A warm breeze, carrying ghostly drips of sea salt and foreshadowed rain, drifted through the forests of the Isle of Keth. It passed through the tallest trees quietly enough to hear them creak, and graced the low rivers so tranquilly so as to hear the buzz of dragonfly and the croak of bullfrog. In the remote villages of the Isle, the wise tribal men might tell of change on so still a breeze. They might tell their children the whispers of the spirits and the storm to come.
The window of the guest home was an enormous circle of stone, wide enough and tall enough for three people to fit through, if they arranged themselves correctly. The man who stood there, wordlessly waiting for the sun to rise, felt the gentle draft and smiled. To Therelin, the breath of the spirits felt like his home, out there on the point of Portram village.
Therelin flicked a bug away from his bare shoulder. His waist-robe kept the bugs off his legs, but the occasional bother found his fit upper body and tried to give a bite. The tall man lowered his hand and folded his thumb to rub the ring on the knuckle of his little finger, an old habit. He shifted his grasp to the ring on the thumb of his other hand. Even in the midst of the city, he could hear the rainforest and the sea.
Fishermen were starting to stir; their closing doors and shouts of greeting interrupted the quiet of Therelin’s room. Soon enough, his father joined their disturbance.
The man’s disapproving words went the way they had before. This time at last, on this particular day, he concluded them with his own attempt at positivity. “Son, if I can’t convince you to stay, I’ll at least tell you this. I’ll be here when you come to your senses.”
“I’m thirty-four,” Therelin replied. He had shouldered his pack of supplies, and his driftwood staff already leaned in his hand. “Just because you don’t agree with my choices, doesn’t mean that they are naïve ones.”
Therelin’s father was an inch shorter than he was, with a beard twice as long and a frame even more muscular. The carpenter and builder listened to his son’s response with a dissatisfied hum, and then shook his head. “Still, I’ll be here when you’re back.”
All Therelin could do was shake his head. When they parted ways at the front door of the guest house, his father somehow managed to deign so low as to pat his son’s shoulders. Then he turned around and walked up the street toward the inland road and their distant village of Portram. Therelin only watched him go for a moment, and then reluctantly continued on his way.
When he reached the Temple of Stone overlooking the ancient Ketho quarry, Therelin paused and collected himself. Myandin, the man who sat near the center of the shrine was already teary-eyed when he received his apprentice. He clapped Therelin’s shoulders loudly and offered him earnest words of encouragement. They had met seven years ago when Therelin arrived in the City of Keth for his training, but they had formed an earnest friendship quickly.
Warnings of the differing cultures beyond the Isle and advice for Therelin’s search had already filled their recent conversations, but Master Myandin still offered his guidance until their very last “farewell” was given that morning.
Then Therelin left the temple-dome behind, and marched down into the Harbour of Keth. His staff was not an uncommon sight amidst the rangers, guardsmen, or elders. Crowds thronged the dockside; navigating the port with a wagon of supplies or a passenger trolley would have been a timely undertaking. Therelin politely gave such cars a wide berth, but was only jostled back into the way by passersby he had or had not noticed. This was nothing like Portram, and even his seven years in the City of Keth had rarely placed him in the midst of all this chaos.
He already missed the lethargic breeze of the morning and the gentle pitter-patter of rain on his day-outings for herbal clippings.
At last, Therelin reached his designated wharf. He paused to let a handful of arrivals disembark—a dozen shirtless workmen, two women in traditional Ketho half-togas, and a foreign man wearing a tunic and chainmail. One of the women smiled to Therelin and he smiled back. She glanced down briefly at the boar tattooed over his heart and the gold mantis face on his shoulder, but then the crowd whisked her away.
Therelin strode along the cleared wharf toward the ship that would carry on his venture. He nodded politely to one of the crew who was securing a wide oily tarp to a crate. The crewman said good-day and then went back to his conversation with another harbour worker.
The worker asked the crewman, “How far west are you sailing?”
“Only to Kedar port and then north to the mainland,” replied the other man, a Raderan with olive skin and a sleeve of ink that resembled a fishnet.
“Good,” affirmed the worker, and Therelin stopped in his tracks before leaving earshot. It was news he wanted to hear. “There’s nothing but the worst news coming off the Great Isle. What news, you might ask? War. Not their annual war sports either. Bandit allegiances, dead Barons, change. There ain’t no point to sailing that way until it simmers down.”
The crewman cursed and quickly cinched the rope on which he was working. He shouted for another crewman to climb down from the deck of the nearby ship, the New Comet, and help with the crate. Then he turned back to the man who had given him tidings. “Hopefully it won’t boil over,” he said.
The harbour worker shrugged and picked up his own burden, a bucket of fish bait. “Don’t matter to me. People leave Keth—they don’t often come here.” He glanced at Therelin with a smirk and stomped off down the dock.
“After you,” Therelin said, as another crewman descended the New Comet’s gang plank. Then he clambered aboard. The first order of business was to confirm his passage with Captain Innar. Of course, his payment had been delivered in advance—a sizeable portion of Therelin’s savings—and everything was quickly worked out with Innar. Though he was shown to his quarters soon after by the same net-tattooed sailor, Therelin didn’t enter them yet. Instead, he sought out the mess to introduce himself to his fellow passengers. There were two this voyage, though one was disembarking during their layover in Kedar.
They set sail less than an hour later. Therelin stood on the deck of the New Comet and watched as the moorings were thrown off. The morning’s breeze had picked up, as it normally did; the caravel’s sails billowed with wind and the New Comet began to drift away. It was a northerly wind, for after they sailed out of sight of the City of Keth, they drifted close to the hooked peninsula before maneuvering into open sea.
When Therelin finally retired to his quarters, he was dismayed to find that he did not have a window, not even the smallest porthole. Nevertheless, he removed one of the three books in his pack, and by shadow light chose the thickest one: Ocean Winds and the Patterns of the Sea by Master Nin’dar of Bellasa.
It was too dark to read, as Therelin had feared, so he pulled out a bundle of cloth from his pack and unwrapped his candle. He set it on the shelf near his cot. It took him a few moments to light it, especially with both of his hands scanning the dim pages of the climatology tome. He was getting better at asserting his focus, at compelling the wick to embers, and then to flame, but he still had lots to learn.
Once the shadows were divided by the conjured light, Therelin leaned back against the rough wooden wall at the head of his cot and continued his studies.