The Arkanist

Martem

Martem

The Heart Eater docked at a small port called Albion, which was a part of the Syr Tallien territory in Albain. Through the haze and fog of the grey morning, Jakn saw its dark shadow rise from the bleak sea, and the great mass of trees behind extend for leagues each way. It would be difficult to trek through, he knew that much without even witnessing it first hand. Yet, now, it looked like a great cloud of green, where you’d get trapped, and never find your way out. The Aden was known to eat up wary travelers and hold them in their lower holds until eternity seemed meager.

         Jakn and Vena thanked the captain for his services and waved goodbye to as they boarded the docks, the sails being collapsed behind them. Before them now, was a small town built at the end of a dirt track, wide and weathered. The shops and taverns and buildings were erected of logs and timber from the great forest before them, and the windows all swelled with lamplight through the drear grey morning. The roofs were of tile and thatch, and the low wood wall protecting the town held aloft the flags of Antur, the fabric beleaguered.

         There were no guards along the roads, save for a group of folk in long hoods and brown cloaks who seemed to be smugglers at the docks. Jakn and Vena first stopped at the Market Bank, where they had to transfer their money from Ardan to Alban. Jakn emptied his coin purse and found they’d had twenty tallos, fifteen wights, and nineteen pents. The cashier took the coins in hand and pulled up thirty silver lire, twenty bronze tarin, and seventy grey rhen. The lire was the most valuable of the coins, being the largest, like the gold tallo of Ardinell and the tarin is the second most valuable, of shiny bronze and copper. The grey rhen was the least valuable, like the Ardan pent, and there are two hundred rhen to one lire, unlike the Ardish coin, where a hundred pents are equal to one tallo. Jakn thanked the cashier for their conversion, and tucked his coin purse away, the new coinage heavy in his pocket as they ventured into a massive inn called the Woodsend.

         The rich wood tavern and bar were astonishing to behold and how the levels rose and rose opened the jaw. Jakn paid the innkeeper, Baroc, when they’d first entered for a small room with a single bed upstairs. Baroc recognized their Ardan accent, and spoke in simple Anturan to them, saying it would come out to six silver lire, and Jakn gave up the silver coins. The innkeeper showed them to the bar and Jakn ordered up two mugs of warm cider for Vena and himself. As they were being heated, Vena went up to the room to check things out and take her heavy lute off her shoulder. Jakn nodded in acceptance and sipped at his cider with cold hands as the snows fell outside through the frosted windows.

         In the far corner of the tavern, a troupe of musicians played the tune ‘Call of the Call’ a classic of Albain, and then finished with a song called ‘Dark Leaves, Dark Skies’ which Jakn had never heard before, but liked the presence it held in the large tavern. The locals clapped lightly when the troupe departed the stage and the lights around the platform faded, and retuned to gossiping about the events of their mundane town, mostly of the harvest up north and the ships passing in today. Mostly all of them had the salty look that suggested them to be sailors, yet some wore a haggard and dark look that suggested they earned their living in the Aden.

         An old chap with grey strands of hair beneath a wool cap muttered noises to a younger man, his hair amber and his beard dark. His hands were callused and large, and he wore a dirk at his waist. They spoke softly about the bad harvest and the apples being dull and flavorless and the pumpkins being small and disappointing. Jakn stopped listening as they conversation got increasingly boring and turned to the bar, where a few men laughed over pints of ale and mead, and another group cackled at stories told round the warm flames of the hearth.

         In little more than a couple of minutes of sitting in the tavern, the skies outside darkened to black, and the inn shuddered in the cold winds, while the hearth in the center roared was Baroc continuously fed the fire large pillars of lumber. With each piece of wood, the fire rose dramatically, licking madly at the granite chimney that rose through the heart of the entire inn. At the bar, the Albish folk talked in hushed voices over their horns ale and mead about the winter and the forest. Next to Jakn, he couldn’t help but hear this man telling the bartender of his recent scouting in the Aden and how he’d lost five of his companions last time out to the cold and seven more to the wild beasts who roam the trees. Jakn shivered at the notion they’d be enduring such conditions on the morrow.