They passed the night in a small, poorly sheltered bay, straining at the anchor. The wind slackened before dawn, but heavy rain moved in after the gale. When they raised anchor and steered east out of their small bay, they did so in a cold, merciless downpour. Hamil shivered and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. “Have I ever told you how much I loathe the weather around here?” he asked Geran.
“Many times last spring, but you seemed to like the summer well enough.”
“Well, summer was far too short. Clearly a cold, wind-driven rain is the natural state of affairs in these lands, and anything else is a temporary aberration.”
Geran smiled humorlessly. “My apologies for the inconvenience. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think much of the weather either. It’s going to cut our visibility to a mile, perhaps two if we’re lucky. We’ll have to stay close to the coast and move slowly, or we might miss Moonshark.”
“Have you given thought to how you mean to get the compass from Murkelmor?”
Geran nodded. “I’ll ask him for it, if he’s willing to parley. It’s no good to him without someone to waken its enchantments. I’ll even pay a fair price. But I’ll take it by force if I have to.” He hoped it wouldn’t come to that; even though he and Hamil had parted ways with the crew of Moonshark under difficult circumstances, he’d sailed with them long enough to view some-Murkelmor for instance-as relatively decent fellows despite their choice of career. As far as he knew, they hadn’t done any harm to Hulburg or its shipping themselves, even if their fellows in the Black Moon had. On the other hand, if Murkelmor refused to part with the starry compass, Seadrake was bigger, better armed, and had a full crew including heavily armed soldiers. Geran did not intend to leave without the compass.
Hamil frowned skeptically under his sodden hood. “I doubt that Murkelmor or Skamang will be interested in parley, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt to try.”
They stood out to sea and ran east. By late morning they passed Keldon Head and Hulburg, slowly closing with the shore again. The coastline here consisted of one headland after the next, steep and desolate. Two or three centuries ago these lands had been inhabited, in the days when Hulburg and Sulasspryn were vital cities carving out land from the wilds of the Moonsea North. Here and there the ruins of old homesteads stood on the south-facing hillsides, with the occasional stump of a crumbling watchtower atop a hill. Geran knew that a small number of shepherds and goatherds kept their flocks in the vales behind the coastal hills, at least within a few miles of Hulburg. But here they were passing into empty lands where no one lived. There was no road or path through these parts into other lands, so no travelers had reason to continue eastward from Hulburg, and the danger of monsters from the Galena Mountains or the bleak ruins of Sulasspryn kept anyone from trying to settle here.
Half an hour after they passed Hulburg by, two swept horns appeared above the ladder leading down to the main deck, followed a moment later by the rest of Sarth. Like Hamil, he wore a heavy cloak against the rain, and like Hamil, he also was soaked already. Unfortunately, few hoods fit him well, so he simply glanced up at the sky with a flicker of annoyance and endured the rain pelting down.
“I have repeated my divinations,” he told Geran. “Moonshark has not moved. She lies perhaps fifteen miles or so ahead of us.”
“Sulasspryn, then. It must be.” Geran frowned. “But why lay there for so long?”
“She must have been more damaged than we realized,” Hamil suggested. “If the stem is well and truly sprung, Murkelmor might have to steam a new piece of timber into shape to fix it. That could take a while.”
“Or perhaps another pirate den is hidden in the ruins there,” Sarth said. “We first found Moonshark in Zhentil Keep, after all.”
“I’ve never heard any such story, but I suppose it’s possible. We’ll approach carefully.” Geran rubbed at his jaw, thinking over Sarth’s tidings. “Any news of Mirya?”
“Only the faintest hints. She lives still-I feel confident of that-but she has passed beyond the range of my divinations.”
“Is she in Faerun?”
“I do not know, Geran. She must be very far away if she is, a thousand miles or more.” The tiefling glanced up into the sky. “I believe she is somewhere above us. She might be held somewhere high in the mountains or perhaps on a high-drifting earthmote. I have seen fortresses, even towns, on some of the larger ones. Or she might be somewhere in the Sea of Night.”
“The starry compass, then,” Geran breathed. He nodded to the tiefling. “My thanks, Sarth. Without your efforts we’d have no hope at all of finding Mirya and her daughter.”
“I only hope that my meager talents do not lead you astray,” Sarth answered.
“Of that, I have no fear,” Geran said. He returned his attention to the gray coastline sliding by through the rain and mists. They continued on for several hours, making little speed in the light wind. Eventually Geran had Andurth call the crew to their rowing stations and continued at half speed, a pace the crew could sustain for hours by rotating rowers to and from the benches. Unlike Moonshark, Seadrake was not really fitted out for rowing speed; she was made for sailing and could only put about twenty oars in the water through high, awkwardly sited ports.
Early in the afternoon, they rounded a headland and spied the ruins of a large city hugging the hillsides of the bay beyond. Old walls encircled the place, marred by numerous gaps. Twisted trees grew up through flagstone courts and choked what used to be the city’s boulevards. High on a hill overlooking the harbor, the keep that had once dominated the place was an empty shell cleft in two by the gray scar of an old landslide; a huge mound of rubble at the foot of the hill marked where most of the castle had fallen. Many other buildings in the vicinity looked as if they’d been knocked down by similar upheavals. Those that still stood stared blankly out to sea, their windows and doorways filled with ominous shadow. Geran could not shake the impression that the city was watching Seadrake approach, resentful of the intrusion.
“This is Sulasspryn?” Hamil asked. “What happened here?”
“No one knows for sure,” the swordmage said. “Some disaster befell the place a hundred years or more before the Spellplague, and few people survived to tell the tale. As the story goes, the ruling family feuded against a drow city beneath the Galenas and won-or so they thought. But the dark elves had their revenge in the end. They undermined the citadel and collapsed it, wiping out the city’s rulers in one swift stroke. Then the dark elves and their monsters boiled up from beneath the city, slaughtering or carrying off most of Sulasspryn’s citizens.” Geran shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but in Hulburg they say that Lolth’s curse lies over the ruins. You can’t find a soul in Hulburg who’d dare set foot within the walls.”
“Including you?”
Geran pointed at a high hilltop west of the city. “When I was about eighteen or nineteen, Jarad Erstenwold and I rode to the headland there to look on the ruins. That’s as close as we cared to be. And even then my father was furious with both of us. He feared that we might wake things better left undisturbed.” He paused, and found that a shadow of old dread had crept over him. He was as close to Sulasspryn as anyone from Hulburg had been in a long time, and it struck him as an unwholesome place to be. “To tell the truth, I sincerely hope Moonshark’s moved on by now. I don’t like to linger here.”
“No such luck, I fear.” Hamil pointed over the rail at a customshouse close by the water’s edge. As Seadrake slowly sculled across the harbor, the slender black hull of the pirate galley-concealed by the ruined building at first-came slowly into view, drawn up on the shore behind the structure. “There she is! It looks like we’ve caught Moonshark on the beach.”
The pirate galley was drawn up on the strand a short distance outside the city walls, well hidden by the headland that sheltered the city’s old harbor from the westerly winds. If the rain had been a little heavier, or Seadrake a little farther out from the shore, they might
have sailed past without spotting the other ship. Geran signaled to the helmsman, who turned the wheel and brought the ship into the harbor. All over the Hulburgan vessel, the soldiers and sailors scrambled to make themselves ready for battle, quickly donning mail shirts or leather jerkins and uncovering the ship’s catapult. The swordmage peered toward the shore, looking for signs of commotion-the Black Moon pirates might try to launch their ship and make their escape before Seadrake landed, or at the very least make ready to defend the ship. But he saw no one moving on the shore.
“Where are they?” he muttered. “They must have seen us by now.”
“I don’t care for the looks o’ the shore,” Andurth said in a low voice. “I can beach if you insist on it, but we’ve a deeper hull than that galley there, and I fear we’ll be stuck fast. It’ll be a devil of a job to get back in the water.”
Geran frowned. The dwarf was right; there was good, deep water by the quays in the city proper, but he was not about to tie up in the middle of the ruins. The shore the pirate ship was drawn up on looked wide and muddy. “Very well. We’ll land by boat.” He hesitated then asked, “Hamil, can you see anyone ashore?”
The halfling shook his head. “It looks like there’s a camp on the beach, but there’s not a soul in sight. I’d suggest that perhaps they’re all belowdecks on Moonshark or sheltering from the rain in the ruins, but somehow I don’t really think they are. I don’t like the looks of this, Geran.”
“Nor do I,” Geran answered. “But we’re here, and we need Moonshark’s compass.” He sighed and looked over to Andurth. “Master Galehand, drop anchor and put the ship’s boats in the water. I’ll take twenty hands ashore.”
“Aye, Lord Geran,” the dwarf answered. He shouted commands to the sailors on deck. The crewmen aloft began to furl the sails one by one, while others hurried to the ship’s anchor or began to unlash the ship’s boats.
Geran absently listened to the bustle and commotion. His attention was fixed on the mist-wreathed ruins looming over the harbor, concealed by veils of rain. Some dire peril awaited within, he was certain of it. But he had no idea what it might be.
TWENTY
12 Marpenoth, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)
Wet gravel grated under the longboat’s keel as it grounded on the strand a bowshot from where the silent Moonshark was drawn up. Geran vaulted over the side into knee-deep water and splashed ashore in the cold, steady rain, sword in hand. Weathered gray battlements and crumbling temples towered over the landing party, clinging to the edge of the steep bluff that marked the western side of Sulasspryn’s bay. The harbor proper lay several hundred yards to the east, where the remnants of a stone jetty sheltered the city’s old quays from the Moonsea storms. On this side of the harbor, a causeway ran out to the old customshouse across a thirty-yard-wide strand at the foot of the bluff. It was the only place in Sulasspryn’s bay flat enough for a ship the size of Moonshark to haul her prow out of the water-and it was well hidden from ships passing by at sea, not that many ever had reason to sail along this desolate coast.
“It seems your guess was right,” Sarth said to him. The tiefling pointed to the camp set up not far from the beached galley. Several fresh logs lay stacked there, partially stripped of their bark. The ship’s bow was braced atop two more logs set like rollers under the keel, and a simple framework of timbers held her in place. “Murkelmor must have decided he could not sail any farther without first mending the damage to the bow.”
“He would’ve been wiser to find a cove a few miles back, then,” Geran said. He reminded himself that few in Moonshark’s crew had any reason to be wary of Sulasspryn. None of them hailed from Hulburg or the lands nearby, after all. But he would have imagined that any grim old ruin of a city should have commanded some respect. Everyone knew that all sorts of curses, ghosts, and hungry monsters might lurk in any long-abandoned castle or city, even if few of the pirates were familiar with the specific perils of these ruins.
“There aren’t many trees along the coast, but there seems to be some good timber here,” Hamil pointed out. “Or perhaps Murkelmor was counting on the reputation of the place to ward off pursuit and chose to land here for that very reason.”
“We’ll ask Murkelmor when we see him,” said Geran, although he was beginning to doubt that they would. He had a hard time believing that the pirates of Moonshark would have been willing to strand themselves beneath Sulasspryn’s brooding ruins even for a few hours, let alone the days of work that would be needed to effect serious repairs. He waited for his armsmen to drag their longboats up onto the beach and then motioned for them to follow him. “Come on, fellows. Stay close, and keep your eyes and ears open. Assume it’s a trap until we know for certain that it’s not.”
They marched toward the pirate galley, boots crunching in the pebbles underfoot. As they neared, they saw that the pirate crew had set up a worksite on the beach to cut and shape new timbers for their ship. It looked as though they’d simply walked away from their work. Saws, axes, and other tools lay scattered around the site. The Shieldsworn and sellswords with Geran kept their thoughts to themselves, but Geran noticed that they redoubled their vigilance, watching the bluffs to their right and keeping a wary eye on the shadows of doorways and windows above.
Where are they? Hamil said silently to Geran. Did they flee into the ruins when Seadrake appeared in the bay? I can’t believe Murkelmor would let us have his ship without fighting for it.
“I don’t know,” Geran murmured in reply. He circled around the prow of the galley with caution, just in case his former shipmates were waiting in ambush behind the ship’s hull-and then he found the first of Moonshark’s crewmen. The body sprawled at the water’s edge, facedown in the small wavelets lapping alongside the black hull. His back was a gory mess, ripped open in great furrows; several small, pale crabs scuttled away from the corpse as Geran approached.
“I think that’s Khefen,” Hamil said in a low voice. He grimaced. “Poor bastard.”
Geran glanced around and then crouched by the body to study it closely. “Dead a couple of days, I think. The wounds show a lot of tearing. Claws or talons, not blades. If I had to guess, I’d say that some beast drove him to the ground from behind and ripped him to shreds. Kara could tell us more, if she were here.”
“Whatever it was killed him here and left him,” Hamil said. “Most animals would have dragged him off or eaten their fill.”
“There’s another over here, m’lord!” one of the Shieldsworn guards called. He stood by one of the large logs at the side of the worksite. A moment later another guardsman peering into the tangled scrub and brush at the foot of the bluff added, “And half a dozen here in the briars, m’lord!”
“None of this is our affair any longer,” Sarth said in a low voice. “We should retrieve the compass and go.”
“You’re right.” The longer they stayed, the more likely it was that whatever had fallen upon Moonshark’s crew would fall on Seadrake as well. And while Geran would have been happy to take away any surviving pirates who appeared and asked to leave, he didn’t feel obligated to search them out, not when the lives of Mirya and Selsha might be hanging by a thread on some far island in the sky. To the soldiers poking around the campsite, he called, “Gather up the bodies you can find without straying too far and bury them together in the sawpit. But keep your weapons close to hand!”
The corsairs had rigged a simple rope ladder with wooden rungs from the half galley’s deck to the beach. Geran caught hold of it and climbed to the main deck, followed by Hamil and Sarth. He saw two more dead crewmen on the deck, both by the door leading to the captain’s cabin, which hung open.
“They must have tried to barricade themselves inside,” Hamil said. “There may be survivors belowdecks.”
“We’ll check in a moment,” Geran said. Keeping a wary eye on the dark opening to the cabin, he climbed up the short ladder to the quarterdeck. A heavy canvas hood covered the binnacle Murkelmor had built for the com
pass. He used the blade of his sword to slice through the cords knotting the hood together and dragged the cover away.
The starry compass was still there.
Geran breathed a deep sigh of relief and peered closely at the dark sphere. In the dull gray daylight, it seemed little more than a smooth round ball of black glass-although the longer he looked at it, the more he saw of its hidden depths, in which tiny glittering pinpoints of light hovered like stars in the night sky.
“It’s here,” he said aloud.
“Good,” said Hamil. “Let’s get it and go. I don’t like this place.”
“Agreed,” Geran said. He produced a small sack from his belt. Together he and Hamil detached its silver collar from the wooden stand Murkelmor had built for it, wrapped it in a woolen blanket, and placed the orb carefully into the sack. Geran had no idea how breakable the thing was, but he certainly didn’t want to take the chance that it was, not when lives depended on it. With that done, they left the quarterdeck. A quick check belowdecks revealed another half-dozen crewmen dead in the midships bunkroom amid a scene of extreme violence; blood splattered the bulkheads, and furniture lay splintered or upended throughout the lower decks.
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