Longing Ring

26

Her dreamed of her putting the thing in him. His mother stood beside his bed, her fingertips pressed against his chest, gently massaging his skin. "Like this?" she asked.

The white shadow in the corner replied, "Yes."

As the ship rocked and listed sharply, J'role and Releana fell to the deck. Dazed, he lost the impulse to get up and move, but Releana was quickly at his side and tugging on his armn. The Chakara isn't holding the Breeton up any more," she said. "We've got to go!"

J'role came out of his strange disorientation, and the two of them fled across the upper deck, trying to get to the Chakara before the Breeton capsized. Balancing carefully on the deck's steep angle, they worked their way through the corpses and the blood. The fighting had stopped, and both the Chakara's crew and the Breeton mutineers who wanted to surrender had begun a retreat. Ahead dozens of t'skrang swung from the sinking ship over to the Chakara.

J'role and Releana were halfway down the length of the ship when J'role suddenly thought of his father.

Where was he? Was he still alive?

Releana ran on a few steps more, then turned to look when she realized J'role had fallen behind. He waved her on toward the Chakara, then turned toward a passage leading to the lower decks. Releana must have read his mind. Running back toward him, she said,

"They might have found him already, Grim … J'role. Some of the Chakara's sailors might have gotten him off the ship."

J'role hesitated. She might be right. But he couldn't wait. He started down the stairs.

A moment later he heard Releana following. He felt much better.

With the ship now tilted at a forty-five degree angle, J'role and Releana had to walk with one foot on the floor and one foot at the base of the wall. They ran through the ship, Releana calling, ”Hello? Hello?" over and over again. They found corpses, but no Bevarden. Eventually they reached the lower decks and as they headed toward the starboard side they saw passages filling with water; further on some cabins were completely submerged.

J'role wondered if the ship would soon begin to sink faster, with he and Releana trapped aboard, unable to find an exit before the decks they now wandered flooded with water.

J role tapped Releana on the arm, then pointed one way for her, and another for himself.

"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.

Once more J'role was forced down under the water by his father.

When next he came up for air, J'role was screaming.

His mouth moved wildly, his tongue out of control. Screeching and screaming and babbling and cursing, he launched himself toward his father, slamming into him. The two of them splashed through the water and J'role forced his father toward the wall.

Bevarden's face contorted in terrible pain, and he tried to grab his ears to protect himself from the sounds. But the tangled rope kept his hands from his head. So he shook his head wildly back and forth.

Without thinking, J'role slammed his father against the wall. He screamed into his father's face. His father shut his eyes, opened his mouth into a wide O, cried out. Tears ran down his face.

So weak. So weak. And each time J’role thought the words, the creature in his mind whispered, “Yes."

The words built themselves into a steady rhythm, and soon, with a matching rhythm, he slammed his father against the wall. An exciting pleasure ran through him. He did not mean to do it, but it all happened nonetheless. Screaming with the creature's voice, he grabbed his father by the throat and smashed his head against the wall with a sharp crack.

He did it again and again until splashes of blood radiated onto the wall, forming a scarlet frame around his father's contorted face. Suddenly his father's eyes opened wide, startled.

He tried once more to speak, looking directly into J'role's eyes, but not a word came out.

Finally he heaved in a sharp, dry breath.

Then stillness.

Immediately J'role pulled his hands back. He saw his father's blood swirling around him in the water, and he screamed and screamed, clawing at the ropes, desperate to disentangle himself from his father's corpse. The cords grew tighter and tighter until he realized he was strangling himself.

"Yes," the creature said, the words crashing through his thoughts even as he struggled.

"Yes. Let yourself die. Kill yourself now. How can you go back? How can you go back to that young girl? Think about what you have just done!"

The creature's words made more and more sense.

How could he have …?

He tightened the rope around his neck, felt the harsh burn against this flesh. "Yes, yes.

Take your life. End it!"

J'role's strength withered away as continued to strangle himself. Dizziness came next, and finally he had trouble seeing. When the darkness closed around him he splashed into the water, aware only of drifting in the water, happy at last that it would finally be over.

Hands grabbed him.

"J'role!" Releana shouted.

The creature whined like an angry cat.

She was in the water with him, uncoiling the rope from his neck, from around his body.

He was confused. Disappointed. Finally he would have been-able to let all the pain go.

Why was she here?

When she had removed the rope from his body, she looked at Bevarden. J'role thought for sure she would scream or push him away. But she did not know he had killed bus own father. She said, "J'role, I'm sorry. But we can't take your father's body with us. We don't have time."

He nodded, too stunned to do anything but listen to her instructions.

Was it obvious? Wasn't it written Across his face? How could she not see?

But the two of them climbed out of the water and worked their way up the passage. They reached another one and turned right, running now on the edge where the floor and wall met. On and on they ran, leaving Bevarden's corpse behind, though J'role did not feel any more distance from the body no matter how far they traveled.

They raced through the ship until they found an open window that led out onto the tilted balcony right outside. They were near the bow of the Breeton now, and not much of the ship remained above water. Around it a terrible undertow had formed. If they tried to dive in and swim to the Chakara, they would most likely be sucked underwater. And now the Chakara was beginning to pull away, its crew probably desperate to get their ship away from the undertow.

"J'rolel, Releana!" he heard Captain Patrochian cry, then saw her on a mid-deck of the Chakara waving her arms. J'role and Releana ran down the side of the Breeton, leaping over windows and doors. As they reached the bow the captain swung a rope over from the Chakara. J'role stretched as far as he could over the edge of the bow and caught it. He had only just fixed his grip when the Chakara's movement pulled him off the Breeton. He stretched out his hand and grabbed Releana by the wrist, and the two of them swung out into the space between the ships. They swung swiftly to the Chckara, where the sailors grabbed J'role and pulled him and Releana over the railing.

All remained silent a moment, then Releana said, Am sorry, J'role."

He said nothing. For once glad he had no choice.

A t'skrang from the Chakara approached. "Scuse me lad, but we fished an ork out of the river. Captain Patrochian said you might know who he is. Now I know you can't talk, but can you signal us what to do with him? We'll be hanging the mutineers, of course, but we really don't know if this one was involved."

J'role looked past the sailor and saw Garlthik, bound just as his father had been. With his one good eye fixed on the J'role, the ork smiled his toothy smile. The look clearly said,

"Whatever you decide, lad. It's all been rough, and I'll take whatever you give me." J'role knew that-with a nod or two to the right questions he could condemn the ork to death.

Hadn't the man plotted the murder of nearly everyone on ship?

Including Bevarden.

J'role glanced at Releana. Better not to form ties, he felt the thief magic tell him. You don't know who you might have to kill next.

Garlthik had warned him of this during the initiation. The lesson was well taken.

He looked once more at Garlthik, knew he had more in common with the ork than anyone else on the ship. He shook his head, and to everyone's surprise, including Garlthik’s, he pointed at Garlthik and shook his head. Then he walked off alone, clutching his forehead, looking- for someplace safe to fall asleep. Some place where he would be safe from the memories.