Corsair

bars, trying to see where she’d gone. Fear for her daughter left her heart hammering in her chest, but this was the best chance that she could see. She consciously resigned herself to endure the wait as calmly as she could-but Selsha hurried back into sight only moments later with the clinking of chain links.

“What about these, Mama?” She showed Mirya a pair of thick manacles. “Would they work?”

Mirya nodded at her daughter. “They ought to. Let’s see.” She took the first pair of manacles, closed the cuffs around one of the cell’s horizontal slats, and then looped the chain over the next slat higher. She hurried over to one of the bunks, turned it on its side, and worked its leg free. Then she inserted the sturdy length of wood in the loop of the chain and began to twist. Slowly she pulled the horizontal brace upwards. When she’d moved it as far as it could go, she moved the manacle to one of the bars she’d already bent and looped the chain around another bar. Repeating the effort, she twisted the chain, this time widening the imperceptible gap she’d started before. It took all ofher strength, and she had several painful slips and bashed her knuckles against the bars more than once. But now one of the bars was bowed several inches out of place.

“You’re doing it, Mama!” Selsha exclaimed.

Quickly Mirya shifted her chain to the opposite bar and once again twisted the thick wood of the bunk’s leg through the loop. She pulled it as far as she could and decided that it was enough. She slipped her head and leading shoulder through the gap and then slowly worked the rest of her body out of the cell-not without more bruises and scrapes. Finally she stood in the hallway, her arms and legs trembling with fatigue.

“Now what do we do?” Selsha asked her.

“Leave this awful place behind us, and soon,” Mirya replied. If she was lucky, they might have an hour or two before someone noticed their escape. The best option would be to steal a small boat from the wharves, but it seemed unlikely that they could make off with a boat right under the pirates’ eyes. It might be better to leave the vicinity of the keep as quickly as possible, staying near the coast in the hope that they might come across friendly traders or a port where she might arrange passage. In any event, the longer she hesitated, the less likely it was that their escape would succeed. The first order of business was to get out of the keep’s dungeons.

“Come, let’s try this way,” she said. She took Selsha’s hand and led her down the hallway to the left. It wasn’t the way they’d come, but Mirya didn’t like the idea of retracing her path back to the dock where Kraken Queen was tied up. At least one of the gates was guarded, the docks by the pirate ship would be busy, and there were monsters down some of those passageways. It seemed better to find some other way out of the keep.

They crept carefully down the hallway, passing more cells-most unoccupied, some not-and more storerooms. Several times Mirya pulled Selsha swiftly into the shadows, hiding as

Black Moon corsairs or their servants passed through intersecting corridors. Once they had to duck into a storeroom and hide behind several large casks of salted meat when a pair of pirates came straight down the hallway toward them. Fortune was with them for the moment; the pirates passed by without seeing them.

Two or three halls from the cell, Mirya stumbled across a small servants’ stair leading up. She listened carefully for any sign that someone might be waiting above, and then nodded to Selsha. “Up the stairs, soft as a cat’s step,” she whispered. Selsha nodded, and together they climbed the stair.

They passed by one floor that looked far too busy for Mirya’s taste-she could hear the bustle of kitchen work and a number of voices murmuring from that direction-and kept going to the next floor up. Hoping that she was not about to blunder into the part of the keep where Kamoth expected her to arrive in a few hours anyway, Mirya led Selsha down a hallway with doors on either side leading to what were likely barracks rooms or private suites. At the end of the hall stood a sturdy door reinforced with iron bands; she guessed that it might lead outside and decided to risk a quick look to gain her bearings. Mirya opened the door as quietly as she could and stepped out onto a dark rampart in the open air.

She took three steps toward the battlements, and then Mirya stopped where she stood and stared up at the sky. It was night, but the night was ablaze with stars. Climbing into the dark sky, a dozen or more small moonlets formed a heavenly stairway of silver and shadow, leading to Selune-but here the moon filled almost half the sky, a titanic presence that left her unable to move or speak for ten full heartbeats. The keep on whose battlements she stood was raised on a steep-sided hill beside a lake of dazzling sapphire waters, overlooking a great dark forest or jungle of fantastic plants colored in hues of scarlet and purple. A soft silvery mist hung in the air, clinging to the hillsides almost like intangible waves that slowly undulated with no breeze to stir them.

“By the Dark Mother,” she whispered. “Where are we?”

Selsha gripped her hand. “Ooooh,” she said in a small voice. “Look at the moon, Mama! And the stars! We’re in the Sea of Night, aren’t we? I didn’t think anyone really lived there!”

“I … I couldn’t say.” Mirya shook herself and tried to master the dizzying terror of her circumstances. They certainly weren’t in Faerun any longer. In fact, she doubted that they were anywhere in the world. No sky such as this could exist in Toril. Either they were in some other plane altogether, or-as the fantastically close face of white Selune suggested-they were on some islet, some black moon, in the midst of the Sea of Night. Mirya had heard tales of magic doorways and ships that sailed the skies, but she’d never paid them any mind. She had learned long ago not to waste her time on foolishness and dreams. Yet here she and Selsha were, seemingly in the middle of some mad dream, and she could not even imagine how the two of them would ever see their little house in Hulburg again.

She wondered if they still had time to return to the cell before their absence was noticed. Where else could they go? Even if they found some place out in the jungle where they could hide from the pirates and their monsters, they couldn’t go home. And Mirya didn’t like the look of the scarlet forest in the least. The Dark Lady alone knew what sort of fierce moon-beasts might lurk in its shadows. Perhaps they could find some place to hide within the keep itself, some forgotten cellar or unused tower where they could avoid Kamoth until she could learn more about the black moon and its secrets.

Selsha suddenly grabbed her hand. “Mama!” she whispered.

Mirya heard it then too-the high-pitched, hissing voice of one of the spider-monsters, and a moment later the voice of another one. The creatures were coming toward them. Without a moment’s hesitation, she turned and dashed for the other door leading up onto the battlement, Selsha’s hand in hers. She fumbled at the door, and at the other doorway two of the neogi scuttled into view, with one of their hulking servant-monsters shambling along behind them.

The little monsters shrieked like angry teakettles. “You humans!” one snarled. “Stop there!”

Mirya managed to get the door open and pushed Selsha inside. The passage beyond descended a flight of stairs, leading down again. She felt something then, a baleful will that started to encircle her mind with unseen talons, but before it could seize her in its sinister grasp, she staggered through the door and slammed it shut behind her. It was fitted with a heavy bolt, and she shot it home just as the neogi’s claws scrabbled at the door. Selsha whimpered, but Mirya grabbed her hand and fled down the stairs.

This part of the keep was lit only by the dimmest of lights, small glass orbs filled with a strange milky fluid that glowed greenish white. She had to grope her way down the stairs, feeling her way along the walls. Mirya guessed that the neogi liked it that way, and shuddered. The last thing she wanted to do was blunder into more of the spidery little horrors in the darkness. She pried one of the small glass orbs free of the wall, and found that it was cool to the touch. “Take hold of my gown,” she whispered to Selsha, and they continued down the hall.

“Yes, Mama,” Selsha whispered. She seized the hem of Mirya’s thin robe.

Mirya led the way through the darkness until they emerged in a large hall or guardroom. There was a door nearby, with a pair of narrow stone embrasures beside it. She glanced out from one and realized that she was looking out of an arrow slit that protected a postern gate leading outside. The sinister jungle crowded close to the base of the keep here. Then she chose one of the other passageways and advanced cautiously into the bowels of the keep, hoping that she’d come across something that she could turn to her advantage-a good hiding place, a slave who might be willing to help her, or perhaps supplies and a weapon so that she might at least face the jungle outside with some amount of preparation. She came to a place where several passages met, and paused to consider her next turn. The last thing she wanted to do was to become completely lost in this place.

The click of talons on stone and the evil chittering of the neogi speaking in their own tongue came from the passage directly in front of her. She stood paralyzed for an instant. “Hide!” she whispered to Selsha, pushing her into one of the passageways. She started after her daughter, but realized that the glowing orb she carried gave them away. Quickly she stepped back out into the intersection and rolled the light down one of the other