Corsair

TWENTY-EIGHT

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 to 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 creatures stood before the gatehouse, weaving their forelimbs in strange passes as their small black eyes, fixed on him, glittered with malice. They’re spellcasters of some sort, he realized. Yet the knowledge that they had somehow conjured the torpor that held him motionless while their monstrous servants rushed to their aid still was not enough to break their grip on him.

“Geran, what’s wrong?” Selsha called. She slipped a few feet down, dislodging more rubble, but she caught herself and looked at her mother. “Mama! There’s something wrong with Geran!”

Hamil did not hesitate. He darted past Geran, daggers in hand, and struck with serpentlike swiftness against the nearest of the spider-monsters. The creature shrieked in anger and fear and scuttled back from the halfling’s attack. Geran! he shouted mind-to-mind. They’re using magic against you. Fight back!

The swordmage tried to muster his willpower against the insidious assault, to summon up anger or denial, any emotion that might give him the beginnings of resistance. He struggled, searching for something as the spider-things circled closer and their umber hulks rushed into the old plaza. He wondered if they’d have the hulks tear him to pieces, kill him with their own sharp teeth, or simply disarm him and leave him helpless where he stood, unable to move or act to protect himself against the first jungle monster that came along.

“Take them alive!” one of the small creatures hissed. “They may be valuable slaves!”

A bowstring sang behind Geran. He felt the arrow speed past him, its passage a faint breath of wind on his cheek, before it sank deep into the body of one of the three spider-creatures holding him with their enchantment. The creature leaped into the air with an agonized hiss and fell on its back with its legs kicking … and the malaise holding him in its grip vanished, as if it had never existed.

With a sudden shout Geran lunged at the nearest of the spider-monsters drawing close and half-severed its neck with his thrust. “Don’t look the hulks in the eyes!” Geran cried. That much he remembered about the creatures; umber hulks could drive a human mad with their magical gaze. The rest of the spider-monsters retreated at once, spitting and snarling in anger. An umber hulk reached for the swordmage with one enormous claw, its sharp mandibles clacking together, but now Geran was free to move. He turned his back on the monster, refusing to look at its face, and rushed over to the spot where Selsha clung to the wreckage of the gatehouse’s upper walls.

“Jump, Selsha!” he cried. “I’ve got you!”

Selsha took one glance at the monsters surging close and leaped down into Geran’s arms. He staggered under her-it was a good drop, and he only had one hand free-but he caught her and lowered the girl to the ground. Hamil chased off another of the spider-monsters, but then he gave ground himself as he saw Geran falling back from the terrible umber hulks. Mirya loosed one more arrow that bounced from the thick chitin protecting an umber hulk’s torso; the creature bellowed and turned toward her.

As matters stood, discretion was clearly the better part of valor. “Through the gate, quickly!” Geran shouted. “We’ll outrun them!”

Mirya drew another arrow and took aim, but Hamil seized her by the arm. “No more of that!” the halfling said. He pushed her ahead on the path. “Run!”

Geran took Selsha by the arm and led her out of the gate and down the road outside the old city walls. The hulks’ mandibles clacked eagerly as they lunged after their quarry. It was a very near thing for the first thirty yards or so, but then Hamil, Mirya, Geran, and Selsha began to pull away; the umber hulks had the size and power to flatten most of the undergrowth in their way or tear their way through hanging vines and creepers, but each time they did so, they lost a step or two on their smaller quarry. Geran was momentarily tempted to try to lead their pursuers off into the forest, but he discarded the idea at once. The last thing he wanted to do was split up now that they’d finally found everyone, and there was always the chance that the umber hulks and their small masters wouldn’t fall for the ruse. He plunged into the new trail behind Mirya and concentrated on speed. If they could outdistance the umber hulks, he doubted that the smaller creatures would be very eager to follow too closely.

After a couple of hundred yards, they struck an intersecting path. “Turn right!” Geran called to Hamil; if his reckoning was true, that should lead them back to the lakeshore and the Black Moon keep. They hurried in the new direction for a long time, until the path began to climb slowly upward again, ascending another hill. There they paused. Their pursuers were nowhere in sight, at least for the moment.

Hamil looked at Geran with a wry smile. “I suppose the little ones don’t fancy the idea of catching up to us without the big monsters to lend a hand,” he said.

“Mama!” Selsha threw herself into her mother’s arms. Mirya met her halfway, dropping to her knees to wrap her arms around her daughter and weeping with her face buried in Selsha’s hair. “I was so scared! The monsters chased me!”

“I know, my darling, I know,” Mirya said softly. “But you’re with me now, and I’ll keep you safe from them.”

The two Erstenwolds stayed that way for a long moment. Geran could hear the distant thrashing of the umber hulks in the forest behind them, but he smiled to see Mirya and her daughter together nonetheless. To the darkest Hell with Aesperus and his words of warning, he decided. He knew it couldn’t have been the wrong choice to rescue Mirya and Selsha from this terrible place. He’d gladly bear the cost of his decision later, whatever it proved to be.

Hamil glanced at the Erstenwolds, and he smiled too. But he looked back to Geran with a troubled expression. We should get moving, Geran, he said silently. We don’t know if there are more creatures around like the eye-monsters. The sooner we’re all out of this accursed forest, the happier I’ll be.

Agreed, Geran answered. And we need to get back to the keep. The fighting seemed well in hand when we left, but I’d like to be sure of it. He moved over to the Erstenwolds and cleared his throat. “We probably shouldn’t linger here,” he told them. “We can celebrate your rescue aboard Seadrake when we’re on our way back home.”

Selsha looked up at him and beamed. She let go of Mirya and threw herself into Geran’s arms, hugging him tightly. “Thank you for coming to save us, Geran,” she said. “Mama said you would, and you did! But I want to go home now.”

He looked over to Mirya. Her face colored a little, but she gave him a warm smile. He kneeled down to return Selsha’s hug and patted her back. “I’m glad I was able to help,” he told her. “But I’m ready to go home too. We’d better get started.”

They hurried along the path at the best speed Selsha could manage. The twists and turns soon left Geran with no very good sense of which way the path was taking them, but he thought the trail was meandering back toward the keep. Whenever he paused, he could hear the thrashing of the umber hulks as they battered their way through the moonlet’s forest along the trail behind them-but Geran and his companions were steadily gaining ground now. As long as they could keep moving, they’d be able to stay ahead of the monsters. The only question was whether this trail they were now on would eventually lead them back to the keep.

The path started to climb steeply, and Geran realized it was leading them to the hill top. Old black stone steps began to appear underfoot, marking out another ancient roadway-this one a staircase ascending the hill.

Hamil paused at the foot of the steps. “Keep going, or turn off the path and strike out for the keep?” he asked. “I don’t think this trail leads where we’d like to go.”

“I’ve no liking for the looks of the forest,” Mirya said. “I don’t want to leave the path until we’re certain that we have to.”

“Well, it would be inadvisable to go back.” Geran nodded in the direction they’d come. He could still hear the umber hulks behind them. “I think we should keep going for now. Maybe we’ll find another way down from the next hilltop.”

Maybe we’ll find more monster-haunted ruins, Hamil observed sourly. But he pressed on, leading the way as they scrambled up the old stone stairs and emerged in another clearing at the hilltop. This one was occupied with a large, round building whose dome had long since fallen in. To Geran’s eyes it had the look of an observatory, the sort of place where priests and sages might study the stars and cast horoscopes. He started to look for another way down from the hilltop, as did Hamil and Mirya.

“Geran?” Hamil called. He’d scrambled to a better vantage on the terrace surrounding the old observatory. “You’d better come here.”

The swordmage jumped up to where Hamil stood, and followed his gaze. He saw that they were closer to the keep than they’d been before; it wasn’t much more than a mile away. A great plume of smoke billowed up from the docks, where Kraken Queen was engulfed in leaping flames, but Seadrake was missing. “What in the world is going on down there?” he asked aloud. “They haven’t left us, have they?”

“Well, if they did, they didn’t get far,” Hamil replied. He pointed in the other direction. On the lower shoulder of the hill they stood on, perhaps five hundred yards away, Seadrake lay tangled in the treetops. Her deck was canted to one side, and a handful of men worked busily to free her from the branches. When Geran listened closely, he could hear the distant sound of axe blows and the ruffling of the wind in the ship’s sail.

“Can you make out who’s on deck?”

Hamil shook his head. “Not from this distance. My eyes are good, but not that good.”

“If Kraken Queen caught fire, Galehand might have cast off shorthanded to avoid burning too. He would’ve taken the ship aloft to open the distance.”

“Or Black Moon corsairs took the ship and wrecked her.” Hamil shook his head. “There’s no way to know from here.”

“The monsters from the keep aren’t far behind us,” Mirya said in a low voice. “We can’t stay here much longer.”

Geran looked at the caravel, caught in the treetop like an oversized kite. Either she was in friendly hands, in which case they’d have allies there and might be able to lend a hand with extricating Seadrake from her situation … or she was in unfriendly hands, in which case their only escape from Neshuldaar was about to sail off into the Sea of Night, leaving them here with no way home. They had to get down to the ship, and the sooner the better.

“We’ll make for Seadrake,” he said. Marking the ship’s position carefully in his mind’s eye, he chose a path that looked like it might lead them in the ship’s direction and set off once more into the moon’s sinister forest.