Mirya led the way through the darkness until they emerged in a large hall or guardroom. There was a door nearby, with a pair of narrow stone embrasures beside it. She glanced out from one and realized that she was looking out of an arrow slit that protected a postern gate leading outside. The sinister jungle crowded close to the base of the keep here. Then she chose one of the other passageways and advanced cautiously into the bowels of the keep, hoping that she’d come across something that she could turn to her advantage-a good hiding place, a slave who might be willing to help her, or perhaps supplies and a weapon so that she might at least face the jungle outside with some amount of preparation. She came to a place where several passages met, and paused to consider her next turn. The last thing she wanted to do was to become completely lost in this place.
The click of talons on stone and the evil chittering of the neogi speaking in their own tongue came from the passage directly in front of her. She stood paralyzed for an instant. “Hide!” she whispered to Selsha, pushing her into one of the passageways. She started after her daughter, but realized that the glowing orb she carried gave them away. Quickly she stepped back out into the intersection and rolled the light down one of the other passages-and then the neogi appeared. Mirya pressed herself into the shadow of one of the other doorways and prayed that the creatures hadn’t seen her.
Several of the monsters chattered to each other, pausing for a moment in the intersection. Then they continued on their way-turning down the hall where Selsha was hiding. Another of the huge, apelike monsters followed after the little spider-creatures, and Mirya almost gave herself away by stepping out of the shadows too soon. She waited a moment for the creatures to pass and then crept out of her hiding place. Heart hammering in her chest, Mirya hurried after the neogi and their hulk, following as closely as she dared. Selsha must have fled down the passage in front of the monsters. Mirya prayed that her daughter was calm enough to seek out a side passage to duck into, or a small room where she might find a place to hide and let the monsters behind her pass. Selsha was a small girl, and she was good at hiding … but the moon-keep’s monsters terrified the child. It was more likely that she was fleeing in blind panic, in which case there was no telling where she might turn.
Mirya came to a large open room and realized that they’d returned to the room by the postern gate again. The party of monsters she followed turned and disappeared up one of the other hallways that met here, and Mirya advanced cautiously into the room behind them. Selsha might have fled down any of the passages leading away from the room. She wheeled in a circle, hoping for some hint of which way her daughter might have gone. She listened for a moment, but all she could hear were loathsome scuttling footsteps of the neogi drawing away. Then she realized that the postern gate was standing open by a double handspan. “Oh, no,” she breathed. She hurried to the gate and peered outside.
One of Selsha’s shoes lay on the stone landing, atop a short flight of stone stairs that led down into a tiny clearing at the keep’s foot.
She closed her eyes, sickened with fear. Selsha was out in that jungle somewhere, with its monstrous plants and its unknown perils.
There was no choice for it, then. Mirya quickly pulled the keep’s gate closed behind her, hoping that their pursuers inside would assume they’d fled down one of the other passageways inside. Then she picked up Selsha’s shoe and hurried down the overgrown path leading into the black moon’s mist-wreathed jungle.
TWENTY-FIVE
17 Marpenoth, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)
Seadrake dropped down out of the moonlet’s black sky like a hawk stooping on its prey. The starry compass glowed with silver light in front of the ship’s wheel, its strange symbols spinning swiftly with the precipitous descent. Geran stood at the helm and grinned fiercely, feeling the sails fill with the strange winds of the dark moonlet and the deck trembling to the rush of iron-shod feet. He had no idea what waited for him below the battlements of the ebon keep, but he meant to meet it with fine elven steel in his hand and spells of ruin on his blade. Whatever else happened, he’d teach the Black Moon a lesson or two about preying on Hulburg … and if Sergen was somewhere in that dark fortress, he wouldn’t escape Geran’s wrath a second time.
“Lord Geran! We’re fallin’ too fast!” Andurth Galehand shouted in his ear. The bowsprit pointed directly at the midships deck of Kraken Queen, tied up alongside its wharf under the black battlements, and Seadrake raced down on the pirate ship with such speed that Geran’s stomach was left behind. “Slow th’ approach, I beg ye!”
“Speed and surprise are our best weapons!” Geran answered. He could see the pirate ship’s crew desperately running for their stations, even as others poured out of the keep’s gates or hurried to man the battlements. Seadrake was low enough now that she seemed to sail through the skies of this strange, small world instead of skimming across the empty blackness of the Sea of Night. The pirate keep stood atop a steep-sided hill overlooking the lake; strange-looking trees and thick, coiling vines in a dozen hues of red, purple, and blue crowded in close around the keep and the shore. A weird silver mist seemed to hang in the air, cool and humid, and tendrils of cloud seethed slowly through the low spots in the hills ringing the lake.
“There are ruins in the jungle,” Hamil said. He pointed at the closer shore of the glittering blue lake. Geran glimpsed crumbling towers of black stone half hidden in the vales near the lakeshore. “Do you think the Black Moon’s got allies nearby?”
“I don’t know, but the sooner we take the ship and get into the keep, the less likely it is that anyone else can interfere.” Geran spared a glance for Hamil. “As I said-speed and surprise.”
He looked back to Kraken Queen, and judged that they were indeed closing too fast. “Slow the descent!” he said aloud. The ship replied, lifting her bow a bit and leveling out. Seadrake’s company-almost seventy Shieldsworn and veteran mercenaries from the merchant companies plus almost forty more sailors eager for a fight-lined the rails, armed and ready to give battle to the Black Moon corsairs. “Grapples, stand ready!” he called to his crew. “Archers, fire as you will!”
The crew raised a ragged chorus of war cries and defiant shouts. Bowstrings sang and crossbows snapped sharply, sweeping the deck of the pirate vessel below. Sarth blasted a knot of pirates trying to ready one of Kraken Queen’s catapults with a crackling ball of green lightning. Geran held his course until the last possible moment before turning the wheel sharply and willing the bow up and the stern down. “Make ready to drop sail!” he shouted. “Brace for impact!” The ship veered wildly before alighting in the sapphire waters of the moon-lake with an immense splash. Despite Geran’s warning, fully half the hands on deck were knocked off their feet … but now Seadrake surged forward in the water, coming up alongside her quarry from astern. The Hulburgans leaped back to their feet, and deckhands swarmed aloft to lower the warship’s sails as Geran turned the wheel the other way to drive his bow alongside Kraken Queen. Grapple-throwers heaved their hooks across the gap. The Hulburgan ship came to a jarring stop, tangled up with the Black Moon flagship.
“Over th’ side!” Andurth Galehand yelled. It was unnecessary, since Seadrake’s company was already swarming across to Kraken Queen. Hamil vaulted up to the rail, seized a hanging shroud, and swung over to the pirate ship’s quarterdeck. Geran followed an instant later with his teleport spell, spanning the gap with a single, bold stride. He immediately found himself in the middle of a furious fray by Kraken Queen’s mizzenmast. Dozens of pirates swarmed up on deck from every hatch and companionway imaginable, desperate to repel the attack.