Corsair (36 page)

He spent an agonizing hour groping his way through the streets, slowly working his way back toward the harbor. He blundered into blind alleys, climbed painfully over the rubble of ruined buildings, and backtracked

dozens of times to try to stay as close as he could to his guess at the straight-line path back toward the harbor. Every fifty steps or so he paused to repeat the charm, hoping for some faint glimmer in the darkness. Several times he heard things moving in the ruins around him—the grating sound of rubble shifting, distant croaking cries that echoed from the stones, and one time the sudden flurry of heavy wingbeats somewhere overhead. For that one, Geran froze where he stood, not daring to move or make a sound until he was certain the creature was gone. But even after the wingbeats faded, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was lingering nearby, something that had his spoor and was patiently stalking him through the rain and the gloom. Icy tendrils of dread began to creep down his spine, and he hurried along as quickly as he could.

He turned a corner into a small, cluttered alleyway—likely a workshop district in Sulasspryn’s better days—and pressed himself into a doorway, straining eyes and ears to detect any motion in the night around him. Something was abroad in the darkness, of that he was sure, and he did not care to meet it. He waited for a short time, watching back the way he’d come, but he could see nothing but the faint glimmer of puddles in the street and the dim, jagged shadows that marked the rooftops of the ruined city. He murmured the words of his detection charm again, stretching out his senses for the peculiar psychic impressions of magic nearby… and this time he felt a distinct answer, a faint vibration like a harpstring plucked in a nearby room. He turned and stared, trying to discern exactly which direction he’d felt the enchantment from, and decided that it was down the alleyway and a little to one side, perhaps in one of the old houses along the lane or just behind them.

He turned to leave, and in the corner of his eye he glimpsed a dark shape slipping across the street behind him. The air grew colder, and Geran jerked his head back, afraid he might have been seen. Best to move on while it’s not in sight, he told himself. Quickly he hurried down the alleyway, moving toward the place where he’d felt the glimmer of enchantment. It still hovered at the edge of his awareness, and he fumbled toward it as he slipped and stumbled through the rubble. A doorway loomed up to his left; he cautiously stepped through, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other cupped around his light-pebble.

The roof of this small home had fallen in long ago and was now an overgrown mound of rubble in the center of the floor. Rain spattered down

from the open sky—and there, half hidden in the underbrush by one wall, the leather satchel gleamed wetly. Geran crossed the room and picked it up. It felt full, but to be certain he undid the latch and reached in. The fall might have damaged the orb, after all … but smooth, unbroken crystal met his fingers. He pulled out the starry compass and quickly examined it. In the darkness the tiny pinpricks of white light embedded in its substance seemed to glow faintly. He sighed in relief and put the magical device back into the satchel.

With the compass in hand, now he was free to find his way out of the city by the most direct route available. He hurried back to the alleyway outside and turned left, hoping that the next big street might lead him toward the bluffs overlooking the harbor. If he remembered rightly, there were old stairways zigzagging down from the street-ends to the strand below.

Something was waiting for him in the street.

He froze in midstep as he emerged from the alleyway, aware of a presence—several presences—gathered in the shadows outside. Again, cold dread welled up in his heart, stealing his voice. He heard the creature this time, a thick wet gurgling sound that wheezed in the darkness. And then that sound shaped itself into words and spoke. “Geran Hulmaster,” it bubbled. “Geran Hulmaster.”

Geran recoiled several steps, until he sensed another one close behind him. He swept out his sword and turned in a circle, trying to menace all the things around him with its deadly point. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was look upon the creatures closing in on him … but he needed some light to fight by. He opened his hand and held high the stone with the light spell. Blue-white radiance flared brightly in the shadowed street, revealing the leaning cornices and cracked facades of the ruins around him.

The dwarf Murkelmor crouched before him. At first Geran thought he was wearing some kind of strange, tattered cape, but then he realized that the flesh of Murkelmor’s chest and shoulders had been ripped to ribbons. Murkelmor raised his eyes to meet his horrified gaze, and Geran saw that half his face had been clawed off as well. His eyes were a dead, pupil-less white, and his teeth had grown long and sharp. Black gore crowned him like careless splatters of paint. More of Moonshark s crew stood in the street behind Murkelmor or stared at Geran through crumbling doorways. They were all dead, with torn, pallid flesh and lifeless eyes.

“Get away from me!” Geran cried. He’d faced ghouls and other such undead before, but never had he seen one he’d known as a living man. It was a peculiarly horrifying experience. Murkelmor bared his fangs and shambled forward a few steps; others of the crew closed in from behind Geran, reaching out with hands whose blood-caked nails had grown into filthy claws.

“Geran Hulmaster, you slew us,” Murkelmor rasped. “You betrayed us, you drove us here, and here we died. A heavy debt you owe us.”

Geran shivered at the idea of what he might owe to Moonshark’s crew. Still, he tried to answer. “You meant to pillage Hulburg, murder its defenders, enslave its women and children,” he said to the gruesome thing that had been Murkelmor. “It was my duty to fight you. I didn’t mean for you to come to Sulasspryn, Murkelmor, and I’m sorry that Moonshark came to a bad end here. But it was not my fault that you chose the course you did.”

Behind him, a tall shape stumbled out of the shadows. Geran swung his sword point to menace the new threat and found himself facing Skamang. The big Northman had been eviscerated, and his ruined face was a mask of gore. Skamang bared his fangs and hissed at him. “Look what you’ve done to us! You must die to set matters right. A heavy debt you owe, Geran Hulmaster!”

The crewmen behind him edged closer. Geran tried to keep them at sword point, hoping to keep the dead pirates from attacking. He was in no condition to fight, and he doubted very much whether he could outrun them. Besides, something did not make sense to him. Murkelmor and Skamang had known him as Aram, a rootless brigand. As far as Geran knew, there was no way either of them—or their undead corpses—should know his true identity. Perhaps the dead saw through such things more easily than the living, or perhaps there was more to this meeting in the shadows of Sulasspryn.

“How do you know my name?” he demanded.

The dwarf snarled in anger and gnashed his long, pointed teeth. For a moment he rocked back and forth, moaning, as if he did not want to answer. But then he let out a thick, bubbling breath from his ruined chest and said, “We’ve been given a message for you.”

“A message? What message? From whom?”

“King Aesperus sends his greetings, Geran Hulmaster,” Skamang said, speaking from behind him. “He bade us tell you that the fates of Hulburg

and the family Hulmaster now hang upon your choice. Follow your intended course, and the harmach’s enemies will triumph over Hulburg. Return home, and you can prevent the harmach’s defeat for now—but Grigor will be the last of the Hulmasters to rule, and his enemies will lay the city in ruins before he dies.”

Geran shivered. He’d met Aesperus once, on the slopes of a barrow in the Highfells a few miles outside of Hulburg. The mighty lich-king was master of the undcad in these lands, and he’d known Geran for a Hulmaster. He didn’t know why the King in Copper had decided to speak to him through the dead of Moonshark … and he didn’t like the message, either. “Which enemies?” he asked Skamang. “What danger in Hulburg can I avert?”

“An adversary you’ve forgotten threatens the harmach’s seat,” Murkelmor said. “But if you defend Hulburg, the Black Moon escapes. The two you seck’ll be lost t’ you forever, and in time the Black Moon’ll work your ruin. If you pursue the High Captain, you may save the two you seek, but Hulburg is doomed t’ fall under the power of your foe. Others dear t’you will suffer in their stead.”

Geran frowned, puzzling over the lich’s rede. How could defeating his enemies lead to Hulburg’s fall? And who was the forgotten enemy—the Vaasans who had aided the Blood Skulls in their war? Some other tribe of Thar? It would seem that defeating his enemies and protecting the city went hand in hand, yet Aesperus said otherwise. And even if Aesperus was being truthful, which choice was the lich trying to lure him into making? To give himself a moment to think, he looked at Murkelmor and asked, “Did Aesperus make you into what you are?”

“There be other powers beside King Aesperus in dead Sulasspryn,” the dwarf answered. “But none return from th’ grave within the bounds o’ his old kingdom without his knowledge.”

“Why does Aesperus want me to know this fate?”

Skamang laughed softly behind him, a horrible sound. “King Aesperus has no more words for you, Geran Hulmaster. And now that we’ve delivered his message, he no longer has any hold on us. We can do with you as we like.” He lurched forward, reaching out with his clawed hands.

“Reith arroch!”Geran shouted, summoning a sword spell. Instantly his elven blade flashed with a brilliant white light, throwing shadows back against the night. The ghouls that had been the crew of Moonshark shrank from the light, which seared their undead flesh. Geran took a half step

toward Skamang and slashed the dead Northman across the face before he could recover. Skamang shrieked and collapsed to the ground, blinded by the searing light.

Geran swung wildly, keeping the dead crewmen at bay. Then he used his teleport spell, choosing a spot on the other side of a large building’s crumbling wall. He appeared in a tangle of underbrush, slipped, and then climbed to his feet. Sheathing his sword and cupping his light closely, he scrambled through the ruins at the best speed he could manage, hoping that he’d given himself the head start he needed to escape from the vengeful crew. He could hear them scrabbling over the rubble and moaning in frustration behind him.

Geran pressed on, ducking through ruined doorways and climbing over decaying walls until he could no longer hear Moonshark’s undead crew behind him. He slowed down, moving more cautiously, and found a street leading downhill—toward the harbor, he guessed. He made his way down through an area of dense overgrowth, fighting his way through thorny thickets, and then emerged on the shore. He couldn’t see if Seadrake was still out in the harbor, but Moonshark’s battered hulk creaked in the gusts somewhere not too far away.

“I hope Hamil and the rest are out there somewhere,” he muttered. He shrugged the satchel off his shoulder, took out the starry compass and tucked it inside his shirt, and put the small stone with its light spell in the satchel. Then he went down to the water’s edge and held the satchel open, facing out toward the harbor. The satchel shielded the stone’s bright glow from anyone in the ruins above and behind him, but allowed the bright blue-white illumination to show toward anyone out at sea.

They might have had to pull off, he told himself. He’d seen a number of gargoyles flying out to attack the ship while the landing party battled the monsters on the shore. For that matter, it was possible that Seadrake’s crew had met the same end as Moonshark’s, torn to pieces to a man. But then, faintly, he saw a yellow light far out on the water shining back at him. It gave two short blinks.

Geran lowered himself to the rocky beach and hunkered under his sodden cloak. He kept a wary eye on the dark bluffs behind him, half expecting the beat of gargoyle wings or a sudden rush from the shadows by his former shipmates. Half an hour later, he heard the muffled clinking of oarlocks and the soft splash of oars in the water.

Geran, is that you? Hamil asked silently.

“I’m here, Hamil!” Geran called. He pushed himself to his feet and limped out to meet Seadrake’s boat. Ten Shieldsworn pulled the oars; Hamil stood in the bow with an arrow on his bowstring, and Sarth scanned the skies nervously from the stern.

The halfling vaulted over the bow and splashed ashore. “Where have you been? What happened? Are you hurt?”

“The curse on these ruins interfered with my divinations,” Sarth added. “In truth, we feared you were dead.”

“Am I hurt? Yes, but nothing fatal. As for the rest, I’ll tell you the tale on the way back to the ship.” Geran could not suppress a shiver. “I found the rest of Moonshark’s crew. They’re all dead … but they don’t rest yet. The King in Copper’s got them.”

“Aesperus?” Hamil frowned and shook his head. “I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone, not even Skamang. You’re lucky we didn’t leave you here with them; we intended to sail at first light.”

Geran glanced once more at the ruins of Sulasspryn and shuddered. “The sooner we’re away from this accursed spot, the better.” He and Hamil climbed into the longboat, and they shoved off the shore and rowed through the rain back out to the waiting ship.

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

When they returned to Seadrake, Geran learned that they’d lost nine men from the landing party and two more aboard Seadrake—a heavy toll, but not as bad as he’d feared in the first chaotic moments of the gargoyle attack. Many more were injured to a greater or lesser extent, but Brother Larken, the young friar who sailed as the ship’s prelate, proved to be an able healer. After the first skirmish with the gargoyles, Larken saved the lives of several severely injured men and repaired injuries that might have crippled others. He looked after Geran as soon as Hamil and his rescue party brought the swordmage back on board, speaking healing prayers over the worst of his injuries. Geran met the morning stiff and sore, but his left wrist was knitting, and he was able to stand up straight on the quarterdeck with only a few aches and pains to remind him of his hours among the ruins.