Chrysaor held his sword vertically, and swept it across his body, driving both of Joen’s daggers to the side. She retracted, leaving an obvious opening in her defenses, but Chrysaor didn’t attack, and Joen quickly righted her blades.
The blue-skinned pirate captain risked a glance my way and said, “Your friend wants me dead.”
“I tend to agree with her,” I answered.
“You shouldn’t.”
Joen jumped ahead again, and once more, Chrysaor deflected her attack. Metal rang against metal, and Chrysaor sidestepped another brutal thrust.
Joen rushed forward again, but this time Chrysaor moved to meet her. He parried one thrusting dagger, sidestepped the other, and for the first time made an attack of his own. He punched out with the pommel of his sword.
Joen didn’t even begin to dodge the attack. Chrysaor’s weapon collided heavily with her shoulder, sending her staggering back several steps. The genasi followed her, kicking out at her ankles, trying to trip her. She skipped back a few steps, holding her balance, but barely.
“You know,” I said to Tessa, “I should probably help her.”
“Might be a good idea, dearie.”
I dashed into the guestroom, where my sword belt lay beside the bed. I scooped it up, strapping it to my hip as I rushed back to the battle.
By now, Joen had pushed Chrysaor back from the cottage door and out into the single muddy street around which the tiny hamlet was built. And the battle had attracted attention. Every door in town had opened, with at least one person standing in each doorway, watching in something between shock and amusement. Directly across the lane, the old man from the night before hooted and cheered—but I couldn’t tell which side he was on.
“Come on, little girl,” Chrysaor taunted, beckoning her to him with his free hand.
“I’m no little girl,” Joen hissed, leaping forward again.
She stabbed ahead with her left dagger, but Chrysaor picked the attack off cleanly with his sword. She stepped forward, cutting across brutally with her right. He fell back a step, out of reach. Joen planted her foot, thrusting her right-hand dagger ahead. His only escape was to her left, rolling his body away from the jab.
Or, I noted, he could have come straight ahead and attacked her too-aggressive posture, using his longer blade to keep her at bay. But once again, he chose not to attack, only to defend, and I knew that he was too fine a fighter to unwittingly let so many obvious opportunities pass.
“I could have killed you as you slept, if I had a mind to kill you at all,” Chrysaor said.
“If you don’t want us dead,” I cut in before Joen could respond, “then why are you here?”
“Ah, a question at last,” he replied. “I was sent to watch you, of course. To follow you and report on your progress.”
Joen continued to press her attacks, daggers cutting and thrusting, but Chrysaor was always one step ahead, his defenses always in place. Joen seemed not to have tired at all—remarkable in and of itself—but she hadn’t wearied her target either.
But now I was more interested in what the genasi had to say than in trying to kill him—that had always been Joen’s fight, the same way the stone was mine.
“Report to whom?” I asked him. “Your master is dead.”
Chrysaor laughed. “Surely you know better than that,” he said. “A demon as my master? Please.”
At last, I fumbled the buckle of my sword belt closed and tried to draw my sword as I ran to Joen’s side, but once again the long blade failed to come out cleanly. Instead, the dangling scabbard, moved by the withdrawing blade, tangled in my legs. In the already slippery footing of the muddy “street,” my boot slid out from under me, and I fell with a splash into the muck.
“Oi, you work for the Circle, then,” Joen snarled. “You’ve been working for them since the start.”
“Pretty,” Chrysaor said with an infuriatingly smug smile, “but not so smart. I see why you like this one, kid.”
Irritated by that last crack, I pulled myself up quickly, trying not to look any more foolish in the process, but no one was looking at me.
Of course they weren’t. They were focused on the fight raging not a dozen feet from me.
I extracted my sword, more carefully this time, and finally took my place at Joen’s side.
Joen stepped forward, her face a twisted scowl. “You shut up,” she said. “You betrayed your crew and got ’em killed.”
I moved around Joen, looking for an opening, for a way to help. But Chrysaor moved with me, rotating around Joen as if she were the center of a wheel, and we two were the spokes. However I moved, he kept her between us.
“I warned you all of the dangers,” the pirate argued.
Joen let out a low growl, pushing ahead ever more furiously. Left, right, left her daggers cut, and one wild sidelong slash nearly clipped me as the blade came around! Chrysaor parried the first, then the second swing, and stepped back from the third, and the slash.
“Oi, ‘In my employ you shall find only the greatest gain,’ eh?” Joen shot back at him. “Isn’t that what you said back when I joined Lady Luck’s crew?”
Joen pressed the assault. She stabbed out with her right hand, and Chrysaor stepped back. She followed with a left. He stepped back again. She leaped forward, punching out with both daggers. Chrysaor fell into a backward roll, falling beneath the cut of her blades, and came to his feet a few strides away, a bit muddy but unharmed.
“And where did you get those fine, shining daggers, child?”
Joen hesitated.
“Took them from a dragon’s hoard, isn’t that right?” the genasi went on. “A dragon’s hoard you never would have found had you not sailed with me?”
She charged ahead, cutting with both daggers. Chrysaor brought his sword in for the parry, but Joen’s attack was a feint. She withdrew both blades, letting the sword slip harmlessly past. She brought one dagger up quickly, snapping it against Chrysaor’s blade, forcing it farther out to his side. With the other, she plunged ahead.
The pirate stepped back, out of her shortened reach, and brought both hands to the handle of his sword. With a burst of strength, he shoved back against Joen’s pressing dagger. He was much stronger than she, and her footing was slick. She skidded back a few feet. Joen held her balance, bringing her daggers up in a defensive cross in front of her, but Chrysaor did not press the attack.
“You led us out there,” I said as Joen circled him, looking for an opening. “You wanted me to pursue you, to be captured by the druids.”
“And I knew Captain Deudermont was honorable enough to give you the chance,” he said with a wry smile.
I snorted at the thought. “Deudermont said no,” I told him. “It was Sea Sprite’s crew that changed his mind.”
“And it doesn’t excuse you using your own crew like that,” Joen added.
“I need no excuses for my actions.”
“Oi, I think you do, at that.”
Then I saw the pirate’s arm twitch—just the slightest jerk of his elbow.
“Joen, duck!” I cried out.
Her defenses weren’t set. She thought of nothing but trying to kill him, unconcerned for her safety. But he had been fighting purely defensively, letting her attacks play out. He had tricked her, had goaded her into his trap.
He had tricked us both, I realized. I could have kept pace, could have been there to pick off the attack. But I wanted to hear what the pirate had to say.
The flat of Chrysaor’s blade struck Joen’s left ear, rolled up and over her head, and tapped her right temple. His empty left hand caught Joen’s wrist and he pulled her past him. He planted a boot on the small of her back as she stumbled past. Kicking out, he launched her skidding to the ground several feet away.
“Are we done playing yet, children?” Chrysaor asked.
“I’m not playing,” Joen snarled, spitting out mud.
“Not very well, at least.”
Joen rose to her feet and stalked t
oward Chrysaor.
“I could have killed you right there,” he said.
“I will kill you right now,” Joen answered.
“Stop, Joen,” I said. He was right. He could have killed her a long time ago. He could have killed us both, but he hadn’t. He had something to say.
Joen shrugged me off but hesitated, looking for an opening in the pirate’s defenses that wasn’t there.
“All irrelevant, all of this,” Chrysaor said, waving his arms as if to chase away the conversation. “There’s a more important question you want to ask of me. There’s someone you’ll like to meet.”
“I don’t think there’s—,” Joen began.
“Malchor Harpell,” I said, cutting her off, but lowering my voice so the villagers wouldn’t hear.
Chrysaor pointed a finger to me, nodding. “And there it is. I know much of him, as most learned folk of the North should.”
“We don’t care,” Joen cut in.
“I care,” I said, and Joen glared at me.
She walked over to me and said in a whisper, “Nothing he says can be trusted. We should kill him and be done with it.”
“I don’t trust him,” I replied. “But he buried his lie in truth last time, didn’t he? He did lead you to a treasure hoard.”
“Guarded by a dragon, after we were caught by a pirate hunter and wrecked in a blizzard.”
“So maybe we’ll have to fight a dragon to get to Malchor Harpell.”
“Or this wizard of yours is dead, or this time Chrysaor’s just lying and it’s a trap.”
“Or,” Chrysaor said, “my task is not to get you killed, and I have no particular reason to keep you away from Malchor Harpell, so I’ll tell you truthfully what I know.”
“I doubt that,” Joen said.
“But say it anyway,” I finished.
Chrysaor nodded. “The Harpell clan are wizards, nearly to a one,” he said. “Most of them live in the town of Longsaddle, a tenday’s ride to the northeast of here. But Malchor no longer dwells there. He instead resides in his own private tower, the Tower of Twilight.”
“And where is this tower?” I asked.
“I’ll have to show you.”
“No.” Joen spoke before I could, but my answer would have been the same.
“The tower is magically hidden. You’ll not find it without my help.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Joen said.
“No,” I cut in, my voice low, quiet. “We won’t.”
She stared at me in disbelief. “You want to take him along?”
“I want him to show us to the tower. That’s all.” I looked back at the pirate and said, “If you never served Asbeel and aren’t reporting to the Circle, who is it, then, that’s so interested in helping me find this wizard?”
The pirate smiled at me in a way that made it clear he thought I should know the answer to that.
“Elbeth,” I said before I even realized I was thinking of the woman who had raised me as her own child.
“Quite a lady,” the pirate said with a chuckle, “isn’t she?”
“Oi, you believe that?” Joen asked me, and her voice made it plain that she didn’t.
“I don’t know,” I answered, “but I need to find Malchor Harpell, so I need him.”
She scowled at me. “What if I tell you it’s him or me, then?”
“I’ll choose you,” I said without hesitation. “But please, please, don’t. I know it could be a trap. I know Malchor Harpell could be of no help. I know this pirate might be leading us into the gods alone know what. But I need to learn the truth, and I won’t find it in this one-mule hamlet.” I glanced around at Tessa and said with a shrug, “Sorry.”
“No worries, lad,” the old lady replied. “We really only do have that one mule, and you’ve given us more excitement than we’ve had since that dragon flew over in the Year of the Bloodbird.”
I looked back at Chrysaor then to Joen, and asked, “So?”
Her scowl softened a bit. After a few moments, she nodded her assent.
“We’re agreed, then,” Chrysaor said jovially. “We should be off at once, unless you have other plans.”
“Lead on,” Joen said, but she wasn’t the slightest bit happy about it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Well, this is exciting, eh?” Joen said over the crackle of the fire and the howl of the wind. She did little to hide the sarcasm in her voice.
We had set up our camp in the midst of a small grove of pines that sheltered us from the wind still blowing hard from the north. At the edge of Neverwinter Wood, a tenday and a half’s journey north of Tessa’s village, we had finally come to the Tower of Twilight.
Or, rather, we’d come to a small pond with a tiny, empty island bordered by the grove of pines. Winter had not yet relinquished its grip here, and patches of snow dotted the area. The journey had been arduous, the road a mix of mud and snow, the wind often biting. But the sky had been bright, the clouds few, and on some days, we’d even been warm.
We had journeyed more slowly than I was used to, partly because Chrysaor had walked ahead of us—a good ways ahead, by Joen’s insistence—but partly because Haze had still seemed weak. We had stopped well before nightfall each day, and had risen after daybreak. I had said it was to avoid having to make or break camp during the cold, dark, northern spring nights, but really I had just wanted to let Haze rest. It had struck me how greatly Haze’s stamina had lessened, and I had feared that maybe the magic that had allowed her to run so swiftly, even across water, had come at a greater price than I’d imagined.
The nights had been cold, but Tessa had given us some warm blankets before we left—they’d been her son’s, and she had no longer needed them. In payment, she had requested that we visit if ever we were in the area again, a request Joen and I heartily agreed to.
But today had dawned cold, and it had stayed cold. Clouds had hovered low over the land, and the wind had blown fiercely. It had been barely past midday when Chrysaor stopped his march and had called for us to set camp here in the trees. When he had told us we’d arrived, I had laughed at first—Joen hadn’t, she had simply scowled. But now, after a few hours, I came to realize the blue-skinned pirate had been serious.
“His friends ain’t on time, I guess,” Joen said.
“That, or he’s lost his mind,” I replied.
“Oi, he never had one to begin with.”
I laughed as a light snow blew up on the wind—the beginnings of a late-season snowstorm. The sun, masked behind the clouds, touched the southwestern horizon.
“Nothing to do now,” I said. “It’s late, it’s snowing, and this is as good a place to camp as any.”
“No,” said Chrysaor, approaching the fire, the light reflecting weirdly off his blue skin, tinting him a deep violet. “It’s as good as any place under the open sky. But tonight, you will sleep in beds, I assure you. It won’t be much longer now.”
“Before what, eh?” Joen said. “Before your crew shows up to kill us?”
Chrysaor shook his head. “Patience is a virtue you should learn, little lady,” he said with a wry grin.
“Call me ‘little lady’ ever again,” Joen snarled, “and I’ll cut you just right so you can take the nickname as your own.”
It took me a moment to sort out what she meant, but when I did, I found myself turning my hips away from her and crossing my legs.
“What do you prefer, then?” Chrysaor asked. “I’ve been calling you ‘child,’ and you’ve yet to protest.”
“I’d prefer you not talk to me at all,” she said.
The pirate nodded, bowed low, and turned back to the pond.
Or, rather, to the shimmering image floating above the pond.
As the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, the very last ray of light traced its way up an object, a tower, standing on the tiny island. Its twin spires reached skyward, twisting into the night sky, each point sparkling like starlight. The whole structure was emerald green, brillia
nt as Joen’s eyes.
A beam of green light traced out from the base of the tower, across the pond to the near shore, forming a sort of bridge of light. I approached tentatively, Joen and Haze following. Chrysaor did not move.
“I lead no farther,” he said. “I have shown you to the tower, but I have no place here.”
“Why not?” I asked, a bit surprised.
“Oi, don’t ask him that,” Joen said. “He might change his mind.”
“No, child, I will not,” Chrysaor said. “But this is not my quest.”
“Your quest is to follow me,” I said. “But you won’t follow me inside?”
“Don’t worry,” Chrysaor said with a laugh. “I’ll be fine without you.” He bowed low, sweeping off his hat. “Farewell, and good luck.”
The blue pirate, the man who had twice tried to kidnap me, turned on his heel and walked away, disappearing into the grove of pines.
I stared after him for a long time. I hadn’t expected that.
Joen just shrugged and walked past me to the bank of the pond and the green light.
“D’you think it’s a bridge?” Joen asked.
I stepped closer to the beam of light, though looking at it made me dizzy. It was like a rainbow, but I could clearly see the ends of it—one right in front of me, the other at the foot of the strange tower.
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “We could swim across.”
“Why go to all this trouble to make us think it’s a bridge if we only end up falling in the water anyway, eh?” Joen said as she stretched out her foot, gingerly touching the light.
I reached out to pull her back, afraid of … I don’t know what. But before I touched her, her toe touched the light. She seemed fine.
“So?” I asked. “What is it?”
She looked at me, smiled, and stepped forward. She looked quite strange, standing on a beam of light, hovering a few feet above the still water.
“C’mon, then,” she said with a smile. “Let’s see what’s here, eh?” She laughed and ran off across the bridge, then around the base of the tower and out of sight.
The Sentinels Page 6
