Corsair

bright golden malice. Beneath it a tiny mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth opened to hiss at him. The eye focused on him, and a sudden wave of lightheadedness and nausea swept over him. His face felt hot and flushed and began to itch furiously. He tore his eyes away from the monster’s gaze and raised his left arm to guard his face; to his horror he saw the skin growing dark, dry, and hot in front of him, until small cracks appeared and fluid began to seep out.

“Ilmater’s holy wounds!” he cried out in horror. “Hamil, don’t let them look at you! Their gaze sears flesh!”

A strangled cry behind him warned that Hamil had discovered that for himself. In pure desperation, Geran turned away from the monster staring at him and did his best to hide inside his own cloak, averting his gaze. The suppuration of his left arm ended abruptly; he bounded past Hamil, charging at a monster that squatted on a boulder by the stream, transfixing the halfling with its horrid gaze. The creature hissed in anger as Geran broke its hold on Hamil, and shifted its gaze to the swordmage-but now Geran was within sword’s reach. He lashed out with a wild slash at the thing’s face and caught it across its great foul eye. The orb burst open in a gush of dark liquid, and the creature screeched horribly. It fell to the ground, its limbs jerking and flailing, and he finished it with a thrust through the center of its narrow chest.

Geran turned back to the one he’d left behind him. The creature was bounding closer, charging at the two companions while neither was looking at it. This time he shielded his eyes with his hand, keeping his gaze at the middle of its chest and guarding himself with his cloak as he moved forward to meet it. Swinging his sword wildly, he forced the monster to break off its rush. Talons raked at him, but Geran leveled his sword and thrust straight ahead, where he guessed the middle of its body to be. Steel bit into flesh, and his adversary hissed and jumped away; when he cautiously raised his eyes to find where it had gone, he glimpsed only a flash of pale hide disappearing back into the jungle.

“I definitely don’t like the jungle,” Hamil muttered. He held his bow with blistered hands, peering into the trees. “Did that last one get away?”

“I wounded it, possibly mortally. But it’s gone now. So is the first one I cut.”

“Well, these two here are certainly dead.” Hamil moved over to kick at the body of the one he’d shot through with his arrow. “What in the world are these things?”

“Nothing in the world, and that’s the problem. We’re a long way from Faerun.” Geran glanced at the ancient roadway winding through the forest and grimaced. If more creatures like the eye-monsters haunted the black moon’s jungle, Mirya and her daughter were in terrible danger. He could only pray that the Erstenwolds hadn’t run across any of these creatures, or worse.

Somewhere close at hand in the forest shadows, the hooting cry went up again. It was answered by another off in the distance. Hamil swore and looked up at Geran. “They’re talking to each other, damn it! I don’t think they’re done with us yet.”

“Then we’d better move on, and quickly. No sense waiting for more of them to get here.” The swordmage chose to head uphill, following the road as it climbed toward the hilltops ringing the lake, and set off at a trot. He wanted to cover ground, but he had to make sure he didn’t miss any trail signs or run headlong into some other jungle monster. The thought of Mirya and Selsha wandering in this dreadful place chilled him to the marrow.

He knew he should be careful of getting too far away from Seadrake and the pirate keep-after all, there was always the possibility that the battle had turned against the Hulburgans again, and he and Hamil might be desperately needed to finish the Black Moon Brotherhood. But he couldn’t bring himself to even consider turning back. In the two years since he’d last walked under Myth Drannor’s golden leaves, the days he’d spent with Mirya and her daughter had been the only ones when he’d been able to truly forget the loss and loneliness of his exile. He couldn’t leave this place until he knew that she was safe. If he had to, he’d send Seadrake back home and stay to search the worldlet from one end to the other himself.

The road climbed steeply upward through the shadows of the forest in a set of moss-covered steps and then broke out of the foliage high on a hillside. The sapphire lake glittered below, stretching for several miles through the jungle-covered hills. Ruined walls of glossy black stone tumbled around them, marking out the overgrown outline of some ancient temple or palace. Geran looked back the way they’d come; he guessed they stood nearly two miles from the keep now. Kraken Queen and Seadrake still lay side by side at the wharf, so he supposed that the fighting hadn’t yet taken any truly disastrous turn. It was cool and still in the open air atop the hill.

“Mirya!” Geran called. “Selsha! Are you here?” No one answered. He jogged across the old plaza to the far corner and shouted again. “Mirya! Selsha!”

The ruins remained silent. Dark archways and scarlet creepers brooded under the heavy black stones of the walls. In growing desperation, Geran ran from side to side, looking frantically into old doorways and around corners. Hamil followed, keeping an arrow on his string, watching Geran’s back. With a cry of pure frustration, Geran turned back toward the lake view. “They’re not here!” he said. “We should have followed the road down instead of up- assuming we didn’t lose the trail somewhere before that. Come on, Hamil.”

“Wait a moment. Let’s be sure before we give up on this choice.” Hamil scrambled to the top of a low wall, followed it to the place where it met a building facade, and then scaled the crumbling roofline. From his vantage he took a long moment to study their surroundings. Geran glanced up at the sky and saw that bright glimmers of pale violet were beginning to streak the absolute blackness overhead. There was a bright gleam on the trailing limb of the moon; dawn, such as it was in this place, was not far off. Then from somewhere close by in the ruins, a chorus of hooting calls and brash yips erupted, echoing loudly in the ancient stone walls.

Hamil winced and crouched low to the roofline. More of the eye-creatures, he observed. They’re almost on top of us!

“Of course they are,” Geran growled. He glanced around and spied a narrow street of sorts that led down off the hilltop. High stone walls offered some hope of concealment, and would keep monsters from surrounding them. “Quickly, this way!”

He darted for the alleyway, listening to the creatures calling to each other in the ruins. Hamil slid down from his perch, alighted on his feet, and raced after him. The alleyway wound past the shells of several old buildings on the hilltop before descending sharply on the other side. The old walls pressed in closely around them, and thick clumps of blue-glowing fungi gathered along the worn stone steps. Geran found a low doorway to one side and ducked inside. The building was open to the sky, its roof long since vanished, but the high walls and narrow doorway offered a defensible retreat. He drew his sword and waited by the opening; Hamil readied his bow and stepped back to watch the walltop in case the moon-monsters scrambled over.

“I think I’d like to go back to the keep and fight pirates now,” Hamil said in a low voice. He laid an arrow across his short bow.

Geran allowed himself a grim smile and tightened his grip on his blade. He heard the monsters moving through the ruins close by-the soft padding of pale, taloned feet on old stone, the maddening notes as the creatures called to each other. He drew his sword back, ready for a lethal thrust through the center of the archway at the first creature to appear … but none of the monsters appeared. The calls continued, but started to move off again. He risked a peek out the doorway and glimpsed one of the monsters bounding past, already by them. It vanished into the ruins.

Did they miss us? Hamil asked.

“I don’t see how they could have.” Geran peered down the alleyway. The moon-creatures hadn’t had any trouble finding them before. Maybe they were on the scent of some other prey … “Bloody hell. They’re after Mirya and Selsha!”

Before he could second-guess himself, he hurried back out into the narrow street and ran after the moon- creatures, following their calls as best he could. Hamil shot him a stern look, but raced after him. They fumbled their way through the maze, now dropping steeply down the shadowed hillside. He bounded around a corner and found himself in a smaller plaza, this one surrounded by leaning five-sided towers whose tops were broken rubble. Trapped in a shallow alleyway between two of the towers, a woman in a thin gown of red silk stood with her back to the wall, fending off several of the eye-creatures with thrown rocks. “Mirya!” Geran shouted.

She glanced up, looking over the pale monsters closing in, and their eyes met across the small courtyard. “Geran?” she said in amazement. She brushed her hair from her eyes.

The moon-creatures wheeled to confront Geran and Hamil. The halfling raised his bow, took aim, and loosed