron maille. The straps held, the heavy rings balanced easily on her withers and flanks; she ran her aura over the silver brooch that held her cape in place and tightened the cords that steadied her nasal helm to her head. By her side, her squire waited with her lance lightly propped against her side.

“You claim to speak in Her Grace’s best interest, lord, yet you truly seek your own emancipation,” she said. “You are unworthy of the title bestowed upon you.”

“Perhaps,” Saul answered. “Yet for the time being our interests are aligned. The path is the same, even if it must fork at its end, and to deny me the information now would mean an obstruction in the princess’ plans. Would it not?”

They stood alone but for the squire outside the city walls, where Shimmershield had bid her slaves set up a training field. Targets small, tall, broad, and thin lay strewn about and stuck firmly to the ground. Said squire watched with poorly concealed wonder as her master traded words with a creature beyond reality, and the slaves lounged beneath a fig tree’s shade; grateful for the brief respite of the day.

“Perhaps,” the knight took her lance from her squire, “and perhaps not. Words are twisted, despicable things, Lord of Brine. A true noblemare would be better off tongueless and earless, with but a lance and hauberk to her name. Elsewise all must turn to intrigue and such grotesqueries...

“My princess has commanded that we aid you,” she said. “And aid you, I shall. What is it you need?”

“Verdant,” he said. “Past the Bay of Mangoes where all things end there is a land called ‘Ebetemei’, and within is a living volcano—a mountain that bleeds fire. The final ingredient is there. Brimstone, the fire rock that will set alight the compound and ignite the flames needed to unleash its full potential... it’s there, and we must have it.”

Shimmershield listened but understood little. Of the language of the mud ponies, she knew a few words, but the name was foreign to her, and of the human’s strange ramblings almost nothing made sense. His sorceries were his business, however, and hers was to do as her princess demanded. She lowered her lance and took her aim. The first target was but a short leap away.

“Then, so we must,” she said. “I fail to see how this concerns me.”

She charged. Tensed legs let go, and the power of her muscles propelled her forward at speed. In her aura, her lance shifted position at the last moment, from a high stance to a low one, and she rammed its iron tip through the wooden target with ease.

“Excellent strike, my lady!” her squire cried out with joy.

Shimmershield did not break stride. She freed her lance with one forceful push and raced on to the next target—it shattered to splinters—and the next one, too. Shimmershield turned to face the last one; set a few dozen paces away, propped against several sacks filled with sand and straw. She raised her lance on the approach...

...then lowered it a moment before impact. The crash cracked! and splintered her lance. Sand and straw went flying, and past it all the knight lightly slowed to a trot.

Shimmershield drew in a deep breath and realized she’d drawn her sword.

“It concerns you, my lady,” the human called to her, his voice impossibly clear despite the distance. “Because there will be a choice to be made once I present this need to the princess, and when it is time, I hope you will serve your princess well...”

“My sole purpose is to serve, human!” she cried. Her chest rose and fell with exertion, but she was fresh, and her aura tingled around the hilt of her sword. All she needed was an excuse.

“Of that, there is no doubt,” he responded. “But to what end? The path will fork for you, too, and when the moment comes, a lance will not avail you...”

There was stillness between them, broken only by the excited shuffling of the young squire—a fresh lance already in her aura—and the curious glances of the slaves. A soft wind blew in from the south, northbound, and Shimmershield sheathed her blade.

“Leave me,” she said. “There is nothing more to be said between us.”

With a polite bow the human left, and Shimmershield called her slaves forth to rearrange the targets. Noon dragged on and April fast behind it. It was the last day of March.