by Mel Odom
"Nothing's wrong," Glawinn told her.
Sabyna placed her spellbook into the bag of holding at her side and Skeins curled around it. Crossing her arms over her breasts, she walked to the window and looked down at the ocean.
The pirate crew stripped what they could from the skeletal hulk that had once been Black Champion. With her hold flooded and having her deck partly disassembled and hauled away, the ship listed even more heavily into the ocean, creating increasing drag on the slave ship Azla claimed as her prize. The deck tilted at an incline now and had for the last two days.
Ship's moldings and cleats, the rudder, extra sailcloth, and the remaining rigging were the first items the pirate crew reclaimed. They'd used a block and tackle to take even Black Champion's two good masts to replace the broken ones on the slave ship.
They could not seat the masts while at sea, but after finishing the salvage operation, Azla planned to put into port at Agenais in the Whamite Isles to make the big repairs. Now they were down to taking the long, good planks from Black Champion's corpse.
"What did you want to talk about?" Sabyna asked.
Glawinn hesitated. "The young warrior. I may be overstepping my bounds here, lady, but-"
"No," Sabyna said. "You're way over."
"Perhaps I should go. I thank you for your time, and I ask your forgiveness."
Sabyna pushed out her breath. "Wait." She sensed him standing there, rigidly at attention. "Has Jherek told you what I said to him?"
"No, lady," Glawinn answered, "he's not one to betray confidences. In fact, I think he keeps too many of his own."
"Why did you come?"
"To offer solace and share company." Glawinn held up the dusty bottle. "And to offer a glass of Captain Azla's rather fine port."
Sabyna was surprised. "I didn't know you drank."
"Rarely, lady," the paladin said, "and never in excess. May I enter?"
"Of course." Sabyna went to one of the small cabinets built above the bed and took out two wooden cups. "The service is rather humble."
"But adequate for our purposes. If I may." Glawinn took the cups and poured the dark red wine.
Sabyna returned to the bed and sat, accepting the cup the paladin handed her. "Say what you have to say."
Glawinn sat on the small bench under the window. "If you'll forgive me my indiscretion, lady," he said, "but you can be dreadfully blunt."
"I come from a large family whose lives were spent crowded aboard one ship or another," she explained. "I learned to speak my mind early. Perhaps you're a little sensitive."
"Lathander help me, but I knew this would not be easy," Glawinn said, shifting uncomfortably.
"If it isn't a pleasant task, perhaps it would be better if it were over sooner."
Despite her calm demeanor, Sabyna's heart beat faster than normal. Since she'd talked to Jherek and explained to him how she felt, they'd hardly spoken at all. The young sailor stayed busily engaged with the salvage work.
"It's just that I've become aware you aren't talking to each other."
"Have you talked to him about it?"
"No."
"Why talk to me first?"
"Because he won't listen to me."
"And you think I will?"
Glawinn's eyes turned sorrowful and he said, "Lady, you have no idea what that boy is going through."
"If he would talk to me, I might."
"He doesn't know himself," Glawinn explained. "Even if he did, he can't explain."
"Does he think I'm dense?"
"In his eyes he feels he isn't worthy of you."
"Because he is wanted somewhere for something?" she asked. "I told him that didn't matter."
"Maybe not to you, lady, but it does to him. In his own way, though, I don't think he quite fully understands it. He strives for perfection."
"I've never met a man who didn't have his faults," Sabyna said. "Though, I admit you've come closer than anyone."
"My faults?"
"You're a busybody," Sabyna told him. "I thought paladins knew enough to keep to their own affairs."
The knight blushed. "I beg your forgiveness. I struggled with this decision, and I'd hoped I'd made the right choice."
"You have," she conceded. "If I'd spent another day like this, with no one to talk to, I think I'd have gone out of my mind."
"I thought you talked to Azla."
"She doesn't understand Jherek any more than I do."
Glawinn smiled gently and said, "Probably not."
Sabyna looked away from the paladin. "It's never been like this for me. I've seen handsome men and wealthy men, and men who could turn a woman's head with only a handful of pretty words, but I've never met anyone like Jherek."
"Nor have I."
Tears stung Sabyna's eyes. "I've never pursued a man before. Climbing that rigging to tell him my feelings was one of the hardest things I've ever done."
"But, I wager, not as hard as the climb back down."
"No," she said. "Do you know what he told me?"
Glawinn shook his head. "I can only guess that it was as little as possible."
"Aye…" Sabyna didn't trust her voice to speak any further.
"If it helps at all," the paladin stated gently, "I believe he tells you everything he knows."
"There's a lot he won't tell me."
"Can't tell you, lady, not won't. There is a difference."
"You defend him very well."
"I didn't come here to help him, lady. I came to help you."
"Me?"
Glawinn nodded in resignation and said, "The Morning-lord knows, I can't help him. He won't let me, and his course has already been charted.''
"What course?"
"To becoming the kind of man he wants to be," Glawinn said. The kind of man he has to be."
"Will he be that man?"
Hesitation furrowed Glawinn's brow. "I know not, lady. I've never seen someone come so far, yet have so far to go. I can tell you this: his path will heal him-or it will kill him."
The solemn way the paladin spoke pushed Sabyna's pain away and replaced it with fear.
"And what are we to do?" she asked. "What am I to do?"
"The only thing we can, lady. Give him the freedom to make the decisions he needs must make"
"What if it kills him?" Sabyna asked.
"Then we will bury him, lady, say prayers over him if that is possible, and be grateful for ever having known him."
Jherek strode barefoot across one of the broken beams still above water. Black Champion lay mostly under the sea now, her black bulk stretched like a shadow against the green water. Seagulls sat on the spars that made up her ribs and gave plaintive cries.
Rigging on the slave ship popped against the masts where she lay at anchor, heeled over hard to port as she supported Black Champions corpse. Six others worked the ship with him, seeking more timber to salvage before the sea took her to the bottom.
"Looks like she's been picked clean," Meelat called out.
Meelat was one of the prisoners rescued from the slaver's hold. Though he was scrawny, his narrow shoulders and thin arms were corded with muscle. Scabs showed at his bare ankles and wrists where the iron cuffs had been.
"Aye," Jherek agreed.
He mopped sweat from his face with his forearm, succeeding only in spreading it around. Nothing on him remained dry. He glanced up at the nets the ship's crew used to haul up the last load of timber.
"Comes a time when you gotta let her go," Meelat stated. "She's given up as much for the future of that other ship as she can. Spend much time aboard her?"
"No, but it was a time I'll not easily forget," Jherek replied.
Memory of his conversation with Sabyna in the rigging and of that kiss wouldn't fade no matter how hard he tried to push it to the back of his mind.
Meelat scratched at the scabs on one wrist, pulling them away so that blood flowed. He rinsed the wrist off in the water.
"If there are sharks around," Jh
erek cautioned, "that might be a foolhardy thing to do. They can smell blood in the water for miles."
Meelat grinned. "If there'd been sharks here, all that noise we been making in the water for days would have already drawn them. Besides, that comely young ship's mage has been keeping a potion in the water to drive away any sharks. Or haven't you noticed?"
Jherek shook his head.
"A pretty girl like that," the grizzled old sailor said, "I was your age, I'd be looking."
"She's a lady," Jherek warned quietly, "and shouldn't be talked about in a cavalier manner."
"Oh, I'm offering no offense, mate." Meelat shrugged. "My manners, maybe they need some brushing up, but a man at sea most of his life, he don't have much chance of that. Does he?"
Turning his attention back to the water, Jherek spotted a conflicting wave below and thought he detected movement.
"That's what I find confusing about you," Meelat continued. "You say you're a sailing man, but your manners put on like you been proper raised."
Studying the water around the bobbing remnant of Black Champion, Jherek tried to discern the movement again. Sahuagin prowled the Inner Sea now. Three passing merchanters two days ago had swapped supplies with Azla and offered up warnings concerning staying in one place or alone too long. Reports of attacks on harbors around the Sea of Fallen Stars-from Procampur to Cimbar-were becoming commonplace.
"I was a suspicious man," Meelat said, "I'd be wondering about you. Wondering what a man like you was doing running with pirates."
Jherek gazed at the man silently.
Meelat dropped his eyes. "Not that there's anything wrong with pirates. Been one myself a time or two, but you don't seem the type cut out for it."
"Thank you."
A puzzled expression filled the man's face, but it was quickly replaced by sudden and total fear.
Ripping his knife from its sheath on his thigh, Jherek turned and braced himself, aware that startled shouts had broken out on the slave ship's decks as well.
Less than twenty feet away, a creature broke from the sea and gazed at them. The triangular snake's face twisted slightly in the breeze, bringing one bright orange eye to bear on Jherek, then the other. Fins stuck out on either side of the head like overly large ears, echoed by the ridged fin that ran down its neck for a short distance. After a short space, the fin continued down the creature's back.
Needle-sharp fangs filled the huge mouth and a pink, forked tongue darted out to taste the smells in the air. The gold scales glittered in the sunlight, some of them catching a slightly greenish cast, muted slightly by the water where the rest of the serpent body coiled.
Jherek thought it was beautiful. Four feet of the creature stayed above the waterline, but he judged it to be at least a dozen feet in length. The serpent's body was broader than a dwarfs shoulders at the neck, growing thicker toward the middle, then thinning out to a wide-finned tail.
"Selune guide us from harm," Meelat whispered hoarsely. "That there's dragon-kin. Some call 'em sea wyrms. Dangerous beasties, lad, so don't do nothing to call attention to yourself
The sea wyrm lowered its head toward the young sailor, then twisted from side to side again as if taking a closer look.
Jherek felt the ship's hulk bob against a wave and knew that one of the salvagers was moving along the beams behind him. He tightened his grip on the knife and slid his left foot forward.
"You try it," Meelat said, "and that thing will gobble you down where you stand. They're quicker than damn near anything you've ever seen in the water, and most things out."
In the next instant, Jherek got a glimpse of the creature's speed. Dipping its head into the ocean, the sea wyrm flipped its tail and pulled the ear fins in tight against its head. It cut through the water cleanly, gliding twenty feet in the blink of an eye.
The sea wyrm raised its great head from the ocean, water dripping from the edges of its open mouth. It rose from the sea until it could stare into Jherek's eyes with one of its own. The sea dappled it like diamonds.
Hypnotized by the fear that filled him as well as awe, Jherek held the creature's gaze. It was close enough to reach out and touch.
"You have a chance," Meelat stated. "Strike quick, if you can, and put that knife through that thing's eye."
Shifting subtly, Jherek reversed the blade, putting the point down. He stared into the orange eye, wider across than a pie plate. At the distance, he knew he wouldn't miss.
Whether the blade was long enough to reach the serpent's brain was another matter.
The finned head moved closer, tentatively. Brine-flavored breath rushed over Jherek.
"Strike now!" Meelat urged. "That thing's going to have the head from your shoulders like a grape from the vine."
"No," Jherek said.
The forked tongue flicked out at the young sailor, missing him by inches. From the periphery of his vision, he saw the ship's crew armed with bows.
Afraid the pirates would fire at the creature, Jherek slowly sheathed the big knife.
"What are you doing?" Meelat demanded.
"I'm giving us the only chance we have. It's curious- nothing more." Standing steady, Jherek faced the sea wyrm.
The forked tongue flicked again, whispering through the air beside his ear, making light popping noises. The young sailor flinched, then steadied himself again. The forked tongue brushed against his face the next time, feeling wet, tough, and leathery.
The sea wyrm drew back out of reach. Its ear fins popped forward, and its large mouth yawned open. The orange eyes glinted. It hissed, yowling as if in anger.
Arrows sped from the pirate archers. Most of them dropped into the water around the sea wyrm, but three of them bounced from the golden scales.
"Stop!" Jherek commanded.
The sea wyrm turned its attention from the young sailor to the slave ship and back again. Sunlight gleamed from its sharp teeth. It hissed at Jherek again, then dived beneath the water, swimming deep and disappearing almost immediately.
"How did you know it wouldn't attack?" Meelat asked.
Jherek shrugged and said, "I didn't."
"Sails! Sails off the stern!"
Still shaking inside, Jherek turned and gazed back behind the slave ship at the cry from the lookout in the crow's nest. There, against the curve of the ocean's northern horizon, square cut white sails interrupted the Line between smooth blue sky and green water. Judging the set of the sails, the young sailor knew the ship was headed for them.
"Where are we?"
On the other side of the gate they'd used to pass from Tarjanas belly, Laaqueel spread her webbed hands and feet, stopping her descent toward the distant ocean floor. From the deep blue color of the sea around them, the malenti priestess judged they were in Seros's gloom strata, the level of the sea between one hundred fifty and three hundred feet.
"Thuridru," Iakhovas answered without looking at her. He held a gem in his hand that glowed suddenly.
According to her studies of Seros, Thuridru was a mer-folk city along the Turmish coast. Located north of the Xedran Reefs where the ixitxachitl theocracy claimed the Six Holy Cities, Thuridru held a precarious position. Trapped near the ixitxachitl nation, Thuridru was also the sworn enemy of Voalidru, the capital city of the merfolk of Eadraal.
The city of rogue merfolk," Laaqueel said.
"What do you know of Thuridru?"
"Little," the malenti admitted.
"Nearly four hundred years ago, there was a territorial skirmish between the mermen and the ixitxachitl nations over kelp beds west of Voalidru. Five war parties from the Clan Kamaar chose to ignore the Laws of Battle that have been in effect since the end of the Ninth War of Seros and attack the ixitxachitl. As a result, Clan Kamaar was banished from Voalidru and driven out to make their homes in the abandoned caverns left by the defeated ixitxachitl." Iakhovas gazed into the distance with a satisfied look.
"What are we doing here?" Laaqueel asked, expecting to be assaulted for her impertinence.
"Ah, little malenti, your impatience truly knows no bounds."
"I would be more effective as your senior high priestess," she said, "if I knew more of what you were doing."
Iakhovas turned his malevolent gaze on her. Even the incomplete golden sphere in his empty socket gleamed. "This war is mine, and it is progressing exactly as I would have it."
"A small group of reinforcements from Vahaxtyl joined
Tarjana's crew this morning," Laaqueel hurried on, ignoring the threat in Iakhovas's voice. "I overheard them arguing among themselves and their brothers in our fleet. They say that your efforts have grown stagnant, that you no longer hold Sekolah's favor."
"You didn't champion me, or the cause I represent?"
"I wouldn't know what to tell them."
"Instruct them to believe. That's where your power lies. If you believe, they will believe."
Laaqueel let the silence between them build.
"Do not cease believing," Iakhovas warned. "That is the only worth you have to me. If you look to your heart, you know that it is the only worth you have to yourself."
"I know." Laaqueel's throat was tight when she spoke.
Without her belief, she was only a hollow shell. The voice she'd heard in her head created tremendous confusion.
"I'm aware of the surviving princes' efforts to undermine my control," Iakhovas said. "Just as I'm aware that the numbers of We Who Eat coming from the Alamber Sea are not as great as I expected after I shattered the Sharks-bane Wall. I also know the Great Whale Bard has drawn a small army of his own to sing a barrier against the passage of more sahuagin."
"Only a few of them fight the magic of the songs," Laaqueel said.
"It will be dealt with, little malenti. In due time." Iakhovas grinned. "For now I conserve my strength and mask my presence. The high mages and the Taleweaver have learned about me. Perhaps they've learned more than they should have-but we will see. Despite everything they have heard, I am more powerful than they can ever possibly imagine."
Laaqueel dropped her gaze from his. Everything he said made sense, and it shamed her that she couldn't see it for herself. She loathed the insecurity that trilled within her, hated the way it took her straight back to the young malenti who knew only fear.