Corsair

his arrow in the space of a heartbeat. The nearest of the eye-monsters shrieked and leaped into air before flopping to the ground, an arrow buried in its ribs. The others glared at the alleyway and charged across the small plaza; Hamil ducked back out of sight, but Geran fixed his eyes on a spot of ground by another of the creatures and summoned the words for his teleport spell. In an instant he stood beside the thing, sword at the ready. The monster leaped for him, talons outstretched; Geran crouched and drove his elven blade straight into its foul heart, shouldering the stumbling corpse aside as it staggered past him and fell. He rose and shook the ichor from his sword.

Two of the monsters hissed and fixed their terrible gazes on him. He felt his flesh searing under their eyes and stumbled blindly toward the next of the monsters-but Hamil shot again and blinded one of the creatures, and a fist-sized rock sailed out of the alleyway to knock the other one to all fours. With a yip of pain, it scrambled up and bounded off into the ruins; the rest of the pack scattered just behind it. Geran slowly straightened up, searching for any more of the monsters, but they vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

Mirya Erstenwold picked her way out of the blind alley, holding another rock in one hand. Geran blinked in surprise; the red silken robe she wore was hardly decent at all, leaving her long legs and slender arms bare and showing an impressive decolletage. “Geran Hulmaster,” she said, lowering her rock. “You’re a sight for sore eyes! What in the world are you doing in this strange place?”

“I’m looking for you, of course.” Geran sheathed his sword and hurried up to catch her in a quick, fierce embrace. For a moment he allowed himself to forget everything that stood between them, and drank in the sweet relief of finding her alive and unharmed. Whatever else might happen on Neshuldaar this day, at least he’d accomplished that much. “Thank the gods you’re safe!”

“Aye, for the moment.” She closed her eyes and sighed in relief. He couldn’t imagine what she’d been through in the last few days, but Mirya was made of stern stuff; she allowed herself only a moment before she disentangled herself from his arms. A worried frown creased her brow. “Have you seen Selsha anywhere?” she asked.

Hamil looked around the ruins looming over them. “She isn’t with you?”

“No. She’s still lost out here somewhere.” Mirya wrapped her arms around her shoulders and shuddered. “We escaped from our cell in the pirate keep, but we were parted. She fled out the side gate. I heard her shouting and followed her all the way up to this awful place, but then those … things … found me.” She nodded at the dead monsters by Geran’s feet. “They chased me all through these terrible old ruins. Where Selsha is now, I’ve no idea.”

Geran winced at the bitter irony. Mirya had managed to escape from her captors only an hour or two before her rescuers arrived … and now Selsha was lost and alone in this terrible dark forest. If only they’d stayed where they were, they might both be safe now-or at least as safe as Geran and Hamil could keep them. But then again, if they’d stayed where Kamoth and Sergen had left them, the lords of the Black Moon might have done something horrible with their captives once they realized the keep was lost. Either way, it was done now; there was no point in fretting over might-have-beens.

“We’ll find her, Mirya,” he said gently. He took his cloak from around his shoulders and offered it to her; her robe was hardly decent at all, not by Hulburg’s standards. “If she found her way from the moon-keep up to these ruins, there’s no reason she wouldn’t be hiding close by.”

“I know it, Geran.” Mirya drew his cloak around her shoulders with a grateful smile, and composed herself.

“Where was the last place you saw her?” Hamil asked.

“I didn’t see her, but I heard her calling for me from the top of the hill, there,” Mirya said, pointing. “I came down this way after her, and then I met the eye-monsters.”

“So she’s likely somewhere in these ruins,” Geran said. “We won’t leave without her, that I promise you.” He turned to study the ruins nearby and drew in a deep breath. “Selsha!” he called, as loudly as he could, monsters or no monsters. It might take hours to find one small girl hiding in the maze of old buildings and shadowed trees. With luck, they’d find her before the eye-creatures regrouped for another attack … or so he hoped.

I don’t care for the idea of shouting out our location for every hungry moon-monster within earshot, Hamil told him silently. But he shouted, “Selsha! We’re here!” a moment after Geran. Mirya joined them, calling for her daughter with her clear, high voice.

Together, they followed the narrow alleyway deeper into the ruins.

TWENTY-SEVEN

17 Marpenoth, the Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)

The sounds of combat grew steadily louder as Sergen peered from the window of his suite high in the keep’s central tower. From his vantage he could see that the surviving Black Moon pirates had abandoned the gatehouse battlements. The fighting on the quay and the decks of Kraken Queen was over; the dead and dying littered the decks and sprawled across the wharf. He glowered at the Hulburgan caravel lying alongside the Black Moon flagship, fuming at the turn events had taken in the last hour. Only this morning he’d had his breakfast on the balcony of his room, sipping from a goblet of chilled white wine as he contemplated his return to Melvaunt and the best use he could make of Mirya and her daughter against his accursed cousin, Geran, and the rest of his accursed stepfamily. Well, it seemed that Geran-it had to be Geran, who else? — had followed him all the way to the hitherto hidden refuge in the Sea of Night, determined to once more foil his carefully laid plans. It was beyond infuriating.

“My lord, we are ready,” his armsman Kerth said. Kerth and the five magically tattooed warriors in his detail had spent the last quarter hour stripping the suite of everything that might be of use, including a small fortune in gemstones and gold. If Sergen had had all of his armsmen present, he might have tried to influence the course of the battle by throwing his soldiers alongside his father’s pirates … but most of his personal guards were still in Melvaunt, watching over his interests there. The armsman glanced out the window and asked, “What are your orders?”

“The keep is lost,” Sergen replied. “But it seems to me that the Hulburgan ship is lightly guarded. With a little luck, I think we may be able to make our escape on Seadrake. But I’d like some insurance in the event that proves impractical.”

“We could slip into the forest and hide, my lord. The Hulburgans would never find us.” That was his magical conditioning speaking, of course; Kerth had to think first and foremost of Sergen’s personal safety.

“I don’t care to be marooned here, Kerth. Now come with me, and stay close.” Sergen glanced around the chamber one more time and then strode out into the corridor beyond. Kerth and three of his soldiers followed closely after him, swords bared in their hands; the remaining two struggled to keep up, carrying a heavy chest full of Sergen’s treasure between them. He wondered briefly where his father was, and whether he still defended any part of the keep, but then he put Kamoth out of his mind. If the pirates were still fighting somewhere in the fortress, it would serve as an excellent distraction for what Sergen intended to do. His father would understand.

He led his guards to one of the servants’ stairs in the center of the tower and quickly clattered down the steps. At each floor he paused and listened carefully, but fortune favored him; the squads of Hulburgan soldiers and mercenaries roving the keep’s lower floors didn’t chance to cross his path. He detoured carefully around the great hall on the keep’s main floor, slipping through the kitchens-as he’d guessed, the servants who worked there were no longer at their places-and then used a freight ramp that led from the back of the kitchen to descend to the granaries and cellars below. Two more turns and a narrow stairway later, and he emerged in one of the gated corridors on the second level of the dungeons.

There he found seven of Kraken Queen’s crewmen gathered around the gate of one of the treasure vaults. “Here, now,” Sergen said. “What’s this about?”

The pirates exchanged looks, but none of them spoke. Sergen smiled to himself. “Allow me to make a guess, then. You all thought you’d fill your pockets with Black Moon loot before taking your chances in the jungle. Am I right?”

A bald Turmishan with a square beard of tight black coils straightened up and looked Sergen in the eye. “What other chance have we got? The harmach’s soldiers hold the keep. When the ship founders, it’s every man for