Coincidence
1st Vhalar, in Volta
Previous PartReminiscence
Still thinking of the outcome of the contemplation of her life and her lack of purpose and meaning, the painter Yrmellyn Cole was strolling around in the port of Volta. After walking for a while, she spotted a tall ship she recognized. It was Gray Gull.
In arc 717 she had travelled from Andaris, Rynmere, to the southern city Ne’haer onboard this ship. Yrmellyn, being an attunement mage, had not been unaware of the growing anti-mage sentiments in Rynmere at the time. Frequencies and notes she had examined had scared her. She hadn’t known what would come of it but it had felt best to leave.
The kingdom had been unstable for some time. A rebellion and a civil war in arc 716 had ended with victory for the kings and his allies. A hunt of the rebels had followed. Some, mostly nobles, had been exiled. But others, those not nobles, had been executed with merciless cruelty and many of their children had been sent to prison in the mines of Endor. During that fall and the winter that had followed, Yrmellyn had been laying low and avoided attention. It had seemed best so, as she had visited the rebels. Her connection to them had never been revealed. Yrmellyn Cole had after all only been a mere painter and not arrived until after the war.
Despite not knowing anybody in Andaris, she had lingered there as she had wanted to learn alchemy. A whim, born out of the contact with a professor whose portrait she had painted. Impatient, she had gone to the criminal district Water Street in search of books about alchemy and found more than she had been looking for. An eídisi warrior had accompanied her, Saeri LaChasse. An intriguing personality. Yrmellyn had met the blue woman one more time (and painted a portrait of her) but Saeri had remained an enigma. Robbers had attacked them but an old bookshop owner nicknamed “Granny Anne” and her grandson Rudi had saved the day. In return, Yrmellyn had promised to take Rudi as her apprentice. She had also sworn an oath to the immortal Vhalar to do so. The grandmother had given her a big tome about alchemy to seal the deal. Yrmellyn had been happy with this outcome. But within short, she had fallen victim to a plague in the spring of 717 and only survived due to Rudi and his dubious grandmother. She owed them her life, not only one time but twice.
During her recovery, she had found an alchemy teacher in the extremely cautious Laurits Verran, the brother of a potion shop owner in Andaris. Her studies with him had been what she thought of as “anti-experimental”. She had learnt everything about equipment and safety measures but not much about the alchemy itself. Yrmellyn had been fine with it as she had seen it as only the beginning of a good collaboration. Instead, it had turned out to be the end. The anti-mage sentiments in the city had interrupted it.
She had left her apprentice Rudi in the care of Laurits Verran, not caring that the boy’s grandmother had kept warning her for the man. Then, Yrmellyn had travelled away with Gray Gull, to settle in Ne’haer. She had intended to send for Rudi when she was established there. A fatal decision. Ne’haer had been facing war and pirate attacks. She had also been a hostage in a bank robbery. The city hadn’t been safe at all. Meanwhile, in Rynmere, the Order of the Mantis had begun rising and the kingdom had entered the path that would end with burning mages on pyres and pulling Rynmere down into a violent conflict. Chaos and downfall had eventually ensued. Unable to get any news from Rynmere, Yrmellyn had never found the boy Rudi again. She didn’t know what had befallen him and the others.
This trial, her 34th birthday seemed to be full of sad reminders of past sorrows. But, the journey with the ship Gray Gull had not been bad. She had helped out with the maintenance, assisting their combined ship medic and carpenter with simple tasks. The life on board had been frugal, with hard work in the days, a bunk on the deck in the nights and food of the practical kind. It had still been a good journey and she had felt hope.
“Hey there.” A man waved at her. He sat on a crate on the pier, in front of the ship, putting tobacco into a skipper pipe. He was middle-aged and burly. She recognized him too. It was the captain of Gray Gull.
“Long time, Captain.”
“Yeah. The painter aren’t you? Cole? You made the painting of my boat. A damned good painting of a damned good ship.”
Yrmellyn smiled. “That’s right. How’s the trade going these days?”
“So, so. Losing the Rynmere trade was a blow to the business. They locked down the whole kingdom and they didn’t open the ports again, to my knowledge. Immortals may know what happened there. Not that I want to go there and find out. The rumours I’ve heard ...”
“What have you heard, Captain?” Yrmellyn had heard a bit about Rynmere for a while, but nowadays the rumours in Rharne were about the approaching armies of fire-beings and other monsters. Who cared what happened in a faraway island kingdom when their home city might be burnt down? The citizens of Rharne and its outlying towns were busy with the local troubles.
“Long story. And a dark one.” He lit the pipe, drew in smoke and blew it out toward the sky.
Yrmellyn knew that this was how the sailor tales used to begin. It was always a long story and it was always a dark one. It also meant that the sailor who said that was itching to tell the tale and wanted the intended audience to fall in thrall. She nodded at the captain. “I have plenty of time. Mind if I paint a bit while I listen? A portrait of you, would that be all right?”
“Pah! A portrait of me? Nobody would want to buy it, not even I.”
‘So they all say.” Yrmellyn had sold the portrait of the “creative alchemist” and drug dealer Jack Hector for a good price at Zynyx market. The portrait of the tavern maid Janey had sold before it had dried, to a tavern guest Yrmellyn suspected for being a pirate.
“So? Well, if you want to waste your colours on me ...” The captain laughed, drew in more smoke, blew it out and made a smoke ring. “We were on the way to the port outside Andaris in Ashan 718. The weather was bad and it looked like it would get worse. But, we felt that we were lucky as we would soon dock, unload and go ashore. The crew was already discussing which taverns to visit and in which order to visit them. But, soon we would run into unexpected setbacks...”
The captain fell silent and just smoked when he had said this. Yrmellyn busied herself by putting the easel and the panel in place. The panel was already ready to use. She prepared the fast-drying outdoors colours on the palette. As always when she was about to paint she felt the magic stir in anticipation. The spark’s love for art seemed as endless as its hunger for ether. She didn’t understand it, but she was aware of it.
“Setbacks?” she asked, while she sketched lines and marks on the panel.
“Setbacks.” The captain sighed. “When we approached the island we ran into Rynmere’s navy. I’m not joking. They were stopping all ships on the open sea before they even were approaching the port near Andaris. When we asked them to tell us the reasons they told us that an order of some kind had burned mages alive on pyres and this had backfired. Now they were at war with bandits and mages who had joined them. Worse, they were also dealing with a plague more dangerous than any illness they had ever seen before. Chaos and darkness reigned. They were going to isolate the island to prevent the illness from spreading to the rest of the world. Otherwise, it might be the end of Idalos. So, they adviced us to not dock there.”
Yrmellyn stood still. Rudi. His grandmother Anne. Laurits Verran. What had befallen them? Her heart was beating too hard in her chest. Her hand trembled, not by much, but enough to make her fail at the line she was drawing. “What ... did you do?”
“What could we say or do ... they were either noble martyrs or raving mad but in either case, we feared that they would sink us if we tried to defy them. We had to take a new route. I didn’t want to turn back to the south so I decided to continue to Viden.”
The captain embarked on and detailed tale about all the ordeals of the journey northwards. Yrmellyn comforted herself by immersing in the painting while she listened to him. Storm, starvation, accidents, merfolk attacks, death ...
“After what we had been told none of us wanted to visit Rynmere. But, finally the ship and the crew was in such a bad shape that we steered toward Norr Bay in the hope that the plague and the chaos were limited to the southern parts of the kingdom. The Duchy of Endor is a quite isolated place you see, particularly in the cold seasons.”
Yrmellyn interrupted him. “Norr Bay? Did you dock there?”
“So we did. And we were lucky. I don’t know if they had just forgotten the north or if they had only begun closing down and not had time to send orders there yet. There was not a single ship in the port and no activity. I had contacts there so we found help without drawing much attention. We repaired and we replenished the food storage and that was it. We just wanted to leave as soon as possible. But ...”
Yrmellyn kept painting while the captain rambled about a plethora of practical problems he and his crew had solved after a lot of hard work and efforts. In the end, they had done anything to get out of Rynmere, even accepted to take passengers on board. His business contacts had wanted to get rid of a ragtag bunch of people who had been living on their charity.
“Well, not all the time, Yrmellyn. They had paid for their stay as long as they had money. Then become indebted. A few of them approached me behind the backs of my contacts. Said they feared being sold as slaves to the mines. They had hidden some gold so they would be able to pay for a journey if they would get a chance to escape ... I could understand them.”
“Anybody would have done it, Captain. Sometimes people just have to save their lives.”
“Yeah. I didn’t blame them. Would have done the same myself if some greedy merchants had tried to fleece me until I was broke, then sell me into slavery.”
“Me too.” The painting was looking as she wanted it to look. She was polishing the details.
“Next, some others approached me, able-bodied men and women, who had no money but wanted to join the crew. As I had lost sailors during the journey it came in handy. But...“
A pause followed and the captain drew in smoke several times and blew smoke ring after smoke ring. The silence grew. Yrmellyn immersed in the painting. The spark of magic trembled in her soul like a flame in wind. She didn’t tune in to the captain.
“I couldn’t take them all on board. I knew that I had people who would pay and people who would work and so I decided that I would take some of the refugees with me and leave the rest behind. I kept my knowledge secret and demanded to get to pick my passengers myself. It was a tough negotiation, but in the end we sailed to Viden with the paying passengers and the new crew members.”
It had been a long story. Yrmellyn was done with the painting. The question she didn’t ask hung in the air between them ... the answer was obvious. The remainder of the refugees, those who lacked money or weren’t fit for working as sailors had been left to their fate. It felt like her heart was growing in her chest. Little Rudi and old Anne had been paupers from the criminal district. They weren’t rich and none of them had been sailor material. Her voice was so low that it was only a whisper when she finally spoke.
“Some friends of mine went to Norr Bay. A boy age eleven or so, with his grandmother and ... “.
“They may have travelled with me, if there was a man with them. The boy’s father had money. He paid for them all. Don’t know if I would have done the same to be honest, considering what a pain in the ass his old hag of a mother in law was. Quite many would have taken the opportunity to get rid of her.”
“Do you recall their names?”
“No. The situation was incredibly tough. I had a lot of things to think of. There was no time to bother with the passengers. They kept to themselves and I hardly saw them. Then they went ashore in Viden and were gone.”
Yrmellyn nodded. Hope fluttered in her chest like a butterfly trying to stay alive for another day when the summer already is over. She cleaned her painting tools and put them back in the kit while the captain continued smoking. Then she folded the easel and showed her motif the portrait. He laughed. “Not bad, if I dare say it myself! I hope you can make a few coppers on it.”
She stayed there for a while, waiting for the colours to dry. Then she said farewell and resumed her walk along the piers. She would sell the painting later, at Zynyx market where she often got well paid nowadays. The unexpected birthday gifts rested in her mind, immaterial but real. One was the insight that she had no clear purpose. The other was a thin thread of hope. She might still be able to pay her debts to those she owed and understand the meaning of her life.
In arc 717 she had travelled from Andaris, Rynmere, to the southern city Ne’haer onboard this ship. Yrmellyn, being an attunement mage, had not been unaware of the growing anti-mage sentiments in Rynmere at the time. Frequencies and notes she had examined had scared her. She hadn’t known what would come of it but it had felt best to leave.
The kingdom had been unstable for some time. A rebellion and a civil war in arc 716 had ended with victory for the kings and his allies. A hunt of the rebels had followed. Some, mostly nobles, had been exiled. But others, those not nobles, had been executed with merciless cruelty and many of their children had been sent to prison in the mines of Endor. During that fall and the winter that had followed, Yrmellyn had been laying low and avoided attention. It had seemed best so, as she had visited the rebels. Her connection to them had never been revealed. Yrmellyn Cole had after all only been a mere painter and not arrived until after the war.
Despite not knowing anybody in Andaris, she had lingered there as she had wanted to learn alchemy. A whim, born out of the contact with a professor whose portrait she had painted. Impatient, she had gone to the criminal district Water Street in search of books about alchemy and found more than she had been looking for. An eídisi warrior had accompanied her, Saeri LaChasse. An intriguing personality. Yrmellyn had met the blue woman one more time (and painted a portrait of her) but Saeri had remained an enigma. Robbers had attacked them but an old bookshop owner nicknamed “Granny Anne” and her grandson Rudi had saved the day. In return, Yrmellyn had promised to take Rudi as her apprentice. She had also sworn an oath to the immortal Vhalar to do so. The grandmother had given her a big tome about alchemy to seal the deal. Yrmellyn had been happy with this outcome. But within short, she had fallen victim to a plague in the spring of 717 and only survived due to Rudi and his dubious grandmother. She owed them her life, not only one time but twice.
During her recovery, she had found an alchemy teacher in the extremely cautious Laurits Verran, the brother of a potion shop owner in Andaris. Her studies with him had been what she thought of as “anti-experimental”. She had learnt everything about equipment and safety measures but not much about the alchemy itself. Yrmellyn had been fine with it as she had seen it as only the beginning of a good collaboration. Instead, it had turned out to be the end. The anti-mage sentiments in the city had interrupted it.
She had left her apprentice Rudi in the care of Laurits Verran, not caring that the boy’s grandmother had kept warning her for the man. Then, Yrmellyn had travelled away with Gray Gull, to settle in Ne’haer. She had intended to send for Rudi when she was established there. A fatal decision. Ne’haer had been facing war and pirate attacks. She had also been a hostage in a bank robbery. The city hadn’t been safe at all. Meanwhile, in Rynmere, the Order of the Mantis had begun rising and the kingdom had entered the path that would end with burning mages on pyres and pulling Rynmere down into a violent conflict. Chaos and downfall had eventually ensued. Unable to get any news from Rynmere, Yrmellyn had never found the boy Rudi again. She didn’t know what had befallen him and the others.
This trial, her 34th birthday seemed to be full of sad reminders of past sorrows. But, the journey with the ship Gray Gull had not been bad. She had helped out with the maintenance, assisting their combined ship medic and carpenter with simple tasks. The life on board had been frugal, with hard work in the days, a bunk on the deck in the nights and food of the practical kind. It had still been a good journey and she had felt hope.
“Hey there.” A man waved at her. He sat on a crate on the pier, in front of the ship, putting tobacco into a skipper pipe. He was middle-aged and burly. She recognized him too. It was the captain of Gray Gull.
“Long time, Captain.”
“Yeah. The painter aren’t you? Cole? You made the painting of my boat. A damned good painting of a damned good ship.”
Yrmellyn smiled. “That’s right. How’s the trade going these days?”
“So, so. Losing the Rynmere trade was a blow to the business. They locked down the whole kingdom and they didn’t open the ports again, to my knowledge. Immortals may know what happened there. Not that I want to go there and find out. The rumours I’ve heard ...”
“What have you heard, Captain?” Yrmellyn had heard a bit about Rynmere for a while, but nowadays the rumours in Rharne were about the approaching armies of fire-beings and other monsters. Who cared what happened in a faraway island kingdom when their home city might be burnt down? The citizens of Rharne and its outlying towns were busy with the local troubles.
“Long story. And a dark one.” He lit the pipe, drew in smoke and blew it out toward the sky.
Yrmellyn knew that this was how the sailor tales used to begin. It was always a long story and it was always a dark one. It also meant that the sailor who said that was itching to tell the tale and wanted the intended audience to fall in thrall. She nodded at the captain. “I have plenty of time. Mind if I paint a bit while I listen? A portrait of you, would that be all right?”
“Pah! A portrait of me? Nobody would want to buy it, not even I.”
‘So they all say.” Yrmellyn had sold the portrait of the “creative alchemist” and drug dealer Jack Hector for a good price at Zynyx market. The portrait of the tavern maid Janey had sold before it had dried, to a tavern guest Yrmellyn suspected for being a pirate.
“So? Well, if you want to waste your colours on me ...” The captain laughed, drew in more smoke, blew it out and made a smoke ring. “We were on the way to the port outside Andaris in Ashan 718. The weather was bad and it looked like it would get worse. But, we felt that we were lucky as we would soon dock, unload and go ashore. The crew was already discussing which taverns to visit and in which order to visit them. But, soon we would run into unexpected setbacks...”
The captain fell silent and just smoked when he had said this. Yrmellyn busied herself by putting the easel and the panel in place. The panel was already ready to use. She prepared the fast-drying outdoors colours on the palette. As always when she was about to paint she felt the magic stir in anticipation. The spark’s love for art seemed as endless as its hunger for ether. She didn’t understand it, but she was aware of it.
“Setbacks?” she asked, while she sketched lines and marks on the panel.
“Setbacks.” The captain sighed. “When we approached the island we ran into Rynmere’s navy. I’m not joking. They were stopping all ships on the open sea before they even were approaching the port near Andaris. When we asked them to tell us the reasons they told us that an order of some kind had burned mages alive on pyres and this had backfired. Now they were at war with bandits and mages who had joined them. Worse, they were also dealing with a plague more dangerous than any illness they had ever seen before. Chaos and darkness reigned. They were going to isolate the island to prevent the illness from spreading to the rest of the world. Otherwise, it might be the end of Idalos. So, they adviced us to not dock there.”
Yrmellyn stood still. Rudi. His grandmother Anne. Laurits Verran. What had befallen them? Her heart was beating too hard in her chest. Her hand trembled, not by much, but enough to make her fail at the line she was drawing. “What ... did you do?”
“What could we say or do ... they were either noble martyrs or raving mad but in either case, we feared that they would sink us if we tried to defy them. We had to take a new route. I didn’t want to turn back to the south so I decided to continue to Viden.”
The captain embarked on and detailed tale about all the ordeals of the journey northwards. Yrmellyn comforted herself by immersing in the painting while she listened to him. Storm, starvation, accidents, merfolk attacks, death ...
“After what we had been told none of us wanted to visit Rynmere. But, finally the ship and the crew was in such a bad shape that we steered toward Norr Bay in the hope that the plague and the chaos were limited to the southern parts of the kingdom. The Duchy of Endor is a quite isolated place you see, particularly in the cold seasons.”
Yrmellyn interrupted him. “Norr Bay? Did you dock there?”
“So we did. And we were lucky. I don’t know if they had just forgotten the north or if they had only begun closing down and not had time to send orders there yet. There was not a single ship in the port and no activity. I had contacts there so we found help without drawing much attention. We repaired and we replenished the food storage and that was it. We just wanted to leave as soon as possible. But ...”
Yrmellyn kept painting while the captain rambled about a plethora of practical problems he and his crew had solved after a lot of hard work and efforts. In the end, they had done anything to get out of Rynmere, even accepted to take passengers on board. His business contacts had wanted to get rid of a ragtag bunch of people who had been living on their charity.
“Well, not all the time, Yrmellyn. They had paid for their stay as long as they had money. Then become indebted. A few of them approached me behind the backs of my contacts. Said they feared being sold as slaves to the mines. They had hidden some gold so they would be able to pay for a journey if they would get a chance to escape ... I could understand them.”
“Anybody would have done it, Captain. Sometimes people just have to save their lives.”
“Yeah. I didn’t blame them. Would have done the same myself if some greedy merchants had tried to fleece me until I was broke, then sell me into slavery.”
“Me too.” The painting was looking as she wanted it to look. She was polishing the details.
“Next, some others approached me, able-bodied men and women, who had no money but wanted to join the crew. As I had lost sailors during the journey it came in handy. But...“
A pause followed and the captain drew in smoke several times and blew smoke ring after smoke ring. The silence grew. Yrmellyn immersed in the painting. The spark of magic trembled in her soul like a flame in wind. She didn’t tune in to the captain.
“I couldn’t take them all on board. I knew that I had people who would pay and people who would work and so I decided that I would take some of the refugees with me and leave the rest behind. I kept my knowledge secret and demanded to get to pick my passengers myself. It was a tough negotiation, but in the end we sailed to Viden with the paying passengers and the new crew members.”
It had been a long story. Yrmellyn was done with the painting. The question she didn’t ask hung in the air between them ... the answer was obvious. The remainder of the refugees, those who lacked money or weren’t fit for working as sailors had been left to their fate. It felt like her heart was growing in her chest. Little Rudi and old Anne had been paupers from the criminal district. They weren’t rich and none of them had been sailor material. Her voice was so low that it was only a whisper when she finally spoke.
“Some friends of mine went to Norr Bay. A boy age eleven or so, with his grandmother and ... “.
“They may have travelled with me, if there was a man with them. The boy’s father had money. He paid for them all. Don’t know if I would have done the same to be honest, considering what a pain in the ass his old hag of a mother in law was. Quite many would have taken the opportunity to get rid of her.”
“Do you recall their names?”
“No. The situation was incredibly tough. I had a lot of things to think of. There was no time to bother with the passengers. They kept to themselves and I hardly saw them. Then they went ashore in Viden and were gone.”
Yrmellyn nodded. Hope fluttered in her chest like a butterfly trying to stay alive for another day when the summer already is over. She cleaned her painting tools and put them back in the kit while the captain continued smoking. Then she folded the easel and showed her motif the portrait. He laughed. “Not bad, if I dare say it myself! I hope you can make a few coppers on it.”
She stayed there for a while, waiting for the colours to dry. Then she said farewell and resumed her walk along the piers. She would sell the painting later, at Zynyx market where she often got well paid nowadays. The unexpected birthday gifts rested in her mind, immaterial but real. One was the insight that she had no clear purpose. The other was a thin thread of hope. She might still be able to pay her debts to those she owed and understand the meaning of her life.
