Abram smiled. “You’re a quick learner.”
They left the astonished boy standing in the street and went to the front door of the house. After two knocks the door was opened by an old man in a brown vest with a white undershirt. His pants were a fine brown fabric, and on his feet he wore thick brown slippers.
“May I help you?”
“Freston, you old dog! Are you so senile you don’t remember old friends?”
The old man’s frown turned into a wide smile. “Abram, I hadn’t expected you. Folks say you were killed in one of your crazy journeys.”
Abram laughed. “There are more stories of my death than there is sand on the beach.”
Freston chuckled. “Come in, come in. I was just about to have a little tea. Now I have someone to share it with.”
Whill and Abram entered the house, which was just as nice inside as out. Paintings of ships adorned every wall, and numerous shelves were dedicated solely to small ships in bottles. Whill looked at these closely, wondering how they had been put inside. Freston led them to his study and offered them each a seat at his scroll-covered table. “Sorry for the mess, but a builder’s work is never done. I’ll return in a moment with the tea.”
Whill noticed that the scrolls were ship drafts and blueprints. He cocked his head at one design that caught his attention. Freston returned with a tray and three tea cups.
“Feel free, young lad. Those are just new designs I’ve been working on.”
Abram and Freston talked while Whill pored over the designs. Freston’s sons now built most of the ships, he said, as he was too old for much of the work. But he was very excited about the proposition to build a ship of Whill’s own design.
“Usually I build merchant ships or small sailboats, and even a few for the royal navy over the years,” he said. “Helping you bring your design to life would be a rare pleasure.”
They talked for a while about Whill’s vision for his ship, and Freston wrote one detail or another down on a piece of paper. Abram added his recommendations to the design. After a few hours of drawing, planning, and calculating, they had a rough draft of what the ship would look like.
Whill held the sketch up to the light. “She’ll be a beauty.”
“That she will, and if done right, also one of the fastest that ever sailed these blue waters,” Freston agreed.
They made plans to meet the following day and said farewell. Upon leaving the house, Whill and Abram stopped in their tracks. Outside Freston’s house there were fifteen kids with pull carts, all offering them a ride.
Abram laughed aloud at the sight. “It looks like the word is out.”
Whill said politely that they would be walking, to the lads’ disappointment. “We could use a good walk anyway,” he told Abram, who simply chuckled.
The kids followed them for a while but soon gave up on the prospect. Whill and Abram walked in silence for a while as the sun set beyond the city walls. The streets were not crowded; only the occasional horseman or guard rode along. Women in long gowns and men in an assortment of autumn colors strolled from shop to shop. Couples walked hand in hand, laughing and talking in excited voices. Some children still ran about, letting off small fireworks from the previous night.
After about a half hour Whill and Abram reached Ocean Mist and enjoyed a fine dinner of seafood and wine. They talked over their plans for the ship and made plans for the days ahead. They had estimated that it would take a month to build the ship, and by that time Abram would be almost fully healed.
The next day Whill brought his horse out beyond the city to give it some exercise. He rode for hours up and down the coast, the fresh saltwater spraying his face as his horse raced along the beach for miles and miles. It was nice to be out of the city. As much as he liked it, he liked the freedom of the open land much more. He had always loved his life of travel, going from town to town, never making any one place his home. He figured he would settle down one day, but not any time soon. He looked forward to setting sail in his own ship, with nothing between him and the setting sun but the gentle blue ocean. There was nothing better than a night on a ship on calm waters. Sometimes the stars seemed so bright and close, he felt as though he could reach up and touch them. When the sky was clear and the water was still, there were times when he could not tell where the earth ended and the ocean began. He was truly at peace on the sea, where the mysteries of the water were more complex than his own. It was a place where he could let go of all his worries and be lulled into quiet tranquility.
As he sped along the beach, he thought of his childhood home. The beaches of Sidnell had been his favorite place to think. He would sit for hours on the sand and read. Abram brought him the most interesting books, some with facts about Agora, some a complete history of each kingdom. Then there were his favorites, the books of the elves. As soon as he had learned to read Elvish, he had been fascinated by them. They had come to Agora in the year 4650, five hundred years before Whill was born. Their story was one of great loss and suffering. They had lived in a land called Drindellia, far to the east. They had thrived there for tens of thousands of years and had built great cities within. The books then told of a great foe, the Draggard, who were created through the evil works of the Dark elf Eadon. Using what people call magic, but the elves call Orna Catorna, he combined an unborn elf with a dragon egg, in the hopes of creating a powerful breed of elves. The Draggard had the shape of the elves, but in appearance they resembled dragons. Their skin was dark green and was rough and scaly upon their backs. They had hideously sharp teeth and claws, and strong thin tails that could whip or impale a man. They were stronger than elves, but like them they lived long, dying only from injury and not age. Like their dragon kin, the Draggard also laid eggs, which was where they found their real strength: great numbers. A queen Draggard could lay thousands of eggs a year.
Eadon proclaimed himself lord of all Drindellia, and with his followers and the Draggard began a bloody war against King Verelas, ruler of the Elves of the Sun. The war raged for nearly 110 years. The Draggard were many in number, but the elves were skilled in body and in mind. Slowly the elves were pushed to the west of Drindellia, where they were to make their final stand. It was then that Verelas sent a great number of his people over the sea, in hopes that even if the war was lost, the race would not perish. Across the sea and into unknown lands went one thousand elves, and with them Verelas’ wife, Queen Araveal; their three daughters, Zilena, Avriel, and Kiella; and their only son, Zerafin. The king insisted that he stay and fight with his fellow elves, though the queen begged him to leave. He told her to go and find a safe land where the elves might prosper again and live in peace. That day a fleet of ten great elven ships left Drindellia forever and as the land faded from sight, the Draggard army could be seen advancing upon the beaches.
For five long months the elves sailed ever westward until they reached Agora. They landed on the easternmost coast of Uthen-Arden, and made contact with the people of Opalmist. Soon the ruler of Arden at that time, King Thoerolus, heard of the refugees and went personally to see them. Whill knew many songs in both human and elven tongues that spoke of the meeting of the queen of the elves and the good king of Arden. The king agreed to help the elves and he gave the southeastern land the elves called Elladrindellia. Since then the elves had lived there quietly and built great cities the likes of which had never been seen in Agora.
Whill had heard countless stories of the elves from Abram and never tired of them. He longed to meet one some day, but that was not likely since they did not leave their territory often, and humans had been banned from entering without permission long ago by King Thoerolus. Most people regarded the elves with fear, mostly because of their use of what humans called magic. The dwarves particularly despised the elves and blamed them for the appearance of the Draggard in Agora. For two hundred years both men and elves had kept the Draggard at bay. They always came from the east, and were always defeated by the navies of the five kingdoms. But recently the Draggard had been attacking from all sides of the ocean and had already overtaken the Ebony Mountains, making them their own. This only infuriated the dwarves more, intensifying their distrust for the elves.
Whill thought of the stories of the elves and wondered if he should indeed become a knight of Eldalon. Abram had told him of the war that would come, and suspected that Abram would expect him to become a soldier. Whill headed back towards the city as the sun climbed higher in the sky. He didn’t want to be late for his meeting with Freston.
He entered the city and rode to the shipbuilder’s house. Abram was already there, and they soon continued the plans for the ship. Freston calculated what it would all cost to build and added roughly 320 hours of labor for
