Its face was tattooed all over with what looked like scrolling runes, scattered throughout with dots and spirals—or perhaps those were its natural markings. Similar markings decorated its tattered robe, gray-blue in the dim light.
With a quick, supple movement, it thrust its hand toward him. Gareth threw himself to his left, as much to draw fire away from Ivor as to avoid the blast himself. He staggered against the interior wall, scraping his cheek on the rough wood, as another bolt of snakelike lightning surged from the extended palm and crackled past his ear. The singed-air smell intensified, and an electric prickle tingled unpleasantly through his bones.
The tattooed creature moaned with the effort of spellcasting and bowed its head from pain or weariness. Gareth caught a glimpse of long pointed ears, exaggerated as a lynx’s with what looked like a frill along the outer edge. He took advantage of its distraction to sidestep away from the wall, jumping surefootedly over bags scattered across the floor as he did. His cornered adversary must have taken refuge belowdecks to hide or protect some object of value. Gareth had seen none of those distinctive blue-green bolts in the fighting on the deck.
The glossy, insect black eyes in the elaborately scrolled face turned back to him, and there was no mistaking its expression of malevolence. It raised a sinewy arm in its shredded blue silk sleeve toward him again, and Gareth could feel the air around him contract and flex, as if it were made of tiny components that had become charged with static electricity.
But the creature had forgotten Ivor, or considered him out of combat, and was taken by surprise when the stocky Turmish man charged, slashing sideways with the short sword.
The startled spellcaster turned, and the snake of blue-green force coalescing from its hand knocked the sword from Ivor’s hand. But the sword was only for distraction. Ivor drew his long knife from his belt with his left hand and slashed at the creature’s forearm with a vicious backhand stroke. The blade bit deep and the creature cried out, falling back against the wall. Ivor’s right hand dangled uselessly at his side, but he retained his grip on his better weapon. Still holding the knife in a backhand stance, he lunged at the wounded thing, aiming for the throat.
It flung up a long-fingered hand. Gareth saw nothing but sensed that the air in the hold had shifted. A ripple like the surface of a windblown pond emanated from the bone-white palm, and Ivor fell back heavily, as if struck by a long staff.
Gareth knew they had no time to reason or negotiate. Darting forward in the gloom, he knocked the creature’s arm up with an underhand blow of the solid hilt of his sword. Off balance and clutching both hands to its breast, it staggered against the wooden board at its back. This was no time to hesitate; with only a breath and a slight back step, Gareth thrust his blade through the creature’s sleeve, down and under the top of its rib cage and into the space where he hoped its heart would be.
He must have guessed right or hit some vital organ regardless, because the creature opened its mouth in a final inarticulate cry and its body spasmed, almost pulling Gareth’s sword from his hand. He pulled his blade from the body, hopping back a pace and ready in case it managed to come at him. Finally it stilled and lay collapsed across a couple of packing boxes, staring at the irregular angle where wall met splintery ceiling, as if it saw infinity there.
Something trickled down Gareth’s face, and his head throbbed acutely—the fighting had reopened the cut on his forehead. Cursing, he dabbed it with his sleeve. He was going to have a perishing great scar if he was ever given a chance to heal up.
There was a heartfelt groan behind him. Gareth jumped and whirled around, sword up. He prayed it wasn’t yet another of those things.
Ivor grinned at him, the tip of Gareth’s sword just touching his chest.
“Jumpy, aren’t you?” he said, shaking his right hand as if it pained him.
“And how.” Gareth turned back to the body and shifted his weapon to his left hand. Bending gingerly over the strange humanoid, he pulled at the elongated hand that curled against its chest. Between its fingers it held a round of metal.
“Lucky thing you’re left-handed,” he remarked over his shoulder as he plucked the object away and examined it, frowning. It was a rather plain bracelet, made like a small torque to slip over the wrist. It didn’t look like anything worth dying over. Surely there were richer pickings in the hold. But the creature had been clutching this.
“It’s proved useful,” said Ivor, and Gareth heard him slide his knife back into place at his belt. Gareth silently agreed. Few opponents in battle, facing a weapon wielded in the right hand, expected the dominant attack to come from a smaller, left-handed weapon.
Ivor leaned close to his shoulder to look at his prize. Gareth examined it as best he could in the dim light. The bracelet was a pale metal, too dull to be silver. Yet it didn’t have the heft or feel of pewter. It was simple, with no embellishment save three red stones—possibly garnets—set evenly along its length. The surface of the metal was polished, smooth to the touch, but looked crosshatched by tiny, even marks. Gareth turned it over in his fingers, frowning. It felt warm. And, oddly, the warmth fluctuated ever so slightly against his skin. It was if the piece had its own tiny heartbeat.
The fluctuation was becoming a flutter, as if he held a small, frightened bird in his hand. Instinct told him to drop it, but curiosity compelled him to hold it. On his upturned palm he could see it quiver, the movement slight but visible.
“Strange thing,” remarked Ivor. “Do you think … Bane’s blood!”
They both jumped. The bracelet flexed, one end butting against Gareth’s hand like a blind worm.
“Sweet Mother’s milk, throw the damned thing away!” said Ivor.
But Gareth couldn’t. He was frozen with an otherworldly fascination with the thing, watching as the strange metal writhed and elongated. Beneath his feet, the wide wooden floorboards shifted up and down as the ship lurched in the water, and he adjusted his balance automatically.
“It’s not doing anything,” said Gareth. “Nothing dangerous, at least.”
Ivor whistled soundlessly. “You know best. It’s you down with the fishes if you’re wrong,” he said. He nudged at a small bag of rough muslin, one of several scattered about the floor, with the tip of his boot. There was a satisfying clink of metal.
“I wonder if that’s what our late friend was so eager to keep from us,” he said. “Let’s have a look.”
Gareth watched as Ivor kneeled and loosed the thin cord tied about the mouth of the bag. He chuckled in satisfaction and held up a couple of elongated coins for Gareth’s perusal.
“Silver?”
“No, my rustic friend,” replied Ivor. “Platinum, or I’m a mermaid.” The coins were stamped with a pattern unfamiliar to Gareth, not unlike the markings on the elflike creature’s robe. He glanced again at the staring blind eyes, wishing he could have asked it about the scrolling runes, about how a member of such an alien race came to be on a merchant freighter on the Moonsea, about the object stirring in his hand. He wished it weren’t necessary to kill it.
But kill he would, if he must to stay alive. To make a safe place in this world, he would see Ping’s ship and all on her destroyed, if that’s what it took.
Between one heartbeat and the next he made a decision.
“Friend Ivor,” he said, casting a quick glance at the hatch overhead. “Would I be wrong to guess that life aboard the Orcsblood has little delight for you?”
Ivor glanced up from sifting through the contents of the bag—all foreign platinum coins, as far as Gareth could see—and narrowed his eyes, considering.
“Not very wrong,” he said. “I find Ping’s policies … unnecessarily harsh and wasteful. And I fear a reckoning is coming. I’d just as soon not be here to taste my share.”
“We think alike,” said Gareth. “And yet it’s my suspicion that for all Ping’s talk of fair share of the spoils and a blessing for the road, none leaves the Orcsblood save in a shark’s belly.”
“Two may have a better chance than one, working together,” said Gareth. “If they can trust each other.”
“If,” agreed Ivor. Carefully he pulled ten of the coins from the bag and transferred them to his own pouch. Six other bags were scattered about—probably fallen from one of the shattered packing boxes. Ivor gathered the bags together, taking ten coins—no more—from each. Before he tied the pouch shut, he went to the corpse and pulled a few—not all—of the gem-set rings adorning the creature’s fingers. Golden rings pierced the frilled ears, and Ivor considered them, then shook his head.
“Being greedy won’t help us,” he said. “See.…”
He held up the bulging pouch before Gareth’s eyes.
“If two could trust each other, they could see that those on night duty drank more than their fill tonight,” he said quickly. “If they were quick, they could climb over the side and cut the dock boat free. Two could row as far as Mulmaster. And seventy platinum is a good start for two. Two who trust each other.”
“Do we?” said Gareth. “You could have taken me from behind after the thing was dead.”
“And you could have skewered me neatly, as you have at least two others this day, as I counted the coin,” replied Ivor, tucking the pouch into the front of his breeches. “There. Let that scarred siren look for it there.”
Gareth nodded. “Equal shares?”
Ivor glanced at the bracelet still squirming on Gareth’s palm. “All save that thing, which you’re welcome to. It gives me the shivers as bad as Helgre.”
The bracelet stretched and coiled. Gareth heard the heavy scrape of a boot at the hatch above, and the living metal paused, as if it heard, too. Then, so fast he barely registered it was happening, the bracelet elongated, becoming little thicker than a wire, and darted under his cuff and up his sleeve like a grass snake. It was a startling and strange sensation, the cool smoothness of the metal and the three small bumps that were the gemstones winding up his arms, across the crook of his elbow, around his shoulder.
Around his neck.
Startled, Ivor cursed. Gareth grabbed at the metal snaking around his neck, praying he could rip it away before it choked him. The weird, bolt-casting creature would have the last laugh here, he thought.
But instead of wrapping tight around his windpipe and cutting off his air, as he expected, it lay loose like a necklace.
Cautiously he felt it between his fingers. It was a necklace. The smoothly forged metal had become small flat links, inset at even lengths with the garnets, just long enough to lie out of sight beneath his jerkin.
Ivor’s eyes were wide, his mouth open. Gareth shushed him as they were hailed from above and the silhouette of a head appeared in the square of light of the hatch above.
“Hoy! Are you gentlemen planning on joining the rest of us soon, or will you malinger all day?” It was the unmistakable voice of Ping, friendly and joking on the surface, with a deadly edge beneath.
“We’ve been dealing with a holdout,” called back Ivor. “And the ladder was damaged in the process. We’ll need a rope to get out.”
Ping called back over his shoulder for someone to bring a rope.
“Anything worth saving down there?” he said, turning back. Gareth stifled a cynical grin at the again-innocuous words, the trap set underneath.
“You’d better come see,” he called in turn. “Bags of coin, and boxes worth searching.”
A rope snaked down, and Ping descended it quickly. Blinking in the darkness, he called to the heads clustered above for a witchlight. It was swiftly tossed down, and he held the blue glowball up high, surveying the bags Ivor had thoughtfully piled together, the singed and shattered steps, and the strange, tattooed body. Under his breath he muttered something in his native tongue.
“Go up and help with the cargo, and then rest. You’ve earned it.” He laid his hand on Gareth’s shoulder in a friendly gesture. Gareth steeled himself not to flinch. He nodded, aware of the tickle of the small metal links against his chest. Ping carried no weapon, but tiny scarlet specks were scattered thickly over his cuff.
He swallowed away a sudden surge of nausea that had nothing to do with the wound on his forehead. He wished he’d thought to shut the creature’s eyes before Ping arrived. Now there’d be a bustle of unloading loot and other unsavory, urgent business, and he’d have no other time to do it.
“I’ll have some of the others help you haul this stuff over to the Orcsblood,” said Ping. “We can dump the rest of the bodies down here before we scuttle her.”
Ping’s eyes gleamed as he looked over the bags and wooden boxes with their port seals, indifferent to the dead body sprawled in front of him or to the carnage above.
Gareth followed Ivor up the rope, swearing to himself that as far as it lay in his power, no Jadaren would ever turn to piracy again.
Something seared over Fandour’s flesh, just for an instant, like a thread of white-hot fire. He flinched and concentrated, trying to follow the fading sensation as a dog would follow the scent of a rabbit gone to ground.
Somewhere on that distant plane his sundered avatar stirred. The Rhythanko artifact, in which an essential piece of himself was forged, link by link and jewel by jewel, was no longer shielded by the gith.
The scent was lost on the winds and current between the planes, and Fandour subsided into himself, inside the walls of his ancient prison. His avatar had forgotten him and no longer sought reunion.
But Fandour knew he had a chance of finding it now. Now it was loose in Faerûn, that strange plane.
THE MULMASTER DOCKS
1460 DR—THE YEAR OF THE MALACHITE SHADOWS
Gareth’s cramped fingers slipped on the slick wood, found a crack between two boards, and grasped it. The rotted wood crumbled, and his fingers lost their grip for the last time. He scrabbled desperately as he slid down the rough lip of the dock, hearing the water churn over the black rocks far below. Somewhere far below them their boat bobbed, dangerously near the sharp edges of those jagged boulders, tied to a barnacle-encrusted pier. The thin chain around his neck flexed slightly, as if realizing how close they were to falling. Gareth prayed it wouldn’t decide to cling on tight and strangle him in the process.
He cursed their turn of luck. It had gone well enough so far. Din and Barneb, assigned to second watch, had been happy to share in the strong wine he and Ivor had brought to break the tedium of the night hours, and in the musky vintage the guards hadn’t tasted the mild drug Ivor had slipped into the second bottle. Once Din and Barneb fell into a deep sleep, Gareth and Ivor had secured them against the side of the ship to prevent them from rolling around on deck, called the half hour themselves, and turned the glass. Gareth and Ivor were set to take third watch, so there was a good chance no one would come by to find the post abandoned.
They scuttled down the side of the Orcsblood undetected, cut the small boat free, and made for the distant, tarnished lights of Mulmaster as fast and silently as they could. They were both strong rowers. There was only one pair of oars secured in the boat, and one of them took over the chore of rowing the instant the other faltered, so although they were weary and sore when they reached the ring of anchored craft that bordered the town harbor, they made good time.
They glided between the ships, hung with green and yellow witchlight that reflected in the quiet water. Some of the craft were dead quiet, and sometimes a low conversation or the calling of the watch came to them on the gentle breeze from the decks high above. Ivor paddled, avoiding splashing, and Gareth took the tiller, straining to avoid coming too near to any craft. No one hailed them or warned them off, but they both knew that sharp eyes were following them at every moment.
Allies of Ping would betray them to the pira
te. Enemies of Ping would hunt them down as suspected pirates. There was no help for them here.
Past the inner circle of craft they saw the docks of Mulmaster, with their red glass lanterns hanging from their piers. Here and there a figure stood on the planking, silhouetted by the soft yellow glow of the town’s lights behind them.
Ivor lifted the oars, drops of water reflecting the light of the dock lanterns and falling like rubies into the dark water. Gareth pointed at the shadowy pillars of the piers of one of the docks that loomed, dark and abandoned, over a barrier of sharp rocks that the low tide exposed. The only illumination came from the light of the fat crescent moon shining on the choppy water and a dim green swirl as some sea creature occasionally came close to the surface.
Ivor nodded silently in agreement. It would be better to creep into Mulmaster unperceived than to risk a challenge at the more populated dock.
They made the boat fast and started up the slippery piers, finding protuberances of reinforcing metal and bulges of overgrown barnacles to aid their climb. Both men were sea trained and used to clambering all over a ship, both in calm and in storm. But they had the effort of rowing all the way from the deep water behind them that night, and before that the task of bringing the Starbound to heel. Fatigue made Gareth’s arms tremble, and more than once he almost lost his footing. The thought of the fatal fall onto the rocks below gave him new strength and determination, but he was mere flesh after all and prayed to whatever god might be listening to give him just enough strength to make the dock.
Perhaps one was listening, for he did. Perhaps it was a capricious god, because he quickly realized that an abandoned dock was an ill-kept dock, and this one’s boards were rotting in the damp sea air and spray. He sprawled on the slick edge and wondered if he could fall free of the rocks, and if whatever lurked down there making green swirls in the water would prove to be hungry.
Dawnbringer: A Forgotten Realms Novel Page 2