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hard for Merk to believe. What had she been doing out here, at
the end of the Devil’s Finger, holed up in the Tower of Kos? Was she in hiding?
In exile? Being protected? From whom?
    Merk sensed that
she, with her translucent eyes, her too-pale complexion and unflappable poise,
was of another race. But if so, then who was her mother? Why had she been left
alone to guard the Sword of Flames, the Tower of Kos? Where had all her people
gone?
    And most pressing
of all, where was she leading them now?
    One hand on the
rudder, she steered the ship deeper into the bay, to some destination on the
horizon that Merk could only wonder at.
    “You still haven’t
told me where we’re going,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.
    There followed a
long silence, so long, he was unsure if she would ever reply.
    “At least, then,
tell me your name,” he added, realizing she had never offered it.
    “Lorna,” she
replied.
    Lorna . He liked the
sound of it.
    “The Three Daggers,”
she added, turning to him. “That’s where we’re going.”
    Merk frowned.
    “The Three Daggers?”
he asked, surprised.
    She merely looked
straight ahead.
    Merk, though,
was stunned by the news. The most remote islands in all of Escalon, The Three Daggers
were so deep in the Bay of Death, he had not known of anyone who had ever actually
traveled there. Knossos, of course, the legendary isle and fort, sat on the
last of them, and legend had always had it that it held Escalon’s fiercest
warriors. They were men who lived on a desolate island off a desolate peninsula,
in the most dangerous body of water there was. They were men rumored to be as
rough as the sea that surrounded them. Merk had never met one in person. No one
had. They were more legend than real.
    “Did your Watchers
retreat there?” he asked.
    Lorna nodded.
    “They await us
now,” she said.
    Merk turned and
looked back over his shoulder, wanting one last glimpse of the Tower of Kos, and as he did, his heart suddenly stopped at what he saw: there, on the
horizon, pursuing them, were dozens of ships, sails full.
    “We’ve got
company,” he said.
    Lorna, to his
surprise, did not even turn around, but merely nodded.
    “They will chase
us to the ends of the earth,” she said calmly.
    Merk was
puzzled.
    “Even though they
have the Sword of Flames?”
    “It was never
the Sword that they were after,” she corrected. “It was destruction. The
destruction of us all.”
    “And when they catch
us?” Merk asked. “We cannot fight off an army of trolls alone. Nor can a small
isle of warriors, no matter how tough they may be.”
    She nodded,
still unfazed.
    “We may indeed
die,” she replied. “Yet we shall do it in the company of our fellow Watchers, fighting
for what we know is true. There are many secrets left to guard.”
    “Secrets?” he
asked.
    But she fell
silent, watching the waters.
    He was about to
ask her more, when a sudden gale of wind nearly capsized the boat. Merk fell to
his stomach, slamming into the side of the hull and sliding over the edge.
    Dangling, he
grasped onto the rail for dear life as his legs sank into the water, water so
icy cold he felt he would freeze to death. He hung on with a single hand,
mostly submerged, and as he looked back down over his shoulder, his heart leapt
to see a school of red sharks suddenly closing in. He felt horrific pain as
teeth began to dig into his calf, as he saw blood in the water that he knew was
his own.
    A moment later Lorna
stepped forward and cracked the waters with her staff; as she did, brilliant white
light spread on the surface, and the sharks dispersed. In the same motion she grabbed
his hand and dragged him back onto the ship.
    The ship righted
itself as the wind subsided and Merk sat on deck, wet, freezing, breathing hard,
and a terrible pain in his calf.
    Lorna examined his
wound, tore a piece of cloth from her shirt, and wrapped it around his leg, staunching
the blood.
    “You saved my
life,” he