Under Fallen Stars (28 page)

Now there was no waiting, no need to hold back, and everything she cared about was at risk.

She pulled her power close to her. Most of her training and learning she’d done on her own centered around the care and upkeep of ships, not waging war against other mages. She loosed the bag of holding at her side. “Skeins,” she commanded, “guard.”

Immediately, the raggamoffyn spewed free of the bag of holding in a flurry of cloth pieces and took shape in the breeze that flowed across Breezerunner. The creature formed a serpentine shape, coiling restlessly around her.

She stood against the cabin under the forecastle. Normally Captain Tynnel lived there, but Vurgrom had seized it upon taking over the ship. Fear clawed at her stomach, turning it slightly sour but she mastered it and kept her wits. The battle raged across the deck, and swords reflected the wavering light from the fire charring into the wood.

She ran to the railing near the fire and lifted the top from the water barrel. It was half full, sloshing with the ship’s uneven movement. She glanced at her familiar. “Enter,” she ordered.

Obediently, the raggamoffyn sailed into the water bucket and thrashed in the water.

“Out,” she commanded.

Unable to float on the wind now, the waterlogged familiar crawled out of the bucket and plopped onto the deck at her feet.

Sabyna concentrated on the fire. The raggamoffyn’s intelligence was about that of a well-trained dog, so complicated instructions were impossible. “Attack,” she told it.

The raggamoffyn slithered across the deck toward the fire, wriggling through men’s feet. Reaching the oil-based fire, the creature unfolded its myriad pieces and sloshed across the flames. The water and the creature’s own mystical nature served to keep the raggamoffyn from harm. Gray smoke curled up from the fire as the flames were extinguished.

Sabyna heard Tynnel’s shouted commands to Malorrie. She glanced up and saw the young sailor in the stern, fighting the rudder, then she spotted the two pirates climbing the starboard steps to the stern castle. She knew he couldn’t handle them and steer the ship.

“Skeins!” she called, running for the ship’s mainmast. She knew she’d never get through the men fighting across the deck in time.

The raggamoffyn sped across the deck, leaving oily black residue in its wake. It reached her by the time she got to the mainmast. She extended an arm down and Skeins curled around it. The creature was already partially dried from exposure to the fire and the wind.

As the raggamoffyn spread its weight across her shoulders, Sabyna climbed the mainmast. Her feet slipped in the rigging twice as Breezerunner rocked from side to side, but she kept pulling herself up.

When the two pirates reached the top of the stern castle, the ship’s mage stopped halfway up the mast, hoping she had enough room to maneuver. Holding onto the mast with one hand, she slipped the leather whip from her side. She uncoiled it with a flick of her wrist. Drawing the whip back, she cracked it forward, aiming for the rear mast rigging.

The whip snaked across the distance and curled around a yardarm. Pulling it tight and saying a quick prayer, fully aware of the twenty-five foot drop that might land her on the ship’s deck or in the river with the way Breezerunner was swinging, she grabbed the whip handle in both hands and leaped. Her father, Siann Truesail, had never approved of her mode of travel in ship’s rigging, considering it not only risky but too showy as well. Her brothers were envious because none of them had ever quite mastered the skill.

She dropped almost three feet, then the give in the leather and the yardarm played out. She arced toward the stern, pulling her feet outward and forward to gain more momentum. At the apex of her swing, practiced in the maneuver, she popped the whip and relaxed the hold on the yardarm. The whip came loose immediately.

Sabyna somersaulted in the air, letting her momentum carry her, and gained an extra two feet that placed her securely on the stern castle. Still, she’d missed her chosen mark by a good eight feet or more.

The pirates closed on Malorrie, who still hadn’t given up his death grip on the rudder. Only the young sailor knew she was there.

“Attack,” she told her familiar.

Skeins uncoiled from her shoulder, breaking apart into a swirl of pieces that glided toward the pirate on the left. The creature was on the man before he knew it, wrapping around his upper body and stripping his self-control, reducing him to a zombie state.

The other pirate raised his arm to strike the young sailor, who ducked around the rudder for protection and set himself to attack. Sabyna cracked the whip, coiling it around the pirate’s sword wrist. Grabbing the whip in both hands, she pulled it taut, then yanked the pirate from his feet before he could react.

The pirate’s face darkened with anger as he pushed himself to his feet again and cursed her. He tried to shake the whip from his arm, but Sabyna yanked on it again, pulling him off-balance. Jherek took one step forward and kicked the man in the head, sprawling him unconscious to the deck.

“Sandbar!” someone shouted.

“Where away?” Jherek yelled, getting a fresh hold on the rudder.

There was no time for an answer. In the next instant, Breezerunner ran aground. Forced up and out of the river by the current, the wind, and the magic that pushed her, the cargo ship heeled over hard to port. Men tumbled from her deck, some into the water and some onto the long, quarter-moon shaped sandbar.

Sabyna tried to grab the railing but missed. She fell only inches, dangerously close to getting pulled under the stern section as it whipsawed around. She felt a hand wrap around her wrist, tightening and halting her fall.

“I’ve got you, lady.”

Looking up, Sabyna saw that Malorrie had grabbed hold of the railing with one hand and her with the other. She watched helplessly as Breezerunner shifted and jolted across the sandbar. The deck hammered Malorrie and her mercilessly, and she didn’t know how the young sailor managed to maintain his hold, but he did, even pulling her in close to him. She grabbed him around the waist, fisting the sash around his slim hips and helping him hold her weight from dangling. He still supported both of them from one arm. His pale gray eyes, gleaming like new silver, met her reddish brown ones.

“Lady, I’m sorry,” he said. “I did my best.”

“I know,” she told him. “No one could have done any more.”

He looked like he wanted to say something further but couldn’t.

With a shriek of tortured wood, Breezerunner came to a rest on her side on the sandbar. The river current slapped at the mired ship, and the sound echoed inside the empty cargo hold.

“Lady,” Malorrie said quietly, “I fear I can’t hold any longer.”

Her arms wrapped around his waist, her cheek pressed to his stomach, she felt the tremors vibrating through him. Yet, somehow she knew he wouldn’t release the hold until she told him she was ready. “It’s all right,” she told him. “Let go.”

“As you wish.” He released his hold and they dropped into the river.

XVII

The elf looked at the dwarf in obvious disdain, dismissing him in a glance. Upon closer inspection, Pacys realized the elf s skin color wasn’t ebony as a drow’s was, but a very dark blue with infrequent white patches.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” the elf asked. “The one who will come to be called the Taleweaver?”

Pacys listened to the accent the elf used, finding it like none other he’d ever encountered. As a bard, he’d trained his ear for dialects and accents. They were part of the most colorful tools a bard had, able to carry emotion and character in a monologue. It was softer and more sibilant, as if used to carrying great distances with very little effort.

“I am Pacys the Bard,” he replied, “and I’ve been called many things.”

“But soon to be the Taleweaver.”

“Maybe. No man may know exactly what lies in his future.” Pacys played his cards close to his vest. Narros had also spoken of those who would try to prevent him from attaining his goals.

“No,” the elf replied, “but a few are sometimes chosen by the gods to get a glimpse of those possible futures.” He ‘ paused, then added, “You have no need for alarm.”

“Aye, and ye speak prettily,” Khlinat spat roughly, “but meself, I’ve found a man sometimes talks differently when he gets the chance to hold a knife to yer throat.”

“I heard your song,” the elf said. “I knew I had to come see you for myself-to discover if you were the one.”

“You knew me from my song?” Pacys asked.

The elf nodded. “I’m something of a minstrel myself, and I was brought up on the lore of my people. Your presence has been predicted in our histories.”

“Whose histories?” Pacys asked.

The elf smiled at him haughtily. “I am Taareen, of the alu’tel’quessir. More directly of late, I am of Faenasuor.”

Pacys laid a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. “This is my good friend Khlinat Ironeater, a sailor and traveling companion on this journey.”

Taareen inclined his head slightly. “A pleasure to meet you, warrior.”

“Aye,” Khlinat replied gruffly. “I guess we’ll be after seeing the truth of that, eh?”

The elf took no offense. “May I come closer?”

Pacys gestured toward the campfire.

Taareen smiled. “Not too close. The flames can be hazardous to one who dwells in the embrace of Seros.”

“Seros?” Khlinat asked. “I thought ye said ye were of Faenasuor.”

“Seros,” Pacys told him, digging into the lore he knew of the Sea of Fallen Stars, “is what they call the Inner Sea.”

“Actually, it’s the term for the world under the sea,” Taareen stated as he sat on the ground across the campfire from them. “It came into use after Aryselmalyr fell-over a thousand years ago. In our language it means ‘the embracing life.’”

“Aryselmalyr was the empire of the sea elves,” Pacys told Khlinat when the dwarf looked up at him with suspicion on his broad face. “Several of the elves took up the sea life after the Crown Wars.”

Harumphing in obvious displeasure, Khlinat sat apart from Pacys, giving himself a clear field of action should it become necessary. He laid his axes on the ground in front of him.

“Do you know of Faenasuor?” Taareen asked.

“I’ve heard of it,” Pacys replied. “The city was thought lost when Aryselmalyr was destroyed.”

He had heard songs of the elven empire’s destruction when an undersea plateau shoved up without warning from the sea bottom and killed nearly eighty thousand inhabitants. The city lay covered over at the bottom of the Sea of Fallen Stars for a thousand years, until it was excavated seventy years ago.

“I’ve never been there,” Pacys said.

“No,” Taareen replied. “As a culture, the sea elves are friendly enough to humans, but only relate to them when there is need.”

“Doesn’t sound much different than elves anywhere ye go,” Khlinat offered.

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never left Seros.” Taareen’s eyes fell on Pacys’s yarting. “May I?”

Pacys nodded, then rose and passed the yarting over.

The sea elf took it gratefully. His hands searched out the strings a little unconfidently, then he fit his fingers into the frets and stroked the strings. Music filled the campsite, and it was clear and true. After a moment, evidently feeling more at home with the instrument, Taareen lifted his voice in song.

The words were alien to Pacys’s ears. He knew some of the elven dialects and languages, but this one wasn’t familiar to him. Still, the emotion of the song was raw and throbbing, speaking of loss and redemption, of brighter days ahead. He finished quietly, but the words still echoed through the trees, vanishing the way the bright orange embers from the campfire did when they tried to touch the sky.

“That was beautiful,” Pacys said.

“Aye,” Khlinat said, tears glittering in his beard. “I’ve not had the pleasure of hearing the like before. Ye may be an elf, Elf, but ye have the heart of a dwarf.”

Taareen bowed his head in thanks, then glanced up at Pacys. “That was your song, Bard Pacys. The song of the Taleweaver’s arrival in Seros.”

“You just composed that?” Pacys asked in astonishment.

“No. I’ve but mean skills, and songcrafting takes me a long time. That song is ancient,” Taareen said. “It is one of the few things that was carried from Aryselmalyr when so much of our history was lost.”

A feathery chill touched Pacys between the shoulder blades. “How could they know all those years ago?”

“How could they not?” Taareen asked. “The Taker existed thousands of years before that. Knowledge of him has not come to us only recently, as it has to you.”

“You said you knew me by my song.” The thought troubled Pacys. “Does that mean the song is not new as I thought it to be?” The possibility of him simply rewriting a song that had already been in existence ate at his confidence.

“No, your song is new,” Taareen answered simply. “In our stories, it was said the Taleweaver would appear near reclaimed Faenasuor. Imagine the horror of those who lived then who realized that Faenasuor would first have to be lost in order to be reclaimed.”

Pacys did, and the weight was staggering.

“When the empire was lost, it was believed that by leaving Faenasuor buried beneath the rubble the Taker wouldn’t be allowed to return to the world.” Taareen shook his head and his fingers began to pick out a soft, low tune on the yarting. “As if that would seal him in whatever limbo he’d been in.”

“They realized in the end it was a false hope at best,” Khlinat said.

“Yes, but the Taker wasn’t the only reason they left Faenasuor buried. Part of it was because no one wanted to see what had been lost. They didn’t want to remember. After a thousand years, the realization that if Faenasuor didn’t exist, if the archives that were buried there weren’t reclaimed, the Taleweaver would never be able to arrive there.”

“But just hearing my song,” Pacys said, “that couldn’t be the only thing that led you to believe I was the one legend names as Taleweaver.”

“Do you have your doubts about who you are?” Taareen asked.

Pacys thought about the question. To answer no was almost egotistical, but to say yes was to acknowledge the possibility existed that Narros had been wrong. The song Taareen played echoed in his head, summoning up images of Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate, and the young sailor he and Khlinat had only just met who’d had such considerable influence on their lives.