“We may have made him so angry that he’s willing to settle for drowning without the frills as opposed to ritual sacrifice. Or else he wants to force us to surrender.”
“Then he’s going to be disappointed,” Kymas said, and Anton had to give him credit. He’d seemed shaken for an instant, but he was all resolve now. “Umara and I are more than a match for any jumped-up zombie, especially if we work together.” He turned to the other mage. “Let’s try some necromancy. We’ll command him to pull his own head off.”
Whispering in unison, the Red Wizards whispered words that set Anton’s teeth on edge. But they didn’t make Evendur decapitate himself or even break stride, and a moment later, the sea heaved the galley up and down. The tangled wreckage of the two masts bounced and shifted, and sailors scrambled to keep from being crushed, or swept overboard.
“All right,” Kymas said, “more acid. He didn’t like it before.”
True, Anton thought, but the corrosive rain hadn’t stopped Evendur, either, and he suspected it would have even less effect the second time around. He turned to the captain and asked, “Where are you keeping the boy?”
“The lower rowing deck,” the Thayan said. “But …”
Anton looked around and spotted a companionway that looked like it ought to lead to the lower banks of oars. Weaving around injured men and trying not to trip over snapped rigging, dropped weapons, and other litter, he dashed in that direction.
The next upheaval came when he was partway down the steep little flight of steps. It pitched him forward to splash down into bilge water that sloshed back and forth with the rocking of the boat.
Near the companionway, a mariner had jammed himself in a corner. The captain probably expected him to command the oarsmen, but at the moment, his eyes wide with fear, he didn’t seem to working on anything but making sure the tossing of the galley didn’t throw him around.
Beyond the sailor were the rows of benches with an aisle running down the center of them. There was just enough wan gray light leaking in through the outriggers to illuminate the creatures occupying them. But even if there hadn’t been, Anton would have known them for what they were by the rotten stink that suddenly assailed him.
Like the zombies topside, these looked relatively fresh and had likely started the voyage as living slaves. They still wore their leg irons, and the shackles had held them more or less in place as the galley slammed up and down, although jerking oars had battered them and left them sprawled and twisted in peculiar attitudes.
Stedd lay in the filthy water between two of the central benches. To Anton’s relief, the boy’s face wasn’t submerged, but he wasn’t moving, either.
As Anton splashed toward him, the nauseating stink of corruption intensified, and the air grew colder even as the light dimmed. Or was it? Anton suddenly wondered if it was actually his eyes that were failing.
He might be going blind. He realized he felt weak and sick in a way that his exertions and bruises didn’t explain. He was stumbling, dizzy, and his pulse pounded in his neck. Was the beat irregular? He wasn’t sure, but he thought so.
Then, mere shadows in his murky sight, the dead men started to turn in his direction. They were about to rise and swarm over him. He knew it.
Except, he realized, that he didn’t.
Common mindless zombies wouldn’t do that, or anything, without being ordered to, and besides, these were shackled in place. A curse had evidently poisoned his mind with terror and nonsense. Resisting its influence as best he could, he reeled onward.
Another upheaval sent him staggering, and the lurching end of an oar nearly caught him in the kidney. Then a final stride brought him to Stedd, who didn’t react to his arrival.
The boy’s eyes had rolled up, with white showing all across the bottoms, and he was shaking. Cast in the form of a skull, an amulet made of black metal hung around his neck.
Anton pulled off the medallion and threw it as far as he could. Stedd’s shuddering abated immediately, and so did the Turmishan’s own feelings of illness and dread. Plainly, Kymas Nahpret had used magic to render the boy prophet helpless. Perhaps the amulet had somehow focused the innate vileness of the zombies, the undeath that was antithetical to the life-giving light and warmth of the sun, on him.
“Hey!” called the Thayan braced in the corner. “You’re not supposed to do that.”
Anton didn’t bother to look around. “One more word,” he said, “and I’ll kill you.” And then, to Stedd: “Wake up, lad. Come back to me.”
Stedd’s eyelids fluttered then his eyes focused on Anton. “You …” he croaked. “I was having nightmares …”
“They’re over now,” Anton said.
“I remember, the bad man made me wear the black skull … did you come to help me?”
Anton felt a twinge of discomfort or something akin to it, but there was no time to pause and wonder why. “We need to help each other. Evendur Highcastle, the ‘bad man’ who put a price on your head, is attacking us. Nobody has been able to hurt him, or at least, not enough for it to matter. But maybe you and your sun god can.”
Stedd shook his head. “I couldn’t pray with the skull around my neck. I couldn’t even think.”
“You have to-”
The world, or at least their little bit of it, heaved up and down. Zombies flailed back and forth as though trying to dance despite the impediment of their leg irons. In the aftermath, Stedd looked shocked, and Anton realized that was only natural. The boy hadn’t been conscious for any of the previous tosses.
“As I was saying,” the pirate continued, “you have to use your power, and that’s the reason why. Evendur will sink us if you don’t.”
“But I’m weak!”
“What matters is, is Lathander weak? That’s not what you told me when we were hiking to Westgate.”
Stedd swallowed. “All right. I’ll try.”
The boy had trouble standing, so Anton helped him. Then they hurried to the companionway and up into the rain.
With commendable discipline, those marines who hadn’t yet tumbled overboard or suffered some other mishap were loosing arrows and crossbow bolts as fast as they could shoot. Still casting magic in concert, Umara and Kymas conjured a fiend with the curling horns of a ram and the leathery wings of a bat and sent it flying at Evendur with its barbed spear leveled.
Yet none of the defenders’ efforts were helping very much. Evendur had a couple more arrows sticking in him, and a couple more charred and torn places in his flesh, but he was only a javelin cast away now and still inexorably advancing. Waves leaped to block the missiles streaking at him; one momentarily assumed the form of a gigantic fish to swallow the bat-winged devil whole.
Stedd gawked at Evendur, then took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Hoping the boy was reestablishing a broad, clear channel down which his god’s power could stream, Anton positioned himself so as to screen him. If the Bitch Queen’s Chosen hadn’t already noticed Stedd on deck, there was no reason to give him a second chance.
The ship wallowed. Anton had the feeling that the unquiet water beneath her was getting ready to fling her into the air once more.
“Take all the time you need,” he said to Stedd. “But if that’s more than another heartbeat, hang on to something.”
“I’m ready now.” Stedd stepped into the open and thrust his hand at Evendur.
The undead pirate’s head jerked in the boy’s direction. Whitecaps broke across the surface of the sea. But before the water could do whatever its master wanted it to, a ray of brilliant light streaked from Stedd’s fingertips, struck Evendur in the center of his massive chest, and set him ablaze-not with fire, but painting him with radiance.
Evendur’s will brought waves leaping over him, but they failed to extinguish the dazzling halo. Then he roared words of power that included the name “Umberlee.” When they too failed, he dived beneath the surface and hurtled along for some distance like an undersea shooting star. And then, at last, the glow went out.