priest, he’d vowed never again to use such aspects of his training as an assassin, but he was sorely tempted to return to them now.
Ghaji took a step forward, hands raised to show he wasn’t holding any weapons. “Look, whatever that stick of yours does, why don’t you just put it down? We don’t want to hurt you, and you don’t want to hurt us, right?”
Ghaji took a second step forward, and Diran knew his friend was getting ready to make a grab for Tresslar’s wand, which Diran thought would be a terrible and quite possibly fatal mistake. Before Diran could intervene, Tresslar’s eyes widened in panic as he realized what Ghaji planned, and he aimed the dragonwand at the half-orc. Diran drew a dagger and threw it hilt-first at the artificer’s wrist. Tresslar managed to keep hold of the wand, but his hand was knocked to the side, spoiling his aim. A crackling bolt of miniature lightning blasted out of the dragon’s mouth, sizzled through the air past Ghaji, and struck the stone wall with a loud booming sound. The stone blackened where the lightning hit, and the room filled with the acrid smell of released ozone.
Diran knew he couldn’t give the artificer the chance to use his weapon again. The priest drew another dagger and hurled this one hilt-first toward the space between Tresslar’s eyes. The dagger hit, Tresslar let out a soft moan then fell back onto the bed, unconscious, but even though he was knocked out, the man still retained his grip on the dragonwand.
As Diran retrieved his two daggers, Ghaji said, “Thanks.”
Hinto had cringed when the lightning blast erupted, and now he lay on the floor, curled into a ball and shivering uncontrollably. Ghaji looked down at the terrified halfling and rolled his eyes. “Great. Now what do we do?”
“We take Tresslar and Hinto and get out of here before-” Diran was interrupted by a loud pounding on the door. “That happens.”
“Tresslar, what’s going on in there? Are you hurt? You’re not experimenting in your room again, are you?” Whoever it was tried to open the door but found it locked Diran motioned for Yvka to unlock and open the shutters covering Tresslar’s window, and the elf-woman nodded and hurried to do so.
“Of course I’m fine!” Diran called out, imitating Tresslar’s voice, and more importantly, his perpetually irritated tone. “Just had a little mishap is all. Nothing someone of your limited intellect would understand.”
As Diran talked, Ghaji bent down to pick up Hinto, but the moment the half-orc touched the shivering sailor, the halfling let out a shriek of terror. In response, something slammed hard into the door, and a splintered crack appeared in the middle of the wood.
“Over here, Ghaji!” Yvka shouted now that there was no longer any point in remaining silent. The shutters were open, and she held out her arms. Ghaji scooped up the shrieking halfling and tossed him to Yvka. Despite her slender frame, the elf-woman caught Hinto easily, then she turned, and still holding onto the halfling, did a forward flip through the open window.
Another impact struck the door, and the crack widened.
One more blow, and the door would surely fall. If it hadn’t been built on Dreadhold, it probably would’ve collapsed at the first strike, Diran thought.
“Get Tresslar outside!” Ghaji said, drawing his axe. “I’ll slow down whoever it is!” He took up a position to the right of the door and flattened himself against the wall.
There was no time for Diran to argue with his friend. He pulled Tresslar off the bed and began hauling the artificer over to the window, the man still holding tight to his dragonwand with a death-grip. Diran laid Tresslar on the windowsill, half in and half out of the room, but before he could do anything else, the door burst inward in two large pieces and a shower of splinters. A dwarf stepped into the room, dressed only in a breech cloth and carrying an axe wreathed in flame. The dwarf, whom Diran assumed was one of Tresslar’s neighbors, laid eyes on the priest.
“Who are-” was all the dwarf managed to get out before Ghaji swung the flat of his axe hard into his face. The dwarf stood there for a moment, smoke curling up around him from the charred remains of the door. Then he pitched forward, releasing his grip on the axe as he fell. The flames surrounding the weapon extinguished as both it and its bearer hit the stone floor.
There was shouting out in the hall now, and Diran knew their time had run out.
“Ghaji, move!”
Diran could no longer afford to be gentle with Tresslar. He shoved the man the rest of the way out the window and climbed through after him. Outside, Yvka and Hinto were nowhere to be seen. Diran guessed the elf-woman had already started back to the Zephyr, carrying the halfling with her.
Diran bent down and started to lift the still unconscious artificer, but then Ghaji leaped through the window and landed beside them. He took Tresslar and threw him over his shoulder as if the man weighed nothing. Then the priest and the half-orc started running toward the shoreline, heading for the spot where they’d left the Zephyr.
As they ran, Diran said, “I notice you’ve got two axes tucked into your belt now.”
“I figured that if we’re going to be walking into a nest of vampires soon, I could use a flaming weapon. Think Warden Gizur will mind that I borrowed it?”
Diran grinned.
CHAPTER
Sunlight glittered off the waves as the Zephyr sailed beneath a clear blue sky. Tresslar stood at the railing looking out over the water.
“I never realized how much I missed being on a ship.”
Ghaji and Diran stood nearby. They’d been keeping an eye on the artificer since he’d awakened several hours ago. Despite having been struck between the eyes by the hilt of a dagger, Tresslar had no bruising or swelling, for Diran had healed the man’s minor wounds while he’d slept. Yvka sat in the pilot’s chair, Hinto at her side, attempting to show her a card trick that he couldn’t get right. The halfling laughed with good humor as he struggled to complete the card trick, showing no aftereffects of the panic that had seized him in Tresslar’s room last night.
Taking the artificer’s statement as an invitation, Ghaji and Diran joined him at the railing, Ghaji standing on his right, Diran on his left.
Tresslar ran his hand over the smooth soarwood surface of the railing. “This is a most impressive vessel indeed. Oh, I could make a few alterations to it here and there, improve the efficiency of the runners, increase the elemental’s output by a few knots, but still, she’s quite a ship. If the Seastar had been an elemental vessel, who knows how many more places we might’ve been able to travel to, how many more wonders we might’ve discovered?”
“It must’ve been difficult for you, being landbound all those years on Dreadhold,” Ghaji said.
Tresslar smiled. “I didn’t think so at the time, but now…” He let the thought go unfinished. “I suppose my wand was left behind.”
“No,” Diran said. “You held tight to it all the way to the ship.”
Tresslar nodded. “Then you’re hiding it from me. Can’t say as I blame you, considering I used it against you last night.”
“What is it?” Ghaji asked.
“A spell collector,” Tresslar said. “It’s able to absorb and store magic until the user wishes to release it. I made it myself. Considering how mobile we needed to be on the Seastar, it came in handy on more than a few occasions.”
“I apologize for abducting you,” Diran said. “I fear it makes us no better than the raiders we seek.”
“You did what you felt was right at the time,” Tresslar said. He grinned. “Just like we used to do on the Seastar.” He then turned back to gaze out across the sea.
“Forty years is a long time to be afraid,” Ghaji said.
“Yes, it is,” Tresslar agreed. He was silent for a time before finally saying, “The place you seek is called
