The flames of the night fire danced, one might say cheerfully, if one considered this hell hole of a swamp a sunny location.  The constant dampness, insects, and mud were really only better than the desert, a location no sane sailor should ever be stranded.   His companions, friends really, had taken to treating him as an invalid, as if he was not capable of standing watch.  HIM!  He’d been standing one watch or another at sea for over twenty years, more if you counted the unofficial watches he stood with his mother.

Four days ago they’d left that damn temple.  Four days after his willingness to trust the word of those who served the fates had yet again betrayed him.  Four days since Valerus had been ensnared in that lousy savant’s grasping trap.  The logic that every good ship’s captain carried somewhere within whispered within him that at least she wasn’t dead, and yet, it proved incapable of allowing the surcease of pain and rage that buffeted him.

While he appreciated the sentiment that allowed him to ponder the magical world in meditation, it only made the nights pass longer, because sleep provided no relief, and little sleep occurred as he tossed in worry.  Tonight, Arbenya sat quietly on the perimeter, watching for an unknown enemy, or perhaps all too many known ones.  As much as he hated to admit it, she had grown quite accomplished under the tutelage of Ephrim and Toradoth.

Thinking of the elder Greythorn brother brought yet again the stray thought of what possibly the Lady Hopeward could have done to trigger the attention of the Illustrae Cadre.  He had been shocked to encounter her outside the temple of luck.  Strange, but ultimately unimportant to the matter at hand, even if he had passed the message via coded letter to Valerus.  Which triggered more astonishment that a trio of the cadre had unerringly flown to El Kevrat in search of her.  How did they even know where Kevrat was?  Two years ago he wouldn’t have given two half coins to gain information about some forgotten isolated city in the interior of the continent.

Two years ago he had been ready to take command of his own ship when he’d been selected by Valerus for this mission of trade in the desert.  It seemed idiocy to his mind, the Windstars being ordered to understand such a perilous mission so far from the sea.  He would never turn her down, regardless of the request.  He’d always wanted to return to the Tempest, he would have gladly given up a Captaincy to service under her again.  He’d never on her ship as more than a cabin boy, when he was very young, on a trip along all the small ports of the coast, all the way to the Dhar-as Fanajan.

It had been an easy decision then to accompany her on the mission, the magic of the icy fish and the expected wealth from such magical food transportation a less than glamorous event, but a necessary one as ordered by the Marquise, or the Sultan as these desert dwelling barbarians called her.    He didn’t really have a choice if she commanded it anyway, but she had asked, and he loved her all the more for it. Or had.

They hadn’t gotten what they expected, not even close.  Attacked by raiders, the caravan had apparently been betrayed not long out of Dhar-as Khadarastra.  The slave collars had been terrifying, the march through the desert one of despair.  Had it eventually led to the benefits of the friends that slept around this campfire, certainly, and potentially great wealth, more trade, and even political alliances with unique nobility.  Perhaps even closer ties with the dwarven peoples if they were successful in eliminating the onyx drought.

And yet, he trembled.  He twisted the ring on his finger in a nervous habit.  Adar had brought it to him three days ago, and they were still a day out of El Kevark.  He shouldn’t have it, not for centuries, if ever.  He was not the heir, Kaloryien was.  Back home, safe in her studies of the moon.  He wanted to explore, to return to a ship, to build trade, to one day discover the fate of his grandfather, who disappeared to the north nearly a hundred years before he was even born.  The sea called to him.

Instead, in less than a year, if he didn’t destroy yet another Incarnation, Valerus would be dead.  All would be ruined, a ship broken upon the infamous rocks of the Cartuean Reefs.

Why had she ever agreed to such a request from Marquise?  The Windstar’s were of the sea, born of the sea more often that not, just as he and his sister had been.  Not made to traipse through the fiery dunes of this forsaken sand, or swamp, or citys.

Why were they here, aground without her wisdom and guidance?

Inside, storms raged, reflected only in the lightning strikes crackling among the grey clouds of his eyes.  The flames of the campfire no longer appeared as dancers, instead fire danced upon a storm tossed sea, ships burning merrily as they sank between the waves of his anger.