by Unknown
I chilled in that hot Moonplum temple, feeling the ghost touch of the rain that pelted my skin so long ago as I waited for the return of the Pathfinder ship. I heard again the vow I mouthed when finally they appeared. No longer would I follow the tradition of my family and my ancestors, seeking truth in the pages of books. I would be like our patrons, the men and women of the Pathfinder Society, who went out into a brutal world, seizing knowledge with
sword and spell. And along the way, when I found those who followed the creed of
pillage and destruction, I would visit their cruelty upon them tenfold.
“Hooves of Asmodeus!”
Aspodell’s exclamation pulled me from memory. His face had lost its usual sardonic aspect.
“Not quite,” I said. “This was certainly homage to an evil deity. But not the God-Fiend. It was a priest of Rovagug that did this. Note the patches of exposed bone.”
“I’d prefer not to.”
“No?”
“A man of my proclivities respects certain boundaries. Butchery of this ilk goes far beyond them. I would not like to do this to anyone. Except you, of course, when the magic of that damnable sword lapses and I’m free to avenge my
enslavement. But that goes without saying.”
I treated the provocation as unworthy of reply. Pushing away revulsion, I peered closely at one of the hanging bodies. There I saw a sigil I despised, a yawning mouth from which the legs of a spider sprouted. “Whoever did this carved the sigil of Rovagug into the surface of their bones. While they lived.”
“Ghastly.” Aspodell swallowed. “And the fellow who did this—you’re sure we wish to encounter them?”
“That I am.”
To my shock, a splutter vented from one of the supposed corpses. Blood spurted from his nose and into his mouth. He moaned, barely conscious.
“Get the priests,” I told Aspodell. He slipped from the temple; I remained with the survivor. He was young and had been well muscled before the f layers started in on him. Blood obscured his features, and the extent of his injuries.
Unintelligible words spilled from the wretch’s faltering lips.
“Do not try to speak. Let us heal you first.”
“Ww-wwon’t l—lll…”
I searched my mind for soothing words but found none.
“Won’t live…” he managed.
“Hush, boy.” Had there been a part of him that was safe to touch, I would have laid a calming glove on it.
“Twill,” he said.
“Twill?”
“Www—wanted to know…”
“He was looking for a man named Twill?”
He assayed a slight nod of the head.
“Had Twill been here?”
His next gesture I took also for a nod, though it could have been a twitch.
“But he was not here when the pirates came.”
He seemed to shake his head, then stopped moving altogether. I took him for dead, but when Jeffret and Cold Bendani arrived, they set to work reviving him.
“Better without the chains, Captain,” said Jeffret, a wan man with hair the color of a pantry moth.
“I’ll see to that, ma’am,” said Seagrave, who had returned with the healers and Aspodell. “No luck so far finding the fire-thrower,” he said incidentally as he sized up the arrangement of columns, joists, and rafters. Withdrawing a pair of spikes from his belt, he hugged a wooden pillar and began to shift his bulk improbably up its length. I had seen him perform acts of unlikely balance many a time before, never ceasing to marvel at his agility. He reached the rafter and swung himself up on it with graceless ease. The rafter trembled, setting the suspended bodies to juddering. He clambered on hands and knees till he reached the chains that held the perhaps-living victim. With his left hand he found a new equilibrium. With his right, he pulled loose his cutlass. “Ready down there?”
“Aye,” replied Jeffret. He and Cold Bendani positioned themselves to catch the poor fellow.
Seagrave brought his cutlass down on the chain. Sparks flew. The magical blade howled like a mistral wind, and the chain fell in two pieces. The sea-priests took the wretch’s weight. On contact, he convulsed, without regaining
consciousness. They carried him out of the temple on a sling of scavenged canvas, and the rest of us followed as Seagrave shinnied back down the column.
“Another dead end, then?” asked Aspodell.
“Quite the contrary,” I said. “Before we lost him, he said the one word that explains all: Twill.”
Aspodell knocked drying muck from his boots. “The significance of which you will now go on to explain.”
“Twill can only be the famed lockbreaker Twill Ninefingers. No other Twill could be worthy of Kered Firsk’s attention. He’s the best lock man within a thousand miles.”
“I believe I heard him spoken of as such, back in Drenchport,” interjected Seagrave. “Never met him.”
“And what does it tell you,” asked Aspodell, “that he seeks this locksmith?”
“When Kered Firsk returned to the Shackles, a rumor came with him. Right, Seagrave?”
“Word has it,” gruffed the fat pirate, “that he dug himself up a legendary treasure, out on some far atoll.”
“If he seeks Twill Ninefingers, I know what it is. The Treasure of Far Thallai.”
Aspodell’s pose of studied disinterest melted away. “Thallai?”
Seagrave’s features widened. “Thallai,” he whispered, as if it were a name that did not bear too loud an airing. “Many have sought it.”
“So much so that doubt pertains to its existence,” said Aspodell.
“The sea coughs up many a wonder,” said Seagrave.
“A golden cask with an impregnable lock?”
I nodded. “Impregnable to ordinary folk, but to one as skilled as Twill…”
“Which, if opened,” continued Seagrave, “becomes a gateway to an unearthly paradise. Where untold wealth lies scattered about, gold and gems as common as sand, ready for any man brave enough to scoop it up.”
“And there is nothing a worshiper of Rovagug, who is mindless destruction personified, would like more than to find and completely despoil an untouched paradise,” said Aspodell.
“Absolutely so,” I answered.
Aspodell lit up with uncharacteristic rapture. “If legend is to be believed, Far Thallai is much more than a beach scattered with gold and gems.”
“You say that like it’s nothing,” said Seagrave.
“Thallai is a place of innocence and beauty,” said Aspodell. “Inhabited by beings of stunning physical perfection, to whom distrust is foreign and wariness
perverse.” He drifted into a pensive pause, then started. “We cannot allow Firsk the Flayer to open that cask.”
“Naturally not! We must be the ones!” A fresh f lood of sweat boiled from Seagrave’s sooty face. It ran in rivulets, soaking into his noisome greatcoat.
I moved upwind of him. “I’m not sure I’d trust you, Aspodell, with lissome beings incapable of suspicion.”
The ex-nobleman scowled. “I was not always corrupt, you understand. In a place like Thallai a man could remake himself.” His voice grew faint. “Perhaps that’s what Kered Firsk seeks as well.”
“You would reform, in Far Thallai?”
“After my last bad act—which, my dear, would be gutting you.”
In the hilt of my sword, his geas gem glowed. I reached for it, prepared to exert its discipline on him, but he stilled himself. “At any rate, you can now explain what Kered Firsk seeks, but we are no closer to finding him.”
“Not so.”
“No?”
“The way to get Firsk the Flayer is through the man he seeks. Instead of chasing the Monster Captain, we find Twill Ninefingers.”
Chapter 2
Butcher’s Rock
A report of cracking wood echoed through the devastated town. The burned husk of a warehouse collapsed in on itself. Black dust mushroomed from it, joining the
shelf of smoke overhead.
Otondo and Rira hove into view through the resulting cloud, skirting the bodies of murdered townsfolk. They dragged with them the elf who had tried to kill me less than an hour before. Rira carried his spell-spitter, tucked into a belt. For a moment, I asked myself if it was wise to leave it in her hands. But then, she could cast spells at least as potent as the device could store, with only gesture and speech. I would rely, as always, on the strength of the geas
that my sword held over her.
Instead I trained my attention on the captive: “What is your name?”
“I’ll not say,” the ragged elf hissed. His lip was split, the left side of his face scraped raw.
“Do you not know who my first mates are?” I asked.
“What do I care?”
“You are either not very bright, sir, or new to these pirate isles.”
“The last is true, and I have heard the other.” He stuck out a defiant, pointed jaw. On closer examination I identified him as merely half elven. “What of it?”
“But even as a fool, and a new fish, it did not give you pause to be chased by an ogre and a woman in a mask. It did not occur to you that it might be Otondo and Rira on your heels?”
His impudence dropped away. “Otondo? Rira?”
“And this is Seagrave. And Adalbert Aspodell.”
“Aspodell the Lash?”
“Now that you know their names, perhaps you’d share yours, my friend.”
“They call me Landson,” he gulped.
“Kered Firsk left you behind, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“To see if anyone was after him.”
“He said a lousy busybody of a Pathfinder was asking questions about him back in Hell Harbor. If she poked her nose here, I was to burn it off.”
“And then make your way back to him?”
“We made no specific arrangement.”
A gobbet of drool fell from Otondo’s lip, striking Landson’s shoulder and soaking into the silk fabric of his shirt. “Shall I soften ’im up some, Cap’n?”
“I’m not lying!” Landson said. “I don’t know where the Slicer will dock next. That’s what you’re asking…”
“Keep talking,” Aspodell said.
The man complied. “After serving on that hellish ship, I was happy to part ways with him. Me and Firsk didn’t get along. This way I could leave and it wouldn’t be desertion.”
“And without him f laying you,” Aspodell said.
“That as well.”
“So you thought you’d sign on with Josiah Common and the Whelk?” I asked.
“Until some other, better chance came my way.”
Seagrave roamed the lens of his spyglass along the coastline. “The Whelk has sailed,” he said.
“Let me sail with you then, Pathfinder,” said Landson. “I finally have my sea legs under me, and continue to master sails and rigging. Give me any magical device, and I can work it for you. Your ship is rigged with arcane f lamers, I’m sure. Well, when I aim them for you, their blasts will fall upon your enemies straight and true.”
“You would serve me with the same loyalty you showed to Kered Firsk?”
“Whoever you order me to kill, I will kill. Whoever you ask me to cut, I will cut. I am slaughter itself, remorseless and without quaver.”
“I like him,” said Aspodell.
“And,” I asked, “you killed and cut and slaughtered as Firsk required?”
“All that and more besides. Yet he did not pay me fair due.”
“What else can you tell about him?”
“His men—creatures more like—they’re crazed and feral things, who treat the act of killing as treasure unto itself. They’re no company for an honest privateer.”
I queried him further, yielding nothing worth recording in this journal. Finally I turned from him.
“So am I in?” he called.
Cold Bendani, one of our healers, appeared at my side. “He has awakened,” he said.
The young man, whom Firsk had suspended from the temple rafters and then partially f layed, sprawled on the building’s steps. By cleaning his wounds, our healers had revealed their grotesque extent.
I knelt next to him. “What is your name, friend?”
“Aglund.”
“Twill Ninefingers. You said the man who did this to you came here looking for him. He didn’t find Twill. But he had been here at one point, you said.”
Aglund made his best attempt at a nod.
“When he left, did he say where he was going?”
He gathered in air, then spoke in a burst of exhalation.
“Butcher’s Rock.”
“Why there?”
“Someone would shelter him,” Aglund coughed.
“Who?”
“He kept saying the name…” Aglund’s eyes drifted shut.
“The name, Aglund.”
“Megeus. The name was Megeus.”
“Did you give this name to Kered Firsk?”
“I would not tell him.” Aglund went still. At first I thought him dead, but then I saw his chest rise and fall.
Cold Bendani took me aside. “He won’t last long. And there’s dozens of other wounded survivors. We can’t heal them all, or look after them. Also we must decide what to do with the corpses. Many dozens dead.”
I issued the necessary orders. We would bury the dead at sea, in accordance with the rites of Gozreh. The living we could take as far as Port Peril. They’d likely not prosper there, but it was what was within our power.
Otondo still held a squirming Landson. “What do we do with this one?”
“He willingly served Kered Firsk,” I said.
“And so…?” the ogre asked.
“Kill him and take his stuff.”
Butcher’s Rock took its name from the great f lat slab of gray sedimentary stone that lay atop the rest of the isle. Through the spyglass it indeed resembled a behemoth’s cutting block. At a thirty degree angle, this rectangular
shape leaned over a vast mound of stone that might have been limestone or ancient coral. This block extended from the waterline to reach a terminal point perhaps a thousand feet above it. Below the waters it continued. From its top edge to about its midway point, a fissure split the stone. One could imagine it as the scar left behind by the strike of a cleaver, as might have been wielded by some titanic god.
The rest of the isle, large portions of which the block permanently shaded like an overhanging awning, arranged itself in layers. A ring of jagged rocks composed the shore. Beyond this lay a rising slope of gravel, a patrolling ground for red-shelled crabs the size of ponies. This led to a cliff side perforated by dozens of cave mouths. Above the cliff sat a network of crags and rock shelves. Some were vegetated by nothing but moss, while others held enough
soil to grow twisted trees and sharp-leaved bushes. Gray, billowing shapes f lapped behind them. After a moment of study I identified them as oilskin tents.
An absence marked the isle: Though its shelves and crannies seemed perfect rookeries for nesting seabirds, Butcher’s Block stood bare. Someone hungry lived here.
After ordering the rest of my crew to keep watch for the approach of Kered Firsk’s ship, I put ashore in a single boat, along with my adjutants.
Aspodell wrinkled his nose. “This Twill must be a peculiar fellow, to think this forlorn place a shelter.”
“Would you want to seek someone in those caves?” I asked. “Or, for that matter, up on one of those shelves where the tents are?”
“Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing?”
“Each of us, then, must concede the other’s point.”
As we approached the shore, eddies seized the boat, threatening to dash it against the rocks. Seagrave and Otondo worked the oars, pushing furiously against them. We found a break in the stony shoreline, where gravel spilled down to the water’s edge. After we scrambled from the boat, Otondo picked it up and moved it up the slope single-handed.
>
Blocks of worked stone, a foot long on each side and nearly three inches thick, dotted this pebbled beach. Ducking down to examine them, I saw that they were covered with carved figures. The crude images spoke through the ages with a terrible clarity. Each stone depicted a scene of violence. Large figures, their frames distorted and not entirely humanlike, attacked, mutilated, or sacrificed humans half their size. Several standard images dominated. In one, the giants stood before an altar, holding aloft a severed human head. In another, a big-bellied man roasted on a spit, as giants danced nearby. The giants displayed a common aspect: in the middle of each massive forehead, a single eye bulged.
“Cyclopes,” Seagrave groaned.
“It doesn’t mean there are cyclopes here,” I said.
“Nor does it mean there aren’t, ma’am.”
The stones survived as remnants of a cannibal empire, Ghol-Gan, which ruled the region uncountable millennia ago. Traces of this primeval civilization could be found throughout the islands of the Shackles, and beyond, especially to the south. Found among them would be the degenerate descendants of their cyclops rulers, who sometimes gathered around themselves the relics of their
forgotten past.
I’d known a few of them in my day, but they were the acculturated ones, who drifted to cities and learned their ways. There was a bouncer, Eriboe, at the Faded Seahorse in Hell Harbor, who told dirty jokes and was pleasant enough—until she had to cave a skull in. Eriboe would never speak of her early life on an island of her kinfolk. I wondered if it was Butcher’s Rock. I tried to imagine her lurking in a cave mouth up ahead, and couldn’t quite bring the image into focus.
Reality mimicked imagining: Movement blurred in the closest cavern, about a hundred yards off. Before I could command otherwise, the others had their weapons out.
“We’re not here to fight,” I said.
“Never assume a warm welcome, Challys Argent,” replied Rira.
I took point, clambering up the slope, cutlass still stowed in my scabbard. I called out to the figure in the cave. “We mean you no harm.”
A round object arced from the darkness. As it came at me, tumbling end over end, I could see that it was a rusted cook pot. It fell a yard short and half a yard wide.