"Good. We'll cover more rooms that way. We'll meet in five minutes. I think that's all we have … J'role. I'm sorry. But I think we must leave soon.”
They broke apart. Alone now, J'role felt the thief magic come warm and strong upon him.
It gave him a valuable sense of balance, allowing him to move quickly through the tilted corridors without falling into the water that now lapped at his thighs. The magic focused him, made him need no one and nothing but himself. He would survive. He knew that. He would endure.
"Why don't you let your father die?" the creature asked. "You know that's what you want."
J'role did not answer, because, in some way he could not understand, he knew that the creature was right.
He checked cabin after cabin, pushing aside bits of wood that floated in the flooding, blood stained waters. Time was running out, but he could not give up.
Passing another corridor that tilted up steeply, he heard the sound of crying. The corridor tilted up, and a voice so like his father's seemed to emanate from somewhere along it.
J'role began to climb quickly up the inclined floor. After climbing another fifteen feet of corridor, J'role found that the water had risen enough to cut off the passage he had traveled. The ship was sinking faster.
Finally he came to the room where his father wept. He looked inside and saw Bevarden resting at the bottom of the room, where the floor met the ceiling. A thick cord was tied around his hands and feet, and he stared down. "What is the world? What is the world?"
he kept asking over and over through his tears.
J'role slid down the floor, and his father looked up, shocked as J'role appeared beside him. Then the fear turned to joy. "My son. My son." But even this emotion evaporated, replaced by deep-lined sadness across Bevarden's thin, tired face.
His father's sudden shifts of emotion filled J'role with a kind of anguished frustration, but he set about untying his father's bonds. His fingers moved nimbly and quickly. Though the sailors had created an extraordinary puzzle, J'role's thoughts cut quickly through the maze of cord. As soon as Bevarden's hands were freed, he grabbed J'role and held him close.
J'role flailed his arms and forced his father away. The man's touch sickened him. His father looked at him, stunned and hurt. "J'role … My J'role …" — Then, as if perceiving some deep knowledge from the look in J'role's eyes, he said, "I'm sorry." He looked away. "I'm sorry. I didn't … Your mother and I …" He gasped for air.
J'role stood, grabbed his father, and helped him up. He handed one end of the rope to his father and then climbed with the other end up to the door. After looping the rope around the doorknob, he slammed the door against the wall, trying to get his father's attention.
But Bevarden simply stared at the rope, his jaw moving without words.
Down the passageway the water was rising faster and faster. J'role slammed the door against the wall again and again. Finally Bevarden looked up at him. "You …," Bevarden began. "The elves are wrong, J'role. All wrong. When we emerged, the world was supposed to be wonderful. Perfect. I had heard … things.'
Confusion swirled in J’role’s thoughts. He knew now what had happened. His mother had betrayed him to the creature, the white shadow in their home in the kaer. Why had his father always been so upset? It was his mother! Why did his father turn to drinking?
Why had his father become so weak?
Energized with furious impatience, he slid back down to the bottom of the room and tied the rope around his father's waist. Then he scrambled back up, and began dragging Bevarden toward the door.
"I loved … I loved … your mother very … You see, J'role. I loved … And she wanted …
She thought … She had to … You see …"
J'role only half heard the words, for he was putting all his effort into dragging his father up the tilted floor. The memory the creature in his thoughts had given him came to him now, and he felt his mother's fingers on his chest, casting the ritual that allowed the Horror into his head.
"I'm sorry…”
The apology! Always the apology! Over and over again the apology! All these years he'd heard his father apologizing. J'role never really knowing what for.
That, J'role realized as he tugged on the rope, was the true legacy his father had given him. Always apologizing. J’role had spent his whole life up until he met Garlthik thinking he had to apologize to everybody. Only now did he realize he was not whole, but he did not have to spend his life apologizing for it.
"Please …," his father begged, but for what J'role did not now.
J'role wanted to scream, but held his tongue. Instead the anger inside him seized his muscles, and he slammed his foot into his father's face. Bevarden cried out with terrible pain, the blood smearing his features. The ship creaked and tipped backward.
"Now, didn't that feel good?” asked the creature.
It did not. J’role felt a terrible shame. He wanted to cry. But he choked back the impulse.
Why had he hurt his father like that? Bevarden began to cry once more. With two more heaves he had his father up to the door frame. He stared at his father, and saw empty and pathetic eyes.
Why had everything been like this?
Fearful of what he might do next, J'role began to climb up the floor, knowing he would have to keep moving to higher ground until they finally made it out the other side of the ship.
"Let him die," the creature suggested.
"Quiet!" J'role thought fiercely.
The thief magic tugged at his muscles. The ship was sinking faster now. With his father slowing him down, he might not make it out. Should he…?
He looked down toward the door. His father looked up at him, longing deep in his eyes, longing for love from his son.
"I just … So much wanted to make you happy …"
Then why weren't you stronger! J’role thought fiercely.
Bevarden reached his hand up toward J'role. "I'm sorry.”
J'role ignored his father, tried to beat down his fury. He tied his end of the rope around his waist and began climbing up the passage. Soon the rope went taut, and he looked back and saw his father had not yet begun to climb up after him. He simply sat in the door frame, staring at the opposite wall. J'role snapped the rope. His father turned languidly and looked at J'role. He smiled. The rising water lapped at Bevarden's feet.
With the fear of drowning growing in him, J'role braced himself in a doorway and began to drag his father up the passage. Bevarden offered no help. When J'role had dragged his father a dozen or so feet, the rope, now wet from the rising water, slid through his hands.
The rope burned deep into his palms, and Bevarden splashed into the water below. The pull of the rope tugged at J'role's waist and he slid down into the water after his father.
But his father grabbed him from behind and the two of them went deep into the water once more.
The two of them splashed wildly in the water for a moment, Bevarden's cries for help filling J'role's ears like a nightmare. Finally He found the floor and began to climb out.
Again they twisted and turned, splashing with panic in the water, the cord that bound them wrapping so tightly around them that soon both had lost the free motion of their arms and legs. J'role could not keep afloat, and he found himself dragged under the water, his throat choking with water. He came up for air, and his father grabbed him, apologizing and begging for help.
His father's weight carried J'role under the water once more, and this time J'role became dizzy from the lack of air. His feet found the floor of the corridor, and he pushed up, forcing his father back and beaching the surface of the water.
His father grabbed him again. J'role freed his right arm and pushed his father away.
Bevarden cried out in despair, and clutched at J'role's face, as if he only wanted to hold his son in a tender embrace for a moment.