pitch bucket sitting idle on the deck, waiting for the swabby who'd left it to return to his drudgery. Merrick knew that when the battle was over he might have to go back to his own pitch bucket, but he would go back to it a sailor. He'd go back to it a man.
He was set to fire again in no time at all, but Lancer had already shot past the fight. As she came about, Merrick began scanning the water, waiting for the chance to fire another shot, but the chance never came.
Cheers rose up from everywhere, and Merrick turned to see why. As quickly as it had started, the battle was over. The sahuagin were abandoning the attack on Star ofTethyr and departing in droves, leaping over the side to escape the deadly cloud of missiles being fired from Centaur and Ram. Two of the dragon turtles had been killed and the other two wounded, and those two were in full retreat. The Star herself was a sorry sight, her once fine sails ruined and her rigging a tangled, shredded mess, but she was intact. The remainder of her crew, led by First Mate Gullah, cheered the three smaller vessels as they came about once more.
Merrick smiled and sagged down, relief draining the remaining strength from his knees.
We did it, he thought. We saved Star ofTethyr. The price had been high, he realized, as he saw the numerous bodies on the decks of both Lancer and Star, but they had saved the pride of the queen's navy.
Thurin slapped Merrick on the back, grinning from ear to ear. Hoke was roaring at his crew to come along side the Star and secure her for boarding, kicking a man in the rear who didn't move fast enough for his liking, but Merrick could see a twinkle in his eye. The captain was proud of his crew, a crew Merrick was finally really a part of.
'Long live the queen!' a seaman shouted from the rigging.
'Long live the queen!' the crew exclaimed, and they broke into song, a victory chantey. Merrick sang along, smiling to himself.
Long live the queen, he thought, long live Star of Tethyr.
10 Eleasias, the Year of the Gauntlet
Here before him was the life he hoped for-the exciting life outside the walls of the Tower of Numos amid all the excitement of war and magic. The battle lay spread out before him, the great triton priest Numos and his warrior comrade Balas facing off against First Arcane Xynakt of the Morkoth Arcanum. He saw it all-the deaths caused by the rampaging morkoths, the savagery of their kraken allies, and the resolution of the triton that all the death and pain would end here that day.
He saw everything save the many carved coral heads of tritons and hippocampi in the army. The smaller figures often became blurred when covered by the detritus and marine snow that drifted into the chambers from the upwaters. Keros buffed the mural clean with a rag of sharkskin, returning the Founders' Battle to cleanliness and clarity. All around him were murals of heroism and faith, and Keros had the distasteful job of polishing all the mosaics before evening prayers.
'If you don't start applying yourself to your studies, Keros, you'll never amount to anything. Fell,' Keros muttered aloud, sarcastically mimicking his father's tone and shaking his finger emphatically against the current.
He quickly glanced around to see if anyone heard him. Finding himself alone, he dived in a quick spiral to shake off his unease. The young triton still smarted from the argument he'd had with his father a few hours previous. Keros had been reprimanded for abandoning his morning prayers to see the armies massing and heading upwater to investigate the mourning songs of the whales and the other sounds of conflict there. He'd been caught swimming back to his chambers. His father was sitting where Keros should have been, reading what he was to know for the next day's service. As punishment, First Priest Moras sent his youngest son to the antechambers of the Great Vault to polish the mosaics-a practically endless task as they spanned the nearly thirteen fathom-deep walls from floor to ceiling on both sides of the corridor leading to the vault.
Getting back to his task, Keros swam easily across the hall to the uppermost mosaic, momentarily catching a glimpse of himself reflected in the crystalline doors to the Great Vault. He had almost reached his full growth, his shoulders and frame having filled in with strong muscles. His skin had lost the lighter blue of his youth and now its deeper color signified his entry into adulthood. While a contrast from the norm, Keros had long since stopped wondering why his hair was a kelp green rather than the usual blue, and accepted it. Though he shaved it off more than once, it had grown back to a full mane of hair trailing just past his shoulders now. He looked like an adult-why couldn't they treat him like one?
Keros knew that many expected him to become a priest like his mother and father both, though the closer he got to his indoctrination from acolyte to the ranks of the clergy, the more pensive and sullen he became.
They never ask me what I want, he began the argument in his head for the thousandth time, because they're still mad at Nalos for rejecting the church and joining the army. I don't want to do that-by Persana's mane, I don't know what I want to do-but they've never given me a choice. They just assume I'll become a priest like them, and they don't listen when I tell them I don't hear Persana's voice in me.
Keros began buffing the mosaic depicting the capture of the Arsenal of Xynakt, binding the unholy items in solid ice, but his anger put more force behind his hand, and he heard a crackle beneath the rag.
Panic brought Keros out of his reverie, and he brought the rag away from the mural. Coral chips over a thousand years old glistened in the rag, and many more now tumbled off the wall. He sank as quickly as his heart did, scooping up the fragments before they drifted too far in the waters. A roaring began in his ears as he began to imagine the punishments his father would dole out for such sacrilege. Far worse would be the disappointment in his mother's eyes, for she loved these murals with a passion. In one second, Keros had ruined a priceless treasure. Having caught what appeared to be all of the fragments, Keros swam up the wall again to look at the damage, though the small pile of coral in his cupped hands seemed more terrifying than a horde of koalinth descending out of the gloom.
Returning to the mural, Keros gasped in horror. He had totally crushed and eradicated the mosaic of Numos casting the ice around the artifacts taken from the morkoth. While Numos's figure still remained on the wall, there now loomed a jagged blank spot between him and the. figure of the wounded Balas. Keros shifted the coral fragments into his right hand and touched the blank area with his left. The stone wall felt rough from the missing coral pieces, but it too crumbled at his touch. Pushing himself away from the wall in another wave of fear, Keros gasped as cracks appeared in the very spot he'd last touched. They grew wider with each passing beat of his heart. The coral chips drifted out of his right hand and down through the water to the floor, forgotten as Keros watched an entire section of the wall crack and split from where he touched it.
Distracted by his rising panic and the roaring in his ears, Keros had ignored the sounds before now. Fearing the worst punishments, the triton boy imagined the loud booms to be cell doors slamming behind him as he mentally threw himself into the dungeons beneath Vuuvax, city of the Wrathful. He finally recognized them to be real sounds as the cracks widened, and the wall exploded inward. Thrown back by the force of the blast, Keros barely registered the chunk of coral carved to represent Xynakt the Arcane flying toward his head by the tune the blackness closed around him.
Keros swam fitfully through the seas, as he had seemed to be swimming for days. No matter how quickly he swam, the sharks kept to the waters around him. His heart racing, Keros wondered why they didn't close in for the kill. He was tired and wounded, with blood clouding the water around him, and they proved more than a match for his speed. One shark lunged at him and Keros dived frantically, leaving the shark with only a mouthful of green hair and Keros with a sharp pain in his head. The other shark closed in and Keros found himself too tired to avoid this one's attack. He blinked once, then opened his eyes to see his death coming-as his father would want him to do. The jagged teeth of the shark seemed innumerable and — the shark veered upward and thumped him on the chest with its tail.
Keros blinked in shock, then woke up to his little sister Charan pounding on his chest in terror.
'Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup! Keros! Getupge-tupgetup,' she screamed.
She kept her eyes firmly shut in desperation as she clung to the only thing she wanted right now-her brother to wake up and make things better for her. She almost looked comical perched there, flailing her little four-year-old arms against his chest as hard as she could, but he could hear the fear in her wails.
