Sea of Death botf-3

by Tim Waggoner

  "Hinto… Onu…?"

  Hinto grinned. "That's right, Leontis! It's us!"

  The wolfshark's arm was completely healed now, and he rose to his feet. Hinto almost stepped forward to help Leontis up, but he restrained himself. Just because the priest recognized them didn't mean he was no longer dangerous.

  Now that the weresharks had been deal with, they should go help Diran and the others. But before Hinto could broach the subject, he felt a chill breeze against the back of his neck. The cold seeped into his skin, penetrated his bones, and seemed to permeate his very soul. Coils of greenish mist slithered across the deck of the galleon, moving as if they were somehow alive, vaporous serpents probing, exploring, seeking something, though Hinto couldn't have said what. The halfling turned toward the ship's railing and there, out in the bay, he spied a dark vessel that every sailor who plied the waters of the Lhazaar Sea feared and prayed never to set eyes upon.

  The Ship of Bones.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Nathifa felt the artificer's lifeforce draining into her body, and she welcomed it. Not only because it weakened one of her enemies, but because it helped restore a small portion of the power she'd lost on Trebaz Sinara by sacrificing her arm and her eye.

  The old man was clever; she had to give him that. His mastery of mystic arts couldn't begin to approach hers, but he'd created a device that allowed him not only to take hold of the dragonwand while it was in use without being damaged, but also to dampen the Amahau's energy output. If he were allowed to continue, he might well be able to stop the Summoning and regain possession of the dragonwand. But he would be dead long before that came to pass.

  A cold breeze wafted in from the sea, bringing with it tendrils of greenish mist, and Nathifa's feelings of triumph gave way to fear and despair. She looked out across the bay, knowing what she would see upon its waters. The Ship of Bones. Prince Moren had come to collect the debt she owned him.

  The lich cast her thoughts out toward the dark vessel.

  Not yet! I'm not ready!

  She wasn't surprised when she received no answer.

  Ghaji-singed and smarting from the burns he'd taken from leaping through the wall of fire-ran to the end of the dock, elemental axe held tight, flames trailing behind him. There were only three weresharks between the half-orc and his destination, but that was three too many as far as Ghaji was concerned. He whirled the axe over his head, bared his teeth, and roared as he came, trying to make himself into what he hoped was a fearsome apparition. He had no illusions that he'd frighten the weresharks off, but he hoped that his ferocity and the flames generated by his axe might give them enough pause so that he could get the first strike in as he attacked.

  But the weresharks didn't appear intimidated in the slightest, and they matched Ghaji's display of ferocity with their own, showing their teeth, raising their claws, and bellowing a challenge. But then they stopped and as one turned to look toward the bay. A green mist that seemed almost to glow with a sickly illumination covered the surface of the water, and there was a sudden drop in air temperature. A moment later the trio of weresharks leaped off the dock, transforming into full shark form before they plunged into the water.

  Ghaji kept running, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the sharks swim away, their dorsal fins cutting through the layer of green mist that hung over the water. He had no idea what the mist was or why it should frighten the weresharks so much, but he was too grateful to question it.

  As the half-orc approached the end of the dock, he saw that his friends had already engaged Nathifa and her servants in battle. Solus gripped the head of the statue of Nerthatch, Diran was struggling with Makala, and Tresslar was trying to wrest the dragonwand from the lich who, in turn, had wrapped tendrils of darkness around the artificer's arm. Ghaji had faced enough liches alongside Diran to know that Nathifa was draining Tresslar's lifeforce. He knew what he had to do.

  He raced toward Nathifa and Tresslar, raised his flaming axe, and brought it down upon the ebon tendrils protruding from the lich's body. The blade sliced through the shadowy substance of the sorceress's cloak, making the lich hiss in pain. The black coils around Tresslar's arm relaxed and fell to the dock, and the artificer gasped with relief. But he did not release his grip on the dragonwand. Ghaji knew they had only seconds before Nathifa unfurled more tendrils and renewed her attack, so the half-orc did the only logical thing: he swung his axe at the sorceress's wrist.

  The flaming blade cut through Nathifa's undead flesh as if it were dry kindling, and Tresslar yanked the dragonwand away from her, the lich's hand still holding tight to the other end. The shaft of necromantic energy emanating from the mouth of the Amahau winked out the instant Nathifa's hand was severed from her body, and the lich shrieked in rage. Tresslar shoved the end of the dragonwand into the flames of Ghaji's axe, and the hand was instantly charred black. The fingers released their grip, and the blackened hand fell to the dock. Nathifa lurched forward, as if intending to retrieve her hand, but Tresslar kicked it out of her reach. The lich's hand flew into the water with a small splash and sank from sight.

  Nathifa, her bleached-white features twisted into a mask of sheer hatred, lunged at Tresslar, but Ghaji stepped in front of her and barred her way with his flaming axe. The lich shrank back with an angry hiss, and Tresslar pointed the dragonwand at the statue of Nerthatch. Streams of black energy began to flow from the statue's stone surface and drift into the mouth of the golden dragonhead, almost as if the mystical device was devouring them. Ghaji understood what was happening: Tresslar was draining the magical power from the statue of Nerthatch.

  "No!" Nathifa cried out.

  Ghaji grinned. "Oh, yes."

  Makala's body writhed as the burning light of the Silver Flame poured from the holy symbol pressed to her forehead. The Flame blazed through her being. She tried to dislodge Diran, but her strength had deserted her. She felt weak as a newborn kitten, and she feared the power of the Flame was going to consume her. She squeezed her eyes shut, and deep inside the inner recesses of her mind, Makala saw herself standing on Regalport's dock, but she wasn't standing alone. Before her stood an old man in a fur cloak with roiling pools of shadow where his eyes should be.

  "Resist!" the old man shouted, blood-flecked spittle flying from his fanged mouth. "The priest is trying to drive me out! Fight him, damn you!"

  Here within the core of her soul, Makala was still human, and she knew the dark spirit that she'd inherited from Aldarik Cathmore was desperate to maintain its hold on her.

  You present yourself as a benefactor that provides both strength and coldblooded ruthlessness, Makala said. But you're nothing. Just a parasite afraid to be separated from its host. You heard what Diran said: begone!

  The dark spirit threw back its head and roared its fury to the night sky. A small dot of silver light began to grow on the spirit's wrinkled forehead. It quickly assumed the shape of a glowing blue-white arrowhead, and then the light spread rapidly across the spirit, blazing brighter and brighter, until Makala could see nothing but its light… a light that no longer hurt to gaze upon.

  She opened her eyes and found herself looking up at Diran's concerned face. The priest knelt beside her. He'd removed the arrowhead from her flesh, holding it clasped in his fist to hide it from her sight. Her forehead felt as if a white-hot branding iron had been pressed to it, but the pain was already beginning to recede.

  She smiled at the man who had once been her lover. "You did it, Diran. The dark spirit's gone. Am I…" She reached up and touched the sharp point of her right incisor. She was still a vampire.

  "I'm sorry," Diran said.

  Makala sat up. "Don't be. Thanks to you, my soul is free of Cathmore's taint. That's enough of a miracle for one night, wouldn't you say?"

  Diran smiled, but before either of them could speak again, they heard Nathifa cry out in a voice like thunder. "I'll see you all dead!"

  The shadowy substance of the lich's cloak rose up to cover her head, a
nd her ebon form began to grow, its shape rearranging as it expanded. Slender sections separated from the central core, forming a dozen writhing tentacles. Makala realized what Nathifa was doing: she was using up the remainder of her magic for one last attack. Perhaps she would snatch them up in her tentacles and squeeze the life out of them, or perhaps she would simply drain their lifeforces. It didn't matter. Whatever the sorceress intended, Makala wasn't going to stand by and allow it to happen. Diran had saved her soul, and now she was going to save his life, regardless of the cost to herself.

  She gave the priest a quick kiss.

  "Don't say I never did anything for you."

  Before Diran could react, Makala transformed into a bat and flew directly into the tentacled monster Nathifa had become, disappearing into its shadowy substance.

  Solus's mind was lost in a raging storm of psionic chaos-a riotous cacophony of blinding images and deafening sounds. Thanks to the memories of his kalashtar creators that he had absorbed long ago, he understood what was happening. When Solus had first descended to the dock, he had sensed that Nathifa was summoning and controlling the weresharks through a psionic link with Haaken, who in turn was linked to the stone body of the priest Nerthatch. Solus, drawing on his creators' knowledge, knew that if he could disrupt that psionic chain Nathifa had established, he could stop her enchantment. But what he hadn't paused to consider-and what was the cause of his current predicament-was that while there was at times a certain overlap in the disciplines of psionics and magic, their power came from very different energy sources. The power Nathifa used to fuel her spell was corrupted by the foulness of her undead form, and the substance of Nerthatch's stone body was suffused with the evil energies of the dark power that had cursed him. Thus, when Solus had attempted to establish his mind-link to Nathifa using the statue and Haaken as conduits, he'd opened himself up to the dark energies surging through all three. Now he could not break the link, and evil filled his mind, threatening to plunge him into madness, and though he was fighting as hard as he could, he feared it was a losing battle.

  He thought of Diran and Ghaji, of Tresslar and Yvka, but most of all, he thought of Hinto. He and the halfling had formed a special bond, right from the beginning, and while Solus felt sorrow at the thought of failing his friends, he regretted letting Hinto down most of all. The psiforged hoped his friends would find a way to defeat Nathifa and stop the weresharks attacking Regalport without him.

  But just as Solus was about to surrender to the whirlpool of insanity that threatened to pull him under, he felt the pressure in his mind ease. The storm of madness that swirled around him lessened, and though it did not abate entirely, it diminished to the point where Solus was no longer in danger of being lost to its fury. He didn't know precisely how it happened, but he sensed that Nathifa's link to Haaken, and therefore to the statue of Nerthatch, had been broken. He was about to sever his own link to the statue since he could no longer use it to strike against the lich, but now that his mind was free to focus more clearly, he sensed that all the weresharks Nathifa had summoned remained linked to the statue.

  And that meant they were all linked to him.

  If Solus had possessed the physiognomy for it, he would have smiled. To the weresharks still at sea, he sent a single command: Stay away! But he had something a bit more special in mind for those lycanthropes rampaging through the streets of Regalport.

  Solus concentrated on sending a very specific image into their minds.

  It had been a glorious night of slaughter so far for the weresharks, and the fun showed no signs of abating. True, there had been some minor resistance. The city watch was putting up a fight (though not much of one), and the Sea Dragons had given a much better account of themselves-and continued to do so in isolated spots throughout Regalport. Operatives from House Thuranni were striking silently and swiftly from the shadows, though not doing much permanent damage, and of course there were various swordfighters, artificers, wizards, and more who had taken to the streets in order to protect their city. But what of it? The defenders' efforts only added to the weresharks' amusement, and every person the lycanthropes wounded but did not slay became infected with their curse, adding to their numbers, if not this night, then on the morrow. There was nothing anyone could do to stop the weresharks' rampage. There were simply too many of them, and they had struck swiftly and without warning. Regalport had already fallen. Its citizens just hadn't realized it yet.

  But then something strange happened. The cobblestone streets shimmered and became coated with smooth metal. The buildings changed as well, stone and wood now overlaid with bluish-white until everything in Regalport gleamed with reflected moonlight. Throughout the city, the weresharks reacted in horror as they realized they were entirely surrounded by silver. Their feet burned from the silver cobblestones they stood upon, and the moonlight reflecting off the silver buildings seared their eyes. The weresharks panicked and ran blindly, following their instincts back toward the sea, and those few who were not slain by Regalport's defenders-none of whom saw the illusion that so terrified the weresharks-actually made it.

  Solus's perceptions shifted back to the material plane in time to see Tresslar, once again in possession of his dragonwand, lower the magical device. The psiforged's fingers were still pressed to the head of Nerthatch's stone body, but he could no longer sense any evil power within the statue. He guessed that Tresslar had used the Amahau to absorb the statue's energy, but he felt confident that he had gotten his twin messages to the weresharks through the statue's link before Nerthatch's body was completely drained of magic. Solus lowered his hands from the statue's head and turned to see what further assistance he might render his friends. That's when he saw Haaken remove his hands from the statue's shoulders, and he realized that he hadn't dealt with all the weresharks in Regalport this night. He had failed to follow the link back through the statue to Haaken's mind.

  Haaken didn't recover right away, however. He swayed on his feet as he struggled to shake off the effects of serving as a conduit for Nathifa's magic. Solus had witnessed the recuperative powers of lycanthropes enough times to know that it wouldn't take long for Haaken to recover, and the psiforged didn't intend to give him the chance. Solus concentrated on using his telekinetic power to grab hold of the wereshark and fling him far out into the bay, but nothing happened. Solus looked down at his chest and saw that his psionic crystals had gone dark. He'd expended his entire storehouse of psionic energy to resist the mental maelstrom he'd been caught in and then to deal with the weresharks. It would be quite some time before his crystals were able to restore themselves, and in the meantime, he was helpless.

  No, he thought as he looked down at his hands. Not entirely.

  The psiforged curled his stone fingers into a fist, stepped forward, and punched Haaken on the snout as hard as he could. Unfortunately, Solus hadn't been built for strength, and all he managed to accomplish with his blow was to clear Haaken's mind. The wereshark glared at Solus and lashed out with a vicious backhand strike, and suddenly the psiforged was the one who found himself flying off the dock and plunging into the bay.

  Ghaji saw Haaken knock Solus into the water. The half-orc didn't know if the psiforged could swim, but since the construct didn't need to breathe, Ghaji decided the point was moot. He took a quick look around and tried to decide on his next move.

  The weird greenish mist now covered the entire bay, and tendrils were just starting to curl up over the edges of the dock. Ghaji didn't know what the stuff was, but he knew it wasn't good. Tresslar still held the dragonwand, but something had happened to it. The Amahau and the wand it was attached to had both turned pure black. Ghaji was no artificer, but he doubted the wand was going to be of much use in the immediate future. Strangest of all, Nathifa had transformed into a mass of shadow tentacles approximately ten feet tall. Nathifa-or whatever she was now-had folded over on herself, as if she were a giant fist squeezing something tight within her grip. Ghaji had no idea what it could be, until
he remembered seeing a small dark object streak into Nathifa's shadowy form right after he had cut the dragonwand free. Ghaji glanced in Diran's direction and saw his friend rising to his feet, silver arrowhead held in his right hand. There was no sign of Makala.

  That's when Ghaji realized what Nathifa was squeezing within her shadowy grasp.

  Diran dashed to the half-orc's side. "Makala's inside Nathifa! We have to do something before the lich destroys her!"

  Ghaji wasn't sure what Diran was talking about, but it never occurred to him to question his friend.

  "Let's do it," the half-orc said.

  Together the two friends started toward the tentacled beast, Ghaji gripping his flaming axe tight, Diran raising his silver arrowhead, preparing to wield the holy object against the evil sorceress.

  That's when Haaken grabbed them both by the neck and slammed their heads together.

  Bright light flashed behind Ghaji's eyes, the world spun, and his vision went gray. When his eyes cleared, he found himself looking up at Haaken, and he realized that he was lying on his back. The wereshark must have dropped him and Diran to the dock after knocking them together. Ghaji tried to rise, but his head felt as if it had been shattered into a million pieces, and he was too dizzy to move. He turned to look at Diran, and though his friend was consciousness, he looked to be in just as bad a shape as Ghaji. Blood ran from both Diran's ears and nostrils. Not a good sign. Ghaji turned the other direction and saw his elemental axe lying on the dock several feet out of reach. Once out of his hand, its flames had extinguished. He supposed it didn't matter that he'd dropped the axe. He was too weak to lift it right now anyway.