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ORIGINAL DRAFT - PRE-EDITING

This story was written as part of the 2016 National Novel Writing Month. It was written without edits between 12:01am, November 1st and 11:59pm, November 30th.

This story was written by David J Rust, aka Sylvan Scott, and is in a pre-edited state. The characters, situations, and concepts herein are property of the author and may not be distributed or altered without express, written permission.

Skylands: the Scorpion Spear, Part One - "Saeldrin", Chapter Three: The Seekers

©2016 Sylvan Scott

"At its heart, it is a ritual of luck and fortune. While used by many it is, indeed, Urdon--derros of balance--who has gifted knowledge of these ways, to mortalkind." Cyan coiled her lower two-thirds around herself and drew her body close to the ground. Marek did not expect any dramatic results but that seemed the nature of invoking a god's power. In the wolfen's experience, it was the arcanists and those who tapped great power by their own, mortal will and imagination who produced visual effects. True to expectation, the jessai'id derroni intoned several words of blessing under her breath and raised her claw-tipped hands to the sky as if in supplication. All Marek heard was "Urdon bless this undertaking."

Then it was over.

"The point is, Lady, you don't put your trust in luck. The very nature of it is unpredictability."

"Then perhaps the name for the meditative rite should be changed," she said. She uncoiled her body and briefly loomed over her guide's grey-furred form. "What matters are the results."

"If centuries of scholars and derroni have called it 'luck', I think the name is probably apt. Those results you want: do you know what form they'll take?"

She shook her head. "Maybe not, but they will manifest themselves in our favor."

"Hopefully," Marek said.

"Hopefully," she sighed. "Don't you have any work to do?"

She smiled but Marek wondered if jessai'id knew just how disturbing it was to see something with a cross between a snake's and a human's face smile at them. The jessai'id may have had a reputation for being wise and spiritual but he suspected they knew, all-too-well, how their size and appearance influenced others.

"Not until you magically conjure a ship for your mad plan," he said.

"I would ask you not to impugn the mental status of Lady Cyan." Bennet was just returning from alerting the others in their band to the change in plans. "While coarseness may be expected of raiders and some guides, I would think you would show more respect in the presence of the gods."

"The derros aren't gods," Marek replied. "And before you say 'they're the next best thing', it doesn't matter. I've met plenty of people who invoke divine power who aren't worth the shit on a pig's foot."

"He's right, you know, Bennet." The lady folded her arms across her flat chest, in a gesture of acquiescence. Jessai'id were hard to read but Cyan had apparently spent time learning how to interact with those not of her people. "And I know my own worth."

The bookish thaylene rolled his eyes. "I'm not defending you," he said. "You don't need it. But, rather, am reminding our illustrious guide that cohesion is of utmost importance when heading towards uncertainty and danger."

"And how do you know there will be danger if our bearings are 'towards uncertainty'?" Cyan asked.

The two-foot-tall mouse cocked his head. "Are you ... joking with me, Lady?"

She laughed. "No, no... Just attempting to lighten the mood." She turned to Marek, her smile still in place on her blunt muzzle. "I appreciate your concerns and assure you I will take every opportunity to protect us. This journey is a rare one. It is uncommon for a derroni's divine sliver to speak out and give direct guidance."

Marek nodded, still unconvinced. From the other side of their small camp, coming around the bend from the narrow game trail that led down to a tree-lined ridge, he spied the two gryphons Cyan had brought as her bodyguards. For feathered fliers with a reputation for strength, this pair certainly seemed to prefer walking over flying.

"One moment, Lady," he said.

Before she or Bennet could respond, the wolfen jogged to meet Keerg and Reita half-way.

Despite his general practice of not forging personal positions with those who hired him as a guide in the wilderness, Marek liked the two. He liked most gryphons. As a people, they were as widespread as humans across the surface of Talvali's many, floating islands. But there was a commonality to them, a degree of practicality, that appealed to him.

What he had to say to them, at least in his mind, was nothing but practical.

"Reita; Keerg... A moment, please?"

The two were talking--engaged in animated debate, more like--and refused to pause at Marek's approach. Their voices, to wolfen ears, were sharp and serrated and ranged both higher and lower than was normal or comfortable.

"Heresy, true, but an interesting idea," Reita said.

The siblings often had arguments of political and religious natures. Marek had wondered if they really were related. But, if not, he would be at a loss to explain why they stayed together. Neither of their inclinations ran towards the sex of the other.

"Interesting does not make it true. And where's the proof?" Keerg demanded. His feathers, a riot of orange and russet and brown, ruffled at his shoulders as he beat his wings a few inches at a time.

"You ask for proof when dealing with the gods?"

"I have proof of their power," Keerg said. "We travel with such proof."

"We travel with Lady Cyan and Bennet."

"And Lady Cyan is...?"

"Her powers come from a source; that's undeniable. But the nature of that source: can you prove it truly is a derros called Urdon?" Reita crossed her arms, idly tapping her long talons against her opposite forearm.

"Keerg: let it rest. We have to talk about--"

Keerg did not let it rest. "I think the Lady's word is good," he said. His voice was laden with contempt. "And, besides: you would take the word of a newcomer over Lady Cyan?"

"Not inherently," Reita admitted. "All I said was, if this newcomer said what you say he did, it is an interesting idea worthy of exploration."

"God is dead? You seriously believe that to be interesting?"

"I don't know, do I? I wasn't there to hear it in context."

"Gods cannot die! That's what separates them from mortals!"

"Tell me: have you ever tried to kill a god?" Reita asked.

"Okay, that's enough!" Marek pushed between the two gryphons. He was a head shorter than both and each looked down, surprised, at his sudden appearance.

"Marek? What are you doing here? Aren't we leaving?"

"Bennet told us--"

Marek interrupted Reita. "That's what I've come to talk to you about. I think Lady Cyan is going to put us all in danger. Mostly, herself. You two are tasked with keeping her safe, right? Well, talk her out of this insanity!"

Keerg narrowed his golden eyes and glared at Marek. Gryphons had some musculature in their cheeks but it was not typically used for expressions. As with most of the different Talvali races, each had to make an effort to share the body language nuances and expressions that others held. From what Marek could tell, Keerg was looking annoyed.

His shaggy, leonine coat of his torso, rose and fell with deep breaths. His tufted tail swished, cat-like, making Marek feel intense scrutiny.

"You think this mission is madness?"

"I think that her decision to try and find a ship to fly through a stormwall larger than any in recorded history is mad: yes!"

"You doubt my brother's piloting skills?" Reita asked.

"What? That's not what I'm saying at all!"

Keerg snapped his right hand forward and crooked a talon under Marek's muzzle. Gryphons did not have the same manual dexterity than most other races had, but they were the strongest of fliers: even moreso than the pegasi and dragonkin.

"When you talk to a gryphon, the conversation is about a gryphon," Keerg said. "Insofar as my part of my Lady's plans is concerned, no: I do not think it mad. I have navigated ships through many storms."

"But a dragon storm?" Marek insisted. He didn't back down, despite the sharp threat at his throat.

"I see no dragons," Reita observed.

"No other kind of storm conjures fragments of other worlds," Marek said. "And the presence of storm dragons is beside the point. The winds up there are fiercer than any I've ever seen. Do you think you could pierce them? In a ship we don't yet have, nonetheless?"

Keerg focused on bringing the muscles around the base of his thick, black beak, down in an emulation of a frown.

"I ... am ... not ... weak."

"And we are not in the habit of questioning our divinely-touched employer's strategies," Reita added.

Keerg took his talon away from Marek and whirled on Reita. "Oh, so now you admit the gods exist!"

"I never said otherwise," she replied.

The two resumed their walk towards Lady Cyan and the camp as Marek shook his head and decided that madness must run in this group.

"I should have known this was futile," he muttered, aloud. "If a book-smart scholar like Bennet is onboard with this, he's either fanatically devoted or just as insane as the rest."

He turned and followed the gryphons back to the rest.

By the time they arrived, they were--once more--debating whether or not gods could die.

Worse, Lady Cyan apparently had found the conversation interesting and was engaging with the two. Marek looked about and started thinking about how much of their money he would have to refund to end his employment, now.

"Remind me," the derroni was saying, "to tell you both the parable of Nephillus and Tithannoc in the great beyond. The question of death and gods is not a new one."

Keerg snorted. It sounded like a cross between a raptor's cry and the rumble of a lion. "All this over a passing remark from a Twin Ruins newcomer. I don't see the importance of it. I was merely saying how it had gotten him arrested and stoned."

Marek bristled. "I'm sure he deserved it," he said, sarcastically.

"Thank you," Keerg said, missing the intonation.

Marek walked towards his tent. One way or another, he was going to strike it. No amount of coin was worth the madness of these people.

The sudden appearance of shadow followed by hull, sails, ropes, and rudder took them all by surprise. Marek dove to the ground, covering his head. Keerg took to the air, unfurling his vast wings and keeping law as he flew to one side. Bennet and Reita followed Marek's example with the latter diving to pull the former close, sheltering the small thaylene with her body. Only Cyan seemed unperturbed.

The vessel had come at them from the far side of a stand of trees. It banked up, carried by winds conjured by way of its white, elemental air crystals embedded in its hull. Then, its starboard, below-decks sail snagging on the central pole of Cyan's pavilion tent, it slowed and stopped. Bobbing in the air like a wayward balloon, the fluyt they had spotted, earlier, had come to them.

The ship's yellow sails were tattered and its hull was scorched and rent by winds and debris. But it was whole.

Keerg reacted without being told and arced back to pierce the shell of winds around the floating ship to land before its navigator's wheel. Reita leaped up and pierced the windshell to start pulling down the under-hull masts, unbolting them from their extended positions, and working as hard as she could to fold them back against the hull. Once retracted, she shouted for Keerg to set the ship down. Marek was still finding his feet when the winds began to abate and the sixty-foot-long fluyt landed in the midst of their camp.

Keerg spread his wings for assist as he leaped off the damaged vessel to land next to Marek. "It would seem we have a ship."

Marek felt his hackles rise at the snide comment. He did not respond, though, and turned to Cyan. "Lady, it would seem Urdon has delivered."

She bowed, graciously. "The difficulty, now, will be to determine our next course of action. You brought up good points. The ship is damaged; especially the sails." She turned to her bodyguards. "Keerg - Reita: can you pilot it? Could you get us through the stormwall?"

Keerg was fiercely optimistic and answered with an undeniable "certainly" before his sister could respond.

Reita did not seem as certain. "The stormwalls are still strong," she said, squinting into the distance. "In my experience we will have an easier time getting through as they weaken towards their end."

Bennet nodded. "It's already lasted longer than most dragon storms," he observed, "but the winds have been slowing over the past day."

Reita nodded. "Perhaps in another two days, then, we would have greater chance."

Cyan frowned and tapped her lower jaw with one claw tip, in thought. "Could we use that time to repair the sails?"

"We could repair them much faster," Bennet answered, "if I apply an arcane sigil or two to the task. But the wooden hull; it's damaged enough that the ship may lose air crystals if it tries to fly through the wind wall. Its integrity is compromised. It could even fall apart if it hits significant turbulence." He shrugged. "Although, I am not an expert in skyship construction."

"I am," Keerg said. "And in the time we have, Reita and I could shore up parts of the hull to make it sky-worthy again."

Marek walked along the ship's expanse. Three times as long as a house, it was enormous. Smaller than a galleon, he--nonetheless--was concerned they had sufficient crew to steer it. The faded, golden paint near the stern identified the ship as the Summer Dawn. Snapped and frayed ropes hung over the rail as tattered sails snapped and fluttered in the natural breezes that skimmed their hilltop camp.

He had been on such ships--many, actually--but was hardly an expert in their operation. What he knew, though, might be enough to help if he had solid direction from an able-bodied and experienced captain. And, grudgingly, he was starting to suspect Keerg and Reita actually knew more than he'd thought they did.

"Are we certain that two days is enough?" he asked.

"It will have to be," Cyan replied. "Perhaps less if the winds of that storm start to abate faster."

He nodded. Then, turning back to face them, he acquiesced to the once-mad plan. "Very well, then. I will continue to serve as your guide and scout." He addressed the thaylene scribe, directly. "You say you can fix the sails? That should be our first priority. I'll inspect the rudder. My first journey with raiders put me aft and I know something of how they need to be maintained. Keerg and Reita: you go over every inch of this ship and make lists of what repairs must be made to make it sky-worthy."

Keerg crossed his arms. "And why are we taking orders from you?"

Cyan admonished her bodyguard. "Because he is the one we hired for the task." She smiled at Marek. "Please: continue."

"Well, that's about it," he said. "Let's get to work. Fast."

Cyan looked pleased at his abrupt ardor but Marek knew if she could read his thoughts, she would find him motivated more by his fear that she would push them to act before they were ready. She had already said that they were only waiting for the winds to abate. If that were sooner than two days...

He had to do his best to make certain that the Summer Dawn was ready to accomplish the impossible.

Bennet proved more useful than either Kreeg or Reita in getting the fluyt ready. At its core, a skyship was akin to a watercraft but with arcane power altering its relationship to the air and altering the air into something that could hold it aloft. Bennet was a student and skilled scholar with the arcane field known as the arcana majiere. While he had served in temples and libraries throughout his life, he had come into contact with elemental crystals to a degree where practical skill in tapping their power was not found in greater abundance, elsewhere. Few had his skill and understanding. And while, unlike arcanists, he could not directly tap the power to flow through his mind, he had learned a great amount about how to bind those energies into sympathetic letters, symbols, characters, and runes.

While most airships were bound to their captains, Bennet knew about to carefully inspect those that powered this particular ship and re-bind them to a wider range of people. Beyond making it more responsive to both of the gryphons, by nightfall he had arranged a series of glowing runes on the main deck that would allow a navigator standing within to serve as makeshift captain should anything go awry.

"In short, if the worst should manifest, we have a greater range of individuals able to take charge and perhaps save our lives."

"Or run us aground and smash us into the firmament," Marek thought, in response. But, still, he appreciated it. If he were being honest, he would have told both gryphons that his own experience probably exceeded theirs. But that would require him explaining the circumstances of that and, frankly, they hadn't paid enough for his life story. Aloud, though, he thanked Bennet and asked the thaylene if he could do anything to speed up repairs.

"I do own an earth crystal," the small man mused. "While best used on minerals and rock, their energies may be tapped for just about any enchantment. And there are schools of thought that state hewn and cured wood has more in common with ore and earth than..."

Marek stopped listening and just smiled with a nod before returning to help plane some wood from available cut-down trees to make replacement planks. He owned and carried enough basic tools such that, if he were ever caught in a wilderness storm, he could improvise most things he would need for an extended stay. While for most of his life he hadn't given thought to such preparedness, his life had taken rather abrupt turns that made it necessary.

By the time he had created enough patches to mend parts of the ship, he found that Bennet had done him one better by working with Cyan to restore limited life to existing patches of wood and grown the creases together. A side-effect was a phalanx of roots sprouting out of the ship's base, into the ground, to pull nutrients into the reanimated wood to fix the holes and gaps.

"Can you do that to the sails?" he asked the thaylene.

Bennet smiled. "I confess, the same approach would be rather vile."

Cyan agreed. "The sails are a well-hammered and dyed leather. To attempt their restoration would be a violation of--"

Marek waved off her reply. "You'd be restoring life to some dead cow's skin."

"Or animating the sails as one would with an undead servant," Bennet added.

"Can you stitch them together?" he asked, trying to push the image from his mind.

"Keerg is doing that with the rudder fin, now," Bennet said. "But once I have been able to rest a bit, I think I can speed that up, too."

"Not by giving us an undead ship, I trust."

"No. By using simple mending runes used on vellum scrolls."

Marek nodded. "Good." Looking from his stack of planks to the ship, he frowned. "Is there anything I can actually do?"

"You've done quite a bit, honestly," Cyan said.

"I fail to see how. Everything I have attempted has been done ten-times over by Bennet, here."

Bennet waved off the compliment and walked towards the gangplank. He, and the others, had apparently taken their sleeping mats below decks. "I'm just an arcane scribe, sir. Nothing more."

"Additionally," Cyan said, "you have kept me and everyone else honest."

"How?"

She smiled. "In truth," she said in a low voice, "I was not sure we could succeed. But I had to try. I needed to attempt it. And that need, that desire, has always been strong in me. Stronger, perhaps, than my own sense of self-preservation.

"My derros is Urdon, after all..."

"Derros of balance, right? Right hand to the goddess of knowledge and wisdom?"

"Rhydia. Yes." She sighed and motioned for him to follow her as she made her way towards her bundle of packs and belongings still on the ground by the ship. "I am, perhaps, the most imbalanced person in all of Talvali." She sounded sad; regretful. "And perhaps that is why Urdon chose me to host a fragment of his holy fire. Perhaps balance needs impetuousness, now and then: a drive to take a stand. Too often, I think, striking a balance takes a long time when the needs of mortal folk demand something more swift."

He nodded. "I get that, but how does that make my dissention valuable?"

"I often act too quickly. Even if it is important to attempt change with all due alacrity, I cannot always be sure that what I invoke is truly a balanced idea. You brought up valuable counter-arguments and problems with my poorly-thought-out scheme."

"Why didn't you just admit it, then, and talk through the problems?"

She hoisted two packs onto her back, one over each shoulder. They were enormous and looked to weigh many dozens of pounds, each. At times, it was easy to forget that the jessai'id--for all their grace and spiritual elegance--were almost all muscle. Incredibly strong and durable, about the only things that hindered them was their cold-blooded nature and lack of legs in a world made up of beings who had them.

"I am born a Lady. That title the others use; it is hereditary. I didn't earn it."

It was hard to tell on her serpentine face but Marek thought he saw a twinge of shame.

"You're keeping up appearances?" he asked.

She raised her brow ridge, curiously. "An odd colloquialism," she commented. "Is that an arven expression, I've not heard before?"

Of three type of wolfen in the world, the arven--grey-furred, tall, and strong--were the most numerous. Marek nodded. "My grandmother used it to infer people who worked to present one face to the world, the face others expected, rather than just be themselves."

"She sounds wise," the derroni said.

Marek nodded. "I miss her very much."

He followed as she slowly slithered her way up the gangplank and onboard. She resumed once they had gone down an interior ramp into the hold. There, Cyan had already set up her sleeping mat and hung some iron lamps to heat the area. It was a bit on the warm side for Marek's taste but he knew she needed the warmth since her body produced little on its own and had trouble regulating it.

"I act the way others expect me to, yes. It fosters unity. I am, after all, a noble and godly jessai'id." She spread her hands as she put emphasis on 'noble'. "Others listen to me when I speak even if, honestly, much of the time I have no idea if what I'm doing will actually help anything or anyone."

"What about the derros you have in your head?" Marek asked.

It was rare to meet a derroni but rarer for one to open up as Cyan had. Marek, in all his travels and for all his guided trips in the wilderness portions of many cloudlands and lightlands, had never heard of anyone actively learning so much from such a person.

"It speaks to me but ... in my own voice."

"Your own voice? In your head?" This admission made Marek feel a bit uneasy.

"It's not like that. I mean I know it's not just voices in my mind; imaginary ideas. It's really something apart from me. But I'm under no compulsion to do what it says. And, anyways, often it just guides me." She looked momentarily perplexed. "It's as if it is trying to speak to me but it doesn't know how to simplify the ideas sufficiently for me to understand. So I get these impulses and, rarely, words and phrases." She shrugged. "I suppose if ever I offended Urdon, it would withdraw its fragment from me."

Marek nodded.

She was potentially insane. She had power, he couldn't deny that, but the guidance to use it was coming from voices and little else. Even the command that led her to pack up everything and take a trip to the central wilderness of the Erryth cloudland: that had been based upon whispers in the back of her mind.

Worse, she admitted to listening to them, impulsively. She also had admitted that Marek's own, very simple opposition, was something she would not have thought of, herself.

He kept all this buried along with the doubts these revelations raised, and smiled.

"So, if I were to tell you that we shouldn't take off and try getting through those storm walls until they had faded some more?"

"Nonsense! As soon as the ship is prepared will be the time to depart," she said. "And with Bennet's great knowledge, that may be as early as tomorrow!"

He gritted his jaw for a moment before forcing himself to sound calm. "Of course."

Marek walked outside past Keerg's sleeping form, coiled almost cat-like with his wings partially covering his head. He was sleeping soundly while his sister worked at stitching the last of the rudder fans. She nodded to him as he passed. He nodded in return.

Night was normally full of stars.

Holes in the vast curtain of night, was how most people described them. "One for each world that sacrificed a piece of itself to construct the firmament of Talvali." He didn't know what to really believe in that regard. It was what everyone thought.

Except for him.

He, and perhaps others like him, had a different theology. It was one that would doubtless get him called "heretic" were it widely-known. But that was less distressing to him than the lack of stars in the nighttime sky, tonight. The massive storm above stretched far.

Normally, the cloudlands were wreathed in the aqueous vapor. Fogs were thick in most of the floating islands at this level above the world, below. But the air between the cloudland layer and the lightland layer was so thin that, on clear nights, the stars shone crisp and clear and in the billions. On nights like that, he could sit and look up and wonder if, somewhere above, was a hole in that curtain of night leading back to his home.

He hadn't always been one of the arven wolfen. But, in a flash of transformative breath, one of the storm dragons had changed that forever.

And, now, he dared not tell the truth.

Most saw newcomers as savages, dragged into the world by the inscrutable reasoning of the storm dragons. Newcomers had poisonous ideas and alien beliefs. But people didn't understand that much of that changed in the wake of storm dragon breath. The experience was transformative: body, mind, and soul. Memories stayed intact but knowledge, shifted. It was said only the twenty races of Talvali had souls and, certainly, whatever a "soul" was, he had one, now. Maybe he always had and it took a world where magic was overt and quite painfully real to prove it to him. Certainly, back on his original home, there was nothing of the sort short of charlatanism. So, here, he had his proof.

But the people of this world still feared newcomers.

And for himself, one who had come through with the fabled lightland "The Twin Ruins" over a dozen years ago with some ten thousand others, it was a label he was eager to hide. And, indeed, he had spent years obfuscating it.

But now he was trapped with a group of potential fanatics following a woman who just described herself as "hearing voices".

If he abandoned them in the wilderness, word would spread. He would never be hired as a guide, again. The life he'd built for himself would be lost.

Not that it was the best life, but it was a life nonetheless.

And now, more than ever, he wanted to look up at the night stars, pick one, and imagine he would be looking at his grandmother who would say, "Everything will be alright." Forty years old and he still wanted to hear that.

Pathetic.

He couldn't run. He couldn't push through. All he could do was ride the wave and try to keep himself alive. And, according to his grandfather, that was no way for a real man to live.

Luckily, grandmother had divorced him and gotten an order from the police to keep him away.

But that was another world and another life, ago.

Marek sat down, his back against his stack of boards, and stared at the flashes of lightning in the giant, brewing storm overhead.

How many people were up there? Lightlands, newly torn chunks of other worlds, were rarely more than fifteen miles across. Cloudlands, about half dozen miles below, were about ten times broader. With each level, the air got thicker, the light got dimmer, and the islands got larger.

Lightlands above cloudlands above daylands above dusklands above shadowlands. And then came the surface. The surface was known as the darklands. He had never travelled there but had met airship raiders who had. It sounded like hell and, honestly, many reported that beneath the surface of the darklands were fissures that delved into an actual, tangible hell of demons and devils.

It was rare that a lightland manifested in a dragon storm with many people on it. It seemed random: the chunks that came from different worlds didn't center on places of settlement. Many came from trackless deserts or, more frequently, vast swaths of ocean that would drain away or be transformed into water crystals by the storm dragons.

His own island, though, had been populated.

What did that mean for the titanic land above him now? What people lived there? What were they losing as they emerged from the clouds and wind?

And why did he want to go there and find out?

Perhaps that was the part of all this that scared him most. A non-inconsequential part of him wanted to go there and offer his help to the newcomers. But there were no dragons this time. No storm dragon breath was there to transform them into things that made sense on Talvali. No storm dragons to change languages into something spoken, here. Or maybe the people, there, would just find the knowledge on their own. He had no idea. Worse, what if no one was there? What if it was just a vast, empty chunk of rock floating in the sky?

Such a result would seem ... empty.

Marek didn't remember falling asleep but the next thing he knew, he was being softly nudged to consciousness by Bennet.

"Good morning, guide. Keerg has made rice with winter berries and tsuri nuts."

Marek smiled, thinly. "Thanks, Bennet." As the mouse-like thaylene bowed, the wolfen felt a surge of camaraderie seemingly from nowhere. "Say, Bennet," he began. The thaylene turned, whiskers twitching. "Thank you."

"For what, might I ask?" the arcane scribe inquired.

"For just being ...well... the most sane person I've met in a long while." He may have been a fanatical follower, but something about the little man spoke volumes of someone who trafficked in reason and science. Even if he was a form of magician.

Bennet cocked his head, tail twitching with a sign Marek had learned was confusion. "I take that as a compliment, Marek. Thank you. Although I'm not sure what brought it up."

Marek shrugged. "I'm not sure, either, but I'll say it again: thank you for being a rock."

The thaylene chuckled. "Using a dwarven aphorism? You are a strange wolfen, my good man. Very strange, indeed."

"More than you know," he concurred.

Keerg was a surprisingly good cook and breakfast was warming. Normally, Marek cooked for those he took into the wilderness. But, today, they had let him sleep. Reita was tired but her eyes were as fierce and bright as any eagle's. And, while many of the animal-like races of Talvali found it insulting to be compared to actual animals, the gryphons seemed to appreciate being likened to eagles and lions.

Best of all, above them, the sky had started to clear overnight. The storm walls were still churning around the impossibly huge new island but it was clear things were breaking up. More ships could be seen, here and there in the distances, but no one was yet diving in to see what could be scavenged or "raided".

By the time they were done eating, everything was ready. The last of their belongings were stowed on the restored fluyt. The leather sails had been fully repaired and now sported glowing runes which Bennet described as "far stronger and more flexible than before". Even Marek's belongings had been brought onboard and stowed. Finally, someone had painted over the words "Summer Dawn" and rechristened the vessel, The Seeker.

It seemed appropriate.

"Shall we go?" Cyan asked him.

Sure thing, crazy-lady, he thought.

Aloud, he said, "Without a doubt."