The Reaver

CHAPTER EIGHT

The galley listed to port a bowshot offshore where it had run aground. Men and zombies waded from the ship to the beach with bundles slung on their backs.

Sheltering beneath the branches of an oak that did a fair job of keeping off the rain, Umara watched the unloading alongside Anton and Ehmed. A short distance away, Stedd stood out in the open with his face upturned. Dawn had come and gone, and as usual, the sun was hidden behind the clouds, but it didn’t matter. After his captivity in the bowels of the ship, the boy was hungry for the open sky.

But if Stedd was elated in a quiet, mystical sort of way, Ehmed’s expression was glummer than usual. Presumably, the death of his vessel was to blame.

“You were as good as your word,” Umara told him. “You got us ashore.”

The captain sighed. “Yes, Lady Sir.”

“I also appreciate it that none of your men quite managed to intervene in my fight with Kymas before the whole thing was over.”

For a moment, Ehmed’s lips quirked upward. “Well, you know sailors, Lady Sir. Useless and undependable. Lord Kymas told me so on more than one occasion, when he wasn’t driving the rowers of the upper tier like they were slaves.” He turned his head in Stedd’s direction. “I didn’t take any pleasure in seeing a child treated the way we treated that one. But no guard nor any sort of restraints? He could run off.”

Umara took a breath. “He won’t because he’s no longer our prisoner. The notion that he ought to be was at the heart of Kymas’s treachery. Our purpose now is to take Stedd to Sapra. By so doing, we’ll cement an alliance that will serve Thay well in days to come.”

Ehmed frowned as though he would have liked to ask the questions her unexpected assertions evoked. But after a moment’s hesitation, all he said was, “Yes, Lady Sir. I’d better go check what’s come off the ship and what still needs to.”

As the captain strode toward the waterline, Anton murmured, “Eventually, you’ll have to tell him that none of you can go home.”

Umara shook her head. “I told you, I’m a loyal Thayan. I have no intention of spending the rest of my life in exile. Besides, Stedd says I’m supposed to go back.”

“Stedd says a lot of things. But I haven’t heard him explain how to justify your failure to carry out your orders.”

Orders handed down from Szass Tam himself. Umara imagined standing before that legendary terror and felt a pang of dread.

“I’ll figure out something,” she said.

“If they understood the actual situation, Ehmed and the others might not care to gamble their lives on your glibness.”

Anxiety gave way to irritation. Scowling, she said, “I’m not Kymas. I have a reasonable amount of concern for my underlings, and I hope that if worst comes to worst, my superiors will only punish me. But I’m entitled to the crew’s service by virtue of who and what I am, even if they come to grief because of it.”

Anton smiled. “Spoken like a true Red Wizard.”

Still vexed, although she wasn’t entirely certain why, she said, “Anyway, who are you to say these things to me? When did you ever hesitate to lie or put other folk in harm’s way to accomplish your ends?”

The Turmishan’s eyes-eyes a rich, shining brown like polished agate-blinked, and then he burst out laughing. “Well, now that you mention it, never once in all my years of plundering. What in the name of the deepest hell has gotten into me?”

Stedd, she thought, and perhaps their time aboard Falrinn’s sailboat, an interlude when neither of them had needed to fight, scheme, or tell too many lies, had exercised some small influence as well.

“I’m more concerned about whether your newfound regard for honesty will last,” she said aloud. “If I knew, perhaps I’d know how far to trust you.”

He grinned. “What a cold thing to say to the comrade who helped you kill angels and a vampire. How many folk share a bond like that?”

That tugged a smile out of her. “Nonetheless. You know I truly mean to help Stedd. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have rebelled against Kymas. But it was different for you. You had to stand with me to be free.”

“And now you wonder if I’m still looking for a way to re-kidnap Stedd and turn a profit on him.”

“Can you convince me you’re not?”

“Well, I suppose it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that I could carry the boy off from the midst of you and your followers, that he and I could survive alone on this desolate shore, and then I could find someone besides the church of Umberlee willing to buy him. Maybe a different band of Thayans. But truly, I’m bored just thinking about it. How many times have you and I and other scoundrels like us pursued the poor brat, taken him prisoner, and then lost him again to bad luck or a rival? I’d rather play a new game.”

“Escorting him to Sapra?”

Anton hesitated. “I don’t go to Turmish. But I’ll tag along as far as the border.”

She wondered why he shunned the land of his birth. She assumed his fellow Turmishans had put a price on his head, but so had the rulers of Teziir and Westgate, and that hadn’t kept him out of their territories.

She drew breath to ask him about it. Then, down on the beach, somebody shouted, “Ship ho!”

Umara looked out to sea. Beyond the galley and farther to the northeast, tiny with distance, she could make out square-rigged sails bobbing up and down as the vessel beneath them cut through the waves.

“Curse it,” Anton said. “That’s the Octopus.”

Umara didn’t know how he could identify the ship from so far away, but that was scarcely the important question. “Is it a pirate ship?”

“Yes, and her master was always one to truckle to Evendur Highcastle even before the stinking piece of offal came back from the bottom of the sea. I guarantee you he’s hunting Stedd the same as we were.”

“Is it possible he knows Stedd’s with us?”

“Given Evendur’s magic, how can you rule it out? Even if he doesn’t know, he might think a wreck and a bunch of castaways are too easy a prize to pass up.”

Umara scowled. “We’re not easy.”

“No, we’re not. But we’re exhausted from the fighting yesterday and then nursing the ship to shore. Have you had a chance to rest and renew your powers?”

“I napped.”

“I’ll take that as a no. The Octopus has a sorcerer aboard. If you were fresh, I’d say he isn’t much compared to you. But as you’re not …” Anton spread his hands.

“All right. I’ll give the order.” She hurried after Ehmed Sepandem.

Anton started to follow Umara, then remembered that no one here had any reason to take direction from him. If he ventured closer to the tide line and the salvaged supplies piled up there, it would only encourage folk to urge him to load himself up like a pack mule.

On impulse, he headed over to Stedd instead. Oblivious to the scurrying commotion breaking out on the beach, the boy was still gazing raptly up at the clouds.

Anton put his hand on Stedd’s shoulder and gave him a gentle shake. The lad jumped and jerked away.

“Easy,” Anton said, “it’s only me.”

Stedd swallowed. “Right.”

“But you are likely to get yourself killed if you keep slipping into a stupor here in the wild.”

The boy frowned. “It’s not a ‘stupor.’ ” Then he spotted the Thayans hastily divvying up provisions, or, in the case of those still wading ashore, making headway as fast as they could. “What’s going on?”

“Lathander really ought to keep you better informed. There are more pirates.” Anton pointed to the Octopus, which was now obviously heading into shore. “Hunting you.”

Staring at the corsair vessel, Stedd trembled. It was one of those moments when he was all little boy without even a trace of the Chosen in evidence.

Anton went down on one knee in the wet sand to put himself at eye level with Stedd. “It must seem like it’s never going to stop,” he said, “but I promise, the bad part is already over. Nobody’s ever going to tie you up, hang some filthy cursed trinket around your neck, or make you any sort of captive ever again.”

Stedd managed a wan little smile. “Even you?”

Anton clapped his hand to his heart in imitation of an actor conveying distress. “It mystifies me how no one trusts my good intentions.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Stedd replied. His smile widened. “What are we going to do about the pirates?”

“Run.” Anton stood back up. “Unfortunately, we can’t do it down the beach. We’ll have to head farther inland and hope the rogues don’t chase us.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Anton gestured to the dripping, tangled trees and brush beyond the beach. “Because that’s Gulthandor. Just the thinning edge of it, thank the kindly stars, but still, harder traveling than the hiking you and I did on our way to Westgate, and by all accounts, teeming with ferocious beasts. If I know Mourmyd-the captain of the Octopus-he won’t have the stomach for it. He’s only bold within sight of the sea.”

Short, bandy-legged, walleyed Mourmyd Jacerryl was a depraved murderer, thief, and slaver in the eyes of the world at large, but a toady in the presence of Evendur Highcastle. It was why Evendur always liked him-to the extent he liked anyone-and why they’d so often worked together to raid convoys and harbors across the Inner Sea. But now the Chosen found that the living reaver’s interminable explanation, self-justifying and wheedling by turns, wore on his nerves.

“I wish we’d had a tracker to follow the Thayans into the woods,” Mourmyd said, waving a scarred and weather-beaten hand. “But at least now you know where they went. That’s worth some sort of reward, isn’t-”

Even before Umberlee graced Evendur with inhuman strength, he could have grabbed a small man like Mourmyd and held him out over the circular pool in the center of the chamber without undue strain. Now, he could barely feel the other pirate’s weight. The only difficult part was resisting the temptation to drop the fool into the midst of the dappled barracudas that rose slither-swimming from the depths in response to his will.

Mourmyd dangled limply as a hanged man from a tree. Either he was too shocked to flail and kick, or he realized that if struggling accomplished anything, it would only be to loosen Evendur’s grip.

“Failure,” Evendur gritted, “never deserves anything but punishment.”

“Evendur-” the small man quavered.

“That’s Captain, you filth! Or Wavelord! Or Chosen!”

“Chosen, then! Please, mercy! You know we would only have lost the trail if we’d tried to follow. Wasn’t it better to return here quickly to tell you what we’d discovered? And isn’t it good news? The boy may well die in Gulthandor.”

“You’re a coward and an idiot.” Evendur heaved the other reaver back onto the floor and shoved him away. Mourmyd lost his balance and fell on his rump. “But I did need to hear this news, and I suppose I also need to fight with the weapons Umberlee has given me. So I’m going to let you live.”

The pirate with his cloudy left eye drew himself to his feet. His clothes were smeared with slime where Evendur had gripped them. “Thank you, Chosen.”

“You can thank me by serving the goddess better than you have hitherto.”

“Anything. Just tell me what to do.”

“Go through the town and the docks. Tell the captains of Immurk’s Hold that hunting the boy prophet is no longer optional. It’s my command, and they’ll sail with the tide to obey it or carry my curse, which is also Umberlee’s, forever after.”

“I understand.”

“I want them scouring the southern shore from the point where the galley ran aground on to the east. And you, my old partner, are going to take control of Morningstar Hollows. It’s where anybody trekking east through the northern reaches of Gulthandor would naturally head, and if they make it that far, you’ll be waiting.”

“Yes, Chosen.” Mourmyd hesitated. “Is there anything more?”

“Yes, by the cold, green deep, there is! Send word to every port and lord who’s bent his knee to the church. Tell them I’m levying warships and the crews to man them.”

By any sane estimation, Evendur shouldn’t need to assemble a fleet greater than the dozens of pirate ships already at his command. But if it turned out that he did, he’d have it. Because he mustn’t fail Umberlee again.

Anton took what pleasure he could in the fact that the rain had eased up a little. Not that he was ever really going to be dry until he made it indoors again someday, but once a man passed a certain threshold of discomfort, even partial relief was welcome.

Then he twisted through the narrow gap between two trees, and his shoulder brushed the tangled vines clinging to the trunk on his right. Somehow, that minor rustling agitation transmitted itself all the way to up to branches interlaced over his head. They dumped the cold water trapped in their leaves and doused him. A goodly portion of it spilled down his collar, and he spat a curse.

Behind him, Stedd laughed. Anton rounded on him and the boy flinched.

Anton took a deep breath and forced a smile. “It’s all right. I suppose it was comical if you weren’t the one standing under the waterfall.”

Stedd shook his head. “It wasn’t that funny. I wouldn’t have laughed, except I’m tired of the forest.”

“You’re tired. You and Umara are the landlubbers.”

“The farm I grew up on wasn’t like this.” Stedd waved his hand at the towering trees, the dense thickets, and the boggy earth underfoot.

“Maybe not,” Anton said. “Still, I’ll wager you explored some sort of woods when you could slip away from your chores. Imagine how out of place we seafarers feel.”

“Can’t we go back to the beach?”

“With the Binder only knows how many pirate ships combing the coast for you?” Anton shifted the bundles slung to his shoulders and plodded onward; Stedd followed. “That would be unwise.”

“But there’s no one to preach to!”

“Try the zombies. They’ll listen all day without complaining.”

Stedd made a disgusted spitting sound to show that this time, he was the one who didn’t think something was funny. He loathed the reanimated corpses and likely would have incinerated the repulsive but useful brutes with conjured sunlight if everyone else hadn’t argued against it.

“Look,” Anton said, “you’ve already done some preaching, and with luck, people remember what you said. Maybe they’re even passing it along. Now it’s Sapra that’s important. Isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” said the boy with a touch of petulance in his voice. “But how are we going to get there in time when the going is so hard?”

“Wait.” Anton turned back around. “What do you mean, ‘in time’? Since when are we on a schedule?”

“I’ve been feeling it for a little while.”

“How much time do we have, and what happens if you don’t make it?”

“I don’t know.”

Anton snorted. “Of course you don’t.”

“I told you how it works! At first, I just knew I had to walk into the sunrise-”

“You do know the world is round, right? Not even a prophet can actually walk to the place where the sun rises.”

“Still, I had to go east! Then, it was east to the Sea of Fallen Stars. Then, east to Sapra. And now I know I need to get there fast.”

“Well, I don’t know what to say to that, except that if Evendur or his followers catch you, you’ll never get there at all. Of course, if you’re telling me you can draw down Lathander’s power to blast anyone who tries to hinder us, that’s different, and I wish to the Nine Hells you’d mentioned it sooner.”

Stedd shook his head. “I have power against undead and other things sunlight hates, but Lathander really means for me to be a teacher and a healer, not a warrior.”

“Then you’d do well to listen to those who are warriors when we tell you-”

One of the Thayans cried out.

Anton pivoted to see the sailor recoiling from a thicket. Within the brush, half hidden, a long, dun-colored, four-legged shape prowled as though the vegetation was no impediment at all.

Anton snatched out his saber and cutlass and stepped to interpose himself between the beast and Stedd. The Thayan men-at-arms fumbled to extricate bows and crossbows from the wrappings and sacks that protected them from the rain. But by the time they managed it, the stalking form had disappeared.

A wand of some rust-red wood in her slim, pale hand, yanking the skirts of her robe free when they snagged on a fallen log, Umara strode over Anton and Stedd. “What was that?” she asked.

Anton shrugged. “This isn’t my country, either, nor did I get an especially good look at the beast. But I believe it was a female lion. Gulthandor is supposedly full of them.”

“Just an animal, then.”

Anton grinned. “I realize Red Wizards are accustomed to hobnobbing with demons and the like and probably have high standards where ferocity is concerned. But I’ve heard stories about the lions of Gulthandor preying on men, and if the Great Rain has dwindled their food supply as it has humanity’s … Still, the beast does appear to have gone on its way, so perhaps we don’t need to worry about it.”

“I agree we should be careful.” Umara turned toward Ehmed Sepandem. “Everyone, stay alert,” she called. “And let’s put the zombies in a circle around the rest of us. Animals avoid the walking dead.”

Once they had the marching order rearranged, they pushed onward. The cold rain pattered down. A woodpecker knocked on a tree, and a raven croaked. Helmthorn berries grew amid long black thorns, and the travelers risked sticking and scratching their hands to pick and gobble the tart indigo fruit.

Then, off to the west, something made a coughing sound. His voice half an octave higher than usual, a sailor asked, “What was that?”

“The same lioness?” Umara suggested. “Stalking us?”

“I don’t know,” Anton said. “It could just as easily be a different animal taking a look at us and then deciding to avoid us.”

It sounded reasonable to him, but even so, the ominous noise had made him edgy, and as they trekked on, he wished all the living folk in the party could stay near to one another for purposes of mutual protection. Unfortunately, the hindrances posed by tree trunks, briars, and mucky ground repeatedly stretched out the procession no matter how often the wayfarers halted and regrouped. The best he could manage was to keep Stedd close.

He would have liked to do the same with Umara but recognized that as commander, she needed to confer with Captain Sepandem, prowl about looking for danger with her own eyes, and occasionally speak words of encouragement or correction to one of the common warriors. He took comfort in the thought that she was at least as capable of defending herself as anyone else in the company.

Eyes wide, glancing in all directions, the other men-at-arms shared Anton’s jumpiness. Eventually, a marine yelped when a form sprang up right in front of him; he jerked his crossbow to his shoulder and shot. The bolt missed, and the brown quail he’d started fluttered on up into the dripping dark green boughs overhead.

His comrades laughed and catcalled. Glad to have something break the tension, Anton chuckled. Then, off to the left, brush rustled.

Anton whirled to see a male lion with a black mane and amber eyes springing from a low place in the ground. It charged past a zombie, whose shambling, swaying effort to intercept it was too slow, and at one of the living Thayans.

Arrows flew at the beast. One pierced its haunch, and the lion stumbled but then kept charging. Shouting words that rang like metal striking metal, Umara struck the animal with darts of blue light, but that didn’t stop it, either. Anton ran at it even though he was unlikely to reach it in time for it to make a difference to the threatened man.

The lion sprang and carried its prey down beneath swiping talons and clamping, tearing jaws, reducing the Thayan’s body to wet red ruin in a heartbeat. Then it abandoned its victim and raced back into the trees. Arrows and quarrels whizzed after it, but no more found their mark before the animal vanished.

Halting, Anton looked at the body on the ground, considered the unbloodied blades in his hands, and felt a frustrated urge to cut something. Looking just as angry, Umara said, “The cat wasn’t put off by the zombie, it risked making a run at the whole pack of us, and then it didn’t even carry away its kill to eat.”

“Moreover,” Anton said, “it’s generally female lions that do the hunting, or so I understand. All of which suggests this wasn’t a natural occurrence. Someone or something else is controlling the beast to extract Stedd from our midst. Possibly by slaughtering the rest of us until there no longer is a midst.”

“One lion couldn’t do that,” Ehmed said.

“Which may be why we’ve already seen two,” Anton replied.

“And the Black Lord only knows how many more are slinking just a stone’s throw away,” Umara said. “There could be a dozen, and we still might not spot them for all the brush and tree trunks.”

“I wish I thought you were wrong.” Anton turned and waved to Stedd. “Stick close to me.”

Stedd obeyed, which unfortunately resulted in Anton leading him over to the mangled corpse so he could appropriate the dead man’s crossbow and quiver of quarrels. With the head torn and crushed and viscera hanging out of the belly, the remains were a grisly sight.

“Sorry,” the Turmishan muttered.

Stedd sighed. “It’s all right. I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies.”

That made Anton feel worse, although he wasn’t sure why. He gripped the boy’s shoulder.

As the travelers trekked on, Anton repeatedly shouldered the crossbow, getting the feel of the weapon as best he could without actually shooting it or even taking it out of its sack. Until another beast, this one a lioness, broke cover and charged.

This time, everyone was expecting such an attack. Still, a couple Thayans froze at the sight of the onrushing predator with its long white fangs and claws. Most, however, shot, and Anton yanked his own new crossbow out of its bag, sighted down its length, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.

As the quarrel streaked from the end of the weapon, the lioness pivoted to retreat from the barrage it had encountered. As a result, the crossbow bolt caught it in the neck. The felid staggered three more strides then fell over on its side.

The Thayans cheered, and for a moment, Anton felt similarly inclined to enjoy the moment. Then the conviction seized him that if some wily intelligence was manipulating the lions like pawns on a lanceboard, then it had just sacrificed one minion in a gambit to achieve some hidden purpose.

He turned. With everyone else, even the zombies, looking at the lioness that had just perished, a second one was creeping in from the opposite direction. It was stalking straight at Umara and was nearly close enough for a final rush and spring.

There was no time to cock and reload the crossbow. Anton dropped that weapon, snatched out his saber and cutlass, and bellowed, “Watch out!” Then he charged.

Not that it felt like a particularly speedy charge when he had to heave his boots out of clinging mud, rip free of twigs and brambles, duck low-hanging branches, and dodge around mossy and vine-encrusted tree trunks. But fortunately, either his initial shout or his subsequent thumping, rustling approach diverted the lioness’s attention. It whirled and bounded at him.

The beast covered ground faster than he had. He barely had time to shift to a spot where he had room to swing his blades, and then his foe was on him.

As he cut with the saber, the lioness leaped and spoiled his aim. Strewing rainwater as it traveled, the curved blade still sliced the cat’s shoulder, but the result wasn’t the lethal stroke he’d intended.

And the lioness was in the air! He dodged and cut again at the animal as it plunged down in the space he’d just vacated. The beast whirled and swiped at the saber, essentially parrying the stroke and nearly batting the weapon out of his grip.

At once, the lioness lunged at him, and he gave ground before it. Until a springy, many-pointed barrier-brush, by the feel of it-pressed against his back, and trees hemmed him in on either side. Despite his resolve to avoid it, the forest had boxed him in.

Well, he thought, if I can’t use my feet to proper advantage anymore, my hands will simply have to do all the work.

As the lioness clawed, he met the attacks with stop cuts.

At first, the tactic worked. The saber cut deep, and the punishment kept the cat from striking home. He even slashed out one of its amber eyes. But he didn’t kill it or make it relent, and after a breath or two, it caught the saber with another swipe and knocked it out of line.

It reared, exposing its chest and belly, and Anton thrust with the cutlass in the desperate hope of piercing its heart.

He at least felt the blade slide into muscle and scrape a rib. But then the lioness crashed into him and bore him down beneath it. The brush crunched as it gave way beneath their weight.

The cat’s weight crushed him against the ground. Its remaining eye glared down at him, and the blood from its gashed countenance spattered down into his. More gore drooled from its mouth.

Pinned, helpless, Anton could only will the lioness to die. The ploy worked no better than he expected. The beast spread its jaws wide enough to engulf his head.

Then a spike or blade seemingly made of shadow popped out of the back of the lioness’s mouth like a second tongue, stopping just a finger length before it would have pierced Anton’s head as well. The vague shape gave off a perceptible chill during the moment of its existence, then withered away to nothing.

Fortunately, though, it had endured long enough to accomplish its purpose. The lion collapsed on top of its erstwhile adversary.

Anton struggled to shift the carcass and squirm out from underneath. Then, grunting, two of the Thayans rolled the body off him.

As he rose, the reaver looked around. Stedd was close at hand, and Ehmed Sepandem had evidently appointed himself the boy’s temporary bodyguard in Anton’s absence. Good.

And for the moment, no more lions were making a run at the travelers. That too was good.

Breathing hard, Anton gave Umara a grin. “I’m glad you didn’t feel obliged to hurry.”

The wizard snorted. “Whiner. I cast the spell in time to save you, didn’t I?”

“What now?” Ehmed asked, an edge of impatience in his tone.

“That makes two dead lions and only one dead human,” Anton replied. “And we wounded the only other beast we’ve seen. Maybe it, and any others like it, will give up.”

“Do you really believe that?” the Thayan captain asked.

“No,” Anton admitted. “Not if some lurking puppet master is driving the animals to hunt us. The best we can reasonably hope for is that there’s only one lion left, but there’s little reason to assume even that.”

“If magic is controlling them,” Umara said, “then perhaps that’s what it will take to chase them away. Everyone, keep watch while I try something.”

She pushed back her cowl to bare her shaven scalp and drew a long wand of some dark, mottled wood from a hidden sheath sewn in her robes. She took a long breath, then exploded into motion, whipping the rod through an intricate figure with tight, precise motions that would have done credit to a duelist. She finished by pointing it at the sky, whereupon she froze.

She remained silent and held the position long enough for Anton to wonder if she’d forgotten what came next. Then she started murmuring. The rhythmic lines didn’t repulse him the way Kymas’s incantations had, but they projected a noticeable pulse of energy that made him feel as though he was being prodded on each of the rhyming words.

Gradually, Umara’s voice crescendoed, and as it rose to a shout, she lowered the wand, held it outward, and turned in a circle.

Crackling yellow flame leaped up where she pointed. Thayans recoiled from the heat, and Stedd goggled at the spectacle. When the wizard finished, a ring of fire encircled her companions and herself. Like the blaze aboard the Iron Jest, it burned fiercely despite the rain and the wet.

Except, Anton suspected, not really. A moment later, Umara confirmed his guess: “Don’t worry. We’re in no danger of burning up. This is an illusion. But fire ought to scare off wild animals if anything can.”

She lashed the wand from left to right as though making a horizontal sword cut. With a roar, the ring of fire simultaneously leaped higher and rushed outward, seemingly setting brush and branches alight as it expanded.

Anton grinned. An onrushing threat like this should spook any beast, even if some warlock or demon was whispering in its ear.

But the fire had only traveled several paces outward when a thunderous roar reverberated through the forest. Reeling, all but deafened, Anton couldn’t tell if the ground was literally shaking or if the prodigious noise had simply overwhelmed his sense of equilibrium. He did see that it extinguished the illusory conflagration as suddenly and completely as a man’s breath could puff out a candle.

He staggered a step, caught his balance, then grabbed Stedd and steadied him as well. After that, he peered through the trees and the rain to find the power that had overmatched Umara’s.

His eyes were drawn to a dot of flickering blue light amid the grayness. It had an indefinable but undeniable wrongness to it that made him want to flinch in the same way that Kymas’s spells had made him want to cover his ears. He kept peering instead and determined that the glow appeared somehow attached to another quadrupedal and possibly leonine form. Then the enormous cat, if that was what it was, stalked into a stand of oaks and disappeared.

“What was that?” asked Stedd.

“The master of the pride,” Anton replied. “Above and beyond that, I don’t know.”

“The light is blue fire,” Umara said. “The chaotic force that maimed the world a hundred years ago. And if our enemy is bound to it, the thing is spellscarred or conceivably even plaguechanged.”

“Does that mean your magic is no use against it?” Anton asked.

The Red Wizard glowered. “I’ll kill it if I have to.” She took a breath. “But I confess, if it remains content to harry us by sending normal lions at us, I won’t complain.”

“Is it trying to catch me to give to Evendur Highcastle?” asked Stedd.

Umara shook her head. “Who knows? It may have sensed your power and craved it for itself.”

“Whatever it wants,” Anton said, “it’s not here to make friends.” He looked up at the sky, or what little he could see of it through the tree limbs, and attempted the always-frustrating task of gauging the position of the sun despite the cloud cover. “We need to move. We’ll want a better place to go to ground if the thing is still stalking us come nightfall.”

They pressed onward. In time, they heard another cough off to the left. Men jumped, then craned and turned, searching for the source of the noise. Until a growl from the right answered the first noise and made everyone lurch around in the other direction.

From that point forward, coughs, snarls, and the occasional roar sounded periodically. The lions were demonstrating there were several of them still alive and shadowing their prey.

Once in a while, someone caught a glimpse of a brown shape slipping from one bit of cover to the next. Then the Thayan men-at-arms hastily raised their bows and crossbows and shot. Umara started an incantation, then broke off partway through when her target disappeared. The power she’d been gathering to herself dissipated with a sizzling sound and a crimson shimmer.

Anton took a couple hurried shots of his own before he realized what was going on. Then he called, “Hold it! Stop shooting. The lions are showing themselves to provoke us into wasting our quarrels, and Lady Umara her spells.”

“May the Black Hand take it,” Ehmed growled, “you’re right. Everybody, do as the Turmishan says. Don’t shoot unless a lion is making a run at us.”

As the travelers resumed their trek, Umara came to tramp alongside Anton and Stedd. “I don’t like the way our enemy keeps trying new tricks,” she said. “Or anything else about this situation. We’d be better off taking our chances along the shore.”

Anton pushed an eye-level branch out of their way. “It’s a little late for that to qualify as a useful insight.”

She frowned. “I wasn’t finding fault.”

“I know.” He reached to touch her shoulder, hesitated for an instant, and then followed through. She didn’t protest the familiarity. “I just … anyway, if we think it the wiser course, we can head back to the strand and try dodging Mourmyd Jacerryl and those like him. But we won’t make it out of the forest before nightfall.”

“And traveling in the dark with the lions lurking to pick us off would be suicide. You mentioned finding a safe place to camp.”

Anton snorted. “Yes, being the master woodsman I am. I was thinking of high ground or a clearing. Something.”

Now it was her turn to give him a fleeting touch on the forearm. “Maybe we’ll still come to a spot like that before sunset.”

Instead, they passed one blighted tree and then more, with twisted, knobby, arthritic-looking limbs and chancrous patches in their bark. Though Anton noticed, at first, he didn’t care; he had more urgent matters to occupy him than the health of this particular part of the woods. But then, as the gray light filtering down through the canopy was growing even more anemic, he spotted a blue glow.

Thinking the lions’ master had worked its way around ahead of the company, he snatched his crossbow from its bag and drew breath to shout a warning. Then he realized the azure light was only one of a dozen such flames flickering on the ground, in the midst of thickets, or in treetops without setting anything else on fire.

A warning was still in order, but one of the marines shouted it before he could: “That’s plagueland!”

And so it was. A patch of earth where, a century later, the blue fire of the Spellplague still burned. Anton had never seen such a place before, but by all accounts, they were rife with peculiar dangers.

Umara glowered at the poisoned landscape. “Was the leader of the pride driving us here? Is it more powerful in plagueland?”

Anton shook his head. “If a Red Wizard doesn’t know, how should I? I’m just glad we didn’t blunder deeper into the area before realizing where we were. Look, we don’t have enough daylight left to find a way around it. We need to make camp. We can chop brush to make barricades, and we’ll want fires. Big ones, even if you have to spend some of your power to make wet wood burn like dry.”

The wizard’s lips quirked upward in a weary little smile. “I thought you weren’t a woodsman.”

“In my time, I’ve maneuvered around a port or two to attack by surprise from the landward side. Sadly, in this company, that makes me about as close to Gwaeron Windstrom as we’re likely to come.”

Chopping brush proved to be nervous work. Though he checked often and had Stedd standing watch as well, Anton kept suspecting that a lion was stealing up on him while he was intent on his task. But he and his companions finished building their boma before nightfall, even if it did look too low and flimsy to slow an attacking great cat for more than a moment.

The fires were somewhat more reassuring. Umara’s words of command made the flames leap high and burn bright. They might actually serve as a deterrent … assuming the master of the pride couldn’t extinguish a real blaze as easily as an illusory one.

Men faced outward, staring. Some gnawed biscuits and smoked fish, but at first, despite the exhausting day’s march, no one tried to sleep. Everybody was too tense.

Snuffling and wiping at a runny nose, a sailor voiced the common expectation: “They’ll come to finish this when it’s full dark. Night is when a lion normally hunts.”

And, Anton thought, the cats might well come from the direction of the plagueland, precisely because that was the one direction in which they hadn’t revealed their presence during the day. So he kept watch in that direction, where the murk was like a desolate sky in which only a handful of blue stars burned. Of course, he thought wryly, even a handful was more than anyone in the vicinity of the Inner Sea had beheld since the start of the Great Rain.

The azure flames wavered like ordinary ones, and together with the blackness, that made it difficult to tell if they were doing anything else. But abruptly, Anton saw, or thought he saw, that one was growing gradually larger. Or rather, coming closer.

For an instant, he was certain he was seeing the unnatural blaze bonded to the master of the pride. Then the blue fire flowed straight through briars, dimly illuminating the closest stems and stickers in the process, and he perceived it wasn’t attached to anything. It was drifting by itself like a will-o’-the-wisp.

That only made it somewhat less alarming. Anton turned to alert Umara in the hope that her wizardry could douse the flame. When he did, though, he spied Stedd, seated cross-legged among men who were too busy watching for the foe to pay him any mind, staring intently at the approaching glow.

Anton almost shouted at the boy, then remembered that the Thayan mariners didn’t know Stedd the way he did, were already on edge, and might react with brutal dispatch to anyone who seemed to be trying to make an already perilous situation worse. He took the young prophet by the arm, hauled him to his feet, and led him to a spot as far from the others as the confines of the boma afforded.

“Were you pulling the blue fire closer?” Anton whispered.

Stedd nodded.

“In Asmodeus’s name, why?” Anton had to make an effort to keep his voice down. “Blue fire isn’t a toy! It could kill us in a heartbeat. Or twist us into forms so foul we wouldn’t want to live.”

“I wasn’t playing with it! I was figuring it out!”

“Again, why? Never mind, I know. Because your dead god wants you to. Well, as usual, he has a wretched sense of timing. Help the rest of us keep watch, and you, Umara, and I can discuss blue fire in the morning.”

The night wore on. The crackling, smoking fires burned down, and the company built them up again with more deadwood and Umara’s cantrips. Safely above the reach of lions, an owl hooted, but otherwise, any animals in the area kept quiet. Despite the grinding tension, a couple weary men eventually lay down on the ground and dozed with their weapons under their hands.

Anton sat for a time, then stood up and stretched. His back popped. He took a drink from his water bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and took a fresh look at the blue lights.

Then, like the world itself was splitting in two, a prodigious roar pounded out of the darkness. Dropping the bottle, he cringed from it. So did everyone else.

At least, he realized, the fires weren’t going out. But wide-eyed men were stumbling, intent only on covering their ears, and surely, the lions were already charging.

“Fight!” Anton bellowed. The roar was fading, but even so, he wasn’t sure anybody heard him.

“Fight!” Ehmed echoed, and then Umara did the same. Still, it didn’t look like the rest of the Thayans were heeding the command. Meanwhile, bounding shadows converged on the circle of brush.

“Help us!” Stedd shrilled. He held out his hand to the east, and red-gold light pulsed across the campsite. Purged of panic and confusion, the Thayans gripped their weapons and came on guard just as the first lions sought to jump the boma.

Anton shot at the nearest target, a lioness, and the quarrel flew harmlessly over its back. The animal scrambled over the barricade and lunged at him, and, backpedaling, he hurled the crossbow at the felid’s snarling face. It glanced off the beast’s skull without slowing it even slightly.

Anton saw that his blades couldn’t clear their scabbards before the lioness reached him, nor, with men and beasts battling on either side, could he evade by springing right or left. But his scurrying retreat had brought him to a point where a fire seared his back, and he hopped back into the yellow blaze.

He meant to keep moving right out the other side, but his foot caught on a piece of burning wood, and he fell down amid glowing orange coals and ash. The heat of the blaze closed around him like a fist and invaded his airways, too.

Scattering embers and scraps of burning wood, he rolled and flung himself clear of the fire. Then, gasping, taking stock, he decided he was likely blistered but not burned worse than that. His clothing wasn’t on fire, and the lioness wasn’t pursuing him through the flames. He felt a surge of relief until he realized he and Stedd were now on opposite sides of the boma.

He tried to reach the boy as expeditiously as possible, but there was no way to force his way through the press except by fighting. He slashed a lion’s back legs out from under it while it was intent on a marine, and when its hindquarters dropped, the Thayan thrust a boarding pike into its vitals. Afterward, Anton managed four more strides and then had to clear his path by helping two other mariners kill a different beast.

So far, he and his companions appeared to be holding their own. But how many lions were there? Amid the howling chaos of lunging bodies and dazzling flame, it was impossible to tell.

Anton rounded the fire through which he’d rolled, spotted Stedd, and breathed a sigh of relief. Along with one of the zombies, Ehmed Sepandem stood so as to shield the boy from attackers. The leonine body on the ground in front of him showed he was doing a fair job of it.

But then a shape as long as Falrinn Greatorm’s sailboat and as tall as the lowest yard on a square-rigger’s mast bounded out of the darkness. Coupled with its hugeness, its mane of blue fire should have revealed its approach when it was still some distance away, but it seemed to spring from nowhere all in an instant.

The gigantic lion could have simply stepped over the thorny barricade in front of it. Instead, the beast trampled and crushed it, perhaps because it didn’t even notice it was there.

Mindlessly impervious to awe or fear, the zombie lurched forward with boarding pike upraised, and the lion swiped at it. The attack ripped the animated corpse apart and smashed some of the pieces flat.

His sour face resolute, Ehmed stepped forward with a javelin in one hand and a cutlass in the other. Rushing forward to support him, Anton glimpsed a lioness lunging in on his flank.

The pirate pivoted, slashed with the saber, and caught the cat in the neck. The beast fell down thrashing, blood pumping from its wound.

The kill had only taken a moment, but when Anton turned back, Ehmed lay rent and squashed like the zombie. Head lowered, the lion with the fiery mane lunged at Stedd. It caught the boy in its mouth, picked him up, and ran in the direction of the other blue flames burning in the night.

Pointing with his saber, hoping someone would take notice and understand, Anton bellowed, “The boy!” Then he gave chase.

He saw immediately that he had little hope of overtaking the giant lion. The bounding strides of its long legs were too great. He forced himself to sprint even faster. Still, the beast lengthened its lead.

Then luminous scarlet netting glimmered into existence on the beast’s hind legs, entangling them and apparently sticking them to the ground. The lion pitched off balance and fell.

Anton realized who must have cast the hindering spell. He’d lost track of Umara when the common lions attacked, but thank Lady Luck, she was still alive, had discerned his need, and had followed him to help.

Eager to catch the gigantic lion, he dashed onward. Zigzagging through the trees and leaping over fallen branches, he passed close to a blue flame glowing at the bottom of a pool of rainwater. Aches throbbed down his body from his left temple and the left hinge of his jaw down to his right ankle and the joints of his right toes.

He looked down at his arms. Bumps were swelling there. The plagueland had infected him.

He lurched around and spied Umara some distance behind him. She wasn’t much more than a shadow in the dark, and he doubted she could make him out any better, but even so, her eyes widened at what she could see of his ongoing transformation.

“No farther!” he shouted, or tried to. His voice had changed, too. It sounded more like one of the lions coughing than the voice of a man.

But whether Umara had understood or not, there wasn’t time to call again. He needed to reach the beast with the fiery mane while it was still immobilized. He ran onward.

For a few strides, he thought he was going to make it. Then, flopping on its side and twisting its enormous body, the lion brought the claws on its front paws to the mesh. It tore its bonds apart, leaped up, and bounded onward.

Once again, it started to extend its lead. Then, all but imperceptible in the darkness, a length of shadow burst up from the ground beneath it, whipped around its midsection, and jerked it to another halt.

It could only mean Umara had kept following despite Anton’s warning. Otherwise, she wouldn’t still have the beast in sight to target it. Hoping she wouldn’t suffer for her tenacity, he sprinted onward and finally caught up with his quarry.

Unfortunately, by now, his steadily swelling tumors hurt even worse. Blocking out the pain as best he could, he cut at the lion’s hind legs.

The creature lowered its head and spat Stedd onto the ground. Then it roared. The thunderous sound staggered Anton and shredded the shadow tentacle into nothingness.

But Stedd was now free and even unharmed by the look of him. As the boy clambered to his feet, Anton rasped, “Run to Umara!”

Stedd stumbled farther from the lion. Anton scrambled to position himself between the child and his monstrous abductor.

A huge paw with claws like cutlasses slashed down at him. He retreated and cut with the saber. The blade sent a fan of blood flying to mix with the rain. The lion snatched its foreleg back.

With a snarl, the beast pivoted to veer around Anton and chase after Stedd. The reaver hurled himself forward, straight at the enormous talons, fangs, and sheer crushing mass of the creature, and cut at its chest.

The saber sliced deep. Too deep, evidently, for the lion to ignore. It snapped around biting and clawing, and Anton recoiled. It wouldn’t have been fast enough to carry him to even momentary safety, except that five luminous spheres, each a different color, flew at the cat’s flank and discharged their power when they hit it, one vanishing in a blast of yellow flame and another bursting like a bubble into a cascade of steaming vitriol. The barrage made the lion falter for a precious instant.

Thank you, Umara, Anton thought. But now take Stedd and run. I’ll hold back the lion somehow.

Slashing and dodging, he succeeded in doing precisely that for several breaths. But the knots in his limbs weren’t just painful anymore. They were binding and grinding his agility away, and he thought fleetingly how strange it was to fight his last fight so far away from the sea.

Then he wrenched himself out of the way of another raking attack, and in so doing, spun toward the spot where he’d last seen Stedd. The lad was still there, give or take, hovering just a few paces away with a scowl of concentration on his face. Umara was there, too, reciting and whirling her hands in spirals. Anton inferred that when the boy hadn’t fled to her, she’d run to him, and when he still refused to accompany her to safety, she’d resumed attacking the lion.

Idiots, both of them, but especially Stedd! Didn’t he understand the blue fire would kill Anton even if the monstrous lion didn’t? What in the name of the Abyss had happened to carrying out Lathander’s mission?

But then again, why was Anton surprised that everything that had happened since he’d first met the allegedly holy child was coming to naught in the end? That simply made it of a piece with the rest of life. Grinning a grin that hurt his newly crooked jaw, determined to score at least one more attack on his towering opponent, he took fresh grips on the hilts of his blades.

Then Stedd raised his hands and called the name of his deity.

Red-gold light washed through the trees. Anton cried out as pain fell away from him in an instant, the sudden relief as shocking as an unexpected blow. He glanced at his arms and found that the lumps and knots were gone.

Meanwhile, the lion faltered and shuddered as the sapphire flame wreathing its mane guttered out to reveal the shaggy gold beneath. When the last tongue of fire disappeared, it wheeled away from Anton to peer back in the direction of the camp.

Stedd dropped to his knees and then flopped onto the ground. Umara kneeled beside him.

Anton watched the lion for another breath-it had, after all, just been doing its level best to kill him-and then, still keeping a wary eye on it, he made his way to his companions. As he did, he noticed no blue flames were burning anywhere.

Stedd looked up at him with a certain smugness. “Told you … I needed to figure out the fire,” he wheezed.