by James Wyatt
“Are you in a particular hurry to leave Sharn?” Janik asked.
“You mean am I trying to leave town before my horrible crimes come to light? No.” Auftane laughed. “No, I’m not running away from anything or anyone, and there’s nobody waiting for me in Stormreach I’m in a hurry to see, either.”
“What did Mathas tell you about what we’re doing in Xen’drik?”
“Very little, really. I know a little bit about your work-archeology is a bit of a hobby of mine, I guess. You can’t grow up in Stormreach and not pick up some interest in the history of the place. I read a couple stories in the Inquisitive about the big discovery you made a few years back. Anyway, Mathas told me you were planning another expedition south into Xen’drik-he said beyond the peninsula, but that’s all. But I know enough to know a trip beyond the peninsula is a pretty big deal. I assume this is no dragonshard prospecting expedition.”
“That’s right,” Janik said. “We’re going back to Mel-Aqat-that was my big discovery. And I think you can come along, at least as far as Stormreach.”
“Thank you,” Auftane said, his face breaking into a big smile that carved deep wrinkles around his eyes. “I’ll make sure you won’t regret bringing me along.”
“Now I’m sure you’re not being too cautious,” Mathas said from the doorway. Auftane spun around to look at the elf, surprised, and Janik laughed aloud at the wry smile on Mathas’s face.
“Auftane made a pretty convincing case,” Janik said.
“And I’m not going to question your judgment,” Mathas replied. “Glad to have you coming with us, Auftane.”
“Thank you.”
“So when are we leaving?” Janik asked. “What did House Lyrandar say to our letter of credit?”
“House Lyrandar was suitably impressed,” Mathas said with a laugh. “They can’t spare an elemental-powered galleon on such short notice, and I’m not convinced that our letter of credit would have extended that far anyway. But I’ve commissioned a small, fast ship with a Lyrandar windwright to take us to Stormreach, leaving this afternoon-as soon as we’re ready. We should get to Stormreach at least a week before Krael.”
“Excellent! Mathas, that’s the best news I’ve heard this week.”
“Who’s Krael?” Auftane asked.
“An old rival,” Janik said, “a captain in the Order of the Emerald Claw. We’ve had a number of run-ins with him over the years, and the last two weeks he’s been rearing his ugly head again.”
“We should be clear about this, Janik,” Mathas interjected. “Auftane, I don’t know how much you know about the Order of the Emerald Claw, but Krael has sent assassins after Janik. He’s a serious threat, and by associating with us, you’re making an enemy of a powerful and dangerous man.”
“I appreciate your candor,” Auftane said. “But you’re not going to scare me off now.”
“Anyway,” Janik said, “Krael is the reason our travel plans are in disarray. We had made arrangements for a ship to carry us to Stormreach tomorrow, but Krael apparently bought the ship out from under us and left three days ago. He’s likely to try to get to Mel-Aqat before we do.”
“Why?” Auftane asked. “What’s in Mel-Aqat that we’re all so anxious to get?”
“We can discuss that on the ship,” Janik said. “We should find Dania and get ready to leave. Mathas, can you get the supplies loaded on the ship?”
“Already done,” the elf replied. “As soon as I left House Lyrandar, I made all the arrangements.”
“Perfect. Then all that remains is getting Dania. Can we find her? She still doesn’t know about our change of plans.”
“I hardly expect that she’s out carousing in the city,” Mathas said. “I’ll find her and meet you at the ship. It’s in Grayflood, dock nineteen.”
“Dania is our fourth, then?” Auftane asked.
“Yes,” Janik said. “She’s a paladin of the Silver Flame now, but she’s always been good with a sword.”
“Now? Her paladin’s calling is a recent occurrence?”
“She has walked the paladin’s path for approximately a year,” Mathas said.
“I look forward to meeting her. I’ve often wondered what that sense of calling is like.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to ply her with questions on the ship,” Janik said. “Let’s get moving.”
“Sea of Fire!” Janik swore. His companions turned to look at him, surprised by his sudden outburst.
The four of them were gathered at dock nineteen in Grayflood, their gear already loaded onto Lyrandar Dayspring. The ship’s crew was climbing the rigging and scouring the deck, making ready to sail. Janik slapped his hands to his head.
“Shubdoolkra,” he said. Auftane looked puzzled at the strange name, but Mathas and Dania raised their eyebrows.
Mathas immediately apprehended the problem. “The sahuagin guaranteed safe passage to Nashan’s ship, not this one,” he said.
“Exactly,” Janik said.
“Doesn’t House Lyrandar have a standing agreement for passage through Shargon’s Teeth?” Dania asked.
“The sahuagin don’t make standing agreements,” Janik said. “They get a lot more tribute by making deals one ship at a time.”
“Can you find Shubdoolkra and renegotiate before we leave?” Mathas asked.
“I doubt it. He doesn’t like daylight-I’m pretty sure he comes to shore only at night.”
Dania looked worried. “Should we delay our departure until tomorrow?”
Janik glanced around at the busy crew and the ship’s captain, shouting orders from the poop deck. “I don’t think we can do that at this point,” he said. “I think our best bet is to leave word for Shubdoolkra at the tavern, tell him about our change of plans, and hope for the best. Besides, we fought our way through the sahuagin once, remember?”
“Ugh, I remember,” said Dania, one hand moving to her belly. “I’d still have scars to show if it weren’t for Maija’s healing.”
“You’d be dead if it weren’t for Maija’s healing,” Mathas said. “That trident went in deep. And stomach wounds kill-they just do it slowly.”
“And painfully,” Dania added. She turned to Auftane. “That reminds me, Auftane. Do you have some means to heal wounds?”
Auftane smiled and produced three wands from a pouch at his belt, holding them up for Dania’s inspection. “This one will take care of minor cuts and scrapes. This one is good for more serious injuries. And this one will bring you back from death’s door.” He stuffed the wands back in the pouch. “With a little time and a lot of money, I could make a scroll that would bring you back from the Realm of the Dead. But let’s hope there’s no call for that!”
Janik scowled as he hurried up the dock to the street to find a messenger.
“Where’s he going?” came a voice from the deck above them. The captain, Avaen d’Lyrandar, was leaning over the bulwark and watching Janik as he disappeared into the crowds. “I thought we were leaving!”
“A momentary delay,” Dania called to him. “We’ll come aboard now, if you’re ready for us.”
“We’re ready! Come aboard!”
Mathas and Auftane followed Dania up the gangplank. At the top, the captain offered them each a hand to steady them onto the gently rocking deck, though he held Dania’s hand somewhat longer than necessary.
“Thank you, Captain,” Auftane said with a small bow when he was firmly planted on the deck. “We appreciate your gracious hospitality.”
“As well as your willingness to make sail on such short notice,” Mathas added.
“House Lyrandar exists to serve the people of Khorvaire,” Avaen said with a bow. “Allow me to show you your quarters.”
Avaen led them aft and down a few stairs to a pair of cabins below the poop deck.
“Master Allister assured me that two cabins would be sufficient for the four of you,” the captain said with some hesitation.
“Mathas and I are quite used to sharing
rooms,” Dania said. She peered in both cabins, then walked into the one on the starboard side.
“She thinks because I’m eight times her age that I pose little threat,” the elf said, winking at the captain before following Dania into the cabin.
“I suppose that leaves me and Janik to get better acquainted over here,” Auftane said.
“I will make the final preparations, and we can weigh anchor as soon as Master Martell returns,” Avaen said. He left them to settle in.
Auftane dropped his pack in the port cabin, then stood in the doorway of the opposite room. Mathas sat on the edge of his bunk as Dania paced the small cabin, anxious to get under way.
“So whose boots am I here to fill?” Auftane asked. “There was a cleric with you before?”
“That’s right,” Mathas said. “Maija Olarin.” “She’s dead?”
“Not exactly,” Dania answered. “She betrayed us to an old enemy.”
“Krael? The one who took the ship we were supposed to sail on?”
“Precisely,” Mathas said.
“And Maija was Janik’s wife? Or lover?”
“Yes,” Mathas replied. “He’s still quite bitter about the experience.”
“That’s understandable. How long has it been?”
“Three years,” Dania said. “He and Mathas haven’t seen Maija or Krael since.”
“But you have?”
“I saw them both in Karrnath last year.” Dania scowled. “At the time I didn’t know what they were up to, but I know that Maija had a stink of evil on her that went far beyond normal human corruption.”
“What does that suggest, Dania?” Mathas asked.
“Probably that she has given herself over to one of the Dark Six.”
Shouts from the crew indicated that the ship was about to sail, and Auftane turned in the doorway to see Janik thumping down the steps.
“Are we ready to leave?” Auftane called.
“The captain just gave the order to weigh anchor,” Janik said, smiling. “I hope we haven’t forgotten anything else, because it’s too late now.”
“Dania and Mathas have claimed the starboard cabin. I guess that leaves us next door.”
“That’s fine.” Janik dropped his pack in the cabin. “I’m going up on deck while we sail out.”
“Good plan,” Mathas said. “I always like the view of Sharn as we leave it.”
“Not quite as dramatic from the sea as it is from an airship, though,” Janik said.
The four of them filed up the steps to the poop deck, trying to stay out of the crew’s way. Already the docks were slipping away behind them. Their vantage point offered an unusual view of the city-they could see glowing lines of magical energy lifting cargo and carrying passengers up the cliff side to the bases of Sharn’s towers. The towers themselves stretched high above them on one side, while a stark cliff face rose on the other. The sun glittered on the river around them.
“And goodbye again, City of Towers,” Janik said.
“Goodbye, Khorvaire,” Dania whispered.
As the sun was setting that evening, Lyrandar Dayspring cleared the mouth of the Dagger River and entered the open sea. The red sky turned the sea to wine in the west, which the sailors seemed to take as a good omen for the journey. When darkness settled in, the captain left the helm in the hands of his mate. Without the magic of the captain’s dragonmark, the ship’s pace slowed, moving at perhaps half her earlier speed. Leaving the wheelhouse, Avaen invited Janik and his companions to join him in his dining room to celebrate their first day of sailing. At the captain’s request, Janik told stories of their past adventures.
“I remember our first trip to Xen’drik. We were looking back at Sharn the way we did this morning, and coming out of the mouth of the Dagger like we just did. I stood up on the prow, peering forward as if Xen’drik might come into view at any moment.” He remembered holding Maija, the feel of her, the way she laughed at him, turning in his arms and looking back, bringing her face close to his. The memory clenched in his chest.
“I was at the stern sending my lunch back into the sea,” Dania said. “That was my first time at sea. I did all right on the river, but when we came into the straits, the straits won.” They all laughed.
Janik was caught up in the memory of the jumbled whirlwind of emotions he had felt that time. “I was so excited to finally see the things I’d been studying for so many years. I was a dedicated young scholar, but I’d never been out of Sharn before-I’d hardly even seen the sky in my twenty-one years. At the same time, I was terrified. The king’s agents had painted a pretty frightening picture of what we could look forward to. I half expected the Emerald Claw to jump us as soon as we disembarked in Stormreach, if the sahuagin didn’t get us first.”
“The king sent you?” Auftane asked. “What was your mission?”
“I was a new recruit into the king’s service,” Janik said. “The war was raging, of course-this was fifteen years ago. And King Boranel got the idea that there were things in Xen’drik that would help the war effort. I think Cannith put the idea in his head, honestly. But other spies had brought word that agents of Karrnath were exploring Xen’drik, though really they were Emerald Claw agents.”
“There’s a difference?” the captain asked.
“There is now,” Janik said. “The Emerald Claw was founded as an extension of Karrnath’s espionage agency, but King Kaius later outlawed them. They’re basically their own little government now. Nobody’s quite sure who they answer to, though it’s generally assumed it’s someone high up in Karrnath. Anyway, the presence of the Emerald Claw was enough to get the king’s brother, Lord Kor, out to the universities recruiting for the Citadel. They were hoping to find people with knowledge about Xen’drik and experience digging through the ruins.”
“But they got you instead,” Mathas said.
“Exactly. And I’m pretty sure King Boranel has regretted it ever since.”
“So how did the rest of you get involved?” Auftane asked.
Janik looked at Mathas and Dania. “Maija,” he said.
“Maija and I grew up together,” Dania said. “We weren’t in the same social circles, but we met when we were girls and somehow kept up a friendship after that.”
“And I met her when I was studying religion, briefly, at the Pavilion of the Host,” Mathas said. “She was an acolyte there for a time.”
“She and Janik were pretty much inseparable,” Dania added, “so she was the force that drew us all together.”
“Right,” Janik said. “When Lord Kor asked me to assemble an expedition to Xen’drik, I went to Maija, and she got me Mathas and Dania.”
“I still don’t know how you got me pulled off the front lines,” Dania said. She was staring at the middle of the table, difficult memories starting to crowd into her mind.
“You can thank Lord Kor for that,” Janik said, “and Maija. She told me she wanted you, I told Kor you were essential, and he got you for us.”
“You were fighting in the war?” Captain Avaen asked Dania.
“I enlisted as soon as I was old enough, which was as good a way as any to get out of my father’s house.”
The captain looked surprised. “Yours is a noble family, is it not?”
“Oh yes, the line of ir’Vran goes back to the first nobles of Breland. And my father could easily have kept me from combat duty, if I hadn’t volunteered for it.” Dania was still staring at the polished wood of the tabletop, not looking at the captain.
“So Lord Kor put the four of us on a ship to Xen’drik,” Janik said, trying to steer the conversation away from Dania’s painful memories of the war. “And we trudged through the jungle to a tiny ruin full of baboons, remember?”
“Rabid baboons,” Mathas said, chuckling.
“Corrupted baboons,” Dania said. “That was no disease-there was an evil in that place that made them that way.”
“And that big one nearly ripped my arms off,” Janik said. He turned to Auf
tane and the captain. “It was holding me right up to its face, my feet dangling above the ground, and tugging on me like a rag doll, screeching like a banshee. Then all of a sudden it got this quizzical look on its big baboon face and started to look behind it, and then it just fell over dead. Dania had neatly cut right through its spine.”
“And did you find what you were looking for?” the captain asked.
“No, but neither did Krael, who was in charge of the Emerald Claw expedition. Eventually we came back to Breland with some good information about the Emerald Claw’s intentions there, and that convinced the king that we were worth what he was paying us.”
“And what were they doing?” Auftane said.
“Mathas, you can explain it better than I can,” Janik demurred.
“They were building some kind of magical device around a manifest zone they had discovered,” the elf began.
“A manifest zone?” the captain asked.
“A place where the boundaries between the planes are thin. In that particular location, the plane of Shavarath, called the Battleground, was somehow close at hand. They were building a device in the hope of bringing some of that plane’s warring inhabitants into our plane to fight on their behalf.”
“It could have been quite devastating,” Dania added, “if they had been successful. Imagine an army of demons marching at Karrnath’s command.”
“Or a swarm of blades flying through the air, unhindered by any defense their opponents could muster,” Mathas said.
“So we snuck in and destroyed their precious device,” Janik said.
“I’m surprised Breland didn’t want it for itself,” the captain said. “Even the best of nations, when at war, can lose sight of the proper perspective on such things-the devastation it could cause.”
“Well,” Janik hesitated, then admitted, “we actually had orders to secure it for Breland, if possible.”
“That turned out not to be possible,” Dania added with a grin.
“In fact,” Mathas added, “it’s not quite fair to say we destroyed it, is it?”