by Mel Odom
Astonishment trailed cold fingers across Jherek’s back. Even on the Sword Coast people knew the Zhentarim to be an organization of great evil.
“I was a boy when I fought at my father’s side under Randall Morn against Malyk,” Glawinn went on in a steady voice. “My sister, like many other Daggerdale citizens, felt that the Zhentarim would continue to hold the lands after the battles. Some thought only to hold onto their property, not caring who ruled them as long as they were allowed to follow their own lives. Cellayne—my sister—saw joining the Zhentarim as a chance to follow the dark nature that possessed her.”
Footsteps passed beyond the door. Men’s voices talked quietly. Eyes reddened with pain and glazed with memory, Glawinn turned to peer at the armor lying on the small bed.
“I’ve seen Cellayne twice in all these years,” he said. “The last time she tried her best to kill me. Only by Lathander’s grace was I spared. I lost two dear friends. Cellayne has immersed herself in the dark arts and become a necromancer. She’s very powerful.” The paladin tried to clear his thick voice but was unsuccessful. “As penance for daring to attack her in her stronghold near Darkhold, Cellayne … did something to my two fallen companions … set them on my trail. I destroyed the walking corpses of my friends. I know not what happened to their souls, though priests I’ve talked to since tell me that the good part of them knows peace.”
“I’m sorry,” Jherek whispered, knowing how feeble those words were.
“Lathander keeps me strong.” Glawinn bowed his head for a moment, then turned to Jherek. “You need only believe, young warrior. Let your faith and your heart guide you, not your birth, not everything you’ve seen. Pursue that which you want, and a way of living that pleases and rewards you.”
“There is nothing to believe in.”
“So, for now at least, that is what you believe, young warrior, but to believe that there is nothing to believe in, is a belief itself.” Glawinn smiled at his own circular logic. “Don’t you see? If there was no belief in you, you would be like a piece of driftwood tossed out on the sea.”
“Even driftwood finds a shore sooner or later,” Jherek said.
A smile crossed Glawinn’s face. “How much you know yet refuse to see. Truly, your stubbornness is as great as any I’ve ever witnessed.” He crossed the room to stand in front of Jherek, then put his hands on the young sailor’s shoulders and said, “When I look at you, I see a good man.”
Unable to maintain eye contact, Jherek dropped his gaze to his boots.
“I only wish that you could see yourself through my eyes.” Glawinn paused. “Or Sabyna’s.”
“I’ve got to go.” Jherek couldn’t stand there any more. It hurt too much.
The paladin pulled his hands away and said, “You won’t be able to escape the doubts that fill you, young warrior. They only sound the emptiness that is within you. Belief is the only thing that will make you whole again.”
Jherek held back hot tears. “If there was just something to hold to, I could,” he said, “but there is nothing.”
“Sabyna loves you, young warrior.”
That single declaration scared Jherek more than anything else in his life.
“Even if that were true,” he said hotly, “my father murdered her brother. She could never forgive me.”
“For your father’s sin?”
“A father’s sins are visited on the son.”
“Not everyone thinks so.”
“I’d rather not talk about this.”
“I told you I’d teach you to believe again, young warrior,” Glawinn said, his voice carrying steel again, “and I will.”
“You weren’t able to rescue your sister.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jherek regretted it. Pain flashed in Glawinn’s eyes.
“Now is not the time to speak of this,” Glawinn said. “I see that.” He turned and walked back to his bunk, sitting and taking up his armor again. “Good night, young warrior.”
Hesitating, Jherek tried desperately to find something to say, but couldn’t. He had no head for it, and he didn’t trust his tongue. His heart felt like bursting.
The sound of the scrubbing brush filled the room, drowning out the echo of the waves lapping at the ship’s hull.
With a trembling hand, Jherek opened the door and left. There was nothing else to do.
V
6 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet
Seated midway up Black Champion’s rigging, Jherek stared hard out at the sunlight-kissed emerald green waters to the west. The Dragonisle maintained a steady distance to the southeast as the ship sailed north over slightly choppy waves, but the Earthspur towered over all. Below Jherek’s position, the pirate crew worked steadily under Azla’s watchful eye.
Reluctantly, he returned his attention to the wooden plate he held. Over half of the steamed fish and boiled potato chunks yet remained of his meal, long grown cold. He picked at the morsels with his fingers but found no interest. The worry and the headache that settled into the base of his skull and across his shoulders left him with no appetite.
Giving up on the meal, he gripped the edge of the plate and flung the contents into the wind, watching them fall the long distance down to the sea. An albatross wheeled and dived after them, managing to seize one of the chunks before it hit the water.
The rigging vibrated, drawing his attention. When he peered down, he saw Sabyna climbing up the rigging toward him.
“I didn’t expect to find you up here,” she said. “You’re usually laboring about the ship.”
“I wasn’t feeling well.”
Sabyna huddled expertly within the rigging, hooking her feet and leaning back so that her elbows held her as well. She gazed at him with concern and said, “Perhaps you should have stayed in bed.”
Jherek shook his head.
“I’m worried about you.” Sabyna regarded him sternly with those frank, reddish-brown eyes.
Sabyna loves you, young warrior. Glawinn’s words spun through Jherek’s mind as soft as silk and as unforgiving as steel.
“I worry about you. Perhaps it is time you make your way back to the Sword Coast.”
“Do you think I’m some kind of ballast you can just heave overboard?” Sabyna’s voice turned icy.
Jherek felt as though his thoughts were winding through mush.
“No, lady,” he said. “I worry only about your safety. This is not your fight, and I fear that things are going to get even harder from this point on. Last night has proven that.”
“I remember a time when you spoke pretty words to me, and enjoyed my companionship,” she told him in a cold voice.
“Lady, I have no hand with pretty words. My skills are with the sea, and with raising the ships that sail on it.”
“Then you’re telling me I heard wrong?”
Jherek felt as though he was being mercilessly pummeled. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t tell you that.”
“Then tell me what you feel.”
Jherek hung his head. “I can’t.” He hated the silence that followed.
“Perhaps,” Sabyna said in a softer voice, “I did hear wrong. Maybe I was wanting to hear something that wasn’t there, nor ever offered.”
She reached into the bag of holding at her hip and brought out two books. “I spoke with Glawinn this morning. He asked me to give you these.”
Heart still hurting, Jherek took to the books, meeting her eyes and never even glancing at the titles. Normally books were a fascination to him, a promise of adventure and other lives he could share.
“Has something happened between you two?”
“Please,” Jherek said, “I don’t wish to speak of it.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. It’s just hard watching the two of you have trouble when it’s obvious you’re so much alike.”
“Alike?”
The comparison stunned the young sailor. He saw no way in which he and the paladin were alike.
“You’re both proud, strong men. You’re brave enough to face your fears, and you’re a good friend.”
“If I was such a good friend, Glawinn wouldn’t be angry with me, and you wouldn’t be so uncomfortable around me.”
“I have no doubt that you and Glawinn will work things out,” Sabyna told him. “That is the nature of men. And you’re not responsible for my discomfort.” Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “That is caused by my own folly and foolishness. You have worries enough of your own. I only wish I could help you.”
Without another word, the ship’s mage turned lithely in the rigging and glided down the ropes, hard muscles playing in her arms, shoulders, and the small of her back.
Jherek almost went after her. It was only when he realized that he’d have to say something, but had no idea what, that he stopped. He watched her, though, as she dropped to the deck and strode to the stern to join Azla. They looked up at him together, then they turned and walked behind the stern castle.
The young sailor felt shamed to have been caught watching after them and quickly turned his head. He’d never felt so alone or unhappy in his life. He glanced at the two books he held, wondering what Glawinn would have thought to send him—and why.
Both books showed signs of stress, as if they had been read a number of times. The first was a thick volume called The Rider and the Lost Lady of Grave Hollow. Jherek carefully opened the front cover and read the frontispiece, discovering the work to be a romance about a Ridesman of Archendale. He flipped through the pages, smelling the scent of the parchment and the ink and remembering all the hours of pleasure he’d received from the books Malorrie had let him borrow.
The second tome was Way of War, Way of Peace by Sir Edard Valins. The book was much slimmer and promised to be a treatise on the art and thinking of combat.
Jherek closed the books, wondering why Glawinn would have sent them to him. He secured the book on the strategies of war in the rigging and opened the romance. A few hours of sailing yet remained before Black Champion reached her destination and he felt it would be best if he could stay away from other people in the meantime.
Standing at Black Champion’s starboard rail, Jherek gazed out at the grotto of sea caves that made up the Dragonisle’s northeastern harbor. The harbor sat back in the curvature of the rocky shoreline below and around the caves, creating a crescent of calm water scarcely able to shelter a dozen ships. Nesting pelicans and seagulls lined the craggy surface.
“These waters are filled with treacherous rocks and reefs,” Azla said as she belted her scimitar around her slim hips. She tucked a fighting dagger down inside the rolled top of her left boot, then pulled on a cloak against the chill of the bitter wind. “I won’t take my ship in there. We’d only be a target if two or three of the other ship’s crews decided to take us as a prize. Out here, Champion can maneuver.”
Glawinn gave a quick nod, accepting her judgment. He offered his hand to her at the ship’s rail and said, “Lady, if I may.”
The half-elf pirate captain seemed a little surprised at the offer, but she took his hand and said, “My thanks, but I am captain, not lady.”
“Of course, Captain.”
Azla made her way down the rope ladder hanging over the ship’s side to the waiting longboat, and Glawinn followed.
Jherek hadn’t noticed the change in temperature until they’d come closer to the harbor. The sun hung low on the horizon behind them, drawing long shadows over the emerald waters. He pulled his cloak more tightly around him.
Without a backward glance at him, Sabyna strode to the side and quickly descended the rope ladder. Jherek shifted hands with his wrapped bow and followed. He quietly made his way to one of the rowing stations and sat. No one seemed inclined to speak to him and that fact gladdened him at the same time it made him feel disappointed.
No one came to meet them when they reached the uneven shoreline, but there were plenty of eyes watching. Five ships sat at anchor inside the harbor proper. Pirates lined the railings and hung in hammocks beneath the yardarms. Others cooked fish over slow fires on the rocky beach. The beach butted up against the gray rock of the cliff face where the caves were.
They ran the longboat aground, then shipped oars. Jherek and three pirates leaped out onto the beach and grabbed the longboat’s sides, pulling it easily onto the rocky sand. The wind ripped low howls from the caves as the breeze traveled across the mouths. Jherek looked up at the towering cliff face while the others stepped from the longboat. A few of the seagulls took wing curiously, swooping down within a few feet of him.
“Look at ’em,” one pirate growled. “You’d think they was watchdogs close as they eyeball a body.”
Azla assigned four of the ten men in the crew to guard the longboat. She took the lead with long strides, crossing the shoreline to the nearest group of men frying fish.
“I need some information,” Azla told the strangers.
A hulking brute of a man standing nearby gave her an evil, gap-toothed grin. “Ain’t nothing free here, wench. Mayhap you show me a little kindness—”
Before the man even knew what was going on, Azla ripped her scimitar free and touched the blade to his throat.
“How much,” she asked coldly, “would you be willing to pay for your next breath?”
Color drained from the big man’s features. “What was it you’d be wanting?” he asked.
Azla kept the scimitar at the big man’s throat. “There’s a diviner who lives here. Do you know her?”
“I know of her, Cap’n.” The big man’s Adam’s apple slid across the blade’s edge. “Name’s Dehnee. She gives readings and such for them what want ’em.”
“Where can I find her?”
The man pointed up the narrow ledge that wandered back and forth across the cliff face. Other branches led off to other caves, giving each a portion of privacy. The diviner’s cave was halfway up and on the right.
“Take us there,” Azla commanded.
“Cap’n, I’d rather not. The woman lives with a ghost.”
“You’d rather not more than you’d rather try breathing through your neck?”
The man started walking, glancing in cold rebuke at his companions who sat without comment. Azla kept the scimitar’s point at the back of the man’s neck.
Jherek kept a ready hand on his cutlass hilt as he brought up the party’s rear. They marched up the narrow, inclined path to the cave the big man indicated.
A handmade sign hung beside the cave mouth that simply proclaimed DIVINER. A thick carpet of sea lion hides stretched across the cave mouth, hung from a length of rope. The hides possessed the maned heads and forelegs of great lions, but the body and tail of a fish. The bottom of the carpet of stitched hides was rolled up and sewn around rocks that weighted it to the ground.
Azla dismissed the big man with a turn of her head. He went quickly, muttering beneath his breath.
“Dehnee,” the half-elf captain called out. “I’ve got coin if you’ve a mind and skills enough to earn it.”
The hides slid to the side, revealing the torchlit interior of the cave. A woman no older than her late twenties stood at the entrance. Her hair was mousy brown, long and pulled back in a ponytail. Gold eyes regarded the party and showed no fear, set deeply in a face that was chiseled and translucent as if she seldom saw the sun. She wore a gown of good material that showed age as well as care.
“I’ve always got a ready use for coin,” she said, smiling, “but I’m not a desperate woman.”
“I don’t particularly care for the desperate,” Azla said. “They have a tendency to tell you what you want to hear.”
“It’s the truth you’re after then?”
“Aye, and we’ve come a far way to get it.”
Jherek watched the woman, remembering the times he’d seen Madame Iitaar work at home in Velen over a man’s hand or an object yanked up from the sea in a fisherman’s net.
Diviners could tell of things yet to come upon occasion, as
well as the past of objects that were brought to them. Those who lived on the sea, depending on the gracious bounty of the waters, learned to respect people like that.
Dehnee looked at them coolly and said, “My home is small, and I like my privacy.”
“Only four of us.” Azla pointed out Sabyna, Glawinn, and Jherek.
The diviner’s eyes raked casually across the ship’s mage and the paladin, but came to rest on the young sailor.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I can see that the four of you are tied. Some in more ways than the one you came to see me about.”
The announcement surprised Jherek, but he said nothing.
“Enter.” Dehnee stepped back and held the folds of sea lion skins back.
Jherek entered last, his mind and eyes seeking danger everywhere. He hadn’t forgotten the story about the diviner sharing her cave with a ghost.
The cave evidently divided into three or more rooms. Some of the division was natural but the young sailor could also detect scars and markings from tools and stone cutters.
More hides taken from sea creatures decorated the walls along with mounted fish on lacquered wooden plaques. Shells and bits of coral of different sizes and colors strung on sections of net in designs and patterns hung from the uneven ceiling. Red, blue, and green lichens clung to the walls in whirlpool patterns, evidently carefully directed in their growth.
Two clam shells more than a foot across hung upside down from more nets. They were filled with blubber and burning wicks to fill the cave with light.
Dehnee passed her hand over a small net with silver bells and shells that tinkled and rattled. The sensation of clawed feet crawled over Jherek, causing him to shift his shoulders.
“It’s all right,” Sabyna said in a soft voice. “The spell was intended as protection only.”
“I have been hunted before,” the diviner said. “I like to make sure that no one enters my home while bewitched by a charm, and that I have no unseen guests.”
