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.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
DWELLING IN THE HOUSE OF SILVANUS, PREOCCUPIED WITH Shadowmoon’s mental deterioration and other threats to the wild lands that a blade couldn’t answer, Shinthala had in recent years seldom worn her scimitar. But the weight still felt comfortable riding on her hip.
She still felt at ease in her old war cloak, too, but had taken it off for the moment. The enchantment it bore made her appear a half step away from her actual location, an advantage when enemies were trying to aim blows or missiles at her but inconvenient on the rolling deck of a warship with crewmen scurrying back and forth. Even in the bow and the stern, there was nowhere to stand that was truly out of the way, and the poor fellows kept jostling her, then cringing and stammering apologies as if they expected
her to strike them dead or turn them into frogs.
She’d retrieve the cloak when the enemy armada appeared. Hoping to catch a first glimpse of it, she squinted out over the waves.
But it was Shadowmoon and Ashenford who wavered into view before her. It was like she was looking through a hole in the air and the House of Silvanus was on the far side, except that the opening didn’t have clearly defined edges. Rather, the shadowy space around the other elders blurred by degrees until it was indistinguishable from the backdrop of gray cloud and falling rain.
Shinthala sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope the two of you would believe I was off meditating.”
“This is unnecessary,” Shadowmoon said. “We arranged for druids to sail aboard every ship.”
“And if we were going to send our followers to fight the Chosen of Umberlee,” Shinthala replied, “on the open sea, no less, it was only right for one of the Elder Circle to share the danger.”
“But you’re needed here,” Ashenford said, and in his voice, Shinthala heard the fear of losing someone who’d been a friend and sometimes more for over a hundred tumultuous years.
But she couldn’t speak to that now, only to their duties and the choices they entailed. “Even without me, the Emerald Enclave’s magic will be at least as strong as it was before Stedd Whitehorn came to us. The restorations of the island and—forgive my bluntness, my friend—of Silvermoon’s sanity ensure that.”
Ashenford shook his head. “Still—”
“There is no ‘still,’ ” Shinthala said. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized Anton Marivaldi was right. We do need to fight these waveservants and pirates, and we won’t be able to lure them into the forests. So we’ll just have to meet them on the water.”
Shadowmoon smiled a sad little smile. “Of the three of us, sister, you were always the one who relished a battle.”
“Then let me have one,” Shinthala said. “Why not? If I die, how much has the Emerald Enclave truly lost? I don’t have elf blood in my veins, and the Treefather’s gift of long life is running out in me.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” said Shadowmoon, “to send you power and luck from here.”
“I know,” Shinthala said. “But do me one more favor. Bring Stedd to the circle.”
The elf cocked her head. “If you think there’s a point.”
“There might be. My judgment tells me we who serve Silvanus should help fight this war. But in the deepest sense, it’s Lathander’s struggle, and perhaps if his Chosen is present when you’re casting magic to oppose Evendur Highcastle, that will finally rouse the boy.” Shinthala smiled at Ashenford. “Or perhaps he’ll simply respond to the sound of your harping. I always did.”
“The boy will be there,” Shadowmoon said. “May the Forest Father keep you.” She waved a tiny copper-skinned hand, and she and Ashenford vanished, just as Shinthala was about to take what might well prove to be a fond last look at them.
With a snort, the white-haired druidess returned to playing lookout. She fancied her sight was still keen despite her advancing years, but even so, a young man in the fighting top partway up the foremast spotted the enemy’s sails before she did. “Pirates off the bow!” he shouted, his voice breaking. Just audible despite the distance and the rain, a sailor aboard the nearest caravel to starboard shouted the same thing.
It had seemed to Shinthala that Delise’s Needle, the ship she’d chosen to ride, had made extensive preparations for battle before ever leaving the harbor. Still, the lookout’s warning triggered bursts of activity both on deck and aloft. Some of it, like the artillerymen fussing over ballistae and catapults, was comprehensible even to a landlubber. Other procedures were not.
But in all cases, the haste seemed to reflect taut nerves rather than necessity. The Umberlant fleet was still far away. Refusing to succumb to her own anxiety, Shinthala watched its upper sails, then the lower ones, and finally the hulls of the vessels appear above the waves before she fetched her cloak and whirled it around her shoulders.
Perhaps that momentary respite from standing and staring did her good. For when she looked out over the rail again, she noticed gray shadows gliding beneath the waves in advance of the Umberlant ships. One raced straight at Delise’s Needle.
Muttering a charm of seeing, she studied the oncoming form, and then she perceived it as clearly as if she were swimming alongside it. It was a long, slender fin whale, gray-brown on top and paler on the belly, and magic crawled in its head like worms. No doubt that was the source of the rage or compulsion driving it toward the warship.
Fortunately, a whale was an animal, and in theory, druids had power over all beasts, even those of the sea. Shinthala held out her hand and called her sickle with her thoughts, and it leaped into her grip all the way from her personal quarters in the Elder Spires. She whirled the bronze blade in ritual cuts as she rattled off words of command. Holly—ghostly to others, she knew, but real to her—flowered around her and filled the air with its scent.
She felt her spell start to close around the whale’s mind like a hand, then something—the original enchantment impelling the animal, no doubt—slapped that notional hand away hard enough to break its fingers. The resistance spiked pain between her eyes. She was still reeling from it when the finback rammed the ship.
The jolt hurled her sideways, and for a panicked instant, she imagined she was about to tumble into the sea. Then the rail caught her.
She took a ragged breath and looked around. Clutching crossbows and javelins, sailors peered over the sides waiting for the whale to make another pass at the ship.
Maybe Shinthala should let them try to kill it, blameless though it was. But if she did mean to try again to calm the finback with magic, it would be counterproductive for her allies to cause it pain.
She cast about and her eyes fell on Thieron Astorio, the other druid onboard, a small barefoot man whose armor of dyed leather scales was fashioned to make it look like he was wearing a coat of leaves. His staff in one hand, Thieron clung to a forestay with the other, an indication that he hadn’t found his sea legs any better than she had.
Still, he looked calm and was an initiate of the Circle of Air, far advanced in the mysteries, and that helped Shinthala make her decision.
“Don’t attack the whale!” she bellowed to the crew at large. “Give me another chance to send it away!” She looked at Thieron. “Druid! I need you!”
Weaving a little, he ran to her.
“We’re going to control the whale together,” Shinthala told him. “I’ll destroy the magic that’s making it attack us. When you sense that giving way, cast a spell of friendship.”
“I understand,” Thieron replied.
They peered at the sea but for a moment couldn’t find the whale. Then, perhaps realizing they’d lost track of the finback, a sailor shouted, “It’s to starboard!”
Dodging around a ballista and the artilleryman waiting to shoot it, the two druids hurried to that side of the bow. The fin whale was turning for another run at the caravel. This time, it meant to ram her amidships.
Shinthala shouted words of negation and swept her sickle back and forth while once again, holly grew around her. She imagined the cruel power driving the whale to batter the ship without regard for its own well-being as a chain. Her counterspell was rust, pitting the links and crumbling them away.
This time, she was ready for the waveservants’ magic to fight back. Still, it nearly slapped her away. But then she felt the power of Ashenford, Shadowmoon, and the other druids in the House of Silvanus streaming like a river in the sky. She seized it, melded it with her own, and stabbed with the result.
The magic slithering inside the whale’s head withered away. And, as Shinthala briefly sensed, somewhere aboard one of the pirate ships, a priest of Umberlee screamed in pain and blood gushed from his nostrils.
But despite its liberation, the finback, likely angry and confused, was still coming. Thieron recited the spell of friends
hip, and it emerged as a nasal moan unlike anything Shinthala had ever heard.
But strange as it sounded to her, the finback understood it. Instead of ramming the caravel, the animal dived and passed underneath.
Sailors cheered, and Shinthala was happy enough to contribute to their morale. But she suspected they might not be so exuberant if they realized just how difficult it had been for two allegedly mighty druids to counter Umberlant magic here at sea with the will of the Bitch Queen’s Chosen reinforcing it.
This whale had been Evendur Highcastle’s opening move, a way to soften up the Turmishan fleet before it and his own armada even came together. He likely had worse in store. But Shinthala could only counter threats and smite targets as they presented themselves. She looked around and spied a ship to port under attack by some sort of marine hydra swimming alongside it. Half a dozen heads atop serpentine necks struck at the men on deck with a motion that reminded her of hands picking berries.
She tried to free it of the coercion that controlled it. Another man died while she chanted, and this time, the Umberlant enchantment proved too strong to break.
She needed to try something else, quickly, while there were still living crewmen left aboard the beleaguered ship. She thought of using her affinity with lightning, but she’d already decided to hold that power in reserve. Instead, with a single murmured word, she invoked another of the Oakfather’s gifts, a bond as close as kinship with the elemental spirits.
Flapping the sails behind her, a whirlwind howled into existence above the sea. A water spirit might have served her needs even better, but she feared the Chosen of Umberlee could turn such an entity against her.
The living whirlwind rushed at the hydra, buffeting but not quite capsizing the ship it was attacking in the process. The wind engulfed the beast in its murky spin and lifted it out of the water. The reptile roared and thrashed for a moment, and then the forces at work in the vortex tore it apart and flung the heads and other pieces in all directions.
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