The Tale of Morin

Chapter 5: Old Friends, New Threats

I awoke with a start in a dark and silent room, a hand that wasn't my own was on my chest.

"Relax, you're safe." Laura whispered.

I saw nothing, but her voice calmed me down considerably.

"What happened?" My head felt as though I hadn't slept in days, I was dizzy and confused.

"Magic will always have a cost. Yours seems to take a rather considerable toll on your body." Laura told me with a lecturing tone. "In time you'll have more control and your body will adapt to the energy you're burning. You'll grow stronger."

"Where are we?" My eyes were adjusting and I could faintly see the outlines of two people I assumed were Laura and Anne, but I couldn't make out anything else. From what I could tell, the room was very cramped.

"We're on a ship." Anne told me excitedly. "A smuggler's ship, captained by the infamous Captain Kymahl!"

"Great. Who is that, exactly?" I hadn't the slightest clue who she was talking about.

"Are you kidding? He's one of the three leaders of the Silent Hand! Gods above, you'd think a thief would know about one of the most renown group of thieves this side of Vanor!"

Of course I had heard of the Silent Hand, but I didn't think much of them. Why brand yourself a thief to all the world? Get caught with one of their trademark tattooed palms and you're dead. I had worked with a few of them over the years, they were good, but I found their silence irritating. I took to messing with them just to see if I could get a word out of them. I never could.

"How is it that you know so much of the Silent Hand?" I asked Anne, accusingly.

"We all have our secrets." She laughed lightly as she said it.

I felt my strength returning. I remembered vividly what happened before I passed out. The death of another man was on my hands. I remember everything. The sound that escaped his dying lips as my sword-like appendage slid easily into his body. I could feel the appendage slipping between his ribs, through his heart and out the back, severing his spine on the way.

I felt sick, not dizzy like when I had awoken, but physically ill at the deeds that I had done. The heat I felt sapped away, leaving a sudden chill that left me shivering.

Before anyone noticed, a trapdoor above us opened up and blinding light flooded into the small, cramped room. As our eyes adjusted, a man with suntanned skin, dark hair, and gray eyes beckoned for us to come up. The sudden illness that overtook me left as quickly as it had arrived. Silently we followed the man onto the deck of the ship. We had arrived.

The deck of the ship was as I expected; plain. The Silent Hand never had a flair for style. It was a decent sized ship with a single gray sail. The crew worked silently, doing whatever it is that needs doing on a smuggler's ship. The man walked us to the gangplank where we departed onto the ports of Olidor.

"Thank you, friend. Have you any idea what the time of day is?" An innocent question that I honestly wanted an answer to, but the real reason for it was given away by my grin.

The man didn't share my grin, in fact he didn't show any emotion at all. As always, those of the Silent Hand did little to give away their thoughts. He nodded towards Anne, most likely because she was the one that had paid them, and boarded the ship.

Anne punched me hard in the arm. "Did you have to antagonize him? He saved our lives. None of the sailors would take us, no matter how much I offered them."

"Doesn't surprise me. They value their lives more than they do our gold. You did well to ask the Silent Hand. I may not like them, but at the least they can keep a secret."