A long journey by sea is an interminable thing if a person is not born to it. There are some–men and women alike–for whom a life at sea is the only life they will ever want. Strange ports and new people. Distant cities passing on hills. Spices and rare furs to trade. The thrill of rising on crests of sea-green water, as clear and hard as stained glass, as tall as sharp-crested hills.
But Samakarantha was not one of these.
For him, the hot forests and shady jungles of his home country had always had a stronger call than the sea ever did. He loved the hard light of a day on the open grasslands. He loved the cool tumble of stream water on rocks under dappled shade. He loved the sounds of the creatures that roam by land, and the bright birds that fly there. A gull was a raucous fool to his ears, and a pelican, a blundering clown to his eyes. The sea held little joy for him. But he had put up with the journey, and now he came at last to the end of it. He thought back, to the first days: immediately after departing the moot, he had sailed from Bernoth Town downriver, and then over great distances to the city of Caitroth, built and cut from golden sandstone, and lounging at the mouth of the Blue Osseth. There he called a meeting of Theurgists, and spoke with them. That city was also where the Lady Peloxanna left him, travelling north to her own home country–for her homeland had its own threats and troubling rumours, and she had to return there quickly. Afterwards, he visited the Cities of Coral Stone, and finally, he arrived at Temask. He had no time to venture as far south as Zorith, where the priests of the Western Sun Temple sing their sunset-songs, but he sent messengers.
Then, he returned.
Over the calm Telaegrian his ship sailed, skating across the waters where the azure drakelings dipped and dived for fish. Then along the coastlines of Sorroscan lands and the Laquahar Kingdoms, and at long last northwards, headlong into the freezing salt-spray and choppy waters of The Great Bay. And all of this for the sake of arriving at Old Brae Port: a squat, grey, seagull-stained, washed-up mass of stone and weathered pine-wood, crouched at the edge of a recalcitrant, stormy sort of inlet. Above it all stood a grim and starkly defensible castle, but even in this, the royal residence of Brae, there was little loveliness. A few streaming banners. A mass of flowering honeysuckle, here and there on the walls. That was all.
The ship that carried Samakarantha was a spice-trader out of Emeraltus. She was called the Lessejo em Tellajio: That Which Longs After the Gates of Dawn, to translate rather literally and without much poetry. It was a three-master, narrow, sharp-prowed and built of a rare wood as dark as mahogany, and twice as strong. Gold paint decorated the carved jungle vines along its gunwales and prow. It was the sort of ship that does not often call at bleak, grey little northern ports.
Already, Samakarantha could see crowds of curious idlers gathering along the piers. As the ship neared port. As the people gathered and pointed, the crew tacked and changed course to better match the rising tide. At that manoeuvre, the whole leaning flank would have become visible from the city for a gilt-flashing moment. That would have sent a rustle of wonderment through the crowd. The Lessejo em Tellajio was twice as tall as the next-largest warship or trader in view, and almost twice the length as well. Samakarantha could imagine the gasps and mutterings on the piers. Soon the ship came about and turned headlong towards port. Fishermen looked up from labouring in their small, fat-bellied boats, and they wiped their brows, and whistled to one another in amazement. And the Lessejo em Tellajio cut onwards with its path, slicing long wakes of foam into the ice-green seas.
Near the prow, he stood. Robes of chalk and grey flapped around his shoulders and legs, graced here and there with gold. His skin shone in the settling rich sunlight. His eyes gleamed hotly. Many who saw him, thought that an emperor of some southern sun-kissed land had come to visit. But he was no emperor. He was Samakarantha, magus, speaker of rare tales, seeker of truth, and hopefully also, an averter of war, chaos and darkness.
Though that last was yet to be proven, one way or the other.