The Copper Promise 01 - The Copper Promise by Jen Williams

Author:Jen Williams [Williams, Jen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2013-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

43

The small boat moved at a crawling pace through the swirling mists. Every now and then a distant outcrop of jagged black rock would appear and vanish again, announcing the islands that lay hidden there like portents in a nightmare. The captain was taking them slowly, his eyes trawling the fog continually for hidden obstacles. He was a native of the Nowhere Isles, with pale skin and hair so blond it was almost white, but even the people who’d lived in these mysterious islands all their lives mistrusted the waters around Whittenfarne. It was a cursed place, they said.

In fact, they said it somewhat constantly and Frith was getting rather tired of it. His guide, another native of the Nowhere Isles called Jeen, was sitting on the deck filling his pipe. Frith went and stood over him.

‘How much further?’

Jeen glanced up at the white, featureless sky, and shrugged. His hair was darker than the captain’s, although Frith suspected that was largely due to the lack of soap and water it had seen lately.

‘As long as it takes, m’lord,’ he said, squinting up at Frith. He had a patchy little beard growing in fits and starts along a weak chin. ‘Can’t just go surging up to Whittenfarne. Good way to get scuttled, that.’

Frith sighed, and glanced towards the prow, where the captain stood staring out at the water. The boat’s figurehead was in the shape of a hideous, tentacled monster – Jeen had told him this was to scare away any restless spirits, which all seemed a little melodramatic for Frith’s tastes, but at least the captain looked like he knew what he was doing.

And really, the people of the Nowhere Isles could hardly be blamed for believing in spirits and ghouls. Frith looked out into the shifting whiteness and frowned. He’d arrived on the most populated of the islands a good fortnight back, and even that had been a bleak, unnerving place. The sand was black and the rocks were glassy, refracting the light oddly, while the grey and brown buildings the people had thrown up seemed to cluster together in desperation. Finding a boat and a guide to take him to Whittenfarne had proved extraordinarily difficult. He walked from tavern to tavern, tolerating the terrible smells and vapours of the tobaccos and powders being smoked in every den, and asked with extreme politeness for assistance, but every query got the same response; frowns, puzzled looks, or outright anger. Eventually though, as was always the case in these matters, the news that a man with a great deal of money was in town found its way to the correct ears, and Jeen had come sidling by. For the price of several fat bricks of tobacco the scruffy man had told Frith everything he knew about Whittenfarne.

And now he was his guide, too.

‘And this Jolnir is who I must speak to?’

Jeen nodded happily, clearly glad to be going over a subject he’d already exhausted.

‘If you want to know about the old mages that lived on the island, if you want to know about them, then Jolnir is the man.

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