'Forecastle. Where the crew sleeps.'
They stepped over the door sill and beheld a terrible sight.
The forecastle was full of skeletons.
Row upon row of clean white bones lay huddled on either side of the ship. Some were stretched out, others knotted with the agony they had borne until death. Not all the bones were human. Some, by their shape and size, belonged to dwarves. Others, smaller bones, may have been kender or gnomes. There was one thing the skeletons had in common:
They were all chained together at the ankles.
'I don't like this. There has been great evil here,' Sturm hissed. 'Come.' He backed out.
'What's up front of that room?' Kitiara wondered.
'The bury of the bowsprit. Where the anchors are kept.'
In the center of the armory was a large square hatch, which Sturm said led to the hold. Removing the hatch was not easy. Someone had secured it to the deck with a dozen large iron bolts. Sturm tried to figure out the best way to remove them, but Kitiara simply took a battle axe from the cache of weapons and bashed the heads off several bolts.
'Stop!' he demanded. 'Did you ever think that hatch might be fastened down to keep something in?'
She paused in midswing. 'No,' she said and brought the axe down on the next bolt. — Some txt — , those poor dev ils died of plague or something. You and I are the first living souls on board in months, maybe, so what we find is ours by right of salvage.' She decapitated the last bolt. 'If you want a share, you'd better help me.'
Reluctantly, Sturm got his fingers under the hatch's flange, and together they lifted it off. The stout lid of oak and copper fell aside, landing on a pile of armor. The ringing boom echoed through the caravel.
Kitiara thrust her candle into the opening. A cold draft flowed out, so she shielded the flame with her hand. The weak amber globe of light fell over the open hold.
It was empty.
A wide set of plank steps led down. Kitiara lowered a foot to the first step.
'Don't,' warned Sturm.
'What's the matter with you? A few skulls and bones, and suddenly you're afraid of your own shadow. Where's your curiosity? Where's your knightly valor?'
'Alive and well, thank you.'
She dropped down a few more steps. 'Coming, then?'
Sturm held up one finger and went to the pile of shields. He found a buckler of good dwarven make and slipped it over his arm. Thus reinforced, he followed Kitiara into the hold.
'It's very black in here,' she said. A post at the foot of the steps proved to be coated with a greasy black powder.
'Soot?' she said.
'Hmm, yes.' Sturm went down on one knee. The deck was charred. 'There was a fire down here.' He brushed off his fingertips. 'This ship's lucky to be afloat.' Fire at sea was one of the worst fates a ship could face.
'Is there anything below this floor?' Kitiara asked.
'Just the bilge.' Something caught the candlelight. Sturm waved her to him. 'Bring the light here,' he whispered.
'What is it?' On the deck a few feet to the right of the steps were four long scratches, so deep that they scored through the charred wood's surface to the lighter, unburned wood beneath. The scratches were three inches apart and almost a foot long.
'What do you make of that?' Sturm asked.
Kitiara drew her sword. 'Claw marks,' she said grimly.
Toward the bow, a massive half cylinder descending from the ceiling divided the bulkhead in two. This was the lower end of the mainmast. On each side of the mast were doors.
Both had been hastily but solidly blocked with boards. The barricade on the right of the mast was intact; the one on the left was burst asunder — from the other side.
'Whatever it was, it came through here,' said Kitiara.
'It?'
She didn't answer, but stepped carefully through the shat tered barrier into the forward hold. Sturm couldn't fit through the hole, so he broke out a few more boards. The charred planks split loudly.
The forward hold was even colder than the aft one. It was not sooted by fire. They found more bones, broken swords and cutlasses, and smashed helmets — the remnants of a fierce fight. Kitiara almost tripped over another form, this one still clad in a moldering brown robe. Where she had dis turbed the robe there was a glint of gold.
'This was a cleric,' Sturm said. 'The robe, the amulets, are the kind a holy man would wear.' He groped in the folds of the robe and pulled out a necklace wrought in copper. He held it to the candle. 'A rose. The symbol of Majere. At least he served a good god.' He laid the necklace down rev erently on the dusky cloth.
Kitiara moved on to the facing wall. A ladder was set in the wall, going up to the forecastle. Halfway up, someone had sawed the rungs off. The stout base of the foremast intruded into the hold here, too, and beside it was another boarded-up door. This one was intact.
'Sturm, come here!' He stepped over the cleric's skeleton.
Kitiara thrust her candle to the battened door. Scarlet threads were woven back and forth across the rough barrier and gathered in a knot in the center of the door. A blob of sealing wax held the threads together, and in the wax was the impression of a ring seal.
'Can you read it?' she asked.
Sturm squinted at the image. ''Majere protect us' and
'Obey the will of Novantumus'.' He looked back at the cler ic's remains. 'He must have been Novantumus.'
Kitiara put the point of her sword to the wax seal. 'What do you think you're doing?' he said.
'There's something valuable on the other side of this door,' she said. 'I want to see what it is.'
'It could be what killed all these men!'
She rapped on the door. 'Hello, any monsters in there?'
The only sounds were the steady, muffled roar of the storm outside and the creaking of the ship's timbers. 'See, no danger.'
Sturm pulled her roughly away. 'I won't let you tamper with it!'
'You won't — !' She snatched her arm free of his grasp.
'Since when do you give me orders, Sturm Brightblade?'
'I won't let you break that seal. It could mean our deaths.'
Kitiara cut at the door. Sturm flung the shield out and deflected the blow. Kitiara uttered an angry snort. She set the candle down and assumed fighting stance. 'Out of my way!' she declared.
'Will you think what you're doing? Do you want to fight, just to open that door? Look around, Kit. Do you think plague smashed up these armed men?'
'So they killed each other fighting over the treasure. Out of the way!'
Sturm started to reply, but Kitiara lunged at him. He backed away, unwilling to use his own sword. Sturm kept the shield up, fending off her cuts. This went on until Kitiara grew frustrated. She aimed a wild overhand slash at his head. Her blade hit the shield a glancing blow and skidded off. The arc of her cut ended against the door and shattered the brittle wax seal.
'Now you've done it,' he said, panting.
Kitiara flung herself, sword and all, at the door. Sturm stared in amazement as she pressed herself against the wood. 'At last,' she said. 'At last!'
There was a split second of silence, then a tremendous crash. Kitiara's sword was knocked from her hand as she flew backward and landed with a clatter among the bones.
The center board was bowed outward and cracked. Sturm tossed the shield aside and went to help Kitiara stand. From inside there came another crash, and the board above the first one flexed out.
