The Shadowmask Page 13

  Elbeth stood before me, a look of the deepest understanding on her face.

  “I can’t regret Perrault,” I said at last. “But why couldn’t he have lived with us, in the forest?”

  She laughed. “Perrault, hidden away in a forest? Perhaps he could have, but never would he have!”

  “Then why couldn’t you have traveled with us?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Your time with Perrault was special because it was you and him.”

  I swallowed. “He’s dead too, now, you know.”

  She took my hand and squeezed it. “We have spoken enough of the past. We have more immediate matters to discuss. I’m sure you are wondering why we are here.”

  I nodded, my mind still reeling at the sight of her.

  “I am here,” she said, “because my duties have brought me here, to join this Circle for the time being. You are here because the stone you are bound to is here.”

  I felt like she had punched me in the gut. “The stone is here?”

  “Haven’t you felt better as you grew closer? The illness that had afflicted you since your separation— isn’t it gone?”

  Reflexively, I flexed my left hand. Indeed the numbness that had crippled me had faded the moment we set sail to the west, heading toward the island. It was just a vague memory.

  “When we took the stone from you, we did not know how you would react. We hoped you would suffer no physical ailment, if only we brought the stone far enough from you.”

  “When you stole the stone, you mean,” I said.

  “I volunteered for that, child. Because I knew I could not only get the stone, but could prevent the others who sought it from harming you. And I was correct, as it turns out.”

  “I could have fought Asbeel.” I would not concede that she’d helped me at all. Elbeth had stolen the stone. All I could think of was that betrayal. She had betrayed me just like everyone else. “I didn’t need your help.”

  “Be not such a fool. The demon would have killed you.”

  “So you saved me from him,” I said sarcastically, “then took the stone from me. And being away from the stone caused illness. So you almost killed me anyway.”

  “I am sorry for that.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “I know now it was a mistake. But then it was not my decision to give you the stone in the first place.”

  “Don’t try to put this on him!” I yelled and shrugged away her hand. A chorus of barks erupted behind me again.

  “I am not. But think back. Would things not have been better had you never touched the stone?”

  “Perrault said I was old enough to have back what was mine.” I glared at her. “The stone is my birthright. He said it was tied to me already.”

  “I believe that things could have turned out differently.” She looked behind me at the distant waves. “Your soul grows full as you mature. It may well have scarred over the missing part where the stone should have been.” She sighed and turned back to meet my gaze. “But now I realize, it’s too late. All we know is you can’t be separated from it, or else you will fall terribly ill. That is why I insisted the Circle bring you here, where you will be near it again.”

  “You brought me back here to keep me near the stone,” I said. “As a prisoner.”

  “That was the Circle’s goal, yes.”

  “But why?”

  “The story is far too long to explain.” Elbeth glanced quickly over her shoulder. “And I mustn’t be gone for much longer, or they will start to suspect. Suffice it to say if Tymora’s stone is active, at this time, on Toril, then it creates a great imbalance. Good luck for one means bad for another, and the stone had given you undue luck. The circle exists to prevent such imbalances.”

  “So I have to suffer in the name of balance? That hardly seems fair.”

  “It is not indeed. But, as I said, it is the Circle’s goal.”

  “The Circle’s goal,” I repeated. I looked deep into her eyes. “But not yours?”

  She shook her head solemnly. “The Circle intends to keep you prisoner. But I cannot bear to see you held against your will. I know now this is not your fate.” She spoke faster, her voice a low growl. “The stone is hidden in a cave. The cave lies beneath the water there,” she said, pointing at the rocky outcropping at the end of the beach, back toward the sailors’ camp. “At low tide, the cave will be exposed.”

  I looked at her, my eyes wide. “So you want me to go in and steal the stone? Why can’t you just give it back to me?”

  “It is not my place to return it to you,” she said. “But since the stone belongs to you, your taking it is not theft.” She took in a deep breath. “I must warn you, this task is not simple. A great guardian of the sea lives in that cave. Be careful that you do not wake him. Even goodly dragons are cranky when they wake, especially if they wake to find a thief in their den.”

  I barely heard a word past “dragon.” My head was spinning. I had always been most fascinated by tales of dragons, the rarest and mightiest of the creatures of the Realms. I found them brilliant and awe-inspiring and ultimately deadly and had always hoped to see one some day. But under these particular circumstances?

  “Wait until the ship is repaired,” Elbeth continued, not oblivious to my suddenly wobbly knees. “Get the stone, and get back to the ship just as it pushes out to sea.”

  “What about the Circle?” I asked. “What about Deudermont? He said he—”

  Elbeth waved her hand in front of me. “You need not worry about Deudermont. You have a place on his ship. And I will take care of the Circle to give you enough time to escape.”

  “You’ll stop them one against eight?” I asked.

  “For as long as I can,” she said. She gave me a wide, warm smile. “Which may not be long at all.”

  “And then what?”

  Elbeth picked up my fallen dagger and pressed it into my hand. “You must find a way to restore the balance.”

  I nodded, trying to think of something to say. The whole plan sounded very dangerous for both of us, but I could think of no better alternative. I had no intention of staying on the island for the rest of my life, certainly not in the name of preserving some mystical balance. So I would face the dragon, and she would face her compatriots, and we would have to hope for the best.

  With a heavy heart, I turned and began the long walk back to the camp.

  “Who is she?” Elbeth called after me, her voice light, almost happy, despite the gravity of the plan we’d just laid.

  “Who is who?” I asked, turning back to face her.

  “The girl, the blonde,” she said. “She followed you out of the camp, you know, but got spooked by the walruses. She’s awake, waiting for you, right now.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. I turned on my heel and sprinted off as fast as I could.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It felt near a mile before the dim light of the campfires came into view, and another half mile before I saw the camp. Joen sat at its edge, against a log, facing out from one of the larger fires. I quietly approached. My heart beat faster. I didn’t quite know what I would say.

  But as I got closer I saw she had fallen asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her. Instead I crept around the camp and moved in near the other fire, which had burned down to embers, and found a spot to curl up.

  Sunrise was no more than an hour away, and I didn’t manage to fall asleep at all. When the crew rose to begin repairs, I rose with them, thoroughly exhausted.

  Sea Sprite had, thankfully, not taken heavy damage, with the exception of the mainmast. And the mast itself was mostly intact; it had only ripped the deck up around it, pulling up from its anchored points below decks. It had miraculously not snapped.

  The work, then, was mostly cleanup: the lower decks had been destroyed by the moving mast; the top deck had the debris of the storm, plus more than a few broken boards. But once we cleared the debris, we could reset the mast, then rebuild the deck with salvaged boards fro
m Lady Luck—which had come to rest tightly against a formation of rocks, and showed no desire to move ever again. We’d use her salvaged lines and riggers to fix the rigging. All in all, Captain Deudermont expected it would take ten days of hard physical work.

  Captain Deudermont showed no sign of refusing my help, and I no longer felt reluctant to pitch in, given my plan. He made no distinction between his crew and Lady Luck’s, nor did he discern based on age. I volunteered to help find lines and whatever food and supplies might have survived aboard the wreck when Lady Luck showed herself at low tide. Joen volunteered to join me. Soon we were both sifting through the debris in Lady Luck’s dark, half-sunken hold.

  For a long while we worked in silence. I lifted a rope covered in seaweed out of a puddle and wrapped it into a coil, keeping my eyes down at all times. I was terrified of making eye contact. Dozens of questions and observations—even jokes—ran through my head. But I was too nervous to say them aloud.

  At last Joen had the courage to break the silence. “Where’d ya go, then?” she asked. Her voice was quiet, but friendly.

  I cleared my throat. “Nowhere. I just walked.”

  “Walked a long time, eh?”

  “How would you know?” I said. I picked up a small box of rusting nails and stuffed it in my sack, still looking down, still afraid to make eye contact.

  “I followed you. But you already knew that.”

  “Someone told me you followed me. I didn’t believe her until I got back to the camp and saw you, waiting.”

  “So why didn’t you talk to me?”

  “Why didn’t you stand up for me?” I asked, glancing up at her at last. When I saw her face, I silently cursed. I hadn’t meant to ask the question so plainly, or so soon.

  She frowned slightly. “I heard a voice, you know? Said, don’t say anything now, there’ll be time later.”

  I cocked my head. “A voice in your head? That’s not normal, you know.”

  Her frown deepened. “No, it ain’t. But it weren’t in my head, either. Was in my ear. Like someone whispering to me, but there weren’t nobody there. I dunno, maybe the wind caught someone else’s words and carried ’em to me, eh?”

  Suddenly I thought of Perrault, standing on the rail of a ship, whispering into the wind, his voice carried over the miles, all the way to the captain of another ship.

  My heart leaped. Perhaps his fate had been similar to Elbeth’s? Perhaps …

  “What did he sound like?” I asked tentatively.

  “She,” Joen replied, and my heart sank once again. “She sounded, I dunno, calm. Comforting, you know? Oi, what’s the matter then?”

  A single tear had formed and dropped from my eye. I tried to speak past the lump in my throat, but no words would come.

  “What, you think I’m going mad and it makes you sad?” she teased.

  “Going?” I said.

  She punched me in the arm, not hard, but enough to leave a bruise. I pulled away, and she followed, a wicked grin on her face, her hand cocked for another punch.

  “Stop, stop!” I said, laughing, surprised that I could manage a laugh. “You aren’t mad, and you aren’t going mad either. It was magic, I think. I’ve seen it used before.”

  “Figured as much. I ain’t crazy, you know? But who was it?”

  Of course it had been Elbeth. That’s why she hadn’t spoken when the Circle presented their demands to Deudermont. She had been whispering a message on the wind, her face hidden behind her mask.

  Suddenly I remembered Deudermont’s vacant stare, as if he weren’t listening to the leader of the Circle at all. Could it be that Elbeth had sent him a message as well?

  “Well?” Joen asked impatiently. “You gonna tell me who it was, or do I have to beat it out of you?” She cocked her arm and balled her fist.

  “It was a friend,” I said. “She’s going to help me escape, but I have to do something first.”

  “Oi, how original,” Joen said, rolling her eyes. “What’s she makin’ you do?”

  “It’s not for her,” I said, considering how much I could tell Joen. “The Circle stole something from me, and she told me where it’s hidden.”

  “Great. So, we wait ’til the repairs are done, then we go get it, eh?”

  “We?”

  “You’re only telling me ’cause you want me to come with. Don’t deny it, you know it’s true too.”

  I hesitated. “It’s too dangerous,” I said.

  “All the more reason I should come. Someone’s gotta have your back.”

  “Would you have had my back out on the beach, if you hadn’t heard the whisper?” I tried, but failed, to keep accusation out of my voice.

  She reached out and grasped my hand in hers. I turned to face her directly, to look straight into her emerald eyes, shining in the dim light. I felt suddenly guilty for questioning her, for ever being angry with her. My palm grew sweaty in her strong grasp. There was so little distance between us, so little …

  The hatch above swung open. We dropped our hands.

  A voice called down: “Lunch at the campsite. Make yer way to the shore!”

  Joen skipped lightly for the ladder, not once looking over her shoulder at me. I waited a long moment, replaying our conversation in my head, before I started off for the lunch table.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The days passed slowly, filled as they were with hard work, poor shelter, and worse food. The weather stayed calm and relatively warm—the sun shone by day and the moon grew toward full, illuminating the night. Each evening Robillard would magically start new fires to keep us warm, and we would settle down to sleep. Deudermont posted a watch, unnecessary though it seemed. Certainly no external threat would rear its head, and it seemed unlikely to me that the crew of Lady Luck would try to cause any trouble.

  Still, the two crews slept apart, each around their own fires. Joen remained loyal to her ship and slept among them. I still considered most of them pirates, evil men who would hurt me given the chance, so I avoided them.

  But during the days we often found ourselves alone in the hold, sifting through the waterlogged supplies for anything useful. During high tide, we sat on the beach with the few crewmen who were still injured, since none of us were much use with the manual labor on board.

  We talked about the past—about both our pasts. She told me of her parents, who died when she was young. She grew up in Luskan, alone on the streets, making her own way by picking pockets. When she turned nine, she took on with a ship, posing as a boy that she might be offered a job as cabin boy. I told her about my own past, from Elbeth to the present, mostly truthfully. I glossed over some parts, in particular not telling her that Elbeth was on the island.

  We only occasionally discussed our plan. After all, it was very simple in theory: on the day Sea Sprite was ready to sail, we would go to the cave, take the stone, run back to the ship, and leave. But something still worried me.

  Late on the night of the sixth day, I jostled Joen awake.

  “Joen, I need to tell you something,” I said. The sun had long since set; the midnight hour was past.

  “Later,” she said, closing her eyes and rolling over. “I’m busy.”

  “It’s about the mission,” I said, keeping my voice hushed. “When we get there, you can’t go into the cave.”

  “Haven’t we been over this, then?” She lifted herself onto her elbows and peered up at me. “It’s dangerous, it’s something you have to do, blah blah. I told you: you need someone to watch your back, and that’s me.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “You don’t listen, do you? I know it’s dangerous, I’m coming anyway. What is it, anyway, a dragon or something?”

  She laughed, but I did not join her. After a moment she caught my solemn expression and stared at me in disbelief.

  “Seriously?” she asked, her voice a hushed whisper.

  I nodded.

  She looked at me long and hard, her mouth
slightly open. I figured she was trying to read my face, to know that I was telling the truth. After a moment, though, her lips curled into that smile again.

  “I’ve always wanted to see a dragon,” she said lightly. “This should be fun, eh?”

  “Fun?” I said in disbelief. “Are you insane?”

  “Maybe,” she said, smiling. “But what’s the worst that could happen?”

  Images of her tiny corpse danced through my mind, ripped to shreds, charred to ash. I could not express in words what I saw, the worst that could happen. But I did not argue.

  “That’s settled then, eh?” She flopped back down and pulled her blanket over her head. “Now leave me alone.”

  On the seventh day, the mast had been reset and the deck around it rebuilt, and it was time to start resetting the rigging. Suddenly Joen and I found ourselves the most-worked members of the crew, as we were the two best able to get to the very top of the mast or the farthest out on the wings above the sails. We had no time to talk, and when our long days ended we were both so exhausted we would go to sleep without any words exchanged.

  Then finally on the tenth day, the last lines were tied, and Captain Deudermont declared Sea Sprite to be seaworthy. The tide was going out, so she was mostly on the beach. At the next high tide, the crew would put her in the water, then be off as the waves began to recede.

  It was time.

  An hour before dawn, I quietly packed my gear and slipped into my boots—the magical boots that Sali Dalib had “loaned” me what seemed like a thousand years before. Careful not to wake anyone, I snuck out of camp, alone. The lookouts weren’t paying much attention—as usual—so it was easy to get out unseen. But I wanted to take every precaution anyway. Not long after, Joen came skipping up the beach.

  Her hair was pale in the moonlight. It almost shimmered as it bounced up and down in time with her skip. She was heading off to her doom, to face a dragon, to steal from a dragon, and she was doing so with a light step and a smile on her face.

  Perhaps I had been wrong before; perhaps she was indeed insane.