Corsair (46 page)

creatures stood before the gatehouse, weaving their forelimbs in strange passes as their small black eyes, fixed on him, glittered with malice. They’re spellcasters of some sort, he realized. Yet the knowledge that they had somehow conjured the torpor that held him motionless while their monstrous servants rushed to their aid still was not enough to break their grip on him.

“Geran, what’s wrong?” Selsha called. She slipped a few feet down, dislodging more rubble, but she caught herself and looked at her mother. “Mama! There’s something wrong with Geran!”

Hamil did not hesitate. He darted past Geran, daggers in hand, and struck with serpentlike swiftness against the nearest of the spider-monsters. The creature shrieked in anger and fear and scuttled back from the halfiing’s attack. Geran! he shouted mind-to-mind. They’re using magic against you. Fight back!

The swordmage tried to muster his willpower against the insidious assault, to summon up anger or denial, any emotion that might give him the beginnings of resistance. He struggled, searching for something as the spider-things circled closer and their umber hulks rushed into the old plaza. He wondered if they’d have the hulks tear him to pieces, kill him with their own sharp teeth, or simply disarm him and leave him helpless where he stood, unable to move or act to protect himself against the first jungle monster that came along.

“Take them alive!” one of the small creatures hissed. “They may be valuable slaves!”

A bowstring sang behind Geran. He felt the arrow speed past him, its passage a faint breath of wind on his cheek, before it sank deep into the body of one of the three spider-creatures holding him with their enchantment. The creature leaped into the air with an agonized hiss and fell on its back with its legs kicking … and the malaise holding him in its grip vanished, as if it had never existed.

With a sudden shout Geran lunged at the nearest of the spider-monsters drawing close and half-severed its neck with his thrust. “Don’t look the hulks in the eyes!” Geran cried. That much he remembered about the creatures; umber hulks could drive a human mad with their magical gaze. The rest of the spider-monsters retreated at once, spitting and snarling in anger. An umber hulk reached for the swordmage with one enormous claw, its sharp mandibles clacking together, but now Geran

was free to move. He turned his back on the monster, refusing to look at its face, and rushed over to the spot where Selsha clung to the wreckage of the gatehouses upper walls.

“Jump, Selsha!” he cried. “I’ve got you!”

Selsha took one glance at the monsters surging close and leaped down into Geran’s arms. He staggered under her—it was a good drop, and he only had one hand free—but he caught her and lowered the girl to the ground. Hamil chased off another of the spider-monsters, but then he gave ground himself as he saw Geran falling back from the terrible umber hulks. Mirya loosed one more arrow that bounced from the thick chitin protecting an umber hulk’s torso; the creature bellowed and turned toward her.

As matters stood, discretion was clearly the better part of valor. “Through the gate, quickly!” Geran shouted. “We’ll outtun them!”

Mirya drew another arrow and took aim, but Hamil seized her by the arm. “No more of that!” the halfling said. He pushed her ahead on the path. “Run!”

Geran took Selsha by the arm and led her out of the gate and down the road outside the old city walls. The hulks’ mandibles clacked eagerly as they lunged after their quarry. It was a very near thing for the first thirty yards or so, but then Hamil, Mirya, Geran, and Selsha began to pull away; the umber hulks had the size and power to flatten most of the undergrowth in their way or tear their way through hanging vines and creepers, but each time they did so, they lost a step or two on their smaller quarry. Geran was momentarily tempted to try to lead their pursuers off into the forest, but he discarded the idea at once. The last thing he wanted to do was split up now that they’d finally found everyone, and there was always the chance that the umber hulks and their small masters wouldn’t fall for the ruse. He plunged into the new trail behind Mirya and concentrated on speed. If they could outdistance the umber hulks, he doubted that the smaller creatures would be very eager to follow too closely.

After a couple of hundred yards, they struck an intersecting path. “Turn right!” Geran called to Hamil; if his reckoning was true, that should lead them back to the lakeshore and the Black Moon keep. They hurried in the new direction for a long time, until the path began to climb slowly upward again, ascending another hill. There they paused. Their pursuers were nowhere in sight, at least for the moment.

Hamil looked at Geran with a wry smile. “I suppose the little ones

don’t fancy the idea of catching up to us without the big monsters to lend a hand,” he said.

“Mama!” Selsha threw herself into her mother’s arms. Mirya met her halfway, dropping to her knees to wrap her arms around her daughter and weeping with her face buried in Selsha’s hair. “I was so scared! The monsters chased me!”

“I know, my darling, I know,” Mirya said softly. “But you’re with me now, and I’ll keep you safe from them.”

The two Erstenwolds stayed that way for a long moment. Geran could hear the distant thrashing of the umber hulks in the forest behind them, but he smiled to see Mirya and her daughter together nonetheless. To the darkest Hell with Aesperus and his words of warning, he decided. He knew it couldn’t have been the wrong choice to rescue Mirya and Selsha from this terrible place. He’d gladly bear the cost of his decision later, whatever it proved to be.

Hamil glanced at the Erstenwolds, and he smiled too. But he looked back to Geran with a troubled expression. We should get moving, Geran, he said silently. We don’t know if there are more ereatures around like the eye-monsters. The sooner we’re all out of this accursedforest, the happier I’ll be.

Agreed, Geran answered. Andwe needto get back to the keep. The fighting seemed well in hand when we left, but I’d like to be sure of it. He moved over to the Erstenwolds and cleared his throat. “We probably shouldn’t linger here,” he told them. “We can celebrate your rescue aboard Seadrake when we’re on our way back home.”

Selsha looked up at him and beamed. She let go of Mirya and threw herself into Geran’s arms, hugging him tightly. “Thank you for coming to save us, Geran,” she said. “Mama said you would, and you did! But I want to go home now.”

He looked over to Mirya. Her face colored a little, but she gave him a warm smile. He kneeled down to return Selsha’s hug and patted her back. “I’m glad I was able to help,” he told her. “But I’m ready to go home too. We’d better get started.”

They hurried along the path at the best speed Selsha could manage. The twists and turns soon left Geran with no very good sense of which way the path was taking them, but he thought the trail was meandering back toward the keep. Whenever he paused, he could hear the thrashing of the umber hulks as they battered their way through the moonlets forest

along the trail behind them—but Geran and his companions were steadily gaining ground now. As long as they could keep moving, they’d be able to stay ahead of the monsters. The only question was whether this trail they were now on would eventually lead them back to the keep.

The path started to climb steeply, and Geran realized it was leading them to the hill top. Old black stone steps began to appear underfoot, marking out another ancient roadway—this one a staircase ascending the hill.

Hamil paused at the foot of the steps. “Keep going, or turn off the path and strike out for the keep?” he asked. “I don’t think this trail leads where we’d like to go.”

“I’ve no liking for the looks of the forest,” Mirya said. “I don’t want to leave the path until we’re certain that we have to.”

“Well, it would be inadvisable to go back.” Geran nodded in the direction they’d come. He could still hear the umber hulks behind them. “I think we should keep going for now. Maybe we’ll find another way down from the next hilltop.”

Maybe we’ll find more monster-haunted ruins, Hamil observed sourly. But he pressed on, leading the way as they scrambled up the old stone stairs and emerged in another clearing at the hilltop. This one was occupied with a large, round building whose dome had long since fallen in. To Geran’s eyes ir had the look of an observatory, the sort of place where priests and sages might study the stars and cast horoscopes. He started to look for another way down from the hilltop, as did Hamil and Mirya.

“Geran?” Hamil called. He’d scrambled to a better vantage on the terrace surrounding the old observatory. “You’d better come here.”

The swordmage jumped up to where Hamil stood, and followed his gaze. He saw that they were closer to the keep than they’d been before; it wasn’t much more than a mile away. A great plume of smoke billowed up from the docks, where Kraken Queen was engulfed in leaping flames, but Seadrake was missing. “What in the world is going on down there?” he asked aloud. “They haven’t left us, have they?”

“Well, if they did, they didn’t get far,” Hamil replied. He pointed in the other direction. On the lower shoulder of the hill they stood on, perhaps five hundred yards away, Seadrake lay tangled in the treetops. Her deck was canted to one side, and a handful of men worked busily to free her from the branches. When Geran listened closely, he could hear the distant sound of axe blows and the ruffling of the wind in the ship’s sail.

“Can you make out who’s on deck?”

Hamil shook his head. “Not from this distance. My eyes are good, but not that good.”

“If Kraken Queen caught fire, Galehand might have cast off shorthanded to avoid burning too. He would’ve taken the ship aloft to open the distance.”

“Or Black Moon corsairs took the ship and wrecked her.” Hamil shook his head. “There’s no way to know from here.”

“The monsters from the keep aren’t far behind us,” Mirya said in a low voice. “We can’t stay here much longer.”

Geran looked at the caravel, caught in the treetop like an oversized kite. Either she was in friendly hands, in which case they’d have allies there and might be able to lend a hand with extricating Seadrake from her situation … or she was in unfriendly hands, in which case their only escape from Neshuldaar was about to sail off into the Sea of Night, leaving them here with no way home. They had to get down to the ship, and the sooner the better.

“We’ll make for Seadrake, “he said. Marking the ship’s position carefully in his mind’s eye, he chose a path that looked like it might lead them in the ship’s direction and set off once more into the moon’s sinister forest.

Marpenoth, The Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

Geran followed the sound of the axe strokes as he slipped and scrambled V_Iover the jungle floor. The path down from the ancient observatory had brought them several hundred yards closer to where he guessed Seadrake was snagged, but it soon became clear that they would have to leave the trail to reach the ship. He chose a place where a small streambed crossed the trail, and he scrambled up the rocky creek, splashing through the cold, clear water. Overhead he could glimpse white canvas through the crimson leaves and make out the voices of sailors shouting and cursing as they hurried to free the vessel from the treetops. Great branches creaked and groaned as the ship’s weight shifted. He climbed up the streambank and found himself standing at the base of a mighty tree whose trunk was easily twenty feet thick. Several other giants stood nearby; Seadrake was caught in their upper branches. He could see the damp curve of the ship’s hull suspended overhead.

“Now that’s something you don’t see everyday,” Hamil said in a low voice. “It takes some seamanship to run your ship aground sixty feet up a tree.”

“They’re freeing her fast enough,” Geran observed. It was hard to tell from the ground exactly what else was holding the ship in place, but based on the number of axe-cut branches and limbs lying near the base of the tree, the crew had already made good progress on their work. He could hear cries of “Hurry, hurry!” and “This one now—all together!” echoing down from above. Then he heard a voice he knew. Somewhere out of sight on the decks above, Sergen Hulmaster called out, “Quickly, now! The harmach’s soldiers could be on us at any moment!”

Hamil glanced at Geran. “I think that was your cousin Sergen.”

“It was,” Geran answered. He stared up at the ship and scowled in anger. He should have known that his venomous serpent of a stepcousin would have found a way to slip away from the destruction of the Black Moon Brotherhood. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let him leave us all stranded here!”

“How many men does he have with him?” Mirya asked.

Geran shrugged. They’d certainly be outnumbered, but with a little luck they’d have the advantage of surprise; the corsairs were busy with their work of cutting Seadrake out of the treetops and likely didn’t expect him and Hamil to be anywhere nearby. He turned his attention to the tree trunk and decided that it was not a difficult climb. The tree forked into thick limbs fairly close to the ground, and thick vines clung to its surface. He could pick out a path that would get them to the windows of the stern cabin or the rail of the quarterdeck with a little effort.

“You’re going up there, aren’t you?” Hamil said.

“We can’t let them have the ship,” Geran replied. “Mirya, it might be best if you and Selsha waited here.”

“I’ll thank you for your concern, but I’ve seen all of this forest I care to,” Mirya said. She held up her bow. “And I may be able to help you.”

“Out of the question. You could be hurt or killed. Sergen and his corsairs won’t be in any mood to take captives if we fail.”

“Better that than the monsters roaming this black forest.”

Geran started to argue the point, but then he thought of the umber hulks and spider-creatures following behind them. The creatures might miss the place where they turned off the trail … or they might not. He wouldn’t want them to come upon Mirya and Selsha here on the forest floor while he and Hamil were on the decks of the ship above. “All right,” he said. “You can come up with us. But you’ll find a safe place to keep out of the way until I call for you.”