Dawnbringer

Chapter One

OUTER BANKS, THE MOONSEA

1460 DR-THE YEAR OF THE MALACHITE SHADOWS

The midday sun blazed white in a cloudless sky as they threw the last bodies over the side. Gareth Jadaren wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and lashed a heavy, flat-stone ballast from the merchantman between a woman’s ankles with a strip of leather. The woman lay on her back, her face oddly placid considering the bone-deep slash across her throat. Her unblinking eyes seemed to be contemplating the blue sky, ignoring Gareth’s fumbling between her feet.

Acutely aware of Helgre behind him, Gareth concentrated on his work. With a grunt, he tightened the last knot. The leather, like his hands, was sticky with blood.

“Check her pockets,” said Helgre.

Gareth obeyed, wiping his hands on the woman’s leggings before gingerly dipping his fingers into the pockets roughly stitched into the fabric at the hips. There was nothing there, but, beneath the thin linen of the blood-soaked shirt, Gareth found a small leather pouch, the strap that had secured it around its owner’s neck severed by the same blow that had ended the woman’s life. Helgre extended her hand over his shoulder, and Gareth placed the sticky pouch on her palm. He didn’t look at her but heard the clink of a few coins as she opened it.

“Over the side with her,” she said, and he heard her walk away, likely enough to rejoin Ping at the helm. He shivered. Helgre’s voice was beautiful, a singer’s voice, deep and clear as the sound of temple bells. It was hard to reconcile such a voice with the brutality of the woman who possessed it.

And never, not even on warm summer evenings when the stars were scattered thick in the sky, the lanterns glowed golden on the deck, and the crew, forgetting their harsh profession, sang the songs of many lands, not even then had Gareth ever heard Helgre sing.

Gareth quickly tugged the wet red fabric of the woman’s shirt over her exposed breast. He didn’t want to drag her over the deck, but he was worried that the deeply bisected neck would give way and the head fall off if he picked her up in his arms. As carefully as he could, he lifted the body by the feet and pulled it over the deck, trying not to let the dead sailor bump against the boards. There was a great pool of semi-congealed blood where her body had lain, and a scarlet smear followed as he dragged her, as if pointing him out to any gods overhead. Gareth swallowed nervously, although he had not been the one to cut the sailor’s throat.

He’d done enough under Ping’s command to earn condemnation.

A space was notched into the railing around the deck, with a hinged door that could be opened and shut for ease of loading and unloading. Another of the Orcsblood crew helped Gareth roll the body to the edge. Below them in the pink-tinged water, sea creatures thrashed, fighting for a mouthful of the unexpected feast the pirates’ raid on the merchantman had created.

Gareth swallowed hard as he shoved the corpse clear of the ship. Limp-jointed as a doll, the woman fell, hit the churning water, and was tugged under the surface in a flash of silver scales and teeth. Almost unconsciously, he muttered a prayer half-remembered from his childhood. As he raised his head, his eyes met those of the other crewman, who had only recently joined Ping’s crew. Ivor was his name, he recalled-a well-built, dusky man from Turmish, with the muscles of a dockworker.

Sweat prickled cold on Gareth’s body. Ping didn’t tolerate sentimentality in his crew.

Ivor held his gaze a few seconds and nodded once. Gareth relaxed.

They both looked at the merchant ship lashed to the Orcsblood’s side, her decks smeared with the blood of her defenders and dotted here and there with the fallen. Movement down the side attracted Gareth’s attention, and he saw Helgre grab a rope and swing from the Orcsblood’s deck to the other, landing lightly with a skill born of years of experience. She drew a long knife from her belt and prowled the silent deck, examining the bodies for any sign of life. As he watched, she bent over one twisted form. Her knife flashed in the sun, and Gareth fancied he heard an agonized groan from the man at her feet.

She glanced their way, and both Gareth and Ivor instinctively backed away from the side, looking away from her and up into the half-furled sails of the merchantman.

“Nice lines,” said Ivor. “It’s a pity she’s to burn.”

“Agreed,” returned Gareth, with more feeling than he intended.

He was beginning to regret signing on to the Orcsblood. It seemed a good idea at the time-bad luck and worse timing had wiped out his profits on the goods he’d brought from Turmish to sell in Mulmaster. Everybody had been willing to pay fair coin, but unfortunately not for the goods he offered. So, when he was bereft of everything but a change of clothes, a fair sword, and a better dagger, Ping’s bargain, put forward over the greasy and pocked wooden table in an ill-lit and sour-smelling tavern in the insalubrious district of Mulmaster, sounded appealing.

He would have a fair share in all the booty and a head start if he decided to leave.

“You’ll understand that in my business an encounter with a … former colleague, shall we say … could be embarrassing, on either side,” the pirate said, his grin showing an impressive expanse of ivory teeth that looked as if they’d been filed to points. “Especially if a former member of my jolly crew had decided to ally himself-or herself-with more or less law-abiding associates. Should we part ways, it’s better we don’t meet again.”

It sounded reasonable, and the offer of a life sweeter than a slave’s, if not as honest, was too good to refuse. Gareth was a realist and had lived a bandit’s life before this. He resigned himself to piracy aboard the Orcsblood, even when he met Helgre. Ping’s second-in-command greeted him pleasantly enough, but no warmth reached her penetrating gray eyes. It was the cold expression in those eyes that chilled Gareth, not the vicious, long-healed slash that marred the left side of her face from eyebrow to chin, twisting the corner of her mouth into a one-sided smile.

Nevertheless, he had left childish ideals in childhood, and serving under a killer was better than starving virtuously, or rotting in prison for debt.

But Ping’s practice of destroying ships and slaughtering any potential witnesses sickened even Gareth’s sensibilities, and he soon suspected anyone who chose to leave Ping’s crew was not in fact given a fair “head start” but disappeared, likely with a slit throat, in the wake of the Orcsblood in the middle of the night. He’d made discreet inquiries, but the other members of the crew were reticent on the subject.

Someone struck him lightly on the shoulder, and he turned to see Din, a tall, thin-faced easterner who had signed on shortly before Gareth. He grinned and held out a bucket. His naturally pale skin had burned, then browned, in the months they’d spent on the Orcsblood, and he didn’t seem at all disconcerted by the slaughter of the merchantman’s crew or passengers.

“Ping says to sluice down the decks before we unload,” he said as Gareth took the bucket. “Clean decks for clean cargo.”

Gareth nodded and lowered the bucket over the side on its rope, avoiding the pink stain where the bodies had been dumped. The waters were quieter now, the victims of Ping’s ferocity sunk to the bottom and the scavengers’ hunger sated for now. Ivor found another bucket and did likewise, and together they had the deck clean of blood in a short time.

It was late afternoon before they had the cargo-silks from Imaskar and a load of exotic woods-piled on deck. The shipwright had already scavenged anything he could use from the merchantman, and now thick black coils of smoke rose from the hapless ship as she was cut free of the Orcsblood. A breeze was freshening, and crew clambered like spiders in the sheets above, for Ping wanted to be long gone before the smoke from the burning ship attracted undue attention.

Others unpacked the crates while Ping and Helgre examined the goods. The crew was cheerful. The slaughter was over, and there would be a generous bonus for all when Ping sold the booty to his contacts on the north shores of the Moonsea. In the meantime, there was food and drink for all, and their captain was pleased with their work.

Gareth stood, stretching his sore shoulders, and watched the merchantman burn. He’d had more than his share of fighting and lifting loads this day. Ivor joined him as a spurt of flame burst from the merchantman’s side, and the drifting vessel listed heavily to one side.

“Why waste a good vessel when we could strip her of identifying marks and sell her?” Ivor kept his eyes on the doomed ship, as if he were speaking to himself.

“Each ship has her idiosyncrasies,” said Gareth, keeping his voice indifferent. “Ping knows she would be identified eventually.”

“But we would be long gone with a decent purse before that happened. And why kill crew and passengers who could be ransomed, or sold far south in the Beastlands, or anywhere the slave trade flourishes?”

Was it his imagination, or was there anger beneath Ivor’s carefully modulated voice?

“It does seem wasteful,” Gareth said, blinking against the ash in the air as the prow of the merchantman began her long, inexorable slide beneath the surface of the Moonsea.

Two tendays later, Gareth Jadaren didn’t have time for moralizing as he blinked the blood out of his eyes. The cut across his forehead smarted, but he’d been lucky. The sellsword had slipped in the gore on the surface of the deck, and the blow meant to split his skull glanced sideways. Gareth had skewered the hapless sellsword as he lay sprawled and stunned, and his sword still quivered in the wooden deck, piercing the mercenary through the torso.

Gareth wiped away another handful of blood, looking around for something to staunch the bleeding. His late opponent wore a jaunty twist of a scarf around his neck that wasn’t too grimy, so Gareth bent and flicked it away with two fingers, wadding the scarf against the wound. It stung and would leave a scar, but that was of little consequence.

He glanced about the deck of the Starbound. The smell of char was heavy, and small flakes of burned canvas floated in the air. The remaining masts were blackened, and the mainmast lay across the deck, embers glowing along its split-asunder length. Here and there the remaining defenders of the Starbound fought in fierce pockets of resistance, but they were outnumbered and couldn’t last long.

Ivor loped across the deck toward Gareth. The long knife he preferred for close work was clotted with gore to the hilt; he must have been on mop-up duty. Gareth swallowed the acid that rose in his throat at the sight. He shouldn’t let it affect him-he knew he wouldn’t long survive his stint on the Orcsblood if he was maiden-squeamish about slaughter. And he did mean to survive and accumulate coin enough to start an honest-well, mostly honest-business far from here, enough to protect him and his from the brutality of such as Ping, and those whom Ping succeeded in making like himself.

Ivor pointed at the bow, where Ping stood surveying the carnage.

“Ping wants us to check belowdecks,” said Ivor, catching his breath. He surveyed the man Gareth had affixed to the deck.

“Lucky blow,” he said in approval, and kneeled to wipe his blade on the mercenary’s trousers. From the bow, Ping caught Gareth’s eye and pointed at a spot on the deck to Gareth’s right. Gareth glanced that way and saw a trapdoor that had been flung open, with the rope that secured it snaked carelessly across the decking. Ping crooked his fingers and thrust his palm down. His meaning was clear.

Gareth nodded. Ivor sheathed his knife and drew a short sword, and Gareth pulled his weapon from his late opponent. Together they approached the trapdoor cautiously.

Ivor pointed at the deck. Dark splotches led directly to the gloomy entrance. When they glanced down into the dark maw, they saw fresh drops of blood soaked into the worn wooden steps leading below.

Gareth ventured down, making sure his booted foot was secure on one step before he attempted another. Four steps down he gestured to Ivor to follow. He heard the steps creak under the Turmish man’s weight. Halfway down he paused, blinking to accustom himself to the dim light of the ship’s interior. Squinting, he surveyed the hold and the various-size boxes piled along the walls. The only sound he could hear was Ivor’s regular breathing behind him. He sidestepped the rest of the way down, making it to the slippery floor without incident.

“Nobody here,” he whispered over his shoulder to Ivor.

He saw the flash out of the corner of his eye. On pure instinct, he ducked, hitting the slimy floor, froglike, as a long, snaky stretch of blue-green lightning seared the space where his head had been. Ivor yelled something inarticulate as the step he was standing on shattered and he fell the rest of the way into the hold, landing with an oath heavily beside Gareth.

Something moved in the shadows before them. Sword extended and poised, Gareth rose quickly, knees bent and ready to move. Ivor was still cursing and trying to untangle himself from his weapon. An odd smell, not quite like a campfire and not quite like an alchemist’s shop, but evocative of them both, lingered in the musty air. No doubt it was due to the strange electrical attack.

Between two tall boxes a pale shadow shifted, then advanced into the dim light that the hatch overhead admitted. Half-light illuminated a fierce, feral face. At first Gareth thought it was an elf, or perhaps a massively overgrown gnome. But this creature was far more gaunt than any elf or creature of the Feywild. Its sunken cheeks and high, sharp cheekbones gave it a predatory look, and its nose was reduced to an abbreviated bony ridge with two elongated slits for nostrils. Its huge black eyes glittered with desperation and hatred. One hand was clutched tight to its chest, as if it had been injured, and the other was stretched toward Gareth, the thin fingers impossibly long, the fingernails curved and sharp as claws. It stared at him, hissing in pain or, with his luck, preparing another deadly, electric blast.

Its face was tattooed all over with what looked like scrolling runes, scattered throughout with dots and spirals-or perhaps those were its natural markings. Similar markings decorated its tattered robe, gray-blue in the dim light.

With a quick, supple movement, it thrust its hand toward him. Gareth threw himself to his left, as much to draw fire away from Ivor as to avoid the blast himself. He staggered against the interior wall, scraping his cheek on the rough wood, as another bolt of snakelike lightning surged from the extended palm and crackled past his ear. The singed-air smell intensified, and an electric prickle tingled unpleasantly through his bones.

The tattooed creature moaned with the effort of spellcasting and bowed its head from pain or weariness. Gareth caught a glimpse of long pointed ears, exaggerated as a lynx’s with what looked like a frill along the outer edge. He took advantage of its distraction to sidestep away from the wall, jumping surefootedly over bags scattered across the floor as he did. His cornered adversary must have taken refuge belowdecks to hide or protect some object of value. Gareth had seen none of those distinctive blue-green bolts in the fighting on the deck.

The glossy, insect black eyes in the elaborately scrolled face turned back to him, and there was no mistaking its expression of malevolence. It raised a sinewy arm in its shredded blue silk sleeve toward him again, and Gareth could feel the air around him contract and flex, as if it were made of tiny components that had become charged with static electricity.

But the creature had forgotten Ivor, or considered him out of combat, and was taken by surprise when the stocky Turmish man charged, slashing sideways with the short sword.

The startled spellcaster turned, and the snake of blue-green force coalescing from its hand knocked the sword from Ivor’s hand. But the sword was only for distraction. Ivor drew his long knife from his belt with his left hand and slashed at the creature’s forearm with a vicious backhand stroke. The blade bit deep and the creature cried out, falling back against the wall. Ivor’s right hand dangled uselessly at his side, but he retained his grip on his better weapon. Still holding the knife in a backhand stance, he lunged at the wounded thing, aiming for the throat.

It flung up a long-fingered hand. Gareth saw nothing but sensed that the air in the hold had shifted. A ripple like the surface of a windblown pond emanated from the bone-white palm, and Ivor fell back heavily, as if struck by a long staff.

Gareth knew they had no time to reason or negotiate. Darting forward in the gloom, he knocked the creature’s arm up with an underhand blow of the solid hilt of his sword. Off balance and clutching both hands to its breast, it staggered against the wooden board at its back. This was no time to hesitate; with only a breath and a slight back step, Gareth thrust his blade through the creature’s sleeve, down and under the top of its rib cage and into the space where he hoped its heart would be.

He must have guessed right or hit some vital organ regardless, because the creature opened its mouth in a final inarticulate cry and its body spasmed, almost pulling Gareth’s sword from his hand. He pulled his blade from the body, hopping back a pace and ready in case it managed to come at him. Finally it stilled and lay collapsed across a couple of packing boxes, staring at the irregular angle where wall met splintery ceiling, as if it saw infinity there.

Something trickled down Gareth’s face, and his head throbbed acutely-the fighting had reopened the cut on his forehead. Cursing, he dabbed it with his sleeve. He was going to have a perishing great scar if he was ever given a chance to heal up.

There was a heartfelt groan behind him. Gareth jumped and whirled around, sword up. He prayed it wasn’t yet another of those things.

Ivor grinned at him, the tip of Gareth’s sword just touching his chest.

“Jumpy, aren’t you?” he said, shaking his right hand as if it pained him.

“And how.” Gareth turned back to the body and shifted his weapon to his left hand. Bending gingerly over the strange humanoid, he pulled at the elongated hand that curled against its chest. Between its fingers it held a round of metal.

“Lucky thing you’re left-handed,” he remarked over his shoulder as he plucked the object away and examined it, frowning. It was a rather plain bracelet, made like a small torque to slip over the wrist. It didn’t look like anything worth dying over. Surely there were richer pickings in the hold. But the creature had been clutching this.

“It’s proved useful,” said Ivor, and Gareth heard him slide his knife back into place at his belt. Gareth silently agreed. Few opponents in battle, facing a weapon wielded in the right hand, expected the dominant attack to come from a smaller, left-handed weapon.

Ivor leaned close to his shoulder to look at his prize. Gareth examined it as best he could in the dim light. The bracelet was a pale metal, too dull to be silver. Yet it didn’t have the heft or feel of pewter. It was simple, with no embellishment save three red stones-possibly garnets-set evenly along its length. The surface of the metal was polished, smooth to the touch, but looked crosshatched by tiny, even marks. Gareth turned it over in his fingers, frowning. It felt warm. And, oddly, the warmth fluctuated ever so slightly against his skin. It was if the piece had its own tiny heartbeat.

The fluctuation was becoming a flutter, as if he held a small, frightened bird in his hand. Instinct told him to drop it, but curiosity compelled him to hold it. On his upturned palm he could see it quiver, the movement slight but visible.

“Strange thing,” remarked Ivor. “Do you think … Bane’s blood!”

They both jumped. The bracelet flexed, one end butting against Gareth’s hand like a blind worm.

“Sweet Mother’s milk, throw the damned thing away!” said Ivor.

But Gareth couldn’t. He was frozen with an otherworldly fascination with the thing, watching as the strange metal writhed and elongated. Beneath his feet, the wide wooden floorboards shifted up and down as the ship lurched in the water, and he adjusted his balance automatically.

“It’s not doing anything,” said Gareth. “Nothing dangerous, at least.”

Ivor whistled soundlessly. “You know best. It’s you down with the fishes if you’re wrong,” he said. He nudged at a small bag of rough muslin, one of several scattered about the floor, with the tip of his boot. There was a satisfying clink of metal.

“I wonder if that’s what our late friend was so eager to keep from us,” he said. “Let’s have a look.”

Gareth watched as Ivor kneeled and loosed the thin cord tied about the mouth of the bag. He chuckled in satisfaction and held up a couple of elongated coins for Gareth’s perusal.

“Silver?”

“No, my rustic friend,” replied Ivor. “Platinum, or I’m a mermaid.” The coins were stamped with a pattern unfamiliar to Gareth, not unlike the markings on the elflike creature’s robe. He glanced again at the staring blind eyes, wishing he could have asked it about the scrolling runes, about how a member of such an alien race came to be on a merchant freighter on the Moonsea, about the object stirring in his hand. He wished it weren’t necessary to kill it.

But kill he would, if he must to stay alive. To make a safe place in this world, he would see Ping’s ship and all on her destroyed, if that’s what it took.

Between one heartbeat and the next he made a decision.

“Friend Ivor,” he said, casting a quick glance at the hatch overhead. “Would I be wrong to guess that life aboard the Orcsblood has little delight for you?”

Ivor glanced up from sifting through the contents of the bag-all foreign platinum coins, as far as Gareth could see-and narrowed his eyes, considering.

“Not very wrong,” he said. “I find Ping’s policies … unnecessarily harsh and wasteful. And I fear a reckoning is coming. I’d just as soon not be here to taste my share.”

“We think alike,” said Gareth. “And yet it’s my suspicion that for all Ping’s talk of fair share of the spoils and a blessing for the road, none leaves the Orcsblood save in a shark’s belly.”

“Worse. I think he gives them to Helgre,” said Ivor. They both looked nervously at the hatch. The sounds of battle had faded, and they heard the calls of their crewmates, one to another, on the deck of the doomed merchantman. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air.

“Two may have a better chance than one, working together,” said Gareth. “If they can trust each other.”

“If,” agreed Ivor. Carefully he pulled ten of the coins from the bag and transferred them to his own pouch. Six other bags were scattered about-probably fallen from one of the shattered packing boxes. Ivor gathered the bags together, taking ten coins-no more-from each. Before he tied the pouch shut, he went to the corpse and pulled a few-not all-of the gem-set rings adorning the creature’s fingers. Golden rings pierced the frilled ears, and Ivor considered them, then shook his head.

“Being greedy won’t help us,” he said. “See.…”

He held up the bulging pouch before Gareth’s eyes.

“If two could trust each other, they could see that those on night duty drank more than their fill tonight,” he said quickly. “If they were quick, they could climb over the side and cut the dock boat free. Two could row as far as Mulmaster. And seventy platinum is a good start for two. Two who trust each other.”

“Do we?” said Gareth. “You could have taken me from behind after the thing was dead.”

“And you could have skewered me neatly, as you have at least two others this day, as I counted the coin,” replied Ivor, tucking the pouch into the front of his breeches. “There. Let that scarred siren look for it there.”

Gareth nodded. “Equal shares?”

Ivor glanced at the bracelet still squirming on Gareth’s palm. “All save that thing, which you’re welcome to. It gives me the shivers as bad as Helgre.”

The bracelet stretched and coiled. Gareth heard the heavy scrape of a boot at the hatch above, and the living metal paused, as if it heard, too. Then, so fast he barely registered it was happening, the bracelet elongated, becoming little thicker than a wire, and darted under his cuff and up his sleeve like a grass snake. It was a startling and strange sensation, the cool smoothness of the metal and the three small bumps that were the gemstones winding up his arms, across the crook of his elbow, around his shoulder.

Around his neck.

Startled, Ivor cursed. Gareth grabbed at the metal snaking around his neck, praying he could rip it away before it choked him. The weird, bolt-casting creature would have the last laugh here, he thought.

But instead of wrapping tight around his windpipe and cutting off his air, as he expected, it lay loose like a necklace.

Cautiously he felt it between his fingers. It was a necklace. The smoothly forged metal had become small flat links, inset at even lengths with the garnets, just long enough to lie out of sight beneath his jerkin.

Ivor’s eyes were wide, his mouth open. Gareth shushed him as they were hailed from above and the silhouette of a head appeared in the square of light of the hatch above.

“Hoy! Are you gentlemen planning on joining the rest of us soon, or will you malinger all day?” It was the unmistakable voice of Ping, friendly and joking on the surface, with a deadly edge beneath.

“We’ve been dealing with a holdout,” called back Ivor. “And the ladder was damaged in the process. We’ll need a rope to get out.”

Ping called back over his shoulder for someone to bring a rope.

“Anything worth saving down there?” he said, turning back. Gareth stifled a cynical grin at the again-innocuous words, the trap set underneath.

“You’d better come see,” he called in turn. “Bags of coin, and boxes worth searching.”

A rope snaked down, and Ping descended it quickly. Blinking in the darkness, he called to the heads clustered above for a witchlight. It was swiftly tossed down, and he held the blue glowball up high, surveying the bags Ivor had thoughtfully piled together, the singed and shattered steps, and the strange, tattooed body. Under his breath he muttered something in his native tongue.

“Go up and help with the cargo, and then rest. You’ve earned it.” He laid his hand on Gareth’s shoulder in a friendly gesture. Gareth steeled himself not to flinch. He nodded, aware of the tickle of the small metal links against his chest. Ping carried no weapon, but tiny scarlet specks were scattered thickly over his cuff.

He swallowed away a sudden surge of nausea that had nothing to do with the wound on his forehead. He wished he’d thought to shut the creature’s eyes before Ping arrived. Now there’d be a bustle of unloading loot and other unsavory, urgent business, and he’d have no other time to do it.

“I’ll have some of the others help you haul this stuff over to the Orcsblood,” said Ping. “We can dump the rest of the bodies down here before we scuttle her.”

Ping’s eyes gleamed as he looked over the bags and wooden boxes with their port seals, indifferent to the dead body sprawled in front of him or to the carnage above.

Gareth followed Ivor up the rope, swearing to himself that as far as it lay in his power, no Jadaren would ever turn to piracy again.

Something seared over Fandour’s flesh, just for an instant, like a thread of white-hot fire. He flinched and concentrated, trying to follow the fading sensation as a dog would follow the scent of a rabbit gone to ground.

Somewhere on that distant plane his sundered avatar stirred. The Rhythanko artifact, in which an essential piece of himself was forged, link by link and jewel by jewel, was no longer shielded by the gith.

The scent was lost on the winds and current between the planes, and Fandour subsided into himself, inside the walls of his ancient prison. His avatar had forgotten him and no longer sought reunion.

But Fandour knew he had a chance of finding it now. Now it was loose in Faerun, that strange plane.