“No fault of yours, Brun. I’ve spent the last tenday passing myself off as a pirate.” Geran came back out into the street. “I’m glad to see that you’re well. From what I could tell, the Spearmeet was in the thick of things.”
The young brewer smiled grimly. “Aye, we had our share of fighting. We made sure that plenty of reavers who left their ships never made it back to ’em. But now that we’ve handled the pirates, the thrice-damned Cinderfists are out looking for trouble. There’s all kinds of fighting over in the Tailings and down along the poorer parts of Easthead. We were just heading that way to lend a hand.” He glanced over Geran’s shoulder at the signboard for Erstenwold Provisioners, and suddenly he fell silent. His face fell, and he looked at the ground.
“What?” Geran asked. “What is it, Brun?”
“It’s Mistress Erstenwold, Lord Geran,” the brewer said. “You couldn’t have heard if you’ve been away from Hulburg, but she’s gone missing.”
“Missing?” Cold dread squeezed Geran’s heart. Mirya missing? If she was not in Hulburg, there was no place she would have gone of her own free will. His weariness vanished in sudden alarm. “What happened? Tell me!”
“It was two nights past. One of her neighbors heard a ruckus at her house and found the place all tore up-the front door wrenched off the hinges, furniture overturned, and all that. No one’s seen her or her little girl since.” Brun set his knuckle to his forehead. “Every man who calls himself loyal to Hulburg’s been looking for them.”
Geran took a step back, as if he’d been physically struck. Someone had attacked Mirya’s house? He started to ask himself why, but halted in midthought. It didn’t matter. He’d been away from Hulburg, unable to protect them. That was most likely the why of it; the only real questions were where the two of them were now, and whether they were beyond his help or not. The thought of some harm coming to Mirya or her daughter made him dizzy with dread. “Who? Who did it?” he asked.
Brun and his men exchanged looks with one another. “No one knows, Lord Geran,” the brewer said. “The harmach himself’s taken it up.”
“Lord Geran?” one of the men with Brun added. “I might’ve heard something new on it. My cousin serves in Tresterfin’s company. He told me he saw something peculiar in the middle of the fighting down by the wharves tonight-a big fellow, an ogre maybe, carrying a couple of people like the evening’s shopping down High Street toward the harbor. There was a thin man in a brown cowl with the big one. My cousin only saw the pair of ’em at a distance, but he told me that he would’ve sworn that it was Mirya Erstenwold the big fellow carried, all trussed up like a prisoner.” The militiaman shrugged awkwardly. “Mistress Erstenwold’s been on all our minds, I guess. He might’ve been seeing things as weren’t what he thought. But I thought you ought to know.”
An ogre and a man in a cowl? Geran could make no sense of that. There was no point in running off to comb the waterfront himself; if Brun was right, the Moonshields had already turned the town upside down, and the militiaman’s story might have nothing to it. But he knew who might be able to help. “My thanks, Brun,” he said. Then he climbed back up the steps to the store, let himself in by unlocking the door through its broken window, and hurried inside the darkened building.
A moment later he found what he was looking for and returned to the street with a well-worn white shawl clutched in his hand. Brun looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, but Geran showed him the shawl. “It might help,” he said. “If anyone asks about me, tell them I’ll be up to Griffonwatch as soon as I can.”
“Aye, Lord Geran,” Brun answered.
Geran nodded his thanks and rushed off down the street. He feared that he knew where Mirya was, but he had to make sure of it. He wound his way through the smoldering town, past bands of militia and soldiers searching for any pirates still hiding in the town, and hurried to Sarth’s home on the seaward slopes of the Easthead. The tiefling lived in a modest house attached to a small round tower rebuilt from the ruins of an older watch-post. Sarth was a man of means in Hulburg and could afford to live well.
Geran found a heavy bell by the front door and pulled it urgently. “Sarth!” he called. “I need your help!” He rang the bell again.
The door opened, revealing a stout, balding halfling of middle years with a small oil lamp in his hand-Sarth’s valet. The servant looked up at Geran and blinked sleepily. “Ah, Lord Geran! I’m afraid Master Sarth has retired for the evening,” he said. “Can you return in the morning?”
“I fear this can’t wait,” Geran answered. “Wake him, please. It’ll be on my head.”
The valet sighed. “Very well, then. Please wait in the foyer. Master Sarth will be down directly.” He retreated into the darkened house. Geran stepped inside and closed the door. Sarth’s home was plainly furnished in the simple, rough-hewn style most Hulburgans favored, although the decor included several fine Turmishan weavings. He paced anxiously across the flagstones of the foyer, trying to fight down the sick dread in his stomach.
Sarth and his servant appeared at the top of the staircase. The tiefling belted a light robe around his waist and descended. “What is it, Geran? What’s wrong?”
“Mirya Erstenwold and her daughter are missing. I fear they may have been carried off in the Black Moon raid. Can you find her?”
The sorcerer grimaced. “I am sorry, my friend. Of course I will do what I can. Do you have something of hers?”
Geran produced the shawl he’d picked up in Mirya’s store. “Here.”
Sarth took the shawl and nodded. “This should do. Come, let’s go to my workshop.” He led the way to the round room formed by the old tower adjoining the house. It was surprisingly uncluttered; in Geran’s experience most conjuries and laboratories were hopelessly messy, but Sarth hadn’t been in Hulburg long enough to accumulate the knickknacks, mementos, and curios that most sorcerers acquired over time. Over the last few months the tiefling had simply shrugged any time Geran asked him whether he was staying or not; Geran suspected that Sarth still entertained notions of recovering the magical tome known as the Infiernadex from the lich-king Aesperus, and spent his spare time investigating ways to do so.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for waking you up,” Geran said.
Sarth sighed. “I spent the last tenday unable to sleep a wink on that accursed ship. I think I managed half an hour before you woke me, but I am glad you did. Time may be of the essence.” He went to a cluttered bookshelf, considered the tomes crowded together there, then selected one to carry over to a reading stand in the center of the room. A circle of intricate runes and sigils was painted on the floor around the stand, and Sarth was careful to step over them as he entered. He opened the book, flipped through the pages, and found the spell he was looking for. “There, this should do. Stand over there, if you please, and keep still. I must concentrate.”
Geran did as Sarth told him. He’d learned a little about magic rituals himself during his studies in Myth Drannor, but Sarth was his superior in such things. The sorcerer ignited several candles around his rune-circle with a wave of his hand, and kindled a small fire beneath a brass bowl on a small table beside the reading stand. Into the bowl he threw pinches of various strange powders and began to intone the words recorded in his ritual book. Geran felt the stirrings of arcane power gathering in the candlelit conjury. Sarth continued with his magic and bent over the bowl to inhale deeply from the fragrant smoke that rose from it.
The candles flickered and guttered out; the sorcerer picked up Mirya’s shawl, holding it close under his nose, and closed his eyes. He stayed that way for a long moment then exhaled and opened his eyes. “She lives,” he said. He pointed toward one wall of the conjury. Its narrow window faced south, toward the Moonsea. “She is about fifteen miles in that direction and drawing farther away as we speak.”