Mel Odom - Under fallen stars

Jherek struggled against the man for just a moment, then realized the caravel's crew was even now beginning to throw the dead pirates overboard. The young sailor took a deep breath, feeling his heart hammering at his ribs and his body shake with exhaustion. Blood streamed down his face and from half a dozen other cuts across his body where his armor hadn't protected him. He let the cutlass hang like an anchor at the end of his arm.

He glanced at Sabyna as Azla assigned a man to relieve her. The ship's mage met Azla's eyes briefly, then Sabyna turned and walked away.

Jherek wanted to go to her, but he knew it wasn't right. Sabyna was capable of standing on her own, and if she wanted his company, she was capable of asking for that as well.

She didn't.

Uncaring of the debris that occasionally struck the deck around him, he walked to the railing and watched the pirate ship that had trailed them break off pursuit as the supernatural wind continued pushing Black Champion away. In moments, it was tacking back toward Vurgrom's other ship.

Jherek stared back at the spewing volcano in the distance, watching as more lava poured into the Alamber Sea. He didn't understand the forces that had pulled him there. He reached out for the voice inside his head, opening himself up to it, wanting it to fulfill its promise.

Only emptiness rang inside his skull.

Jherek gazed down at the deck, watching Sabyna walk away. The ship's mage had her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She never looked up at him. A heaviness he'd never felt lay on the young sailor's heart. He couldn't make sense out of anything, and in that moment, knowing how little control he had over anything that happened to him, he let go the faith he'd tried to cling to for so long.

Ilmater the Crying God, the god to whom the young sailor had given himself, shed no tears for Jherek Wolf's-get. The young sailor's heart turned cold and hard. No matter what happened, he promised himself silently, once he got the pearl disk from Vurgrom, he would be free.

Covered protectively in Iakhovas's grasp, Laaqueel watched the fiery red of the volcano channel give way to the cool blue of the sea again. Huge boulders spun through the water, wreathed in flames that wouldn't die, until they dropped out of sight.

Iakhovas gripped the wheel sternly, altering his course. "See, priestess. We are arrived hale and whole. If you have faith, all things become possible."

"You have my thanks, Most Exalted One. If not for you, I would have died."

"You cannot die. I won't let you. Our fates are strongly wound together-as long as you acknowledge them."

Laaqueel stepped away from him, no longer feeling the pull of the currents sweeping Tarjana's deck. She stood easily on her own. "Where are we?"

"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.

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."