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By Root 301 0

dark and the storm was wild and ferocious and strange things were happening, but the storm and the night would soon come to an end, as nights and storms always do. That was the promise of the gods. When day dawned, Rhys and Nightshade and Atta would start back home, back to his monastery. The journey would be a long one, for the monastery was located north of the city of Staughton, which was on the west coast, and they were on the east coast of the vast continent of Ansalon and would have to travel on foot. He was not concerned at the distance. Every step would be devoted to the god. He thought of the work he would do to earn his bread, of the people he would meet, of the good he would try to do along the way, and the journey did not seem long at all.

“Did you hear that?” Nightshade asked suddenly. “It sounded like a yell.”

Rhys hadn’t heard anything except roaring thunder and howling wind and crashing waves. The kender had sharp senses, however, and Rhys had learned not to discount them. He was further convinced by the fact that Atta also heard something. Her head was up, her ears pricked. The dog stared intently out into storm.

“Wait here,” said Rhys.

He walked out of the grotto and the wind smote him with such force that even standing upright was difficult.

The wind blew his long dark hair back from his face, whipped his orange robes around his thin body. The salt spray stung his eyes, the sand tore at his flesh. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he peered about. The lightning flashes were almost constant. He saw the black waves with their white, foaming tops and the seaweed being blow along the empty beach and that was all. He was about to return to the shelter of the grotto when he heard a cry, this time sounding behind him.

A gust of wind caught hold of Nightshade, sending him staggering backward for a few feet, then knocking him flat.

Rhys braced himself against the gale and, reaching down his hand, grabbed hold of Nightshade and hoisted the kender to his feet.

“I told you to wait inside!” Rhys shouted.

“I thought you were talking to Atta!” Nightshade yelled back. The kender turned around to the dog, whose ears were flat against her head from the force of the wind. He shook his finger at her. “Atta, stay inside!”

Rhys was hanging on to Nightshade, who was trying to stand against the wind and not having much luck, when he heard the cry.

“There it is again!” shouted Nightshade.

“Yes, but where?” Rhys returned.

He looked at Atta. She was standing at alert, her ears forward, her tail motionless. She was staring out to sea.

The cry came again, shrill and clear, cutting through the howling wind. Squinting his eyes against the spray and sand, Rhys again peered into the night.

“Blessed Majere!” he gasped. “Wait here!” he ordered Nightshade, who didn’t have much choice in the matter, since every time he stood up the wind knocked him down again.

In the last flash of lightning, Rhys had seen a child, a little girl, to judge by the two long braids whipping out in front of her, floundering waist-deep in the wind-tossed sea. He lost her momentarily in the darkness and prayed for another lightning strike. A sheet of white-purple light flared across the sky and there was the girl, waving her arms and crying out for help. She was desperately trying to make it to shore, fighting the vicious rip current trying to drag her back out to sea.

Rhys fought against the wind, wiping his eyes free of the spray, keeping his gaze fixed on the child, who continued to struggle toward the shore. She was almost there when a foaming wave crashed over the girl’s head and she vanished. Rhys stared at the boiling froth, praying for the child to emerge, but he saw nothing.

He tried to increase his speed, but the wind was blowing off the sea, driving him backward a step for every two he took forward. He struggled on, continuing to search for the child as he fought his way toward the water. He saw no one, and he began to fear the sea had claimed its victim, when suddenly he saw the girl’s body, black in the silver moonlight, lying on the