Key of Stars

CHAPTER TEN

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR)

Green Siren, Sea of Fallen Stars

The cool wind off the water tumbled Anusha’s hair. The salty tang smelled like childhood.

Mist clung to the wave tops. Green Siren’s prow swept a lane through the fog as the ship pushed across the sea.

Anusha was not a sailor, but she was the daughter of a shipping merchant. When she was a child, she’d spent years aboard the small fleet of craft Marhana kept. That familiarity allowed her to note the newer boards interspersed with original planking, the fresh sails, recently cleaned surfaces, and dozens of other small improvements to Green Siren’s demeanor. Anusha could tell that each repair had been done with masterful attention to detail.

The captain stood next to her, his weathered hands on the wheel.

If Lucky had been aboard, he would have been standing between them, probably licking Anusha’s hand looking for a treat. But she’d decided to leave the loyal hound at home, in the care of the servants. She’d become too attached to the mongrel to put him in harm’s way. It was different for her, the captain, and the crew. They knew what they were getting themselves into.

“So, what do you think?” said Thoster, nodding across the deck.

“Stonekeel’s work?” Anusha asked.

The captain smirked and nodded.

“You must have paid through the nose to get her on such short notice,” she said. “I can’t think of a shipwright with a longer backlog.”

“Karna Stonekeel and I go back, ’s all,” the captain said. “I paid her a king’s ransom, aye, but she owed me too.”

Anusha decided not to ask what the shipwright could possibly owe a pirate.

“Last time I put out of New Sarshell,” said the captain, “it was Japheth on deck, and you stowed away in the hold, not that I knew it then. With you up here this time, it makes me wonder; do you think we’ll find a warlock down there stuffed in a trunk?”

“You’re funny, Captain,” she said. She smiled at the ridiculousness of the image.

No, Japheth wasn’t on the ship. He was … where? If the wizard’s portal ritual had worked, he was deep in the Yuirwood, tracking down Malyanna.

Using the powers granted to him by his newly sworn star pact.

Anusha frowned.

“You all right lass?” asked Thoster.

Anusha drew in a breath, and nodded. “Just letting my mind reel out too far,” she said.

“Worried about the warlock?” the captain said.

She wasn’t worried in the way he guessed, but she nodded anyway.

“I wouldn’t,” Thoster said. “He’s no slouch, and he’s with Raidon too.”

“True,” she said.

“And, I hope he ain’t worrying about you; I’m here,” the captain added with a chuckle.

“Don’t forget Yeva,” she said.

“Your friend the walking statue?” the captain replied. “She likes it below, it seems.”

“Well, she doesn’t like to come on deck much because she’s afraid she’ll fall off and sink.”

The captain grinned.

“Also-just like you said about Raidon, I’m ‘no slouch’ either,” she said.

“Indeed,” Thoster replied.

Anusha laughed.

“Japheth,” mused the captain, “comes off as a fierce sort, at least on the surface. He once told me he could curse the heart out of a demon. Trying to ruffle my feathers by way of indirect threat, I think. But … I don’t doubt he could slay a demon just so, and probably not think twice about it.”

“I suppose,” said Anusha.

“But I think he’s proved he’d go the last mile for you,” the captain said.

“Yes. What’s it to you, pirate?”

“Well, I don’t mean to be nosy, but I have to wonder why he’s there”-the man pointed east-“and you’re here?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Anusha said.

The captain chuckled. “Mayhap,” he said. “But were I you, I wouldn’t throw a good thing away just to prove I could.”

Anusha snorted. “We each took on the task suited to our strengths,” she said. “Separating was the logical choice-we didn’t choose against the relationship, as you make it sound. It’s not an either-or. Being in love doesn’t mean you do everything together.”

The captain raised his hands. “My misunderstanding!” he said. “Didn’t mean to wrinkle your frock.”

“It’s all right,” Anusha replied.

But it unsettled her how the privateer had so casually pierced to the heart of the matter. Had she separated them for more than merely logical reasons?

If so, then so be it, she thought. It had been necessary. Too many questions required answers-answers she was unlikely to get if they remained together while danger closed in from every direction.

The question was, could she separate the man from his issues? When she was with him, forgetting her concerns was easy. Despite her fears, he’d demonstrated he wasn’t a slave to his new pact, nor even to his old addiction.

It was when she was apart from him that all her worries returned. That’s really why she’d suggested they separate, so she could think clearly without Japheth around to confuse her.

At this point, she had to admit her plan wasn’t working.

If anything, with only her memory of him present, she vacillated even more spectacularly between hope and distress, back and forth over the course of hours.

All she knew for certain was that she missed him.

“Hold,” said the captain. His voice was devoid of the amusement it’d held moments earlier. “Listen!”

“No, I’d rather we not discuss my love life any longer …” Anusha saw the captain’s head was cocked to one side, as if he were straining to hear something.

The mist around Green Siren thinned. Then the fog peeled away, opening up the view on all sides.

Streamers of black cloud swirled on the horizon, creating a vortex in the sky. Lightning danced at the storm’s hollow heart, briefly illuminating an obelisk jutting from the crown of a thunderhead.

It was still miles away, thank Torm, but-

A brilliant flash revealed the petrified shape that crouched atop the obelisk. The Eldest! Still unmoving and as stiff as stone … But even the glint from its pocked carapace across the miles that separated them made Anusha’s stomach heave. She flinched her gaze away, then forced herself to return her regard to the horrific sight.

Small dots circled Xxiphu like crows around a tower. If the flying shapes were visible at such a distance against the city, Anusha realized that whatever the specks were, they must be colossal.

“The music … it’s like smoke in my mind,” Thoster said. “Awful, yet … enticing. Xxiphu commands that we find the Key of Stars and deliver it.” The privateer clutched the amulet that lay atop his jacket. When his fingers brushed the stone, some of the tension that bunched above his eyes faded.

Anusha swallowed. She strained to listen, but heard only the sound of the waves against the ship and the distant rumble of thunder.

“I hear nothing,” she said.

The captain shook his head. “It’s there all the same,” he said.

“Does it say anything else?” Anusha asked.

Thoster nodded. “It says, ‘Come to me, children of Toril, and serve.’ ”

The fluting melody tattered the moment Thoster’s fingers brushed Seren’s amulet. The sound threatening to engulf his mind in a conflagration of wonder was reduced to simple, if atonal, music. The piping melody, echoing and ethereal, lost its power to command him. He let out a relieved breath.

The magic in the talisman, which kept him from unraveling into a scaled mess, also protected him from Xxiphu’s mental compulsion.

“Children of Toril?” said Anusha.

Thoster shrugged, but as he did so, the image of a scaled fish person flashed in his mind. A kuo-toa. He tried to say the word aloud, but surprise robbed him of volume.

The deck vibrated with Yeva’s approach from belowdecks. “I counsel we keep our distance,” the iron woman said.

Thoster only nodded.

“Yeva,” said Anusha, “The captain says he can hear some sort of music. But I don’t hear it, nor does the crew. Can you?”

The woman’s metal head swiveled to regard the distant city. “A telepathic aura surrounds Xxiphu,” she said. “It carries some kind of compulsion, but one narrowly tuned to reach only a certain subset of creatures. More than that … I cannot say.”

“Kuo-toa,” said Thoster, finally managing to make his voice work again. “That’s what Xxiphu’s after.”

“And you can hear it?” said Anusha. Her gaze dropped to the captain’s forearm. It was covered with the sleeves of his black coat. She’d seen what was hidden beneath, though. “Would that mean-”

“Something along those lines,” Thoster interrupted. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out myself.”

“Mmm,” Anusha said.

The lookout on the mainmast screamed. “Something in the water! Approaching starboard!”

Thoster followed the woman’s pointing finger.

A school of large fish darted along just below the sea surface, occasionally breaking above, roiling and splashing the water. The disturbance was closing on Green Siren’s position. He squinted, focusing on the approaching school. He felt his eyebrows rise when, instead of fins, he saw scaled limbs and webbed feet. Spear tips, harpoons, and other weapons gripped tight in fishy hands also flashed above the water line.

“Hard about!” Thoster yelled, even as he spun the wheel. Too little, too late. The attackers were already too close. He wished, not for the first time, that Green Siren had a porthole installed below the waterline to afford a better view of threats that swam beneath the surface.

“Break out arms! Repel boarders!” he shouted.

He glanced at Anusha. “Don’t just stand there; get to your cabin and lock yourself inside your strongbox, lass!” he said. “You ain’t protected by dream!”

Anusha ran for the stairs. Yeva stamped after her.

Thoster lunged for the starboard railing.

The approaching swimmers had already halved the distance. Though still mostly hidden beneath the waves, Thoster knew what they were: kuo-toa. He also knew there were many, many more than the few dozen he could see along the surface.

Crew swarmed the railing around Thoster. Most had their swords and axes drawn, but a few fired crossbow bolts into the swell of the approaching tide. The bolts struck the frothing water with no apparent effect.

“Don’t waste your shots!” Thoster yelled. “Wait until they breach!”

He drew his venomous blade. Its cunning gears immediately began to spin and click, pulling poison from the ever-full reservoirs hidden in the hilt.

The kuo-toa reached the ship and swarmed up the sides.

Ten or twelve attackers fell back into the waves, crossbow bolts buried in their heads, necks, or chests. But others leapt from the water to take the place of the fallen. The kuo-toa gave voice to a wordless chant that prickled Thoster’s spine. It was the same melody as the one emanating from Xxiphu.

The second wave of climbers reached the railing, and nearly as one, the crew slashed, stabbed, and clubbed the boarders. A dozen more kuo-toa fell back into the water. Scarlet threads of blood spread through the lapping waves.

A crewman screamed as a kuo-toa harpoon skewered him through the chest. The attacker wrenched the harpoon, pulling the crewman forward over the rail. The man yelled again before he hit the water. Thoster kept his eyes on the spot where the man had gone under, even as he dispatched two boarders with his sword. The crewman didn’t surface again.

A yell pulled his attention to the ship’s port side. A separate wave of kuo-toa poured over the railing there, unopposed. The damn things had surrounded Green Siren!

“ ’Ware behind you!” he screamed at his crew. Their attention was fully occupied with the initial boarders, who’d apparently served merely as a distraction.

Thoster swept his sword through three more starboard attackers, then charged across the deck to a wedge of spear-wielders who’d come over on the port side. The kuo-toa hissed and cried out in a disturbing language whose slick consonants made him queasy. He didn’t know the words, but … The sounds were hauntingly familiar.

He growled and engaged the lead kuo-toa. It was more proficient than the ones he’d already dispatched, damn it all. The two sides of the wedge continued to move forward, attempting to wrap and surround him!

A kuo-toa on his flank shoved a spear into Thoster’s left hip.

“Umberlee’s lying lips!” he said.

He took a step back, but his sword found the throat of an attacker. The creature blackened with poison and fell, but another kuo-toa immediately stepped into the gap.

Thoster tried to take another step, but the smooth curve of the mainsail ended his retreat. At least they couldn’t get behind him, he thought.

The exclamations of his crew grew more desperate. Thoster couldn’t spare a moment to assess the situation. It was all he could do to keep the five creatures pressing him from sliding something sharp into his viscera.

Then the kuo-toa on his right spit up blood and dropped. A sheen of light briefly illuminated … something standing behind it.

The creature next to it turned to see what happened to its comrade, but before it could complete its motion, it screamed. It joined the first on Green Siren’s deck. The same sparkle of golden light hinted at an invisible presence.

“Anusha?” the captain said, and plunged his sword through one of the remaining confused kuo-toa.

Yet another of his attackers shrieked and fell.

“None other!” came the woman’s voice from an empty point in space.

The combined effort of his poisonous blade and her invisible one broke the wedge of attackers into so many unmoving fishy corpses.

The deck vibrated beneath his boots an instant before Yeva appeared from the doorway leading to the ship cabins. Four milling kuo-toa rushed her. She glanced in their direction. A corona briefly flared into an elaborate pattern of light haloing her head, and two of the four tumbled and lay still.

The other two didn’t flinch. One stabbed Yeva in the stomach; its spear broke on her metal body. The other tried to run past her through the door, but she stopped it cold with an iron punch to the face.

“Why are the kuo-toa attacking us, Captain?” said Anusha’s voice.

He shrugged. “They’re babbling something, but I ain’t proficient in fish talk,” he said, grabbing his amulet.

When he touched it, his sense of the ethereal music sleeting through his head faded, and the chant the creatures uttered lost its familiarity. But something in him was kin to the fatherless biters, and both Anusha and he knew it. She did him the courtesy of not pursuing the issue.

Another wave of kuo-toa swept over the railings on both the port and starboard sides simultaneously.

“How many are there?” Yeva yelled.

“Too many,” he said. “Yeva, you and Anusha are worth five of my crew put together. Hold ’em off the port side. I’ll help the lads keep starboard clear.”

He swept into the press, wielding his sword like a scythe; with it, he reaped.

But no matter how many kuo-toa they killed, more leaped out of the water. Their awful, lisping chant, voiced nearly as one, was thick in the air. The words tugged at him, urging him to accept some terrible insight. Part of him wanted to look. Most of him wanted to turn tail and run the other way.

Thoster’s shadow reached out across the deck for an instant as thunder cracked, too close.

He whirled and saw Yeva lying unmoving, face down. Her metal skin glowed a dull red. Where her body touched the deck, wood smoldered.

Two kuo-toa with elaborate headdresses and brandishing pincer spears stood near the fallen woman. Residual sparks of electricity danced between them. They reminded him of the priestess Nogah, whose strange message had pulled him into the mess in the first place. If those two shared anything like the power Nogah had been able to command, Green Siren was in trouble.

Kuo-toa stampeded through the doorway Yeva had guarded, into the crew cabins.

“They’ll find my luggage!” came Anusha’s voice.

She briefly materialized, resplendent in golden armor. She hewed into the rear flank of the creatures swarming the cabinway.

“Here! This way!” she yelled. “I’m right here!”

A few of the boarders turned to engage her. Most didn’t.

The anxiety fluttering in his stomach redoubled. Green Siren was being swamped beneath a horde whose numbers seemed endless. If ten or twenty kuo-toa appeared for every defender, the ship would be lost no matter how much power he, Yeva, or Anusha could bring to bear individually. And Yeva didn’t look like she was part of the fight any longer. Anusha might soon follow; if she wasn’t able to defend her body, her phantom self would be snuffed out too.

He had to do something. But he was terrified to try.

“You’d rather be dead?” he muttered to himself as he pushed his sword into the stomach of a kuo-toa trying to do the same to him with its spear. His enemy curled into a knot of unmoving scales.

With his shaking free hand, Thoster grabbed his amulet. He jerked hard, parting the leather strand securing it around his neck. He dropped it into a jacket pocket.

The ethereal music resolved to a symphony of dire portent and crystal-clear meaning. The chant of the kuo-toa sounded in nearly perfect accompaniment. The kuo-toa were indeed set to guard the ocean beneath the hovering city of Xxiphu.

With his mind now naked to the penetrating emanation, Thoster was commanded to do the same.

“No,” he said. “I am Eneas Thoster. I am slave to no one!”

The clamor of Xxiphu’s melody redoubled. He resisted the authority the music tried to assert over him. It did not have the right. Xxiphu was claiming dominion where it should have none. And Thoster wasn’t going to stand for it.

His fear turned suddenly to anger.

Something inside him reacted. Like a burning taper set to a pile of oil-soaked tinder, rage flared in his chest. It filled him up like waves fill a bay at stormcrest. It was intoxicating. His eyes and mouth popped wide, and he screamed out a challenge. His voice was louder and deeper than was humanly possible, but he was too caught up in the surge of his fury to marvel at the volume.

His wrath burned away his wall of denial. Time to stop hiding from himself.

He was of kuo-toa lineage.

Denying it was a childish pursuit. Because, he suddenly understood, the blood that flowed in his veins was akin to the scaly forms that surged around him, but … it was also more potent. There was a strength in him that the kuo-toa around him lacked.

He reached for that strength, and it fitted itself to him like a comfortable pair of gauntlets.

His shadow wavered on the deck, seeming to inflate for a moment before becoming his own shape again.

Thoster’s gaze fell upon the two kuo-toa wielding lightning. They stared back at him. Their confident grip on their pincer spears grew slack in confusion.

One spoke. Her voice slurred as it attempted Common. “What … What is this? Who are you … Should we know you?”

Thoster didn’t have an answer for her.

Anusha’s form wavered into existence once again, convulsing. It disappeared in a puff of golden light. A scream, Anusha’s physical, fleshy scream, echoed down the crowded cabinway. The invaders had found her sleeping body. Time was up.

He bellowed out a command of his own. “Stop your attack!” He felt his voice partly reaching into that same mental plane in which Xxiphu’s mental command reverberated.

All around him, kuo-toa paused.

Thoster raised both hands over his head, the palms spread wide. A vibrancy tingled beneath his skin, a feeling of freedom that, for the first time, didn’t terrify him. He wanted to see what he truly was.

Time for worry was long past. He channeled all the power surging through him into his voice. “Leave these waters, kuo-toa!” he called. “By the right of my blood, which I share with you, listen to me! Forsake this false idol, lest it command you to your doom.”

His last word hung in the air and in the ethereal space beyond hearing like the tolling of a cathedral bell. His shadow enlarged once more for the length of a heartbeat. When the sound finally died away, Thoster slumped to the decking, utterly wrung out.

But he was grinning from ear to ear. Across the entire ship, kuo-toa turned from their onslaught. One by one, they returned to the Sea of Fallen Stars.