Elder Atuik and Kamagua

Orfus bundled the clues carefully.

“My people are bitterly entrenched in a war with the Northsea Freebooters. If any tuskarr could help us in our quest to right the wrongs of the pirates, it will be Elder Atuik of Kamagua.”

He pressed the bundle into my arms.

“You must take these clues to him at once. To get to Kamagua you must take the Ancient Lift, behind me. Take the lift directly to Kamagua and find Elder Atuik.”

The Ancient Lift was a marvel, a rickety gondola suspended on cables, which made me nervous, stretching from the clifftop down to an island far below. The sea churned between, gray and cold. I stepped into the gondola, and it began to descend.

The ride was long enough, the cables creaking and the wind pushing the car in slow, nauseating arcs. Below, the Isle of Spears resolved into focus: a rocky outcrop crowned by buildings that looked like monstrous fish, their round backs hunched against the weather.

Kamagua was the largest tuskarr village in the fjord.

I found Elder Atuik in the village’s central building, warmed by fires that burned in pits dug into stone. He was older than Orfus, his tusks yellowed with age, but nothing about him suggested frailty.

“Orfus is a good tuskarr. One of our strongest warriors.” Pride in his voice, and relief. “I knew he would not let us down.”

He unwrapped the clues one by one, studying the parrot feather, the painted cannonball, the scraps of evidence that told the story of pirate greed and awakened curses.

“Allow me to see what it is that you have brought.”

He pieced together the story and said nothing for a long time. Then he began giving orders. Somewhere out on the sea, these pirates had no idea what was coming for them.

Atuik pointed him at Scalawag Point, where a goblin named Grezzix Spindlesnap might know where the stolen artifacts had ended up.