Kalen nodded. “It looks like a warzone down here-shouldn’t there be victims?”
“Little Dren be right.” Toytere dug through the detritus, not unlike a rat scavenging for scraps. “And I think I may have the answer.” He held aloft something small, curved, and gleaming white.
“Is that what I think it is?” Myrin asked.
Kalen nodded. “More over here.” He pushed aside pieces of a broken barrel to reveal an entire rib cage, attached to a skeleton with a battered skull. The bones were perfectly white and clean. “The skeleton looks perfect.”
“And fresh,” Toytere said, lifting the skull. “Hapless fool be breathing not a month gone.” He patted the bleached skull sympathetically. “Nary a hint of rot, neither.”
“The Fury,” Kalen said. “It was here.”
“Dancing gods on high!” Toytere spat. “What burns flesh but leaves bones?”
“Magic,” Myrin said without hesitation.
“You sound quite sure,” Kalen said.
“There are spells,” Myrin said.
“Spells you be knowing?” Toytere asked.
She shrugged, a gesture neither of the men apparently found encouraging.
The halfling crept into the shadowy interior of the lower deck, prodding at the piles of rubbish with his cane. Myrin watched as he uncovered skeleton after skeleton much like the first. All lay contorted as though in terrible fear. Myrin sniffed but could smell only dust and the sharp tang of animal dung. No sign of rot or putrescence.
Across the way, the halfling bent to inspect each skeleton in turn, and each time he came up with jewelry gleaming in his hands: rings, earrings, necklaces, and the like.
“Pardon,” Myrin said, “but how do pilfered riches help us investigate the plague?”
“Me lady, they do not,” Toytere said. “But more coin means more the Rats can do … for Luskan, no?”
“Oh.” That made sense. “Kalen, are you-?”
Kalen was staring at a space roughly in the middle of the destruction. There, Myrin saw a small furry creature about the length of her forearm: a rat. It peeked up from a mess of matted, oily fur, its eyes gleaming red.
“Myrin,” Kalen said. “Back away.”
“Aw,” Myrin said. “It’s adorable! Look at its little eyes!”
A second rat had joined the first. Together, they looked up at Myrin and Kalen with something like curiosity in their eyes. Myrin couldn’t help but wonder if they might be useful for certain magical experiments. She chose not to share this observation.
Then, as they watched, greenish spittle leaked from the rats’ mouths. Sickness.
“I’ve seen one like that before,” Kalen said. “Trapped in a closet with a skeleton.”
“Oh,” Myrin said. “No sudden movements, right?”
Kalen nodded slowly and they began to back away.
More rats were appearing out of holes in the floorboards and from among the skeletons. They gathered in a mass in the center of the room-a teeming swarm, all of them looking at the two humans. Hungrily.
“What you all be about?” Toytere burst into their midst, carrying a sack full of gold and jewelry. “I can-the dead
As one, the rats drew back and hissed. Kalen raised his blades.
“They’ve stopped being adorable,” Myrin said. “Bit scary now, actually.”
The rats surged toward them.
For the first time, Kalen regretted parting with Vindicator. He had two daggers-one that was Waterdeep Guard issue, the other of fine dwarven steel-but they hardly seemed adequate against a horde of rats.
Nonetheless, he stepped in front of Myrin, his blades ready. Three rats leaped at them and he sliced them to pieces. “Go,” he said over his shoulder. “Get back to the deck.”
“Hardly.” Myrin snapped her wand at the swarm, sending a fan of flames into the thick of the rushing creatures. Rats burst into crackling flames, falling away from Kalen. “You run, if you’re afraid.”
Kalen couldn’t quite suppress a smile. “Good,” he said.
“Good,” she agreed.
He defended Myrin as she slashed her wand at the rats again and again, sending them sailing back with bursts of flame and thunder. He kept them at bay with blade and boot, killing rat after rat as it surged through the deadly swath of Myrin’s magic. Finally, the creatures fell back, unwilling to launch themselves into certain death.
They made a fine team, Myrin blasting the swarm, Kalen slaying the stragglers. For a moment, he thought they would win-until he saw rats mustering in the hundreds. He braced himself and opened his mouth to tell Myrin to flee.
Then the halfling joined the fight.
Hissing in challenge, Toytere leaped in front of them both, a slim rapier scraping from his cane. The blade whistled as it cut through the air. Bolstered by the sound, Toytere slashed into the oncoming horde. His momentum diverted the rats, sending dozens rippling back along their path. Ugly things of more bone and fur than flesh, they chattered madly as they scrabbled. But more boiled up to take their places, and the halfling staggered back. The wave of rats overwhelmed him, scrabbling all over his body. A loud hiss emerged from Toytere’s mouth, or perhaps that came from the rats. Toytere slavered, his eyes wild.
“Toy!” Myrin cried. Rather than a fan of flames or crack of thunder, she summoned forth an arrow of magical force-the same spell she’d cast at Sithe on the deck-which blasted a huge rat away from Toytere’s leg, allowing him to stagger free of the swarm’s clutches.
“Can you get to him?” Myrin asked.
Kalen thrust his blades into a rat and looked. The vermin flowed like a living river between him and the halfling. “Yes,” he said. “But if I do, you’ll be on your own.”
“Don’t worry,” Myrin said. “Get to him and get down.”
Kalen looked to her quizzically, his eyes widening as burning runes spread out across her face and down her arms. Fire surged around her hands.
He ran and leaped, his boots flashing with fire. The magic sent him sailing over the stream of rats, and he slammed into Toytere, knocking them both to the floor. He covered the small body with his cloak.
Fire flared from Myrin in an arc that slashed through the air barely a hand’s breadth over their heads. A hundred voices screeched as the flames cut through the swarm like a scythe. The magical force spun across to cleave two of the support beams of the main deck before finally bursting out the far wall to soar heedlessly over the sea. Smoldering bits of rat corpses rained down in the scythe’s wake.
Kalen had never seen Myrin do anything quite like
Toytere wriggled out from under Kalen. “Me thanks, Little Dren.”
A few paces away, Myrin stood tall, her hair drifting on the hot winds of her magic, her eyes blazing. Her mouth curled into an unsettling smirk, as though inflicting that sort of destruction pleased her considerably. She saw them looking and her dangerous look went away, replaced by a beaming smile.
The swarm roiled, half its number twitching and dying on the floor. The surviving rats milled aimlessly, hissing and wailing. Kalen thought their voices sounded entirely too human. That chilled him.
“Er,” said Toytere. “Perhaps we be running, no?”
Suddenly, all around them, creatures rose from the rubbish-strewn hold. Rats streamed from holes in the deck, from fallen barrels and shattered boxes, from ceiling beams. They dwarfed the first swarm-if Myrin had slain a hundred rats, a thousand now surrounded them, creeping from all sides.
The three of them ran.
As Kalen made for the stairs, he slipped on a bloody rat corpse and staggered. When his knee hit the floor, a cough rose up in his chest and stayed him. Toytere reached back to grasp his wrist. He flashed a grin full of sharpened teeth.
