"In the Alamber Sea."

The water around Tarjana roiled with boiling bubbles that raced for the surface. They were so thick, so tightly compacted together, that they created a misty curtain that limited visibility to no more than a few feet. Only the magic surrounding the mudship yet protected them.

Laaqueel looked behind, making sure the fliers trailing them had made it as well. Miraculously, the cone of protection that extended over Tarjana weaved back through the roiling water. She couldn't see if all of the fliers were there, rowed from the belly of the volcano that had burst underwater, but she got the sense that most of them had.

"Where are we going now?" she asked.

"There is much to do now that we are here," Iakhovas said. "First, we will find a place that will serve as our base of operations. If I'm to free the forgotten clan of We Who Eat from this place, I must find the tools to do it."

"Do you know where these items you need are?"

"Yes. There is an ancient place that lies far from here. It's called Coryselmal, a broken city that once housed the cursed sea elves. I shall reap from its corpse all that I need to destroy the Sharksbane Wall, then I shall recoup all that is mine."

Laaqueel gazed at the water, knowing the titanic forces that warred in the ocean were somehow kept separate from them. She started her prayers to Sekolah, asking that their voyage be successful, and that it try the spirits of the sahua-gin so the Shark God's chosen might become even stronger.

It was better, she knew from her experience as a priestess, to pray for the things that were sure to happen. It helped to remind her that those trials weren't unexpected or without reason.

She knew her, people would pay in blood.

XXVIII

2 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet

"Are you sure you want to do that, young warrior?"

Glawinn's quiet words startled Jherek. He hadn't known the paladin was there. Immediately, he felt guilty about what he was doing. He'd thought he was going to be alone long enough to do what he planned.

"Aye," the young sailor replied, his voice thick with his own doubts and fears. "It's what I have to do." He peered at the long black sea stretching out to the east as Black Champion made her way west again.

Vurgrom and his pirates had lost sails during the volcanic eruption stemming from the Ship of the Gods, but they'd brought extra sails. After the turbulence had finally died down in the Alamber Sea, Vurgrom's pirates had simply rehung their rigging with the new sails and continued on with their journey. The pirate captain had paused to throw a few taunts Azla's way first. Azla had ignored him, but in stony fury. The half-elf obviously had a long-standing feud going with the pirate that wasn't going to end until one or the other was dead. Evidently Black Champion's captain and crew were too well respected for the pirates to think they could take them without loss.

In the hours since the eruption, Azla and her crew, with help from Jherek, Sabyna, and Glawinn, had worked to repair the sails,. However, there was no replacing the lost mainmast, not at sea. Jherek had sewn and cut and spliced sailcloth until his hands ached, but he hadn't complained. Neither had he talked with Sabyna. He'd also avoided Glawinn's offer of lessons with the sword, working on the sails until it was well past dark.

"Why do you think you have to do this?" Glawinn asked in a soft voice.

Jherek listened to the man's words but found no challenge in them, nothing he could take offense at and use to leverage an argument that would end the unwanted conversation. "Because I'm tired."

"We're all tired."

"It's not the work," Jherek snapped, his voice almost breaking with the emotion that filled him. With all the rage inside him, he felt like demanding that someone understand what was going through his mind. "It's the hope, Glawinn. I'm tired of all the hope."

"A man can't live without hope."

"Well," the young sailor challenged, "I'm going to have to see about that."

Glawinn stepped closer, coming within Jherek's peripheral vision. The young sailor didn't turn to face him. "You have no thoughts of a future?"

"I have no future," Jherek declared.

"You're not dead."

Jherek clung to the cold rage that had filled him since the voice saved the ship. "I was born dead, and I've died a little more each day, till I owe Cyric at least three or four other lives." A chill touched him when he mentioned the god of death's name. In all his life, he never had.

"You really believe that?"

Turning, Jherek glared at the paladin. "You don't know anything about me."

Glawinn crossed his arms over his chest and drew himself up to his full height. "Such wisdom in one so young, to be knowing all these things that you do."

"You taunt me." Jherek's eyes blazed, but he restrained himself. Glawinn didn't deserve his wrath and he knew it, but that emotion was so ready to be released.

"The opposite," Glawinn disagreed. "I marvel at you."

"This is my decision."

"I've not tried to alter it."

"You asked me if I was sure about doing this."

Glawinn let out a slow breath. "I only thought that someone should. I've known something was bothering you. I waited, thinking you might come to me for help. Or talk to Sabyna about it."

Jherek's throat hurt when he tried to talk, and his eyes burned from the effort it took to keep his words from breaking. "I can't talk to her about it."

"Why?"

"Because it would hurt the friendship I have with her."

"Is it so bad, young warrior?"

Jherek looked past the paladin, making sure none of the sailors were close by. Troge, the first mate, was making his rounds, checking his night crew and the lanterns that hung from Black Champion's yardarms and masts to light her and to mark her for other ships in the water at night.

Closing his fist over the object in his hand, Jherek pulled up his left sleeve, baring the flaming skull tattoo masked in chains. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.

Glawinn only had to glance at it briefly. "It's the mark of Bloody Falkane the pirate, also called the Salt Wolf."

"Aye," Jlierek said bitterly, "and known widely abroad enough that even someone from the Dalelands has heard of him."

"You're not old enough to have been one of his crew."

"No," Jherek agreed. "My fate is worse than that. I'm his son."

Glawinn didn't let any surprise show. He said, "I never knew he had a son."

"It wasn't," Jherek replied, "something he seemed especially proud of." He rolled his sleeve back down. "And what do you think of me now, Sir Glawinn, when you think back on those nights you've spent training me with a sword? Did you ever think you might be training a pirate captain's son who might someday hold that sword and all that skill at your throat?"›

The paladin's eyes narrowed. "That's not something you'd ever do."

Jherek shook his head. "How can you be so sure about that?"

"I know you."

"You don't know me. The tattoo proves that."

"I know you," Glawinn said, "I admit the tattoo is something of a surprise. Tell me about it."

Standing there gripping the railing, his fist tight about all that he was about to abandon, Jherek did. He told the story of his life on Bunyip, and of what little he knew about his father. He spoke of the sea battles he'd seen, the deaths he'd watched, and the tortures he'd seen inflicted.

And he told of the time when he was twelve and his father had first placed a cutlass in his hand and told him he was going to be part of a boarding crew. He'd escaped in the night and somehow made the long swim in to Cape Velen fourteen miles away.

"When I got to Velen I was starving," Jherek said, "but I couldn't even steal food. Instead, I lived on berries and eggs I found down by the beach. I hired myself out first working the docks to move cargo, then any job I could get in Velen. Eventually I got a job with a shipwright. I love working wood, and I've got a talent for it. That's what got me the job of repairing Madame litaar's roof."