Mistshore

CHAPTER 18

Ruen's raft was in good condition, considering it had gone through a sea wraith attack. Ruen and Bellaril worked the oars while Icelin sank into her thoughts. She kept a part of her mind fixed on the apparition watching over Sull, but she knew she would lose the spell soon. The battle ahead would require her complete concentration.

The Watch would be there by now. They would save Sull. Icelin could not consider any other outcome.

She took inventory of what magic she had left. She had never used so much in so short a time. Some of the spells left she hadn't meditated on in years. They were at the very edges of her consciousness. Her teacher had insisted that she be able to protect herself, but she" d put the harrowing magic as far from her active mind as she could.

Now, mentally, she entered the tower room. The sunlight spilling in the windows had become stygian night. When she entered the room, flames sprang from tallow candles, long unused in their brass candelabras. Black shadows stretched to caress the bookshelves. It was only her fear made manifest, but she was still unsettled at the changes.

Icelin walked to a place at the base of the shelves. A black tome floated down from a high shelf to meet her outstretched hand. Arcane writing was burned into the silver spine. The book opened in her hand, and she read.

The spells were powerful, but she was more concerned with the backlash. She'd been caught completely off guard and made helpless when she'd incapacitated Trik. All the offense she could muster wouldn't be worth anything if she were incapacitated herself.

Icelin blinked, and the tower disappeared. She stared out at an endless stretch of dark water. Ruen didn't have his ring. With his body unfortified, he'd be significantly weakened by any blow that managed to land on him. But she trusted his speed. If they couldn't catch him, they couldn't hurt him.

That left Bellaril. She would anchor all of them, and she would make Cerest's men answer for her master. It worried Icelin that she would be walking into a potential den of spellplague, but she knew the dwarf woman would not be dissuaded.

"What will you do when this is all over?" she asked.

Bellaril looked up from her rowing. "Go back to the Cradle," she said, as if it was a foregone conclusion. "No one to run it, the champion should step in. I don't think he's going to be doing it," she said, nodding at Ruen.

"The title's yours," Ruen said. "I have no interest in the Cradle."

"Don't know what you're missing," Bellaril said. "What do you love so much about the fighting?" Icelin asked. Bellaril shrugged. "I like the crowd, like it when they cheer for me. It's what everyone wants." "She likes to be seen," Ruen said.

"Isn't that what I'm saying?" The dwarf woman looked irritated. "What of it?"

"Bells grew up in a family with eight brothers," Ruen said.

"Eight? Isn't that quite… prolific, for a dwarven family?" Icelin said.

"Not so much these days," Bellaril said. "I'm thinking our sire wanted a small army, not a family, so he got all of us on my mother. As far as he was concerned, I would grow my cheek fuzz and be indistinguishable from my brothers. Nine soldiers, nine sons. That's what he wanted. He cut my hair himself, when I refused to do it. My brothers held me down."

"Gods," Icelin said. "Your own family?"

"Blood doesn't mean much. The next time he came for me, I bruised him good before he could get the shears on me. After that, I almost took out his eye. Each time I hurt him a little more, until he stopped coming for me."

"That's when you came to Waterdeep?"

"Not at first. I wandered a little, busied my hands at different jobs before I ended up in Mistshore. But the Cradle." Bellaril shook her head. "They'd never seen a dwarf woman pretty as me who could fight as hard as the boys they bet their coin on."

Icelin smiled at Bellaril's pleased expression. "No one ever tried to make you grow a beard?"

"And they know better than to touch my hair," Bellaril said.

In the distance, Icelin could see the behemoth outline of Ferryman's Waltz. Wraiths circled in an endless dance in the water, occasionally swirling up to curl their bodies sinuously around the broken masts of the inverted ship.

The leviathan's bones twined seamlessly with the rotting greatship. There was no flesh left to suggest what the creature might have looked like in its original form, but the thought of it driving the massive ship straight into the air was boggling. The leviathan's remains kept the Ferryman from plunging into the deep by sheer force of an old will, a need beyond death to remain locked in battle.

Bellaril looked unimpressed by the sight. "How you thinking of getting past them?" she asked, nodding at the wraiths.

Icelin closed her eyes. She hummed the familiar ballad to brace herself against the magic. The lost boy, trying to find his way home. She didn't look at Ruen to see his reaction to the song. She couldn't let herself be distracted.

"Find a path into the wreckage," Icelin instructed rhem. She reached into her pouch for foci, careful this time to make sure they were the correct objects. "When the wraiths scatter, make for it with all possible speed."

Bellaril snorted. "They're not just going to let us glide in-" "Quiet," Ruen said. "Let her work."

Help me, Nelzun, Icelin thought. The raft drifted closer. One by one, the wraiths slowed their restless circling. They sensed a change in the chaotic usualness of their domain and turned theit attention to the small raft and its three distinctly human occupants.

Icelin finished the spell and threw her arms into the air. She released a handful of coin-sized stones, three in each hand. They soared high and burst into orange flame. She pictured them in her mind, the wild, soaring orbs, pulsing with arcane energy.

To the wraiths, arcane energy released from a body steeped in spellplague was like a bone cast in the path of starving dogs. Their bodies glowed in concert with the flames. They streaked after the orbs in clusters of three and four, leaving a clear path between the only three living souls on the water and a cavernous hole snugged between the wrecked Ferryman and the leviathan's bbnes.

The raft drifted up to a slash of sail draped across the upper half of the opening. Ruen pushed it aside with his oar. He maneuvered the raft between hull and rib and they floated on, into the Waltz.

Cerest listened to Trik's report in fascination. "You're certain it's only the three of them?" he said. Trik looked uncomfortable. Cerest narrowed his eyes. "I'm sorry for the loss of Borion, but if you're lying, it won't go badly for just me. We've lost Cearcor and Rondel."

Trik's eyes bugged out and he half-swayed on his feet. "How?"

"Arowall's guards," Cerest said. "They caught them just after we split up. I underestimated their loyalty. But don't worry, Feston is safe. He's gone to get three more of your fellows to aid us."

"Six of us," Trik murmured. "Six of us against three of them."

"More than passable odds, if Icelin is willing to cooperate."

Trik shook his head. He looked at Cerest in a way that made the elf s skin prickle with anget-disgust swimming in pity. But Trik wasn't looking at the elf s scars.

"You go find her on your own," he said. "Take the others if you want. Hells, they'll all fight 'til they're dead, if there's coin in it."

He turned away, the torchlight burning his profile orange. "Don't you want revenge?" Cerest asked him. "They killed your friend."

"And I killed hers, or near enough," Trik said. "I'm out of it."

Cerest watched the man walk away. It didn't affect him the way it had when the Locks had left him. He felt nothing now, not in light of what Trik had told him about Icelin.

He'd finally worn her down. She was coming to him, and she was coming angry. He would have to fight to bring her to heel, but he wasn't worried about that. He would have the uppet hand, because he had the truth Icelin wanted.

All he had to do was make her give up everything to get it.

Ruen's lantern flickered and went out. Icelin started to cast a light spell when she felt Ruen's hand on her arm.

She knew it was him by the cool touch of leather.

"Save your strength," he said. "I'll get the lantern going. Bells, keep rowing."

The dwarf grunted acknowledgment. Ruen moved away in the darkness. Icelin could only assume he was feeling his way.

She tried to get a sense of the interior of the Waltz by the moonlight filtering through the gaps in the rigging, but the sheer bulk of the vessel and bones prevented much detail from being discernible. The structures had massed together in one hive shape, eclipsing all the individual parts.

The raft bumped against something solid about the same time Ruen got the lantern lit. Icelin thought it was debris floating in the water. It took her a breath to realize that it was a boot, propped against the front of the raft. The boot's owner floated six inches above the water.

Icelin looked up into the most frightening collage of a human face she had ever beheld. Naked above the waist, the man's torso and shoulders were disproportionately wide. Veins and bone bulges stood out from his pale skin. Thin patches of hair grew like scrub grass all over his head. His bottom lip folded over on itself in one corner, giving him a perpetual sneer and allowing a stream of drool to escape from his mouth in a needle-thin waterfall. This type of deformity, the godscurse, Icelin had seen before. But the gods weren't done with their jest at this poor soul's expense.

From the man's neck sprouted a quartet of bulbous gray tentacles. He had them draped-across his shoulders like a mane that ended at his belt. The tentacles were moving, seemingly independent of any conscious mental direction on their owner's part.

With his boot on the raft, the man brought forward a long polearm, its tip reaching well above his head. He swung the point down level with her chest. His arm muscles tensed. Icelin thought he was going to drive the weapon through her breast, but instead, he let out a keening whistle that threatened to shatter her eardrums.

Icelin (bided into herself, clutching her head against the high-pitched whistle. When it was over, she noticed Bellaril and Ruen had adopted similar protective positions.

"We mean no harm here," Icelin said shakily. "We came here for refuge-"

A howling cry echoed from somewhere deep in the inverted Ferryman, cutting off Icelin's words. It rose in intensity, so that it mimicked the man's whistle perfectly. The sound rang out again, nearer, and with it came clicks and rapid pounding on wood.

"Get the oars up!" Ruen shouted. Bellaril was already hauling hers out of the water.

Ruen ran past Icelin and swung his oar. He batted the man's polearm away from her chest and reversed the swing for a swipe at the man's legs.

The deformed man backed off, blocking Ruen's swing with his polearm, but he made no furthet move to fight back. He smiled, and the expression was horrid, his lips curling like worms around uneven rows of teeth.

Ruen plunged the oar into the water, trying to push them away from the Ferryman.

"Beware!" Icelin cried, pointing to the ship. Pinpoints of light were visible from a gap in the hull. There came another howl, and a breath later, two enormous bodies leaped through the opening. In size and movement they resembled stags, but their faces were a cross between canine and badger. They launched into the air using massive haunches, one and then the other landing on the'small raft.

The stink of rotting flesh and gamey fur swelled in Icelin's nostrils. Their craft was not big enough to contain the beasts. Icelin fell to her knees to avoid being slammed off the raft by the weight of the furry bodies.

The beast farthest from her whipped its head around, catching Bellaril by the leg. She fell on her backside. The beast shook her like a playtime doll, and for the first time Icelin heard the dwarf woman scream. Terror widened her eyes, but she fought back, and folded her body up to get at the beast's head.

It lifted her by her leg and swung her, tossing its head and snarling. On the second backswing Bellaril grabbed her belt dagger and planted it beneath the beast's eyes. She missed its burning orb by half an inch.

The beast keened and snapped its head down. The knife came out of its flesh. It bit the blade in half, nearly severing Bellaril's fingers too. The dwatf woman dropped the ruined weapon. Her skull smacked the raft, and she went senseless.

"No!" Icelin cried. She tried to crawl between the second beast's legs. Ruen had his arms around its head. His muscles strained as he attempted to keep the beast's teeth from his neck.

"Get up," Ruen hollered when he saw her weaving between the beast's legs. "They're leucrotta. They'll trample you!"

Icelin lunged forward, but the second leucrotta had already seen her. It dropped Bellaril in favor of a moving target. Curling sideways, it lunged. Its massive weight hit Icelin from the side and bore her to the ground.

She hit the planks hard. The leucrotta's rancid breath was all over her. Bone-ridged jaws snapped inches from her face.

Icelin pushed against the leucrotta's throati Her hands slipped off the oily fur and down its chest. She had the brief impression of a wild heartbeat and stone-hard muscles. She would never throw the beast off. Het only advantage was the size of the raft. The craft bobbed wildly between the leviathan's bones and the bow of the Ferryman. The leucrotta were positioned half on these shores and half on the raft.

Icelin couldn't see Ruen now, but she could hear his punches vibrating along the other leucrotta's body. It squealed in pain, and Icelin heard a splash when its back legs skittered off the raft.

She kicked up, into her own foe's belly. It hacked a foul breath and became meaner. Nine feet of muscle and bone settled on top of her. Icelin couldn't breathe. She flopped back and tried to pull her chest free, but the leucrotta latched onto her wrist and began to shake the appendage in its teeth.

Fire exploded up Icelin's arm. She cried out as the flesh was stripped from her wrist, exposing white bone. The pain was mythic. She felt the blood dribble down her arm and almost passed out. She tried to rip her arm out of the leucrotta's mouth, but that only made the pain worse.

Haltingly, she chanted a spell. Her concentration was in shreds, her attention too caught up in her trapped arm. She imagined how the magic would go wild, but she didn't care. Any pain was better than watching the leucrotta tear her hand off. It was playing with her, enjoying her pain before it ate her alive. She shrieked the arcane words and braced herself for the backlash.

Metal spikes burst bloodlessly from her skin. They were two inches long and curled at the tips. She felt them puncture the roof of the leucrotta's mouth. Willingly she gave the beast her hand, driving the spikes deep.

With a high-pitched wail, the leucrotta released her. The beast pulled its weight off her chest, but more of the spikes were growing from Icelin's skin. She felt each one as a tiny pinprick. They stuck and tore the leucrotta's skin until both woman and monster were drenched in blood. The beast ripped free and retreated, whimpering pathetically. It limped to the edge of the raft and licked its wounds.

Icelin could see the wicked intelligence in its eyes as it reevaluated her. She stretched out her wrecked arm, daring the creature to come at her and taste more spikes.

It watched her with those frightening eyes like the burning edges of coins, but it came no closer. That's right, Icelin thought. I'm not as weak as I look.

She sat up and looked around, careful to keep one eye on the injuted leucrotta. Ruen lay on his back; his beast had worked its way onto his chest, but it couldn't keep him still. He punched the leucrotta in the side of its wedge-shaped head over and over. His fists moved in a blur, delivering quick, alternating punches down either side of the beast's Dank. Distracted by the constant stream of hurts, it couldn't bite his fists or sever fingers. He would wear it down eventually, but not before he exhausted himself.

Not far away, Bellaril lay in a wrecked heap. Icelin saw she'd taken a bite to the neck before the beast had grabbed her. Her leg flopped in a blood pool. The stench of copper and oily fur was dizzying.

Icelin crawled to the dwarf's side. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the leucrotta's deformed master pacing the air among the leviathan's ribs. He was agitated, his tentacles writhing over his chest. He propped the polearm on his shoulder, but he didn't throw it.

He won't risk hitting the beasts, Icelin thought. She tore her sleeve, wrapping it three times around the deep gash in Bellaril's leg. The spikes made it take twice as long, but she didn't want to end the spell yet.

When she was done, she tore her other sleeve and wrapped her own wrist as tightly as she could. Blood immediately soaked through the makeshift bandage. She felt light-headed. She prayed she could kill the injured leucrotta before she passed out.

Standing on her knees, Icelin chanted again. The spikes sank back into her flesh and dissolved. On the heels of the dispel, she pushed her arms out from her body, the sweep encompassing both leucrotta.

Blue missiles of magical energy shot from her hands. They hit the injured leucrotta in the chest. The beast howled. The blue streamers sank into its flesh, briefly illuminating the beast's face.

Before the injured one could recover, the missiles rebounded, striking the leucrotta Ruen was. fighting in the spine.

In the explosion of pain and surprise, the leucrotta lost its balance at last, its back legs collapsing underneath its body.

Ruen took the distraction and flipped himself onto the leucrotta's back, raking his body across the beast's singed fur. The leucrotta howled and bucked, trying to throw the monk off, but Ruen locked both arms around its head.

The leucrotta turned and charged toward the water. It would force Ruen off one way or another. When the beast turned its head, Ruen sprang up, contorting his body so that his full weight landed on the leucrotta's left flank. With his arms locked around the beast's head, Ruen had the leucrotta disoriented. It tried to twist free, but Ruen pulled straight up and to the right with all his sttength.

The leucrotta's neck popped with a stomach-turning crunch. It sagged against Ruen, biting and snapping at random, its senses shattered by the trauma it had suffered.

Ruen grabbed the jagged remains of Bellaril's dagger and plunged it into the beast's throat. It coughed once and expired, collapsing half on top of Ruen. He shoved the body off into the harbor.

The injured leucrotta howled furiously, a cry echoed by the deformed man. He hefted his spear, aiming it at Ruen, while the leucrotta lunged for him.

"No!" Icelin cried. Ruen dodged, but the leucrotta grabbed him by the shoulder, tearing out a chunk of flesh.

He crab-crawled back, putting a little distance between them, but the leucrotta was already tensing to spring again.

Icelin gauged the distance and cast another spell. She twisted her arms together and waited, sweat from the pain pouring down her face, until the deformed man threw his spear. He aimed for Ruen's heart.

Icelin spoke a word, and Ruen and the leucrotta disappeared. She untwisted her hands and instantly they reappeared, but they had exchanged places on the raft.

The deformed man stared, his jaw slack with horror, as his own spear punched a hole in the leucrotta's flank. Its wicked point protruded out the other side, between two of the leucrotta's ribs.

The beast collapsed-dead before it hit the ground-and Ruen was up and moving, grabbing Icelin, hauling her to her feet.

She sagged against him, her strength gone. She'd done too much. Three spells practically at once, and she was losing blood, despite the bandage.

"He's still armed," Ruen said, and as he spoke, the deformed man drew a broadsword from a ratty leather scabbard. He let himself fall out of the air, landing on the raft with a crash that sent Icelin and Ruen to their knees and jarred the leucrotta's body.

Seeing the corpse up close seemed to incense the man more. He came forward, slashing wildly with his blade. Ruen let go of Icelin and rushed him. He ducked under the man's reach just before his slash would have come around and decapitated him. He brought his forearm up and blocked the slash at the man's wrist, leaving his other hand free for a counter attack.

One of the few things Icelin had learned to be true about Ruen Morleth-however much honor he showed as a thief, as a Mistshore fighter he would never fight fair.

So Icelin was not in the least shocked when Ruen brought his other hand up and snagged one of the tentacles writhing at the deformed man's waist. He wrapped it around his fist and yanked.

The man s swotd arm flew out wide at the same time his face came down, until he was nose to nose with Ruen. The monk snapped his skull against the deformed man's and released the tentacle.

The deformed man staggered back. He tried to bring his sword up, but Ruen had him this time. The monk took his thick wrist in both hands, twisted and brought the sword point down, driving it harmlessly into the raft. The deformed man released the sword and it bobbed there, a scar in the wood.

Ruen brought his fist around and punched the deformed man in the stomach. He stumbled backward and off the raft. No spell held him as he plunged into the water.

Ruen went back to Icelin's side. "Are you well enough to walk? We have to get to a hiding place. We won't be able to fight Cerest like this."

"I know," Icelin said, "but Bellaril's wound is bad. I don't think we can move her."

A pitiful wail erupted from the water. Icelin and Ruen tensed. Ruen turned, his fists raised to defend against another attacker, but it was the deformed man. He thrashed in the water, his tentacles floating weirdly around his head. It gave the impression an octopus was latched onto his neck.

"Gods," Icelin said, "he can't swim." She took a step toward the edge of the raft.

Ruen latched onto her arm. "Or maybe he's a clever play actor who'll stick you with a hidden dagger when you get close enough to help him."

The cries intensified. Icelin flinched. "If that's so, you'll finish him when he makes his attack. If it's not-I can't listen to him die like that."

"He was willing enough to let us be eaten by his dogs," Ruen said, but Icelin had already shaken off his restraining hand.

She walked to the edge of the raft and got down on her knees. She buried one hand in the strapping that kept Ruen's raft together and extended the cither out to the deformed man.

He thrashed for a handful of breaths, his eyes huge in the lamplit darkness. He watched her for sign of a trick, but she just let her hand linger in the air like a bird hovering before a cat.

The deformed man dipped down, catching water in his half-open mouth. He coughed and spat. Panting now, he reached out and grabbed her small hand.

Icelin tightened her grip on the strapping. She felt Ruen's legs on either side of her. He grabbed her shoulders to steady her, and hauled her up by the armpits with the deformed man in tow. Together, they dragged him up and onto the raft.

He lay on his side, in a pool of water and leucrotta blood, coughing up harbor filth from his slack mouth. Icelin stood over him, unsure how far the uneasy truce was going to stretch.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, like sudden heat in a cold room. She looked up and saw a man standing in the torn gap of the Ferryman's hull. She didn't know how long he'd been standing there, watching them, but the man looked to be about a hundred and ninety years old.

He had a narrow, jaundiced face, but his expression was not unkind. Gteen eyes peered out from eye sockets that were heavy on top and papery with age on the bottom. His thick, stark white eyebrows were raised in speculation. He was clean-shaven, head and face; and wore a long set of robes, white over gray. A black belt that looked like it had been chewed on by wild dogs circled his waist.

But the feature that demanded the greatest portion of Icelin's attention was the carved wooden staff he held in his right hand. The wood had been notched with arcane markings over every visible surface At its peak, a swirling red mist encircled thin shoots of wood, like foliage on a burning tree.

He had the staff slightly pointed forward. Icelin could imagine a ray of arcane power shooting from the tip and striking Ruen down before the two of them could flinch. This was not a warrior's polearm; this was a wizard's staff. It relied not on human strength, but on a connection with its master. The staff would respond to its wielder's slightest instinct, and it would do so in the space between heartbeats.

Icelin raised her hands, palms out. "We surrender," she said.