"The desert breaths fire hot as a refiner's forge.
It's unkind touch as heavy as a mountain.
The unrelenting land saps strength and drinks blood.
It bends warriors and strong men to its will.
And it shapes them into shards of death.
Which stab at the heart of the enemy of all."
- from an unknown Scattered Kingdoms philosopher
A sigh eased free of his nostrils as Patrik looked out the small window adorning the southern wall of the room he shared with his two cousins and onto the spreading blue of the bay. It was a handful of days since his strange encounter in the bay and his brush with Destiny at the hands of the elf named Darkfin. And, if anything, the nightmare had become more vivid, more intense than he could've ever imagined, searing his thoughts every night until restful sleep was a mere fantasy.
Add to that tumbling images, sensations and thoughts generated from the very moment the mysterious woman that appeared in his boat had touched him, and chaos had become his meat and drink. No longer did the mundane tasks of repairing nets and scrubbing the deck of his uncle Jerem's boat bring any relief in their mind-numbing repetitiveness. Nor could the boundaries of the tiny fishing village of Gorgon's Port contain his far ranging thoughts.
'I am a son of Ironstorm, a creature destined to something far greater than repairing nets and baiting hooks,' he mused, barely resisting the impulse to scrub callused hands through unkempt hair. 'Everything that I thought I knew, my entire life, . . gone.' This new knowledge hollowed him out until all he could feel was the nightmare. The nightmare and the need to know what being a son of Ironstorm meant. That need now burned in him like a fiery brand, with no relent or remorse, searing at his essence until he thought he would burst into flame.
A movement across his field of vision momentarily tore Patrik from his darkening thoughts and back to the bay, in time to see the triangular sails of a Scattered Kingdoms merchant ship hove to the foot of the Port's largest pier. From conversations he had caught while delivering oil to the Netted Shark, that'd be the Sirocco, carrying fireworks and other goods for the Ra'Ashal festival to be held in less than a tenday. As fast as its namesake, the Sirocco dared the Septan blockage every cycle to bring Ra'Ashal goods and return to its home port with a hold heavily laden with rare fish oils and well-spent Porter gold.
Patrik's jaw abruptly tightened with tension as he made a hard and quick decision. This cycle it would also be his ticket out of Gorgon's Port.
Dropping to a knee beside the heavy footlocker that sat at the foot of his cot, he flipped the brass-strapped wooden lip back with an almost casual twist of his wrist and began pulling clothing out. 'If I can't find answers about being a son of Ironstorm in the Scattered Kingdoms, I'll just keep going north until I do,' he silently vowed, adding a worn backpack to the small pile growing on his cot. 'Or die in the attempt!'
After stuffing the clothing into the pack and sneaking into the kitchen to fill a leather scrip with as much as he could carry while his aunt labored outside in the small family garden, Patrik was out of the house, down the hill and quickly making his way to water's edge. His bare feet sending up puffs of dust on the worn path along the edge of town towards the bay, he was oddly light-hearted as he mentally planned what he'd do once he reached the Scattered Kingdoms.
'Why should it pain me to leave this place? It's empty to me now, a falsehood Darkfin's truth dispelled in a single instant,' he thought when, as his feet touched the worn planking of the main pier, he pondered his lack of sadness in departing what had been his home for as long as he could remember.
Still, he jerked to a rough halt when Jerem's voice suddenly called out.
"Off somewhere, lad?" Patrik paused to look over his shoulder, catching sight of Jerem's square form as he and his two cousins, Jerem's sons and regular deckhands, stepped into view, each with arms full of netting and line. Like many of the Port's smaller fisher folk, Jerem stored his off-season nets in a public warehouse, to give them more space to work on the Pony's deck. From their burden, Patrik could guess Jerem had just finished storing the fiber weave chud nets and now was carrying the geta nets to the Pony for the upcoming run.
Straightening his shoulders, the young man bobbed a quick confirming nod. Waving his sons on to the Pony, Jerem dropped his burden of netting and stepped onto the pier and towards Patrik, a frown on his bluff, weathered features. Hard as working the Sea of Polua in all manner of weather would make a man after a lifetime, his features etched by salt, wind and water, Jerem Donogan was a man who brooked little nonsense. With a voice roughened by shouting commands against the elements, and hands callused thick by hauling hawser and line, he had seen the Sea Pony out of port and back for over 30 cycles, capable and practical as only a Gorgon Porter could be.
Yet the expression on his face, and the look in his eyes as he walked towards Patrik with sure, steady strides, could be described only as wary and hesitant as if he was now looking at the young man he had called son for over 10 cycles as a stranger. A look past Patrik at the Sirocco, where goods were being unloaded by hand crane and stevedore, only made the hesitation more obvious.
Then he was halting in front of Patrik, taking in the young man's resolute look and stuffed back pack and scrip with a sweeping glance.
"So, it looks as if you intend to board the Scattered Kingdoms ship," he said slowly after a long pause, his locution touched with a hint of Mamra, the long distant parent of the fishing colony he called home. "You'd abandon the Pony on the eve of the geta run?"
Nearly goaded into a stammered apology by the hard question, Patrik grit his teeth together against the impulse and quickly composed his thoughts.
"I'm meant for something else, uncle," he replied instead. "Something other than scrubbing the Pony's decks or filling her holds with fish."
Now it was Jerem's turn to stifle the hot retort that nearly burst past his lips at Patrik's flat statement. Gone was the need to state the reminders that he had fed and clothed the lad since he was small, gave him a place to sleep and work to do. And also gone were his own feelings of frustrated loss at the possibility of losing a deckhand so close to an important run. They were gone all in a sweeping rush of memory.
"That you are, boy," he said finally with a sigh, "and I've known that since two strangers thrust you into my hands over 11 cycles ago, during the hardest storm ever to make shore in the Bay of Gorgon. To speak truthfully, I've dreaded this day; the day I'd have to let you go and face the strange and great beyond that spat you out and into our little village. Seeing your turn to the fey mood you've worn of late, I knew that day was nigh."
Again his dark eyes lifted to take in the distant Scattered Kingdoms vessel, his expression abruptly sad.
"I'd say that day is today."
Jerem's eyes dropped back onto Patrik's startled face.
"I see you thought I'd only have a mind for the Pony and her duties. You're wrong, my boy. I've an eye for a great many things, including the strangeness that gripped you after that day you spent fishing in the bay. You walked into the house as if touched by madness, gripped by some strange vision, like a prophet wandering out of the desert from the old tales. It was as plain to see as a ripped spinnaker in a gale." His eyes fell off Patrik and onto his weathered and callused feet, bare as was the habit of Porter fisher folk.
"It was my destiny to be married to the sea, touched by salt water and spray all my days. I care for no other. Yours, however, lies elsewhere. I know it, and now, so do you. Go and discover it, while you can."
Patrik blinked in shock, trying to justify the image of the hard and bluff sea captain he had known all his young life with the one that now stood in front of him, head bowed and eyes cloudy with tears. Jerem actually cared about his life? Then the fire of his resolution gripped him once more, sweeping aside any doubt.
"I go," he said quietly. "But I will never forget you, Uncle Jerem, or Aunt Elana. You gave me shelter and saved my life. Someday I will return to repay you in kind." Then he was turning tightly on his heel to run lightly towards the Sirocco, the straps holding his pack and scrip over a shoulder.
Jerem lifted his head and watched as Patrik jogged up the Sirocco's gangplank to begin negotiating passage with the vessel's dark and wiry captain, a turbaned, bare-chested fellow with long, drooping mustaches.
"Go, my boy, go," he whispered, strangely melancholic now that the moment he had feared for 11 cycles, ever since he and his wife had come to care for the orphan thrust unceremoniously into their lives, had come for Patrik's departure.
"Be as great as we know you can be; great enough to shake the oceans of the world!"
****