The Reaver

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The lean-to leaked. Annoyed by the trickling and dripping, Umara tried to rearrange the weave of branches over her head and only succeeded in making matters worse. “The Black Hand take it,” she growled.

Lying beside her, Anton chuckled. “You’d think rangers could build a better shelter.”

“I don’t suppose they could have, really. Not one that this rain couldn’t find its way through. When I get back to Thay, I’m never going out in foul weather again.”

“We could still watch the ceremony from inside the sanctuary. The rain hasn’t worked its way through that roof.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to try to make out what’s happening from the other side of the pool. I want to be up close.”

It surprised her to learn that the Chosen’s ritual wouldn’t take place inside the temple. But as Ashenford explained, the entire plateau was sacred to the Oakfather, whereas only the easternmost patch of land could be considered holy to the Morninglord. Thus, it made sense to perform the rite where the petitioners would find it easiest to draw power from both gods.

There were plenty of them to do the drawing, too. After Shadowmoon canceled the massacre of the scar pilgrims, she’d dismissed most of the rangers and other warriors from her little army. But the Elder Circle had summoned additional druids to gather in their place, along with a miscellany of nature spirits and forest creatures. Sprites the size of mice flitted on dragonfly wings, and treants towered over everyone else, remarkably easy to mistake for actual trees with their gnarled, asymmetrical bodies, crowns of leafy branches, and bark-like skin, shifting ponderously when they moved at all.

The company had assembled to perform a work of magic greater than Umara had ever witnessed or likely ever would again. It would be priestly magic, not arcane, and beholden to the forces of Light and Nature rather than those of those of the Pit, and thus, in no way her sort of power. But she meant to drink in the spectacle and learn all she could nonetheless.

The ceremony should commence soon. At the moment, everyone was waiting for Stedd to announce that, behind the wall of gray thunderheads to the east, the sun was rising.

Umara turned back to Anton. “You wanted to watch this, too, didn’t you? That’s why you haven’t already run away.”

The pirate drew back. “Wizard, you insult me. I gave my oath.”

He was only able to maintain his air of affronted dignity for a moment. Then a snort forced its way out, and she laughed with him.

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “Naturally, I want to see how this all works out. But once it’s over …” He gestured in the general direction of Hierophant’s Trail.

“I suspect Shadowmoon actually intended for you to flee.”

“Then she won’t be disappointed.”

“You don’t suppose the Assembly of Stars might actually pardon you?”

He grinned. “In their place, I wouldn’t.”

She took a breath. “Well, then, we’ll smuggle you back aboard the Octopus and safely out of Turmish.”

Anton hesitated. “If someone catches you helping me, we’re liable to end up facing the headsman together. Even if we don’t, you’ll still have forfeited any good will you may have generated on Thay’s behalf. And from what you told me, that’s the one prize you can offer your superiors to make up for not bringing home a Chosen.”

Umara made a spitting noise. “Please. You already saw me trick Shadowmoon herself with an illusion. I can fool any Turmishan if I put my mind to it. Druids and such have their talents, but Thayan magic is the most sophisticated in the world.”

Anton laughed. “Certainly, Thayan arrogance is the most egregious.”

“You do realize I’m offering to help you.”

“I know, and-” His head turned to the druidic spellcasters and their allies. “We can talk about this later. I think the ritual is starting.”

He was right.

Standing at the brink of the drop-off, closer to the hidden sunrise than anyone else, Stedd extended his hands to the eastern horizon, and they bloomed with gold and crimson light. He turned and thrust them at the ground. Lines, circles, triangles, and more complex figures spread outward from the spot he was indicating, writing themselves on the ground in light.

Standing to the west of her collaborators, Shadowmoon began a kind of slow, twisting, pirouetting dance in place. She made the contortions look as effortless as they were lithe. To the north, Shinthala looked upward and muttered; the clouds overhead rumbled and flickered as lightning stirred inside them. In the south, Ashenford stroked arpeggios from his harp.

Traceries of light flowed from the druids’ positions across the ground to interweave with the figures Lathander’s power was drawing. But the new designs were green instead of yellow or ruddy, and more freeform, their shapes hinting at the uniqueness of every leaf on every branch or every bend in the course of every stream rather than the perfect roundness of the sun or the flawless arc of its daily progress across the heavens.

Trained to construct every pentacle with geometric precision, Umara winced at a sloppiness that, had a Red Wizard committed it-perhaps because he was drunk-would have proved either futile or suicidal. But the Elder Circle’s figures smoldered with a power that, so far at least, they seemed fully able to contain.

A droning began. It sounded so much like a deep tone from the Thayan pump organ called the zulthoon that Umara might have mistaken it for one had she not known no such instrument was anywhere nearby. Eventually, she realized the treants were groaning out the hum as accompaniment to Ashenford’s harp.

One or two at a time, the other celebrants joined in, sometimes singing, sometimes chanting, sometimes contributing by other means. A barefoot, dirty, and nearly naked druid-a hermit, Umara suspected-beat out rhythms on a pair of femurs. Sprites hovered in a cloud to merge the whine of their wings into a piercing chord. A spindly horned man with enormous eyes and ears simply exploded into a run of eight ascending brassy notes, leaving not a speck of flesh nor a drop of blood behind.

By rights, it should have all combined into cacophony, but somehow, beauty emerged instead. What Umara chiefly noticed, though, was vibration resonating through her bones as mystical energy accumulated.

The glowing designs grew larger than the space taken up by those who created them. A straight line of rose-colored luminescence shot into Umara and Anton’s lean- to and out the back. Figures and sigils even wrote themselves on the surface of the pool, maintaining their forms thereafter despite the constant flow to the tops of the three waterfalls.

Then the storm clouds to which Shinthala had been muttering answered as clouds had never answered any mortal spellcaster before. The sky-the world-blazed white with so many lightning bolts that it was impossible to see the individual strikes or, in fact, anything but brightness. The accompanying crash was so loud that it scarcely registered as noise. Rather, it smashed sensation and thought into chaos. Even though Umara had had some notion of what to expect, for a moment, she feared that she was dying.

She wasn’t, though, and when her head resumed working, and she blinked the dazzle out of her eyes, she saw the rain beating down harder than it had in all her time on or near the Sea of Fallen Stars. The pounding drowned out whatever singing and chanting was still going on, and gray veils of falling water obscured objects only a few paces away.

The Great Rain had caused Turmishan crops to fail and produced privation around the Inner Sea. Thus, it had at first astonished Umara to hear that the Chosen’s solution to the famine involved bringing down even more of it.

But Stedd was certain that, contrary to appearances, the rain was neither a force of pure destruction nor a weapon forged by Umberlee to impose her creed on the region. It was how one part of the world was mending the damage inflicted by the Spellplague.

And if the Great Rain was fundamentally a kind of healing, then master healers should be able to nudge it to work faster and finish restoring the natural order in Turmish. With luck, that truly would raise the Emerald Enclave’s magic to its former potency, and then the druids would be strong enough to undertake another great work.

That was the plan, anyway. Lying on her side in a lean- to with the torrential rain blinding and deafening her, Umara couldn’t judge how well it was working. “I’m going outside,” she shouted.

“What a bad idea,” Anton replied. But when she crawled out, he followed.

The rain pummeled her, stinging her nose, cheeks, and chin. She tugged her hood farther down and looked around.

Standing in the open, she could see and hear better, albeit only somewhat. The patterns of light on the ground had stopped expanding, presumably because they were complete. Reduced to a vague silhouette by the downpour, Shadowmoon still danced, and at least some of the other celebrants were still intoning their incantations; a trace of their voices whispered through the rattle of the rain.

Umara drew breath to yell, then thought better of it. She offered Anton her hand, and he smiled and took it. She led him toward the drop-off.

As they made their way, the sky repeatedly flashed white, and booms and crashes shook the tableland. Umara realized the clouds were producing some of the most prodigious thunderbolts she’d ever seen. But they didn’t make her flinch, not after the supreme violence of the initial blast. They simply felt like one detail of a still greater power at work on every side.

Unfortunately, even when she reached the spot where the ground fell away, she still couldn’t tell if that power was doing what the Chosen intended it to. Once again, the rain obscured too much. She could make out some of the nearer peaks composing the Elder Spires, but that was all.

“Seven black stars,” she growled in annoyance, and could barely even hear herself. But then the pounding of the rain abated, if not the roar. Surprised, she looked around and found one of the treants looming over her and Anton. The leafy branches that spread out above the creature’s face blocked some of the downpour.

She and Anton weren’t the only folk to whom the tree man was providing a sort of shelter. Several of the winged sprites perched in its lower branches.

“Thank you!” Umara bellowed.

The treant smiled, its mouth bending slowly. It extended a huge, bark-covered hand.

Umara hesitated, then took hold of a bark-covered fingertip. Anton gripped another.

The wizard wondered how long a polite treant handclasp was supposed to last. Then images surged into her mind.

Her immediate impulse was to defend against psychic intrusion, to snatch her hand back from the treant’s and sear the creature with a burst of fire while she was at it. It was the prudent way to react when anybody sought to touch one’s mind uninvited, and besides, the contact reminded her of Kymas riding in her head.

Yet another part of her-the part that had decided a measure of trust was possible even with outlander pirates, farm boy prophets, and druids-doubted the treant meant her harm. So, telling herself the contact was neither an attack nor an intentional violation, she focused on the visions and perceived them clearly.

When she did, she realized that either by virtue of its participation in the ritual or simply because of some inherent bond with the land, the treant could see farther than she could. In fact, it discerned what the rain was doing across the length and breadth of Turmish, and it wanted to share that knowledge.

The storm fed streaming floodwater that gnawed at the base of the peninsula that was home to the House of Silvanus and Sapra. Already eroded by months of rain, soil and even bedrock crumbled, falling away to form a gigantic ditch. Scattered steadings and hamlets slid and tumbled into the gulf. Umara hoped the folk who’d lived therein had abandoned them. If not, well, the druids had sent messengers to warn them.

Plainly, even after a year of torrential storms and even given the climactic fury of the current one, the collapse was occurring with impossible speed. But as the Chosen had realized, the Great Rain was in its essence a transcendent mystical force, not a mundane one, and apparently, it could do impossible things.

When the channel across the peninsula opened, the sea came rushing in to fill it. Smiling, Umara could only assume that even Umberlee was powerless to stop it, for the Queen of the Depths surely wouldn’t approve of the results.

Before the Spellplague, the Emerald Enclave had ruled a holy island called Ilighon as its particular domain. With the straits reopened, Ilighon was reborn.

The reshaping of land and sea brought a rush of spiritual power. Green light rippled and flickered in the sacred pool known as Springbrook Shallows. Treants laughed and danced with slow, swaying steps in the meeting place they called Archentree.

Then Umara’s benefactor looked farther afield. Once again, the sea was advancing, but this time, it wasn’t racing down a newly created channel. It was rolling over a long expanse of shore and drawing ever closer to a gray stone city.

“That’s Alaghon!” Anton shouted. “The capital! Before the Spellplague made the waters recede, it was a great port. Now, it can be again.”

That’s assuming the water knows when to stop, Umara thought. But in truth, she expected that it would.

The treant shifted its clairvoyant gaze. Now Umara beheld patches of plagueland in the south. Pounding down, the rain extinguished Blue Fire as easily as it could have doused ordinary flame.

Then the visions faded, and the wizard found herself wholly in her own body and limited to her own perceptions once more. She was clutching the treant’s finger and Anton’s callused hand tightly, and the reaver was squeezing back. For some reason, she found herself reluctant to let go of him.

She did, though. The rain wasn’t falling nearly as hard as before, and the lightning and thunder had abated. She and Anton no longer had any reason to cling together like timid children.

All around her, the druids and their allies had an exuberant look; despite their exertions and the stinging drenching they’d just endured, they experienced the same exhilaration as the enormous dancers in Archentree.

Grinning, Ashenford struck chord after chord from his harp. Shinthala wore a kind of satisfied sneer, like the magic just concluded was an adversary she’d wrestled into submission. A centaur galloped, his hooves throwing up mud, and the sprites that had sheltered in the foliage of Umara’s treant friend flew into the air and whirled around and around one another.

But Stedd made a little gasping sound that almost sounded like a sob.

Anton and Umara both pivoted to the boy. His golden hair dripping, Stedd winced and held up a trembling hand to signal that he was all right.

The adults hurried over to him anyway. “What’s wrong?” Anton asked.

Stedd shook his head. He looked unhealthy and spent, with discoloration like bruises under his bright blue eyes. “Nothing.”

“Tell me!”

“It’s just … There are three grown-up Chosen and all these other druids and creatures to draw down Silvanus’s power. There’s only me to draw Lathander’s. And this new … well of strength we just dug. It’s for them, not me. It doesn’t give me any extra power. But don’t worry. I can do what I need to.”

“I’m sure you can,” Anton said, “when you take up the work again tomorrow. The druids can stop for today and give you time to rest.”

“No, they can’t.” Stedd pointed to the glowing lines and symbols at his feet. “The designs and the … things the designs tie together … won’t last until tomorrow. Lathander says that when folk start a big, complicated work of magic, they need to push through to the end.”

“That’s true,” Umara said, “but perhaps the others can finish without you.”

Stedd sighed. “You know that isn’t true.”

Umara and Anton exchanged worried looks.

The boy scowled up at the pirate. “You told me to concentrate on finishing Lathander’s business.”

Anton scowled. “Would it sway you if I took it back? No, plainly not, stubborn brat that you are. Do what you have to, then. But be careful.”

“All right, everyone!” Shadowmoon called from her station to the west of everyone else. “Prepare yourselves. We have to press on.”

Umara squeezed Stedd’s shoulder. Then she and Anton moved back to stand with the treant.

The ritual resumed in the same incremental fashion in which it had begun. The Chosen at the cardinal points started conjuring in their various fashions. Stedd looked to the eastern horizon, prayed, and a golden glow lit his body from within. Shinthala murmured words that made the toes of her bare feet lengthen, burrow into the earth, and root her in place. Shadowmoon danced, and Ashenford harped. And gradually, over the course of the several breaths, the rest of the celebrants joined in.

Umara felt the intricate design on the ground pour out the power it had amassed. Or perhaps the luminous figure could more accurately be described as a lens focusing an ongoing torrent of spiritual energy rising from the Morninglord, the Treefather, and their worshipers. She suspected both descriptions were true in their way, and neither was sufficient.

However the magic functioned, she and her companions were about to find out if it was equal to the colossal task before it. The treant offered its hand, and she took hold of a fingertip as she had before.

The first vision showed her the forest called Mielikki’s Garden. The conjoined powers flowing outward from the Elder Spires rose through the trunks of the oaks. Branches sprouted acorns in a matter of moments, and hungry squirrels came bounding shortly thereafter.

Similar visions followed. Silvanus was the Forest Father, and whatever the celebrants had intended, the magic quickened the wild places first. Fortunately, plenty remained to revitalize plowed fields and orchards as well. Barley and beans sprouted and grew tall in fenced squares of mud and weed that peasants had abandoned in despair. Blossoms burst forth from apple and cherry trees, then fell in blizzards of petals as fruit supplanted them.

Umara sensed that Stedd had been correct: The other Chosen couldn’t have brought forth this bounty without him. The druids could summon the vitality and fertility Silvanus embodied. They could even direct it to farmlands that under normal circumstances were the province of Chauntea the Earthmother. But to flourish, the wheat and rye, the carrots and peas, the peaches and strawberries also needed an infusion of the sunlight the cloud cover had so long denied them.

Fingers closed around Umara’s wrist and pulled her hand away from the treant’s. “Look!” Anton said.

She did and caught her breath. Stedd was on fire!

No, she realized an instant later, he wasn’t. But the radiance shining from his body had brightened from a dawn-like glow to a blaze. Squinting, she could barely make out the human form inside the light or even stand to look at it directly.

“Is that the way it should be?” Anton asked.

For the most part, Umara still didn’t comprehend the inner workings of the ritual. But she feared she could guess the answer to the pirate’s question. “He may be channeling more power than he can handle.”

“Then this ends.” Anton started forward.

Umara caught him by the forearm. “You can’t,” she said.

“I touched the tree man’s hand again, too. I saw there are already new crops in the fields.”

“Still, if you interrupt the ritual, the change may not stick. And Stedd wouldn’t want that, no matter what.”

“To the Hells with what he’d want,” Anton answered. But he didn’t try to pull away.

The ritual seemed to stretch on endlessly. Umara supposed that was because her wonder and curiosity had given way to apprehension.

Finally, Shadowmoon shouted, “It’s done!”

The celebrants stopped chanting, singing, drawing shrill harmonies from beating transparent wings, or making any other sort of sound. The enormous glowing design on the ground vanished.

Stedd’s corona winked out at the same moment. Its departure left his body looking utterly emaciated, as though the magic had melted every ounce of fat and most of the muscle, too. He turned to Anton and Umara, tried to smile, and then pitched forward onto his face.

Evendur Highcastle sensed that elsewhere the rain had fallen with exceptional fury for part of the day and then subsided to what, in these times of perpetual rain, was normal. But on Pirate Isle, the storm had changed in certain respects but raged on even more violently than before.

Thunder boomed, and lightning repeatedly struck the highlands above Immurk’s Hold. Avalanches spilled down the mountainsides, and wildfires burned. Surveying the scene from the battlements atop Umberlee’s temple, his vestments flapping around his spongy flesh, Evendur speculated that it was the wind that kept the fires going in defiance of the rain. The same screaming gale burled huge waves at the island to maul and toss ships at anchor, crash against the rocks, and fling spray high into the air. It tore the thatched roofs off huts and taverns or knocked them down entirely and tumbled the wreckage away.

The wind was also a voice, though Evendur suspected he was the only one who understood it. It had called him forth to stand in the tempest and attend his deity.

Umberlee kept him waiting long enough to watch a galley pound itself and the dock to which it was moored to pieces, and the handsome old house called Teldar’s Rest slowly list until it toppled. Then, finally, she deigned to appear to him, although he felt her anger like a hammer blow before he actually recognized her countenance for what it was.

Her face was the sea. The entire sea, or at last as much of it as he could see from his perch. Two faraway lighter patches were her glaring eyes, while the breakers defined her snarling mouth. Somehow, her features maintained their fundamental constancy even though the water was in constant storm-tossed upheaval.

The instincts of a Chosen told Evendur the Queen of the Depths came to him in this guise because no lesser form could contain or express her wrath. An instant later, the sheer force of that anger shattered the walkway under his feet and much of the temple facade beneath it. He and countless shards of blue-green stone fell down the cliff face toward the waves below. He slammed into an outcropping, bounced off, and smashed down partly on and partly off a boulder protruding from the foaming surf.

“I warned you,” she told him. Louder now, deafening, her voice was both the roar of the wind and the hiss of the waves, and it held gloating laughter as well as rage. Perhaps he should have expected as much. She was the drowner of sailors and the breaker of ships, and every opportunity to torment and destroy excited her.

Instinct prompted him to try to drag himself all the way up onto the rock. He couldn’t. He was still aware and undead but as incapable of movement as any ordinary corpse.

The alternating push and suck of the waves shifted his center of gravity and tipped more of his body into the water, immersing his legs up past the knees. He kept slipping a bit at a time until he slid wholly into the water.

The waves bumped him into the waving seaweed on the side of the boulder. Then a riptide seized him and dragged him away from shore.

He wondered what Umberlee had in mind. She could feed him to sea creatures willing to eat carrion, or scrape him through corral reefs and cut and pull him apart a bit at a time. But he suspected she meant to dump him back where she’d found his drowned corpse to deliver a more protracted initial torment. Whatever punishment she intended, it could only be because she’d decided he’d failed her yet again.

Previously, Evendur had deemed it wise to remain mute in the face of her rage. But he sensed that tactic would no longer serve. His only hope was to convince her he could still achieve her ends.

But how? He sensed his paralysis was no impediment. Linked to him as she was, she could still hear his voice if she condescended to do so. But what was he to say? He struggled to frame some sort of argument, and finally, the words came to him.

“Fine!” he snarled. “Cast me away! Surrender!”

He felt the pressure of the rip current diminish for a moment, as though his insolence had startled her. Then it swept him onward.

“I know what your holy books say,” he continued. “The mighty Queen of the Depths never surrenders. But maybe it isn’t true. Because I’m still your champion, and if you take me out of the contest now, you’re abandoning the Inner Sea to Lathander.”

The racing current tumbled him.

“Leave me in place,” he pleaded, “and I can still win! I’ll bring together every iota of the church’s might into a great armada and lead it against the boy and any who dare to stand with him. Whatever miracle he’s worked, I’ll unmake it. Whatever hopes his magic and preaching have raised, I’ll dash them. And when I’ve done all that, and drowned him in your name, no one will doubt your supremacy any longer!”

Suddenly-and rather to Evendur’s surprise-the riptide ebbed away to nothing. He felt something in his upper back grinding together, and strength surged back into his hulking frame.

“Kill everyone,” Umberlee hissed. “Everyone but those who grovel before me. Turn the green sea red if that is what it takes.”

Then the crushing sense of divine presence disappeared.

Evendur kicked upward until his head broke the surface. The howling, hammering storm was already subsiding into just another gray, rainy day. The harbor was half a mile away, an inconsequential distance for a fellow who could swim like a shark.

Anton put his hand on Stedd’s brow. That morning, it had been cold. Now, it was hot. The temperature swung back and forth for some reason the druids had failed to explain in terms a pirate could understand.

The boy’s eyes, vividly blue even in the subdued light of the House of Silvanus, fluttered open. “Papa?” he croaked.

Anton winced. “No, Stedd, it’s me.”

“I wanted to say goodbye. But you wouldn’t have believed. You would have tried to stop me.”

“Your father’s not here. I’m Anton. Try to remember.”

“I wanted to say it! I promise!” Stedd squirmed under his blanket like he was trying to sit up but couldn’t manage it.

“I believe you,” Anton sighed, “and everything’s all right. Why don’t you drink some water?”

The earthenware cup was ready to hand. But in the moment it took him to pick it up and turn back around, Stedd had lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Anton felt an urge to throw the cup at one of the granite slabs bordering the space that served as Stedd’s sickroom. He settled for growling an obscenity.

“At least he woke up,” Umara said.

Anton gave her a sour look. “Is that what you’d call it? Why doesn’t he have a druid sitting with him all the time?”

“I’m sure they check on him often.”

“Even if they do, why aren’t they healing him?”

Umara took a breath. “You heard what Shadowmoon said. This isn’t an ordinary sickness amenable to the usual cures. And in any case, it does no good to grouse at me.”

Nor was it fair. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She cocked her head, listening to the drumming on the roof. “The rain’s slacking off. Let’s get some air.”

As they negotiated the turns of the sanctuary, a structure that, with familiarity, had come to feel less labyrinthine, he said, “I’m not truly angry with the druids or the boy, either.”

“I hope, not with yourself,” she replied.

“No!” he snapped. “With Lathander. Surely, he could help Stedd. But now that the boy’s served his purpose, his god’s tossed him away like a broken tool not worth the mending.”

“In Thay, we expect spiritual powers to favor the strong, not help the weak.”

Anton snorted. “Whereas I used to think they don’t truly care about anybody. Then Stedd nattered on and on about hope and goodness until, perhaps, he blathered the common sense right out of my head. Well, now I have it back.”

They stepped out under the gray sky. Anton took stock of how hard it was currently raining, and then, on impulse, squashed his drum-shaped Turmishan hat flat and tucked it in his sword belt. His hair was going to get wet, but he got tired of having it covered all the time.

Then a white horse and a rider in green and brown scrambled onto the plateau. The steed was lathered and rolling its eyes, and Anton wasn’t surprised. He wouldn’t have cared to take a horse up the steep last leg of Hierophant’s Trail, certainly not at any kind of speed.

But the ranger in the saddle showed no consideration for his mount’s weariness or frazzled nerves. He dug in his heels and urged it onward to cover at a gallop the remaining distance to the edge of the pool.

“The Elder Circle!” he half shouted, half gasped in a way that showed he was nearly as exhausted as the horse. “I have to speak to the elders at once!”

No doubt impressed by his urgency, druids came scurrying to assist him. A couple took charge of the horse and started to relieve it of its saddle. Others conducted the ranger across one of the chains of steppingstones.

Umara looked at Anton. “Whatever it is, I don’t care,” he said. Then they followed the ranger and his escorts back into the temple.

Once apprised of the woodsman’s arrival, the Elder Circle opted to receive him in a relatively spacious area where, on other occasions, Anton had watched older druids instructing novices five and six at a time. It was less imposing than the circular space at the center of the temple, but it was also drier, and the cryptic symbols daubed on upright surfaces gave it its own air of mystery and magic. Sometimes, they seemed to change when a person wasn’t looking, although afterward, Anton could never identify what was different.

A bench carved into one of the stone slabs afforded Shadowmoon, Ashenford, and Shinthala a place to sit. Everyone else-the ranger, those who’d brought him in, and curious souls like Anton and Umara who simply wanted to find out what was going on-stood.

The woodsman was a barrel-chested fellow whose bushy beard had grown out enough to lose any trace of a straightedge cut at the bottom. He bowed deeply but so quickly that the gesture of respect nevertheless felt perfunctory. “Elders,” he rasped.

Shadowmoon waved a dainty, copper-skinned hand, and the skinny adolescent girl who’d tried and failed to smite Anton with a spell emerged from behind a screen carrying a stool. A boy perhaps three years older than Stedd followed with a wooden cup.

“Something is clearly distressing you,” said the elf. “Sit, drink, and tell us what it is.”

But the ranger didn’t wait for the seat or the cup to deliver his tidings. “We’re going to be attacked.”

Shadowmoon’s green eyes widened. “Please, explain.”

The messenger dropped onto the stool. “This comes from another ranger, Vonda Pisacar. You know her?”

“Of course,” Shinthala said. “As well as we know you, Mareo Calabra.”

“Then you know she likes to patrol the wild lands along the coast. She was doing that west of Sapra, seeing what the sea had swallowed and what was still above water, when she spotted what she thought was likely a pirate ship anchored offshore.”

Probably one of Evendur’s, Anton thought, still hunting Stedd.

“Vonda wanted to find out what the ship was up to,” Mareo continued, “and she’s friendly with the merfolk. She knows a tune to whistle to call them if any are nearby. Well, one was, and she asked him to swim out and eavesdrop on what people were saying aboard the ship. He got there just in time. The pirates were making ready to sail.”

“Where to?” Ashenford asked.

“To meet up with other ships. Pretty much all the ones from Pirate Isle but extra, too-warships from places like Westgate sent because the church of Umberlee demanded it. The undead wavelord people talk about is supposed to lead them all to Turmish to destroy Sapra and everything else they can get at.”

“This is retaliation,” said a druidess with a sparrow perched on her shoulder and feathers adorning her three long braids, “for running off the waveservants when they tried to set themselves above us.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Shinthala said, “but the whys can wait until later.” She looked to Mareo, who was finally taking a drink from the cup. “I trust this same news has gone to Sapra and the Assembly of Stars.”

Mareo swiped the back of his hand across his lips. A stray drop of red wine dribbled into his whiskers even so. “To Sapra, yes, and it’s been sent to Alaghon as well. I just don’t know if it’s arrived yet. A messenger can’t get there by land anymore.” He grimaced. “And warriors on the mainland can’t just march here and reinforce us.”

People muttered to one another in dismay, and to his own surprise, Anton stepped forward. “You don’t need the army anyway,” he said. “You should meet the enemy at sea and sink them before they ever come within catapult range of Sapra.”

Mareo nodded. “I suppose that’s the strategy to try.”

“Why do you sound so pessimistic? The Turmishan fleet is as capable as any on the Inner Sea.”

“So I’ve always heard tell,” Mareo answered. “But the navy says some of the ships are far away on various errands. Even if they somehow hear about the trouble, they likely won’t make it back in time. And as for the rest …” He shifted his gaze back to the three elders. “Please understand, I don’t mean any irreverence. I’m thankful there’s food now. Everybody is.”

“But …?” Shinthala prompted.

“Well,” Mareo said, “it wasn’t exactly a gentle miracle, was it? Not the first part. Silvanus and, I hear, Lathander made the rain fall harder than ever before, and the sea bashed ships in Sapra Harbor around as it rose. Some are damaged too badly for the shipwrights to repair them in time to meet the pirates.”

“But what you don’t understand,” Anton said, “is that the storm also strengthened the Emerald Enclave. If Turmish doesn’t have enough ships that are fit to fight, magic can take up the slack.”

Shadowmoon sighed. “Not necessarily.”

Anton rounded on her. “Lady, you told us that when your holy island was reborn, it renewed your strength.” By all the Hells, clinging to the treant’s finger, he himself had watched it happen, even if he lacked the knowledge to make sense of very much of it.

“It did,” Ashenford said. “But then we spent the land’s strength and our own. We didn’t weaken ourselves to the extent that your poor young friend did, but the results were somewhat similar. We need time to recover.”

“You may not be at your best,” Anton replied, “but it will still be three Chosen against one.”

“Fighting on the sea,” the half-elf said, “which is his place of power, not ours.”

“Even if the pirates come ashore,” Shinthala said, “a port like Sapra is at best neutral ground. The same is true of the farmland that keeps it fed. But I may know how to beat the raiders.”

Ashenford turned in her direction. “How?”

“They surely want to kill us. And Stedd Whitehorn. They may enter the forests to get to us.” The wrinkled, white-haired druidess smiled an ugly smile. “Then we’ll have them.”

“No,” Anton said. “That’s the wrong play.”

Shinthala’s smile twisted into a scowl. “Why?”

“Various reasons, but the main one is what your scout Vonda found out. Evendur Highcastle’s changed his strategy. He’s not hunting other Chosen anymore, and that means he won’t take the bait you’re dangling. Once he breaks the fleet, destroys Sapra, and burns the crops here on the island, he’ll sail along the coast wreaking the same kind of havoc with impunity. There won’t be anyone who can stop him.”

Shadowmoon folded her hands and stared down at them as if the answer to every vexing question could be found there. At length, she said, “Captain, I swear to you on the scepter of Queen Amlaruil that the druids of Turmish will aid in the defense of their homeland.”

Anton’s mouth tightened. “But you won’t give all you could, will you? You’ll hold something back. Even though that could make the difference between winning and losing.”

“Please believe,” the fragile-looking elf replied, “that we of the Emerald Enclave care about the folk of the towns and farms. We’ve always looked after them to the extent our path allows. But our true purpose, decreed by the Treefather himself, is to protect and nurture the wild lands. Thanks to you, Lady Sir Umara, and especially Stedd, we have the chance to do that more effectively than we have in a century. It’s a chance we mustn’t squander.”

“What about Stedd’s purpose?” Anton asked. “His god ordered him to keep the Umberlant church from becoming the supreme power around the Inner Sea.”

“Silvanus doesn’t want that, either,” Ashenford said. “But he also judges there’s little danger of the goddess of the sea extending her influence into the forests.”

“He might be surprised,” the reaver said. “He should visit a shipyard and take a look at just how much timber the carpenters use. But never mind. I can see I’m not going to sway you, so I’ll thank you for your hospitality and take my leave. If I head out now, I can be in Sapra tomorrow. I’ll help repair a damaged warship and sail with her when she puts to sea.”

“Did you forget you’re our prisoner?” Shinthala asked.

Anton blinked. Caught up in the passions of the moment, he actually had.

“I think,” Shadowmoon said, “that in light of his recent service to the land, and the matters of great urgency that will soon preoccupy the Assembly of Stars, we need not consider him such any longer.”

“I agree,” Ashenford said. “By the First Tree, if the assembly ever even finds out he was here in the first place, I’ll answer for it.”

Shadowmoon looked back at Anton. “There,” she said, “you’re free to do as you please. But as one who’s come to think well of you, I recommend you not go to the fleet. A disguise allowed you to walk through Sapra without being recognized. It won’t keep mariners who knew you in your former life from doing so if you seek to work right alongside them, and then, no matter how honorable your present intentions, the navy will kill you for the man you were.”

Anton laughed even though he felt like something was grinding on the inside. “If that’s the way of it, then fine. I’ve already wasted too much time fighting for causes I don’t have a stake in.”

On Umara’s previous visit, Sapra had seemed sluggish with hunger. Now, the port felt frantic, echoing with the sawing, chopping, and hammering of the shipwrights and smells of the smoke and pitch that likewise figured in their labors. Men of the watch were swinging mallets, too, erecting barricades at certain key points in pessimistic but realistic anticipation of the Umberlant raiders coming ashore.

Some townsfolk nailed shutters closed in an effort to make their particular homes secure, or drilled ineptly with spears in possibly unsanctioned militia companies. Others pulled carts, pushed barrows, or carried bundles or squalling babies as they headed out of town.

Umara wondered where the latter thought they were going. If it was the half circle of farmland around Sapra, that wouldn’t be far enough. If it was the forests beyond, she doubted many of them knew how to forage or avoid natural hazards. How would they have learned when, from what she understood, the Emerald Enclave had always discouraged intruders? Sometimes, it had done so violently.

She imagined the bewildered horror of the fleeing townsfolk if the same servants of Silvanus who’d worked magic to feed them yesterday ended up slaughtering them tomorrow because they frightened a bear cub or trampled a sacred wildflower. Many a Red Wizard would have found the potential irony humorous, but she didn’t. Perhaps she’d been away from Thay too long.

“I keep thinking,” Anton muttered, “that we should have brought Stedd with us.”

Umara glanced at him. “You said the pirates won’t venture into the forests to try to take him, and the druids said they’ll kill them if they do.”

“I remember.” He detoured around one of the deeper puddles in the street. “Just as I realize neither of us knows how to nurse a sick child. I suppose that after months of first hunting the boy and then helping him, it just feels odd to walk away and leave him behind.”

“For me, too.”

“But to the deepest of the Hells with how it feels. We got the stubborn whelp to Turmish. Now, I’m going to concentrate on what I want.”

“Which is what?” she asked.

He hesitated. “A new ship, I suppose. Somehow. Put me ashore in Akanul, and I’ll figure it out.”

For a moment, she felt disappointed but didn’t know why. What had she expected him to say?

They walked on. Four men came striding in the opposite direction, and then, evidently taking note of her red cloak and robes, stepped aside into a puddle to let her and Anton pass on the higher, drier part of the cobbled street. Less intimidated or simply intent on his errand to the exclusion of all else, a boy pushing an empty barrow ran past a few breaths later, and the wheel and his pounding feet threw up water to splash her.

Though the two boys didn’t look especially alike, the incident made her think again of Stedd. She told herself she wasn’t abandoning him. He himself had said that he-or his god-wanted her to return to Thay.

Then she and Anton rounded a corner, and the pirate hesitated. Fearing someone had recognized him for the fugitive he was, she cast about to locate the threat. But no one was gaping at them, reaching for a weapon, or making a hasty retreat, and after a heartbeat, Anton simply tramped on. Now, though, he scowled and quickened his stride.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he replied.

Only somewhat reassured, she kept on studying their surroundings until she finally realized something. While none of the nearby shops and houses looked clean and new-months of unrelenting rain had torn tiles and shingles loose and flaked paint off walls-nothing looked unmistakably old, either. Which made this street different than the last one, or many another in Sapra.

“This is a part of town the demons destroyed,” she said. “Where everything had to be rebuilt.”

“Yes,” Anton said.

“And it bothers you to picture it burning again.”

“No, because I don’t let things bother me if I can’t do anything about them. And Shadowmoon, curse her, was right. The navy wouldn’t let me help defend Sapra even if I were stupid enough to volunteer. And our one ship, without an assigned role in the battle plan …” He stopped in his tracks, and his brown eyes widened.

“What?” Umara asked.

It only took him a few breaths to explain. The idea seemed cunning and madcap in equal measure. Just the sort of trick she’d expect him to devise.

She smiled. “Let’s do it.”

He blinked at her immediate acquiescence. “You’re serious?”

“Why not? We’ve seen that Evendur Highcastle can be hurt, and at least inconvenienced by having a ship sunk out from underneath him. If luck favors us, we could tip the scales.” She smiled. “Then I can go home and say, ‘No, I didn’t capture a Chosen for sacrifice. But I did stop the waveservants from becoming the dominant power on the Sea of Fallen Stars and threatening Thayan interests. That’s worth something, isn’t it?’ ”

“Will the crew be game?”

“They have been for everything up until now, and I’m still a Red Wizard. They’ll do as I command.”

Energized, Anton and Umara hurried onward. But as they neared the ramshackle collection of piers that was Sapra Harbor, and she spotted a battered fishing boat sunk to the gunwales in the shallows, it occurred to her that for all she knew, the Octopus might be in much the same condition. If so, she and the reaver would have no way of putting their plan into effect. In fact, if the Turmishan fleet lost the battle at sea, they’d be stuck on Ilighon when Evendur’s armada descended on the island.

She sighed when she saw that she needn’t have feared. Floating at its mooring, the Octopus had sustained some damage to the rigging but was essentially intact. She started down the dock.

Anton gripped her forearm. “Look at the men mending the yards and cordage,” he said.

She did and realized none of them was a sailor or marine who’d sailed with her and Kymas from Bezantur. They were strangers, clad in the green uniforms of the Turmishan navy.

“The thieves commandeered our ship!” she said.

Anton nodded. “With so many of their own disabled, I should have anticipated it.”

“What do we do?”

The pirate grinned. “The next move is fairly obvious, isn’t it? Our men must be somewhere, perhaps squatting in one of the scar pilgrim camps. We start by rounding them up while the navy kindly finishes making repairs on our behalf.”

Anton headed down the benighted pier with as little noise as possible. That was only sensible. But he resisted the urge to stay low or slip from one bit of cover to the next. Even in the rain, that would be foolish behavior for an invisible man moving through the dark. He knew because he couldn’t see any trace of Umara stealing along just a pace or two ahead of him.

She popped into view, though, at the same instant the lookout in the bow fell victim to her spell of slumber. She skulked up the gangplank, and Anton followed.

Anton crept astern and positioned himself beside the hatch leading into the captain’s cabin. Umara lifted a storm lantern down from its hook, climbed up into the bow beside the sentry she’d put to sleep, and waved the light back and forth in the air.

The signal brought the rest of the Thayans sneaking down the dock. Twenty men couldn’t do so as quietly as she and Anton had alone, but the mariners made it onto the ship with only a little noise.

In their hands were scraps of lumber, lengths of chain, and other improvised and pilfered weapons. The Turmishan sailors had confiscated their boarding pikes, cutlasses, crossbows, and such when they’d taken possession of the Octopus, and maybe it was just as well. Anton didn’t want his crew killing anybody, nor should it be necessary to achieve the current objective.

The Thayans’ clothing was different, too, but that was of their own choosing, or rather, Umara’s. She’d ordered them to discard their ragged crimson uniforms and put on whatever they could scrounge amid the current crisis. The results made them appear like a tough-looking but otherwise nondescript company of tramps, which was pretty much the desired effect.

They and Umara surrounded the hatch beneath which the rest of the Turmishans were sleeping out of the rain. The wizard murmured too softly for Anton to hear and swirled her hands in sinuous patterns. Phosphorescent green vapor billowed into existence around her fingers, most of it clinging there, a few wisps trailing as she made the mystic passes. Some of the other Thayans flinched from a stink Anton was too far away to smell, but if it bothered Umara, no one could have known. Her expression of calm concentration never waivered.

She nodded to a sailor to signal that her incantation was coming to an end. He stooped and lifted the hatch.

Umara spoke the final word and thrust her hands down at the opening. Luminous mist streamed down like the steaming breath of a dragon turtle.

Anton could imagine the noxious fog abruptly filling the hold. The putrid reek would wake the sleepers, and the cloud would blind them. Overwhelmed by nausea, many would simply lie where they were and puke. Those with stronger stomachs would struggle to reach uncontaminated air, but even they would blunder on deck coughing and retching with their eyes full of stinging tears, in no condition to withstand the foes awaiting them.

The Thayans subdued the sick men with brutal efficiency and, almost certainly, satisfaction. As they’d complained, the Turmishans had played a trick of their own to dispossess them of the Octopus without even giving them a chance to fight for her, and now they were paying them back.

Of course, they couldn’t do so altogether quietly, without the occasional outcry or crack of wood bashing somebody’s head, and suddenly, the hatch to the captain’s cabin flew open. Still invisible, Anton stuck out his foot to trip the officer when he rushed out with a sword in one hand and a buckler on the other arm.

The captain crashed down on the deck. His hands and arms reappearing in a surge from the fingertips upward, Anton moved to dive on the other man’s back, pin him, and choke him unconscious.

But his opponent, a burly man with a slab of forehead over deep-set eyes and a touch of silver in his square-cut beard, wrenched himself around and slashed. Anton just managed to jerk to a stop in time to keep the sword from slicing his belly.

No one was that fast without magical assistance. The swordsman must have drunk an elixir or recited a charm before coming through the hatch.

Anton stepped back and reached for the hilt of his saber. His opponent started to scramble to his feet. Anton rushed him.

The move startled the Turmishan captain and made him falter for half an instant. Then he tried to put his point in line.

By then, though, Anton was already safely inside his reach. He plowed into his adversary, bore him down beneath him, and made sure the back of the bearded man’s head hit the deck hard. The impact slowed the naval officer down but didn’t stop him struggling. Using the heel of his hand, Anton hit him in the nose, smashing it flat and banging his head against the deck again, and that knocked him unconscious.

Panting, the pirate turned and looked toward the bow. The Thayans were just finishing up the task of subduing any sailor who’d made it out of the hold.

That left the incapacitated men still below, who’d recover quickly as soon as the foul vapor dissipated. Hoping to deny them the opportunity, Anton had instructed the Thayans to attack as soon as the glow of the mist winked out, and he himself was the first man to leap down the hatch.

There was just enough light left to reveal a pair of figures rushing him with blades. He swayed back to avoid a slash to the head and parried a thrust to the chest with his cutlass, a better weapon than a saber for tight quarters like these.

He bellowed, rushed the Turmishan sailors, and made cut after furious cut. He needed to drive them backward and clear the space under the hatch so the Thayans could start dropping after him.

The sailors gave ground for a moment, then pushed back. The one on the left tried a thrust to the face. Anton slipped the attack, stepped in, and hammered the cutlass’s guard into his assailant’s jaw.

The remaining Turmishan cut at the pirate’s flank. Anton pivoted and swung the cutlass down just in time to parry. Then a Thayan smashed his foe over the head with a piece of board.

From that point onward, it was easy. Superior numbers overwhelmed the one or two other Turmishans who’d recovered sufficiently to fight.

Afterward, still hurrying, some of the Thayans hauled up the gangplank or manned the halyards to ready the Octopus to set sail. Others bound and gagged the prisoners, whom they’d put ashore or set adrift when they had an opportunity.

Watching the latter operation, Umara shook her head. “It would have been easier just to kill them.”

Anton chuckled. “I was just thinking the same thing. But Stedd wouldn’t have approved.”