Chapter One
To Dr Chancei Wicket,
The Royal University of Ecologists, Grove College
Chance,
By the time you receive this letter, I will be some ways across the West Sea, possibly already passing the Elippes and nearing Neridia. Though, who’s to say, Wayfinder is my fastest pidgeon, but she’s getting old, you know. She reaches you when she reaches you, and I should hope you’ll give her a good feed and a rest when she arrives.
I’d imagine you’re angry. Well, I understand.
You’re probably also still thinking about that last conclave, about how I could have just kept my mouth shut, could have avoided antagonising the Dean. But no matter how many “yes sir,”’s and “of course sir,”’s I simper, there was no way I was getting this trip funded by the University. The old man hated me the moment I first said the word “Unicorn.”
That place has changed, Chance. It’s been the ‘Royal’ University for centuries, I know, but since when did research proposals need a Royal seal of approval for funding, directly from the office of the King’s clerk? At one time, knowledge was the only master that the Dean of Grove College bent the knee to, but we both know that he may as well have a permanent cushion set up by the throne of the King, for all the grovelling he does.
“The King has made many generous donations to the College, and to the University, over the years,” - oh Chancei, I can just hear you now, as though you were here, speaking to me.
But I don’t care. Both these men, the Dean and his ignorant King, won’t stop me from leaving on this journey.
You’ve heard it a million times, Chance, but I’m going to say it again, here, in these pages I write in a wobbly hand in my cabin, on the tallship Crestlorne: There are Unicorns in the Western Steppes.
You know I’ve always been certain of it, but I think I’ve found proof, in a book written some forty years ago, about the people of the Spine mountains. I’d send you an excerpt, but I think it’s safest with me, my distance from Alachria growing every minute.
Unicorns aren’t extinct, even though the King and his academics are so certain they are, and I’m going to find out why the Ecology Department, the Port Authority - and the King himself! - are so adamant that none are to cross the Western Sea. You heard them at the conclave, they claim danger, that the cost of insuring such a voyage outweighs the sense in funding it - but come ON. Did Arturo Estanger balk at the danger when he ventured deep into the southern jungles of Hybrunn to study the Phooka Cat for the first time? Did Dr. Kroken, when she spent a month living amongst volcanic fire drakes?
This is not a research field for those who value safety, and they know it. No, this is something else.
What are they hiding, so far beyond the borders of Alachria? What does the King want hidden so badly that he’s willing to block every expedition, academic or otherwise, that crosses the West Sea?
I’m not going to wait for permission to find out.
I probably worried the life out of you when I disappeared, that morning after the conclave, and I’m sorry for that. I could tell you that the journey has been a safe one, that I’ve been in comfort for the voyage.
But it’d be a lie, and you might be the only person I’ve never lied to. I had bags packed for weeks, anticipating the council rejecting my proposal for the trip. Some time ago, I made contact with a dock worker in Port Kholan, whose brother captained a whaling vessel that sailed the West Sea, apparently with a Royal permit.
Only, it isn’t a whaling vessel, and there was never any Royal permit. The Crestlorne, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is a smuggling ship.
The hardest part, shockingly, wasn’t securing passage across the West Sea - in fact it was getting from the College to Port Kolan, with all my papers and ink and all the books you know I carry with me. But make it I did, some of it albeit on foot.
The Crestlorne weighed anchor at sundown, at the changing of the lighthouse guard, to avoid any undue attention and slip by the naval blockade. The trip across the West Sea will take a week, and when the weather is rough, I spend my time in my tiny little cabin. It’s a tight, cramped little space, and I can’t even claim sole ownership of it.
I share a bunk with two other travellers: one is a Westerner himself, a quiet little man with dark hair and an Ikirian complexion. He has that thick Ikirian accent, though his common tongue is surprisingly good. I know his name is Ulka, but I know little more.
My other bunkmate was contained in a two-by-two metre wrought-iron cage, sometimes covered with flameproof tarp.
Do you remember when the University had a Hobdragon in the Vivarium, when we were just kids doing our undergraduate studies? What did Dr. Myrphy call that thing… Hobart? Humphrey? Either way, you’ll remember that not long after that acquisition, the breeding and sale of Hobdragons was strictly forbidden, and aggressive extermination was taking place for wild populations. Poor little thing might have been one of the last of his kind left in all the Kingdom, by the time old age took him.
Well, imagine my surprise when I came face to face with a moody male Hobdragon, juvenile at the size of a dog, locked away in a cage barely a few feet from my bunk.
I did some sketches of him, and tried to ask around as to his name, but found out nothing except that the crew of the Crestlorne have absolutely no zoological curiosity (or sense of whimsy for that matter,) and that there’s a very wealthy buyer for the creature waiting in some Ikirian city out West.
Or - at least there was.
It was around our second day at sea, from memory, that I noticed that the cage was unlocked - closed, sure, but still unlocked.
From the night we embarked we were beset by dreary weather, a lingering blanket of angry grey clouds that would sometimes release mists of vapour, and other times an absolute deluge of torrential rain. They were long days I spent in my cabin. Both my human bunk-mate and I sat reading in a silence perforated only by a crackling sound I know you’re familiar with. It’s the grinding that comes from a Drake’s mouth when they’re trying to ignite sparks from their kindling molars, but they have too much moisture to start a blaze. I assume the crew have their captive Hobdragon on some kind of over-salivant, to stop him from burning down the ship - oh Chancei, what a sorry sight he was. Cooped up in that cage, oozing great stalactites of drool down his jaw, yet trying to breathe fire all the same.
So when the sun broke through the clouds at last, and we passengers were able to go above deck and breathe fresh air at last, I remember distinctly the sound of a shout from somewhere below deck.
Everyone above deck turned with alarm at the sound of a deep scrape, and a clatter, as though all the cargo below was being shunted aside by some raging bull.
When the doors that led below deck thundered open, one snapping entirely from it’s hinge, and a juvenile Hobdragon stumbled out, the alarm turned to panic. It’s limbs and wings flapped and folded and tanged like a baby creature taking it’s first awkward steps, and I wondered how long it had been cramped in that cage.
“Do something!” I remember the first mate shrieking, which now I remember with a laugh.
Because what can any person without any formal combat training do, when faced with a drake, but freeze with a fear most primal? There was nothing to be done, not even the most decorated drake hunter from the Royal Slayers Guild could have stopped that creature.
Still dripping with drool, it didn’t even attempt to ignite it’s breath, instead loping across the deck with a rumbling snarl as ship crew and passengers alike clamoured out of it’s way. It launched itself onto the main mast of the ship, the claw-hook on it’s wings digging deep into the wood and sending a rain of woodchips and splinters down to the deck as it climbed. Higher and higher, I strained my neck as it moved in and out of sight in between billowing sails.
It reached the crows nest (which was, mercifully, empty,) pulled itself up to the tallest crosstree on the mast and perched there like a gargoyle.
I like to imagine what he saw up there, finally out of his cage. Away from his human tormentors, the world spread out before him in his infinite freedom, indulging in his power. What an image he was, Chance, like he’d stepped right out of an old oil painting - an Arcanis, or an Oakshade, or some other old master painters from the days where men feared monsters like they should, and didn’t try to cage them.
He only paused a moment before he launched himself into the open air, wings spreading with the genetic memory that drakes posess since their hatchling days, and rode the sea breeze beyond reach.
The first mate, the captain, any of the crew who were expecting a cut of the profits from the sale of their prize, were furious. Furious AND bewildered, because how does a Hobdragon - famously one of the most simple-minded of drakes - free itself from a latched cage?
The thought that a human would free such a creature was rejected out of hand - who would let loose an enraged, flammable lizard on an incredibly flammable ship? How were any of the passengers to know that his flame had been medically doused?
Who, indeed.
Anyway, I’ll enclose the sketches I did of him with my letter, maybe it’ll make you smile, or at least make you forget how angry you are at me for a moment. I’ll also include those passages from the paper Dr. Myrphy published about Humphrey (or Hobart… or Harry, maybe?) because I know they always made you smile. God, he hated that thing.
I really am sorry for leaving without telling you, Chancei. And I hope it doesn’t make you angrier when I say that I’ve never felt more energised, more excited in all my life. Since we were undergraduates together, reading ecology journals and plotting trips through the undergrowth of the University grounds, this kind of expedition is all I’ve ever hoped to do. I want to send you my research, my findings, and I hope you aren’t so angry that you throw it all into a fireplace and curse my name. I hope you keep it all, in one of those organised little leatherbound folios you have in your study.
And one day, when I’ve found Unicorns and Cloud Drakes, and Hellwisps, and all the other things that have been forbidden from study at the university - I hope you bind all my notes into a proper book, and find me a place on your shelf alongside Arturo Estanger and Dr Kroken, and of course Dr. Myrphy.
Onwards to adventure! And to knowledge, the master I haven’t forgotten. This strange world is full of monsters, and I want to know the names of them all.
Yours, in love and forgiveness
Dr. Lysara LeMare
^Ex Resident Ecologist at the Royal University of Ecologists, Grove College
PS. Do send Wayfinder back to me when she’s rested, even if you don’t have it in your heart to send her with a reply. I do miss that silly bird