Prophet of Moonshae tdt-1

by Douglas Niles

  "You're insane!" snapped Currag, not even convincing himself. Indeed, there could be no other explanation for the suddenly fading sound of the chase. The young noble knew sorcery when he saw it, yet he was a cool and steady warrior. He did not fear this wild stranger.

  "They know! They understand, and now they are safe!" The intruder, momentarily forgotten, opened his eyes. Once again the passion glowed there.

  "Safer than you, lunatic!" Currag's rage shifted instantly to the man. He slapped the guard on the shoulder. "Your sword-give it to me!"

  The man-at-arms did not hesitate. The young laird of Blackstone raised the blade, stepping toward the still figure of the prophet. Currag's eyes held murderous purpose, but the old man's lip curled back in a caricature of a sneer.

  The blade darted forward, oddly liquid in its movement, and thrust through the old man's ribcage. It met only slight resistance. A spot of crimson spurted through the robe.

  "Madman!" cried Currag, his own eyes burning fiercely as his victim fell on his back, rigid, eyes bulging toward the dark skies. Then an expression of peace, as if he but slept, crossed the stranger's features. He sighed softly.

  Raindrops spattered in the growing pool of blood, and soon the water washed the thicker liquid away.

  The appearance of the raving stranger and the flight of the hounds were but the first two mysteries to arise in Blackstone on this night of dire portents. They were not the last nor, to the lord of the manor, the most troubling. Instead, Earl Blackstone found the third mysterious occurrence to be far more sinister, its portents more evil.

  Like the other two, the third was a puzzle that developed during the darkness of the night of the full moon, though it was not discovered until the morning.

  This was when a guard, patrolling the outside of the great manor house, came upon the body on the ground. It lay facedown below the third-floor window leading to Currag's chambers. When the stunned guard rolled the corpse over, it proved to be that of the young heir to the noble house.

  There was no mark to be found on him, no sign of any physical injury-except, of course, for the brutal impact of the forty-foot fall into a stone-paved courtyard. Despite that impact, the features on the face, the expressions of the mouth and eyes, were still visible.

  It remained for his father, the earl, to wonder at the thing that had come to Currag Blacksmith in the depths of the fatal eve. Yet this much he knew: The visage of his son at the time of his death was a mask of almost unimaginable horror.

  From the Log of Sinioth:

  I walk among men, but I am not a man.

  I have a name, but it may not be spoken.

  I serve my master, Talos, and his power makes me strong. I labor in his name, and the Raging One grants me the will and the means to grow, to gain mastery in the world, and to spread the word and the truth of his power.

  Now my god has chosen this place called Moonshae. Here the name of Talos will be made great-and I, the Priest With No Name, shall rule in the shadow of my lord.

  Coss-Axell-Sinioth

  2

  The House of Kendrick

  The chariot thundered across the vast expanse of grass, effortlessly cresting the frequent rises in the moor, then plummeting with dizzying speed into the bowls between. Two magnificent horses, a gray mare and an auburn gelding, drew the small two-wheeled platform with bounding ease. The stocky, nimble creatures darted this way and that, responding instantly to each of the driver's commands.

  The charioteer carried no whip, but held the reins with strong, sure hands. Insulated against the morning chill by leather leggings and a woolen cloak, the nimble figure balanced lightly on the tiny, lurching platform, springing into the air each time the chariot skipped over a rise. A stout cap of leather covered the rider's head, slight protection in the event of a hard fall.

  To the east, the waters of Whitefish Bay gleamed in the morning sun. That brightness also etched the craggy highland of the Fairheight Range in vivid detail. The crest sprawled the length of the western horizon while blue sky-the first cloudless weather in months-domed overhead. Only beyond the mountains, far to the west, did a fringe of clouds linger along the horizon.

  Before the chariot stretched a seemingly limitless range of rolling grassland. The rider directed the racing team with confidence, often darting onto the narrow pole between the horses. There the charioteer perched, exhorting the steeds with encouragement and praise. The small vehicle, careening behind the horses, followed the creatures into a gully, splashed through a gravel-bottomed stream, and then bounced up the steep bank.

  The driver held on, guiding the twin wheels around boulders, up a barely discernible path, and once again onto the freedom of the moor.

  "Geddaway there, now! C'mon, Brit! Run, Mouse!" The voice was intense, and the rider's eyes stared toward the sea. The horses bounded forward with renewed intensity, clods of dirt flying beneath the thundering hoofbeats. The wind whipped the crouching driver, who once again perched on the bar between the straining beasts. They crested a steep rise and the chariot left the ground, soaring like a flying thing.

  Caer Callidyrr came into view then, its alabaster walls gleaming in the sun. The haze had burned from the hills, and the castle stood out clearly as the dominant feature of the panorama. High ramparts stretched across three small hilltops over the town that clung to the edge of the bay. Towers soared, a dozen of them higher than any other man-made structure in the Moonshae islands, fitting grandeur for the palace and castle of the High King, ruler of all the Ffolk.

  The team began the long descent with a staccato gallop, but gradually the driver pulled them into a canter, slowing to an easy walk by the time they rolled toward the stable building along the outside of the castle wall.

  Here the charioteer's strong hands revealed gentleness as they tugged the reins slightly, bringing the two frothing steeds to a rest. Reaching upward, those hands lifted off the driver's leather helm, releasing a cascade of hair the color of rust. Curling slightly, as thick as a lush stand of wheat, the locks wrapped like a full blanket, trailing behind the lithe figure halfway down the slender, proud back.

  Alicia Kendrick, Princess of Moonshae, returned to the castle, her cheeks stung red by the breeze, her heart pounding.

  "By the goddess, what a ride!" She made the announcement to the liverymen who already moved out to tend the exhausted horses. She stepped smoothly to the ground and shrugged off her cloak, which was quickly caught by an attendant. Jauntily Alicia strode toward the door of the stables. Though the castle was huge, the Kendricks maintained their stables outside the walls for convenience's sake-and because, in Alicia's lifetime, there had never been any threat to those high walls or indeed to any other portion of her father's kingdom.

  Any military threat, she corrected herself. She couldn't forget about the scourge of weather that seemed to constantly afflict the Moonshaes, the reason today's warmth had been such a compelling summons to the outdoors.

  For the last five years-fully a quarter of the young woman's life-the Moonshae Islands had suffered the onslaught of terrible violence, but it had been the violence of nature run amok, not of man. Winters of deep frost, broken only by the blizzards that howled in from the great Trackless Sea to bury the land beneath tons of wet, clinging snow, had marked each of those five years. Then followed spring, such as the one just passing, with days of torrential rains, pounding hailstorms, and winds that seemed determined to rip the outposts of land from their precarious perches in the sea, all combining to blast the beleaguered isles for months on end.

  But the summers, perhaps, were worst: searing weeks of blasting heat, unbroken by cloud or even the hint of rain, would yield to periods of violent thunderstorms. Lightning slashed the land, and towering, moist cyclones blew in from the sea to uproot trees and smash houses. The storms lasted into the autumn, until the cycle of ice resumed.

  Then today, as they neared the start of the fifth summer of this ruinous pattern, the weather had paused, as if marshaling st
rength for the next horrible wrack. The skies remained clear for hours, and the winds mellowed enough to allow one to enjoy the warmth of the sun, a warmth the princess had been unable to resist.

  Alicia stopped abruptly when she saw the tall, thin figure standing in the stable doorway. He was a young man who wore a long brown cloak. His narrow face wasn't displeasing, though it bore an unhealthy-looking pallor. He was cleanshaven, but his brown hair tumbled over his ears to the height of his narrow shoulders. Now, unaccustomed to sunlight, he squinted at her.

  "Hello, Keane," she said, offering her most winning smile, a look that was very dazzling indeed as her green eyes sparkled. A whisper of freckles marked her cheeks and her nose, and these seemed to dance across her face, expressing her joy.

  The tall man, however, did not share her pleasant mood. His heavy eyebrows dropped as he made an attempt to glower menacingly. Though older than Alicia, he was still too young to effectively look the part of the displeased senior.

  "Your lessons!" he reminded her sharply. "Your father will have my head if you cannot recite the Tale of Cymrych Hugh at the councils of midsummer!"

  Alicia sighed. "I'm sorry, Keane-I really have been working on them, every day but today. But this morning, for the first time in weeks, the sun was shining. Mouse and Brittany were as frantic to get some exercise as me!"

  "I, not me," the tutor corrected automatically.

  Then Keane, too, sighed. "I really can't blame you. These storms of late-they've gotten to all of us, the gods know! What with black clouds and rain and hail, even I might welcome a chance to spend a day outside."

  Indeed, the weather had lashed the lands of the Moonshaes with unaccustomed sharpness during the past winter and spring. Even among the savage pattern of storms, the droughts and floods and cyclones that had plagued the islands for the past six months, ruining crops, freezing livestock, and destroying homes and buildings, had been particularly grueling.

  "And even you used to be young once, didn't you, Keane?"

  The tutor grimaced, and Alicia felt a twinge of guilt. He wasn't that much older than she. He had passed his twenty-seventh winter, while Alicia would be twenty in the fall.

  "I'm sorry," she added hastily. "That wasn't fair. But I wish you'd understand-on a day like this, I didn't have a choice."

  "I know." Keane shook his head. "I wonder if the king will have me beheaded or simply hanged."

  Alicia laughed, knowing her teacher's displeasure had passed-at least, to the point where he could joke with her.

  "Tell me which you'd prefer, and I'll see if I can use my influence with him. I am his firstborn child, you know."

  She followed the man into the castle, knowing that Keane was in no danger from her father. Indeed, the regard felt by the king and queen for the tutor was the reason he had been entrusted with the education of the princesses.

  Once Keane had been an apprentice to a powerful magic-user, but Alicia had gotten the impression that sorcery had proven beyond his skill. He had abandoned the study of spells, eventually, to devote all his time to the education of the royal daughters. Tristan and Robyn Kendrick could afford the finest tutors in the Realms for their children, and they had chosen Keane.

  "Ah! That reminds me," said Keane. "Your father sent for you. He's meeting with the Earl of Fairheight and the Lords Umberland and Ironsmith in the Great Hall. By now, doubtlessly, he wonders with some annoyance what has happened to you."

  Alicia laughed again, not worried. "No doubt he'll have both of us drawn and quartered," she teased, enjoying the look of exasperation that Keane gave her as they passed through the high castle gatehouse.

  Angry pressures mounted in the icy depths, emerging as heaving waves across the storm-tossed Sea of Moonshae. Like the terrain of a jagged-toothed mountain range, monstrous swells loomed in all directions. But they were crests in motion, with living summits rising, then toppling to cascade into the next liquid massif. Overcast skies darkened the water to charcoal shades, and rain lashed the peaks and valleys of the pounding swells.

  Below the storm-tossed surface, the world did not warm, though it became more still. . and more dark. The gray depths became black, and even if the sun had broken through the clouds, its rays couldn't have penetrated this far below the chill surface.

  Yet still farther into the depths the pressure grew and the blackness closed in like a cloak of icy ink. Fish dared not swim so deep, and the beds of kelp remained far above.

  Finally came the ocean bottom, a wasteland of silt-strewn plain dotted with the occasional skeleton-like framework of a ship or the bones of some great sea creature. The plain of the ocean's floor stretched, featureless and flat, for many miles. Then yawned a place where the descent plunged still farther as a great chasm cut like a raw wound through the flatness of the seabed. Sheer walls plummeted into the unimaginable deep, farther still below the realms of light where the fish and the fauna dwelled. Yet even at this frightful depth, under the burdens of pressure and darkness, there was life.

  Within this undersea canyon, occupying both sides of the steeply sloping walls, the sahuagin had built their city of Kressilacc. The aquatic humanoids were constantly vicious and hungry, the mortal enemies of air-breathing humankind. Covered with hard scales and, on the males, bristling dorsal spines, the fish-men formed a horrific army when they ventured forth. They carried bronze weapons, wore shell shields, and swam in great, swarming companies.

  From Kressilacc, twenty years earlier, the Deepsong had thrummed, luring hordes of the fish-men into war with the Ffolk and northmen of the surface world. It had been a war during which the sahuagin armies fared very badly indeed.

  After the battles, their ranks decimated and their pride savaged, the proud warriors of this evil submarine race had returned to their remote city, there to lick their wounds, to praise their dead, to punish their clerics. . and to let their hatred fester.

  The clerics had been followers of Bhaal, and it had been their exhortations that had led the sahuagin into the ill-starred war. Bhaal was now a vanquished god. And so the priestesses had died-slowly, with much suffering, which is the way the sahuagin prefer to dispose of their enemies.

  The king of Kressilacc, a great bull of a fish-man called Sythissal, had barely escaped the slaughter wreaked upon the clerics-indeed, it had only been his vehement cries for vengeance, claiming that he himself had been dazzled by foul sorcery, that had shifted the rage of the sahuagin away from the one who had led them to disaster.

  Thus King Sythissal's hatred of the surface dwellers was even more profoundly rooted than was the vengeful bloodlust of his subjects. And yet, though he loudly declaimed human treachery and greed and often sent his leanest warriors forth to harass and sink the ships of men, the king had never returned to the surface since the last battle, a disaster that had culminated with an abject collapse of morale. His army fled in disarray from the base of Caer Corwell back to the sheltering darkness of the sea.

  This defeat had done another thing to King Sythissal. It had inflicted upon him a deep and vengeful mistrust of all things clerical.

  Temples to gods of chaos and evil had long stood in the wide galleries and long, curving balconies of the cliff-wall city. Images of Bhaal, and Malar the Beastlord, and Talos the Destroyer and Auril Frostmaiden and many others had occupied these holy places for untold centuries, but the king ordered them all cast down. Thus at the same time as the New Gods secured their grip upon the worship of the Ffolk, the evil gods worshiped in the deep were cast aside, abandoned by their followers, their power spurned with them.

  All except one, that is. The faithful priests and priestesses of Talos the Destroyer foresaw, quite accurately, the day when the power of their god would gain prominence in the Moonshaes. With a surface world swept free of interference by the gods of good and their pitiful human tools, these scaly priests understood that the sahuagin would be able to attain ultimate power. Mastery of the isles was a dream that could soon become real!

  The key to the f
uture of the sahuagin race, Sythissal knew, lay in defeating the hated humans and the air-breathing dwarves, elves, and halflings who were their allies. His loathing of the surface peoples grew into a palpable abhorrence, a hatred so strong that, for the King of Kressilacc, it became a reason for living.

  The clerics of Talos prepared their king for the coming of their god. They sent to him nubile priestesses for the Great Spawning, and these pleased him well. While the king rested, the priestess fish hissed premonitions to the piscine monarch, and Sythissal dreamed of a great messenger. That one would come with word of a plan, the king saw, wherein the humans would bring about their own destruction. Talos and his faithful would rule!

  Sythissal saw one whose skin had scales like his own. But this messenger claimed all the skies as its sea and moved through those lofty heights with the same ease that the king glided through brine. Sythissal saw that the messenger was a thing of death, but also of unspeakable power.

  To prepare for this messenger-one the king did not yet know as the harbinger of Talos-the great sahuagin desired gifts. He wished to meet this great one in a fashion that would indicate the might and richness of Kressilacc. Thus Sythissal decided to personally lead a war party to the surface, reveling once more in the taste of warm human blood.

  The sahuagin city lay in the Sea of Moonshae but wasn't far removed from the trading routes connecting the eastern cities of the isles-most notably Callidyrr-to the wealth of the distant Sword Coast. Instinctively the king desired to strike at the Ffolk for his treasure raid; a lingering sense of vengeance required it. Too, their vessels tended to be slower than the longships of the northmen, making easier targets for the swimming fish-men.

  For the first time in two decades, King Sythissal led a great host of his warriors forth from the city, upward and eastward toward the realms of sunlight and air. He would find a prize, he knew, and claim it for his own. Then when the messenger of the gods came to them, the sahuagin would be ready with appropriate offerings.