Corsair (45 page)

A small figure in scarlet robes appeared on the battlements above the gatehouse. Sergen frowned as he recognized the sorcerer Sarth. The tiefling gestured, his mouth moving as he snarled the words of a spell Sergen could not hear. Golden fire gathered around his rune-carved scepter, taking on an arrowlike shape—and then with a flick of his hand, Sarth sent the quarrel hurling up at him. Sergen swore and threw himself flat as the fiery bolt blasted through the spot at the rail where he’d been standing.

The Turmishan pirate at the helm gave a strangled cry, and suddenly the bow of the ship began to droop. Sergen glanced back to the wheel and saw the man standing there with a charred, smoking hole burned through the base of his throat. He looked at Sergen, his eyes startlingly wide and white in his dark face, and tried to say something, but blood pooled from his mouth and dribbled down his chin. He leaned on the wheel, his hands knotted on the spokes, and as he slumped to the deck, the helm spun

wildly in his dying grip. Seadrake lurched to the side, and one of Sergen’s bodyguards scrambling aloft in the mainmast lost his grip. The man tumbled from his precarious perch and fell past the rolling deck, splashing into the lake below.

Sergen realized he was the only person anywhere near the wheel. He threw himself forward and seized the helm, trying to right the ship’s careening course. The ship was heavy beneath the wheel, and he struggled to steady her. The vessel picked up speed on the fresh breeze as Sergen fought with the helm. He finally managed to level the deck again, just in time to see the scarlet foliage of a forested hillside looming just ahead. “Up! Up!” he screamed at the helm … but it was too late. Even as the bow began to rise sharply, the wind carried Seadrake into the great trees mantling the hillside. Branches cracked or whipped across the deck like scythes, hurling loose gear into the jungle below, and the ship came to a halt canted steeply to one side, snagged among the branches.

“Damn it all!” Sergen snarled. He clawed his way to the rail and looked back at the keep. They’d come a mile or more in their brief flight, and it was clear that Kraken Queen wouldn’t be coming after them any time soon … but Seadrake was snagged in plain sight on the hillside. The Hulburgans could give chase on foot. Maybe it would take them half an hour to get to Seadrake in its precarious perch, or maybe it would take them less than that.

He hurried down from the quarterdeck to his sadly diminished crew, most of whom were picking themselves up off the deck or looking around with stunned expressions on their faces. “Don’t just stand there!” he shouted. “Cut us free! Cut us free!”

I can still escape, Sergen told himself. A few minutes’ hard work with axe and knife, and Seadrake would be free to carry him to safety. He hurried to the rail and looked back toward the keep, where smoke billowed from the burning ship, and watched anxiously for any signs of pursuit.

17 Marpenoth, The Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

The strange old ruins proved more extensive than Geran would have guessed from the vantage of the hilltop. Walls and plazas, tumbled towers and rambling palaces ran for hundreds of yards beneath the dense canopy of Neshuldaar’s strange, mist-wreathed jungle. Below the crown of the hill, the ruins took on the character of a strange, walled maze—an old stronghold, monastery, or fortified town of some sort, but not one raised by human hands. The doorways stood only four feet tall, there were no windows to speak of, and the cell-like buildings were piled up on top of each other, linked by what Geran guessed had once been trap doors in ceilings and floors. Large standing stelae marked the small plazas, each covered in carvings of grotesque, monstrous creatures. There were very few streets, and the whole place had an almost warrenlike feel to it even without the overgrowth of trees and vines.

Geran, Mirya, and Hamil picked their way carefully through the ruins, descending deeper into the forest. From time to time they called out for Selsha, but the moon’s strange mists grew thicker as the trees closed in around them. Their shouts didn’t seem to carry very far, and Geran began to wonder if Selsha would hear them even if they happened to come close to wherever she was hiding. The idea of combing the ruins for hours was not particularly appealing.

Hamil led the way, with Mirya close behind him. She carried Hamil’s bow and quiver. Geran knew her for a fair shot with the bow; at least, she’d been pretty good in the days when she’d tagged after her brother Jarad and him on their forays into the Highfells. She might not shoot with Hamil’s speed or accuracy, but he felt better having her armed. Geran brought up

the rear, keeping a wary eye over his shoulder for any more jungle monsters. He tried to ignore the graceful curve of Mirya’s hip beneath the borrowed cloak and the thin silk robe and was not entirely successful. It wasn’t that hard to see the girl he’d loved ten years past in the strong stride and carriage of the woman walking before him. Somehow he doubted that his lost love, Alliere, would have shown Mirya’s strength and resourcefulness in similar circumstances. Strange to compare a common woman from rustic Hulburg to a highborn lady of an elf noble family and find the princess of the Tel’Quessir wanting, he reflected.

After they’d wandered through the ruins for a half hour or so, Mirya glanced over her shoulder and caught him as he happened to be admiring her. Geran quickly raised his eyes ro meet hers; she gave him a stern look, but the ghost of a smile crossed her lips before she spoke. “I’d like to know how you found this place,” she said. “We’re a far way from Hulburg, and there’s no doubt of it.”

“We followed you, of course,” he answered. “We found that you’d been carried off only an hour or two after the Black Moon raid on Hulburg. I set out after you as quickly as I could. We chased Kamoth and Kraken Queen halfway across the Moonsea—”

“And then Kamoth took to the skies,” Hamil interjected. “We had no idea that he was using magic like that to come and go from the Moonsea.”

“We had to locate an enchanted compass of our own to sail the Sea of Night. As soon as we did, we fitted it to Seadrake and followed Kamoth here,” Geran continued. He smiled grimly. “We’ve been searching for the Black Moon’s hidden lair for tendays now, but we never imagined that it wasn’t anywhere in the Moonsea—or Toril, even. In any event, we’ve taken Kraken Queen and the pirate keep. The Black Moon Brotherhood is finished. As soon as we find Selsha, we can all be quit of this place forever.”

“How bad was the Black Moon raid?”

“Not as bad as it might have been,” he told her. “Sarth, Hamil, and I were disguised aboard Moonshark, one of the pirate ships. Sarth managed to carry a warning to the harmach just before the Black Moon ships sailed into the harbor. We took our ship in after them—we had command of Moonshark by then—and helped to sink two other ships before our crew chased us over the side.” He paused, thinking about the events of the night. “We only stayed in Hulburg a few hours before we set out again in

Seadrake, so I know only what I saw with my own eyes. Parts of the harbor district were burned, and many people were killed. But the Shieldsworn, the Spearmeet, and the merchant company armsmen threw back the attack after an hour or two of hard fighting. I did see that Erstenwold’s seemed mostly undamaged.”

“I’m glad of that, but Hulburg should have been ready. With more warning—”

“I did the best I could, Mirya,” Geran said. “The weather that night was terrible, and we made the best speed we could for Hulburg. It was all we could do to give the harmach any warning at all.”

“No, it’s not that, Geran,” Mirya said. She halted and turned to look at him. “I knew the raid was coming. I spied on the leader of the Cinderfists and overheard him conspiring with the Master Mage, days before the Black Moon attacked. I thought I’d gotten away with it, and I meant to tell the harmach first thing the next morning. But they came to my house and caught Selsha and me both.” She looked down at the ground. “The gods alone know how many folk died because I didn’t go up to Griffonwatch straightaway.”

“The Master Mage?” Hamil asked. “Marstel’s House wizard?”

“Lastannor, aye. He brought word of the attack to the Cinderfist leader. That one’s a priest of Cyric named Valdarsel. I eavesdropped on them in the Three Crowns.” Mirya shivered. “The wizard came for me later with his horrible servant at his side—a huge, pallid, man-shaped thing with dead eyes and cold flesh. The servant broke down my door, and Lastannor struck me senseless with his spells. He kept me that way until I woke up on Kamoth’s ship.”

“What in the world led you to play at spying on wizards and Cinderfists?” Geran asked. “You were gambling with your life!”

“Selsha stumbled across Valdarsel’s shrine. He found her out. I feared that he might do something to make sure she didn’t tell anyone else what she’d found. The Shieldworn couldn’t help me because they had no idea who he was or where he was hiding. I … I heard something of his whereabouts, but I had to go have a look to make sure of it before I could turn the matter over to the Shieldsworn.”

Geran frowned. He was about to say, “you should have told me,” but of course he’d been away from Hulburg for tendays now, boring his way into the Black Moon by playing pirate. Still, Mirya had just given him a great

deal to think about. If she was right, then House Marstel—or its chief mage, anyway—was in league with both the Black Moon Brotherhood and the Cinderfist gangs. And he’d sailed off after Kraken Queen, completely ignoring the enemies he’d left at his back. Was that what Aesperus had been hinting at with the cryptic warning dead Murkelmor, delivered in the ruins of Sulasspryn? He still had no idea what the lich-king’s interest in the whole business was, but suddenly he was much less sure that venturing into the Sea of Night to chase after Kamoth was as right as it had seemed at the time.

It’s done, he told himself. And if I hadn’t come, what would have become of Mirya and Selsha? Whatever happens at home while I’m away, at least I’ve spared Mirya the fate Kamoth and Sergen had in mind for her. “As soon as we get back to Hulburg, we’ll deal with Lastannor and this Valdarsel,” he told her. “They conspired with the Black Moon and kidnapped you and Selsha. That’s enough for the harmach to exile both of them, at the very least. You shouldn’t have to worry—”

A distant scream interrupted him—the scream of a child in terror, echoing from somewhere ahead of them in the ruins.

“Oh, dear Lady,” Mirya breathed. “Selsha!” She dashed off down the street, leaping down the steps.

Geran and Hamil exchanged a worried glance. Mirya was off without a moment’s hesitation, reacting with a mother’s instincts regardless of what else might be waiting in the shadows of Neshuldaar’s forests and ruins. “After her, quick!” Geran snapped. He sprinted after Mirya, determined not to lose her again. Hamil followed a step after him as they rushed headlong into the sinister black ruins at Mirya’s heels.

Selsha’s scream echoed in the air as Geran and Hamil ran down the steep steps in the mazelike alleyways. Mirya appeared and disappeared in the gloom ahead of them, a glimpse of white limbs and sheer red silk fluttering amid the black stone. She took several quick twists and turns, and Geran almost lost sight of her completely. Hoping that she was navigating her way toward Selsha with more confidence than he was, he simply followed her as she went. A few steps behind him Hamil pelted along, doing his best to keep up. Halflings were quick despite their short strides, but few could keep up with long-legged humans for long.

Keep Mirya in sight! Hamil told him. I’ll catch up soon enough.

Geran redoubled his pace. He saw Mirya turn a corner just ahead, and

he sprinted around the turn behind her—only to skid to a stop just on the other side, nearly knocking her down. They were looking out into another plaza, but this one was larger and had no towers. Instead, it seemed to be a square just inside the ruin’s encircling wall, with a crumbling gatehouse of several stories guarding an ancient archway leading to the jungle beyond.

Selsha Erstenwold clung precariously to the topmost part of the old gatehouse, which was little more than a leaning heap of stone about fifteen feet tall. On the plaza below her feet, several small arachnid monsters, with long eel-like necks and furred carapaces dyed in strange whorls and marks, hissed and chittered to each other, eyeing the girl hungrily. A spearcast behind the spider-monsters plodded enormous, insectile apelike creatures that Geran recognized as umber hulks. He’d encountered them before in a long-ago venture into the Underdark as a member of the Company of the Dragon Shield. The hulks were burdened with heavy chests.

Mirya swore a startled oath. “The monsters from the keep!” she cried. The spider-monsters at the foot of the ruined gatehouse hissed in surprise at the three adults’ sudden appearance, and then began shouting orders in their own strange tongue. The hulks coming up behind them set down their chests and began to lumber forward.

Geran glanced at the umber hulks and back to the small arachnids. If he was swift, he could reach Selsha before the hulks … but he’d have to chase off the arachnid monsters quickly. Best not to think this through, he decided. “Get away from her!” he shouted at the spider-things and charged recklessly straight at them. Hamil shouted and followed on his heels.

“Geran! Hamil!” Selsha shouted. She scrambled back another foot from the spider-creatures, rubble sliding out from under her feet. “Watch out for the monsters!”

The arachnids recoiled with hisses of agitation, apparently none too eager to let Geran come within sword’s reach, but the umber hulks were hurrying to the aid of their small masters. Geran’s feet flew over the mossy old stones of the plaza, and he raised his sword for the first strike—but suddenly a black, hopeless malaise descended over him, a hopelessness so powerful and complete that he stumbled to a halt, his knees buckling and his sword point drooping to the ground. He knew that he had to drive off the spider-monsters before their towering servants caught up, but the effort simply seemed impossible. Try as he might, he couldn’t muster the volition to even take another step toward the little eel-spiders. Three of the