By

PROLOGUE

Hetham studied the murky gap between the dark mounds that were the hills. Nothing there yet, or at least, nothing he could see.

The problem was that despite the enchantment a sea-elf Dukar had cast on him to augment his vision, he couldn't see much. Like all mermen, he was a creature of the upper waters. He wasn't used to these cold, desolate depths. Light as he knew it scarcely existed here, and clouds of particulate matter, a byproduct of the teeming life hundreds of feet higher up, drifted down to obscure any feeble gleam that did arise.

With a flick of his piscine tail, he swam a little closer, squinted, and still saw nothing. He cursed.

Ingvatorc chuckled. "Relax, my friend. They'll be here soon enough."

Hetham's mouth tightened in irritation.

Thus far, the mad dragons had mainly attacked As'arem, the confederated shalarin kingdoms. But the spindly, crested shalarins were part of the Nantarn Alliance, and so troops from all six allied races, and others that merely maintained friendly relations with them, had united to battle the wyrms. Companies of mermen stood with slender sea-elf crossbowmen and goggle-eyed locathah spearmen with jutting fins ringing their faces and lining their limbs. Tritons, beings somewhat resembling mermen, but with scaly legs ending in flippers in place of tails, tended gigantic crabs that served as both mounts and weapons. Morkoths, their forms an ugly blend of fishy heads and octopod bodies, inspected the ranks of their sahuagin and scrag slave soldiers. Dolphins and whales swam about the periphery of the formation.

The battle order put Hetham and his company next to a band of storm giants, towering manlike beings possessed of prodigious strength and potent magic. The merman knew he was lucky to fight in proximity to such formidable comrades. Still, no doubt because he was nervous, he found Ingvatorc's calm and cheerful manner grating.

"What if the wyrms don't come through the gap?" the merman asked. "What if they circle to take us from behind, or from above?"

"They won't," said Ingvatorc, strands of his long, dark hair and beard shifting in the current. "The scouts and diviners agree. You have to remember, the wyrms have gone crazy. They no longer have sense enough to keep an eye out for trouble or use clever tactics. They just swim until they find something to kill, tear into it, then rush onward-" The giant stopped and stared. "They're here. Get ready." He waved his hand, signaling to others that the time for battle was at hand.

Across the formation, other officers did the same, and everyone made his final preparations as silently as possible. The wyrms surely sensed that someone awaited them beyond the gap, but if the warriors of the alliance were quiet-and lucky-the cover afforded by the twin hills might keep the drakes from realizing just how strong a force had ventured forth to engage them.

Hetham heard a rasping screech, a snarl, but still couldn't see anything. Then, at last, the notch between the slopes seemed to churn. Vague, serpentine shapes erupted from the gloom.

For a final moment that seemed to stretch on and on until Hetham wanted to scream, nobody attacked. Then captains and sergeants bellowed their orders. Volleys of crossbow bolts streaked through the water, though Hetham and his company didn't shoot. As yet, they were too far away. Spellcasters pointed wands and staves, or chanted incantations and lashed their hands through mystic passes. Darts of crimson light; glowing, slashing, disembodied blades; and pouncing, seething masses of shadow assailed the wyrms. Glaring at a huge black drake with a withered, leprous mask, Ingvatorc sang more than declaimed his words of power. He ended on a deep, sustained note, and rounds of milky phosphorescence materialized above and below the reptile. They snapped shut on it and engulfed it completely, like an oyster clasping a pearl.

For an instant, it almost seemed as if the allies could batter and harass the wyrms with impunity. One of the mermen cheered. Then, in a surging blur of motion, the reptiles struck back.

A dragon eel, as long as Ingvatorc was tall, with a few crossbow quarrels sticking in its dull scales, lashed its tail and hurtled into the midst of a band of elves. Each snap of its beak obliterated a warrior, nipping him to fragments, or snatching every trace of him from view as the creature swallowed him whole. A haze of blood suffused the space around it.

Wings beating, shimmering water drakes shot through a band of shalarins, wheeled, and streaked at them again. On each pass, they ripped at their prey with fang and claw.

A colossal sea drake, a wyrm somewhat like the dragon eels but even bigger, whipped around a whale, confining and crushing the cetacean in its coils, tearing great chunks of flesh away with its jaws. Dolphins swirled about the duel, hammering the drake with their snouts, but to little effect.

A long-necked dragon turtle, like a living fortress in its massive, bladed shell, opened its beak and spewed its breath weapon. The water in front it bubbled furiously, suddenly boiling hot. The locathahs caught in the effect floundered in agony.

Meanwhile, the dragons capable of casting spells, or possessed of innate magical powers, blasted arcane attacks at the wizards and priests among their foes. The reptiles might be insane, but they still had sufficient wit to use the full range of their abilities and to strive to eliminate their most dangerous adversaries first.

A topaz dragon, eyes glowing like yellow flame, hide reflecting light as if it were a living jewel in truth, stared at a half dozen morkoths. Unlike many of the supernatural effects being conjured on every side, the wyrm's power didn't manifest with a flash, a whine of sound, or anything else perceptible to Hetham's senses. But the morkoth wizards convulsed, their tentacles whipping about. Instantly, the topaz beat its wings and plunged forward to finish them off while they were helpless. The morkoths' bodyguards, sahuagin with round, black eyes; webbed, clawed hands; and maws full of needle fangs, leaped to interpose themselves between their masters and the threat, but the topaz smashed through them in an instant.

A black dragon snarled at a trio of sea-elf Dukars, the enchanted coral bonded to their skeletons now visible to all, jutting from their hands and twining about their limbs to serve as weapons and armor. The water around the mages darkened, curdled. They flailed, evidently unable to breathe, and struggled to flounder clear of the cloud. One of them succeeded, but only to blunder into the dragon's jaws.

The glowing, clamlike prison Ingvatorc had conjured winked out of existence, liberating the black inside. The dragon snarled words of power. To Hetham's horror, Ingvatorc changed, shrinking, his limbs becoming soft, clear, and shapeless as the substance of a jellyfish. Until something, his own magical abilities or sheer strength of spirit perhaps, reversed the transformation. He swelled and solidified back into his true form, then slumped wide-eyed and quaking, striving to collect himself sufficiently to resume the struggle.

Hetham was glad to see his huge companion withstand the curse, but he wondered if it was really going to matter. Nothing else had. The army of the alliance had claimed the ground its commanders had wanted and executed the strategy they'd devised. They'd struck the first blow and struck it hard. Yet as best Hetham could judge, they'd scarcely hurt the wyrms at all. They certainly hadn't slowed them down or dampened their appetite for slaughter. The reptiles were knifing through their ranks as easily as a whale sucked in mouthfuls of plankton.

Heart pounding, Hetham looked over to see if his captain was about to order the company forward into the mayhem. It didn't look like it. Perhaps the officer was afraid, or maybe he simply saw no point in moving. For after all, the dragons were coming to them.

The dragon turtle boiled a squad of tritons with another puff of its superheated breath. Water drakes and dolphins spun around one another in a combat like intricate dance. The cetaceans fought fearlessly, and their bards sang songs laced with magic, but the reptiles had them overmatched and ripped them to bloody shreds of fin and viscera. A dragon eel caught a giant crab in its beak, bit down, and cracked its adversary's shell. Still alive for the moment, the arthropod groped with its pincers, but the drake kept is scaly coils out of reach.

Two dragons, the colossal black Ingvatorc had tried and failed to imprison and the equally enormous topaz, tore another contingent of morkoths and slave warriors into a gory haze. Hetham saw with a thrill of terror that no one remained between the wyrms and his own company. Sure enough, the reptiles oriented on them and charged, legs stroking and kicking, wings sweeping, and tails lashing.

Some of the mermen turned and bolted. For an instant, Hetham wondered if he was gong to do the same. But evidently he was not, though he wasn't sure why. He was certain he was just as frightened as those who'd fled.

"Aim!" the captain shouted.

The mermen lifted their crossbows. Hetham pointed his weapon of bone and coral and its bolt of blowfish spine at the topaz's radiant yellow eye.

"Shoot!"

The volley flew. Hetham's quarrel missed the eye by a finger's length. For an instant, he thought it might still do some good, but it just glanced off the creature's brow. Many of his comrades' darts did the same. A few lodged in the dragons' scales, but failed to penetrate deeply enough to kill or cripple. It seemed possible that the reptiles didn't even feel the stings.

Some storm giants cast additional spells, but whatever the resulting flashes of green and purple light, sudden chill, carrion stink, and head-spinning moment of dizziness were supposed to accomplish, the reptiles weathered it all without slowing down or veering off. The rest of the band discharged their own crossbows. The oversized missiles might have done the dragons some actual damage, but they dodged the bolts by lashing their serpentine bodies low or from side to side. The black had but a single hole punched in its leathery wing, and the topaz suffered no harm at all.

"Tridents!" the merman officer shouted, reasonably enough. A warrior didn't want to be caught with a missile weapon in his grasp when the foe closed to striking distance, even if said foe's prodigious fangs and talons were such fearsome implements of destruction that Hetham's three-pronged lance seemed a joke by comparison.

The giants dropped their crossbows and unsheathed greatswords of sharp, faceted claw coral. For a sea creature Hetham's size, such a cutting, chopping weapon was all but useless. The resistance of the water kept a merman from swinging it hard enough to do much damage. But beings as strong as Ingvatorc and his kin could wield them to deadly effect. Hetham tried to draw some encouragement from that fact.

Meanwhile, the dragons raced closer, loomed larger, until even the giants seemed puny by comparison. For Hetham, dazed with dread, the moment had a dreamlike quality, and he had the daft thought that if only he'd lived a better life, and so inclined the gods to love him better, it might truly be possible to escape this doom by the simple expedient of waking up.

Just as the drakes were about to close, one of the storm giants bellowed a command or war cry in his own language. He and his fellows lunged to meet the onrushing dragons, essayed a first strike with their long, heavy, gemlike blades, then tried to dodge and spin away from the reptiles' ripostes. Some were such able swordsmen, or had so augmented their natural prowess with enchantment, that they jumped away from that first exchange unscathed. Another, less skillful or less fortunate, sank down to the sea floor with three gaping vertical rents in his torso. Blood streamed out to dirty the water, to taint it with its coppery smell and taste.

"Kill them!" the merman officer cried.

The warrior beside Hetham cried out, "I'm sorry!" dropped his trident, and fled. Everyone else rushed forward. Hetham had once watched a big shark and eel fighting while smaller fish, ignored, perhaps even unnoticed, whirled around the combatants to feast on drifting morsels of flesh from their wounds. The moments that followed reminded him of that, with his fellow mermen and himself playing the roles of the scavengers.

The dragons were too intent on the giants, by far the more serious of the two threats facing them, to pay much heed to mermen. Unfortunately, the wyrms were so huge and powerful that they could annihilate a smaller creature hovering close at hand without even particularly intending to. The black-scaled "skull dragon," as such reptiles with their shriveled masks were called, raked at a giant, accidentally snagged a merman on the tip of one claw, and crushed him when it set its foot back down. A random swat from a dusky wing shattered the bones in another warrior's body. The topaz pivoted to strike at the towering swordsman on its flank, and its whipping tail smashed the merman officer's head, which tumbled clear of his shoulders.

Even the storm giants posed a hazard. One feinted a cut at the jewel wyrm's leg then whirled his blade high for the true strike at its neck, without seeing the merman obliviously swimming into the arc of the attack. The coral blade sheared off the flukes of his tail.

All but choking on the blood in the water, his eyes smarting and nearly blinded by it, Hetham strained to block out the horror of what was happening, believing his side might actually have a chance. For after all, the giants were fearsome combatants. Their greatswords hacked long, deep gashes in the dragons' hides. At the very least, they were keeping the wyrms busy, and while they managed that, maybe the mermen's desperate little pokes and jabs would actually do some good.

He wanted to think so. But despite their wounds, the dragons never faltered, while, one by one, the giants slowly collapsed to the sea floor with crushed, misshapen heads, shredded torsos, and ragged stumps where massive limbs had been. Finally only Ingvatorc remained. The reptiles maneuvered to flank him, and knowing himself overmatched, he started jabbering a spell. Before he could finish, though, the wyrms pounced. He lashed out with a stop cut, and intent on the kill, the topaz didn't even try to avoid it. The blade sliced its flank, but at the same instant, the creature caught Ingvatorc's shoulder in its jaws.

Meanwhile, the skull wyrm plunged its fangs into the giant's lower back. The drakes twisted, wrenching and pulling in opposite directions, and Ingvatorc's torso ripped into two pieces.

With that accomplished, the reptiles rounded on the surviving mermen. The topaz clawed at Hetham. He jerked out of the way and swam backward.

The retreat carried him into water where the drifting blood wasn't quite so thick, permitting a glimpse of the battle as a whole. What he saw came as no surprise but wrung his heart nonetheless.

The army of the alliance was finished, Dukars, high mages, morkoths, mermen, shalarins, sea-elves, and tritons all annihilated, or maybe, in the case of a few lucky folk, put to flight.

We tried, he thought, perhaps addressing the multitude of folk who'd depended on them for their deliverance. I swear by the tides, we tried. But we just couldn't stop them. No one could.

Still, he had a duty to fight on, for these last few moments of life. He aimed his trident at the topaz's mask. If it bit at him, he would try again to put out its luminous yellow eye.

But when he met its gaze, pain exploded through his head, paralyzing him. Before he could recover, its fangs pierced him through.

Anton Marivaldi sighed at the aching pleasure as the pert, chattering brunette masseuse thumped and kneaded his muscles. He suspected that after she'd hammered all the stiffness and tension out, she might offer even more intimate services, and if so, he intended to purchase them.

He'd earned his amusements, hadn't he? First had come tendays of imposture, of bearing up under the knowledge that even the tiniest slip could expose him. But he hadn't slipped, and the masquerade had ended successfully in a clatter of flashing blades. His superiors had paid him well for his efforts, and he intended to squander every copper before they ordered him back into the game.

The hot, soapy bath, fragrant with scented oil, did feel truly delicious. The attendant, her thin cotton shift soaked transparent and clinging to her curves, scrubbed his shoulders, and the pressure of her hands slid him down a little deeper into the polished marble tub.

He frowned, suddenly uneasy. Going deeper-for some reason, that was bad, wasn't it? And now that he thought about it, hadn't the bath been a massage just a moment before?

The attendant shoved him down with startling strength, submerging him completely. He thrashed, trying to shake off her grip, and in the process, broke free of the entire dream.

Reality was equally alarming, because he was still underwater. He flailed, kicked, and stroked toward the brightness above. After a moment, his head broke the surface. He coughed and retched out the warm, salty liquid he'd obliviously inhaled and, when he was able, gasped in air instead.

That took the edge off his terror, and he recalled his float, three chunks of broken plank pegged to a crosspiece. He'd encountered the flotsam, adrift as he was adrift, an hour or so into his ordeal. It was the only reason he hadn't drowned long ago.

He cast about for it. The hot summer sun danced on the blue, rippling surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars, making him squint. After a few anxious moments, he spotted the float. It hadn't drifted far. Even in his weakened state-parched, starved, gashed arm feeble-he could probably swim to it and heave himself back on top.

But then again, why bother? Why prolong the misery when it would be easier just to let the float slip out of reach? He doubted drowning was a particularly easy death, but it would be over quickly.

No, curse it, he wouldn't give up! A ship could still happen along, or he might still drift within reach of land. He paddled to the makeshift raft, gripped the splintery wood, and dragged himself back on top of it.

The effort exhausted him. He had to lie panting and trembling for a while before he found the energy to lift his head, peer down into the water, and croak, "You could have woken me when I first slipped off the float. Or helped me get back to it. Or, if you want me dead, it was a perfect opportunity to attack. Just do something."

Swimming several yards below the surface, the creature stared back at him.

It was somewhat human in form, but slender as an elf, with dark blue skin and long, webbed fingers and toes. A proud black dorsal fin ran from its hairless brow all the way down to its rump, and some sort of white pendant hung around its neck. Round, dark goggles shielded its eyes. Though Anton had lived his entire life in the environs of the Sea of Fallen Stars, he didn't know much about the various sentient races dwelling beneath the waves. Few of his species did. But if he wasn't mistaken, his unwanted companion was a shalarin.

Whatever it was, he'd apparently attracted its attention at some point during the night, because he'd first noticed it gliding beneath him shortly after sunrise. Initially, given that shalarins didn't have an especially sinister reputation, he'd hoped it would help him. When it failed to do so spontaneously, he'd tried to entreat it via pantomime.

The creature hadn't responded in any way, and he'd wondered if it meant him harm. Though more adept with a sword or dagger, he had a small talent for sorcery, and had considered striking first with one of his spells. Ultimately, though, he'd decided he'd do better to save them for a moment when he knew for a fact he was in peril.

Often, though, the urge to lash out returned, simply because the shalarin's lurking presence was unsettling.

At times, it even felt like mockery of his plight. What did the cursed creature want, anyway? Was it simply curious to see how long it would take him to die? If so… well, in the course of his duties, Anton had witnessed more than his share of brutality, but this sort of patient, passive cruelty was something new in his experience.

The sun hammered down until he wished it would set, even though once it did, no passing ship could possibly see him. He fought the impulse to drink saltwater and drowsed for a bit. Then he gave a start and cast wildly about.

For a second, he couldn't tell what had jolted him back to full wakefulness. Maybe he'd simply felt himself slipping off the float again.

No. After hours of hovering close, the shalarin was swimming away. That was what had snagged his attention, even in his somnolent state.

Had the creature finally gotten bored with watching him suffer? His instincts warned him no, and they were evidently right, for after the shalarin had gone a ways, it turned and oriented on him once more. It was still interested but had apparently deemed it prudent to put more distance between them.

Was it because something was about to happen to him? He looked around, saw nothing, then dunked his face in the water to better scan the blue-green depths below. A soft, rounded thing resembling a huge sack shot up at him like a stone from a sling. Long tentacles lined with suckers trailed behind it, undulating as if to help propel it along.

After a moment of stunned incomprehension, Anton realized it was an octopus, albeit the biggest specimen he'd ever seen. Indeed, more than big enough to make a meal of a lone man afloat.

Heart pounding, he reviewed his modest store of spells. Some were of no use in combat, while others wouldn't function underwater. But a pulse of pure force might work. He fumbled the necessary talisman-a bit of ram's horn-from his pocket and swept it through the proper arcane figure. Praying that his raw throat and thick tongue could still enunciate the words with the precision required, he recited the incantation.

Power sang like a note from a crystal bell. Visible as a streak of rippling distortion, magic shot through the water. It bashed a momentary dent in the octopus's softness and scraped its hide.

The cephalopod recoiled. You see, Anton thought, I'm dangerous. Go eat something else.

The octopus hesitated for another moment then evidently decided its wound was inconsequential. At any rate, it hurtled onward.

Anton yanked his dagger, the straight, double-edged steel blade coated in gleaming silver, from its sheath. He'd dropped his sword when he'd first gone into the water, lest its weight drag him down. But at least he'd retained this weapon, and it would double as the necessary focus for another spell.

He recited the complex rhyme and sketched the proper sign. The dagger point carved the sigil in scarlet light on the air. A second knife, glowing red like the rune, shimmered into existence in front of the octopus and stabbed into its bulbous body.

Surely now it would turn away or, failing that, linger to try and fight the shining animate knife instead of charging on to close with Anton.

But that was not the case. It veered past the red blade and raced upward. The flying dagger pursued and might get in another jab or two before it winked out of existence, but Anton doubted that would be enough to save him.

The shalarin drifted, kicking and stroking lazily, watching.

All but certain he lacked the time, Anton nonetheless tried to materialize a second blade of force. In his haste, though, he stumbled over the mystical words, botching the spell, and the gathering power dissipated in useless stink and sizzle. Then tentacles came writhing and swirling to grab him.

He struggled to avoid them, but his scrap of timber was too small; he had no space to maneuver or retreat. He managed to drag his entire body up out of the water, to kneel atop the float, for an instant rocking and bobbing precariously. Then a loop of tentacle found his ankle, yanked tight as a garrote, and wrenched him under the surface.

Whether it realized or not, the octopus only needed to hold him under until he ran out of air, and with more of its tentacles whirling to wrap around him, it had an excellent chance of doing so. Floundering, his leg already snared, he had no hope of avoiding them all. He had to concentrate on keeping his dagger arm free.

He twisted and whipped it about to keep it from being entangled. Ringed suckers cut him as they gripped the rest of his body, and he jerked at the pain. The tentacles constricted like pythons, threatening to squeeze the precious, dwindling air from his lungs.

Round, dark little eyes staring, the octopus pulled him toward its jagged, gaping beak. He hacked and sliced at its arms. The dagger's maker had enchanted the edge to a supernatural keenness, and it bit deep, maiming the creature's limbs and severing one entirely.

Still it seemed unlikely to prove sufficient. But as the octopus hauled him within reach of its mouth, its whole body spasmed, and the flailing tentacles loosened. Anton tried to squirm upward out of the coils.

The tentacle wrapped around his ankle still had a grip on him and anchored him in place. He bent over, sawed at it until the tough, dense flesh parted, then swam upward.

Suddenly the need to breathe overpowered him. He expelled the stale contents of his lungs in an explosion of bubbles and helplessly inhaled. At the same instant, though, his head broke the surface.

More luck: the float was still within reach. Wheezing and praying he'd hurt the octopus badly enough to discourage it, he struggled toward the wood. He set the dagger atop the small platform then started to drag himself up.

A tentacle wrapped around his leg and jerked downward. The sudden motion rocked the float. The knife tumbled off the edge and vanished into the sea.

Panic rose, threatening to swamp his reason, and he strained to push it down and think. He didn't have the strength to keep the octopus from dragging him back under water, and he didn't have a weapon anymore, either. How, then, could he save himself?

There was one way, maybe. But it required him to free up a hand.

It was hard enough to hold on with both of them. As soon as he let go with the right, the strain on the left, and the arm attached to it, became all but unbearable, and he cried out at the sudden jerk.

But the pull didn't break his grip, at least not instantly. He must have done the octopus some harm, after all, enough to weaken it a little. Perhaps, then, he had the seconds he needed.

He groaned another incantation and twisted his right hand through an arcane pass. The extremity took on a pale silvery hue, and the fingertips lengthened into talons. A keen ridge, a blade to slash and hack, pushed out from the underside, from the base of the little finger to the wrist.

When the transformation was complete, he drew a deep breath, released the float, and allowed his tormentor to drag him back under the water.

He cut and tore at the octopus, severing two more of its limbs. It hauled him to its beak, and he slashed that, too, and the soft, pulsing flesh around it. He ripped and sliced, straining for one of the dark little eyes-

The world exploded into blackness. For a moment he didn't understand; then he realized the cephalopod had discharged its ink. Its tentacles released him, and he felt a spurt of pressure. The creature was jetting away. It had had enough.

He struggled back to the surface and, as his hand melted back into its normal shape, back onto the float. The shalarin regarded him for a moment, then turned and swam away.

"That's right," he wheezed, "you see, I am dangerous. You'd better not hang around, or…"

Oh, to Baator with it. Even if the shalarin had been able to hear and understand, he was too spent and in too much pain to finish the threat or do much of anything else. He knew he should examine his new wounds and check to see if the old one had started bleeding again, but it simply wasn't in him. He could only lie still, trying not to cry or whimper too much, with his hands and feet dangling in the water.

Though he somehow avoided sliding or rolling off the float again, he kept drifting in and out of consciousness. Since oblivion washed away misery, he welcomed it. It might well mean the end was near, and during his lucid moments, he supposed that would be merciful. He was too stubborn to put an end to his suffering. He'd proved it twice today already. But the sun and sea might soon do it for him.

He closed his sore eyes. Just for a moment, he thought, but when he opened them, the stars were out and the water was black. He wondered if, without the sunlight baking him, he might last a few more hours and couldn't make up his dazed, wretched mind whether to hope for it or not. Then he noticed a crested, oval-shaped object sticking up, beyond the float but almost within arm's reach.

It was the shalarin's head. The creature had returned and ventured close. Perhaps it reckoned he was finally weak enough to attack without any risk to itself.

The thought stirred the dregs of the resolve he generally felt in the face of danger. He tried to rear up so he could use his hands for self-defense but found he lacked the strength. All he could was flop around a little, like a dying fish in the bottom of a boat.

The shalarin surged up onto the float. The wooden surface rocked, but its new occupant centered its weight before it could overturn.

The creature gripped Anton. He struggled to shake it off but couldn't manage that, either.

The shalarin rolled him onto his back. They were now closer than they'd ever been before, with no distorting layers of water between them, and despite the dark, he picked out details he hadn't discerned hitherto. Slim as it was, it had a certain subtle fullness in the area that would be a woman's bosom, as well as a breadth to its hips, that told him it was a she. Gill slits opened along her collarbone and above her ribs. A round mark-the paucity of light prevented him from making out the color-adorned the center of her brow just below the beginning of the fin. The pendant was a skeletal hand-human, by the looks of it-and she also wore a belt around her narrow waist. Attached were several pouches.

She unlaced one of the bags; extracted something small and roughly cubical in shape; and pressed it to his dry, cracked lips. He found the action mildly reassuring. She probably wouldn't try to poison a man who was already dying, for what would be the point? The action suggested that, inexplicable as it seemed, she'd finally decided to help him.

Unfortunately, she didn't seem to understand that his most pressing need was water, not food. He wondered if his swollen throat could even swallow anything solid without choking. But he'd try. Maybe the pellet, whatever it was, would help him a little, anyway.

When he sank his teeth into it, it burst into fragments and a copious quantity of oil. The liquid tasted so bitter that in other circumstances, he might have spit it out. But when he swallowed some, it assuaged his thirst like water.

He greedily consumed it and the solid matter-some sort of preserved fish?-too. "Thank you," he gasped.

The shalarin fed him two more cubes then produced a different sort of pellet. It was rounder, tasteless, and as tough to chew as the stalest ship's biscuit he'd ever sampled. Still, hoping it would do him as much good as the other morsels had, he gnawed until it softened and broke apart.

As soon as he swallowed it, the shalarin gripped him with her long, webbed fingers. She half rolled, half shoved him toward the edge of the float.

"No!" he said. "Wait!"

But she wouldn't relent. He struggled to resist and in other circumstances might have succeeded. He was an able wrestler and brawler, and his brawny frame surely outweighed her spindly body. But while the pellets had snatched him back from the brink of death, he was still weak as a baby, and his attempts to grapple and punch were pathetically ineffective.

The float tilted beneath him. Clasping him, the shalarin rolled down the incline, and they tumbled into the sea together. Kicking, she dragged him downward.

He kept struggling but still couldn't break her grip. After a minute the burning in his chest demanded release. He let out the breath he'd clenched in his lungs and gulped in water instead.

It felt different than inhaling air. Water was heavier, more substantial, in his chest. But the sensation wasn't unpleasant, and more important, he wasn't drowning. Something the shalarin had fed him-the round morsel, he suspected-enabled him to breathe. Maybe it helped him to ignore the heightening pressure, too, considering that he didn't need to pop his ears.

But the magic didn't help him see. As he and the shalarin descended, the benighted waters rapidly became impenetrable to human sight. He couldn't even make out his captor hauling him along. It reinforced his sense of utter helplessness-not that it needed reinforcing-and he simply hung limp in the shalarin's grasp and allowed her to do as she would.

It was cold in the depths, though not insupportably so. Perhaps he had the pellets to thank for that as well. He had the feeling he was drifting in and out of awareness, but the unchanging blackness made it difficult to be certain.

Finally, a soft glow flowered in the murk. Below him stood a vast, intricate riot of coral, portions of it shining with its own inner light. Spires rose, or partly rose, from the tangled reefs like trees mired in parasitic vines. Anton might have assumed the city, half buried as it was, was an uninhabited ruin, except that the bluish cryscoral wasn't the only source of illumination. Lamps shined in windows and along the boulevards. Altogether, the lights sufficed to reveal the tiny forms of the residents swimming to and fro.

Fascinated, Anton wished the shalarin would swim faster. He wanted to get closer and see more. But he passed out before he could.

Testing his strength and stamina, Anton swam back and forth and up and down at the end of the tether binding his ankle to the marble couch. The leathery cord reminded him unpleasantly of the octopus's tentacles dragging him down.

Fortunately, barring a ring-shaped scar or two to go with all his others, nasty memories were all he retained from his ordeal. He was whole again, thanks to the shalarin. When he'd seen the skeletal hand hanging from her neck, he'd suspected she was a priestess of Umberlee, and she had in fact employed a cleric's healing prayers to mend his damaged body.

What she hadn't done was talk to him. Not once, no matter how he entreated her. Such indifference made him suspect she intended him for sacrifice or slavery. She was, after all, a servant of the Bitch Queen, goddess of drownings, shipwrecks, and all manner of deaths at sea, a power notoriously malign.

But if she did mean him ill, he didn't intend to meet his fate like a sheep placidly awaiting the butcher's pleasure. He didn't know if he could truly escape, but now that he'd recovered his vigor, maybe he could at least free himself from the rope and find out what lay beyond the nondescript room in which the shalarin had imprisoned him.

Floating in the center of the chamber, he turned his attention to the complex knot securing the cord to his ankle. He'd spent hours picking at it, but it remained as tight as ever. Evidently it bore some enchantment.

With luck, his own magic would counter it. He murmured a charm, marveling once again that he could speak as plainly as if he were on land. In fact, he could function here without much difficulty of any kind. He saw clearly and moved quickly, without the water hindering him. Plainly, the enchantment must have been responsible for that as well, and he wondered if such conditions only prevailed within this one building or if the entire submerged city was equally accommodating.

The knot squirmed and untied itself. He smiled, swam to the doorway, and peeked out into the larger room beyond.

As he'd suspected, it was a temple of Umberlee, dominated by a towering statue of the Queen of the Depths herself. Bigger than a giant, clad in her high-collared cape and seashell ornaments, the deity had risen from the waves to smash a cog with her trident. Sharks cut through the water to seize the mariners toppling overboard.

Smaller sculptures, representations of predatory sea creatures and hideous things that might be aquatic demons, lurked in alcoves. Mosaics depicting Umberlee's battles against Selune, Chauntea, and other gods adorned the high ceiling and walls. Heaped offerings covered the several altars and overflowed onto the floor.

It was all rather magnificent in a grim sort of way, but somewhat surprisingly, at the moment no one else was here to tend or marvel at the splendor. Anton hesitated then swam to the nearest of the altars to see if some worshiper had given Umberlee a weapon.

A cutlass caught his eye. He pulled the short, curved sword from its scabbard and came on guard, testing the balance and weight. It felt good in his hand, so light and eager that, like his lost dagger, it must have magic bound in the blade. He sheathed it, buckled it onto his belt, turned, and froze.

The shalarin floated in a big arched doorway that likely led outside the temple. In the days she'd tended him, he'd had a chance to observe other details of her appearance. Her dark blue skin wasn't scaly like a fish's, as he initially imagined, but smooth like a dolphin's. The round mark on her brow was red. Here in the depths, she dispensed with her goggles, revealing eyes that were glistening black, all pupil. They gave him a level stare.

"It is death to rob Umberlee," she said in a cold contralto voice. "Fortunately, you have not. It is her will that you take the blade."

"You're talking."

"Yes."

"You wouldn't before."

"I did not understand your language and doubted you understood mine. I had to trade for this." She extended her hand, drawing his attention to a striped tiger-coral ring. "Its magic enables me to speak to you."

"Oh." His ordeal and its bizarre aftermath must have muddled his wits because that simple explanation for her silence had never occurred to him. "Lady, I'm grateful for your care, and I mean no harm. I only took the cutlass because it alarmed me that you kept me tied and never answered when I spoke." She might at least have given him a reassuring pat on the shoulder or something.

"I kept you secured so you wouldn't wander and come to harm. And because you now belong to Umberlee."

He hesitated. "Exactly what do you mean?"

"What I say. Tell me your name."

"Anton Marivaldi, out of Alaghon, in Turmish." He wondered if the place names meant anything to her.

"I am Tu'ala'keth, waveservant, member of the Faiths Caste, keeper of Umberlee's house in Myth Nantar."

He assumed Myth Nantar was the name of the city. He'd heard vague reports of such a place, a metropolis where the various undersea races, and even a few expatriates from the surface world, dwelled together. "I understood that you're a divine. Are you saying you laid claim to me somehow, in your goddess's name?"

A glimmering membrane flicked across the blackness of her eyes. Perhaps it was a shalarin's equivalent of a blink. "Yes. What is unclear?"

"Among my folk, you can't just take possession of another person, even if you save his life."

"I did not; Umberlee did." She waved a hand at their surroundings. "What do you see?"

He didn't know what she wanted him to say. "Riches. Sacred things."

"Neglect!" the shalarin snapped. "All the treasures here are old. Who now offers at Umberlee's altars?"

"In my world, every seafarer who wants to come safely back into port."

"But few here, where every creature should adore her. I will tell you the tale, Anton Marivaldi, and you will understand why and how she has chosen you."

"Please." He needed to comprehend what she had in mind so he could talk her out of it.

"How much do you know of shalarins?"

He shrugged. "You live in the Sea of Fallen Stars. You're no great friends to humanity but no foul scourge like the sahuagin, either."

"We did not always live here. Our race was born in the Sea of Corynactis."

"I never heard of it."

"It lies on the far side of the world. Three thousand years ago, some of my folk found their way here. But the mystic gate connecting the two seas closed, trapping them, and so they, and their descendants, were exiled from their home."

"That's unfortunate," he said, but he couldn't imagine what it had to do with him.

"The exiles endured many griefs and misfortunes. One was losing touch with the gods of their forefathers. Those deities apparently had no interest in Faerun or lacked the ability to project their power into these waters."

Anton waved his hand, indicating the statue of Umberlee. "It looks as if your ancestors adapted. They started worshiping the gods who rule hereabouts."

"Yes," said Tu'ala'keth, "and were surely the better for it, for no deity is greater than Umberlee. Her favor enabled them to prosper. Yet now the faithless idiots turn their backs on her!"

More puzzled than ever, Anton shook his head. "Why?"

"Because two years ago the gate to the Sea of Corynactis opened again-permanently this time." She smiled grimly, or at least he took it for a smile. He wasn't sure her changes of expression always signified the same emotions they would in a human face. "That is a shalarin secret, by the way. It is death for you to know."

"In that case, thanks so much for telling me."

"You must know in order to understand. Since the gate opened, the shalarins of the two realms can communicate, and with that communication has come a great curiosity, an enthusiasm"-her tone invested the words with bitter scorn-"for the religions of our ancestors, even though those feeble godlings still lack the strength to manifest here. Folk pray to them in preference to Umberlee."

Anton could understand why a worshiper might prefer another deity-most any other deity-to the savage, greedy Bitch Queen, but saw no advantage in saying so. "Maybe they'll return to Umberlee once the novelty of the new cults wears off."

Tu'ala'keth glared at him. "I am a waveservant. I can't simply wait for them to change their foolish minds. It is my duty to bring them back."

"With my help?" What in the name of the Red Knight could she possibly be thinking?

"If they weren't blind and deaf, they would have returned already, gashing their flesh and shedding their blood to beg their goddess's forgiveness. At her bidding, a host of dragons has banded together and started ravaging Seros, to punish those who failed to give her her due. The entire commonwealth is in peril."

Anton frowned. "Lady, with respect, for the past few months, something called a Rage of Dragons has been occurring. All across Faervin, wyrms are uniting to slaughter and destroy. The shalarins' problem isn't unique."

"It still embodies the wrath of Umberlee. Otherwise, the army of Seros would have destroyed the drakes, instead of the other way around."

"Well… maybe."

"I proclaimed that only Umberlee could save us. I preached it as clearly as I explained it to you. But no one heeded. Finally I forsook Myth Nantar for the wilds of the open sea. It is there one feels closest to the Queen of the Depths, and there, I hoped, I would hear her speak, instructing me on how to achieve her ends."

"That's when you stumbled across me?"

"Yes. I lingered to watch your death as a form of meditation. When the sea takes a life, it is a holy event. Umberlee reveals herself to those with eyes to see "

Anton reckoned he, too, might be starting to "see." "But I didn't die."

"No," said Tu'ala'keth. "Hour after hour, you endured. Even the octopus could not kill you. It became clear that Umberlee wished you to survive, and since she guided me to you, it had to be so you could aid me in my mission. So, quickly as I could, I fetched the items and prepared the spells that enabled me to rescue you."

"I'm grateful, but truly you've made a mistake. I have no idea how to help you. I'm no priest or philosopher or orator, to lure your truant followers back."

"What are you, then? Tell me, and it will become apparent exactly how you are to serve."

"There isn't much to tell. I'm a trader. I took a ship to sell lumber and buy metals. During the voyage, I passed the time throwing dice. I was lucky two days straight, only not really so lucky after all, because a couple of sailors decided I was cheating and attacked me. One knifed me, and I fell overboard. I can only assume that no one but my ill-wishers realized what had happened because the carrack sailed on and left me.

Her black eyes bored into him. "You lie. You use magic. You fight well. You cannot belong to the Providers Caste."

"I don't know how it works among shalarins, but there's nothing to stop a human merchant from learning a little sorcery or training with a blade. Sometimes it comes in handy."

"It may be so. Still you are a liar."

Anton was actually a highly proficient liar. Otherwise, someone would have killed him long ago. Either Tu'ala'keth was suspicious by nature, she had an enchantment in place to tell truth from falsehood, or she possessed an unexpected and inconvenient knack for reading human beings.

However she'd caught him, he had a hunch a second lie would prove no more convincing than the first. It might simply provoke a disciple of cruel Umberlee into trying to torture the truth out of him.

In other circumstances, he might have risked it, and if it came to it, resisted the torment as best he could. But what would a shalarin care about the true nature of his business or the manner in which he'd come to grief? With no stake in the affairs of the surface world, what would she do with the information? Maybe it would do no harm to confide in her.

"All right," he said, "the fact is, I'm a spy in the service of my homeland." He hesitated. "Do you have spies here under the sea?"

She sneered. "Of course."

"Well, my usual chore is to ferret out information concerning pirates and smugglers, so others can catch and punish them as they deserve. But a month ago my superiors set me a new task. Have you ever heard of the Cult of the Dragon?"

"No."

"I guess you sea folk aren't susceptible to their particular kind of madness. Lucky you. They're a secret society of necromancers, priests of Bane, Talos, and similar powers, and common lunatics, laboring to make a certain prophecy come to pass."

"If the prophecy is true, it will come to pass regardless."

"Don't tell me, tell them. The prophecy says that one day, undead dragons will rule the world, and the cult intends to make it sooner rather than later. As near as I can make out, they believe the dracolich kings will favor them and elevate them above the common herd of humankind.

"Anyway, a couple months back, the paladins of Impiltur-a land on the northern shore-discovered that of late, the cultists have been more active and advanced their schemes farther than any sane person could have imagined. They've established a number of hidden strongholds across Faerun. The purpose of the refuges is to transform dragons into liches, and supposedly, wyrms have been flocking to them and consenting to the change as never before, because they fear losing their minds to frenzy. Evidently undead dragons are immune.

"The Rage has produced destruction and misery enough-you shalarins seem to know all about that- but it's nothing compared to what a horde of dracoliches will do. So the Lords of Impiltur sent out the word: People in every realm need to find and destroy the cult enclaves before they can accomplish their task."

"You were one of the seekers."

Anton grinned. "Yes, and it was just my rotten luck that it turns out the whoresons do have a stronghold somewhere in the region. My guess is on one of the Pirate Isles. If I were pursuing a plan to topple every monarch and ruling council in the world, I'd hide out in a place without governance or law."

"You say you guess. You did not learn for certain?"

"No. I had a lead and tried to follow up. At some point I apparently made a mistake, and some cultist tumbled to the fact that I was sticking my nose where it didn't belong. The maniacs sent abishai-winged demons with a dash of dragon thrown in-to deal with me.

"They caught up with me on a carrack sailing out of Procampur. We fought, and I got the worst of it. Finally they cornered me against the rail, and I jumped overboard. If I hadn't, they would have torn me apart.

"The move worked, after a fashion. For whatever reason, they didn't keep after me. But the ship didn't come back for me either. Maybe the abishai killed all the sailors. Or perhaps the captain decided he didn't need a passenger who lured demons down on his vessel.

"The rest you know. I drifted, and you found me." Tu'ala'keth floated silently, pondering. Suddenly she grinned. "Of course! It is clear!" "What is?"

"This Cult of the Dragon. They must be mighty wizards with a profound knowledge of wyrms to warp their lives into undeath and leave their minds intact."

"I suppose."

"You will help me find them, for that is your craft. They will then tell me how to stop the dragons threatening Seros. I will do so in Umberlee's name, and afterwards, the other shalarins will return to her altars in penance and thanksgiving."

Anton shook his head. "You don't understand. There's no reason to assume the cult has what you need, and it wouldn't matter even if they do. They worship dragons. They won't help anybody hurt or hinder them."

"If they won't give up their secrets willingly, we will take them."

He laughed. "Just you and me, you mean, against a dragon or three, a whole coven of spellcasters, and the Grandmaster only knows what else? I know you're a reasonably powerful cleric in your own right, but that's ridiculous."

"You only believe so," she said, "because your lack of faith blinds you. You look at this moment and you see only chance-coincidence. These elements are there, but they make a pattern, and the pattern conveys meaning."

"Look: If we were to march into the cult's fortress and announce ourselves, all it would do is alert them to the fact that people are searching for them, and that they haven't covered their trail well enough to keep from being found. Then, after they killed us, they'd take additional precautions. That would make it all the more difficult for somebody else to locate them, descend on them in force, and wipe them out.

"And that needs to happen, for everyone's sake. A horde of dracoliches will pose a threat to your Seros and Myth Nantar as much as the surface world."

"What matters is the restoration of Umberlee's worship. Everything else must fall out as it will."

"Lady, I respectfully disagree."

Tu'ala'keth peered at him as if honestly mystified by his intransigence. "You must help. As I explained, your life, like mine, belongs to the Queen of the Depths to spend as she sees fit. If I must punish you to convince you, I will."

"No. You won't. I'm leaving." He swam toward the arch, and she centered herself in the space to bar his way.

Hoping it would persuade her to stand aside, he pulled the cutlass from its scabbard. At the moment, she had no weapon but her spells. Of course, those were formidable enough.

She sneered. "Do you truly believe a blade Umberlee put in your hand will cut a waveservant?"

"I think it might," he said, though her apparent faith in her own invulnerability, crazy as it appeared, was almost enough to make him wonder.

"Think on this, then. Even if you could kill me, what would happen then?"

"Myth Nantar is supposedly full of sea-elves, mermen, and by your own account shalarins who don't care a snake's toenail about Umberlee anymore. Maybe I can talk one of them into helping me back to dry land."

"After you've killed one of their own? How would your folk treat a stranger who'd done the same? Even if somebody did decide to help you, do you really believe it would do any good? You, the slayer of Umberlee's servant, would still be at the bottom of the sea, where all creatures live only at her sufferance. Rest assured she would avenge me before you could escape."

He hesitated. If it was a bluff, she was selling it well.

Maybe the sensible course was to play along at least until he was back on land. It was possible that with her powers, Tu'ala'keth could even help him locate the cult's lair. Tymora knew, he hadn't had any luck on his own.

He let his shoulders slump as if in resignation. "All right. You win. I'm at your-and your goddess's- service."

For now. But, Lady, you will never see your goal.

When they reached the shallows, Tu'ala'keth stroked the neck of her seahorse, and the animal obediently came to a halt. Anton stopped more awkwardly, nearly slipping from the back of his steed, and the creature tossed its ruddy, black-eyed head in annoyance.

The riders dismounted, Tu'ala'keth waved her hand in dismissal, and the seahorses swam away to roam and forage as they would so long as they didn't stray too far from the island. She wanted them to hear and come if she called.

That accomplished, she and the human swam up the slope of the seabed. They soon reached a point where a person could set his feet down and wade with the upper part of his body out of the water, and Anton chose to do so.

She compelled herself to do likewise, meanwhile striving to conceal her trepidation. Such an emotion was weak and unworthy. She had come on Umberlee's business, and the goddess would protect her.

Still it was one thing to be certain of her deity's power and another to place her confidence in the contrivances of the Arcane Caste. If the talismans they'd provided failed to work properly, she was in for discomfort, even pain.

When she raised her upper body out of water the sun was even brighter, but with her goggles in place, she could see. The air passing through her gill slits felt strange, thin, but sustained her nonetheless. The latter benefit was due to the enchantment woven into her silverweave armor, a fine mesh tunic of worked coral.

Anton made a retching sound and, as she turned to look, finished coughing the water from his lungs. He straightened up, wiped his mouth and shaggy black whiskers, and asked, "Are you doing all right?"

"Of course." She hefted her stone trident. "Onward."

They sloshed toward the white-sand beach. Tu'ala'keth had done a bit of walking in her life, but not much, and it made her feel as clumsy as Anton had looked trying to manage the seahorse. She resolved to master the trick of it as quickly as possible.

She supposed she might have quite a bit to learn, for the landscape before her looked dauntingly un-familiar. In its essence, Dragon Isle-a name of good omen, surely-was a mountain like any other, just one so tall its crest rose high above the surface of the sea. But it had no abundance of fish swarming about its stony crags, just a few gulls swooping and wheeling. The odd-looking vegetation was equally sparse.

Everything seemed muted, too, as if she'd gone partially deaf, and what she could hear was different. Absent was the ambient drone she'd known her entire life, a hum composed of the noises generated by the tides, currents, and countless marine organisms striving to survive. In its place was only the susurrus of the breaking waves and a bit of clamor rising from the town at the end of the strand, where humans and their ilk shouted to one another, scraped barnacles from a beached ship, or pounded pegs into the half-completed hull of a new one.

Bracketed by fortifications where land met water, the settlement was as peculiar as the rest of the scene. Naturally, Serdsian towns had no use for docks or boats floating at anchor, but something else struck her as even odder. All the doors were at ground level, and that was where everyone moved about. Some of the rough coquina structures were several stories high, but even so, it was plain that in a real sense, humans lived their lives in only two dimensions.

The cloth rectangles-fields of black emblazoned with skulls, crossed swords, and similar devices-flapping atop several of the most imposing structures added a final note of strangeness.

Anton shivered and gave her a grin. "It's funny. When I was under water, I never really felt wet. Now that I'm in the air, I can feel I'm soaked."

"What do we do next?" asked Tu'ala'keth.

"The sea turned my clothes to rags. I need new ones. Even more importantly, I need a barber. The cult identified a spy with long hair and a proper Turmian square-cut beard. Accordingly, I mean to turn into a clean-shaven fellow with close-cropped locks.

"So here's the plan. At the end of the beach, there's a path that runs up around the edge of the town. If we take it, we can reach the fellow we need without everybody in town gawking at us."

"But surely some people will see us."

"Oh, yes, the lookouts manning the battlements at the very least."

"What if one of them is a cultist and knows your face?"

"It's unlikely, but should it happen, life may get interesting very quickly. If the prospect frightens you, you can always turn around and jump back into the water."

She scowled. "I would never shrink from anything Umberlee requires of me."

"Of course not. Perish the thought."

As they tramped up the beach, Tu'ala'keth kept a wary eye on her companion. She thought he might try to escape, but so far, he showed no signs of it. She wondered if he'd found the wisdom to embrace his destiny or if he was merely biding his time and reassured herself that it didn't matter either way. Umberlee would make use of him regardless.

Despite the magic woven into Tu'ala'keth's gear, the sun felt unpleasantly hot on her skin, and though she'd used it for years, her long trident suddenly seemed heavy. In time, she hit on the expedient of carrying it tilted over her shoulder, and that made it easier to manage… until the shaft started galling her skin.

The path climbed as the pirate haven of Immurk's Hold itself ran upward from the harbor to higher ground. The slope made walking all the more difficult, and Tu'ala'keth's calf muscles and the soles of her bare feet ached at the unaccustomed motion. Once she and Anton passed the fortress, she took her mind off her discomfort by peering down the streets and alleys that connected to her route. Her initial impression was that humans shared their habitations with an interesting miscellany of animals: plump, crested, strutting birds that seemed unable to truly fly no matter how frantically they flapped their wings; fat, oinking creatures rooting in muck; a smaller, shaggier, bleating animal with hooves and horns; and by far the most numerous, little brown creatures with short legs and long, hairless tails, digging and scurrying through heaps of refuse.

"Here we are," said Anton. He led Tu'ala'keth down a quiet street so narrow the bright sun overhead left a welcome stripe of cool shade along one side. "I hope Rimardo is still in business."

"Is this someone you trust?"

Anton grinned. "The Red Knight forbid! But the old miser knows how to cut hair and stick leeches on a festering wound, sells clothing pilfered from the dead, and despises everybody too profoundly to go out of his way to help anyone. In the Pirate Isles, that's all you can expect of a barber." He pushed aside the makeshift oilcloth curtain that hung in place of a door.

Rimardo's shop proved to be a filthy one-room shack jammed full of bins, crates, and barrels. The proprietor himself, a scrawny, wrinkled, sour-faced runt of a man, sat the strapping Anton on a tall stool then had to step up on a box to reach his head. Though the spy had warned Tu'ala'keth that folk hereabouts were likely to stare at her, Rimardo showed no interest, nor, after determining what his customer wanted and negotiating a price, did he utter another word. Tu'ala'keth wondered if Anton patronized him partly because of his sullen, incurious nature.

She watched with mingled impatience and interest as the razor scraped away the Turmian's lathery whiskers. To her sensibilities, all body hair was disgusting, and even after the shave, he had his share, just as his muscular frame still had a lumpish thickness. But he didn't look as uncouth as before. The brown hue of his skin was pleasant to look on, and his square features, though coarse compared to those of most any shalarin, nonetheless bespoke resolution, and the green eyes, intelligence.

Rimardo evidently had no mirror a customer might employ to approve or disapprove his handiwork.

Anton ran his fingers over his jaw and scalp to assess the results then said, "Good enough." He rose from the stool and started rummaging through the bins and crates, strewing rejected garments on the floor. Rimardo evidently expected no less of his patrons, for he watched the process without comment.

Anton selected leather sandals; baggy, blue, knee-length breeches; a scarlet sash; and a loose, white, sleeveless shirt that opened all the way down the front. Indifferent to Tu'ala'keth's scrutiny-appropriately so, since her folk regarded nudity as normal, and there was no carnal attraction between their two species in any case-he stripped and pulled them on. "You can keep my old clothes," he said to Rimardo.

The barber spat in their general direction.

Anton grinned. "Yes, well, that's why I wanted new ones." He slipped the cutlass through the sash, tossed Rimardo one of the silver coins they had taken from Umberlee's altars, and led Tu'ala'keth back out into the open air.

"Are we ready now?" she asked.

"Almost. I've been many different men during my years of spying, but none of them had a tattoo of an octopus running down his left arm, and so I hanker for one now. It takes a few minutes. If I can find a secluded spot in which to work, "He cast about. "There." He strode to a neighboring shack, tried the door, and found it warped in its frame. He shoved hard, and it yielded with a squeal.

The little cottage was empty, devoid of furniture and tenants, too. She wondered how he'd been able to tell from the outside.

Anton murmured the same arcane rhyme over and over again, meanwhile drawing on his skin with his fingertip. An image took form beneath the strokes, clear and vivid as if the digit were a needle dipped in ink. She supposed he'd chosen to depict an octopus because of his recent combat and might not even realize the cephalopods were familiars of Umberlee. Still it was fitting that he branded himself with such a sign, whether he understood the significance or not.

When he finished, she said, "Now we begin."

He grinned. "Yes, impatient one. I wanted to be inconspicuous until I achieved the proper appearance, but henceforth, you can attract as much attention as you like. Parade as if you expect people to stare and to make way for you, too. As if you're a personage."

"I am. We both are: agents of the Queen of the Depths."

"That's the spirit."

Now they marched through the center of town, down teeming streets and across bustling marketplaces selling what were evidently plundered goods, cringing or stolid slaves included. Unfamiliar sights, sounds, and stinks came quickly, relentlessly, now. It was almost enough to disorient her, and she watched Anton with special care lest he attempt to lose himself in the crowds.

He didn't, though, and in a few minutes, they arrived at one of the massive coquina structures that appeared to be fortresses as much as houses. A rectangular black cloth, emblazoned with a white grinning skull above and a red axe beneath, flapped from a pole atop the roof.

"Behold the residence of Vurgrom, self-styled 'the Mighty,'" Anton said. "With luck, he and the captains of his faction are still looking for new crewmen. They've suffered losses of late."

"Are you certain?"

"Who do you think informed the Turmian fleet where to intercept Vurgrom's ships before I had to take up the matter of the cult? Shall we?"

Though the house could likely serve as a bastion at need, the wrought-iron gates were unguarded and unlocked. Dozens of air-breathers, human mostly but with a smattering of other races, occupied the courtyard beyond. Some sat at trestle tables gorging, drinking, playing cards, or throwing knucklebones. A few wrestled or fenced with clattering wooden swords. At the far end, though, business was in progress. A knot of folk stood beneath a verandah, where dignitaries slouched in rattan chairs could survey them, should they deign to take notice. Unfortunately, the petitioners had competition for their betters' attention. At the moment, the captains, if that was who they were, seemed more interested in consulting with each other and with the flunkies scurrying in and out of the door behind them.

Tu'ala'keth and Anton headed toward the press. "Captain Vurgrom!" shouted the spy.

One of the petitioners, a squat man with a snout of a nose and two pointed teeth jabbing up from his under-bite across his upper lip-an indication, Tu'ala'keth surmised, that his ancestry wasn't pure human-turned and growled, "Wait your turn!" Then he caught sight of her, and his eyes widened in surprise.

"We might do that," Anton said, "if we intended to serve as ordinary reavers. But since we merit something grander, we take priority. Now, I'm sure you recognize my companion for what she is. Shut your hole before she lays Umberlee's curse on you."

The pirate scowled, but he stepped back, too.

"Captain Vurgrom!" Anton called.

A hulking whale of a man with a braided red beard sat in the center of the platform in a high-backed chair that looked in imminent danger of collapsing under his weight. He held a golden, ruby-studded cup in one meaty, copper-furred hand, and a prodigious battle-axe lay at his feet. He looked around in annoyance, evidently, but put away his glower when he spotted Tu'ala'keth.

"I'm Vurgrom the Mighty," he said, "and those who wear the drowned man's hand are always welcome in my palace."

She inclined her head to acknowledge his courtesy. "That is well. I am Tu'ala'keth. I have decided to sail with you for a season. We will take lives together, in sacrifice to Umberlee."

"In other words," said Anton, "we're offering ourselves as officers. Tu'ala'keth is both a waveservant and a shalarin. She wields powers over sea and storm no human, ore, or what have you can hope to match. Whereas I"-he grinned-"have my own talents. I can swing a cutlass as well as any man here and practice sorcery as well. In my time, I've been a navigator and a boatswain, too. I guarantee the ship that brings us aboard will profit."

Someone made a contemptuous, spitting sound.

Surprised, Tu'ala'keth turned to see a burly, sneering, ruddy-faced man clad in dark vestments decorated with dabs and jagged streaks of silver. The hem and the ends of the sleeves were cut in ragged, sawtooth fashion. A patch covered his right eye, and he held a spear in his hand.

It all served to mark him as a priest of Talos the Destroyer, chieftain of the Deities of Fury, and Tu'ala'keth felt a spasm of reflexive dislike. On the surface, Umberlee was Talos's ally, even, in a certain sense, his subordinate, but as a waveservant advanced in the faith, she learned that her goddess and religion strove for the day when they could topple the Storm Lord from his preeminence.

"You sound like very special people," the Talassan jeered. "But you're too late. There was only one captain looking for officers today, and she's already chosen my friend and me for ship's mage and priest."

"Umberlee sent me here," said Tu'ala'keth, "and death upon the sea is her dominion. If you truly revere the powers of Fury's Heart, you will step aside."

"I revere Talos," said the man with the eye patch. "Your patron is merely his whore, and so I caution you to pay him the respect he deserves."

"Theology's always fascinated me," Anton drawled, "but unless I've washed up on the wrong shore, this is an assembly of freebooters, not priests. So I'll simply say this: I don't know you, Patch, or this friend of yours, either. But I'm still sure Tu'ala'keth and I will prove of more use than you to the captain who was considering choosing you-"

"Who has chosen us!" said the Talassan, glaring.

"-or to some other with the good sense to recruit us."

Vurgrom grinned. "That's bold talk, stranger."

"Anton Fallone." The spy, who'd warned Tu'ala'keth he meant to give a false name, now turned his gaze on the only female seated among the captains. She was a young human, slim by the standards of her race, with bronze-colored curls. She wore an abundance of glittering, delicate jewelry and a frilly gown that contrasted oddly with her several scars and the dense tattooing crawling on her bare arms, shoulders, and neck. "Captain, I believe you are a person of sense. I see it in your face."

Now that Anton had spoken to her directly, the Talassan's features turned blotchy and even redder. "If you have any sense," he said to the spy, "you and your pet fish won't annoy a priest of the Destroyer any further than you have already."

"I doubt," said Tu'ala'keth, "that anyone here is so foolish as to fear Talos more than Umberlee. It was she who proved her power by smiting these islands only fifteen years ago."

"All the more reason," said the human priest, "to honor the god who holds the Bitch's leash."

It was an obscene image-the mistress of the raging sea, destruction incarnate, leashed-and even had Tu'ala'keth been willing to let the blasphemy pass, she sensed that if she and Anton did, they'd forfeit all hope of winning the pirates' respect and places of authority among them.

Accordingly, she brandished her skeletal amulet on the end of its cord and declaimed a prayer. The folk standing between her and the Talassan realized what she intended and scrambled out of the way. The holy words of the incantation sounded hushed and strange enunciated in air instead of water, but she could feel power massing and knew she was performing the conjuration properly. On the final syllable, a harsh noise blared. People cursed and clapped their hands over their ears. The Talassan staggered a step, and blood dripped from his nostrils.

But to her disappointment, the attack didn't hit hard enough to disrupt his own chanting and gesturing. He thrust out his hand, and a rustling, fan-shaped burst of something yellow and fluid exploded from his fingertips. She tried to jump out of the way, but it brushed her even so, searing her flank despite the silverweave.

She realized the stuff was flame. It was clever of the human priest to strike at her with a force alien to her experience. But she refused to let it spook her or even to take her eyes off him to see if the fire had taken root in her flesh, even though she'd heard it could cling to you and burn and burn and burn.

Meanwhile, another man stepped forth from the crowd. Plainly, he must be the Talassan's comrade.

Tu'ala'keth hadn't taken a good look at him before. Her circumstances were too unfamiliar, too many people were milling about, and things were happening too quickly. She beheld a gaunt, wrinkled man with piercing maroon eyes, a lantern jaw, and a long, tangled mane of graying hair. He wore a russet mantle embroidered with black serpents and carried a long staff of rusty iron, with another snake, carved from carnelian, twining around it.

Tu'ala'keth was no wizard, but she'd mastered her own form of magic, and generally recognized power when she saw it. The man was a conjuror of considerable talents. Fortunately, she didn't have to contend with both him and the Talassan by herself. Cutlass in hand, Anton ran at the warlock, who swept his serpent-girded staff through mystic passes. Strangely, though, he didn't recite any words of power, any more than he'd taken part in the verbal preliminaries to the fight.

She perceived that much in an instant but didn't have the luxury of watching any more. She had to stay focused on the Talassan. Hurrying as quickly as she dared-it would do no good to botch the incantation-she commenced another spell. Had her opponent done the same, she likely would have finished first, but instead, he resorted to a different form of magic. He simply shook his spear at her, and suddenly he seemed huge, fearsome, more vivid and real than anything else in the world. The sheer, naked force of his anger made her want to turn and flee or grovel and beg for mercy.

She understood what was the matter. Most every priest possessed the ability to affright or command the undead, and some clerics exercised such powers against other sorts of beings as well. The Talassan apparently knew how to chasten creatures of the sea.

But mere comprehension didn't negate the effect. She had to deny it. Push it out of her head. She snarled, "I am a waveservant!" and felt the compulsion crumble away.

By that time, though, the Talassan had reached the end of another conjuration. Distortion shimmered around his outstretched hand, and a shrill whine cut through the air. He was attempting a sonic attack of his own, but to Tu'ala'keth's surprise, his effort didn't hammer and tear at her flesh. Instead, the silverweave shivered on her torso as if trying to shred itself to pieces. Her foe somehow recognized that if he destroyed it, she wouldn't be able to breathe.

But the coral mesh held together. She chanted a prayer, and the few stray blades of grass pushing up between the flagstones at the human's feet abruptly multiplied, thickened, and grew tall. For a split second, they undulated like eels then whipped around the human and yanked themselves tight, binding his limbs. They crawled higher still, seeking his head to gag, blind, and smother him.

The Talassan had no choice but to try to dissolve the effect. Otherwise, it would render him helpless. He started jabbering a counterspell, and Tu'ala'keth cried, "Silence!" The charge of magic infusing the word stole his voice only for an instant, but that was enough to spoil the rhythm of his conjuration.

Green strands coiled around his mouth then masked his face completely. He heaved and thrashed, lost his balance, and fell. Tu'ala'keth hefted her trident and ran at him.

"Enough!" Vurgrom bellowed.

Tu'ala'keth felt a pang of frustration and nearly defied the command. But to do so might hinder Umberlee's cause, so she halted short of her target.

An instant later, the coils of grass burned away in a flash of fire. Even bound as he was, the Talassan had somehow managed to destroy them. He sprang to his feet, raised his spear over his head, and shouted rhyming words.

"I said, enough!" Vurgrom said. "The fight's over, Kassur. The shalarin beat you, and her friend beat Chadrezzan." The spectators cheered or groaned and swore, depending on their sympathies.

The man with the eye patch shuddered as if he found the words unbearable, as if the violence of his nature left him no choice but to ignore them. It made Tu'ala'keth feel an odd twinge of sympathy. They might be enemies, but they were also both priests of the Gods of Fury, and understood that by rights, a duel such as theirs should end in death.

But they were also trying to make their way among folk who lacked their sacred insights. So in the end, he broke off his conjuring and gave a curt, grudging nod, and she, too, forbore to strike at him again.

Several paces away, Chadrezzan lay on the ground with blood seeping from a torn lip, while Anton stood over him, cutlass poised to chop. But when the spy saw that the wizard intended to obey Vurgrom's command, he grinned and reached to help him up. Chadrezzan spat, ignored the proffered hand, and rose on his own, moving in a slow, pained manner that suggested that, at some point during the fracas, Anton had kicked or kneed him in the crotch. The spy shrugged and sauntered back to Tu'ala'keth's side.

"Good," Vurgrom said. "Freebooters brawl, if they're any good at their trade. It's natural and gives the rest of us something to bet on. But I don't see any point in letting you butcher one another when you could all be useful to the faction."

"But in what roles?" asked the tattooed woman, her manner that of a protege seeking guidance of a mentor. "I'd like to bring all four of them aboard Shark's Bliss, but I can't lead a company that's all officers and no common hands."

The huge man chuckled. "It's your ship and your decision, honey cake. I can only advise. Though I will say that I would never have taken all the prizes I have, nor won eternal fame, if I hadn't favored men who'd already proved they knew how to win a fight."

"Hmm." "Honey cake" took a second, pretending to deliberate, though it was plain to Tu'ala'keth that Vurgrom's words had already decided for her. "Waveservant, Anton, my name is Shandri Clayhill. I'd like to bring you aboard Shark's Bliss as ship's priest and mage."

"That's outrageous!" Kassur exploded. "You already offered the positions to Chadrezzan and me, and he's a master wizard, able to slay a dozen men or shatter a hull with a single spell. All you've seen this impostor do is cast a couple of petty charms."

"He's right, of course," murmured Anton to Tu'ala'keth. "The mute's a true magician, far more powerful than the likes of me. But I recognized him as an elementalist, and elemental magic isn't dainty. It takes up space. So I hovered close to the crowd as I advanced on him, and he couldn't throw his most potent spells at me for fear of hitting them as well. Vurgrom wouldn't have stood for that."

Captain Clayhill glanced at Vurgrom, evidently making sure KaBsur's outburst hadn't swayed him, then said, "My decision stands. But you and your comrade are welcome aboard the Bliss as well, on the understanding that, for the time being, anyway, you'll serve as ordinary gentlemen of fortune, receiving one share each, not two."

"We accept," gritted Kassur, "for now." He glared at Anton and Tu'ala'keth, and she answered with a sneer.

^ome of the folk in the boisterous crowd staggered or moved with exaggerated care. Others spoke too loudly or slurred their words. Despite the noise and the frequent jostling, a few snored, sprawling back in their chairs with limbs akimbo or with their heads cradled in their arms on wet, scarred tabletops.

Puzzled, Tu'ala'keth turned to Anton. "Is this a sick house?" she asked.

Anton grinned. "A tavern. Don't you have taverns-and intoxicants, and drunks-in Seros?"

"We have intoxicants, but no establishments like this."

"Well, now that you're a pirate, you'd better get used to them."

Captain Clayhill motioned to them, and they followed her and the rest of her officers on through the press.

Toward the rear, the common area with its benches, hearth, and hard-packed bare-earth floor broke apart into hodgepodge of smaller rooms, niches, and closets fitted haphazardly together. The captain was evidently familiar with the layout, for she led her officers-save for Tu'ala'keth, a mix of humans and the stooped, brutish, gray-skinned race known as ores-straight to the private chamber she'd hired for the occasion.

Tu'ala'keth was grateful when the door shut out the noise and stink of the common room. Someone had already brought in pewter goblets and bottles of wine, and several of her companions made haste to pour themselves drinks, but she didn't follow their example. No sea creature drank anything-or else, depending on how one looked at it, one drank constantly, simply by using one's gills-but even if she had been susceptible to thirst, she would have been more interested in the map spread on the table, the curling corners weighted by extra cups.

She saw with relief that she could pick out the place Anton had specified when he'd sketched a far cruder chart in the sand. By her standards, she knew a fair amount about the shape of the world. She could have drawn a map of Seros in considerable detail. But she'd never had any reason to concern herself with what lay beyond its waters.

"Are you ready?" Captain Clayhill asked. Though still aglitter with jewels and frills, she was no longer the girlish sycophant taking her cues from Vurgrom. Away from him, she put on a harshness, a striding, shoving impatience, which had taken Tu'ala'keth by surprise.

"Yes," the shalarin said.

"Then find us a worthy prize."

"As you wish." Tu'ala'keth seated herself, yet another action that felt clumsy in a medium as lacking in buoyancy as air. "It will be helpful if everyone stays quiet."

The pirates settled to watch her. She gripped her skeletal pendant with one hand, poised the other over the chart, murmured words of praise to Umberlee, and pretended to slip into a trance.

It gave her a vague sense of shame. Her creed taught her to use every weapon and seize every advantage in the pursuit of her ends-to resort to subterfuge whenever she deemed it useful. Still she couldn't help feeling it was one thing to lie about mundane matters, and something else, something akin to blasphemy, to claim she was employing her sacred gifts when, in fact, nothing of the sort was going on. Despite Anton's assertions to the contrary, she had no more talent for divination than any other cleric.

But the spy insisted they needed to exploit her cachet as an exotic shalarin waveservant to further their mission. Since it was manifestly Umberlee's will that the endeavor succeed, Tu'ala'keth swallowed her qualms as best she could.

She let the litany of praise fade into a wordless croon. She'd once known a genuine oracle who made sounds like that. When she felt the first phase of the charade had gone on long enough, she brought her index finger stabbing down.

Everyone leaned to see where she was pointing. "Saerloon," Captain Clayhill said.

"I see docks," droned Tu'ala'keth. The somnolent voice she'd adopted made her sound like the drunken men outside. "Buildings with a wall around them, an enclave accessible from land or sea. People bring bags and chests stuffed with gold to buy what the folk in the compound have to sell."

"It all fitth tho far," said Sealmid. He was the first mate, a human with a broken nose, many missing teeth and, in consequence, a lisp. "A good many rich traderth have a thetup like that. But which-"

Harl the helmsman, an ore whose garments of clashing colors were garish even by freebooters' standards, shushed him.

"I see the men in charge," Tu'ala'keth continued. "They carry staves and wands. They wear red."

Everyone stared at her. Finally the helmsman said, "Are you talking about Thayans?"

"I do not know," Tu'ala'keth said. She wanted them to believe that, as a gifted seer, she could perceive all matter of hidden things, but her instincts told her the ploy would be more convincing if her powers fell short of omniscience. "But Saerloon is not their homeland. They trade talismans and potions for heaps of yellow gold."

"Thayanth," Sealmid sighed. "All honor to the Bitch Queen, but thith doethn't help uth."

"Hear her out," said Anton, his gaze fixed on Captain Clayhill. "Please."

The pirate leader shrugged her tattoo-covered shoulders, where images of blossoms and butterflies mingled with skulls, snarling basilisks, and bloody swords. "I suppose we might as well."

Tu'ala'keth rambled on, laying out the rest of the information in a disjointed sort of way, as if, in her daze, she failed to comprehend its meaning. She reckoned that too would make it seem as if she were plucking it from the spirit world as opposed to repeating facts and rumors Anton had gleaned during his years as a spy.

When she reached the end, she sat quietly for a moment then gave a little jerk as if waking from a doze. "What did I say?" she asked.

Harl gave her a yellow-fanged smile. "You told us a lot, waveservant. Unfortunately, it was all about Thayans. Nobody raids Thayans. It's bad luck."

"The kind of bad luck where the Red Wizardth turn you into a worm or light you on fire like a candle when you try," Sealmid said.

Tu'ala'keth scowled. "Umberlee has chosen these folk to be her prey, and ours. We will not fail."

Captain Clayhill sat frowning, staring into the depths of her amber wine, then gave her head a shake. "If it worked, we'd make a fortune. But the risk is too great. I waited too long to command Shark's Bliss to lose her now."

According to Anton, in theory, pirate crews elected their captains, but the truth was more complex. On Dragon Isle, no one ascended to such a position without the approval of one of the several factions. Tu'ala'keth could readily believe Shandri Clayhill had spent a long, dreary time cultivating Vurgrom before he endorsed her aspirations.

"Try again," the human continued. "Find us another target."

Tu'ala'keth ostentatiously folded her arms. "No. The goddess has already spoken."

Captain Clayhill glared. "I revere Umberlee, and I respect her clerics. But you're one of my officers now, and you'll follow orders."

"Hold on," Anton said. "Let's at least discuss the Thayans before we give up all hope of robbing them. Tu'ala'keth has given us their secrets. That should enable us to discern their weaknesses and put together a plan to exploit them. What if…"

Pretending to devise it on the spot, he laid out his scheme. The notion was that she would prove herself a powerful seer and spellcaster, he would establish himself as a cunning strategist, and as a result, the pirates would come to hold them both in high regard.

After he finished, the reavers sat quietly for a heartbeat or two, pondering. Then Harl said, "It isn't the stupidest plan I ever heard. I can halfway imagine it working."

"Can you halfway imagine the part that cometh after?" Sealmid asked. "Thay we do escape with the loot. Then a bunch of the really powerful Red Wizardth get together and lay a curthe on uth."

"They have an ugly reputation," Anton said, "and deservedly so. But they're not gods. They have their limits."

"Whereas Umberlee is the greatest of gods," said Tu'ala'keth. "Do her bidding, and she will protect you."

"I believe you," Captain Clayhill said. "I do. But to hazard Shark's Bliss in the way Anton suggests- No. It would be too easy for things to go wrong."

Tu'ala'keth stared into the captain's eyes. "You say you believe, but in truth, you have no faith at all, neither in Umberlee nor in yourself. No faith and no courage. Perhaps you had them once, but as you toadied to Vurgrom-and surrendered yourself to his lusts-they withered inside you."

Captain Clayhill sprang to her feet. "Give me your sword," she snarled to Sealmid.

Tu'ala'keth remained seated, as if the human's anger was of no concern to her, thus maintaining the appearance of strength. "Will you strike me, then? To what end? Will the other reavers finally respect you if you kill me sitting in my chair?"

The captain gripped the hilt of Sealmid's broadsword but didn't raise it to threaten Tu'ala'keth-not yet. "The other reavers do respect me!"

"No," said Tu'ala'keth, "they do not. To gain their admiration, you strove for your captaincy, but the manner in which you achieved it makes it a lewd jest.

"You know this, and it gnaws your soul. You tell yourself you would do anything to achieve true respect, but you lie. The trouble with the mask of servility is that, worn too long, it starts to impress its shape on the face beneath. Without realizing it, the pretender opens himself to genuine meekness and uncertainty.

"So it is that you fear to wager what little you have already gained. Even though no pirate wins glory except through daring and ferocity.

"Umberlee wishes to wake these sleeping virtues in you. Because you have the potential to be the greatest of reavers and stain the waters red with the blood of your prey. I see it now. It is why she sent me to you.

"But to achieve your destiny, you must pay heed when she speaks through me. It begins here. Do what other captains fear to do. Plunder the Thayans. Win the respect of Dragon Isle, so that one day, you may rule it. Vurgrom and his rivals aspire for supremacy, like Immurk in his day, but the prize will be yours if you find the strength to take it."

Captain Clayhill stared at Tu'ala'keth in manifest astonishment. Finally the human's lips quirked upward. "It's tricky to know how to respond when somebody insults you with one breath and praises you with the next."

"I did neither. I spoke the truth as the Queen of the Depths revealed it to me. Hear or ignore it as you please."

Captain Clayhill turned to Anton. "Tell me your idiot plan again," she said, "from the beginning."

***

When she'd set sail, Shark's Bliss had been a sleek, handsome, two-masted caravel. As Anton considered her now, he supposed she was still handsome, but it was harder to see. The primary impression was one of calamity. The ship wallowed low in the waves, as if she were sinking. The sails hung in tatters.

The crippled state of the vessel made the pirates grumble. Just as tense, Captain Clayhill stood beside Anton on the aft castle gazing out over the heaving, gray-green expanse of the sea. Her fingers with their gleaming rings kneaded the rail. Even on the brink of battle, she still wore a frilly, impractical gown, like a lady attending a banquet or ball.

"Where is she?" the captain asked.

"She'll be back soon," said Anton, hoping it was so. Tu'ala'keth could take care of herself, and was inconspicuous when she swam primarily beneath the sea. Yet even so, it was chancy to go looking for a Red Wizard's vessel. She couldn't know what enchantments he had in place to detect sentient creatures, or spellcasting, in his vicinity.

Finally Durth, the ore in the crow's next, called, "I see her!" In another moment, Anton did, too, as she parted company with her seahorse and swam to the ship. He tossed the rope ladder over the side, and blue skin and black fin wet and gleaming, the shalarin climbed upward with a facility that demonstrated she'd finally mastered the knack of moving nimbly even out of the water.

"Did you find them?" Captain Clayhill asked.

"Yes," said Tu'ala'keth. She adjusted the strap securing her tinted goggles to her head. "I spoke to the wind and current, and they shifted their courses. As a result, the Thayans will come close enough to sight us."

"Good." The captain turned and shouted down the length of the ship: "It's time! Go below if you're supposed to. If you're staying on deck, look tired, thirsty, and helpless. If you're carrying a weapon bigger than a knife, get rid of it."

"Prejudice against ores, that's what this is," Harl said. All the members of his warlike race had to hide in the cramped, half-flooded hold. Otherwise, the Bliss wouldn't look as they needed her to look. He gave Anton a wink and headed for the companionway.

Kassur and Chadrezzan had to go below as well, but did so with an ill grace. Tu'ala'keth dived back over the side to conceal herself beneath the waves.

Then, once again, there was nothing to do but wait. Anton had spent much of his life on one ship or another, and knew how long it took for two vessels to rendezvous on the open sea. Still time crawled.

At last, squinting, he glimpsed the Thayan caravel, a speck far to the northeast. He was sure the Thayans' lookout had spotted Shark's Bliss as well. But would they change course to meet her?

He thought so. She flew the flag of Aglarond, Thay's bitter enemy, and looked defenseless. Were Anton a Red Wizard, he'd certainly take the time to plunder the foundering ship, capture those on board to ransom or enslave, and salvage the vessel itself if possible. It was too juicy an opportunity to pass up.

Yet he sweated until he could tell the Thayans had in fact turned southwest.

He supposed he still had reason to be anxious. The Thayans could conceivably maintain a certain distance and batter Shark's Bliss with magic, volleys of arrows, and bolts from their ballista. If they did, the pirate vessel, unable to maneuver or run, had no hope of surviving. His ruse had seen to that.

But the Thayans wouldn't take that tack, not if convinced they had nothing to fear. Such a barrage could only diminish the value of their prize.

The Thayan caravel was larger than the Bliss. Her hull, sails, and streaming banners were all varying shades of crimson, and she maneuvered so smartly that enchantment was surely involved.

"Prepare to be boarded!" someone shouted. Grappling hooks flew, and crunched into the pirate vessel's timbers. The Thayans heaved on the lines, drawing the ships together. With Shark's Bliss riding low in the water, the red caravel's deck was a few feet higher, but even so, it would be possible to clamber from one to the other. t

The Thayans proceeded to do so. Clad in leather armor and armed with javelins, boarding pikes, and short swords, the shouting warriors herded their new prisoners into a single clump. Anton tried to look scared and submissive while studying the newcomers. He needed to identify the spellcasters.

He could see only one magician, a short, tubby Red Wizard with a rosy-cheeked, incongruously jolly face. Like all members of his fraternity, the Thayan had shaved every hair from his head, eyebrows included. Vermilion tattooing showed on his neck and wrists. He was likely marked over much of his body, but the scarlet robe hid most of it.

It was lucky the Thayans had only one warlock, and that he'd elected to come aboard Shark's Bliss, where his foes could reach him more easily. Armed with a spiked ball and chain, clad in flame-yellow vestments, a priest of Kossuth the Firelord still stood in the forecastle of the crimson ship. He could be trouble.

"Now then," said the Red Wizard in a cheerful tenor voice, "who's the skipper of this unfortunate vessel?"

"I am," Shandri Clayhill said.

The Thayan's eyes opened wide in surprise. "Are you indeed? How charming. May I ask, how did the ship come to grief?"

"A squall. Look, I have coin and land back in Vel-printalar. I can reward you for rescuing us."

The Red Wizard chuckled and fingered one of the gold-and-diamond necklaces dangling on her bosom. "You already have rewarded me, dear girl, and will again later, more intimately. If you're enthusiastic, perhaps you can avoid-"

Still bound together, the two ships fell.

As planned, Tu'ala'keth had cast a spell to scoop the water from beneath their hulls. They dropped several feet, down a hole in the gray-green sea. Everyone slammed down hard when the vessels hit bottom, but at least the pirates had known what to expect, whereas the sudden plummet caught the Thayans entirely by surprise. Some surely suffered sprains and broken bones. All looked stupid with astonishment.

The spell effect ended as abruptly as it began. Saltwater crashed across the deck, engulfing everything, and Anton was suddenly afraid they'd remain submerged, that they lacked the buoyancy to rise. But then they bobbed up into air and sunlight.

Screaming crazily, pirates erupted from every hatch that led down into the hold. Despite their lack of weapons, the freebooters who'd remained on deck also sprang at the stunned and disoriented Thayans.

Anton looked for the Red Wizard. Though the reavers currently had the advantage, a powerful mage might alter that with a single spell. But not if he was denied the time to cast it.

There! The plump wizard had placed his back to the rail, and some of his bodyguards had positioned themselves in front of him. The man in red intoned a chant as sonorous as a dirge and swept his hands in slow passes. Cool, whispering gloom drifted across the deck, as if the sun had passed behind a cloud.

Anton knew he'd never fight his way through the bodyguards in time to stop the spell, but fortunately, that wasn't his only option. Another Thayan-swept overboard or killed by a pirate, the spy neither knew nor cared-had dropped his javelin on the deck. Anton snatched it up and threw it.

It was a difficult throw because the spear had to pass between two of the guards to reach its mark, but he managed it. The point drove deep into the Red

Wizard's chest. Looking bewildered, he stumbled backward to slam into the rail. It cracked in two, and he tumbled into the sea. Sunlight scoured the shadow from the air.

Anton instantly pivoted to find the priest of Kossuth. Curse it! Nobody else had neutralized the divine, and he was conjuring, too, bellowing and swinging his chain weapon over his head. The spiked ball at the end had ignited and left an arc of flame behind it like a tame shooting star.

Anton would never reach the brazier, as such folk were called, in time to stop him. He peered about for another missile, even a makeshift one, but nothing came to hand. He wondered just how horrific the fire magic was going to be.

Then the brazier lurched forward, and blood gushed from his mouth. His knees buckled, and when he collapsed, he revealed Tu'ala'keth standing behind him. She yanked her stone trident from his back and raised it in salutation.

Anton grinned and nodded back. Then they each turned to find another foe.

The fight lasted only another minute before the Thayans started throwing down their arms. They were able warriors, but without leadership or magic of their own, they couldn't stand up to the pirates' fury or the flares of flame, lightning, and withering darkness with which Kassur and Chadrezzan assailed them.

The freebooters cheered, and Anton smiled and shook his head. All things considered, the first phase had gone easier than expected.

***

Tu'ala'keth declaimed the sacred words and with the aid of her helpers, shoved the surviving Thayans over the side, one at a time. Some of the naked prisoners merely wept or advanced to the sacrifice as if sleepwalking. Others begged for mercy, screamed curses, or struggled to break free of their captors' grips.

Their resistance didn't bother her. It was appropriate that the sacrifice should fight to survive if it could. Umberlee even spared a few of them, as she'd spared Anton. What vexed Tu'ala'keth was the attitude of many of the pirates, who mocked and jeered at the doomed Thayans, behaving as if the ritual was an entertainment.

"Silence!" she cried at last. The spectators gaped in surprise. "This is a holy occasion. Do you wish to anger Umberlee, who gave you victory? She is quick to anger, I assure you. You can easily turn her against you."

"Glory to the Bitch Queen," said Harl. The ore was one of the pirates who'd volunteered to assist in the rite. Other freebooters repeated the phrase in a ragged chorus.

The deference pleased Tu'ala'keth-until she thought to contrast it with the apostasy of her own people. Then it took an effort of will for her to maintain a worshipful frame of mind until the conclusion of the ceremony.

After that, she turned her attention to the hold. Her magic could help the squeaking, gurgling hand pumps draw the water out. But before she could begin the prayer, a joyous whoop aboard the red caravel snagged her attention.

"Look at this!" called Durth. He threw back the lid of a brass-bound leather chest and lifted out a fistful of pewter vials, displaying them for all to see. No doubt they contained magical elixirs. A second box yielded gleaming, finely crafted broadswords and rapiers, surely bearing enchantments bound in the steel.

"The hold ith full of magic!" Sealmid cried. Everyone cheered, and when the clamor subsided,

Kassur and Chadrezzan were standing with Durth, Sealmid, and the other folk who'd gone to explore the Thayan vessel. Tu'ala'keth blinked, for she hadn't seen the Talassans make their approach. All at once, they were simply there, at the center of attention.

"It is a rich prize," said Kassur. Tu'ala'keth had yet to hear Chadrezzan utter a word. Either he truly was a mute or he'd sworn a vow of silence. "I say we take it back to Dragon Isle and enjoy it."

"As I recall," said Anton, "we've only completed the first part of our plan. Stripped to the waist, a rope in hand, he stood at the base of the Boss's aft mast, where he'd been helping to replace the tattered sails with serviceable ones. "We have the talismans that were going to Saerloon, but not the gold the Thayans expect to send home. I say we steal everything."

"That's foolish," the man with the eye patch answered. "We were lucky once. Our prize had only one Red Wizard and a single priest aboard, and we caught them by surprise."

"As we expect," Anton said, "to take their counterparts in Saerloon by surprise."

"That may not happen," Kassur said. "Even if it does, I guarantee you, we'll find several Red Wizards on hand, some far advanced in the mysteries of their craft. We'll find defenses in place, and whatever the shalarin claims, I doubt her scrying discovered all of them. It isn't worth the risk. Let's pass the dice while Lady Luck's still smiling."

Tu'ala'keth understood what was truly in the Talassan's mind. He still coveted her position for himself, and Anton's rank for Chadrezzan. He wanted the crew of Shark's Bliss to sacrifice primarily to Talos, not Umberlee. But none of that would come to pass so long as she and the Turmian kept guiding their comrades to notable victories. Thus, the storm priest counseled turning back not because he expected the raid on Saerloon to fail, but because he feared it might succeed.

"Are you scared?" Anton asked him.

"If so," said Tu'ala'keth, "how dare you wear the Destroyer's vestments? Does he not command his followers to be fierce and bold?"

Kassur hesitated. He evidently hadn't expected anyone to accuse him of being lax in the observance of his own savage creed. Perceiving that he didn't know how to respond, the pirates muttered to one another.

"Talos doesn't command us to seek our own destruction!" Kassur managed at last. "He tells us to destroy our enemies!"

"Then let's destroy them," Anton said.

Tu'ala'keth turned to the aft castle, where Captain Clayhill had positioned herself to watch the sacrifice and supervise the ongoing repairs. Some of her jewelry still glittered dazzling bright in the sunlight. Other pieces were dull with spatters of Thayan gore.

"You began this voyage with courage and faith," said Tu'ala'keth. "I urge you to continue in the same spirit."

"If you want to come home with as grand a haul as any pirate's ever stolen," Anton said, "and a tale people will tell not just for a tenday or two, but for the rest of our lives."

Harl laughed. "That sounds good to me, Captain. Especially the part about the loot."

Shandri Clayhill drew a deep breath then gave a nod. "So be it. We sail to Saerloon, and may the gods pity any Thayan bastard who wanders within reach of our blades."

The reavers cheered. Kassur and Chadrezzan glared at Anton and Tu'ala'keth with balked, bitter anger in their eyes.

Even late at night, Saerloon was a bustling port, and the land adjacent to the water was accordingly too valuable for any of it to go waste. Still, as Anton surveyed the Thayan compound at the northern end of the harbor, it seemed to him that it stood a little apart from its neighbors, as if shunned. Maybe it was just his imagination.

Or maybe it wasn't. Everybody hated Thayans, and rightfully so. The whoresons wanted to conquer all of Faerun. People being people, though, they tolerated the Red Wizards and their minions because they sold magic cheaply. They bought it even though the coin went back to Thay to finance the zulkirs' schemes to undermine and ultimately subjugate their neighbors.

But the coin these particular Thayans were sitting on would not be going back to Thay. If Anton had his way, it was bound for Dragon Isle.

The scarlet caravel glided toward to the dock. Clad in the armor and clothing of the former crew, most of the pirates were aboard. They'd left a few hands on Shark's Bliss, the minimum required to see her safely home.

Harl turned the helm a notch. "If we haven't fooled them," he said, "I guess we'll find out when the thunderbolts start flying."

"We flashed the proper signal with the lantern," Anton said. Of course, that was only if the Thayans hadn't changed the code and if the information he'd picked up in a thieves' den in Selgaunt had been accurate to begin with. "This is the caravel they're expecting. The dark should keep them from seeing the ship is crawling with ores." He shrugged. "I'm optimistic."

Harl snorted. "'Crawling with ores.' Nice talk." A breeze wafted the stink of a great city in their direction, a smell compounded of garbage and smoke.

The caravel glided closer to the dock, where a pair of bald, robed Red Wizards and their bodyguards waited to greet her, and workers scurried about lighting torches to facilitate the process of mooring and unloading her. The flickering yellow illumination revealed the hulking statue at the water's edge. Twice as tall as a man, it was nearly as wide as it was high, with enormous clenched fists and a face that was all snarling mouth and a single glaring eye.

Anton studied the Thayans. As best he could judge-the night hampered his vision, too-none of them looked alarmed or even particularly wary. It wasn't until the pirates started tossing lines to the dockhands that one of the latter abruptly goggled in shock. Maybe he'd noticed the flat-nosed countenance of an ore or Tu'ala'keth's narrow inhuman features and black dorsal fin.

Given a chance, the dockhand surely would have cried a warning. But Tu'ala'keth, in the stern castle, and Kassur, in the forward one, each cast the same spell, and all the ambient sounds-the creak of ropes and timbers, the splash and hiss of the water, the conversation on the dock, and the muddled drone of the city beyond-cut off abruptly, supplanted by utter silence.

Weapons in hand, the first pirates sprang from the caravel to the dock like a wave sweeping onto the shore. In so doing, they slammed some of the Thayans off the platform into the water, and perhaps those were the lucky ones. They might survive if they could swim away.

A warrior thrust his spear at Anton. The spy parried-thanks to the magic bound in the massive cutlass, the quick, precise defensive action was easy enough-and hacked open the Thayan's belly. The soldier reeled and toppled off the pier.

Anton pivoted, seeking the Red Wizards. He had no doubt the magicians were still dangerous, even bereft of the ability to recite incantations. Some spells, and a good many sorcerous weapons, didn't require the wielder to jabber words of power.

At first he couldn't tell anything. The pier was too narrow. The combatants were jammed together, obscuring the view. Then he caught a glimpse of a Red Wizard leveling a wand. Captain Clayhill slashed his neck with a boarding pike. Half severed, his head flopped back on his shoulders, blood spurted, and the arcane weapon dropped from his twitching fingers.

Good, one down, but where was the other? There! Anton pushed toward him. Before he could reach him, though, the Red Wizard brushed back his voluminous sleeve and ran his fingertip down the curved length of a tattooed sigil. He vanished in a flash of light-

–and reappeared beside the monstrous statue. His mouth worked as he screamed the command that would bring it to life then snarled in frustration as he realized the zone of silence enshrouded the image, too.

He still needed killing, however, as soon as possible. Anton looked for a way past the frenzied fighters blocking his path, but it was hopeless. He snatched a sling from his belt, loaded it with a lead bullet-and the Red Wizard stroked his tattooed forearm. Once again, he disappeared.

His departure left Anton with nothing to do but slaughter his share of the remaining Thayans as rapidly as he could. To his relief, he and his comrades needed only a few more heartbeats to clear the pier. Afterward, he grabbed Captain Clayhill by the arm and dragged her onto dry land, beyond the statue. The hum of the city popped back into his ears.

"One of the Red Wizards got away," Anton panted. "He'll warn the others. We have to keep moving." Every moment they delayed gave warriors time to wake, grab their weapons, assemble into squads, and take up defensive positions. Every second was another chance for a wizard or priest to weave a spell.

"I know," the captain said. She beckoned urgently, yelling curses even though she must have known her crew couldn't hear her, and the pirates came scrambling onto the shore. She barked a few orders, and they charged up the slope toward the buildings ahead, dividing into teams as they went to envelop the entire complex quickly.

Anton and his companions smashed open doors and killed whomever they found beyond. Some of the pirates tried to linger and search for loot, but he bellowed at them to stay with the squad.

In the center of a small garden with gravel paths, a marble fountain abruptly emitted an eye-watering stink. "Run!" he cried, an instant before the marble basin spewed acid like a geyser. Most of the freebooters reacted quickly enough to avoid all but the diffuse, merely blistering fringe of the discharge. But one man toppled, clothing and skin dissolving. His body was covered in bubbling, sizzling burns, and his eyes melted in their sockets.

A wisp of spider web enlarged without warning, snaring the men it engulfed in sticky cable. The arachnid at the center grew as well and, when it was as big as a cat, scuttled to bite the first of its prisoners. Straining, Anton managed to slip the cutlass through some of the mesh restraining him, and the preternaturally keen edge severed the gluey strands. He slashed himself free, cut once more, and split the spider's eight-eyed mask just as it started to pounce at him.

It was all grueling, frantic, desperate work, and from a certain perspective, it was all inconsequential. Where were the rest of the enemy spellcasters? They were the chief threat, the adversaries the pirates truly needed to confront.

They reached the end of the lane running between two rows of low sheds and buildings, peeked out into the open space beyond, and at last Anton saw the Red Wizards.

The surviving Thayans were making a stand in a two-story limestone building like a small but well-fortified manor house. Soldiers shot crossbow bolts through arrow loops or, kneeling, from behind the battlements on the slate roof. The magicians lurked behind windows, popping into view just long enough to hurl bursts of fire and hammering hailstones at the corsairs laying siege to the place then ducking back out of sight.

The quarrels and flares of magic were taking a toll on the pirates. It was obvious they needed to break into the house and fight the Thayans at close quarters. But it was difficult when their enemies concentrated their attacks on anyone who sought to approach. Even when some daring soul did reach the side of the house, he found it impossible to kick in a door or pry open a shutter. Some charm evidently prevented it.

Tu'ala'keth, Kassur, and a couple of others had taken cover behind a big, forked-trunk tree at one corner of the battlefield. Chadrezzan wasn't with them, though. Apparently, like Anton himself, he was late reaching the heart of the battle.

The priest and priestess of Fury chanted and swept their arms in mystic passes to no particular effect, as far as Anton could tell. Either they were attempting something subtle, or the enemy spellcasters were neutralizing their efforts.

Perhaps he and Tu'ala'keth together could think of an effective tactic. Crouching low, he ran toward her and the others, and the air ahead of him crackled and burned blue.

The shining haze coalesced into a trio of dark, long-legged creatures with streaming tails and manes. For an instant, Anton wondered if the Red Wizards had wasted a summoning spell on something as mundane and relatively harmless as horses. Then he noticed the pale, curved horns and glowing crimson eyes. The beasts were black unicorns, corrupted with a taint of demon blood, a prime example of the many abominations bred in Thay.

Plainly heeding an order to kill the clerics, the unicorns charged the group behind the tree. Anton sprinted after them, but wasn't exceptionally concerned. Black unicorns were dangerous foes, but Tu'ala'keth's magic, and Kassur's, should suffice to fend the creatures off.

Then, however, wind howled. Anton could barely feel the disturbance in the air where he was, but it staggered the pirates behind the forked tree and ripped leaves spinning upward off the branches. Tu'ala'keth's goggles jerked off her head and hurtled into the air as well.

It shouldn't have mattered. The sunlight of the surface world couldn't blind her in the middle of the night. But in the same instant the whirlwind died, as abruptly as it began, her face lit up like an ember fresh from a blazing fire. She pawed at her features as if she could wipe the glow away, but to no avail.

The black unicorns thundered nearer.

Help her! Anton thought. But as Kassur, brandishing his flickering spear, started to conjure, he backed away from her. No doubt he wanted to ensure that the defense he meant to create would shield only himself.

Tu'ala'keth must have mastered her panic, must have heard her attacker's pounding approach, for at the last instant, she tried to spring out of the way. Even so, the black unicorn's horn gored her side, spun her, and dropped her to the ground. The creature turned and reared to pulp her beneath its battering hooves.

Still Kassur made no attempt to aid her. It was Harl who rushed in, scimitar raised, interposing himself between the unicorn and its intended prey. He started to strike a blow, but the creature was faster, and the ore dropped with his head bashed to gory, lopsided ruin.

At least he'd distracted the unicorn long enough for Anton to close with it. He hoped to take the beast from behind and cut a leg out from under it before it knew he was there, but it must have heard or smelled him coming because it whirled to meet him.

He cut; gashed the equine's flank; then twisted to the right when the pale, whorled horn drove at him. That put him in position for a chop at the unicorn's neck, and he raised the cutlass to try. The beast's horn suddenly glowed like crystal filled with tainted moonlight. It whipped its head sideways and bashed him in the chest with the luminous spike.

But it didn't hit with the point, just the side of the shaft. It should have been a solid, bruising clout, but nothing worse. Alas, the supernatural force the unicorn had invoked amplified the power of the blow. It knocked Anton into the air and threw him several feet. He slammed down hard.

His chest burned, and he felt as if he couldn't draw a breath. He had no idea how badly the attack had wounded him and had no time to worry about it either. The unicorn sprang after him and reared to hammer him with its hooves.

Anton tried to roll out of the way. For an instant that seemed to stretch out endlessly, he thought his abused body wouldn't answer to his will, but then he broke through the paralysis that came with shock and flung himself to the side. The unicorn's hooves slammed down mere inches away, pounding dents into the ground and flinging up bits of dirt.

He had to roll again before he could attempt to scramble to his feet. He was still straightening up when the black unicorn leaped at him, crimson eyes blazing, horn shining with another infusion of malefic power.

He needed another moment to settle into a balanced fighting stance, but he didn't have it. He'd simply have to manage as best he could. He tried to sidestep and cut at the same time.

The unicorn crashed into him. Flung him reeling backward and down on the ground. He was sure he'd taken a mortal wound, but when he ran his hand over his torso, he couldn't find a puncture. Some part of the beast's body had struck him, but he'd dodged the horn.

Something screamed an inhuman scream. Anton forced himself to sit up and look around. His foe lay on its side several feet away, the cutlass buried in the base of its neck. It gave a final cry, and its head thudded down onto the ground. Blood oozed from its mouth and nostrils.

Anton smiled then glimpsed a surge of motion from the corner of his eye. He turned his head, and another black unicorn charged him.

Tu'ala'keth's steely contralto voice cried words of power. The grass beneath the unicorn's hooves grew long and whipped around its lower legs. The beast's momentum kept it plunging forward anyway. Bones snapped, and it crashed to the ground to shriek until the shalarin drove her stone trident between its ribs.

She then hobbled to Anton. The blinding luminescence on her face had disappeared-she'd probably extinguished it with a counterspell-but blood poured from the rent in her side.

"Are you badly hurt?" she asked.

"I've been knocked around," he said, "and taken a little jolt of magical virulence, but I can still fight.

You're the one who's really wounded. Fix it before you bleed to death."

"Yes, now that I have time." She declaimed a prayer and pressed her hand against the gaping cut. Her webbed fingers glowed blue-green, and the gash closed. Meanwhile, Anton yanked his cutlass from the first unicorn's carcass and looked to see what else was happening.

Kassur and Chadrezzan stood near the body of the third unicorn, which burned as if someone had dipped it in oil and set a torch to it. Sour-faced, the Talassans were glaring at him and Tu'ala'keth, but they turned away as soon as they noticed him looking back.

Anton realized it hadn't been a Red Wizard who'd blinded Tu'ala'keth. It had been Chadrezzan, hiding in the shadows.

The knowledge infuriated him, but retribution would have to wait. The attack was faltering. The pirates were game, fighting hard, but as long as the Thayans' bastion remained unable to be breached, they held an insurmountable advantage.

He turned to Tu'ala'keth. "Are you fit to keep fighting?" he asked.

She sneered. "Of course. Umberlee's power sustains me, just as it does you."

"Right. How could I forget? Look, I need to get to the side of the house to try my charm of opening."

The glimmering membrane flicked across her obsidian eyes. "Do you think it will overcome the enchantment the Red Wizards used to seal the place?"

"It untied your magic tether, didn't it? I'm lucky with that particular spell. But maybe not lucky enough to run across the clear space without taking a few quarrels in the vitals, or a lightning bolt up the arse."

"I will shield you." She raised the bloody trident over her head and chanted words in her own tongue. A grayness thickened in the air. In a moment, most of the world vanished beneath a blanket of mist. The vapor smelled of the sea.

"The enemy will banish the fog quickly," said Tu'ala'keth. "We must run."

"Wait! I've lost track of where the doors and windows are."

"I remember." She gripped his hand. "Come on."

They rushed the house. A quarrel whizzed down out of the fog and past his head. Evidently some of the Thayan warriors were shooting blind.

But that was the only missile that came anywhere near him, and the facade of the enemy fortress swam out of the murk. As Tu'ala'keth had promised, she'd led him straight to a door.

Just as they reached it, though, a pulse of magic that made his head throb scoured the fog from the air. They pressed themselves against the side of the house to make it awkward for anyone inside or on top to target them, and he began the spell. Knowing he had sufficient power to attempt it only a couple of times, and that the articulation needed to be perfect to overcome Thayan wizardry, he resisted the urge to hurry, even when quarrels thumped into the ground behind him.

As he reached the final word, silvery sparks danced on the surface of the heavy four-paneled door. He tried to twist the wrought-iron handle. It wouldn't budge, nor would the door shiver even minutely in its frame. It seemed of a piece with the wall around it.

Footsteps shuffled overhead, and Tu'ala'keth rattled off a prayer. Anton glanced up just as the warriors on the roof overturned a cauldron. Boiling water poured down, but the stream divided as it dropped. It splashed, steamed, hissed all around him and the shalarin, but left them untouched.

"Next time," said Tu'ala'keth, "they will drop something besides boiling water. I will find that more difficult to deflect."

"Point taken." He resumed his conjuring.

In response, the entire surface of the door glowed silver. He twisted the handle, and the latch released. He and Tu'ala'keth scrambled inside, and blazing coals rained, thumping and rattling down on the spot they'd just vacated.

Anton cast about for defenders waiting just inside the entry. Feet were pounding above his head, but as yet, no one had appeared to bar the way. He turned and bellowed to the pirates: "Come on! Come on! We've got a way in!"

The freebooters dashed forward. The Thayans might have decimated them as they emerged from cover, except that Chadrezzan, shrouded from head to toe in vermilion flame, his serpent-staff held high above his head, hurled burst after burst of fire over their heads. While the barrage lasted, the Red Wizards and their minions had no choice but to hide behind their casements and merlons.

The first pirates reached the doorway. Anton and Tu'ala'keth led them deeper into the house.

It was a different fight now, through rooms, along hallways, and up stairs. With walls in the way, no leader could hope to oversee or direct more than a small part of it. Warriors lacked the space to stand in proper formation. Wizards and crossbowmen couldn't harass their enemies safely at long range.

Which was to say, it was brutal, howling chaos, and in such a melee, the sheer viciousness of the pirates gave them the upper hand.

Or at least Anton thought it did. In truth, he too had only the haziest impression of what was occurring beyond the reach of his blade, and didn't dare divert his attention from the enemies in his immediate vicinity to look around.

Finally, though, he killed another Thayan, cast about, and couldn't find any more to fight. Durth yelled, "I saw a mage run up this way!" He scrambled up a staircase with a door at the top, and two of his fellow ores scrambled after him. The lookout grabbed the handle.

"Stop!" cried Tu'ala'keth.

The word was charged with magic. Durth froze for a heartbeat then turned to her in anger and confusion.

"It is warded," the waveservant said. "I will deal with it." She hurried up the steps, and Anton followed.

Tu'ala'keth gripped her dead man's hand and recited an incantation. Power tinged the air green and made it feel damp. She thrust the tines of her trident into the door, and for an instant, a complex design, inscribed in lines and loops of scarlet light, flared and sizzled into being but without doing anybody any harm.

"Now," said Tu'ala'keth, "we may pass." She threw open the door.

Beyond the threshold was a richly appointed suite, surely the private quarters of the ranking Red Wizard in Saerloon. His leg torn, leaving bloody spatters and footprints on a gorgeous carpet as he limped about, the mage was stuffing various possessions in a haversack seemingly too small to hold them. It must be one of those enchanted containers that was larger inside than out.

The mage cursed and pointed an ebony wand with a milky crystal on the end. The attackers ducked for cover as best they could in the confined area of the top risers and the small landing.

With a roar, force exploded through the doorway and smashed the sections of wall on either side into hurtling scraps. Time seemed to skip, and Anton found himself lying amid a litter of wood and plaster on the floor at the base of the steps.

His ears rang, his whole body felt as if it were vibrating from the impact, but he didn't seem to be dead or maimed. He looked around for his companions. One of the ores had both legs twisted at unnatural angles with a jagged bit of broken bone sticking out of one, but other than that, it looked as if everyone might be all right. They were just battered and dazed.

The concussion had blasted away the top of the staircase, but a bit of the supporting structure remained, affixed to the wall. Anton used it to clamber high enough to peek into the Red Wizard's quarters.

The wretch was gone.

Anton dropped back down to the floor, where Tu'ala'keth awaited him. "He escaped," the spy admitted. "Used magic to whisk himself away with his most valuable treasures."

"Will he return with more warriors?" asked Tu'ala'keth.

Anton grinned. "That's the funny part. Thayan trading enclaves count as Thayan soil. They insist on it. That means the local watch and what-have-you carry no authority within these walls, and most likely they resent it. They won't be in any hurry to come accost us even if a Red Wizard begs them."

His slate-colored cheeks and forehead bristling with splinters, Durth shook his head. "Still when I think of the swag the dog just snatched away from us…"

"Don't worry," Anton said. "We still have the gold."

And, as they discovered when they broke into the strong room, it was a lot of gold. It was as much as he'd ever seen in one place-enough to take everyone's breath away.

Captain Clayhill turned to Chadrezzan. "It will be heavy," she said. "Can you conjure some of those floating disks to carry it to the ship?"

The magician inclined his head.

"Then let's move. The Sembians could still bestir themselves to chase us."

"If they do," said Tu'ala'keth, "the wind and currents will not favor them."

***

Tu'ala'keth knew Anton had taken a late watch. She found him alone in the forecastle, gazing over the black, silver-dappled expanse of the moonlit sea. Knowing how humans depended on the glare of the sun, candles, and the like, she wondered if he could actually see much of anything.

She joined him at the rail and pointed to starboard. "Do you see the school of mackerel," she asked, "swimming just below the surface? If the others were awake, we could net ourselves a good breakfast."

"No," he said, "I can't make them out. You should sleep, too, if you want your side to finish healing."

Beneath the silverweave she'd painstakingly mended, her wound gave her a twinge, as if agreeing with him

"I wished to talk to you," she said. "You seem troubled."

He snorted. "I'm trying to act triumphant. I must not be the dissembler I hoped I was if a creature who doesn't even know humans can see through me."

"You and I are the hands of Umberlee, sealed to a single purpose. That is why I ken your feelings."

"Or you're just shrewd."

"Tell me what bothers you. Do you fear our charade is taking too long? It has occurred to me that while we play games above the sea, the dragon flight may already have laid waste to all As'arem… perhaps even all Seros."

He lifted an eyebrow. "I'd just about decided you never felt doubt or worry about anything."

"I am mortal and thus incapable of perfect serenity. Besides, Umberlee is demanding. It may be that she has chosen us as her agents but is testing us, too. Or testing me, anyway, as an exemplar of the shalarins. She has set me a challenge, which I must quickly overcome, or she will give the wyrms leave to obliterate my race."

"That's a cheery thought. For what it's worth, I'm told dragon flights run around erratically. They don't always race from one big collection of victims straight to the next. So chances are pretty fair they haven't chewed up all of Seros yet. I was actually pondering something else."

A fish jumped, making a soft splash off the port bow. The deck rose and fell beneath their feet. "What were you brooding over?" asked Tu'ala'keth.

"Just that we've done, and instigated, a lot of killing."

His tone was somber, though she had no idea why. Slaughter was a holy act when the slayer dedicated the kill to Umberlee. "And so?" she asked.

"So nothing, I suppose. The Grandmaster knows, after all this time, it shouldn't bother me. I've stood and watched murders, rapes, and acts of torture, because to intervene would unmask me, thwart my mission, and so, theoretically, allow even more suffering elsewhere in the world. But it still does trouble me sometimes. Of late, maybe more than it used to."

She groped for comprehension. "But the pirates and Thayans are both enemies of your people, are they not? Was that not part of the reason you bade me point Shandri Clayhill at Saerloon? So that whoever died in the course of the raid, Turmish would be the better for it?"

He nodded. "I wasn't sure you understood that, but yes. Still, no doubt, the zulkirs are scum, and so are Red Wizards. You couldn't rise in, or even stomach, the crimson order if you weren't. But do you think every warrior, sailor, and dockhand we killed was a fiend incarnate? Or were they just ordinary folk doing their jobs and trying to get by? Checkmate's edge, it's not their fault they were born Thayan. Some may even have been slaves."

"They certainly were not fiends. Demons are magnificent entities. Viewed clearly, they afford us a glimpse of the divine."

Her observation failed to divert Anton from his own chain of thought: "But really, I don't mind Thayan blood on my knife. It's the deaths of our shipmates that weigh on me because we knew one another." He sighed. "When I first took up this line of work, one of my mentors warned me the hard part was befriending the enemy. Not the doing of it, but the consequences. Because when you betray them, you bear the guilt."

"Your true loyalty is to Umberlee, and in any case, you have not betrayed the reavers."

"We lied to them."

The remark reminded her of her own misgivings, but she pushed them aside. "For a sacred purpose! And if that is not enough, the ruse gave them the courage to win glory and wealth."

"But Harl won't get a chance to spend his share. He died protecting you."

"For that reason, Umberlee has taken his spirit into her keeping, as she will one day welcome us if we do not fail her." She peered at him, saw her words had given him no comfort, and felt a pang of frustration. "Why did you become a spy in the first place, if you are too squeamish for the work?"

Where wise counsel had failed, the exasperated question surprised a smile out of him. "'Squeamish?' I haven't heard that before! In truth, I didn't start out to be a spy. When I was a boy, I loved tales about paladins. I wanted to grow up to be one and begged my parents for permission to train with the Fellowship of the True Deity."

"But they refused?"

"Oh, no. They were pious folk and approved of my aspirations. But it turned out that, while I took to swordplay and the rest of the combat training, I had no real patience for the constant prayer, fasting, meditation, and general asceticism an apprentice paladin had to endure, and discipline and self-denial only became more difficult when I started noticing girls. Perhaps because I chafed at them, I couldn't establish the special bond with Torm his knights must have, nor learn to work even the simplest bit of divine magic. By trying, I discovered a small knack for the arcane, but that was beside the point.

"When it became clear I was hopeless, my masters discharged me, and I enlisted in the Turmian army. If I couldn't be a mystical hero, I'd at least be a chivalrous one. I imagined myself dubbed a knight on the battlefield, fighting single combats with champions from enemy armies, devising brilliant strategies to turn certain defeat into total victory… suffice it to say, if it was a piece of rubbish from a heroic saga, it was rattling around in my head."

"I take it that the army, too, was not as you envisioned it?"

Anton chuckled. "Sad but true. My superiors showed a strange reluctance to place a raw recruit in command of his own company, or otherwise reward my manifest talents as they deserved. I grew bored with regimentation and routine and disliked taking orders from fellows I deemed less clever than myself, and certainly less worthy than the paladins back in the cloister. In short order, I turned into a shirker and a troublemaker. Once my impudence even earned me a flogging.

"But occasionally I earned my keep. I always volunteered for scouting, carrying dispatches cross-country, any task I could undertake alone, guided solely by my own wits. Then I did well. In time my checkered career caught the notice of one of Turmish's spymasters, who convinced me I was better suited for his trade than a life in the ranks."

He shrugged. "And that's the tale. I've been playing this game ever since. Lies and low blows may look shabby compared to paladin's miracles and valor, but they, too, serve a purpose. At least when some clerk doesn't just take my report and stuff it in a cubbyhole unread."

"You yearned to serve a deity," said Tu'ala'keth. "Yet now that the greatest of all has claimed you, you find no joy in it. What makes you so perverse?"

He hesitated. "I promised to help you-and Umberlee-and I will. But your deity stands for cruelty, greed, and destruction. Torm is virtue, honor, and loyalty. It's scarcely the same thing."

"You must open your eyes," said Tu'ala'keth. "You see sharks devouring prey, tempests destroying ships and drowning mariners, victors slaying the vanquished-Umberlee's reflections in the mundane world-and you cringe. As well you might, for these events are terrible. But so, too, are they sacred and beautiful. They are life expressing and refining itself. Without the urge to feed and to have and to master, what creature would discover its strengths, or do anything whatsoever?"

Anton shook his head. "You may be right, but I can't feel what you feel. If it's any consolation, I don't spend much time contemplating the glories of Torm anymore, either. Of course I still believe in him, and all the gods. I'm not insane. But it's hard to imagine them stooping to take an interest in the small, grubby lives of people like Harl and me. I suspect that by and large, we mortals are on our own."

"No," she said. "The gods may sometimes hate us, chastise, slay, and damn us, but they are never remote or indifferent. I believe that if you are true to our purpose, Umberlee will reveal herself to you, and you will know better."

"Well, maybe so." He glanced up at the moon and the trailing haze of glittering motes people called her tears. "Hmm. It's past time for Williven to relieve me. Let's go wake the lazy bastard."