Rising Tide

V

11 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet

The dream overtook Jherek while he lay in Butterfly's brig, filling him with the same cold dread that all memories of his father did when they haunted his sleep.

He swam in the blue-green of a sea. He didn't know which sea it was, nor did he care. He was free. He'd spent days in the brig at the insistence of the Amnian merchant.

He took joy in the feel of the warmth of the sea against his skin, at the currents that brushed against him. He knew at once it was a dream because he could breathe underwater. Looking up, he couldn't see the surface, and looking down he found a sea bed scattered with coral and fish.

He swam for a time, racing fish and finding that he was faster than them. Exuberant, he flashed through the water, diving and twisting and rolling through the ocean in great loops.

Only a short time later, he spotted the largest clam he'd ever seen. It was ten feet across, nearly that deep, and possessed a ridged alabaster shell. Curiosity gripped him and he was drawn to it. As he watched, it started to slowly open.

Jherek floated in the water, mesmerized by what was happening. Even before the clam was halfway open, he spotted the woman inside.

She was beautiful, close to his age, and had platinum blond hair that framed a nut-brown complexion. Since she wasn't dressed, he could see all her generous curves and womanly gifts.

Jherek was embarrassed, but somehow he felt it was right to simply gaze at her.

She smiled at him and waved. "Jherek," she cooed.

He heard his name plainly. Even his unconscious mind knew it was a dream, but he couldn't ignore that siren call. He swam down to her, realizing that she was a mermaid, her lower body that of a fish, all sheathed in iridescent green scales.

Instead of being appalled, he found her nature made her even more attractive to him. He stopped just short of her, gazing in wonder as she sat on the pink bed of the clam.

She reached out to him, laying her palm along the side of his face. Her touch was warm, soft. A string of shaped fire coral figurines lay between her breasts.

"Lady," he said in a thick voice.

"Shhhh," she admonished him, "I'm here to talk to you, to warn you."

"Warn me of what?" Jherek asked. "I've already been locked in Butterfly's brig. When I get back home, I'll probably be hanged in the dockyards."

"No," she told him. "That's not going to happen. You've made friends, Jherek, and they'll stand you in good stead. You must not lose heart or hope. Things have been given to you, but you must seek out the key that opens the understanding you need."

He shook his head. "No. This is only a dream. Something my mind has culled from one of Malorrie's romantic stories."

"Dear, sweet Jherek," she rebuked softly, "so much doubt."

He felt guilty at her tone. "Aye," he agreed, "but I've got reasons."

"You'll understand in time," she assured him. "You've been given the burdens you carry only so that you may become who you should be. Running water shapes stone but it doesn't do so overnight."

"I don't understand."

"You will. You must trust that."

The look she gave him drew the promise, "I'll try."

Her face took on a more somber look. "Know, too, that there are those who would stop you in your journey," she said. "They fear you, fear what you will become, and with good cause because your life will touch the lives of many. I came to you in this dream so that you may take heart in this time of despair. There is a darkness out there, greater than any darkness you've known. It has already moved against part of the world you know, and it will be your crucible. Should you live, understanding and more will be yours."

"And should I die, lady?"

She looked at him, gave him a small smile, and said simply, "Don't."

Jherek wanted to talk to her further, to explain things as he saw them and to tell her of the ill fortune that had been his birthright, but she looked away from him. Cold horror now shaped her features.

He looked up instinctively, his attention drawn to whatever she saw.

At first, it was only a dim shape lost in the horizonless vast of the sea, then it came closer with astonishing speed. He realized it was a shark when it was still a distance away, recognizing the dorsal fins. He'd dreamed of sahuagin and sharks a lot since the recent attack on Butterfly. Reaching down to where he normally carried his shin knife, he found only bare skin. He had no weapons.

He reached for the girl. "Come, lady," he said, "while there is yet time."

She resisted, pulling against him, and said, "No, Jherek. This is not a thing that can be fled from. This is something that you must face."

He grabbed her wrist, desperately wanting to pull her to the sea bed below. The great shark was bigger than he'd thought, swelling into sight. Fear took him then when he saw that it was thirty, forty, or more feet in length.

Its skin was a stained gray, like ivory that had been rubbed with charcoal, the black coloring worked into the veins and scratches. When it came closer, he saw that the veins and scratches were tattooed runes and old scars. One eye was liquid black, malignant, magnetic. The other was only a puckered hole, dark with the hollow and the scarring around it.

Without warning, the girl slipped through Jherek's fingers. The clam closed over her again, a fort protecting her from the approaching dreadnought.

Before Jherek could move, the shark was on him. It opened its fanged mouth and swallowed him whole. Trapped in the shark's teeth, he discovered whatever ability had let him breathe underwater was now gone.

Death came for him.

Jherek fingered the scabbed and itching cut along his throat, remembering the Amman sellsword's blade from three days ago. Nightmares had continued to plague him the previous nights, and he knew there'd be no relief tonight either. They'd put in at Athkatla two nights before, then made the journey on into Velen.

He sat at a back table in the Figureheadless Tavern and looked out the dirty window at the eastern dock walk over the waves lapping up onto the beaches of Velen. His stomach knotted and clenched repeatedly as he considered all his ill luck of the past few days.

It would have been better, he thought dismally, if Captain Finaren had let the sellsword slit his throat that day. Butterfly's captain had talked with the Amnian merchants, explaining that Jherek had never been a true part of Falkane's crew aboard Bunyip, only a captured youth pressed into service on the pirate vessel who'd managed to escape with his life.

Lelayn had reluctantly accepted the story. There was no proof to the reports that Captain Falkane was in league with the sahuagin, but the Amnian merchant had demanded that Jherek be held in the ship's brig. Though Finaren hadn't been happy about complying with the order, the brig was where the young sailor had found himself.

Jherek had lain on the hard bed with no light to read his books and no company. The ship's crew had been busy with repairs, and probably no one wanted to speak with him now anyway. With nothing to occupy his hands or mind, the darkness that always waited to consume his soul had riven him, tearing at him with the gale fury of a summer squall and as persistent as the seasonal rains. His grip on the world around him had come loose, freeing many of the old demons that he'd walled away with Madame litaar's and Malorrie's help and guidance. He hadn't forgotten the old fears that lived with him, but he had been surprised at how fierce they seemed now. Where the nightmares had come from was no mystery, but the one with the shark continued to gnaw at him.

Even Captain Finaren hadn't come to see him. The Amnian sellswords had rotated at guard duty over the brig as well on Lelayn's orders, insuring that Jherek hadn't been working with anyone else aboard Butterfly.

He hadn't seen Yeill again either, and he'd had mixed feelings about that, which surprised him. Both father and daughter had conveniently forgotten that he'd risked his life to save her's and he couldn't bring himself to remind them of it. That kind of chest-thumping behavior didn't sit well with him.

After the Amnian trading party had been unloaded in Athkatla, Finaren had released him from the ship's brig. The captain had apologized, saying he'd had no choice in the matter. Jherek had accepted the declaration stoically, with not a word said other than thanks for releasing him. Finaren had also ordered the crew not to be asking a lot of questions. He went on to tell them that all of them had stories and secrets they'd rather not have out in public without a couple drafts of mead to cushion the experience.

Finaren went on again to tell them that Jherek had never been a pirate, only someone captured by Falkane's vicious crew. That had been a bald-faced lie, though, and Jherek knew they both were aware of it.

Rather than face the crew, the young sailor had retreated to the crow's nest, pulling extra duty there, and spending the rest of his time mending nets and sleeping out on the deck in a hammock. No one talked to anyone mending nets. Finaren had a standing rule aboard Butterfly that men who could talk to someone mending nets could join in. A wagging tongue didn't stop fingers from working.

Jherek had wanted things to heal aboard Butterfly. He also knew that he'd have to take steps to make sure that happened, but he couldn't. That tattoo upon his arm marked him as different from those men in these waters. Falkane and his men had reputations as being the fiercest, blood-thirstiest pirates in the Sea of Swords, and they had some of the largest bounties offered for them. Rumor had it that even other pirates of the Nelanther feared Falkane and Bunyip's crew.

After Athkatla was behind them and the wind filled Butterfly's sails again, Jherek had hoped that things would return to normal aboard the cog. When they didn't, he was saddened but not surprised. Bad luck ran in his blood, showing in that flaming skull tattoo. Just before they'd docked at Velen, Finaren had told him not to help with the loading and with the rigging and to meet him at the Figureheadless Tavern later.

Finaren's choice of meeting places fit Jherek's mood. The tavern was a dive, queen among the cheap diversions that took the coppers and silvers from a working sailor's purse. He knew that Finaren had been aware of the tension among the crew. Even Hagagne had been quieter than normal, and he'd mentioned nothing more about having Jherek read to him.

The young sailor sat at a back table and nursed a mug of hot tea. He didn't really favor the tea, but he didn't drink mead or the liquors the tavern served. The barkeep kept watch on him. The Figureheadless was a place where pirates met, and where honest work on the sea was discussed at a table where a murder might have been plotted only moments ago.

The walls held no decor except stains from drink, oily hair, and blood. Sawdust covered the heavy walkways and looked like it should have been changed days ago. The tavern's three serving girls had already been by and offered themselves-for a price. He'd politely declined, and his thoughts had wandered inadvertently back to Yeill, wondering how someone so beautiful could look at life the way she did. For the tavern girls, it was just another means to make a couple silvers, and though he couldn't condone it, he at least did understand.

How was it that having wealth and not having wealth so often put the people who had and didn't have it in the same camp? he wondered. He realized it wasn't so much like a camp as it was like the table in front of him. People had to fill the seats on both sides, one giving and the other taking, each in turn, to fulfill the business between them.

In its basest terms, he supposed it was business, like Finaren sitting across from merchants who needed goods shipped to and fro.

It was still no way to live life. Coins were a means, not tools of war and not some counting system in a game. What mattered about life was the way a man lived it.

There were those, he knew, who would never get the chance to live a decent life at all no matter what was in their hearts. He felt immediately guilty at that, thinking of the time Madame litaar and Malorrie had spent with him these past years. Closing his eyes, he lowered his head and folded his hands, praying to Ilmater that he have the strength not to find fault with others for his own troubles and that he wouldn't slight what he had been given.

When he blinked his eyes open, he found Finaren standing there. The captain had his hat in his hands as he waited quietly.

"I didn't mean to intrude on your prayers, lad," the older man said in his deep voice.

Jherek pushed himself from his chair and turned up a hand to offer the seat across from him. "You're not intruding, sir."

"I'm not one to get between a man and his god," Finaren said, easing himself into the chair.

Jherek gave him a small smile and took his own seat. "Did you get the repairs set up for Butterfly!"

"Aye, and rogues that they are, they're going to charge a man an arm and a leg to have them done." Finaren waved to one of the serving girls and called, "Wench, you've got a restless man here dying of thirst. Bring me a bottle of your harshest who-hit-Nate and be damned quick about it."

Jherek was surprised at how demanding the captain was. As rough and prickly as he was at sea, he remained the epitome of good manners around children and women.

Finaren looked at him, then sighed. His shoulders slumped. "Being hard on the lass, aren't I?"

The young sailor shrugged, feeling even more nervous than he had when Finaren first sat down. The captain could bluster and yell louder than any man Jherek had ever known, but only in its proper time and place.

"I am and I know it, lad," the captain added. "There's no excuse. Rest assured that she'll see a healthy stipend for any troubles I might offer."

The serving girl brought a bottle and thick glass and put them before Finaren.

The captain thanked her and pulled the cork from the bottle. "Care for a libation, lad? Trust me, I think we're both going to need it."

Jherek's stomach flip-flopped, and he had to force the words out. He'd often seen Finaren take a drink and knew the man kept a ship's keg tapped, but he'd never seen the captain in a drunken stupor. He noticed for the first time the stink of liquor already on Finaren's breath and said, "No, thank you."

Finaren filled the glass in front of him and put the bottle away unstoppered. "Me, I'm going to get royally pissed back at Butterfly, lad." He drained off half the contents of the glass, then had a coughing fit that ended with, "I've damn sure earned it."

Jherek said nothing, already not liking the turn the conversation was taking.

"Valkur's brass buttons, lad, would that you were not who you are." Finaren met his level gaze, and Jherek saw the pain in the older man's eyes.

"But I am," Jherek whispered, barely able to get the words out.

"It's one thing for me to tell my crew a white lie for a good reason," Finaren said.

"I never asked that," Jherek said.

"I know that, lad. Hell, I'm not blaming you for me putting me own head in a noose on that one. You came to me and told me about that tattoo, same as you told Shipwright Makim who you were, and it was my choice not to tell the crew about it."

Jherek remembered that decision. Even though Finaren had made the choice, he'd hated living that lie around men who on occasion trusted him with their lives.

"They wouldn't have stood for it," Finaren said. "Me, I don't know how I'd agreed to let you ship with me."

Jherek opened his mouth to speak, not sure what he was going to say.

"You just shush, lad," the captain cautioned. "I'm here to make my peace, and I'll not have you taking blame on yourself where there's none. I could have done it another way, but I knew there'd be some of them men wouldn't stand for having you aboard. Selune grant me some good fortune here that they never find out who you truly are."

Shards of hot tears stung the backs of Jherek's eyes but he wouldn't let them fall. He grew angry at himself, knowing how the conversation was going to end, and frustrated with himself that he could have believed even for a moment that it was going to go any other way.

There was no way to escape his heritage. The flaming skull tattoo marking him as one of Falkane's pirate crew had been magically administered, put on by Falkane himself. Falkane hand picked his crew, taking the hardest men a reaver's life could turn out, and he tied them to him for the rest of their lives by the tattoo. Nothing could erase that tattoo once it had been inscribed. Jherek had tried everything. Even before Madame litaar had attempted to remove it with her magic, he'd even tried to cut it from his flesh, leaving the scars that marked it.

"Lad, one of the most unfair things in life is the fact that a man can't pick the man who fathered him." Finaren's voice took on an unaccustomed thickness. "That day you came to me, why that's as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday. You were only a lad. Hell, you still are, but then you didn't have all the muscle and height you've picked up these past few years. You were just a spindly boy, not even shaving."

Jherek remembered, too. He'd thought Madame litaar was punishing him for wanting to go to sea and had set his interview up with the crustiest captain that operated out of Velen to discourage him. Finaren's demeanor had been hard to take.

"I thought I'd have you out away from the city a half day's journey and you'd be crying for your ma," Finaren went on. Even though he knew Madame litaar wasn't Jherek's natural mother, he'd always referred to her that way, 'Taut I saw that look in your eyes when you talked about the sea, and I knew it came from the fire in your belly a man always has when he's fallen in love with the briny blue."

"There's no other place I'd rather be," Jherek said.

"I know, lad, and a man with that kind of passion, he's going to find the way of it. That's why, even after you told me who you are, and showed me the tattoo when I doubted, that I let you sail old Butterfly. I turned down growed-up men to put you on her deck."

Jherek knew it was true. Malorrie maintained contacts among the docks and had relayed the stories to him.

"Damn your father's eyes, lad," Finaren said, "I can't be taking you with me any more. We've had a good run of luck these past few years. I tell you now, I've never had a finer man crewing aboard Butterfly. Umberlee take me now if I'm lying."

"No one said anything to me these last couple of days," Jherek protested, knowing that was just as damning as anything. He just wasn't ready to let go.

"I know, lad, but plenty's been said to me since then. Your birthright has almost split my crew. Some are for you and some are against you. Almost had guts spilling out on ship's decks tonight when the matter was brought up, and I can't have that. I've got to have a crew like the fingers on a hand, always together and always working to stay that way. Otherwise I'm out of business and someone else'll be owning Butterfly. That's a thought that makes the blood run cold." Finaren shook his head sorrowfully and finished his glass. "What if they learned the real truth of the matter?"

"I don't know," Jherek whispered. Even then, it hurt to get the words out.

"You aren't just a boy who escaped impressment," Finaren stated. "You're Bloody Falkane the Wolf's son!" He paused and made a brief luck sign in Selune's name. "There are those who'd kill you hoping to get back at that man."

Jherek leaned back in his chair, defeated. He looked at the table, suddenly realizing what it meant: one man giving and one man taking. Only there were no deals he could make and he knew it.

"You hate me, don't you, lad?" Finaren asked gruffly.

"No," Jherek answered honestly.

Finaren looked away for a time, then gradually met his eyes again. "I hope you mean that, lad. It'd break me heart if you did."

Jherek tried to get around the hurt and loss that filled him. During the last few years, other captains had offered him employment after learning how good he was aboard ship and how skilled he was with marine craft as well as weapons. He'd turned them all down, even the offers that came with more wages attached. For a moment he resented the fact that he hadn't accepted them, hadn't left Finaren and gone his own way, but he knew if another captain had discovered the truth about his birth, he'd have been hung from a yardarm if he hadn't had his throat slit first.

"Maybe I can get a ship somewhere else," he said.

Finaren nodded. "Aye, there's a thought, but try somewhere far from the Sword Coast where the flaming skull tattoo won't be as heatedly remembered."

"Could you give me a letter of recommendation?"

"Aye, that I could, lad, but are you sure you want to ask me for one? Someone asks around down here, they're going to find out about this. By morning, this whole town will know and tongues will still be wagging."

Jherek knew he was right.

"Maybe the Sea of Fallen Stars," Finaren suggested. "You find a captain, tell him your da was a fisherman, that you learned the trade from him. They see what you can do, you'll move up smart enough."

Shaking his head, Jherek said, "I can't lie. I didn't lie to you, and I'm not going to lie to someone else. There'll be another captain out there willing to take a chance on me."

Finaren hesitated for a moment, then shook his head sorrowfully. "I hope you're right, lad, but you're going to be looking for one few and far between. You're no stripling boy now. You're almost a man full-grown. Most men will look on you as more of a threat. Valkur's brass buttons, Jherek, how many of them sahuagin did you kill in that battle? How many pirates and other creatures before that?"

"I couldn't tell you."

"Look for a way to get rid of that tattoo," the captain advised. "That'd be the first thing to work on."

"Madame litaar couldn't get rid of it."

"Meaning no disrespect whatsoever, lad, but your ma don't know everything that's under the sun. Mayhap you'll find a mage in one of them countries around the Inner Sea who'll know just what to do."

Jherek nodded, not knowing what he was going to do. The only true home he'd ever known was here in Velen. Leaving it while on a ship, knowing he was going to return, was one thing. Moving was an entirely different matter.

"I do know one thing, though, lad," Finaren stated. "Traveling around and hiring mages, that's going to cost some money."

Jherek nodded. That was another problem that he was going to have to think on.

"There," Finaren said with a small smile, "I can help." He took a leather bag from under his blouse and pushed it across the table.

Jherek hefted it, surprised at how heavy it was.

"Go on," Finaren said, "take a look."

Untying the strings, Jherek peered in surprised to see a collection of gold pieces and gems. He looked up at the captain. "What's this? If this is charity-"

Finaren held up an authoritative hand and interrupted, "Hold your water, lad. Charitable I may be, foolish I am not. What you've got there you've rightly earned. When I hire a man onto my ship, I set aside a bit of the wages I pay him that he don't know about. Bonuses, you might call them, for every voyage we take together. I know men living on ships don't always put back for them rainy days. So when I got a man laid up by illness or injury, or I got a man don't come back to his family, I can see to it he don't go hungry or homeless. Or unburied if it comes to that. That there's the coin I've been putting aside for you, and I managed to scrape together a little over two thousand gold pieces worth of gems to pay for them healing potions you got from the Amnians. Unless you'd rather have the draughts and try to sell them yourself."

"No. I know you've been generous." Jherek also recalled that the ship didn't have any healing potions aboard, and for every one he tried to sell, he'd be forced to think about Yeill again. He didn't want that either.

"You might be able to double your money on those potions," Finaren pointed out.

"One of the things you always taught me was to take the money up front if I wasn't sure where I'd be the next day."

"Good lad," the old captain congratulated. "I kept the crew aboard Butterfly till just before I came to meet you here, but they'll be telling tales up and down the docks tonight. You might warn your ma that some angry people could show up at her house."

For the first time, the cold realization that he might not have a choice about staying in Velen struck Jherek. The town had been Madame litaar's home for dozens of years. She'd buried a husband there, and other family as well. Malorrie had been buried there himself. Neither of them might be willing to move.

Finaren read the look on his face. "You hadn't thought about that, had you, lad? About the fact that once this is out in this town, you might be forced to move?"

"No," Jherek replied honestly. He looked out the dirty window and tried to imagine living anywhere else. He couldn't. The only life he'd known before Velen was his father's ship.

"Even if someone here don't try to kill you," Finaren warned, "didn't you say Falkane might come looking if he knew where you were?"

The possibility seemed small now, but Jherek remembered how much it had frightened him when he was younger. "I don't know."

"Get out of town, lad," Finaren said. "That's my advice. For what it's worth."

"I'll think about it." The stubborn streak that had helped Jherek survive the hardships he'd experienced up to now surfaced.

Finaren started to argue. Jherek could tell by the way the captain's lips jerked and his eyes narrow. Then the older man shrugged. "As you think, lad." He stoppered his bottle. "As for me, I've got to go so you can be going."

Jherek nodded, not wanting the man to walk away from him, but knowing there was no way to hold him.

"You put that purse away and keep it safe," Finaren ordered as he rose from his chair.

"Thank you."

"Know something else, Jherek: if there's ever a time I can be of help to you-in any way-you don't hesitate to come to me. Right now, I've done all I can."

"I know."

"Come here, lad, that I can say a proper good-bye."

Jherek stood, hugging the old man back as fiercely as Finaren hugged him. He didn't know if it was Finaren's tight hold or his throat swelling with emotion that shut off his wind.

Finaren cuffed him on the back of the head and stepped back. Tears gleamed in the old man's eyes and ran down unashamedly into the rough crags of his weathered face. "I want you to know something else, lad," he said in a thick, hoarse voice. "If me wee boy that Umber-lee had taken from me so long ago had turned out to be anything like the kind of man you are, there wouldn't have been a prouder da in all of Faerun."

"Thank you," Jherek said with difficulty. His heart felt like lead in his chest, stillborn and heavy. He hadn't even known Finaren had lost a son or even been married. He watched helplessly as the captain grabbed his bottle from the table and turned around. He walked away, his legs still bent from all the days at sea.

Jherek tucked the purse inside his shirt and left a couple silvers on the table for the serving girl. He wiped his face and walked outside. The smell of the sea hit him more strongly when he walked outside. Full dark had descended on Velen while he'd been waiting in the tavern. Several ships occupied the small port, their rigging beating rhythmically against the masts in the strong breeze.

His steps turned automatically toward the alleys he'd often traveled to the docks from Madame litaar's house. When he'd worked for Shipwright Makim, he'd spent most of his evenings watching the ships put out to sea. When he'd gone to Madame litaar's to live after being hired to repair her roof, he'd often stolen away when she wasn't looking to spend time at the docks. When he'd put together enough money to buy a small skiff, he'd sailed it every evening and every free day he had.

He paused on a familiar promontory on a hillock in back of Hient's Glass Shop. The breeze cut across from the east, coming in over the Drake Gate that lead overland out of the city. He thought about traveling through the forest, knowing he might not be safe on any ship. He disliked the idea immediately. The sea was his life. It had birthed him and held an attraction he couldn't shake.

A woman's scream cut through the night from the east. He turned at once, tracking the scream as the echoes died around him. With all the noise coming from the docks, he doubted anyone else heard. He moved through the alleys, unable to ignore the plea for help, dreading the place he was sure it was taking him to.