You put too much of yourself into the seeking. You must be wary of this.

Jherek gasped, gazing down at the sapphire whale. "She's in danger."

Of course, Swims Truly said. All of Seros is in danger. Your love follows the currents to the greatest danger of all.

Anxiety filled the young sailor. "I should never have left her side," he said.

There was no choice. To be what you need to be, you had to come to these waters. If you had stayed with her, she would have been lost for certain. As you would have been, and all of Seros as well. Now you are closer to being what you need to be so that most will be saved.

"Will she be saved?"

That remains to be writ, Jherek Whalefriend. We can see but a few currents from this point on, and all of those are not clear, nor without risk. Much death lies ahead for all of Seros. No one may save them all. Perhaps, you will not even save yourself. If you do not complete yourself, you may not have even that chance.

"What do I need to do?"

Accept. Begin there and the rest will follow. May Oghma, Lord of Knowledge and Bards, keep you within his sight.

Without another word, Swims Truly dived deeply into the blue-green water and disappeared.

"Should we sail?" Tarnar asked. "Or do you yet have business with the whales?"

"No," Jherek said. "It's time for us to go."

He stared west, wishing he could be with Sabyna at that moment, facing whatever danger waited for her.

"Where do we sail?"

"West," the young sailor answered. "As fast as we are able."

XIX

6 Eleint, the Year of the Gauntlet

"He hates you, my liege," Tu'uua'col said, "even though you are his father."

He swam easily at King Vhaemas's side through the palace in Voalidru. As usual, even though he'd been the king's advisor and trusted friend for years, all the other court personnel stayed away from him.

The merman king's face turned bitter, and his eyes wouldn't meet his friend's. Broadened by the sea and battle, a little more than eight feet long from head to tail, the old king's frame remained heavily muscled despite his sixty-eight years. His gold crown, inset with precious gems and rare bits of coral, held back his white hair. Scars decorated his arms and torso. Pink-ridged flesh scored the left side of his face from a koalinth attack years past.

"My blood is in him," King Vhaemas argued.

"And you denied it."

"Because I had to," the merman monarch replied.

"Yet you loved his mother."

Vhaemas put out a webbed hand and stopped his forward motion through the palace hallway. The nearest pages and court attendees scattered. Though he was one of the most favored kings in the history of the Serosian merfolk, his temper was legendary.

"A nation," the king said, "cannot be compromised by a young man's indiscretion without proper perspective."

Tu'uua'col knew the king wasn't referring to his own illegitimate son. but to his own past mistakes.

"Your son does not see himself as an indiscretion, my liege, and I think he would take grave umbrage at your own insistence upon calling him that."

"He would not form an alliance with Iakhovas of the sahuagin."

"My sources suggest he already has."

"They're wrong!" the merking snapped.

"Remember when your own court of advisors denied that you had made me one of them? Denied, in fact, the friendship that exists between us?" Tu'uua'col sighed heavily, hating the turbulence that formed between him and his friend.

The court rejected him for a number of reasons, and most of them still hadn't changed their minds. First and foremost among their complaints was that he was not a merman. He was a shalarin.

Tu'uua'col stood not quite six feet tall but seemed much taller due to the dorsal fin that started between his full black eyes and jutted up nearly a foot above his head before running all the way down his back to his buttocks. The jadelike sheen of his smooth, scaleless skin further set him apart from the warmer colors of the merfolk and their scaled tails. His gill slits were along his collarbone and ribcage.

All the merfolk knew him as a wizard, and a teacher of the royal princelings. That he had the ear of not only King Miaemas but the royal offspring as well was enough to unnerve most of the other advisors. If the royal court at Voalidru had known he was a Blue Dukar of the Order of Kupav and interested in the protection of Myth Nantar, assassination attempts might have been the order of the day.

"They do not know you as I know you," Vhaemas stated irritably. "They think of you simply as a wild-tider."

The merman nickname came from the prophecy of Selana, the mermaid who rose to prominence after the Tenth Seros War and the fall of Hmurrath, the merfolk empire. The mermaid predicted that the merfolk would one day ally with the shalarin. The wild tide referred to the magical force that brought the shalarin from their homes in the Sea of Corynactis, whose exact location had never been decided.

"Yet they will not listen," Tu'uua'col pointed out. "Some-times the plainest of truths are the hardest to believe. They require acceptance rather than recognition."

Vhaemas shook his head wearily. 'These are difficult currents we face, my old friend.'7

"That is why we must recognize and quickly deal with the dangers that surround us."

"Including Thuridru's king."

"Yes, my liege."

In all the years that they'd known each other, Tu'uua'col had never heard Vhaemas refer to his bastard child by the Kamaar clan as his son.

Vhaemas scoured the palace corridor with a jaundiced eye. As capital of the Eadraal empire, Voalidru was beauty itself, sculpted from the sea. The merman builders had combined stones dug from the ocean's floor with quarried rock lost in shipwrecks. The royal buildings were wide and generous, sporting shells and coral decorations in myriad colors and shapes.

"The ixitxachitl cities of Ageadren and Orildren, as well as their outposts, have fallen to the sahuagin. I have heard that Thuridru was instrumental in destroying Orildren and the outer temples."

"But to join with the sahuagin?" Vhaemas questioned. "Why?"

Tu'uua'col was silent for a moment, weighing his words. "Perhaps, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Thuridru has no alliances in Voalidru and remains trapped between the demon rays and the morkoth, who also attacked the ixitxachitls with the sahuagin."

"The Taker is not to be believed. In our legends he only looks toward his own interests."

"I think that is true," the shalarin Blue Dukar replied. "Still, Thuridru's ruler is willing to set aside merman histories and beliefs in order to forge his own future. He is openly ambitious. This alliance is the only one open to him. At worst, he gets some of the ixitxachitl lands. At best…"

Tu'uua'col shrugged. '"Perhaps he even thinks to have a hand in humbling all of Eadraal."

"What would you suggest I do?"

Vhaemas started forward again, following the bend of the halfway to a balcony. The royal palace was built on the lower foothills of Mount Teakal. The vantage point allowed it to overlook Voalidru below.

Most of the citizens of Voalidru lived in stone houses and caves, though some of the merfolk took up residence in ships that had come to rest on the ocean floor. Once, centuries ago, a great naval battle had been fought along the coast of Chondath between the coastal and inland city-states during the Rotting War. Many of the ships had sunk around the Whamite Isles and drifted down to the Lesser Hmur Plateau.

Tu'uua'col hesitated, knowing the advice he was prepared to give wouldn't be well received. "I think you should take the first step in allying the merfolk with the sea elves and the shalarin. I have learned of a caravan journeying toward Myth Xantar. Locathah I have talked to have told me of them. They tell me the Taleweaver is with them."