Corsair

TWENTY-FOUR

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

The second time Kamoth Kastelmar came to visit Mirya in her cell, she knew she had to escape or die trying. The pirate lord had stopped by once on the second day of their imprisonment to check on their accommodations-or so he said. But the whole time he’d been discussing routine matters such as bedding, fresh water, and the quality of their meals, he’d stared at Mirya through the bars with a cold smile beneath his beard. A few hours later, a dour-faced slave woman had come by with an armful of new clothes for her and, asked for her to remove what she’d been wearing for days now so that it could be washed. Mirya was none too happy to strip in her cell, but no men were in sight, and her dress sorely needed a washing. She’d complied, only to find that her new clothing was more than a little scandalous by Hulburg’s standards. Instead of her sensible, neck-to-ankle, long-sleeved dress of blue wool, she was given a thin gown of crimson silk with a plunging neckline and diaphanous sleeves. At least Selsha was decently covered; the slave had brought her a small servant’s tunic and smock that Mirya was able to fit to her with a couple of strategic tucks and knots.

Late the following day, Kamoth stopped by for the second time. He leaned against the bars of her cell and grinned broadly. “Well now, Mistress Erstenwold, perhaps I did you a discourtesy when I said you’d fetch a better price in the markets of Chessenta if you hadn’t seen your twentieth year yet,” he said. “That’s a far more fetching outfit you have on today. You’re a fine sight, you surely are. Why, it seems a shame to leave you locked up in my cellar. There’s a much better room for you in the keep.”

Mirya shivered, but she stood her ground with her arms folded over her chest. It was about the only way she felt decently covered. “I don’t want to be any trouble,” she said. “We’re comfortable enough, unless you’re willing to bargain our release.”

“As I told you before, Mistress Erstenwold, your money and property are of no great value to me here.” He studied her closely, and his dark eyes glittered in the torchlight. “But perhaps other arrangements might be made.”

Mirya flushed. She took a deep breath to calm herself. “I’m sure you’ve no lack of women at your call, Lord Kamoth. You can hardly need me for … company.”

Kamoth shrugged. “Perhaps, my dear, but I simply don’t see what else you have to bargain with. Besides, you’re being modest. I like my women tall and slender, and I admire your courage. I surely do.”

Mirya started to answer with the idea of begging the pirate lord to be kind for Selsha’s sake if not her own, but stopped herself short. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to remind Kamoth that her daughter was in his power, as well. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to protect Selsha, and that was all there was to it. Instead she said, “Geran Hulmaster will be looking for me. Let me go, and he’ll have no quarrel with you.”

The pirate lord enjoyed a long laugh at that. Mirya frowned, wondering what it was that he knew that she didn’t. When he finished, he passed a hand over his face and shook his head. “Geran Hulmaster is very unlikely to forget his quarrel with me at this point, my dear. He’s welcome to look for you all he wants, though. It’ll be a long time before he comes to storm our battlements. A long time indeed!”

“Why?” Mirya demanded. “Where are we?”

Kamoth chuckled again and turned to the guards who flanked him. “Have Mistress Erstenwold bathed and brought to my chambers this evening,” he said. “Take the girl and put her in the common pens. No need to be unkind to her-as long as Mistress Erstenwold remains pleasant company, well, little Selsha here will be quite taken care of with the keep’s servants. Am I clear?”

“Don’t take me away from her!” Mirya objected. She flung herself to the bars of her cage, but Kamoth was already leaving. “Please! Let Selsha stay with me!”

The pirate lord paused to glance over his shoulder. “Now, now, don’t make a scene. I hate scenes, Mistress Erstenwold.” Then he strode out of sight down the corridor. The guards leered at Mirya then followed their lord.

Selsha threw her arms around Mirya’s waist. “I want to stay with you, Mama!” she said. “I don’t want to be by myself here!”

Mirya hugged her daughter to her. “I know, darling. I’m afraid too.” If she had to, she’d do her best to be pleasant company to Kamoth … but she suspected that Kamoth was the sort of man who quickly tired of his toys. She interested him now because she looked him in the eye and refused to let him see how terrified she was. That would not last long once she surrendered to him. He’d discard her soon enough, and then where would Selsha be? She couldn’t leave her daughter alone in a place like this. She simply couldn’t.

“Better to be hung for a goat than a sheep,” she muttered to herself.

Selsha looked up at her. “What did you say?”

“We can’t wait for Geran any longer. If we can get away from here on our own, now’s the time to try. Otherwise the pirates will split us up, and I’ll never have the courage to try it.”

Selsha nodded. “How can we get out?”

Mirya smiled. “Well, I’ve given it some thought, and I’ve an idea how it might be done. I think you might be able to squeeze between the bars if I help you a little.”

“But what about you, Mama?”

“I’ll need a little more help.” Mirya kneeled to bring her face closer to Selsha’s. “When you get out of this cell, you’ll have to go down the hallway here to one of the storerooms we passed, find me a good sturdy bit of rope or a chain, and bring it back here.”

“I … I don’t think I can,” Selsha said in a small voice.

“My darling, you must, or we’ll be in the power of these wicked men for the rest of our days.” Mirya cupped Selsha’s face with her hand. “I know you can do it. You’re the bravest, most clever girl I’ve ever known. Now, let’s see if we can get you through the bars.”

Mirya stood up and took a closer look at the bars of the cell. She’d studied them thoroughly during the last day or two-after all, what else did she have to occupy herself, other than entertaining Selsha and keeping her calm? The cell’s bars were inch-thick iron, anchored firmly at floor and ceiling, with two horizontal braces to secure them: one at her midthigh, the other a little above her shoulders. “Come over here and try to fit your head between the bars,” she told Selsha. “Carefully, now!”

Selsha kneeled and leaned her head against the bars. It would be very close. Mirya looked carefully to see how much more she’d need. “All right,” she breathed. “Selsha, I want you to strip down to your underthings and use our washbucket and soap to get yourself slippery all over. Make sure you soap up head and hair best of all. I’ll see if I can bend this just a little bit.”

She braced one foot against a bar, gripped the opposite bar, took several deep breaths, and threw all her strength into bowing the bar, even if it was just a little bit. She strained until a gasp of effort burst from her lips. Then she reversed her position and started on the opposite bar, pushing it in the other direction.

“I’m ready, Mama,” Selsha said. She grinned at Mirya from underneath a head full of suds; the prospect of adventure had lifted her spirits.

Mirya slowly pushed herself upright and looked at the bars. She hadn’t moved them much at all, but perhaps it was far enough. “Covered in soap, are you? Good. Now come here, and let’s see if you can get out. Try your head first-if your head goes through, the rest of you must follow.”

She moved out of the way to make room for Selsha. The girl pressed herself against the bars at the place where Mirya had tried to widen the gap. For a long moment, she struggled in vain, and Mirya despaired. This was the only plan she’d been able to come up with, and the bars were just too strong for her. But then, with a sharp cry, Selsha forced her head through. “I’m stuck!” she wailed.

“No, you’re not!” Mirya answered. “We’ll get you through!” She helped Selsha to turn her shoulders and pushed as hard as she dared. Selsha caught again at the chest, but Mirya had her exhale as far as she could, and in one more push she spilled out onto the floor of the hallway.

“I did it!” Selsha exclaimed. She did a little dance in the hall, and despite the desperation of the moment Mirya smiled at the sight of her daughter shaking suds all over the floor. “But now I’ve got soap in my eyes!”

“And I’m sorry for that, Selsha, but look-now you’re out!” Mirya answered. She handed Selsha her tunic through the bars. “Here you go. Dress quick, and then offwith you! The longer we take, the more likely it is that we’re caught. There’s a storeroom just a few feet down the hallway there. I need a rope, a chain, something like that.” She smiled. “Or the key to the cell, if you see it hanging near.”

Selsha pulled the simple servant tunic over her head and ran off down the hall. Mirya pressed her face to the bars, trying to see where she’d gone. Fear for her daughter left her heart hammering in her chest, but this was the best chance that she could see. She consciously resigned herself to endure the wait as calmly as she could-but Selsha hurried back into sight only moments later with the clinking of chain links.

“What about these, Mama?” She showed Mirya a pair of thick manacles. “Would they work?”

Mirya nodded at her daughter. “They ought to. Let’s see.” She took the first pair of manacles, closed the cuffs around one of the cell’s horizontal slats, and then looped the chain over the next slat higher. She hurried over to one of the bunks, turned it on its side, and worked its leg free. Then she inserted the sturdy length of wood in the loop of the chain and began to twist. Slowly she pulled the horizontal brace upwards. When she’d moved it as far as it could go, she moved the manacle to one of the bars she’d already bent and looped the chain around another bar. Repeating the effort, she twisted the chain, this time widening the imperceptible gap she’d started before. It took all ofher strength, and she had several painful slips and bashed her knuckles against the bars more than once. But now one of the bars was bowed several inches out of place.

“You’re doing it, Mama!” Selsha exclaimed.

Quickly Mirya shifted her chain to the opposite bar and once again twisted the thick wood of the bunk’s leg through the loop. She pulled it as far as she could and decided that it was enough. She slipped her head and leading shoulder through the gap and then slowly worked the rest of her body out of the cell-not without more bruises and scrapes. Finally she stood in the hallway, her arms and legs trembling with fatigue.

“Now what do we do?” Selsha asked her.

“Leave this awful place behind us, and soon,” Mirya replied. If she was lucky, they might have an hour or two before someone noticed their escape. The best option would be to steal a small boat from the wharves, but it seemed unlikely that they could make off with a boat right under the pirates’ eyes. It might be better to leave the vicinity of the keep as quickly as possible, staying near the coast in the hope that they might come across friendly traders or a port where she might arrange passage. In any event, the longer she hesitated, the less likely it was that their escape would succeed. The first order of business was to get out of the keep’s dungeons.

“Come, let’s try this way,” she said. She took Selsha’s hand and led her down the hallway to the left. It wasn’t the way they’d come, but Mirya didn’t like the idea of retracing her path back to the dock where Kraken Queen was tied up. At least one of the gates was guarded, the docks by the pirate ship would be busy, and there were monsters down some of those passageways. It seemed better to find some other way out of the keep.

They crept carefully down the hallway, passing more cells-most unoccupied, some not-and more storerooms. Several times Mirya pulled Selsha swiftly into the shadows, hiding as

Black Moon corsairs or their servants passed through intersecting corridors. Once they had to duck into a storeroom and hide behind several large casks of salted meat when a pair of pirates came straight down the hallway toward them. Fortune was with them for the moment; the pirates passed by without seeing them.

Two or three halls from the cell, Mirya stumbled across a small servants’ stair leading up. She listened carefully for any sign that someone might be waiting above, and then nodded to Selsha. “Up the stairs, soft as a cat’s step,” she whispered. Selsha nodded, and together they climbed the stair.

They passed by one floor that looked far too busy for Mirya’s taste-she could hear the bustle of kitchen work and a number of voices murmuring from that direction-and kept going to the next floor up. Hoping that she was not about to blunder into the part of the keep where Kamoth expected her to arrive in a few hours anyway, Mirya led Selsha down a hallway with doors on either side leading to what were likely barracks rooms or private suites. At the end of the hall stood a sturdy door reinforced with iron bands; she guessed that it might lead outside and decided to risk a quick look to gain her bearings. Mirya opened the door as quietly as she could and stepped out onto a dark rampart in the open air.

She took three steps toward the battlements, and then Mirya stopped where she stood and stared up at the sky. It was night, but the night was ablaze with stars. Climbing into the dark sky, a dozen or more small moonlets formed a heavenly stairway of silver and shadow, leading to Selune-but here the moon filled almost half the sky, a titanic presence that left her unable to move or speak for ten full heartbeats. The keep on whose battlements she stood was raised on a steep-sided hill beside a lake of dazzling sapphire waters, overlooking a great dark forest or jungle of fantastic plants colored in hues of scarlet and purple. A soft silvery mist hung in the air, clinging to the hillsides almost like intangible waves that slowly undulated with no breeze to stir them.

“By the Dark Mother,” she whispered. “Where are we?”

Selsha gripped her hand. “Ooooh,” she said in a small voice. “Look at the moon, Mama! And the stars! We’re in the Sea of Night, aren’t we? I didn’t think anyone really lived there!”

“I … I couldn’t say.” Mirya shook herself and tried to master the dizzying terror of her circumstances. They certainly weren’t in Faerun any longer. In fact, she doubted that they were anywhere in the world. No sky such as this could exist in Toril. Either they were in some other plane altogether, or-as the fantastically close face of white Selune suggested-they were on some islet, some black moon, in the midst of the Sea of Night. Mirya had heard tales of magic doorways and ships that sailed the skies, but she’d never paid them any mind. She had learned long ago not to waste her time on foolishness and dreams. Yet here she and Selsha were, seemingly in the middle of some mad dream, and she could not even imagine how the two of them would ever see their little house in Hulburg again.

She wondered if they still had time to return to the cell before their absence was noticed. Where else could they go? Even if they found some place out in the jungle where they could hide from the pirates and their monsters, they couldn’t go home. And Mirya didn’t like the look of the scarlet forest in the least. The Dark Lady alone knew what sort of fierce moon-beasts might lurk in its shadows. Perhaps they could find some place to hide within the keep itself, some forgotten cellar or unused tower where they could avoid Kamoth until she could learn more about the black moon and its secrets.

Selsha suddenly grabbed her hand. “Mama!” she whispered.

Mirya heard it then too-the high-pitched, hissing voice of one of the spider-monsters, and a moment later the voice of another one. The creatures were coming toward them. Without a moment’s hesitation, she turned and dashed for the other door leading up onto the battlement, Selsha’s hand in hers. She fumbled at the door, and at the other doorway two of the neogi scuttled into view, with one of their hulking servant-monsters shambling along behind them.

The little monsters shrieked like angry teakettles. “You humans!” one snarled. “Stop there!”

Mirya managed to get the door open and pushed Selsha inside. The passage beyond descended a flight of stairs, leading down again. She felt something then, a baleful will that started to encircle her mind with unseen talons, but before it could seize her in its sinister grasp, she staggered through the door and slammed it shut behind her. It was fitted with a heavy bolt, and she shot it home just as the neogi’s claws scrabbled at the door. Selsha whimpered, but Mirya grabbed her hand and fled down the stairs.

This part of the keep was lit only by the dimmest of lights, small glass orbs filled with a strange milky fluid that glowed greenish white. She had to grope her way down the stairs, feeling her way along the walls. Mirya guessed that the neogi liked it that way, and shuddered. The last thing she wanted to do was blunder into more of the spidery little horrors in the darkness. She pried one of the small glass orbs free of the wall, and found that it was cool to the touch. “Take hold of my gown,” she whispered to Selsha, and they continued down the hall.

“Yes, Mama,” Selsha whispered. She seized the hem of Mirya’s thin robe.

Mirya led the way through the darkness until they emerged in a large hall or guardroom. There was a door nearby, with a pair of narrow stone embrasures beside it. She glanced out from one and realized that she was looking out of an arrow slit that protected a postern gate leading outside. The sinister jungle crowded close to the base of the keep here. Then she chose one of the other passageways and advanced cautiously into the bowels of the keep, hoping that she’d come across something that she could turn to her advantage-a good hiding place, a slave who might be willing to help her, or perhaps supplies and a weapon so that she might at least face the jungle outside with some amount of preparation. She came to a place where several passages met, and paused to consider her next turn. The last thing she wanted to do was to become completely lost in this place.

The click of talons on stone and the evil chittering of the neogi speaking in their own tongue came from the passage directly in front of her. She stood paralyzed for an instant. “Hide!” she whispered to Selsha, pushing her into one of the passageways. She started after her daughter, but realized that the glowing orb she carried gave them away. Quickly she stepped back out into the intersection and rolled the light down one of the other passages-and then the neogi appeared. Mirya pressed herself into the shadow of one of the other doorways and prayed that the creatures hadn’t seen her.

Several of the monsters chattered to each other, pausing for a moment in the intersection. Then they continued on their way-turning down the hall where Selsha was hiding. Another of the huge, apelike monsters followed after the little spider-creatures, and Mirya almost gave herself away by stepping out of the shadows too soon. She waited a moment for the creatures to pass and then crept out of her hiding place. Heart hammering in her chest, Mirya hurried after the neogi and their hulk, following as closely as she dared. Selsha must have fled down the passage in front of the monsters. Mirya prayed that her daughter was calm enough to seek out a side passage to duck into, or a small room where she might find a place to hide and let the monsters behind her pass. Selsha was a small girl, and she was good at hiding … but the moon-keep’s monsters terrified the child. It was more likely that she was fleeing in blind panic, in which case there was no telling where she might turn.

Mirya came to a large open room and realized that they’d returned to the room by the postern gate again. The party of monsters she followed turned and disappeared up one of the other hallways that met here, and Mirya advanced cautiously into the room behind them. Selsha might have fled down any of the passages leading away from the room. She wheeled in a circle, hoping for some hint of which way her daughter might have gone. She listened for a moment, but all she could hear were loathsome scuttling footsteps of the neogi drawing away. Then she realized that the postern gate was standing open by a double handspan. “Oh, no,” she breathed. She hurried to the gate and peered outside.

One of Selsha’s shoes lay on the stone landing, atop a short flight of stone stairs that led down into a tiny clearing at the keep’s foot.

She closed her eyes, sickened with fear. Selsha was out in that jungle somewhere, with its monstrous plants and its unknown perils.

There was no choice for it, then. Mirya quickly pulled the keep’s gate closed behind her, hoping that their pursuers inside would assume they’d fled down one of the other passageways inside. Then she picked up Selsha’s shoe and hurried down the overgrown path leading into the black moon’s mist-wreathed jungle.