He didn’t find anyone who matched the description of the boy prophet or even any loot worth pocketing, just the cowering folk—children, mothers, the elderly and infirm—he flushed out of hiding. But when he marched them to join their fellow captives in the center of the village, he saw that some of the other searchers had been luckier.
In fact, one could argue they’d been too lucky. They’d found three little boys with blond hair and fair complexions, and on first inspection, there was nothing to distinguish the special one from the other two.
Anton could haul all three back to Pirate Isle and let Captain Highcastle identify the one he wanted. But what if none of them was the right child? It would be embarrassing to disappoint the self-proclaimed Chosen of Umberlee. It might even be dangerous.
He raked the prisoners with a menacing glare. “My name is Anton Marivaldi, and my ship is the Iron Jest. You may have heard of me.”
Apparently they had. Some of them blanched.
“You have a choice,” Anton continued. “Someone can point out the boy Stedd Whitehorn without further delay, in which case, all of you will live. Or you can keep mum until my men kill enough people to loosen somebody’s tongue.”
With that, he waited. While the rain beat down, the moments crawled by, and none of the peasants spoke up.
Perplexed, Anton shook his head. The rustics were clearly terrified. He could all but smell it on them despite the downpour. So why weren’t they giving up an outsider to save themselves?
Maybe because, despite Anton’s reputation, they hoped he wouldn’t carry out his threat. If so, it was time to disabuse them of their optimism. He turned to Yuicoerr. “Have at it. Start with the babies and little girls.”
“No!” an old man yelped. He was stooped and scrawny with brown spots on the backs of his wrinkled hands and the bald crown of his head.
Anton raised a hand to halt the second mate and the other pirates advancing with knives in hand. “I’m glad one of you is sensible. Keep talking, old man. Point out Stedd Whitehorn and save your grandchildren.”
“I can’t!” the elderly villager replied. “He isn’t here! When the trouble started, one of his minders rushed him out of town!”
Anton’s jaw tightened. That was what he’d feared might have happened, and he and his crew could hardly comb the countryside if riders from Teziir were on the way.
But was the story true? If he’d been commanding the other side, would he have believed he had to get the boy out of the village because he couldn’t possibly win the battle to come? Why? The defenders had had wizardry and superior numbers on their side, and at least some of their fighters had been seasoned warriors of the scroll, moon, and stars.
“That’s too bad,” he said to the old man. “I explained the only way to save your village, but if the boy’s no longer here, then obviously, you can’t avail yourselves of the opportunity. Go on, lads. Kill everyone.”
“Wait!” cried a woman with three small children clinging to her skirts. She had the sagging, loose-skinned look of someone who’d been stout before hunger whittled away the excess weight. “He’s—”
“No!” cried one of the three golden-haired boys. “Don’t say it! You don’t have to.” He turned to Anton, and even amid the downpour and the gloom, his eyes were as blue as the clear skies and seas that no one had seen in a year. He swallowed, and in a voice that quavered just a little, said, “I’m Stedd.”
Anton had to admit, the lad had courage. Although he might not know exactly what fate awaited him, he surely realized it wouldn’t be pleasant. But then again, maybe he was simple or downright mad and believed the power he professed to serve would protect him.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Anton said. “Now be a good boy and stand still while one of my men ties your hands and leashes you. Then we’ll be on our way and let your friends here get back to slopping the hogs or whatever they need to do.”
Yuicoerr looked to Anton. “What about our dead?”
“In my considered opinion, they’re likely to stay that way.”
“I mean, we should carry them back to the ship and give them to the sea.”
“That would slow us down.”
“Only a little, and we owe it to them.”
Anton laughed. “When did you turn so sentimental? We owe it to ourselves—”
Something smashed into the back of Anton’s head. He pitched forward onto his hands and knees, and, his skull ringing, turned his head to discover Naraxes standing over him. The first mate raised the belaying pin he used as a cudgel and clubbed him a second time.
The rain turned the streets of Immurk’s Hold into streams rushing from the mountainous heights of Pirate Isle, past taverns, festhalls, fighting pits, chandleries, smithies, and sail makers’ shops, and down to the harbor, where the rising waters of the Sea of Fallen Stars were drowning docks and shipyards. Umara Ankhlab hunched her shoulders against the downpour and tried to avoid wading through deep water. It slopped over the tops of her shoes and soaked her feet even so.
That was unpleasant, but not as much as her sense of Kymas Nahpret’s amusement at her discomfort. Her superior had cast a spell to link their psyches, and in consequence saw, heard, and felt what she did, but not so intensely as to cause him distress.
One day, he said, speaking mind to mind, if you serve me well, I’ll make you as I am. Then you’ll never be cold again.
Or forever cold, she thought, forever cold and dead. Then she made haste to mask the thought before it bled across into Kymas’s awareness. It would be unwise to let him realize she didn’t want to become a vampire.
And actually, she needed to overcome her instinctive revulsion and desire it in truth. She came from a long line of tharchions and khazarks, but over the course of the last century, mortal Thayan nobles had declined in stature relative to the undead ones. The only way for even the daughter of an old and once-prominent Mulan family to achieve any measure of genuine status and influence was to become such a creature herself, and at least then she wouldn’t have to bear the presence of a thing like a psychic tapeworm.
She splashed past scrawny, half-naked men setting up trident-shaped markers to line the street leading to the temple of Umberlee, Queen of the Depths. The rain made any sort of outdoor labor unpleasant, but the raiders of Pirate Isle evidently were no more concerned than Thayans for the misery of slaves, and the overseers with their coiled whips had taken shelter under the dripping eaves of nearby buildings.
Many buildings in Immurk’s Hold were haphazardly constructed of driftwood, other flotsam, and the odd piece of plundered lumber. A few though, including fortresses and the mansions of the most rapaciously successful captains, were as imposing as any structure Umara had seen in any settlement bordering the Inner Sea. The house of the Bitch Queen was one of the latter, and thus proof that Pirate Isle was one of the few places where her priesthood had wielded considerable influence even before Evendur Highcastle proclaimed her new ascendancy. It was a pile of blue-green stone perched on a promontory overlooking the storm-tossed sea. Stairs and walkways snaked their way down the cliff face to vanish beneath the heaving surf where it smashed itself to spray against the rock.
Umara strode to the primary entrance, where two steps ascended to a recessed doorway with one of Umberlee’s emblems, a double wave curling to both the right and the left, carved above it. A pair of sentries, novice priests in sea-green tabards, crossed their tridents to bar the way.
“I’m Umara Ankhlab,” she told them, “Red Wizard and envoy of Szass Tam, master of Thay. The Chosen of Umberlee has agreed to receive me.” As he certainly should have done after all the gifts Kymas’s legionnaires had carried to the temple.
One of the waveservants said, “Yes, Saer. Follow me.” And when he led her into the high-ceilinged, shadowy chamber beyond the doorway, her first thought was that it was a relief to escape the rain. She pushed back her scarlet cowl and wiped at the moisture that had blown inside it to dampen her face and shaven scal
p.
But escaping the rain didn’t mean she’d escaped water, or at least the idea of it. As one would expect, the keepers of Umberlee’s house had adorned it with representations of sharks, eels, octopuses, and the goddess herself with her clawed hands, finned elbows, kelp hair, and cloak made of jellyfish dragging a ship beneath the waves. In addition, some acoustical trick filled the structure with the rhythmic hiss and crash of the waves below, while the cool air smelled of brine.
As Umara’s guide conducted her deeper into the temple, she paid attention to the number and locations of other guards. She noted, too, the glyphs protecting windows and thresholds. Many of the symbols were unfamiliar to her, likely because they derived from divine magic rather than arcane. But even so, she could often sense the power lurking in them as a twinge of headache or a prickling on her skin.
Her escort ultimately brought her to a round chamber with several doorways leading out of it and what appeared to be a bottomless pool in the center. Given that the spacious room was above sea level, she inferred it was enchantment that drew the water up the shaft. Wet, splayed footprints suggested that some marine creature had recently clambered from it to confer with the waveservants or Captain Highcastle himself.
“Sahuagin,” rumbled a voice at her back. “We’re good friends.”
Startled, she nearly jerked around. But it wouldn’t do to appear nervous, and so she took a breath and turned with the composure appropriate to her alleged role as an envoy. At which point, she had to steady herself again.
Like most Thayans, she’d spent her life growing accustomed to the undead and in fact was obliged to consort with a vampire nearly every night of her life. Yet even so, the sight of Evendur Highcastle jarred her.
Plainly, he’d been a hulking brute of a man even when alive. The tendays he’d supposedly spent lying at the bottom of the sea before his goddess saw fit to reanimate him had swelled his bulk even larger just as they’d softened his features. Still, despite the bloated, mushy look of him and the bits the fish had nibbled away, the balanced solidity of his stance conveyed a sense of enormous strength.
His costly but mismatched attire accentuated the grotesquerie of his appearance. From his massive shoulders swept a pearl-bedizened, high-collared green cloak that was part of the regalia of a high priest of the Bitch Queen. Yet beneath it, he still dressed like a pirate with plunder to squander and an utter lack of taste, in a jerkin with alternating ruby and emerald buttons, an orange sash, black and white checked breeches, and high maroon boots inlaid with erotic imagery.
Spreading her hands, Umara gave Evendur a shallow bow, respectful but not servile. “Captain Highcastle, Szass Tam sends felicitations to his brother in undeath.”
The pirate’s face shifted, but his features were too puffy for Umara to tell exactly what expression he’d assumed. Her inability to read him gave her another twinge of unease.
“Does the lich understand that I am more than undead?” Evendur asked. “That I am the Chosen of the Queen of the Depths?”
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? said Kymas, speaking inside Umara’s head. Use the talisman.
Safely ensconced in the coffin concealed aboard their galley, his very existence unsuspected by any of the locals, the vampire could afford impatience. Umara was the one who’d suffer if Evendur caught her doing something he didn’t like. She exerted her will to quiet her superior’s urging and to keep the nasty sensation it produced, like an itch inside her skull, from showing in her face.
“He does indeed,” she said to Evendur. “Who could doubt it, considering how quickly the church of Umberlee, under your leadership, is extending its influence around the Sea of Fallen Stars? That’s why he sent me.”
“To pledge me his fealty?”
Despite the gravity of Umara’s situation, the question almost surprised a laugh out of her. Divinely anointed or no, the living corpse plainly didn’t understand the ruler of Thay.
“Honestly, no,” she said. “Only a small portion of Thay is coastline, and Bane is our patron deity. But Szass Tam offers an alliance between equals.”
“I just told you: He and I are not ‘equals.’ ”
“Captain, it’s not for me to debate that. You and Szass Tam are both greater than I, so how could I even pretend to know which of you stands higher than the other? All I can do is deliver my master’s message and hope that something in it meets with your favor.”
The drowned man grunted. “Continue, then.”
“Thank you. Szass Tam asks you to consider that he has the strongest army in the East, and you have a mighty fleet. Thayan traders have goods to sell—including crops grown in fields where continual rain doesn’t spoil them—in Turmish, Impiltur, and the cities of the Dragon Coast if they can convey them to market without the sea wolves of Pirate Isle attacking them. They’ll pay you for immunity … and for doing your utmost to destroy their Aglarondan competitors.”
“What do I care about armies when I’m building an empire of the sea?” Evendur replied. “And as for the toll you propose, I already have something similar in mind, but I don’t need an arrangement with your master to collect it. The day will come when every man who sails these waters or lives anywhere near them will tithe to Umberlee and her church.”
“To answer your question about armies,” Umara said, “may I show you something? I’ll need to work some magic, but I give you my word, it’s harmless.”
Evendur spat a wad of something too dark and foul to be a living man’s saliva. “I don’t need your ‘word’, girl. You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. Go ahead and cast your charm.”
Inwardly, Umara bristled at his contempt, but, probably fortunately, she’d had a great deal of practice masking her resentment when undead beings condescended to her. She simply said, “Thank you,” turned toward a clear space in the circular chamber, and began an incantation from Six Lies and a Question, a grimoire supposedly authored by the legendary illusionist Mythrellan.
As Umara crooned and whispered, she swept her hand back and forth like a child finger-painting. Gradually, a city square crowded with figures took form, and when the magic filled in enough detail, the figures began to move.
Soldiers wearing sea-green cloaks emblazoned with the image of a dolphin leaping over a seashell battled other men-at-arms clad in white surcoats bearing a purple dragon emblem. The major differences between the two factions were that the warriors of the dolphin were fully armored and attacking in squads, while as often as not, the men of the dragon wore no mail, carried no shields, and scurried to form up with their comrades.
The scene shifted to a tree-lined boulevard and then a shabby little marketplace in the shadow of a towering city wall. In each view, it was plain the warriors of the dolphin and shell had attacked the Purple Dragons by surprise and to deadly effect.
Evendur Highcastle had been an infamous pirate long before he rose from the waves as an undead monstrosity, and he studied the butchery with what Umara took to be professional interest. That meant it was time to use the talisman in her pocket. If she was lucky, his distraction combined with the magic already seething in the air would keep him from noticing another momentary pulse of power.
She wrapped her fingers around the carved onyx disk and mouthed the trigger word Kymas had taught her. Pain stabbed between her eyes as her perceptions shattered into paradox.
Evendur seemed to loom taller and also to spring toward her even though neither of those things actually happened. Rather, he became more massive and real than anything else, the crushing force of his presence diminishing the thick stone walls around him to something as wispy as the clash of shadows Umara had conjured to hold his attention.
Yet though he felt more solid and true than anything she’d ever experienced, at the same time, he was empty, absent, just a hole in the substance of the world opening on a realm of churning tumult and ferocity. It was actually the infinite violence of that place that made his mere existence so oppressive. That, and the intuition t
hat at any moment, something might peer back at her from the far side of the opening.
No one claimed a place among the Red Wizards without facing fiends and other horrors that common folk could scarcely imagine. Still, Umara’s heart pounded, and she had to bite back a moan.
She needed to get hold of herself before Evendur noticed anything amiss. She tried to let go of the talisman, but her fingers wouldn’t stop clutching it. She took a breath, focused the trained will of a wizard on performing that simple action, and her digits slowly unclenched. Evendur reverted to the rotting hulk she’d first encountered, and vile as that creature was, she almost felt grateful to him for masking the greater horror that used him as a spy hole and a conduit.
“What am I seeing?” he asked.
“The defection of Daerlun,” she replied. “With the beginning of summer, First Lord Gascam Highbanner betrayed Prince Irvel with the results you’ve now seen.” Deprived of her concentration, the illusory struggle began to blur and fade.
“How do you know?” Evendur demanded.
She smiled. “Captain, you’ve made it plain you deem my powers weak compared to those granted by your goddess, and I don’t contest the point. Still, Thayan scrying and divination have their uses.”
“Maybe so,” Evendur said, “but how does treachery in the war in the west concern me?”
“Prince Irvel and his army were the great hope of Cormyr,” Umara said. “Now that they’ve come to grief, Sembia will soon win the war. Then it—and the conquered vassal state it will make of its foe—will be free to turn its attention to any power that threatens its interests anywhere around the Inner Sea. It will have a strong, seasoned navy and army to bring to bear, and this … tacit theocracy you’re building may need allies to withstand them.”
The pirate priest shook his swollen, all but neckless head; the dangling mustachios and strands of beard like black, slimy seaweed flopped back and forth. “I doubt it. By the time the Sembians and the shades pulling their strings turn their attention to me, the church of Umberlee will control every port and coast, no matter who the nominal lord may be. And if my enemies succeed in bringing a force against me even so, the goddess will give me the strength to smash them.”
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