The sea devil's eye ttfts-3

by Mel Odom

  "This is no ordinary astrolabe," Dehnee told them. She cradled the instrument in her lap with one hand. "This device is ages old, and its origin is almost completely unknown to me."

  The whale oil light glistened off the astrolabe's surface. Only then did Jherek realize it was cut from some kind of yellowed crystal that held only minute fractures.

  "I was given this by a sea elf in exchange for information," the diviner continued. "I can enspell it to track Vurgrom's ship for you."

  "At what cost?" Azla demanded.

  "Only that you bring it back when you're finished," Dehnee replied. "And I would ask a favor."

  Azla's eyes narrowed. "What favor?"

  "Not from you, Captain." Dehnee's eyes locked with Jherek's. "From this boy."

  Glawinn interrupted before Azla could respond. "He is only a boy."

  The diviner nodded. "And what he faces will make a man of him." She glanced at the paladin. "You know this as well as I. That's part of the reason you're here. I won't ask a favor of the boy. I will want a favor from the man."

  "He's too young to know what you ask," Glawinn interrupted. "A promise from him-"

  "Is all that I will settle for," Dehnee said. "Otherwise, you are on your own."

  "You know of the portents and magic that surround the Sea of Fallen Stars," Azla said. "Some are saying that ancient prophecies are being fulfilled, that an old evil is descending upon us."

  "That's not my concern." The diviner stared at Jherek and he felt the pull of her gaze. "What is your answer?"

  "Young warrior," Glawinn said gently, "don't agree to these terms. Wait until a more proper time."

  "Time is against us." Jherek spoke clearly, but his words sounded distant.

  "There is much for you to learn," Glawinn persisted.

  "It's only a favor," Jherek said. "I owe a debt to the temple of Lathander…"

  "Do you accept?" Dehnee asked.

  Dehnee took his hand back in hers, holding both of them again. "Swear to me that you will honor my request, and that you will never lift your hand against me."

  In the periphery of his vision, Jherek saw Glawinn's stony face and knew that the paladin didn't approve.

  "Lady," the young sailor said, "I swear that I will honor your request and will never lift a hand against you."

  "Swear by your god."

  Jherek's throat tightened. "Lady, I'm sorry. I recognize no gods. I am adrift in my beliefs and hold no anchor."

  The diviner's eyes studied his face, searching.

  "He speaks the truth," Glawinn stated coldly.

  "I can see that. Yet he's no stranger to falsehood."

  Shame burned Jherek's cheeks. The only things he'd never been completely forthright about concerned his heritage and his true name-and those he'd hidden primarily from Sabyna.

  "Not in this matter," Glawinn said.

  "It's strange to think of one such as him without strong beliefs."

  "As may be, lady," the paladin said, "but so it is."

  Dehnee tightened her grip on his hands and said, "Then name something you believe in, boy."

  An incredible weight seemed to descend on Jherek's chest. It felt impossible to breathe. He had confessed to Glawinn that he believed in nothing. The paladin swore to teach him to believe again, but hadn't told the young sailor what he was supposed to believe in. Only now there was a huge gaping emptiness where his faith in the gods had once been.

  "My eye and my sword arm," he croaked in a tight voice, remembering what Glawinn told him he would believe in first. "I believe in those."

  "No," the diviner said. "Those things you trust in, but that is no real belief. Search yourself, boy, tell me what you believe in."

  Jherek thought furiously, trying to find some quote, some philosophy Malorrie had taught him that he could cling to in that moment. Memories piled in on him, breakfasts shared with Madame Iitaar, battle sessions with Malorrie, sunsets he'd seen sink into the waters off the western coast of Velen.

  He recalled the smell of the blueberry pies Madame Iitaar made for him, the feel of the paper of the books Malorrie loaned him, the satisfaction he got the day he first finished mending Madame Iitaar's roof, already knowing the woman had more work for him and a bed as well.

  He remembered the cake he'd gotten from Hukkler's Bakery to celebrate Madame Iitaar's first birthday since he'd gone there to live. An image of Madame Iitaar at her husband's grave filled his mind. The old woman had grown a special flowering plant, then planted it on the grave in remembrance. Her smile that day, both sad and joyous, was something he'd known he'd never forget.

  And he remembered the first day he'd seen Sabyna. He avoided talking to the pretty ship's mage then, fearing himself too backward and too entrenched in lies about his own identity. He'd admired her from afar, watching how she managed Breezerunner's crew so efficiently and effortlessly, the easy way she smiled and the graceful way she moved with the ship's roll.

  "What do you believe in?" Dehnee asked again.

  "These are troubling times for him," Glawinn said.

  "He knows what he believes," the diviner replied. "All he has to do is give voice to it."

  Jherek faced the woman, feeling scared and alone, but his thoughts kept focusing on the same images. Madame Iitaar hadn't been forced to take on an orphaned boy and make a home for him. Whatever drew Malorrie to him hadn't ensured the bond that grew between the phantom and the boy. He didn't doubt the way he felt about Sabyna. When he'd met her again in Baldur's Gate, his spirits soared. Even though he knew he could never be good enough for her, he knew how he felt about her.

  "Tell me what you believe in," the diviner said in a softer voice.

  "Love," Jherek whispered, knowing it was true. "I believe in love."

  The diviner's hands suddenly shook as if palsied. Her eyes went wide. The sea lion beside her snarled irritably, one forepaw flexing, then drawing back.

  "By the gods," the woman said in hoarse surprise.

  Embarrassed, the young sailor risked a glance at Sabyna, not knowing what she might make of his answer. Her gaze didn't meet his, but unshed tears glittered in her eyes.

  Jherek felt like a giant hand reached inside of him and tried to yank his heart from his chest. He sat up straighter, knocking the cutlass from his knees, his chest suddenly too tight to breathe.

  The feeling of being yanked out of his own body passed as suddenly as it came, dropping Jherek back to the floor. He gasped, then his breath came back to him in a rush. Awareness returned to him, making him feel as though a part of him was gone, but he couldn't name which part.

  "Your promise," the diviner stated in a strained voice, "is accepted."

  "Lathander help you, young warrior," Glawinn said gravely, "as I will if I am able."

  Jherek sat, stunned, unable to explain what had passed between the woman and him. He had no doubt that it would have consequences.

  Dehnee took her hands from his and lifted the astrolabe from her lap. She spoke over the device, calling out in a language Jherek couldn't understand. A purple flame filled the yellowed crystal and threw a lambent glow over the room. A moment later and the light shrank back inside the astrolabe.

  "It's finished," the diviner said, and offered the instrument to Jherek.

  The young sailor reached for the astrolabe, his limbs feeling like lead. When he touched the polished surface, an icy chill filled him.

  "All the readings you take from that astrolabe will give you the position of Vurgrom's ship and not your own," Dehnee said.

  "You took a reading from the disk for Vurgrom," Azla said.

  The diviner didn't try to deny it. "Yes."

  "What did you learn?"

  The diviner shook her head. "Not much," she said. The disk is protected from the small skills I have."

  From what he'd been through in the last few minutes, Jherek doubted the diviner's skills were in any way small. He wondered what brought her to the Dragonisle, and why to that place's most desolate harbor. H
ad it been through choice, or need? How would that affect the promise he'd made her?

  "But you learned something," Azla said.

  "The disk is designed to lead its possessor to a weapon," Dehnee said.

  "What weapon?"

  "I couldn't see that much, but I know it lies somewhere off the coast of Turmish. In the vision, I was able to see that coastline and the druids that care for the place. In the past, I've been there."

  "You're certain of this?" Glawinn asked.

  "Yes."

  The paladin faced Jherek and asked, "Did the talisman ever try to guide you?"

  The young sailor thought back. He had possessed Lathander's disk for only minutes. "No."

  "Maybe the disk isn't guiding Vurgrom either," Sabyna offered.

  "It is," Jherek told her.

  "How do you know this?" asked Azla.

  "Because," the young sailor said, "I felt it come alive in my grasp."

  VII

  10 Flamerule, the Year of the Gauntlet

  "You're keeping to yourself a lot these days."

  Jherek looked down from his position in the rigging and spotted Sabyna. "Good evening, lady," he said, and immediately felt uncomfortable.

  There had been much to do in the four days since they'd taken their leave of the Dragonisle. Jherek had taken care to stay involved in shipboard duties that the pretty ship's mage hadn't been assigned to oversee.

  "I've gotten the impression you don't care much for present company," Sabyna said as she hauled herself up in the rigging and looked out over the curved horizon of the sea.

  They were well away from land now, sailing by the mystic astrolabe. The canvas cracked and snapped as it held the wind.

  "Not true," replied Jherek. He marked his place in the romance Glawinn had loaned him.

  "I thought maybe I was the cause."

  "Of course not," Jherek assured her. "Why would you think such a thing?"

  "Because the last time we spoke I was so… forward."

  "You merely said what was on your mind."

  "Is that what you think?" she asked softly.

  Despite the quietness of her words, barely heard over the crash of the waves below and the snap of canvas sails around them, Jherek suddenly felt as though he'd stepped into the jaws of a steel trap.

  "Lady, I don't know what to think," he admitted. "These are very confusing times."

  "For all of us." She held his gaze with her eyes and said, "When things get confusing, people who are together should be most truthful with each other."

  "Aye."

  Jherek's temples pounded. He hoped she wouldn't steer their conversation in a direction that would force him to lie.

  "Your name isn't Malorrie."

  "No. Malorrie is the name of a good friend and teacher."

  "Your name is Jherek. I know you feel that you have reasons to conceal your identity. I promised you I'd never push you about it." Her eyes searched his and he saw the pain there. "But times have changed. I can no longer bide my own counsel. There are things I must know."

  Jherek's stomach protested, wanting to purge its contents. Even though the wind raced over him to fill the sails, he felt like he'd come to dead calm inside, the last place a sailor wanted to find himself in an uncharted sea.

  "Are you a wanted man, Jherek?"

  "Aye."

  Sabyna didn't bat an eye. She'd already been mostly certain of that, the young sailor knew.

  "Is it for something you have done?"

  "I've never done anything in my life to harm another soul out of greed or anger."

  "I believe you," she said.

  Relief flooded through Jherek.

  "So your guilt, the price on your head, came from association with others?"

  "Aye."

  "So how did you come to be with these people that earned you the price on your head?"

  "Through no fault of my own, lady," Jherek replied honestly. "It was ill luck."

  "When did you leave them?"

  "I was twelve," Jherek whispered.

  "By the Lady's mercy," Sabyna said in a hushed voice, "you were only a boy."

  Jherek remained silent, hoping she had probed enough. Every question she asked-skirting so closely to the truth he felt he needed to keep hidden-felt like a healer lancing an infected wound. Only in this there was no release from pressure and misery, only the promise of even more, sharper pain to come.

  "What did they do?" Sabyna asked.

  "Lady, please, I can't talk of it."

  "Why? Jherek, don't you see that there doesn't have to be anything unsaid between us?"

  Her question caught him by surprise. He shook his head, unable to voice what she wanted to hear.

  "Lady, I would never have anything unsaid between us."

  "But there is something?"

  He couldn't answer.

  "I told you before, when we first met on Breezerunner, that I could be very forward," Sabyna said. "Most men feel uncomfortable around a woman who knows her own mind. Sailors especially. They're not used to it."

  "Aye, but that is not true of me. Sometimes," Jherek said quietly to give his words weight, "no matter how hard you struggle for something, it's not meant to be yours."

  "Is that a threat?" Sabyna's voice hardened, but it was only a brittle shell over uncertainty.

  The young sailor laughed when he wanted to cry. "No, lady. May Umberlee take me into her deep, dark embrace this very moment if ever there was a time I would intentionally hurt you."

  "Back in the diviner's cave, she asked you what you believed in. You told her that you believed in love." Sabyna gazed deep into his eyes. "Did you mean that?"

  Jherek hesitated, but in the end he knew she would know if he lied. "Aye," he said, "I believe in love. Perhaps, lady, it's the last thing I do believe in."

  "So many things, evil as well as good, have been done in the name of love."

  "There is no evil when the love is true," Jherek stated.

  "How much do you believe that, Jherek?"

  He shook his head. "Lady, with all that I am."

  "Then how can you be so far from me? Surely you must know how I feel."

  The question hammered Jherek like a fisherman's bully.

  Tears trickled down Sabyna's face. "Never have I met a man," she said hoarsely, "that I've wanted as much as I want you. From the moment I saw you hanging onto Breezerunner's side scraping barnacles, to the time we sit here together. Yet you don't acknowledge it."

  Helplessly, Jherek watched her cry, not knowing what to do or what to say except, "I didn't know."

  Her eyes remained steady on him and dark sadness clouded them, took away the merriment he always saw there.

  "I know," she said finally, "and I think it's that bit of naivete that endears you to me even more. I look at you, Jherek, and I see a kind of man I've never known before. The puzzle of it all is that I don't know you."

  "You know what you need to know, lady," Jherek told her.

  "Do I?"

  Jherek forced himself to speak, choosing his words carefully. "The other things you don't know, they are of no consequence."

  "Then how is it we are apart? Unless I am wrong in your feelings about me."

  Jherek tried to speak but couldn't. He dropped his gaze from hers, looking down into the deep waters below. How could his life be so twisted and so painful? What could he have ever done to deserve this?

  "Tell me I'm wrong, Jherek," Sabyna said in a voice ragged with emotion. "Tell me I'm a fool."

  "I would never call you a fool, lady," he told her.

  "Tell me again how you believe in love, Jherek. Gods above, when I heard that timbre in your voice in the diviner's cave, I felt more confused than ever. The anger I'd been harboring toward you left me, and with it all of my defenses against these feelings. Tell me."

  He raised his eyes to meet hers, seated across from her in the rigging. "As you wish, lady."

  She gazed at him expectantly.

  "I believe in
love," Jherek said, "but I don't believe in myself. If I've learned anything at all in my life, it's that a belief in himself is what makes a man. I haven't yet become one."

  Sabyna shook her head. More tears cascaded down her face. "Mystra's wisdom, I wish I knew some way to let you see yourself as I see you, and as others see you."

  "It wouldn't matter, lady," Jherek said gently. "It's how I see myself."

  "Why?"

  "Because I know the true me that no one sees," Jherek stated. "Even now, you're in danger here on these seas because of a mistake I made. That weakness of pride I felt in accepting Lathander's disk at the Rose Portal has brought us all here."

  "And what if that was no mistake?" Sabyna asked. "What if that disk is truly supposed to be here?"

  "It's in evil's hands, lady There's no way to make that right."

  "You are so stubborn, Jherek," the ship's mage said in a harsh voice. "I would change that if I could."

  "I know of no other way to be," Jherek told her.

  "I know, and changing you would be so dangerous. Everything in you builds on everything else. Were one small part removed, I think the whole would somehow be changed as well. You are one of the most complete men I have ever known." Sadness carved deep lines into her face, draining her of the vitality he loved about her. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pressed you like this, but I couldn't go any further without letting you know how I felt. Forgive me."

  "Lady, there is nothing to forgive."

  "There is. I should have handled my own emotions better. I am a ship's mage, trained to handle battle, dying men, and the ravages of an uncaring sea and a fickle wind. I am no young girl to have her head turned so prettily. I have a heart, though, Jherek, and I've learned to listen to it. Selune forgive my weakness."

  Sabyna stood in the rigging and turned to go.

  "Lady." Jherek stood too, catching her hand in his. It felt so slim and warm, so right in his. "It is not you."

  Tears sparkled like diamonds on her wind-burned cheeks. "I know. I only wish I could be brave enough and strong enough for both of us. I wish I could help you trust me."

  Without warning she leaned in, too quickly for Jherek to move away. Her lips met his, and he felt the brand of her flesh, tasted the sweetness of her tears. His pulse roared, taking the strength from his knees. In all his life Jherek had never known such a feeling, so strong and so true. For the moment, all his fears and self doubts were nothing. He felt whole.