The Sea of Dust

I felt it was time to broach the question that I had been avoiding, "Father there is one charge against you that you have not yet addressed. The templars of the sorcerer kings charged you with insanity. They claimed that you spoke of obeying voices that only you could hear. Is this so?"

My father paused clearly uncomfortable with the question and then responded, "I cannot deny this. I did hear voices. I know that sounds crazy and if someone else told me that I say that they were of of their minds. But what happened, happened. Most of the time it was when I slept but sometimes it happened when I was awake. Often it was just pictures with no voice at all. 'Mina you need to believe me when I say I am not insane, I mean was not insane. The voice was real and I did not obey it without thinking. I did what the voice said because it seemed to give good advice. I always planned to disobey the voice if it told me to do something wrong. And most of all I always hoped that the voice was Stone Brother, though I have to admit the voice did not match up well with the legend my fathers told me."

I found that interesting that there was a kernel of truth to at least one of the charges leveled by the templars. Yet my father's explanation, while strange, made it sound less bizarre. What if some creature was speaking to my father? Who could fault him if this occurred?

I asked my father to continue his narrative and he responded, "My friends and I sold most of our mounts and other items that we did not need in Balic. We also bought a map of the Sea of Dust to help us find our way. The map seller we bargained with told us about a pirate captain that would be able to take us where were going for a reasonable price. The captain wanted us to rescue a captured crewman. We judged it to dangerous to attempt a break out so we just purchased his freedom."

"The ship used these giant stone wheels to travel the shallows. When we got to the deep waters, they dumped the big wheels and one of the crew used the Way to float the ship on top of the silt. After a short time we were attacked by a pirate ship about the same size as our ship. It was a short and fierce battle but I was prepared and so instead of trying to cut the pirates down, I just struck them with the flat of my axe and knocked them into the Silt Sea to drown. The magic in my new axe handle allowed me to throw the enemy pirates around like rag dolls. The few that remained were overwhelmed by my allies and our own crew."

"A couple of days later the ship was attacked by an enormous giant beast with a huge mouth and many arms like ropes.

The creature used its thorny rope-arms to scratch and drag the crew off to die in the silt. It probably would have killed us had we been alone but with a whole crew to eat and our being tied to the deck we managed to stay alive. A half dozen or so of the crew were killed that day. Most of the battle was with distance weapons and all could do is chop at the thing's arms. When things were looking really bad the monster brought his huge head up to the boat. With the help of two swordsman from the crew we managed to kill the huge thing. But the beast had damaged the ship and it started to sink. Just as it looked like we would all die, one of the great flying flat beasts came near and we leaped upon to escape.


It seemed that someone wanted us to live a little longer."