The Arkanist

The Endless Sea

Eller was drunk when he woke to the smell of vomit. His quarters were small, smaller than even the captain’s and cluttered with mountains of cloth and broken arms of wood. His head rung with a stagnant drone as he flickered his eyes open to a dark cabin. A single waxen candle licked the corner of the room, its light consumed by the oppressive darkness. Eller shot upright as his hard, uncomfortable bed moaned with a breathe of water under the hull. Up came his food, shooting out of his mouth in a stinging stream of brown, splashing across the rank wooden floor and creeping off into the mounds of cloth, dark with his vomit.  

What bloody time is it? He could usually tell when his servant entered with a dull plate of food that it was morning, but none had moaned his creaky wooden door ajar. The food tasted and looked horrid even when the servant did come, and Eller refused to eat any of it. He much rather fancied the idea of eating with Shaalad in his lavish cabin for dinner. The boat churned again and so did his stomach, twisting and cringing in a knot. I have been on ships before, Eller said to himself. Why is this happening?

He reached for his glass of summerwine next to his bed, but when w he tilted it to his lips, all that came forth was a feeble drop to kiss his lips. Eller begged for more, cursing, and threw the empty vile against the wall in a shattering ring as the tiny fragments cascaded down to dance across the wood floor. Bloody wine, bloody ship, bloody bed! It had been almost two days since he had slept for more than an hour, and since, he stared at the moving ceiling, swaying back and forth with the waves.

It was hot too; heavy and humid like the marshlands of the south. His pallid skin glistened with the sheen of sweat and his hair soaked like strands of oil. His loose white linen shirt clung to his saturated body, and the white had gone a dark and dismal grey. His worn breeches were like another layer of skin, dark and leathery with long wrinkles running across his thighs. Eller collapsed back down onto his bed, hard as stone, his sprawled figure heavy and jaded. His throat burned from his violent resuscitations and his nose flared from the fetor odor. I smell worse than a pig, like shit itself. Father would have liked to see this, before I killed him.  

         Musing over his father, the door cried ajar, like an infant weeping for his mother. Eller’s ears thrummed at the cries, his mind playing nasty tricks on him. He dreamed the servant had come, but only laughed and shut the door on his little pale face—prick. He dreamt his father came, side by side with Oppilus, and they both stabbed him in his eyes so he couldn’t see—I’d do the same to you. He dreamt nothing came at all, and that the door merely opened from a violent wind above the decks—This cabin is a cell. Though none, thankfully, came true.

         Entering without any food or wine was his servant, the small thin lad with twigs for arms and sticks for legs. He wore a ratty blue cap over his short brown hair and a dirk at his waist. I could kill him, take his cloths, and escape this cabin. “My lord—“ Eller glanced over drunkenly. “I am no lord, only a man. You have no need of those bloody titles. They are only words to make people feel good and safe at night, or rather in my father’s case, the opposite.”

         The servant stared at him blankly, “Yes, man…”

         “You can call me Eller, if it please you, for it does me.”

         “Yes, Eller, well Shaalad—“

         “Can you bring me a glass of wine?” Eller asked. “I do rather like the vintage you have here.”

         “My orders forbid me.”

         “Bugger those orders, boy,” Eller said. “It’ll be between you and me. Our little secret.”