“Get back up ’ere!” cried the short man. He dodged a second kick from Ruen. “Help me!”
The brick man shook his head and swam away. He was obviously done with the fight.
Icelin turned her attention from Ruen to Cerest, who was climbing onto the raft behind her. His knife was gone, but he looked furious enough to kill her with his bare hands. His nose was a red, twisted mass on his face. The blood seeping into his scars made him look like a demon. Icelin remembered the scene outside the tower, when the newly scarred elf had looked up at her young self in agony.
“I remember now,” she told him. “The tower. My parents. Elgreth. Did you really think it was safe for us to go in, Cerest? Or was that just what you told yourself? The same way you convinced yourself it wasn’t your fault that they died?”
“I had to weigh the risk and reward,” Cerest said. There was no remorse in the words. “The knowledge and artifacts we might have found would have enriched all our lives, including yours.”
“Oh yes, my life has been enriched indeed,” Icelin said.
“I was more than willing to take care of both of you afterwards,” Cerest said. “Elgreth could have used his scar to unearth treasures unimaginable. He’d become just like my father, a god of magic—the very aberration I never thought to see again. But he refused to help me. He forced me to look to you.”
“And here we are,” Icelin said, “in another plague den.” She listened to the sounds of fighting behind her, Ruen’s muffled cry of pain as he took a blow to some vulnerable part of his body.
“I’m sorry,” she told Cerest as she came to a silent decision. “You named me, Cerest, but you were never my family. I thought my family was Waterdeep and a sundries shop. That would have been more than enough for me. But my family is everywhere: Waterdeep, the Dalelands, Aglarond, Luskan—even a burned-out tower. Their footsteps can be heard in the tombs and lost places of Faerûn.”
“You can be more than they ever were,” Cerest said. “You survived, when Elgreth did not.”
“I survived because my gift is different,” Icelin said. “Poor Cerest, I share your curse. I don’t have Elgreth’s sense of magic. I only know memory.”
She took a step toward him and lifted her hands, the palms facing each other. Cerest flinched, but only for a breath. His eyes reflected the blue glow illuminating her fingers. He was transfixed, watching the power swirl in the empty air between her hands.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Protecting what I have left,” Icelin said. She felt the cold touch her palms. She thought it was the first taste of the frost ray forming, but the sensation spread up her arms and lingered around her shoulders.
Icelin looked up and saw the wraiths swirling silently, less than ten feet above their heads. Like Cerest, they seemed transfixed by the radiant glow that was now climbing her arms. Her flesh glowed cerulean, far beyond the scope of the attack spell.
“What’s happening?” Cerest demanded. He looked up at the wraiths. Icelin followed his gaze. Beyond the undead, another blue glow was forming on the bones of the leviathan. More of the creatures dived and chased the light around the bones. Like mad fireflies they soaked up the raw spell energy.
“It’s the spellplague,” Icelin said. Her magic had released the long dormant energy. The wraiths were finally going to have their feast.
“Get off the raft,” Cerest cried. He grabbed her arm, trying to tow her toward the Ferryman. “If we can make it to some cover—”
Icelin stumbled and fell. On her knees, with one hand on the raft and the other caught in Cerest’s grip, she looked up and saw the blue light descending the magnificent bones, a waterfall coming down a mountainside.
“It’s too late,” she said. “Ruen!” she screamed, and turned to see the monk holding onto one of the rib bones for support. He clutched his chest with his other arm. The short man lay at his feet, a strip of blood leaking from his mouth. His eyes stared vacantly up at the doom working its way down to them.
Ruen jumped into the water. He surfaced five feet from the raft and started to swim to her.
“No!” Icelin waved him off. “Go down,” she cried. “Swim down, as far as you can. Get away from the light.” She could barely see him now. The light was so bright, she had to squint. “We’ll be behind you.”
Ruen hesitated. Icelin could almost see him calculating their odds. “I’ll try to find an air pocket around the ship,” he said. Then he was gone, diving beneath the surface. Icelin crawled to the edge of the raft to follow, when suddenly a heavy weight hit her from behind.
Her breath gone, Icelin fell flat to the raft. She could feel Cerest pressing his body against hers.
“Get off!” she cried, but her scream was lost in the cry of the wraiths. They dived and hovered around the raft, blocking her escape into the water.
“They still smell the magic,” Cerest shouted. His strength held her immobile. The blue light fell over them in a curtain.
The glare brightened to a painful intensity, and suddenly everything went black. Icelin thought she’d gone blind.
Blinking reflexively, she felt a warm breeze against her face. She looked up and saw a crescent of sunlight spilling over a pile of stone. It was the remains of a rooftop.
She was back in the tower. The heat continued to build, just as it had in her vision. Her two realities were merging, past and present bridged by the spellplague.
But this time something was different. Icelin rolled onto her side and saw the body lying next to her. Cerest was staring, disoriented, up at the sunbeams and the tower roof.
He doesn’t know where he is, Icelin thought. His mind is joined to mine by the plague.
“What happened?” The elf sat up and swung toward her. His face paled visibly. Icelin turned to see the specters of her parents and Elgreth searching the tower. They went about their exploration, smiling and laughing, oblivious to the two figures sitting on the ground.
Cerest’s lips formed the name of his old friend, but he couldn’t speak. His eyes welled with unshed tears. Icelin couldn’t believe the sight.
He’s in pain. This pains him. Does he know what’s coming? She looked up at the light. It fell in sunbeams and blue threads. Did Cerest know how few breaths stood between his friends and oblivion?
She reached out, against her will, and touched the elf on the shoulder. “Cerest,” she said. “Close your eyes.”
“What?” He turned to her, gripping her shoulders. “It’s them, can’t you see them? They’re alive!”
Icelin winced at the pressure he exerted. His hands trembled. Half-crazed joy shone in his liquid eyes.
“They aren’t real,” Icelin said. “This is memory. Everything’s going to burn, Cerest.” Maybe us too.
“No!” He shook his head. Sweat dripped from his hair. “Not this time. I’ll be able to warn them this time. I’ll get them out before anything happens.”
“They can’t hear you,” Icelin said. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch it a second time.
Cerest continued to hold her in a crushing grip as the heat built to a roar in her ears. She heard the screams. Cerest’s raw shriek pricked icy needles all over her flesh. She tipped her head forward, resting against his chest while he wept and screamed, over and over.
He was seeing everything as he had never seen it before—from the inside of the inferno. Elgreth had long since carried her young self away, but the memory and Cerest’s imagination had taken over. She could hear her mother crying out for her husband and for Cerest. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
To distract herself, Icelin conjured an image of Ruen, swimming deep in the rotting harbor. She prayed he’d found safe haven from the plague’s reach. He’d already drowned in its grip once.
And what about Aldren, Darvont and Bellaril? Would they be safe inside the Ferryman, or would the plague consume the ship and crush them all? She held onto the screaming elf and hoped that one of Aldren’s deities would take pity o
n all of them.
CHAPTER 21
Tallmantle heard Tesleena’s scream a breath before the explosion. The keel of the Ferryman erupted in blue fire. Debris shot thirty feet into the air. The flames spewed toward the sky in an arcane geyser the likes of which he had never seen.
“Halt the boats!” Tallmantle raised a hand, but the men were already bringing their oars up from the water to watch the spectacle. A shower of blue flame and what looked like humanoid forms were raining down over the harbor.
“Gods above,” said Deelia, who was behind him in the boat. “Are those people?”
“No,” Tesleena said. She was in the boat adjacent to Tallmantle’s. Her voice sounded detached from her body. Her eyes stared, unfocused, at some distant point on the horizon. “They’re sea wraiths.” A crease appeared in her forehead. “I understand. My thanks.”
Tallmantle looked at the wizard. “What does the Blackstaff say?”
“He’s too far away to know how much damage was done,” Tesleena said. Her eyes shifted, centering on Tallmantle. “Which also means he has no way of knowing if it’s safe to approach. He can’t return to the city now. He leaves it up to you to decide whether to go in.”
“What do you think?” he asked her.
“I will go,” she said without hesitation. “But it’s likely anyone who was in the wreckage was killed instantly when the spell-plague pocket erupted.”
Icelin awoke staring into darkness. She flexed her fingers—grateful that she still possessed the appendages—and cast a spell using the least possible amount of energy.
A pinprick glow lit her fingertip and spread to her whole hand. By its light, her eyes adjusted to her surroundings.
She stared up at the sky. It took her a long time to realize that the Ferryman’s masts and rigging had been incinerated by the spellplague blast. Small fires burned at various points along the Ferryman’s length.
The entire ship had listed far forward, but by some miracle the leviathan’s bones held it stable and prevented their being crushed under its weight. The small chamber created by the wreckage had been reduced to half its size, but Ruen’s raft was miraculously still intact. Gaps yawned in the planks like missing teeth. Water seeped freely across the ship’s surface, but for now it stayed afloat.
As her vision adjusted, Icelin became aware of the bodies. There was one on either side of her and another draped half on the raft and half in the water directly across from her. She could smell the burning, the singed flesh and hair. Her breath quickened.
The body on her right stirred. Icelin swung her spell light toward the movement. Her wrist stopped in midair, caught in an iron grip.
Icelin’s heart lifted. “Ruen,” she whispered. She removed his sodden hat from where it had fallen over his face. His skin was wet but unmarked by arcane fire. His eyes, when they opened, were the familiar rust red color. “Are you all right?”
He nodded and released her wrist. “Hat, please,” he said.
Icelin helped him sit up and put the hat back on his head. “How did you manage not to get that thing incinerated or lost in the harbor?” she asked.
Ruen looked at her, his expression grave. “Magic,” he said.
Icelin had the urge to laugh, but it died in her throat when she remembered the other bodies. She moved the light away from Ruen. Her spell illuminated a face she didn’t immediately recognize. The man was beautiful, his face smooth-skinned and symmetrical. His long golden hair fell across ears that were pointed like needles.
“Merciful gods,” she said. “This is Cerest.”
Ruen looked over her shoulder. The elf’s face had been perfectly restored. His eyes were open and staring glassily at something invisible in the distance. The expression on his face was both peaceful and sad.
Icelin put her hand against the elf’s cheek. It was ice cold. “He’s dead,” she said.
“So is this one,” Ruen said, checking the man draped across the raft. He put his hand against the man’s chest to find a heartbeat, but they both saw the burns on the man’s face and torso. His skin was blackened, and his hair was gone. His clothes had been burned to brittle strips that turned to ash when Ruen touched them. His chain vest had melted into his skin.
Ruen met her gaze. Icelin knew they were both thinking the same thing.
“Maybe Aldren’s magic protected them,” Ruen said.
Icelin shone her light around the wreckage. The entrance to Aldren’s chamber was now underwater. The channel they’d used to get the raft into the wreckage was filled in with debris.
“We’ll have to swim out,” Icelin said. Her gaze strayed involuntarily back to Cerest’s face, perfect now in its death pose. “Why did it happen?” she asked. “Why were we spared?”
“I don’t know,” Ruen said. “We’re already scarred. Maybe we’re immune to the plague now.”
“Cerest was scarred,” Icelin said, “in body, if not magically. Why would the plague restore him and then kill him?”
Maybe it hadn’t been the plague. She remembered Cerest’s anguished screams inside the tower. “He saw my mind,” she said. “In that breath we were joined, he saw everything he’d done, for the first time. He was inside the tower with me, watching my parents die.”
“A perfect memory,” Ruen said. “Maybe Cerest’s mind couldn’t survive that kind of clarity. To have all the defects of your own psyche laid out for you in a ring of fire—not many people could face it and live.”
“So this,” Icelin said, touching the elf’s smooth face, “this is memory. His last memory.” She felt an overwhelming wave of sadness—for her parents, Elgreth, and for Brant. So many lives destroyed.
“We should get out of here,” Ruen said. “There’s no telling how long the structure will hold.”
“The Ferryman’s Waltz is over,” Icelin said quietly. She turned away, leaving Cerest on the raft, staring peacefully up at the sky.
They swam out of the wreckage together, Icelin’s bobbing light leading the way. Gray mist clung to the harbor’s surface. In the distance she could smell the Hearth fire burning. The orange glow gave the impression of a false dawn.
Out of the darkness, Icelin saw the line of boats coming toward them. Lantern light swayed at each prow. Icelin could see there were at least two men in each boat.
“Think you can take ten of them?” she asked Ruen, who was treading water next to her. “Leaves eight for me.”
“Only ten?” Ruen said. His face twisted with a gallows humor smile. “Bring me a true challenge, lady.”
The lead boats drifted to a stop practically on top of them. Icelin squinted up into the face of a woman in robes. She wore a tense frown, but she seemed more interested in the wreckage than in the two figures in the water.
A tall man leaned down to Icelin. This man she recognized immediately, though she’d never expected the Watch Warden to come for her himself.
“Warden Tallmantle,” she said. “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”
“Well met, Icelin Tearn,” Tallmantle said, inclining his head gravely. “Would you care to come aboard?”
“I would, and if you’ve a spare blanket or two, I’d be weepingly grateful for those as well. But I’ve a problem. Three of my friends are trapped in the wreckage. We can’t get to them.”
“’Ware!” shouted one of the men at the back of the group. “We need more light over here.”
Tesleena spoke a word, and the surrounding harbor lit as if a miniature sun had risen.
A single small boat drifted toward the group. Her oarsman was hunched over, forcing the craft through the water.
The Watch officer nearest raised his crossbow. The oarsman lifted his head, and Icelin shouted, “Stop! He’s a friend.”
The crossbow stayed aimed at the deformed man. His tentacles undulated across his shoulders. He continued to row toward them, undaunted by the stares.
When Darvont got close enough to Tallmantle’s boat, Ruen grabbed an oar and hauled the boat in the re
st of the way. There were two figures lying side by side in the bottom of the boat. Icelin recognized Bellaril and Aldren, but she couldn’t see if they yet breathed.
The deformed man slumped against the side of the boat, exhausted by whatever toil had brought them out of the wreckage. Tears streaked his face. Icelin could see him stroking Aldren’s robes. Her heart lurched painfully.
She swam to the boat, but Tallmantle was closer. He bent over the prone figures. “The old man is dead,” he said. “The dwarf lives.”
“The Art is around her,” Tesleena said. She put a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder and rolled her onto her back. Clutched between her two hands was Aldren’s staff. It pulsed with pale, crimson radiance, but it was clear at Icelin’s touch that the item had been drained. It was nowhere near as powerful as it once had been.
“Is he truly dead?” Icelin asked. She saw Tallmantle nod, but she was looking to the deformed man. He met her gaze and seemed to understand what she was asking. He nodded. The sorrow in his eyes pierced her.
“It was what he wanted,” Ruen said.
“He protected Bellaril,” Icelin said. The Art requires a focus, Aldren had told her. She lifted the staff from the sleeping Bellaril’s arms and cradled it in her own. “Thank you,” she murmured. “In Mystra’s memory, thank you.”
“In Mystra’s memory,” Tesleena whispered. The words echoed down the line of boats.
EPILOGUE
Icelin sat outside the Watch Warden’s private office, awaiting her audience and her fate. It was strange, to be alone in the small chamber, not to hear the constant flow of the harbor and the people on the twisted walkways. She felt, in some ways, that she’d lived her whole life in Mistshore, and was only now venturing out into the sun-washed world.
She ran her hands over the bodice of her dress, marveling at the softness of a fabric that was not stiff with salt water and grime. All trace of the harbor stink was gone from her body, though her hair had been a struggle. She’d ended up cutting most of the muck out of it. The strands barely brushed her shoulders now, and the shorter locks at her temples were stark white. She ran her fingers through the strands self-consciously.
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