Corsair

uncovering their crypt-breaking and their extortion of Hulburg’s folk by striking at Mirya. Now a new enemy had chosen the same course-likely at his treacherous cousin Sergen’s urging, he reminded himself. He didn’t think he loved Mirya, not in the way he once had; a foolish, wishful part of his heart still clung to the memory of Alliere and the leaves of Myth Drannor, and at other times his arms remembered the slender waist of Nimessa Sokol before him as they rode across the moonlit hills of the Highfells. But he would rather have stabbed himself with his own sword than see Mirya Erstenwold hurt on his account. After much tossing and turning, he finally fell into a discontented sleep.

The morning broke gray and dreary. Geran awoke to find that the wind remained cold and blustery, a restless autumn gale that veered wildly throughout the day but stayed more or less west and north despite its sudden changes. Whitecaps danced across the Moonsea, and Seadrake’s bow kicked hissing sheets of cold spray over the foredeck as she flew over the swells. Late in the afternoon they struck the Moonsea’s northern shore about twenty miles west of Hulburg, not far from the ruins of Seawave, and here Geran reluctantly decided to anchor for the night. The waters at the eastern end of the Moonsea were poorly charted, and more to the point, it would be all too easy to sail past Moonshark in the dark. He felt reasonably confident that Murkelmor wouldn’t have sought shelter so close to a city the Black Moon had just attacked, but he didn’t care to run too much farther to the east without carefully checking the bays and coves of the steep coast as they passed by. If Moonshark’s damage was severe enough, Murkelmor might not have had much of a choice about putting in to begin repairs.

They passed the night in a small, poorly sheltered bay, straining at the anchor. The wind slackened before dawn, but heavy rain moved in after the gale. When they raised anchor and steered east out of their small bay, they did so in a cold, merciless downpour. Hamil shivered and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. “Have I ever told you how much I loathe the weather around here?” he asked Geran.

“Many times last spring, but you seemed to like the summer well enough.”

“Well, summer was far too short. Clearly a cold, wind-driven rain is the natural state of affairs in these lands, and anything else is a temporary aberration.”

Geran smiled humorlessly. “My apologies for the inconvenience. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think much of the weather either. It’s going to cut our visibility to a mile, perhaps two if we’re lucky. We’ll have to stay close to the coast and move slowly, or we might miss Moonshark.”

“Have you given thought to how you mean to get the compass from Murkelmor?”

Geran nodded. “I’ll ask him for it, if he’s willing to parley. It’s no good to him without someone to waken its enchantments. I’ll even pay a fair price. But I’ll take it by force if I have to.” He hoped it wouldn’t come to that; even though he and Hamil had parted ways with the crew of Moonshark under difficult circumstances, he’d sailed with them long enough to view some-Murkelmor for instance-as relatively decent fellows despite their choice of career. As far as he knew, they hadn’t done any harm to Hulburg or its shipping themselves, even if their fellows in the Black Moon had. On the other hand, if Murkelmor refused to part with the starry compass, Seadrake was bigger, better armed, and had a full crew including heavily armed soldiers. Geran did not intend to leave without the compass.

Hamil frowned skeptically under his sodden hood. “I doubt that Murkelmor or Skamang will be interested in parley, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt to try.”

They stood out to sea and ran east. By late morning they passed Keldon Head and Hulburg, slowly closing with the shore again. The coastline here consisted of one headland after the next, steep and desolate. Two or three centuries ago these lands had been inhabited, in the days when Hulburg and Sulasspryn were vital cities carving out land from the wilds of the Moonsea North. Here and there the ruins of old homesteads stood on the south-facing hillsides, with the occasional stump of a crumbling watchtower atop a hill. Geran knew that a small number of shepherds and goatherds kept their flocks in the vales behind the coastal hills, at least within a few miles of Hulburg. But here they were passing into empty lands where no one lived. There was no road or path through these parts into other lands, so no travelers had reason to continue eastward from Hulburg, and the danger of monsters from the Galena Mountains or the bleak ruins of Sulasspryn kept anyone from trying to settle here.

Half an hour after they passed Hulburg by, two swept horns appeared above the ladder leading down to the main deck, followed a moment later by the rest of Sarth. Like Hamil, he wore a heavy cloak against the rain, and like Hamil, he also was soaked already. Unfortunately, few hoods fit him well, so he simply glanced up at the sky with a flicker of annoyance and endured the rain pelting down.

“I have repeated my divinations,” he told Geran. “Moonshark has not moved. She lies perhaps fifteen miles or so ahead of us.”

“Sulasspryn, then. It must be.” Geran frowned. “But why lay there for so long?”

“She must have been more damaged than we realized,” Hamil suggested. “If the stem is well and truly sprung, Murkelmor might have to steam a new piece of timber into shape to fix it. That could take a while.”

“Or perhaps another pirate den is hidden in the ruins there,” Sarth said. “We first found Moonshark in Zhentil Keep, after all.”

“I’ve never heard any such story, but I suppose it’s possible. We’ll approach carefully.” Geran rubbed at his jaw, thinking over Sarth’s tidings. “Any news of Mirya?”

“Only the faintest hints. She lives still-I feel confident of that-but she has passed beyond the range of my divinations.”

“Is she in Faerun?”

“I do not know, Geran. She must be very far away if she is, a thousand miles or more.” The tiefling glanced up into the sky. “I believe she is somewhere above us. She might be held somewhere high in the mountains or perhaps on a high-drifting earthmote. I have seen fortresses, even towns, on some of the larger ones. Or she might be somewhere in the Sea of Night.”

“The starry compass, then,” Geran breathed. He nodded to the tiefling. “My thanks, Sarth. Without your efforts we’d have no hope at all of finding Mirya and her daughter.”

“I only hope that my meager talents do not lead you astray,” Sarth answered.

“Of that, I have no fear,” Geran said. He returned his attention to the gray coastline sliding by through the rain and mists. They continued on for several hours, making little speed in the light wind. Eventually Geran had Andurth call the crew to their rowing stations and continued at half speed, a pace the crew could sustain for hours by rotating rowers to and from the benches. Unlike Moonshark, Seadrake was not really fitted out for rowing speed; she was made for sailing and could only put about twenty oars in the water through high, awkwardly sited ports.

Early in the afternoon, they rounded a headland and spied the ruins of a large city hugging the hillsides of the bay beyond. Old walls encircled the place, marred by numerous gaps. Twisted trees grew up through flagstone courts and choked what used to be the city’s boulevards. High on a hill overlooking the harbor, the keep that had once dominated the place was an empty shell cleft in two by the gray scar of an old landslide; a huge mound of rubble at the foot of the hill marked where most of the castle had fallen. Many other buildings in the vicinity looked as if they’d been knocked down by similar upheavals. Those that still stood stared blankly out to sea, their windows and doorways filled with ominous shadow. Geran could not shake the impression that the city was watching Seadrake approach, resentful of the intrusion.

“This is Sulasspryn?” Hamil asked. “What happened here?”

“No one knows for sure,” the swordmage said. “Some disaster befell the place a hundred years or more before the Spellplague, and few people survived to tell the tale. As the story goes, the ruling family feuded against a drow city beneath the Galenas and won-or so they thought. But the dark elves had their revenge in the end. They undermined the citadel and collapsed it, wiping out the city’s rulers in one swift stroke. Then the dark elves and their monsters boiled up from beneath the city, slaughtering or carrying off most of Sulasspryn’s citizens.” Geran shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but in Hulburg they say that Lolth’s curse lies over the ruins. You can’t find a soul in Hulburg who’d dare set foot within the walls.”

“Including you?”

Geran pointed at a high hilltop west of the city. “When I was about eighteen or nineteen, Jarad Erstenwold and I rode to the headland there to look on the ruins. That’s as close as we cared to be. And even then my father was furious with both of us. He feared that we might wake things better left undisturbed.” He paused, and found that a shadow of old dread had crept over him. He was as close to Sulasspryn as anyone from Hulburg had been in a long time, and it struck him as an unwholesome place to be. “To tell the truth, I sincerely hope