When the trials begin,
in soul-torn solitude despairing,
the hunter waits alone.
The companions emerge
from fast-bound ties of fate
uniting against a common foe.
When the shadows descend,
in Hell-sworn covenant unswerving
the blighted brothers hunt,
and the godborn appears,
in rose-blessed abbey reared,
arising to loose the godly spark.
When the harvest time comes,
in hate-fueled mission grim unbending,
the shadowed reapers search.
The adversary vies
with fiend-wrought enemies,
opposing the twisting schemes of Hell.
When the tempest is born,
as storm-tossed waters rise uncaring,
the promised hope still shines.
And the reaver beholds
the dawn-born chosen’s gaze,
transforming the darkness into light.
When the battle is lost,
through quake-tossed battlefields unwitting
the seasoned legions march,
but the sentinel flees
with once-proud royalty,
protecting devotion’s fragile heart.
When the ending draws near,
with ice-locked stars unmoving,
the threefold threats await,
and the herald proclaims,
in war-wrecked misery,
announcing the dying of an age.
—As written by Elliandreth of Orishaar, c. –17,600 DR
FORGOTTEN REALMS®
THE COMPANIONS
R.A. Salvatore
THE GODBORN
Paul S. Kemp
THE ADVERSARY
Erin M. Evans
THE REAVER
Richard Lee Byers
THE SENTINEL
Troy Denning
April 2014
THE HERALD
Ed Greenwood
June 2014
THE REAVER
©2013 Wizards of the Coast LLC.
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All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All Wizards of the Coast characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Prophecy by: James Wyatt
Cartography by: Mike Schley
Cover art by: Tyler Jacobson
ISBN: 978-0-7869-6458-1
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620A4358000001 EN
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v3.1
For Stacy
Contents
Cover
Other Books in the Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
CHAPTER ONE
Eleint, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
THE COLD RAIN HAMMERED DOWN LIKE A WATERFALL. COMBINED with the gray clouds shrouding the sky from horizon to horizon, it was blinding. Peering around the corner of a peasant’s cottage at more of the shacks, sheds, and pigpens that made up the ramshackle village, Anton Marivaldi took solace in the reflection that the enemy couldn’t see him and his crew either.
Then darts of crimson light leaped out of the gloom and streaked at Atala. Like her captain, the pirate with the wheat-blond braids had been trying to spot the foe, and now she sought to duck back down behind the donkey cart she’d been using for cover. She was too slow, though, and a pair of the arcane missiles pierced her face. They didn’t leave holes or any sort of visible wounds, but Atala flopped down in the mud, shuddered for a moment, and then lay still.
“I stand corrected,” Anton murmured. “Someone can see.” Perhaps the wizard had worked magic to sharpen his sight.
From beneath a broad-brimmed hat that shielded from the rain narrow gray eyes set in a long, dour countenance, Naraxes Corieth said, “I say we retreat before the wretches circle around and block the way back to the ship.”
Anton snorted. “How likely is that?”
“How likely was it the child would turn out to have bodyguards,” his first mate retorted, “and one of them a mage? How likely was it that all these farmers would risk their lives to protect him?”
Anton smiled. “It’s the little surprises that make life interesting.”
“Curse it, Captain, one man fell overboard before we even got here because you sailed us into the teeth of that storm—”
“We needed to reach this place before the boy moved on.”
“—and now I count three more of our comrades lying dead!”
“You may count twenty before we’re done. But the rest of us will be rich, and that’s what matters.” Anton turned to survey the crew at large.
His men were well armed for raiders living in the days of the Great Rain, when the perpetual downpour so quickly ruined bowstrings and rusted mail that many folk had dispensed with them. Their weapons coupled with the willingness to take what they needed filled their bellies and provided creature comforts in a time of want. Yet even so, like many people their captain had encountered over the course of the last several months, they had a haggard cast to their faces.
Anton raised his voice to make himself heard over the hiss and clatter of the rain. “We’re going to split into three groups and charge. Naraxes and his squad will swing left. Yuicoerr will take his to the right. I’ll lead mine straight up the center.”
The pirates looked back at him with a sullen lack of enthusiasm. Then Yuicoerr, the second mate, an Aglarondan whose pointed chin and slanted eyes bespoke a trace of elf blood, said, “What about the wizard?”
“He can’t throw spells in three directions at once,” Anton said.
“Maybe not,” Naraxes said, “but he might have more trouble hitting us if we wait until dark.”
Anton grinned. “Excellent idea. Unless, of course, the villages sent a runner in the direction of Teziir, in which case, cavalry will arrive before nightfall to butcher us all.”
“Still,” the first mate said, “one blast of frost or vitriol—”
“Enough!” Anton snapped. “You heard my orders. Now, everyone who isn’t craven, count off by threes!”
For a moment, no one spo
ke. But then Roberc squared his shoulders and said, “One.” And perhaps the example of the sole halfling in the company, an able fighter but one no bigger than the human child they sought, shamed the others into following suit.
Once the three squads formed up around their leaders, Anton took off his hooded cloak and hung it on a fence post so it wouldn’t hinder him. The cold, stinging rain instantly plastered his inner garments to his skin. Suppressing a grimace, he drew his two curved blades, the long saber he customarily wielded in his left hand and the shorter cutlass, useful for parrying and close-in killing, he generally carried in his right.
The men around him still looked less than eager, but they did seem resigned. Some breathed heavily and glowered like madmen, summoning anger and the urge to violence. Others mouthed prayers, fingered lucky amulets, or guzzled from flasks and wineskins. In Anton’s eyes, all such practices were equally pathetic. Still, whatever it took to steady the rogues so they could perform their function.
When he judged the crew ready, he said, “All right, charge on my signal, and whatever happens, keep going. Our first task is to kill the mage. The second is to seize the little boy. Alive, like Evendur Highcastle wants him.”
He then turned in the direction of the foe, raised his saber over his head, swept it down, and lunged into the open. Scrambling out from behind the cottage, a cluster of nearby chicken coops, and a little shrine to Chauntea with a neglected-looking wooden statue of the Earthmother inside, the other pirates darted after him. Naraxes’s and Yuicoerr’s teams swung wide as instructed.
Anton’s boots splashed up brown water from puddle after puddle. The mud alternately slid under his feet or clung to them like glue, threatening his balance either way. He squinted and blinked against the rain but still saw little sign of the enemy, just shadows in the dusky grayness up ahead.
Javelins plummeted at him and his companions.
But the folk who’d thrown them could, apparently, see no better than he could. Most of the weapons missed. On his right, though, a fellow renegade Turmishan, with skin the same mahogany brown and who still sported the long, black, squared-off beard his captain had long ago shaved off, caught a javelin where his neck met his shoulder and fell down thrashing. Another pirate tripped over him and pitched headlong in the muck.
Then a point of red light appeared amid the downpour. Even though Anton was looking for warning signs of hostile magic, it took him an instant to discern that the spark was moving, indeed, hurtling toward him and his companions fast as an arrow.
“ ’Ware magic!” he roared. He sprang to the side and threw himself down to the ground.
Something boomed. Heat and yellow light washed over him, the ambient murk momentarily giving way to brightness. Men screamed, and when Anton raised his head, he saw them reel and drop as they burned like torches. The fires would go out quickly, dowsed by the rain, but likely not quickly enough to save them.
His striped purple sash, gold-trimmed crimson shirt, and the rest of his gaudy pirate finery now black with mud, Anton scrambled back to his feet. “Onward!” he screamed, charging once again, and as before, the survivors of the fiery attack raced after him, even though, as best he could judge, they only numbered half a dozen.
Anton watched for another spark, but none was forthcoming. Instead, thunder banged and a dazzling twist of lightning stabbed off to the left. Evidently satisfied with the harm he’d done to the pirates charging up the middle, the enemy mage turned his attention to Naraxes’s squad.
Anton grinned and thought, Wizard, you should have finished with me first.
At last a line of armed rustics appeared amid the pelting rain and the gloom. Anton’s respect for them increased a hair when he saw that they stood behind a low line of plows, horse troughs, and barrows. As barricades went, it wasn’t much, but it showed somebody was thinking.
Two men pulled crossbows out of the sacks that had thus far protected them from the wet. The weapons clacked, Anton sprang to the side, and neither of the quarrels found him. He couldn’t tell if all the freebooters behind him had been as lucky. Nobody screamed, so it was possible.
When he came within range, a boar spear jabbed at him. He knocked it out of line with the saber and leaped high enough to clear the makeshift barrier, slashing while in the air.
The saber sliced a farmer’s face from his right eye to the left corner of his mouth and sent him stumbling backward, but not quite far enough to open a gap. As Anton landed, he slammed into the peasant, and the impact staggered him as well.
The foes to either side pivoted toward him. He bulled forward, shoving the stunned peasant with the gashed face ahead of him, and his assailants’ initial blows, a swing with a mallet and a chop with a hoe, missed.
Anton heaved the man with the ruined features away from him and down into the mud. In so doing, he recovered his balance and cleared sufficient space to use both swords to good effect. He whirled and cut, and the saber slashed open the belly of the farmer with the hoe.
The man with the mallet screamed and rushed in with his weapon raised for a bone-crushing strike to the head. Anton stepped in, twisted, and the blow fell harmlessly behind him. He slid the point of the cutlass between the peasant’s ribs.
As that man dropped, another villager rounded on Anton with a pitchfork. When the thrust came, Anton rammed the cutlass between the tines, jerked the fork to the side, and lunged. The saber tore open the peasant’s throat, and blood spurted.
By now, the other pirates had reached the barricade, and, howling and hacking, swarmed over and pushed the defenders back. Satisfied, Anton turned to locate the wizard and spotted him—or rather her—too. But another of the boy prophet’s actual bodyguards was in the way.
The barrel-chested warrior had proper martial gear, a broadsword, targe, brigandine, and a conical helm with a nose guard sticking down between brown eyes. Judging from his stance—feet at right angles, blade high and slanting—he knew his trade and might well have learned it in Cormyr.
As he closed with the guard, Anton shifted to the left, then instantly back to the right. He feinted to the head, then whirled the saber low to slash beneath his opponent’s shield.
Unfortunately, neither Anton’s footwork nor his blade work deceived the warrior. The Cormyrean lowered the targe to deflect the true attack and cut over the top of it. Anton jerked sideways barely in time to keep the broadsword from cleaving his skull.
He grinned and tried a head cut of his own, but the targe jerked up and blocked it. Then he and his adversary traded attacks for the next few breaths. Neither scored, but the exchanges gave him the chance to take the Cormyrean’s measure.
His initial impression was correct: The bodyguard was good. But like most swordsmen, he had a few favorite moves and an accustomed rhythm, and once Anton determined what they were, he likewise understood how to exploit them.
He waited for the Cormyrean to cut to the knee. When the attack came, he sidestepped and slashed at the other man’s forearm.
But as he did, a stabbing pain in his gut turned the whirling extension of his arm into spastic flailing. The saber still reached the target but not squarely and not with the maiming force he’d intended.
A few paces behind the Cormyrean, the mage, a pale, slender moon elf whose blue cloak matched her tangled, rain-sodden hair, glared at Anton while holding a talisman over her head. He realized she’d cast a spell to cause the ongoing agony in his belly, and then the Cormyrean lunged and smashed the shield into him.
Anton reeled backward. The guard rushed him and bashed him again, this time knocking him down on his back in a puddle. His bloody right hand empty—Anton had evidently at least cut him badly enough to make him fumble the broadsword—the Cormyrean dropped to his knees beside his foe and raised the targe to smash the edge down on his head.
The preparatory action opened him up, and the need to strike now, now or never, spurred Anton into motion despite the ripping pain in his stomach. He stabbed the cutlass up underneath the bod
yguard’s ribs, and his foe flopped down on top of him.
To Anton’s relief, his spell-induced torment subsided a moment later. Otherwise, he might not have found the strength to flounder out from under the Cormyrean’s corpse. He scrambled up and looked in the elf’s direction.
Another man-at-arms fought hard to protect her, but two pirates kept him busy. Anton had a clear path to the wizard, and he charged her.
Magic filled her hand with a short sword made of blue and yellow fire. Raindrops puffed into steam when they struck the blade. But unfortunately for her, whatever the supernatural virtues of the conjured weapon, her technique with it was rudimentary, and it only took an instant to cut past her guard and into her torso.
As she fell, Anton noticed the brooch pinned to her mantle, a rolled-up silvery scroll sealed with a round white moon and a circle of blue stars. It looked like a coat of arms, perhaps the symbol of some sect or knightly order, but he didn’t recognize it.
Nor did he have time to wonder about it. He cast about and observed that although there was still a little killing going on, he and his fellow pirates were victorious. Naraxes’s and Yuicoerr’s squads had assailed the enemy’s flanks to murderous effect, and it looked like all the boy’s actual bodyguards were dead. The only folk still resisting the raiders were a handful of peasants too stupid to quit.
The pirates disposed of the dolts in a few more heartbeats, and then, panting, Naraxes hurried in Anton’s direction. “We won,” the first mate said.
“Yes,” Anton said, “we defeated a rabble of pig keepers. It’s a glorious moment.”
Naraxes scowled. “The crew fought like demons to give you what you wanted.”
“I want the boy. I don’t see him.”
“We just now finished fighting.”
“Then start searching. Every hovel, dunghill, and woodpile. And while you’re at it, round up all the peasants who are still alive.”
Anton led one of the search parties himself. It would make the task go that much faster, and he wanted something to occupy his mind.
He relished combat even at those moments when he took some hurt or feared for his life. It whetted existence into something sharp and simple. But in the aftermath, he sometimes suffered a bleak despondency, and when he felt such feelings rising, activity helped to quell them.
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