Left alone with Merrin, Kendath mentally squirmed in the uncomfortable silence that seemed to draw longer, each second a lifetime. In his peripheral vision he examined her features, the delicate chin, the slight flush in her cheeks. The wind whipped her hair into her face like a coppery veil. That image etched itself in his mind, almost as though... Why? Why did he abruptly have this feeling that he'd never see her again? He halfway raised a hand as if to touch her cheek, before regaining control and dropping it onto her shoulder, which he offered a pat that felt more perfunctory than genuine.

Hoping to the gods he didn't worship that his visage gave away nothing - no tenderness, none of the unfounded wistfulness suddenly flooding his chest - he murmured, "Don't forget what I said." Not meeting her eyes, he brushed past her.

His feet were taking him across the deck without conscious consent, and it was only when he found himself leaning against the prow did he register his surroundings again. Bracing himself against the lull of the ship rocking into the waves, he thrust his face into the cold teeth of the wind and let his stare fix on the lapis lazuli horizon, flecked with gold. Like his gaze, his mind was determinedly fixed to plan ahead. Reclaiming the Crystal would be no simple feat. Firstly he couldn't know for certain where it was, though he could venture a few conjectures. The Meiltha high officials would want to flaunt their latest victory, and what better way to rub it in the Renegades' faces than to perch the Cloud Crystal on some shining pedestal in Vryngard? And then there was the matter of Reckless Plan Number One, to which Garthag's reaction could be anywhere from cold annoyance to inciting a massacre.

No, Garthag wouldn't dare. Merrin wouldn't stand for it, and she was, after all, Chosen of the Gods...

The thought, carrying more acerbity than Kendath anticipated, blew in with all the force of the salty gusts buffeting his face. Merrin. Chosen of the Gods. Handed a quest by the divine and tasked to complete it at all cost. Knowing it was too late, he didn't try to stop his thoughts from hurtling down that road, didn't try to stop the world from crumbling around his ears. It seemed eons ago that he'd stood in the common room of a blithe inn and felt himself at peace, as if his path were finally laid out before him. He'd spun on clouds that night. And it'd taken a cynical mage, whose words held more truth than he could ever admit, to bring his feet crashing back to earth.

Cruel jest.

Something broke the water, and he looked in time to catch a dorsal fin slipping beneath the waves. Another splash, and a glistening streak of silver burst up, shooting through the air without a care in the world. Not fish, he reflected, but dolphin - and the knowledge came with an inordinate amount of pride. It catapulted him twenty years back in time, when he'd stood in a flagstone square and watched a similar streamlined creature dance within a crystalline fountain....

"Is that a fish, father?"

A small smile. "Not fish, Ken. Dolphin."

"Dol-phin." He formed the word slowly, turning it over in his mouth like a piece of fruit, exotic and sweet. He watched the beautiful creature circle its crystal prison, its flippers grazing the fountain's translucent walls. A laugh teased his throat, but a glance upwards at his father forbade it. Amrinev was standing rigid - the only one in the appreciative audience not admiring the Lord of Dey'tarn's exotic pet. The boy was confused. "What's wrong, then? The Lord feeds her. Shouldn't she be happy? Shouldn't you be happy?"

"If I put you in a cage and fed you scraps of bread everyday, Ken, would you be happy?"

His face fell, yet he couldn't help but sneak another glance at the dolphin like quicksilver. Not happy? Watching her nose collide with the wall for the umpteenth time, he began to understand. "No, I suppose not."

Amrinev's calm voice bore an undercurrent of disdain. "You see. The Lord does not treat his pet badly, but he doesn't realize that one being's euphoria is another being's misery. The dolphin deserves more. The open sea, perhaps. But it is too late. She is dependent and now needs what only the Lord can provide. If she is set free now, she may die."

And Kendath, seeing for the first time the strange clumsiness in what he'd initially taken as her dance of utmost grace, had never heard anything sadder in his life.

Again they echoed in his mind - Merrin's words... I need you.... Kendath clenched his hands. No! Was he mad? Merrin was not a dolphin! And yet... He recalled her eyes, wide and filled with tears, gazing beseechingly up at his. She was clutching him like a lifeline. For the first time he wondered - what was he doing to her? All this time he'd thought she was the one in control, but could she be as enslaved to him as he was to her? Was this the weakness Garthag had spoken of?

No. No! It didn't have to lead to this. They had to watch their actions, was all. But he knew, much as he loathed it, that simply watching their actions was not enough. He'd seen it all. He'd seen too much. For this, lives had been slaughtered, entire families shattered. And the Meiltha were not the only ones who knew how to utilize this... this advantage. Garthag, for one. The Shadowers, if they found out. What an easy, perfect way to dispatch their greatest enemy! This sentiment - love - which the gods so conspicuously championed!

And not only that. Other reasons, other terrible conclusions surfaced to mind. Deserves more... Mistress Merrin Dragonrider, Chosen of the Gods. Kendath, the disgraced shadow of a high priest's dreams. He spread his callused hands before him and imagined blood running in rivulets through his fingers - blood and dirt. The pristine walls of Vryngard were teeming with handsome nobles and gallant knights. When Merrin returned, she would be a heroine. Her suitors would wait in lines. She would forget Kendath - the fool who'd tagged along on her quest to save dragonkind, the peasant who had not a drop of nobility in his veins. And even if she didn't, even if she wanted him still, he had nothing to offer her - no wealth, no inheritance, no status. She was floundering in his pretty crystalline fountain, when she could have the seas, the entire ocean....

There was no denying it anymore. Kendath closed his eyes against the biting wind and brought his clenched fists down on the railing. Slowly, one by one, he burned the images. Merrin clinging to him on that cold mountaintop, Merrin twirling with him around the bonfire, Merrin throwing herself into his arms... He should have known better from the start, from the first time he'd asked her to dance. He should have listened to the common sense that'd never failed him before, instead of letting his heart lead him off on some simpleton's dream. To think that he had been so foolish to hope...

Did it hurt? Yes, dear gods, it hurt - just like he knew it'd hurt, before plunging headlong into waters too deep for him to grope the surface. In his life he'd been impaled by lightning, stabbed in the chest, tortured until his life hung by a thread - but nothing, nothing, compared to the agony he felt now.

This time, the lump clogging his throat was one he couldn't swallow. Something warm and wet escaped his closed eye and slid down his cheek, though it took a while to realize what it was. Without thinking, he brushed it away before it could be dried by the wind. Sentimental weakling, came Demon's voice, a mere memory. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered now. He couldn't turn back, wouldn't let himself turn back. The decision was his, and he knew it to be right.

It was over.

_________________

Merrin half-turned to look after him, one hand extended as if to stop him going. All that floated back on the salty wind were words.

Don't forget what I said. Merrin pressed her hands - which were cold - to her cheeks. They felt as though they should be flaming crimson. Remembering what he had said was troubling enough in itself, but to remember what she had said, what she had done, was enough to make Merrin abandon any lingering notion of going after him entirely. In fact, she sought the tiny cabin amidships that was hers with some alacrity.

Once there, she dropped onto the bunk and battled with a pressing urge to bury her face - which still felt scarlet - in the pillow. Unbidden and entirely unwanted, a vision of herself floated before her eyes. Gods, what had she done?

Panicked. Aye, she had. All of it, everything she'd let fly from her lips unrecalled, was true - but what must he think? Merrin was no flirtatious butterfly of a girl, to make herself so blatantly transparent. But the thought of losing him, even now, terrified her to such an extent that she almost considered going to find Kendath, pleading with him again that he was all she had left to cling to.

And that too was true. In the thoughts and images that swam before her eyes in the darkness before sleep overtook her every night, Kendath was the one star in the midnight blackness of everything Merrin feared. All the guilt, worry, terror that loomed large like some monstrous specter of night, all of it could fade into unimportance when Merrin dwelled on the briefest instance of their eyes meeting or the tingle that raced down her fingertips at the touch of their hands.

And she had thought he might return it, too, a lovely fantasy that could destroy the most paralyzing fear in the briefest instant. Could she have been wrong? Merrin couldn't think how - surely the treasured moments when she'd felt his arms around her or been held spellbound by a moment of silence to just look up into his eyes had to mean something? She still relived them, still closed her eyes in the darkness to remember how even the most piercing hurt vanished when she could bury her head against his chest and know that in an uncertain world, this was her surety. Could she be the only one? Even Merrin, who forever second-guessed and doubted herself, didn't think that could be possible.

If he did love her, then? Was he only waiting for her to speak? Merrin could only let that thought lift her for the shortest moment before she suddenly could have been drowning in a sea of guilt. What did she think she was doing?! With so much responsibility resting on her shoulders, the word 'selfish' did not begin to describe Merrin's preoccupation with a glance or a touch when she should be thinking of all that the gods needed her to do.

Not thinking of Kendath, however, could be compared to attempting to stand in the way of a breaking wave. She might as well not think at all rather than try to avoid the relentless pounding of his presence on her thoughts.

But it couldn't go on, not any longer. With so much depending on her, how could Merrin think so much of such things without admitting herself selfish and obviously unfit to serve the gods in the capacity she did?

But it was that or put Kendath out of her mind, which was impossible.

So Merrin must resolve it. She had to tell him, once and for all, that she was irretrievably in love - and let him choose yes or no. The decision made her press her face into the pillow so hard she couldn't breathe, but Merrin ruthlessly brought the thought to completion. If he said yes, she could stop this agonizing unsurety and finally know, finally be certain that he loved her as much as she did him. Fighting the Lich would be nothing if she knew he stood by her side.

But if he said no...

She would still know. Know that she was alone after all, know that he cared only enough to see the quest through, and not beyond. Even then, it would torment her thoughts, but at the very least she could be sure. Bleakly, despairingly sure.

She would say it, then. Admit she loved him and accept what followed. Tonight, she would do it.

Merrin charged blindly out of the cabin, already numb with sickening apprehension, and noticed absolutely nothing of where her feet took her until a small hand tugging at her own became insistent enough that Merrin jerked herself out of a numb void and looked down at a reproachful upturned face.

"Papa says it's going to storm," piped the girl, aged likely seven or eight summers, and fixed Merrin with a pair of chastising sea-green eyes. "You'll get wet, you will."

She would not be dissuaded from dragging Merrin belowdecks again. Merrin herself could summon enough emotion to be a little amused, but nonetheless she did protest when the girl - Kiril, she introduced herself as - turned and said imperiously, "Help me put the dolls to bed. Kavyn never will."

And with no amount of persuasion would she be swayed. Merrin did attempt to stop mentally assigning each doll a name, though, when she discovered they were all variations of Kendath, and managed to make her worry fade enough to laugh at Kiril's impish antics.

Tonight would keep, but the knowledge didn't make Merrin's stomach unknot.

_________________

Streaks of indigo and navy in the eastern skies found Kendath sitting at the prow, his back against the rail, where he hadn't budged since morning if he could help it. Once a mariner had asked to help with the rigging, and another time to hold the plank steady for caulking a crack in the cargohold. He'd finished the tasks and returned right to this spot to stand - sometimes sit - but all the while his stare boring a hole in whatever currently seizing its attention. Right now it was the base of the foremast, and it surprised him that it hadn't begun steaming yet.

He recalled a boy skipping out sometime around noon to offer him lunch and inform him that he was hiding from his sister and can he please sit with Kendath because he looked like he was hiding too? "She wants me to put Lyla to bed again. Papa said I don't have to, so why should I?" Kavyn finished his bread crust and scattered crumbs on the deck. He looked up at Kendath, as though expecting an answer.

Kendath shrugged. A long silence during which the boy's indignation only seemed to wax, before he coughed and attempted, "The man standing by the quarterdeck - yes, the one in white... he looks lonely - why don't you go talk to him?"

Kavyn spared a brief glance at Garthag. His face lit up. "Hey, can I have your bread?" Without waiting for reply, he seized the assassin's untouched loaf, crumbled it in his palms, and offered it to the seagulls perched above them. An ephemeral second later - "Pigeon's foot, it's Kiril! Quick, hide me!" He ducked behind a stack of crates and proceeded to be quite adept at compacting himself into the smallest space possible.

Kendath snorted and leaned back again... until he caught sight of who Kiril was dragging by the hand. Breath catching in his throat, he ducked behind the crates too.

He didn't see Merrin again after that, though perhaps that could be explained by his forced tunnel vision, not wanting to see her or acknowledge her even if he did. He drifted in a kind of limbo, where human necessity - thought, hunger, time - left him behind to dance on the opposite shore, just beyond his reach. Not thinking, not feeling, not conscious of the wind biting his face or the darkening skies... or the ship lurching... "Storm's coming," he imagined he heard one mariner remark to another. They sauntered right by him without noticing. He might as well have been a statue, carved in stone.

It was easier this way.

_________________

"Shouldn't you go find your mama?" Merrin suggested gently for the umpteenth time. Kiril bounced away from where she was leaning over a miniature wooden cradle to grin up at her impishly. "No no, we di'nt find Kavyn! He's hiding. He always does."

Upon persuading a wearily protesting Merrin to follow her, Kiril darted out into the narrow corridor. By the time Merrin had caught up, the little girl was being sharply scolded by a sharp-eyed, trim woman who was perhaps ten years older than Merrin. "It is bedtime, Kiril," she said firmly, and directed an apologetic glance at Merrin. "You haven't been bothering the young lady, I hope?"

Merrin had to force the smile that usually came to her so readily. "No," she reassured the obviously disapproving mother. "No, Kiril's been teaching me about her dolls."

Wriggling out of her mother's grasp, little Kiril came to tug at Merrin hand and tell her a solemn goodnight. "Kavyn never came," she lamented, turning back to her mother. "He's hiding."

"Yes, well..."

Merrin watched them out of sight down the hall and cast a glance up into the square of darkening sky she could see. She should find Kendath.

Venturing abovedecks proved to be somewhat treacherous, what with mounting winds combined with the increasing pitch and roll of the ship. Merrin carefully worked her way along one railing, the wind cutting effortlessly through her cloak and whipping her hair wildly into her face. She'd seen him a few times that day, in Kiril's hunting for her elusive brother, but he always seemed to be staring out to sea and had never once looked in her direction. Merrin refused to believe it was because o their earlier discussion.

She must tell him. There was no two ways about it, and the knot in her stomach needed no tightening by useless worrying over what he might think, or what he was already thinking.

A wave crashed against the railing, sending Merrin a little off-balance, and the nearest sailor turned to doff his cap. "Best get below, miss. There's to be a storm a-comin', and no mistake."

Merrin nodded as if she were just about to do so, and scanned the deck. Where was he? She had to squint fiercely against the sun, low on the horizon, but there was a figure leaning against the railing further up by the ship's raised prow. It took concentration to walk there without losing her balance, welcome concentration that Merrin clung to in order to deny hr mounting and nearly paralyzing anxiety. He looked...rigid, more than was usual, and Merrin hesitated before saying uncertainly, "Kendath?"

_________________

The familiar voice jerked Kendath from his limbo as surely as the rumble of thunder that rolled in from the horizon. Feigning ignorance, he kept his stare fixed on the roiling seas for a moment longer. Self-control. Perfect deadpan. I've mastered that art at least - why can I not summon it now?

Suddenly he couldn't help but look back at her, wanting to drink her in with eyes alone. Lightning split the clouds looming in the distance. It flashed once, twice, illuminating Merrin's face for one fleeting millisecond, then leaving him blinded afterwards. He wished he could see her expression, wished he could see... what? He inwardly sneered at himself. What was it that he wanted to see? Compassion? Love? Strange how the one thing he wanted most was that which he'd so firmly decided he couldn't have. Stranger still, it'd taken exactly that revelation to want it even more.

He felt his sneer sneaking in to curl his lip, which he hastily remedied by setting in an austere line. The deck pitched again, forcing him to grab onto the railing. The wind picked up, stinging his eyes and sending his cloak flapping against him. Captain Greydon was shouting something, to which the mariners were frenetically scattering all over the deck. No one was paying the three passengers aboard any heed now.

Kendath raised his voice to be heard. "We should get belowdecks." Feet braced against the lurching deck, he beckoned Merrin and started back towards the hatch, where the captain was helping his wife down the ladder.

_________________

Merrin gathered her cloak around her with on hand, holding it closed against her where it strained to flap wildly against the wind. Kendath was barely more than a darker figure against falling darkness when she hurried across the deck after him, feeling strangely afraid that she'd lose him in the darkness - and why was his expression so stonily rigid, as though he were holding it there?

The first burst of cold rain punctuated her stab of fear that what she'd told him had been a terrible mistake, and she was about to make a worse one. The ship pitched suddenly, listing hard against a white-capped breaker, and Merrin felt herself flung hard against the railing she'd previously had only a guiding hand on. Shaken by the encounter, the eyeful of rolling black waves, she scrambled toward the hatch.

Once down in candlelit dimness, Merrin lurched once and then got hold of a supporting beam to hook her elbow around and avoid the unpredictable tossing of the ship. "Where - where were you, today?" she ventured to ask of a somewhat wet Kendath once he too was below, a little bemused by his expression - or rather, the lack thereof.

_________________

Kendath was the last one to descend. After exchanging a glance with Captain Greydon, he braced himself on the ladder and pulled against the wind. The hatch slammed down with an echoing bang, plunging the hold below into darkness lit only by a dimly flickering candle and a few oil lamps. The silence was punctuated by a soprano voice trilling out an inquiry and another voice - a woman's - answer back in suave tones. The captain's family was down here as well.

He reached one of the bottom rungs and leaped down into a narrow hall lined with doors to what he guessed were the sailors' quarters. A sturdier door at the hallway's end must open to the cargohold. The ship thrashed again, and the lamps hanging from the ceiling sent flickering light dancing on the walls. Mistress Greydon seized the candle and snuffed it out before it could tip over. Likewise, Kendath rescued one lamp from the ceiling and blew the rest of them out. The last thing they needed was for the ship to take fire.

Albatross lurched once more. On the hall's other end, a small circle of firelight illuminated Mistress Greydon, who was gently rocking all three children in her arms. Kendath held the lamp at elbow level, slightly away from his dripping self. It cast half of Merrin's face in shadow and glistened on rivulets of water rolling down her cheeks - rivulets of water that resembled... He shook the image away. It could all too easily become true, should he ever tell her in words or even lack of words...

He shook that away too. He leaned against the wall for support, feeling the unpolished wood bite into the back of his arm, and shrugged. "Where do you think I was?"

_________________

Kiril - Merrin could identify the voice - was asking in small worried tones if Papa was all right and why all the lamps had gone out. The two others, an older boy she identified as Kavyn and a littler girl who was huddled in her mother's arms with her thumb in her mouth, were silent. Merrin swallowed a sense of apprehension that had nothing to do with Kendath.

Every sailor available was above, trying to battle out the intensifying storm, so all was very quiet but for Kiril's anxious inquiries. Only the six of them - and Garthag somewhere, Merrin assumed - seemed to remain below. She drew in a breath that wasn't quite as steady as it could have been, and realized with a jolt that Kendath was looking at her. He'd said something, but she couldn't recall what, or even what she'd asked.

You're going crazy. Do it, just do it. Merrin almost fell with the next pitch of the ship and took a former grip on the beam - but upon looking up, even the most hesitant words died on her lips.

Something was wrong - wasn't it? He hadn't been so stonily inexpressive, even for Kendath, in a long time. It didn't help that the sight brought back extremely unwelcome memories. A behemoth of a black dragon - Demon - and leaving Wyvern, and - Merrin thrust the memories away. Soon she'd see a monster in every dark corner if she started doing that. She moistened her lips, realizing they were dry, and found that it was going to be quite difficult to break the awkward silence that stretched between them. How had it been so comfortable before...?

"I - need to talk to you," she finally said, voice rather shrill with the strain of it.

_________________

At loss for a response, Kendath let his jaw hang slack for a fraction of a second. Talk to him? What, then, was she doing now? But no, it sounded like she was asking his permission, of all the mad notions in the world.... This realization was instantly ensued by his mind plunging into overdrive, bounding through a thousand possibilities, each more sneer-worthy than the last. She was tense - it was obviously something important, and for some reason he doubted it had anything of relevance to their quest - what could this mean...?

Absolutely not. Forget it. Whatever she wanted to say, it had nothing whatsoever to do with -

The ship pitched again, really pitched. As in, the entire vessel groaning and lurching sideways and sending Kendath hurtling into the opposite wall, his feet doing a miniature dance step to avoid collision with Merrin. Bang. The hatch fell open in a spray of rain and thunder. The oil lamp clattered to the floor and extinguished, plunging the hold into darkness punctuated only by a sporadic blossom of lightning.

Albatross didn't right itself again. It remained tilted on its side, the tempest pelting its hull, groaning with the strain. Somewhere on the ship, wood splintered and cracked. Another gale slammed the hatch shut again. Belowdecks, petrified silence hung in the air. The hallway was still tilted, with its occupants propped against the almost horizontal wall. For a while, the only sounds were the muted pounding of rain and Kendath's own hammering heart, which he felt certain rivaled the thunder itself.

A scream shattered the silence. Then another. And another. And above it all, a feral roar... inhuman... of hunger...

Mistress Greydon's children began shrieking. Not too confident he could stomach his own sick feeling either, Kendath didn't even bother telling them to shut up. It didn't matter. The screams outside were waxing louder, more strangled, carrying over the storm. "Merrin," he forced out, that being the only two syllables he could manage. His knuckles were white over the hilt of his falchion. His glance darted from her to the hatch and back again.

_________________

Merrin scrambled upright - or some semblance of upright - to grope in the darkness. Something small and frightened stumbled into her, making distressed noises, and Merrin clasped a trembling Kiril to her. "It's all right, shhh, it's fine," she gasped, arms tightening around the little girl and squeezing almost convulsively when the next scream split the air. The words were for herself as much as for shaking Kiril.

She heard her name and turned, eyes as wide as Kendath's. A child's wail, that of the littlest Greydon, was the next thing to pierce the night. For a moment their eyes locked and she stared, almost finding what little solace their was in his gaze. Kiril shuddered against her and Merrin turned to find Mistress Greydon clutching her youngest to her chest, face white. Kavyn scrambled halfway up to the hatch, pushing at it and scrabbling with his fingers. It opened partway and stopped, but the crack was enough to send a stream of water down to drench Kavyn and swirl around Merrin's boots.

Another feral roar echoed in the din of screams and boots pounding, of water smashing on the hull of the disabled Albatross and thunder rolling across the sky. Merrin sprang to catch at Kavyn just as his mother did, but there was an awful grind of timber on rock and more water was coming in to slosh around her feet. "We have to get up," she gasped, her words punctuated by another, clearer roar. Merrin froze.

Images assaulted her - Wyvern with his teeth bared, emerald eyes flaming and fire likewise kindling within him. Wyvern spraying flame across a night sky. Wyvern turning to scream an urge for her to run - no!

Merrin didn't know what snapped her out of paralyzed recollection, but next thing she knew Kiril was staring up at her and there was a crunch of something heavy splintering wood. The ship creaked and groaned, tipping further, and banishing images of a silver dragon she flew to the blocked hatchway, working her fingers into the crack and straining. It moved what seemed an inch and stopped again.

_________________

The hatch exploded.

Kendath turned away, shutting his eyes, as water and wood splinters spewed forth and pelted his back. The entire hold groaned as planking shifted, cracking, falling... All he saw were flashes of Merrin running forward, throwing herself against the hatch, crying out as it exploded in a blossom of smashed planks. And afterwards, a glimpse of something more terrible... something gleaming and spiked like a dragon's fang...

It hit him from behind, sending him fully into the air and slamming into the hallway's ceiling with a sickening crack. Spots of black and scarlet blurring his vision, he slid back onto the floor. Through his half-closed eyes, he caught something razor sharp sliced through the haze of rain and darkness, headed straight for his chest -

He didn't think, didn't even register his reaction. Somehow a trickle of clarity penetrated the pain. A dagger snapped up, slashing across in a great sweep - no, it didn't penetrate, glancing off a spike - the spiked tail was moving, preparing to lash out again - With a snarl rivaling the monster's in ferocity, he reversed his stroke and plunged. This time, the blade bit into an all too familiar surface. Armored. Scaled. Blood spurted, and he couldn't see for the crimson obscuring his vision, but he dimly heard another roar as the tail flipped back over itself... it was leaving....

Lightning split the darkness. Scales flashed. It was lunging again. His hand shot for his weapons belt, his fingers groping for another dagger. In his subconsciousness he knew that he was too slow - he wouldn't make it.

His world went black.

_________________

Merrin had time enough to register an explosion of water and splinters of broken timber, but little else before something lashed out and she hit hard wood painfully. Now the entire sky was lit, almost half the deck having been suddenly torn away, and in an infinitesimal flash of lightning time seemed to stop.

Something great and armored silver-blue reared up, roaring, and Merrin's scream was drowned out in the already deafening noise. This was a dragon - but nothing like the ones she knew. She grasped frantically at splintered wood, screeching Kendath's name, but more ship crumbled around her and Merrin threw her arms over her head as it groaned and the foremast twisted against a black sky to thunder down nearly on top of her. Merrin hardly dared to breathe.

With a last rending groan of wood on rock, the wreckage of Albatross slipped sideways, tilting. Merrin caught wildly at anything available but the ship was slipping into a black sea. She cried out once more, unable to see or hear anything besides thunder cracking and that behemoth dragon roaring. Water drenched her and Merrin slid down the tilting remnants of deck to crash roughly into unforgiving rock. In the last instants before black sky swallowed everything she felt a small still body and threw herself over it, every breath a prayer to the gods before breath itself became something she only remembered in a dream of blinding light and crushing darkness.

_________________

Running. Running hard and fast. From who or what, he couldn't say. He knew his lungs were burning, though he couldn't feel it. He was stumbling too, reeling from pain lancing through his chest, though he couldn't feel that either. It was as though he drifted in limbo again, but without the deck rolling beneath his feet. There was nothing beneath his feet. Nothing. And suddenly he was falling, falling, and on his lips was a name - a name that choked his throat -

"Merrin!" It left his mouth and echoed back to him, strangled, desperate. Panting for breath, Kendath bolted upright or tried to, before that same pain stabbed through his chest and forced him back down. He coughed and tasted liquid iron on his tongue. Choking it back down, he flattened himself on the cold surface and coerced himself to breathe long and deeply. Ah, curse it. The pain again, every time his lungs filled. Come out of it... focus...

The gentle lapping of water against stone. His own labored breathing. Was he alone? It sounded so, though he couldn't sit to verify this - the pain would only intensify. Instead he opened his eyes and contented himself with staring at the reflected waves on the smooth stone ceiling. A cavern with access to the sea - he could smell salty air and hear more vehement breakers crashing on a distant shore. He cautiously extended his arm, dropping his hand in the lapping water and letting it flow through his fingers. He lay on a ledge in... a sea cave?

None of this made any sense. He could recall with stunning clarity the sea dragon, those deadly spikes filling his vision. The screams... the screams of dying men... Why, then, was he not dead like the rest of them? Unless this was the leviathan's lair, and it was to return to feast on him later.... Feast on him! Gods, oh gods, where was Merrin? He couldn't be the sole survivor. It would only make sense for there to be more!

Call out, or not to call out... Not knowing what existed deeper within the grotto, he didn't want to wake a slumbering sea dragon. Ludicrous - he had nothing to lose. He wet his lips and took a wincing breath. His voice came out hoarse, though it echoed around the cavern a threefold louder than he would have preferred. "Merrin...?"

_________________

There was a sound of water sloshing, which echoed on the slick stone walls of the damp cave to sound somewhat ominous. It was broken by a splash and a muffled whimper.

A bedraggled, wet, but miraculously barely harmed Kiril came staggering around the nearest corner, nearly waist-deep in murky water, sea-green eyes as large as saucers and welling with tears. "Merr'n won't wake up - I want mama," she said, lips trembling. "Do you know where she is?"

The stone ledge that Kendath had woken on ran further down into the cave, where the light grew dim and a musty smell lingered. The water there was stagnant, sitting in various pools clogged with limp seaweed. Merrin lay still on the rough protrusion of stone, past Kendath's sight, and the first thing she found herself aware of was that her fingertips were wet. The rest of her, too, seemed to be uniformly wet through, and if she could have summoned the energy she would have shivered in the chill.

She ached all over and her head pounded horribly and Merrin hardly dared open her eyes to discover what perilous situation lay just beyond her closed eyelids. A high, trembling voice echoed into her consciousness and Merrin started awake, blinking and attempting shakily to raise herself on one elbow. Her voice wouldn't work the first time she tried. Swallowing, she gulped a breath and managed to ask hoarsely, "Kiril?"

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The sound of sloshing water, and Kendath clapped a hand on his falchion. He craned his head to the side, caught a glimpse of a dirty tunic -

Whatever he expected, it wasn't this.

The girl was no more than ten years old, with straggly brown hair framing her delicate, familiar features. She twisted the hem of her tunic in her small fingers and looked on the verge of tears. If Kendath hadn't been caught aphasic with surprise, he would have snapped that he had no idea where Mistress Greydon was and that he was in no mood for entertaining her, but something about her made the caustic retort die on his tongue. "I... don't know," he said, though he knew with almost perfect certainty. But how did one tell an innocent girl that her mother was dead?

"Merrin?" he reiterated, weak with relief. "Where's Merrin? Are there any others?"

Kiril pointed a trembling finger farther down the grotto, and this time tears did stream down her blood-streaked face, collecting at gashes on her cheeks and chin. She didn't seem to feel the sting, only sobbed harder. "Sh-she won't wake up! An-and then th-there's Uncle Pumfoot, and he w-won't wake up either! I think he's h-hurt..."

A fresh wave of agony greeted Kendath trying to sit up. He paused, panting for breath, and clutched the slick walls to no avail. He finally managed to stand by bracing his hands on the stone beneath him. Breathing easier upright, he swiped his sleeve across the blood at the corner of his mouth. "Show me."

Kiril bobbed her head and jumped back into the water to slosh deeper into the cavern. She led him around the corner, where the ground ascended and water lapped at a wealth of clinging algae. Just beyong the dim light lay two prone figures, one of them beginning to stir. Kendath waded through the knee-deep water towards a stone protrusion, where he thought he'd spotted a gleam of coppery hair.

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Merrin groggily raised herself on both elbows, saw the dim, dank interior of the cave swim before her eyes and multiply itself into six or seven blurry, overlapping images - and leaned over to empty her stomach onto the seaweed-draped floor. She marveled weakly over the amount of seawater she seemed to have swallowed, and then found all her mental energy occupied by resisting to urge to black out.

The blurry images resolved themselves into a pair of figures she thought she knew. Merrin nearly did black out, this time in violent relief. If her stomach hadn't been heaving threateningly, and she had been able to make out more than blurry images, and if Kendath had looked steadier on his feet, she would have flown to hug him fiercely. As it was, she slipped off the ledge and felt her boots splash into water, and then her knees threatened to buckle. They very nearly did when Kiril threw herself forward to wrap her arms around Merrin's waist and squeeze. "Kendath - oh, gods - " she gasped when her stomach had settled, holding Kiril to her. Perhaps the blurriness of her vision was somewhat augmented by tears of relief.

Kiril was sobbing into Merrin's already drenched tunic, clinging like the proverbial barnacle, and Merrin suspected from the agonizing pain that was inching its way through her midsection that an upset stomach might be the least of her problems. Her back under the drenched tunic felt raw and scored. She looked over Kiril's head and met Kendath's eyes, scanning him frantically as if to assure herself he was, indeed, alive.

Unexpectedly her knees gave way and Merrin slid to the floor in a heap with Kiril. "You're all right - oh, gods, you're all right..."

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