The young triton fought to regain the use of his limbs, but couldn't. He knew from his studies that the spell he was under wouldn't last long, but it lasted long enough for the sailors to secure him to the mainmast with loops of rope.

As the sailors finished their knots, feeling returned to Flyys's body. He pulled hesitantly against the ropes and found them too tight to escape. Under the glare of the morning sun and left out in the breeze, his skin started drying almost at once.

"Khorrch," a man bellowed.

The morkoth turned and gazed up to the ship's stern castle. "Yes, Vurgrom," it replied in the human tongue.

Flyys spoke the language himself. Everyone who traded in Seros learned the human tongue. With the enmity that existed between the undersea cultures at times over Seros's long past, it proved to be as common a tongue below the waves as above it. He also recognized the name.

Vurgrom the Mighty was chief of the pirates among the surface world. He was also the man Flyys and his companions had been sent to spy on. Though Vurgrom hadn't been on board the ship they'd invaded during the night, his minions had been.

"This is one of them?" Vurgrom walked down the steps leading up to the stern castle. He stood tall and broad, with a huge chest that sloped down to a massive stomach. Still, he moved lightly enough on the ship's rolling deck that Flyys knew the bulk would throw off most of his opponents. Vurgrom's reputation was fierce and savage, built on the number of deaths he'd ordered over the years. Many of them he'd taken part in himself.

"Yes," Khorrch answered.

The wind stirred the wild red hair on the pirate captain's head, ruffled the long, untamed beard. He stopped in front of Flyys. "He knows where the Eye is?"