As the sun barely slipped behind the tops of the highest buildings in the city, casting long shadows over the docks and the harbor, Breddan declared the Silverknife ready to sail, and the sailors gave a mighty cheer. Janik looked around the deck at the crew—his first look at all the sailors together. They were a motley bunch—a number of hobgoblins and goblins, a big bugbear covered with matted fur and missing one eye, an assortment of bedraggled humans, a halfling who looked like a recent immigrant from the Talenta Plains, and a surly half-orc with no tongue. Breddan was not a former pirate, but clearly, many of his sailors could not make the same claim.
Despite the strange blend of crewmen, they worked well together. On Breddan’s orders, they moved into action as if they shared a common mind and a single will. They were boisterous, to be sure, yelling more than was necessary and chanting songs in Goblin that Janik felt sure would make Dania blush—and it was rarely easy to make Dania blush. In fact, Dania seemed caught up in the spirit of the crew and contributed some soldiers’ marching songs in Common that made the goblins screech with laughter. Auftane joined in the high spirits as well, and bellowed as loud as the human crew-members in Dania’s call-and-response chants. Janik was too tired to do more than grin as Dania clambered in the rigging like she’d been born on a ship. Mathas sat beside him, clearly worn out from his day’s activities.
“Another departure,” Janik said with a sigh. “You ever feel like you’re always leaving places and never really arriving anywhere?”
“What do you mean?” Mathas said. “Every journey has its end. We set sail from Sharn and landed in Stormreach. Was that not an arrival?”
“But as soon as we arrived in Stormreach, we starting getting ready to leave. When we get to Mel-Aqat, we’ll turn around and leave. We’ll come back to Stormreach, go back to Sharn. And then what?”
“Then what, indeed?”
“I don’t know,” Janik said. “I just wish that I could arrive somewhere and feel like I had come home.”
Mathas nodded, smiling as he looked at Dania. Janik turned and watched Dania laughing with Breddan in the bow, saw Auftane slapping the bugbear’s back, and he felt the quiet presence of Mathas beside him. In a way, it wasn’t the departure or the travel he minded so much, and the presence of his friends was a comfort not too different from the feeling of home. But something was missing—someone was missing, and he could almost feel the brush of her hair against his face.
They sailed through the night, the sailors continuing with repairs to ensure Silverknife stayed afloat. Breddan dismissed his passengers from further work, urging them to sleep, but Janik and Dania both stayed up, pitching in where they could. Despite his insistence that elves don’t sleep, Mathas was exhausted from the day’s work and retired to his cabin shortly after they set sail. Auftane said he wanted to help but needed his sleep so his magic could be fresh for the next day.
Their course took them east for at least a week, then north around the tip of the Skyfall Peninsula—the northernmost stretch of the vast continent of Xen’drik, the area most familiar to explorers and adventurers. As the sun rose over the sea ahead, Janik stood at the bow, watching the sky brighten and then the light dancing on the sea like gold leaf. He went below to his bunk just as Auftane was getting up.
The days flew by. Janik enjoyed the night shift at first, when the ship was quiet and the sailors spoke little. He often found himself working beside the mute half-orc, sharing each other’s silence. But he woke up earlier in the afternoon each day, talked with his friends at the evening meal, and by the end of the second week was back to a normal schedule of work and sleep. Silverknife was just beginning to bend her course southward—she was approaching the Phoenix Basin.
Janik found a new reason to like the daylight hours. Sailors had long told stories of the Phoenix Basin, and the lack of exploration in its waters suggested truth in the tales. Legends said that when the civilization of the giants fell, the entire continent of Xen’drik was torn asunder by the powerful magic the giants had wielded against invading nightmare demons, the quori. Both Shargon’s Teeth and the Phoenix Basin were said to have been solid land that sank beneath the waves in that cataclysm. Indeed, as the ship glided over the still waters of the Basin, Janik occasionally caught glimpses of towering structures deep beneath the surface. The water was not deep and some of the ruins might have gouged holes in Silverknife’s hull, but the water was so clear that the crew easily steered clear of these hazards.
Janik spent as much time as Breddan would allow—for the hobgoblin remained a driving taskmaster as the journey continued—standing on the prow and gazing down into the deeps.
“It’s good to be doing this again,” he said one day to Mathas, when the elf joined him at the prow.
“To be out of the city and back at work?” Mathas asked.
“Yes. I’ve been so … inactive these past few years. I mean, I kept busy and told myself I was doing important work. But writing scholarly articles isn’t who I am, you know?”
“I know.”
“It took a lot to even consider going back to Mel-Aqat. But I’m starting to think about doing more once we’re done with this. Sea of Fire, what would it be like to explore these ruins here?”
“Wet,” Mathas observed.
“Yes. That’s why, as far as I know, nobody has done more than draw sketchy maps of these ruins from above. What must be down there? What secrets of the giants are just waiting for the right team to discover? What treasures there must be!”
“I would think the sea devils of the straits have plundered the ruins already.”
“Maybe you’re right. Well, maybe I’ll ask the sahuagin what they know about this area.”
“You always did enjoy an insurmountable challenge, Janik.”
“I always surmount them, don’t I?”
“Up until about three years ago.”
Janik ran his fingers through his hair. “What are you saying? That I let Maija defeat me?”
“Hmm.” Mathas chose his words carefully. “I’m saying that it’s good to see you facing those challenges again, and looking forward to new ones.”
“I haven’t given up on Maija.”
“You did already, Janik. For three years you sat in your office at Morgrave University assuming that she was lost to you. Maybe you should accept defeat where she is concerned without giving up on life altogether. You need to get past her.”
“I will, Mathas. One way or another, when we leave Mel-Aqat this time, that challenge will be over.”
“You expect to see her there?”
“Of course not. It’s just—well, I keep thinking about what the Keeper of the Silver Flame said, and what you said about it.”
“What was that?”
“She told me that what I had lost was still in Mel-Aqat, remember? And you said that it seemed I had lost a great deal. I know I didn’t take that well at the time, and I was saying that all the things I had lost weren’t to be found in Mel-Aqat. But I might have been wrong.”
“You? Impossible. I have a great deal of respect for your scholarly work, Janik.” Mathas was smirking.
“And I have a great deal of respect for your wisdom and insight, Mathas. Thank you for telling me the truth about myself, even when I wouldn’t listen to you.”