The Reaver

CHAPTER SEVEN

Anton fell to the deck unconscious, and Umara looked down at him with a knot of emotions pulling tight in her chest. She couldn’t untangle them all, but she did know she was angry.

Why did you make me do that? she silently asked. Why were you such an idiot?

Kymas gave her a sardonic look. “That was marginally helpful,” he said, “but if I’d been in the mood to brawl, I could have broken free at any time. Why didn’t you cast something a bit more lethal?”

Because she herself wasn’t sure, she made up a lie that ought to satisfy him: “I expended much of my power aboard the pirate ship and nearly all the rest when you and I were fighting the Chosen of Umberlee. I don’t have any lethal spells left.”

“Hm. Well, perhaps it worked out for the best.” The vampire turned to Ehmed Sepandem. “Now that the wizards have attended to all the difficult and dangerous tasks, maybe your men could at least muster the wherewithal to carry our two prisoners down to the lower oars.”

“Yes, lord,” the captain said.

When they all arrived there, Kymas had the mariners drag Stedd to the center of the rowing benches and bind him hand and foot. Then the vampire retrieved a skull-shaped medallion made of black metal from the bilge water and hung it around the boy’s neck. Umara could see Stedd straining to resist the talisman’s influence, but he quickly lapsed into a sort of twitching, shivering trance state nonetheless.

Kymas then glanced around at the zombies. The attack on the galley had so thoroughly battered a couple of the creatures as to rob them of animation. Others had suffered broken bones that would hinder them as they sought to row.

“Put our new guest behind an oar,” Kymas said. “He can take up some of the slack.”

“Yes, lord,” said a marine. “Uh, should I kill him? So you can make him like these other things?”

“No,” Kymas said, “just lock him down, and chain his hands to the oar while you’re at it. He can work himself to death here in the dark and the stink with the magic of the amulet gnawing away at him. It will give him the opportunity to reflect on his insolence.”

Umara watched the marines carry out their master’s instructions. Until, surprising herself, she blurted, “Is this truly necessary?”

Kymas regarded her quizzically. “The wretch didn’t just argue with me. He insulted and threatened me. I see no reason to grant him the mercy of a quick death.”

She took a breath. “I was thinking, must we kill him at all? I recognize his transgressions, but I also see that if not for him, we might neither of us be alive or have Lathander’s Chosen in our possession. Doesn’t it-”

“Balance the scales?” Kymas shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you, Red Wizard. What a very un-Thayan way to think.

“The lowly owe the high respect and obedience,” the vampire continued, “whereas the high don’t owe the lowly anything at all. Certainly not fairness, whatever that weakling’s notion actually means.”

Umara realized she’d pushed as hard as she dared. Bowing her head, she said, “Yes, Master. I understand.”

“I hope so. Let’s get out of here.”

Back on deck, Kymas strode briskly toward the cabin under the quarterdeck, but not quite briskly enough. Suddenly, wisps of smoke puffed from his hands and face, and, sizzling, patches of alabaster skin charred black. His protective charm was failing, and despite the clouds and the rain, the light of the hidden sun was burning him.

He sprinted toward the stern, dodged through the wreckage of the fallen masts, threw open the hatch to his cabin, scrambled inside, and slammed it shut behind him. Umara scurried after him, hesitated, then rapped on a detail of the naval battle carved into the panel, a warship stuffed from prow to stern with spearmen.

“Come in,” he said, the hint of an edge in his cultured voice. “The screen is in position to block the light.”

It was, and by the time she stepped around it, his burns were already healing. “I’m glad you’re all right,” she said.

“You should be,” he replied, “considering that it was your foolishness that delayed me below deck.”

“I apologize.”

“The principle I just explained to you-that I shouldn’t have needed to explain-applies at every point up and down the great long ladder that is the world. It applies every bit as much between you and me as it does between your Turmishan friend and me.”

“I know that, lord.”

“Then come ‘apologize’ with your blood.”

As he bared her neck, he murmured, “I know you dislike this. I’ve always known. Do you know why I don’t change your loathing to pleasure?”

She hesitated. “Because a Red Wizard needs to learn to endure that which is difficult?”

“Well, yes, partly. But mostly because your aversion increases the pleasure for me.”

Anton gathered that he must, in his own bellicose and imbecilic fashion, have impressed the Thayans, for they hadn’t contented themselves with chaining down his feet. They’d also looped a set of manacles around his oar before locking them on his wrists, a hindrance that prevented him from reaching the narrow blade hidden in his boot.

The manacles clinked every time he and his zombie benchmate with the skin sloughing off its grub-infested arms and torso hauled on their oar. After a while, he’d realized he was croaking out his reminiscences, tall tales, and sea shanties in time to the beat.

“So the sea giant said, ‘If that’s the Pool of Love, why does it bubble and smoke?’ And I said …”

Curse it, what had the clever original hero of the story said to convince the wicked giant to dive into the lava? Anton’s mother had told him the tale dozens of times, but now he couldn’t remember.

Blame exhaustion, the fetid air, or the debilitating aura of the skull medallion. Perhaps because Anton wasn’t currently attempting to remove the amulet from around Stedd’s neck, the effect wasn’t hitting him as hard, but he could still feel it in his body and mind alike.

He wracked his brain for several pulls on the oar, then gave up and started a new story. “You may have noticed that unlike many another pirate-or all these Thayans-I don’t have any tattoos. But I used to. I was covered from the neck down. And this is the story of how I lost them.

“The Iron Jest,” he continued, “had been through a storm so terrible it left every sail in tatters. If we didn’t mend them, we’d never make port. But when we checked the ship’s stores, we discovered we’d forgotten to stow any thread.

“So I took my dagger and picked at a bit of the tattooing on my left big toe until I dug the end of a line of ink out of my skin. Then I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger and started pulling very carefully.”

“What?” Stedd mumbled.

Anton grinned. He’d talked and sung his throat raw in an effort to rouse the boy despite the power of the skull talisman, but he’d nearly given up hope of it working.

“Never mind,” he said. “Just wake all the way up. But don’t squirm around.”

He didn’t want the overseer of the lower tier to realize Stedd was awake. Fortunately, the Thayan had already proved to be a lackadaisical supervisor, happy to stay by the companionway outside the aura of the amulet so long as Anton kept rowing. And if the pirate and the boy prophet kept their voices low, the creak of the oars should cover the sound of their conversation.

Stedd’s eyes fluttered open. “I’m sick …”

“You’re exhausted and wearing that filthy skull again. But you have to raise the power to free yourself.”

Stedd grimaced. “I don’t think I can. Not like this. It’s just too much.”

There was a demoralizing certainty in the lad’s voice, but Anton struggled to keep any hint of defeatism out of his own. “Surely not too much for the fighter who destroyed Evendur Highcastle.”

“I didn’t destroy him. He’d already used up a lot of his own strength, and you and the wizards had already hurt him some. So I was able to hurt him more. Enough to chase him off. But that was all.”

“If we’re not done with him, that’s all the more reason for you to get us free.”

“All right, I’ll try.” The boy stared at the planking over their heads as though hoping by sheer force of will to peer through it to the sky beyond. His lips moved as he whispered his entreaties. But Anton couldn’t see anything happening in response, not even the faintest, briefest flicker of conjured light, and finally Stedd said, “I’m sorry.”

Anton sighed. “So am I.”

“But this isn’t the end. As long as we don’t give up, we’ll find a way.”

A muscle in the Turmishan’s back gave him a twinge and made him suck in a breath. “Boy, I don’t give up. Ever. But I don’t care if you are Chosen, whatever that really means; you need to get over thinking that destiny or some friendly god is going to make everything come out all right. That’s not how the world works.”

“I don’t think that. Not exactly. But-”

“Show me the divine hand manifest in what’s happened to you so far. Everybody lied and betrayed everybody else. Everyone wanted to kill you or peddle you to those who would. It’s not exactly the sort of inspirational fable the priests like to tell. It’s what that dastard Kymas called it: a farce. A bloody, random comedy of errors.”

“Everything is different than I thought it would be, back when Lathander first spoke to me. I’m scared a lot of the time. But I need to go east, and you know what? I am. You took me part of the way, and the Thayans are taking me farther.”

Anton frowned. He hadn’t looked at the situation like that. Probably because it was a ridiculous perspective.

“It’s not going to help you,” he said, “that Thay just happens to lie at the eastern end of the Inner Sea. You won’t even lay eyes on Sapra as the galley sails on by.”

“Maybe. But it isn’t true that nobody’s really my friend. There were Questele and the other Moonstars, and now there’s you.”

“By the fork, mooncalf, haven’t you figured me out even now? I didn’t sneak into the House of the Sun or chase after the galley to rescue you. The sordid truth is, I never stopped intending to sell you to Evendur. It was just another droll twist in the plot of the farce that put him and me on opposite sides today.”

“I did figure that out,” Stedd answered, “and I don’t like it. But then you tried to help me when the Red Wizard said he was going to hang the skull on me again.”

“And I have no idea why. But you can rest assured that if I had the moment to live over again, I’d cheerfully drop the chain over your head myself.”

“I don’t believe that. Why do you want to be bad? You try so hard that when a good feeling pushes you to do something, you don’t even see that’s the reason why.”

Inwardly, Anton flinched. “Has your Morninglord been telling you the alleged secrets of my innermost heart?”

“No. It doesn’t work like that. But sometimes I understand things I wouldn’t have before.”

“Well, this isn’t one of those occasions. I don’t have to try to be bad. I am bad, and I have a string of outrages and atrocities to prove it.”

“That doesn’t mean-”

“Enough prattle! Pray. Meditate. Find some magic to set us free.”

Lying in filthy bilge water, Stedd presumably resumed trying to do precisely that, albeit, to no more effect than before. At least the absence of twitching and jerking provided reassurance that he hadn’t slipped back into nightmare-ridden delirium.

Meanwhile, Anton felt pains flower throughout his body. He was strong and fit but lacked the calluses and specially developed musculature of a galley slave, and he was paying for it. The ordeal would have been even more taxing if he hadn’t figured out how to let his putrescent but indefatigable benchmate do more than its fair share of the labor. Unfortunately, he couldn’t let the zombie do too much more than half, lest the overseer take notice.

In time, Anton also learned that even with the sun hidden behind the rainclouds, he could guess the passage of time by the way the feeble daylight shined through the outriggers. Thus, he judged it was late afternoon when, robed in scarlet and magenta, her head newly shaved, her cheek bruised where he’d pinched it, Umara descended the companionway.

“Be quiet and keep still,” Anton whispered. He suspected the wizard intended a closer inspection than any the overseer had made of late, and he didn’t want Stedd to give himself away.

Somewhat to the pirate’s surprise, Umara gave the Thayan mariner permission to vacate his post for a while, and the man clomped up the steep shallow steps. Then the mage headed down the central aisle.

She gazed down at Stedd with a somber expression that hinted at regret, but her jaw tightened as she stepped around him to reach Anton. She backhanded the reaver across the face; her rings tore his cheek.

“Idiot!” she snarled.

For some reason, Anton could only laugh, even though it made his sundry aches hurt worse. “Is that how Thayans apologize?”

“I have nothing to apologize for!”

“No,” he said, “you don’t.” Deciding she likely wouldn’t object if he let the zombie do all the rowing, he uncurled his raw fingers from the oar. Even that hurt; they didn’t want to straighten out.

“What possessed you to defy a Red Wizard and a squad of marines standing ready to assist him?”

“I relish a challenge? It seemed like a shrewd idea at the time? Truly, I can’t explain the impulse. Some passing madness, I suppose.”

“And now you have to die for it.”

“Are you here to do the honors?”

She scowled as though he’d bruised her feelings. “Kymas doesn’t mean to let you off that easily.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised. Why did you come, then?”

She reached into a concealed pocket and brought out a little silver flask. When she offered it, he drank without hesitation, for after all, who would waste poison on a man in his situation?

The liquid burned like some unfamiliar sweetish liquor, but its analgesic properties took effect far more quickly than that of alcohol alone. One mouthful made Anton’s assortment of pains dwindle significantly.

Umara reclaimed the flask and screwed the cap back on. “You won’t wake up stiff, either.”

“You mean they’re eventually going to let me rest? I’d just about concluded your crew can’t repair the rigging to raise a sail.”

“They can’t. In fact, Evendur Highcastle crippled the galley in several ways. We lost one of the side tillers, and we’re taking on water as fast as we can pump it out. Captain Sepandem plans to limp to the coast and, if possible, find a shipyard and put in for repairs. If it’s not possible, we’ll continue our journey on land.”

“Through the wilds of Gulthandor? That should be entertaining. Perhaps Lord Kymas will let me tag along as a porter.”

Umara put away the flask and produced a split biscuit with a slice of fried fish in the middle. The aroma flooded Anton’s mouth with saliva, and he took the food and gobbled it down. The bread was stale and hard, and the fish cold and greasy, but he was too hungry for it to matter.

“That was all I could bring,” the wizard said.

“I’m sure it was tastier than whatever scraps my keeper will eventually toss my way.”

“And it’s all I can do for you.”

“It’s more than I expected.”

“I mean it. I won’t be back. Not like this. My duty is my duty, my path is my path, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Truly, I understand. You have a respectable place among your people. Ambitions, too, I imagine. You can’t just throw them away.”

“No,” she said, “I can’t.” She looked at him for another moment, then turned away.

Stedd said, “Wait!”

Startled, Umara gaped down at the boy, and Anton felt an impotent urge to grab him and smack him. Didn’t the empty-headed child realize that the possibility of him eventually channeling more magic, however remote that possibility might be, was the best chance they had? And he’d just thrown it away.

“You’re conscious,” Umara said.

“Yes.” Stedd tried to sit up despite the impediment of his bonds.

After a moment, Umara helped him lift his upper body out of the bilge water and settled him against the end of a bench. “How?” she asked.

“Anton talked to me to help me wake up. And maybe I’m getting used to the skull. I mean, just a little. I can’t reach out to Lathander, so don’t worry about that.”

“Then why reveal you’re awake?” the wizard asked.

“So I can talk to you,” Stedd replied. “You and Anton are just alike. He thinks he has to be bad. You think you have to be what you are. But you don’t. You can change.”

Umara sighed. “You’re a bright boy, Stedd. I could tell the moment I met you. But you’re talking about things a child can’t understand.”

“You’re wrong. Even with the skull around my neck, I still see things.”

She hesitated. “Like what?”

“Like, you don’t even want to go where you’re going. Not really. You like magic, but hardly anything else about your life.”

“So I should throw it all away to help you? No. I’m not a traitor.”

“Lathander doesn’t want you to be. He wants you to make your country better.”

Umara blinked. “What, now?”

Even in the gloom, Stedd’s blue eyes seemed to shine. “It’s … you’re right. I don’t understand everything. How could I, when I’ve never even been to your land? But it’s like there are two Thays. A real one, and one you dream about.”

“I don’t dream about it. Like any educated person, I know that a hundred years ago, Thay was different. But I’m not obsessed with the past. I’m getting on with my life.”

“Anything that changed once can change again. There’s a new dawn every day, even when people can’t see it behind the clouds.”

“That may be, but it’s ridiculous to tell me to go change Thay. I’m one person!”

“You can’t do it all yourself, but you can be part of it. Maybe a big part. Only, not if you just keep doing what you’re told no matter how low or mean it is. You have to start listening to your heart. Then Lathander can help you.”

Umara snorted. “Why would he? The old Thay, the Thay you imagine I’d want to restore, was his enemy.”

“But it was still better than the land you have now. And if it came back, maybe it could get better still.”

The Red Wizard stood silent for a breath or two, then shook her head. “It was a good try, child. But some lies are just too absurd for anyone to believe.”

Stedd frowned up at her. “I don’t lie. That’s the two of you.”

“Well, I’m truly sorry I ever deceived you, and sorrier still for what’s coming. But I can’t do anything about it.” She turned and waded back up the aisle with her scarlet robes dragging in the bilge water.

As she disappeared up the companionway, Anton said, “It was a good try, but also a rotten choice of tactics. There was never any hope of persuading her.”

“I guess,” Stedd said, and now he simply seemed like a sad, tired little boy, without even a hint of divine inspiration in his manner. “At least she didn’t make me go back to sleep.”

Frowning, Anton realized that was true, she hadn’t, and for a while, he wondered if Stedd’s plea actually might have struck a chord with Umara. But as he toiled through the night and into the following day, exhaustion made every pull on the oar a torment, and the power of the skull medallion scraped away at his manhood and obliged him to struggle against recurring urges to weep and beg the overseer for mercy, he decided it plainly hadn’t.

But then, when it was afternoon once more, the mariner abruptly slumped, slid off the little seat built into the corner, and started snoring. And a moment later, Umara descended the steps with Anton’s saber and a cutlass tucked under her arm.

She plucked an iron key from the overseer’s belt and hurried down the aisle. She then pulled the chain from around Stedd’s neck, flung it away like Anton had, and unlocked the Turmishan’s manacles.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she growled.

Anton grinned. “Blame the lad. Clearly, his greatest magic is the ability to rob folk of their common sense.”

Evendur floated in the endless green waters of Umberlee’s otherworldly ocean. Enormous eels and sawsharks came swimming to inspect him.

He didn’t recall passing from one level of reality to another to reach waters that would douse Lathander’s burning light and help him recover his strength. Maybe he’d done it instinctively. But it was also possible the Queen of the Depths had drawn him here, and not for healing but for judgment.

Suddenly, she came swimming out of nowhere-or rather, out of another hidden doorway from one place to another-with gigantic great whites, krakens, jellyfish, and sea dragons swimming in attendance. Huge and terrible as the apparition that had risen from the pool in the temple had been, it barely hinted at the awful majesty of the goddess in her latest form, the trident tall as a tower in one clawed and scaly hand, the least of the shells that made up her jewelry as big as wagon wheels, and her mane of kelp and gelatinous cloak streaming and swirling around her. Evendur felt like a speck of plankton drifting in front of a whale.

As in the temple, he struggled against the urge to plead that if the goddess would only give him the chance to finish his task, he could still capture the boy. In all likelihood, excuses and assurances would only anger her further, and in truth, for the fearful part of him that a man kept hidden from the world, it was easier to remain silent in the face of her transcendent malice and disgust.

A colossal shark glided closer to him and opened its jaws. Umberlee’s eyes followed it. They were like immense black pearls, yet at the same time, whirlpools spinning down into annihilation.

Evendur steeled himself against the terror howling inside him. He meant to perish without letting it out. That, it seemed, was the only thing left to him.

Then, however, the shark veered off just before its toothy maw would otherwise have engulfed him. Had Umberlee really only ever meant to scare him? Or, at the final instant, had his display of courage blunted her fury? He had no way of knowing, nor, at this moment of reprieve, did he care.

“I made you my vessel,” the Bitch Queen said. “You are the fangs that tear, the jaws that clamp, the tentacles that snare and sting. Yet a child bested you. Fail again, and you will pray to me through endless eons to send a hungry beast to end your suffering.”

With that, she wheeled, and her monstrous entourage turned with her. The flukes of her scaly mermaid tail were as long as many a city street, and when she swept them downward, the motion created a surge that tumbled Evendur through the water.

Umara gave Anton the key, the saber and cutlass, and the silver flask containing what remained of the analgesic elixir. As he bent to unlock his leg irons, she drew her dagger and crouched down in the bilge water to cut Stedd’s bonds, while the reeking zombies rowed obliviously onward.

By the time she finished freeing the boy and helping him to his feet, Anton was rising, also. She frowned to see that despite drinking what remained of the elixir, he had difficulty straightening all the way up and flexing his fingers with their broken blisters.

He gave her a crooked smile. “If my condition distresses you, you should have come to your change of heart sooner. Or brought another dram of potion. You didn’t, did you?”

She shook her head. “There wasn’t any more.”

“Well, I’ll be all right.” The pirate drew his saber and cut at the air. “Once I move around enough to work the kinks out. What’s the plan?”

“One that I hope won’t even require you to fight. Kymas is a vampire-”

“Oh, splendid!”

“I hope that for us, it will be. It’s afternoon. He ought to be sound asleep in his coffin. I’m going to stab a stake through his heart and then cut his head off.”

“And afterward, the crew won’t think anything about it?”

“Afterward, I’ll be the only Red Wizard left aboard.” She smiled. “And where I come from, killing one’s superior is an acknowledged way of climbing the ‘great long ladder.’ ”

Anton smiled back. “It’s reassuring that you actually aren’t doing this because the boy’s blather drove you insane or, worse, moral.”

“Hey!” said Stedd.

Anton stayed focused on Umara. “Make me invisible again and I can come with you.”

“I thought of that, but no. For pure sneaking, one is better than two even if the second sneak is veiled in magic.”

“I suppose. Especially in the rain. Then what do you want me to do while you’re busy staking and beheading?”

“Just stay here. It will be as safe as anywhere. Come running if you hear a commotion. Or, if you see that it’s too late to help me, do whatever you can for yourself and Stedd.”

“All right. Good hunting. And thank you.”

“Thank me when it’s done.” She gave Stedd a smile, squeezed his shoulder, and headed for the companionway.

Her heart pounded as she stepped back up into the rain, agitated by the irrational fear that somehow, all the sailors and marines would perceive she’d just gone from being Kymas’s faithful lieutenant to his would-be murderer. But no one gave her a second glance.

She took a deep breath, looked around, and found Ehmed glowering at the crewmen laboring to repair the damaged side tiller. She beckoned to him as she approached, and he strode to meet her.

“Lady Sir,” he said, “how can I serve you?”

“You know,” she said, “what manner of being Lord Kymas is. So you know that unless he works magic to transcend his normal limits, he sleeps-and sleeps deeply-during the day.”

“If you say so. You’re the mage. You understand the nature of … of gentlemen like that better than I do.”

“I also understand,” Umara said, “why under normal circumstances, Lord Kymas prefers to keep his precise resting place a secret even from me. But unfortunately, our situation isn’t normal anymore. The ship could go down at any time.”

Ehmed frowned. “The men and I will get you to shore.”

“I believe you will if anyone can. Still, if we do sink, Kymas may well require my magic to save him. So I need you to tell me where his coffin is.”

The captain cocked his head. “How would I know?”

“Because it’s your galley. You must know where the secret compartment is.”

“I would if there was one, but there isn’t. I never saw a coffin come aboard, but I figured it was in my … I mean, in his cabin. Haven’t you seen it there?”

“No.” Nor could she imagine how he could have fit such a large object in amid all the clutter. “But you know what? I’m fussing over nothing. We aren’t going to sink, certainly not before nightfall, and when Kymas wakes, I’ll ask him where the box is.”

“That makes sense to me, Lady Sir.” Ehmed paused. “Is there anything else?”

“No, Captain, thank you.”

“Then I’d better get back to directing the men.”

Ehmed returned to the damaged tiller, and she made her way past a pair of mariners working a pump and followed the hose down into the cargo hold aft of the lower banks of oars. Despite the pump team’s dogged efforts, water sloshed around her feet and partway up her calves.

She was now underneath Kymas’s cabin, and she could imagine him retiring there at daybreak, then changing to mist and passing through some tiny opening down to this space, where his coffin actually resided. But when she whispered a charm and set a patch of bulkhead alight, she didn’t see it.

That didn’t actually surprise her. If the box was down here, it was surely either invisible or wrapped in illusion. She murmured a counterspell to strip such concealments away.

Nothing changed.

It was possible she simply hadn’t mustered the force necessary to disrupt the original enchantment, but she doubted it. Kymas was the more powerful wizard overall, but she fancied herself his equal at casting and penetrating veils.

If he wasn’t down here, he must actually be in the cabin. Somehow.

She climbed back topside and headed for the carved hatch under the still-drooping awning. No one would suspect anything amiss if she passed through readily. But if somebody noticed her having difficulty, he might realize she was entering without permission.

She turned the handle and pulled. The hatch shifted minutely, then caught in the frame.

So she whispered a word of opening. The lock clicked, and the hatch hitched open. She slipped inside and closed it behind her.

The magical candles and torches were still burning as they would for centuries unless some spellcaster went to the trouble to extinguish them. The greenish light gleamed on the rack of staves, Ehmed’s suit of half plate on its stand, the little metal automaton, currently draped motionless atop the sea chest as it awaited a new command, and all the rest of the jumbled articles Umara had seen on previous visits. Rainwater dripped through a pair of new leaks in the timbers overhead.

Umara recited the same spell of revelation she’d cast in the hold, and with the same lack of results. Nothing hitherto unseen popped into view, and everything that had already been visible remained as it was.

Yet, she reflected, scowling, if the coffin was here, wizardry had to be hiding it somehow. Whirling her hands in spiral patterns, her fingertips trailing crimson phosphorescence, she recited a spell intended to indicate the presence of any sort of magic.

In response, the entire cabin seemed to glow with rainbow colors, because so many of the articles before her bore enchantments. Kymas must have enchanted nearly every item he’d brought on the journey-or had some underling attend to the chore-at least in one petty fashion or another, and even the evicted Ehmed had left a couple magical belongings behind. There was simply no way to pick out the spell concealing the coffin from all the others.

Umara wondered how much time remained before sundown. Not much, she suspected. Perhaps not much at all.

She started picking through the articles in the cabin, examining the cramped space by feel as well as sight. Her mouth was dry, and her pulse quickened. The jangling tautness in her nerves demanded that she rush, but she forced herself to remain methodical.

Yet even so, she nearly passed over the oblong carnelian box on one of the built-in shelves. She was already turning away when it struck her how exactly it resembled a certain type of Thayan sarcophagus.

She found that she couldn’t simply lift the lid and look inside. A ward was holding it in place, and she’d have to disrupt it. But as she drew breath to do so, she was already certain what she’d find.

Magic could change the size of a person or object. To a shapeshifter like a vampire, such spells likely came easily, and she was glad of it. She liked the thought of her proud master perishing while shrunk to the size of a doll.

Metal clinked, and then something bumped between her shoulder blades and clung there, yanking her cowl off her head as it scrabbled for purchase. A shrill brassy tone like the blare of a glaur horn jabbed into her ears.

Startled, she faltered, and something sharp stabbed into the skin on the left side of her neck. An instant later, a little hinged arm of red and black metal whipped around the right side of her head, and tiny fingers with needle points clawed at her eye. She flinched away, and they tore her cheek instead.

She reached behind her and yanked her small attacker from its perch. She felt a twinge as its fingers pulled free of her neck and hoped she hadn’t just ripped her own skin too badly.

Grunting, she threw her assailant against the screen in front of the hatch. Still emitting the brassy wail, it fell with a clatter and then rolled to its feet.

As she’d realized as soon as she saw its arm, it was Kymas’s little metal golem. It hadn’t been inert after all. It had been surreptitiously standing watch and sprung into action when she touched the shrunken stone coffin.

The automaton poised its hands to claw and grab, flexed its knees, and sprang upward. She backhanded it and knocked it flying into the rack of staves.

Once again, the metal puppet scrambled up as soon as it fit the floor, but this time, she was ready for it. Backing away to the minimal extent the close quarters allowed, she rattled off words of wrath and thrust out her arm. Her fingertips throbbed, and darts of blue light shot out of them to pierce her attacker and tear it to shreds. The blaring died.

She felt a surge of satisfaction. Then other fingers, full-size this time, grabbed her from behind and threw her face first into the screen. The collision made it fall back into the hatch and then crash to the floor. She fell right along with it.

She was half stunned, but instinct made her flounder over into a sitting position to face the new threat. No doubt roused by the racket the marionette had made, Kymas loomed over her. She thought dazedly that she was sorry she’d missed seeing him emerge from the coffin and grow to normal size. That would have been interesting.

“I can respect the desire to eliminate me,” he said, exposing fangs that had already extended, “but not your judgment. You should have waited until you were stronger.” He stooped and reached for her.

She was certain that no attack she could cast in the instant remaining would stop him. Investing it with every iota of willpower she could muster, she screamed the word of opening instead.

With a crash, the hatch flew open. Banging, the storm covers did, too. Gray daylight shined through the openings, and Kymas’s hairless head and alabaster hands burst into flame.

The vampire roared and flailed. Umara snatched for the stake concealed in her robe. If she could stab it into his heart, that would be the end of him.

But despite the fiery agony he was suffering, Kymas caught the stake in mid-thrust. He jerked it away from her, reversed it, and swept it down at her.

She flung herself to the side, and the stake made a cracking sound as the point slammed against the floor. She scrambled out onto the deck before he could try again.

The hatch slammed shut behind her, and with a ragged clattering, the storm covers did the same. Kymas apparently possessed a charm of closing as potent as her word of opening.

Umara knew what would happen next. The blaze consuming the vampire’s substance would gutter out. He’d shield himself against the sunlight and perhaps take another moment to start healing his burns. Then he’d come after her.

The sailors had heard the racket in the cabin, witnessed her frantic, scuttling withdrawal, and now they were gaping at her. She drew herself up straight and attempted to cloak herself in the haughty aura of command proper to a Red Wizard.

“Kymas,” she shouted, “is a traitor and means to kill us all. When he comes out, attack him!”

She couldn’t tell if anyone believed her or meant to obey, nor did she have time for persuasion. She raised her hands to conjure a blast of fire, spoke the first crackling word of the incantation, and then realized that any magic that further damaged the already crippled galley might result in her death even if Kymas’s retribution didn’t.

Anton, she decided, had been right. Stedd really had robbed her of every trace of sense.

Despite the rain pattering on the deck overhead, Anton heard a brassy note cutting through the air. Next came banging, and then the sound of Umara shouting.

Stedd asked, “What was she saying?”

“I couldn’t make the words out, either, but she told us to consider noise the call to battle. Can you blast Kymas the way you blasted Evendur? Or work any magic to hurt him or slow him down?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet.”

“Then keep hiding. If neither Umara nor I come back for you … well, you’ll have to think of something.”

With that, Anton climbed the companionway. He half expected crewmen to start shouting and rush him the moment he slipped up onto the desk, but they didn’t. Everyone was busy staring at the galley’s stern-

— where Kymas Nahpret stood casting about with the carved hatch to his cabin standing ajar behind him. The vampire had charred patches on his ivory face and hands but the failing, feeble light of an overcast dusk wasn’t inflicting any new burns. He must have shielded himself against the sun.

Unlike those who served him, Kymas oriented on Anton immediately. The undead mage stared, and despite the intervening distance, the pirate felt a surge of lightheadedness. He couldn’t remember why everything had seemed so dangerous and urgent just a moment before.

Then crimson light rippled over the vampire’s body. Above and behind him on the quarterdeck, Umara appeared with her hand outstretched. She’d breached her invisibility by making a mystical attack.

Unfortunately, the spell didn’t appear to have harmed Kymas, but it did make him whirl in Umara’s direction. When he did, Anton’s head cleared.

The Turmishan drew his blades and charged down the strip of deck that ran between the upper banks of oars. Now lashed in place, the fallen mainmast took up part of the walkway.

Anton’s dash snagged the attention of some of the Thayan mariners, distracted though they were. A couple oarsmen-two of the ones who were still alive instead of zombies-started to scramble up from the benches onto the deck with the manifest intention of blocking the way. But then someone called, “Belay that!” Whereupon the rowers faltered.

Meanwhile, the capacious sleeves and voluminous folds of his robe billowing like the wings of a huge red bat, Kymas sprang from the main deck onto the quarterdeck. The crewmen who’d been adjusting the stern rudder recoiled.

So did Umara. But when Kymas plunged down on top of her, she vanished.

A heartbeat later, a second Umara appeared in front of the drooping awning and the entrance to the vampire’s cabin. She too had her hand outstretched, and with a crackle, a twist of lightning leaped from it to burn into Kymas’s back. The vampire shuddered.

Anton grinned. By combining illusion and invisibility, Umara had kept the other Red Wizard from attacking her for a critical moment. Better, she’d maneuvered him to a place where she could smite him with a powerful destructive spell without risking further damage to their already leaking, floundering ship.

But neat as the trick was, it didn’t end the fight. When the spear of lightning winked out of existence, Kymas spun around toward Umara, snarled words in the innately repellent conjuring language Anton had heard him use before, and slapped at the air.

Seething into view, already in motion as it emerged from nothingness, a disembodied hand as long as a man was tall and seemingly made of shadow slapped at Umara. She jerked backward and avoided the blow but nearly pitched herself overboard in the process.

Her murky attacker instantly reversed direction for a backhand swipe. Meanwhile, an orb of gray-black crystal appeared in Kymas’s fingers, and he brandished it over his head as he started another incantation. Distorted faces appeared, stretched, and split into new visages inside the dark but gleaming sphere.

Flanking the entrance to the cabin and the strip of sagging sailcloth that shaded it, two companionways ran up to the quarterdeck. Umara was in front of the one to starboard, so Kymas was looking in that direction. Hoping to avoid notice, Anton sprinted for the larboard steps.

But to his disappointment, though not his surprise, the undead wizard pivoted in his direction, shouted a word of power, and stamped his foot. The cry became a roar loud enough to jab pain into Anton’s ears and jolt through the larboard half of the quarterdeck and the steps the pirate ascended.

Staggered, he felt the risers breaking apart under his feet. In another moment, they’d give way, and he’d fall, perhaps over the side. He made one more bounding, ascending stride, leaped, and landed teetering on the very edge of the ragged hole his foe had just torn in the planking above his cabin.

Anton windmilled his arms and the blades in his hands, caught his balance, stepped to safety, and then, as he came on guard, shot Kymas a grin. “That was foolish,” he said. “Now it’s going to rain in on all your things.”

“It truly is sad,” the vampire replied, “that you didn’t know your place.” The crystal orb vanished, he held out his hand, and a red staff flew up out of the hole in the deck and slapped into his palm. Taking it in his other hand as well, he shifted into a trained staff fighter’s middle guard and shuffled forward.

When facing a staff fighter, Anton liked to cut at his adversary’s fingers. Taking care not to look into the vampire’s eyes, he advanced and feinted low. As he’d hoped, the staff snapped down to block, and then he made the true attack, a slash at Kymas’s right hand.

An instant before the saber would have sheared flesh and bone, Kymas’s extremity burst into mist. Striking right through the gray vapor, the blade rebounded from the staff. Spinning his weapon one-handed, the Red Wizard caught the saber in a bind and nearly tore it from Anton’s grasp before he could twirl it free.

At once, Kymas snapped the staff at Anton’s head. Anton parried with the cutlass, and though he knew by a telltale glimmer deep in the steel and the light, somehow eager feel of the weapon that it too was enchanted, the impact still jolted his arm to the shoulder. Plainly, the vampire had extraordinary strength and skill to match; otherwise, he couldn’t have wielded a staff to such vicious effect with two hands, let alone one.

That was unfortunate. So were most aspects of this situation, including Anton’s physical condition. He’d promised Umara he could fight if need be, and in fact, at the moment, energized by combat, he felt more or less like himself. But it was likely he wasn’t moving as quickly or surely as he would in better circumstances, and likelier still that he’d tire soon.

Still, he thought, I’m not pulling an oar or breathing zombie stink, so why am I complaining?

He tried to hook the staff with the cutlass and yank it aside to clear the way for a saber cut to the chest. Both hands solid and gripping his weapon again, Kymas stepped back just far enough for the cutlass to fall short, then clubbed at Anton’s forearm with a stroke that would surely have shattered bone if the pirate hadn’t evaded in his turn.

They traded attacks for the next several heartbeats, neither quite managing to penetrate the other’s defense. Anton was too busy fighting, avoiding Kymas’s gaze, and trying not to step in the hole to spare a glance to see how Umara was faring. He could only hope she was still alive. Or rather, he hoped she’d destroyed the shadow hand and was about to strike Kymas with another spell.

The vampire whispered words that made wood creak, crack, and crunch all around him although that was apparently incidental to the incantation’s actual purpose. Hoping to at least spoil the casting, Anton rushed in and cut to the head. Kymas parried and nearly knocked the saber out of his hand.

As Anton fumbled to recover a firm hold on the hilt, Kymas hissed the final word of his spell. Likewise hissing, only louder, a scaly length of flesh burst out of the wizard’s abdomen and through the scarlet folds of his robes. Eyeless, it spread its fanged jaws wide and struck at the man in front of it.

Caught by surprise, Anton just managed a thrust with the cutlass. The short blade stabbed into the pallid roof of the tentacle snake’s mouth.

The thing’s jaws snapped shut anyway, and only the cutlass’s curved brass guard kept its fangs out of Anton’s hand. The violent action in defiance of the weapon drove the blade deeper, and the bloody point popped out of the snake-thing’s dorsal surface.

Surely, Anton thought, that had hurt it badly, and if Tymora favored him at all, hurt the undead mage who’d grown it out of his belly, too. But apparently Lady Luck wasn’t smiling in his direction. The tentacle ripped itself free of the impalement, nearly yanking the cutlass from his grasp in the process, and then both it and Kymas attacked as fiercely as before.

Swaying back and forth and up and down, alternately trying to bite Anton or loop around an ankle or wrist, the tentacle serpent added a new complication to a duel that hadn’t been going notably well as it was. Step by step, Kymas pushed him back, and the cramped confines of the broken quarterdeck wouldn’t permit him to back very far. Another retreat or two would drop him over the side.

Having evidently rid herself of the shadow hand, Umara crept up the remaining companionway, which put her at Kymas’s back. Her lips moved as she whispered something too faint for Anton to hear. She whipped her hands through diagonal clawing motions.

Kymas jerked and stumbled. Though Anton couldn’t see the wound from his vantage point, he surmised that Umara’s spell had produced an invisible something that was tearing at the vampire from behind.

Anton sprang forward to take advantage of Kymas’s incapacity. But, unaffected by its creator’s distress, the tentacle snake whipped itself into the way and struck. Anton knocked the gnashing jaws to the side and swung the saber at the writhing arm behind them. The stroke sliced off the eyeless head, and both it and the member to which it had been attached melted away.

The demise of the tentacle serpent constituted progress of a sort, but by the time Anton followed up with a flank cut, Kymas had recovered from the shock of the unexpected assault from behind. Once again wielding the staff one-handed, the Red Wizard parried, and at the same moment, the dark orb reappeared in his off hand. Snarling a word of command, he threw it down on the deck.

The globe shattered, and a dozen misty, elongated figures rose from the shards. Moaning, half the phantoms flew at Umara. The rest swarmed on the unseen thing she’d evoked to rip at Kymas; they evidently perceived it without difficulty.

They kept it away from their master, too, and, freed of the danger it posed, he drove Anton backward again until the pirate had the jagged hole in the planking on his left and the sea just a step or two behind him.

Anton hitched to the right, and Kymas whirled the staff in a murderous horizontal arc. He’d been waiting for the Turmishan to dodge in that direction, for after all, where else was there to go?

But the blow didn’t connect. After that initial feinting shift, Anton actually leaped left, over the hole. At last he could see his adversary’s back-bare, burned, and shredded thanks to Umara’s lightning and her invisible minion-and he slashed it as he fell.

He couldn’t focus on making that clumsy stroke count and land gracefully, too, so he crashed down on a miscellany of hard objects. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but he made himself flop over onto his back.

Rain stung his upturned face. At some point during the fight, it had started coming down harder, and he’d been too preoccupied to notice. Squinting against it, he peered upward and rather to his surprise saw only cloud beyond the splintered hole, not Kymas jumping after him or throwing a spell at him. That last saber cut must have finally slowed the undead wizard down.

But it surely hadn’t destroyed him, and left to his own devices, he’d quickly shed his wounds and be as strong as ever. Anton sucked in a breath, jumped up, and scrambled out of the cabin and up the surviving companionway.

On what remained of the quarterdeck, Umara was alive and armored in crimson light. Unfortunately, she was also still busy contending with the apparitions from the broken orb.

Kymas was likewise still on his feet, but it was no longer just his fangs that looked bestial. His ears were pointed, and his eyes, red. He’d dropped the staff to seize the rudder man-the poor wretch must have been cowering up here the whole time-in clawed hands, yank him close, and bite his throat out.

Yet despite his newly demonic appearance, Kymas retained the ability to speak. He proved it by bellowing, “Kill the pirate! Umara, too!”

“Yes, lord!” called Captain Sepandem from somewhere to the fore. “Get them, men!”

That was an unfortunate development, but Kymas was still the primary threat. Anton rushed him.

His mouth and chin smeared with gore, Kymas dropped the dying crewman, hissed a word of power, and thrust out his hand. A bolt of ragged darkness flared from his claws. Anton twisted, and the power missed him by a hair.

But as he dodged, he inadvertently met the vampire’s crimson gaze. His thoughts dissolved into confusion. Uncertain why he was running, he broke stride. Kymas lunged at him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and opened his gory mouth wide.

Perhaps it was the suddenness of Kymas’s action, or the threat implicit in it, that jolted Anton out of his daze. The Red Wizard was too close for him to easily use the saber, but he managed to jam the cutlass between their bodies and rip his assailant’s belly open.

Kymas shoved Anton away and staggered backward. His body steamed as it started melting into mist. So he could slip away and hide.

“No,” Anton gasped. He darted forward and swung the saber. Kymas’s head flew from his shoulders and tumbled into the sea. His body rotted even as it fell.

Anton turned, but nothing else required his immediate attention. With a shouted word and a clap of her hands, Umara destroyed the last of the phantoms. It unraveled into nothingness in a way that reminded him of his mother pulling apart an unsatisfactory bit of knitting. And while some of the marines and sailors had armed themselves, they were no longer advancing on the quarterdeck.

Panting, Anton grinned at Umara. “What was that you said about no fighting?”

“Well,” she said, “maybe just enough to make it interesting.”