Sea of Death botf-3

by Tim Waggoner

  The last member of the circle-standing between Hinto and Ghaji, which at the moment wasn't the safest place aboard Welby's Pride-was Asenka.

  "I, for one, think a man covered by jewels is quite attractive," she said. "Even if he isn't human." She gave Diran a quick wink to show she was joking. She and Diran weren't lovers, not yet, but they were more than friends. Diran wondered if their relationship would continue to grow and deepen, and he surprised himself when he realized that he hoped it would.

  Asenka had close-cropped strawberry-blond hair and a tattoo of a scorpion on the back of her right hand. Instead of the red cloak she normally wore with her uniform of black tabard over mail armor, she had on a fur cloak as protection against the cold. She was armed with a long sword, and though at first glance she didn't appear muscular enough to wield it effectively, Diran had seen her use the weapon to good effect on more than one occasion. Asenka served as commander of the Sea Scorpions, Baron Mahir's elite cadre of warriors, and it was she who had delivered Diran's proposition to the baron: the priest and his companions would travel to Kolbyr and see if they might be able to lift the curse that had hung over the ruling house for a hundred years. Mahir had been skeptical at first. After all, the Barons of Kolbyr had doubtless attempted to have the curse removed numerous times over the years, and without success. Not only would another attempt most likely prove futile, the fact that it originated from Perhata might well lead to an escalation of hostilities between the two cities. Especially since Diran and Ghaji had been responsible for the destruction of the Maelstrom and the Coldhearts. That action hadn't been authorized by Mahir-not that he wasn't pleased by it-but Baroness Calida might not see it that way.

  In the end Asenka had managed to convince Mahir to sponsor the journey to Kolbyr. It helped that it wouldn't be too expensive, of course, and that they planned to conduct their mission as unobtrusively as possible. But Mahir's main reason for agreeing was a practical one. The longstanding enmity between the two cities had prevented both from progressing the way they might have otherwise. Mahir didn't exactly want to become friends with Calida, but the periodic clashes between their two cities were costly. If those Lhazaarites who made their homes in the Gulf of Ingjald ever hoped to compete economically with the rest of the Principalities, the feud between Perhata and Kolbyr had to end.

  So with Mahir's approval-and more importantly, his money-Asenka was able to hire a cargo vessel to bear Diran and his companions to a small fishing village not far from Kolbyr. They couldn't use the Water Dragon-the Sea Scorpions' ship-lest she draw too much attention and be seen as an attack on Kolbyr, especially now that the Coldhearts were no longer there to protect the city.

  After arriving at the village, they disembarked and hired Welby's Pride to take them the rest of the way. It was common for independent fishing boats to bring their catch in to either Kolbyr or Perhata, depending on which was closer and which happened to be paying more for fish at any given time. It was true that Diran, Ghaji, and the others didn't much resemble local fisherfolk, but then even in this less-than-cosmopolitan backwater of the Principalities, it wasn't unknown to see groups of odd strangers, and while some eyebrows might get raised, few questions would be asked.

  "It seems like we've been sailing for days," Ghaji complained. "At this pace, we may not reach Kolbyr until summer."

  "We wouldn't have to use this leaky wreck at all if we still had the Zephyr," Yvka said. "In the time it's taken us to get this far, we could've already reached Kolbyr, lifted the curse, and be halfway back to Perhata."

  Tresslar frowned. "You're not the only one who's lost something, you know."

  The artificer had been in a foul mood for the last several days, ever since his dragonwand had been stolen at Mount Luster by the barghest. The elderly artificer had searched for the device night and day, forgoing both sleep and meals in his obsessive quest to regain the dragonwand. Diran couldn't blame the old man. The golden dragonhead affixed to the tip of the wand was a magical artifact of great power, enabling its user to drain mystical energy from enchanted objects and rechannel it to create whatever effects the user desired. Tresslar had possessed the dragonwand for forty years, ever since he'd sailed with the legendary explorer Erdis Cai in his youth. Tresslar was determined not to give up the dragonwand easily, but so far all his attempts to locate the artifact had met with failure.

  Yvka's face reddened with anger at Tresslar's comment, and Ghaji-as he so often did-stepped in to lighten the mood. "I think you've been spoiled by your elemental sloop, Yvka. Now you're frustrated because you have to travel as slowly as the rest of us ordinary mortals."

  But Ghaji's words had the opposite effect. Yvka's face turned a deeper red, and her delicate elvish brow furrowed into a scowl. "It's not a joking matter."

  Her voice had a sternness to it that Diran had seldom heard before, like she was an adult lecturing a small child, and an annoying one at that. Yvka was an elf, and therefore older than Ghaji, perhaps quite a bit older. Diran forgot that sometimes.

  Ghaji's jaws muscles tensed, and Diran knew his friend was fighting to keep from becoming defensive.

  "I'm sure Ghaji didn't mean to make light of your loss," Diran said.

  Yvka smiled and reached out to pat Ghaji's hand. "I know. It's just that the Zephyr doesn't belong to me. It's a loan from my associates."

  The elf-woman had never directly admitted to any of them-not even Ghaji-that she worked for the Shadow Network, had in fact never acknowledged that the secret organization of spies and assassins even existed. But it was an open secret among the companions, though they avoided speaking of it out of respect for their friend.

  The crew hauled another net full of fish out of the water and dumped the catch onto the deck. The fish, still alive and flopping, were mostly cod, Diran noted, and good-sized ones at that, each nearly the length of a man's arm. The fish would bring in good money once the crew put in to Kolbyr, Diran thought, and he found himself thinking of the path his life might have taken if his parents hadn't been killed, if he'd grown to adulthood fishing the waters of the Lhazaar. Certainly it would have been a simpler path than the one he now trod-he glanced at his companions and smiled-but a far less rewarding one.

  Several of the crystals on Solus's forehead began to glow, and though the psiforged didn't possess the physiognomy to frown, the tone of his voice conveyed his concern.

  "Something is wrong."

  Before Diran could ask Solus to clarify, a chorus of shrill cries cut through the air, and a white mass descended upon Welby's Pride. The gulls, excited by the cod flopping on the deck, had abandoned making individual sorties to snatch fish in favor of a group assault. The crew yelled and cursed, flailed their arms, punched, kicked, even drew knives and struck out at the birds. But instead of frightening off the gulls, the crew's actions only served to further embolden the raucous scavengers. At first it proved to be an almost comical sight: grown men and women, toughened sea-hands all, battling birds that were little more than flying feathered rats for possession of a pile of flopping codfish. But then the gulls became more aggressive, forgetting the cod and turning their attention toward the crew. The birds pecked at every hand that came near them, flew past heads and dug their beaks into scalps. At first the crew merely yelped and swore, the injuries inflicted by the gulls little more than annoyances. But then the birds began to strike harder, sharp beaks drawing blood, and the crew's shouts of anger became cries of pain.

  At first the gulls ignored Diran and his companions, presumably because none of them were standing near the fish, but that didn't last long. A single gull broke away from the flock and came flapping toward them, beady black eyes glittering with almost human hatred. The bird made straight for Asenka, clearly aiming for the woman's eyes, but before it could reach her, the commander of the Sea Scorpions drew her long sword, swung, and the gull's body fell to one portion of the deck while its head landed on another.

  More gulls broke off their assault on the crew and came flying at the
companions, harsh cries full of rage, as if they intended to avenge their flock-mate's death. Without a word, Diran and the others turned around, remaining in a circle but facing outward to meet the gulls' attack. Ghaji activated his elemental axe, and mystic fire burst forth from the metal. The half-orc warrior swung the enchanted weapon in wide, sweeping arcs, flames trailing from the axe head as he cut down one bird after another. Asenka continued striking out with her long sword, while Hinto did the same with his long knife. Yvka reached into the leather pouch that hung from her belt and withdrew a slender steel spike upon which three white acorns had been skewered. With a graceful flick of her wrist, she flipped the object-a product of the ever-inventive and always-devious artificers of the Shadow Network-toward the attacking gulls. The steel spike disintegrated in mid-air, and the acorns became ivory streaks as they shot off in three separate directions to bore large, bloody holes in the chests of three different gulls.

  Tresslar appeared to do nothing but stand and watch the others fight, his brow slightly furrowed. But a moment later the warming gem he'd created floated out of the circle and toward a concentrated mass of gulls, the mystical object glowing more brightly with each passing second. When the light given off by the gem became too intense to look at directly-and when it was far enough away from any of the companions, the crew, and the ship's rigging-it exploded, killing at least a dozen birds. Like Tresslar, Solus seemed to be doing nothing more than observing the battle taking place around him, but the crystals covering his face and hands were flashing rapidly on and off in an intricate pattern, and Diran felt the psiforged was doing something, though the priest had no idea what.

  Diran had drawn a pair of razor-edged steel daggers from the sheaths sewn into the inner lining of his cloak. His hands were blurs as he swept the blades through the air, slicing the wings of gulls as they swooped in to attack, cutting through feather and flesh, the birds falling to the deck, unable to remain aloft. Diran had no compunction about killing the gulls if it became necessary. He had served as an assassin during the Last War before forsaking that path to become one of the Purified. But as a worshipper of the Silver Flame, he held all life sacred and would only kill to defend the lives of the innocent, and even then only when he could find no other way to protect them.

  Diran had no doubt that this attack was the trouble Solus had attempted to warn them of. Such aggressive behavior was unnatural for gulls, but during the Last War, Diran had seen animals ensorcelled and used as weapons to assault an enemy in a fashion similar to this. As one of the Purified, Diran could sense the presence of evil in the flock of mad gulls, but it was a diffuse evil, its nature difficult to grasp. Whatever the source of the malignant power that drove the gulls to attack, it didn't seem to be something Diran could exorcise using his priestly abilities. A notion struck him then: perhaps it wasn't magic at work here, but rather psionics. Diran turned to Solus, but before he could give voice to his question, the psiforged answered it.

  "I do not know what is causing the birds to attack, but your technique for dealing with them appears to be sound. If you will allow me to borrow your daggers…"

  Before Diran could reply, his blades were yanked from his grasp by an unseen force. They soared through the air, flying through the mass of gulls with blinding speed, cutting through wing after wing and sending birds tumbling to the deck one after another. Within moments, the air was empty of gulls, and Diran's daggers-steel blades smeared with avian blood-floated back into his hands. An instant later, the blood rose from the daggers in crimson beads, joined together to form a round mass of red liquid, then flew over the side of the boat and into the sea. His daggers now clean, Diran returned the knives to their sheaths within his cloak.

  "Nicely done, Solus," Diran said.

  "It was your idea," the psiforged replied. "I simply expanded on it."

  Though Solus had been brought to life during the Last War, he'd remained in seclusion inside Mount Luster ever since the traumatic event of his creation. Only recently had he ended his isolation to emerge into the outer world, but while the psiforged lacked practical experience of life beyond the walls of Mount Luster, Diran thought the construct was proving to be a fast learner.

  "Too bad you couldn't have used your mind tricks to make the gulls docile," Tresslar said. The artificer nodded at the wounded birds surrounding them. The gulls might not have been able to fly, but the creatures continued to cry shrilly and peck at anything near them that moved, including each other.

  "I tried," Solus said. "But their minds were too simple, the rage that engulfed them too strong."

  "That's all right," Hinto said. "I heard you tell Diran you didn't know what caused the gulls to go crazy. You can't counter magic if you don't know anything about it, right?"

  "I said didn't know what power affected the birds, but I do know something about it. I know where it originated from."

  Solus pointed sternward and everyone turned to look in the direction the psiforged indicated.

  There, off in distance, lay the harbor of Kolbyr.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As Welby's Pride headed into port, Diran healed the wounded crew members while Solus used his telekinetic abilities to remove the gulls from the deck. The psiforged placed the birds into the water, where the dead would become food for other scavengers and the wounded would have a chance for survival, slim though it might be.

  Once the shallop was settled into a berth and tied down, Asenka paid the captain the rest of his fee, and the companions disembarked. Ghaji found the docks of Kolbyr to be quite a change from those in Perhata. Instead of using wood for pillars and planking, the Kolbyrites had fashioned their docks entirely from gray stone. The surfaces were worn smooth by decades of exposure to the elements as well as by the thousands of feet that had trod upon the docks over the years. Patches of moss clung to the stone everywhere, making the docks look more green than gray, as if they had grown from the sea floor rather than having been constructed with hammer and chisel.

  The stink of fish hung heavy on the air here-no doubt due to all the fishing boats berthed at the docks-and Ghaji was grateful that a strong breeze was blowing to cut the stench, though gale-force winds would've been even better. He hadn't said anything to the others, but the smell of fish reminded him far too much of the stink of Karrnathi undead, which in turn reminded him of the months he'd spent serving as a mercenary on the Talenta Plains during the Last War. When he thought of those days, he thought of Kirai, and since those thoughts were too painful to recall, he did his best to cast them out of his mind. Doing so would've been easier if the damned air didn't stink like a horde of Karrnathi zombies, though.

  Asenka led the way. Not only was she more familiar with Kolbyr as a citizen of the Gulf of Ingjald, she was also the representative of Baron Mahir, which meant she carried all the bribe money. Diran and Ghaji followed closely behind Asenka, while the others brought up the rear. Ostensibly their mission was a secret one, but Kolbyr had many spies in Perhata, just as Perhata had its own spies here. Often, these spies were one and the same, men and women who worked "both sides of the gulf," as the saying went. Thus the chances were excellent that word of their mission had preceded them to Kolbyr, and Asenka was authorized to play the role of official ambassador from Perhata-and spread Mahir's money around as liberally as necessary-should the need arise.

  "Do you sense it, Ghaji?" Diran asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Ghaji glanced sideways at his friend. "I assume you're not talking about the fish smell."

  "Hardly. I sense the same sort of evil I did aboard the fishing vessel when the gulls attacked. Only it's stronger here, more focused."

  Ghaji had traveled with Diran ever since the two had met when the half-orc had been working as a brothel bouncer in Kartan. Though not a worshipper of the Silver Flame himself, Ghaji had joined Diran's crusade against evil, and he had fought alongside the priest against threats so dire that just to stand in their presence was to risk one's sanity. They owed eac
h other their lives a dozen times over, and there was no person in the world that Ghaji trusted more. If Diran said he sensed evil, Ghaji believed him, without question.

  "My teeth have been on edge since we first approached the dock," Ghaji admitted, "and the hair on the back of my neck is standing at attention. What do you think is causing it?"

  "The same force that drove the gulls to attack us," the priest said. "But other than that, I cannot say."

  "Do you think it also has something to do with the way everyone's been looking at us?" Ghaji nodded toward a berthed sail boat as they passed. There were three men aboard-two humans and a half-elf-and whatever they had been doing a moment ago, they now stood upon the deck of their vessel, glaring at the companions as they walked by, faces contorted into expressions of pure hatred so intense they were almost comical.

  Almost.

  "We do seem to be attracting a great deal of negative attention," Diran said. "Far more than mere travelers should get for simply walking along the dock. It's almost as if our arrival was expected, though obviously not welcomed."

  The trio in the sailboat wasn't the only ones staring at them with hate-filled eyes. Sailors, fishermen, dockhands… all fixed the companions with baleful glares that seemed to carry an almost physical force. If eyes were swords, then those gazes could've pierced flesh.

  Ghaji's fingers toyed with the haft of his axe, but though the half-orc made no move to draw his weapon, Diran-with the awareness that only long-time companions possess-said, "Easy, my friend. They appear content to stare. For now, at least."

  Ghaji nodded, though his perpetual scowl deepened in displeasure.

  Diran glanced back over his shoulder toward Solus. "Do you sense anything more than you did aboard the shallop?"

  The psiforged's crystals flashed briefly, then went dim. "No more than you do. The atmosphere of anger is stronger here, but I cannot locate its center. It seems to come from both everywhere and nowhere at the same time."