His father looked incredulous. "And you're an idealistic idiot, if you think you know better how to change the world."

"No." Gerard tugged on his beard in a gesture of agitation. "But I know their way isn't for me. I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not going back."

Mondar's voice grew low and menacing. "You will if you expect to remain a son of mine."

Gerard stiffened. "You must do as you see fit."

Mondar huffed for several moments, his mustache fluttering with each exhaled breath, too outraged for speech. "You dare to defy me?" he demanded at last.

"I'm not trying to defy you, sir. I'm only informing you of my decision. I thought it my responsibility as your son."

"Then you're no longer my son!" Mondar was bellowing now.

Gerard stood straight, despite the severity of the blow. "If that is your wish."

"My wish? It's my command!" Mondar jabbed his finger at the door. "Out! I want you out of this house by nightfall. I won't suffer an ungrateful son. From this time forward, you are no kin of mine!"

Gerard didn't trust himself to answer further.

Instead, he bowed stiffly to his father and started for the door.

"See how far those lofty ideals of yours will get you!" Mondar roared at his departing back.

Gerard walked fixedly erect from the room, summoning his military training to keep his steps measured and assured. But once out of the room and with the door slammed shut by his father behind him, his shoulders sagged.

His mother must have been listening outside her husband's study, or perhaps she was inspired by a mother's unerring sense of danger to her child, for she met Gerard in the corridor, crying and flinging her arms around him. "What happened?" she asked, surely knowing the answer to her own question. "Did you two have a disagreement?"

Gerard snorted at the understatement of the word, then wrapped her in an embrace, not wishing to seem disrespectful or give offense. As he did so, he was struck by how much smaller and frailer his mother felt to him now than when he was growing up. He stroked her hair, noticing for the first time how gray it had turned. And when had she taken to wearing it done up in a severe bun, instead of hanging down like a younger woman's? Even her face, once beautiful and young, had become lined and wrinkled. "I'm leaving, Mother," he said gently. "I'm going away."

She trembled in his arms. "You did have a falling out, didn't you? I'll go to him; maybe I can smooth things over."

Gerard restrained her, holding her firmly in his grasp. "No, Mother. In a way, he's right. He and I can't live under the same roof anymore. It's time for me to leave."

"But where will you go?" Her voice quavered.

Gerard frowned, recalling the message from Palin. "I don't know, Mother. Perhaps I'll go to Solace for a while. Palin Majere has written to me, and I might bear my reply in person."

"Palin? What did he write you about?"

He eased himself from her arms. "I honestly don't know, but whatever it is, I think I'll pay him a visit. At least until I can figure out what else to do." He smiled at her to soften the blow of his leaving home and returned to his room, where he carefully slit the wax seal on Palin's message.

¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦

By evening, Gerard and Vercleese had ridden from Gerard's family estate down to Daltigoth. Gerard used his family connections to book passage for them aboard The Merwitch, leaving with the evening tide bound for New Ports in Newsea. That would put them at the mouth of the White-Rage River, where the pair intended to continue, riding overland to Solace.

The first two days at sea were hot and clear, with a stiff breeze blowing across their stern and filling the sails. Canvas snapped purposefully and rigging creaked with the sound of authority as The Merwitch made good headway toward the Straits of Schallsea. Gerard and Vercleese were at leisure to roam the deck, staring for hours toward the distant horizon in the pensive manner of seafarers from time immemorial. When not thus engaged, Gerard, filled with bright hopes and confident of his ability to fulfill the job of sheriff that Palin was offering him, reflected on fellow passengers and crew, enlightening Vercleese with his observations.

"That one, Sir Vercleese," Gerard said, pointing to a small fellow playing bones with the sailors, "is obviously a light-fingered kender." Gerard scowled. "Wretched little fellows, I assure you. Watch your purse around him. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him."

"Mm," Vercleese said noncommittally, although he gave Gerard a peculiar look.

Gerard turned and pointed to an elegantly clad young woman wearing a fur-lined cape despite the warm weather. "Now that one. Did you see all the luggage she had brought aboard? Clearly on her way to a ceremonial occasion. Note the easy smile she has for the sailors and her fellow passengers, as well as her carefree nature. I'll warrant she's betrothed and on her way to a new life somewhere."

Vercleese looked from the woman to Gerard and back again, his brow furrowing in some unspoken observation of his own. Meanwhile, the woman smilingly accepted an invitation from the captain to accompany him to his cabin.

"How nice," Gerard said. "The captain has asked her to have tea with him." He turned and indicated a figure in the opposite direction, standing at the rail, his features lost in the folds and cowl of a dun-colored robe. "Now there's an intriguing fellow," Gerard whispered. "Strange color for a robe. Sooty, wouldn't you say? The color, I mean. I mark him as a cleric of some sort. Probably one of those in-between clerics, neither dark nor light, that abound these days. Still choosing their gods, I suppose. Harrumph! I know the type, mark me well. Still rooted to earthly concerns. Did you see when he boarded? He had more luggage than the lady getting married. Boxes and crates and all sorts of packages.

"Shhh! He's looking daggers at us." Gerard turned back to the sea and pretended to be absorbed in the horizon. "Clerics!" he hissed under his breath. "Worse than mages, some of them." From the corner of his eye, he noted Vercleese studying him sharply, although the old knight still said nothing.

¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦

Once within the Straits of Schallsea, the weather turned and the sea grew rough. Huge swells bore passengers and crew up to towering crests, then plunged them down into troughs where it seemed they would never rise from the watery depths again. The deck was awash; the gunwales ran with water. Rain slashed down so fiercely it was hard to distinguish it from the waves that crashed upon them. His stomach churning, Gerard rose that night to find that Vercleese had already abandoned his hammock. Gerard fought his way onto the pitching deck, where he discovered the old man hanging perilously over the railing, holding on by his one hand and feeding the fishes his dinner from the evening before.

"Oh, gods, why was I ever fool enough to leave home?" Vercleese wailed between bouts of retching. "Please let the sea just take me and get this torment over with!"

Gerard hung onto the old knight's belt for answer and remained there with him, saying nothing, for a long time. Several times, it was his grip alone that kept the two of them from being washed out to sea.

Mealtimes became haphazard as the cook tried to contend with the weather, although few of those aboard, crewmen and passengers alike, had much appetite. After several days of this, The Merwitch wallowed her way through the heavy swells of Newsea and reached the relative calm of New Ports. Rain continued to pelt down, but at least the waves diminished sufficiently to allow them to disembark. Gerard eased his horse, Thunderbolt, a handsome bay, down the gangplank and onto the dock. Vercleese followed miserably with his own nag, which promptly slumped to the ground and died, as if it had merely been waiting for solid earth beneath its hooves once more before yielding up its spirit. Vercleese sank to his knees in the mud, although whether in despair over losing his horse or from gratitude for being returned safely to land, Gerard wasn't sure.