The Shadowmask Read online

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I awoke to a grating, grinding sound and a vibration in the ship. The waves swelled up beneath us, moving us far more than any ship should when tied safely to a dock. Either the storm had arrived early and the seas were tossing beneath us, or …

  I leaped from my cot and raced to the ladder, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only the breeches I’d slept in. Up I went, into the afternoon sun, just in time to catch the spray as Sea Sprite cut through a wave.

  I glanced around, hardly believing what I was seeing. Captain Deudermont had the helm, and the sails were set and full of the wind blowing down from the north. The crew moved about in a slow waltz, securing a line here, untying one there, following the captain’s orders almost before he called them.

  “Mister Maimun, to the helm,” the captain called. “After you dress yourself, that is.” Without a word—I couldn’t have found one if I’d tried—I dropped down the ladder and raced to my cot, quickly gathered my things, and sprinted back to the deck. The sway of the ship on open water beneath my feet felt wonderful.

  “Yes, sir,” I said as I skidded to a halt before the captain, trying to sound formal and calm.

  “Relieve Mister McCanty in the crow’s nest, if you please,” Deudermont said.

  “Yes, sir. And thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said tersely. “Thank your friend Lucky. He polled the crew, and they agreed, to a man, to take the incredible risk and pursue our blue friend.”

  I could barely draw breath as I walked to the crow’s nest.

  My head was still spinning when I reached the top of the mainmast. The mast was shorter than on the old Sea Sprite, so the view was not as good and the bucket was smaller—or I had grown. But the ship moved with a speed unlike anything the previous one could have managed, and the chill wind in my face was refreshing indeed.

  I took it all in: the smell of the air and the feel of the wind; the view of the crew moving about, a perfectly choreographed dance; the shining sun reflected off the sea, and off the—

  “Iceberg! Ahead, off the port bow!” I yelled.

  We cut sharply, avoiding the massive chunk of floating ice. And the next, and the next, and on and on, huge bergs drifting down from the Sea of Moving Ice. The thaw had dislodged them from their winter rest, but it was not warm enough to melt them. It would be a dangerous journey indeed. I hoped it would be worth it.

  My mind wandered back to the previous summer. I had seen only snippets of actual combat on that journey, had watched much of it from a porthole in the hold of the ship, until a particularly nasty troll pirate had climbed aboard. I had defended the ship from the troll and had eventually knocked the foul thing from the boat.

  After the fight, Captain Deudermont had offered me a place on his crew, citing my courage. But it had not been courage, it had been self-preservation that drove me. The troll had found me, and would have killed me had I not fought back. I looked down at my scar. That was the end result of my so-called courage.

  And I was leading the crew into trouble yet again. We were following a pirate ship—all because of me, because the crew had agreed to help me. I remembered Tasso, a sailor aboard Sea Sprite during the other fight. He had been wounded, and had died in the bed next to mine. More could die because of me and my selfishness, I knew. Would Lucky fall, or Tonnid, or even Captain Deudermont?

  I shook the thought from my head. This time would be different, I vowed. We would capture Chrysaor and force him to tell us where the stone was. And if anyone died in the trying, it would be me.

  “Look alive, Maimun!” I caught sight of Lucky down below hefting a coil of rope over his shoulder. He looked up at me, his eyes shaded from the sun. “Why the long face? Ye’re going to get yer pirate after all!”

  “Seems so!” I called out. “I can’t thank you enough!”

  “How’s about you join me and Tonnid in a game of cards later on then, eh? We got a few chores we wouldn’t mind putting on the table for a lucky fellar like yerself.” Lucky’s face broke out into a wide grin.

  I nodded and laughed along with him. And that was all the confirmation I needed that we were on the right path after all.

  For seven long days we followed Lady Luck, each colder than the last. The ship had turned due west, then northwest, and was heading out into open water far, far from shore. We never caught sight of her, but Robillard kept his magical eyes upon her.

  He also kept his eyes on the northern storm, which hit Waterdeep right on schedule, bringing nearly three feet of snow. Even if we had wanted to turn back, we couldn’t. The harbor was sealed shut.

  I remembered the voyage from Baldur’s Gate to Waterdeep: the constant tacking, the long nights in fear of a berg, the cold so deep it felt as if I’d never feel warmth again.

  Each day, I took my post in the crow’s nest. The biting wind was brutal. I wrapped Perrault’s cloak around me, but it wasn’t the magic that kept me warm. I leaned into that frigid wind. I thought of what might lie at the end of the journey, and the cold never touched me.

  On the seventh day out from Waterdeep, I sighted a dark line of clouds, due west and moving toward us.

  “Storm! Dark clouds ahead, due west!” I called down.

  Everyone abovedecks halted whatever they were doing. Then a moment later, they began again, working more furiously than ever.

  “Hold course,” Deudermont called out.

  Right into the storm, I thought. The man who had initially refused to sail out of port for fear of a winter storm, was ordering us to hold course directly into one.

  “What do you see, Maimun?” Deudermont yelled.

  “No bergs ahead, just the storm, sir,” I called. How had Robillard not scryed it? Or perhaps he had, but he and the captain had kept it secret from the crew? The captain would have no reason to conceal something like that, would he?

  “Just the storm? Are you sure?” I got the distinct feeling he knew something I did not.

  I peered out into the distance scanning the horizon in all directions. Nothing north, nothing south, nothing east, a storm west …

  A storm, with a white spot on it. A growing white spot. Sails.

  “Sail ho! Due west, and it looks like she’s closing!”

  “Very good,” the captain called. “Can you make her heading?”

  “Looks like she’s sailing right at us, sir.”

  “Very good. Mister Lucky?”

  “Oh, right,” Lucky, who was standing beside the captain, said. “All hands make ready for battle!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Whoosh!

  The catapult on Sea Sprite’s foredeck released, throwing a ceramic bucket of burning pitch high into the air, spinning end over end, to splash into the water three hundred yards short of Lady Luck.

  A ranging shot. And a close one.

  I looked across the water to the fast-approaching ship, to the bustle of activity on deck, and the single spot of yellow in the crow’s nest. Somehow I knew Joen sat there with her hair cropped short, her piercing green eyes, and her figure so tall for her age. And I knew she looked back at me. She would have turned thirteen, I knew; her birthday was in the winter.

  As Lady Luck drew closer, our catapult sent another bucket of burning pitch into the sky. I watched its arc, a trail of red on the black clouds of the approaching storm. It seemed to drift on the air, in defiance of gravity, moving oh so slowly toward its target.

  Oh so slowly, toward Lady Luck’s mainmast.

  Toward Lady Luck’s crow’s nest.

  My eyes widened in terror. Joen ducked down into the crow’s nest.

  The flaming bucket skipped off the mast barely four feet above her, sending the thing swaying. But the ceramic did not break, and the whole bucket plummeted through the furled rigging into the water below. Joen poked her head up again, her head bobbing up and down. Sobbing?

  No, laughing. Thirteen and fearless. That was Joen.

  I scanned Lady Luck’s deck. She had no cat
apult, and it seemed to me that we would get many more shots before the ships closed the last few hundred yards. But a pirate stood on the forward deck, waving his arms in tiny circles, chanting. An odd time to be singing and dancing, I thought.

  Crack! I whipped back to look at our foredeck. A massive fireball burst directly over our own catapult. The whole catapult crew dropped to the deck. Small fires sprang up all around them, and fingers of flame reached out for the stacked buckets of pitch.

  The crew rose up and immediately began to scramble, pails of water in hand. I tried not to imagine what would happen if the fire reached the pile of pitch before they could extinguish it. The blaze of fire, the screams of pain, the smell of burning flesh …

  “They’ve got a wizard!” I called down. “Forward deck, wearing pirate clothes.” A bolt of lightning arced out from the hands of the wizard. “He’s casting a sp—”

  The lighting struck the side of the crow’s nest, splintered right through the wood, and crashed into me. Energy jolted through my chest, and I flew up into the air.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath, waiting to plummet onto the deck below.

  But a second later, I realized, I was not falling.

  I opened my eyes.

  I was drifting, as light as a feather. I looked at my hand and caught a glimpse of the gold band circling my finger. I remembered gliding down from the wall in Baldur’s Gate, Perrault’s hand in my own. He had given me the magical ring then, but I had completely forgotten I still wore it.

  The deck drifted up to meet me, slowly, dreamlike.

  From below, I heard several crewmen gasp. At first I thought they were merely astonished by my gentle fall. Then I looked down.

  The ship was sailing out from under me. I would not land on the deck, but in the frigid ocean beyond!

  I snatched my stiletto from my belt. I thrust it into the sail, or what little of the canvas was exposed. My fine dagger cut through the sail as if it were paper. I heard a few lines snap. But my momentum slowed.

  At last I came to a stop, dangling ten feet above the deck.

  The wind picked up. The crew scrambled around the deck below me.

  “Help!” I called out weakly. But my words were lost in the growing storm.

  A fine white powder of snow churned all around me. I peered through the tear in the sail at Lady Luck’s forward deck, my heart in my throat. The wizard who had attacked me had disappeared. But her captain, Chrysaor, still held fast to the wheel. Snow settled on the crossbeams of her rigging, on her rails, on Chrysaor’s violet hat. Then, without warning or any apparent reason, Chrysaor flung his hands from the wheel and stepped back. I took in a sharp breath. He mounted the forward deck railing. For a moment he stood there, riding the storm, his blue-skinned face lifted into the wind, his ocean white hair whipping out behind him. He turned to flash me a wicked grin. And then, he plunged into the sea.

  “No!” I called out. “Captain! Chrysaor is abandoning his ship!” I looked down at our own deck just as Captain Deudermont’s hat blew off, lost to the storm.

  The sky grew dark. The sail I clung to whipped around, as if it were trying to buffet me loose. My arm ached. I could not hold on much longer. No one was coming to help me.

  I pulled my dagger free, kicking off from the sail.

  I landed hard, sending numbing pain coursing up my left leg.

  As soon as I hit the deck, the storm unleashed its full fury. The air was thick with snow, and sleet blew sidelong across the deck. The wind swirled. Those few sails that were open threatened to tear from their rigging. But they could not catch and harness the wind, and we did not move. The other ship was completely obscured. The crew slipped and slid, and I slid with them, finding my balance impossible to keep on the slick deck in the tossing seas.

  Only Captain Deudermont held his ground, his grip firm on the wheel.

  At last I pulled myself up to the railing and glanced down at the rolling ocean. But I could see nothing but white-capped waves. Chrysaor was gone, racing to safety beneath the sea.

  Suddenly the deck beneath my feet heaved. The whole ship rose into the air, caught on a huge swell. The water carried us with it, carried us faster than the wind ever had.

  A voice cried out over the wind—Lucky’s voice. “Captain! She’s—” The rest of his warning was garbled in the wind.

  But his meaning became clear a second later, as Lady Luck came racing up alongside Sea Sprite, her deck barely ten feet from ours.

  With a colossal bang, her mainmast and ours collided.

  Both ships stopped in their tracks.

  I, however, did not. Nor did the rest of the crew.

  We flew across the deck. I crashed into a rolling barrel and bumped into Lucky before I finally came to rest at the forward deck.

  The snow cleared just long enough to reveal Captain Deudermont, standing firm and tall at the helm, holding his sword high. The wind died just enough to hear his voice calling out to us.

  “To arms,” he cried, “and to the rail! To the fight!”

  “To arms!” echoed Lucky, scrambling to his feet.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I watched as the men of Sea Sprite rose up unsteadily around me. They shook off their bumps and bruises. They drew their weapons.

  Then they raced to the pirate ship’s rail.

  We had trained hard the last few months, in swordplay and in tactics. But in the span of that last second before the throng of pirates crashed into the crew, all that training disappeared.

  The fight descended into chaos.

  I huddled behind an overturned barrel. I had promised the captain that I would stay out of the fighting. And I meant to hold fast to that vow. After all, with my leg aching and my still clumsy swordwork, what good could I possibly do?

  Sounds of steel on steel echoed across the water, with battle cries turning fast to howls of pain.

  The first time a cry of pain ripped through the air, I found my breath hard to come by. I watched as the battle lines formed and broke, as the throng surged toward the rail, then halted and pushed back the other way. I watched as the snow piled up on the deck, listened as the wood of the tangled ships creaked and groaned against the strain, against the wind.

  I watched in horror as the snow piles turned red.

  I peered around the barrel to see a man go tumbling over the rail, screaming all the way into the icy water. I could not tell if it was one of ours or one of theirs.

  I wedged myself farther behind the barrel and hugged my knees. I had brought all of it about, I reminded myself. I had started the voyage. But here I was, hiding, while men died for me. I could hold back no longer.

  Gathering all my courage, I pushed back the barrel and stood up. I took a step, then another, then broke into a run across the slick deck. I would leap the rail, join the fray. I flicked my dagger into a long blade.

  And then I saw her.

  Around the side of the melee, a tiny figure moved: a girl with hair the color of wheat and the purest green eyes. She held a dagger in each hand, and walked like a warrior, stepping lightly and in perfect balance.

  And then she saw me.

  Twenty yards separated us, but I felt as if we were standing face to face. Her expression was as cold as the storm, her teeth gritted, and her jaw set.

  Joen crossed the deck at a run, leaping the rail in a single, graceful leap, landing but a few yards in front of me. The wind picked up again, drowning out the sounds of combat. The snow came down faster, obscuring the battle still raging around us.

  I held up my arms, sword out wide, trying to indicate that I meant no harm. Joen rushed toward me, her arms tight to her body. For a moment I thought she was going to embrace me.

  Instead, she punched out with the pommel of the dagger. It slammed me in the forehead and sent me reeling. I fell and skidded halfway across the deck.

  I lifted my sword and looked up, expecting her to be right atop me. I rose unsteadily to my feet, my weapon at the ready.

/>   “Never drop your guard in a fight, eh?” she said, stalking toward me. “That’s a free lesson for you. The next one’s gonna cost you, got it?”

  I brought my sword up, touching the blade to my forehead right where her blow had landed, then snapping it back down in mock salute. “So you have more lessons for me, then?” I quipped, settling into the stance the Waterdeep swordmasters had taught me.

  “Many more, kid,” she promised, spitting the last word like an insult.

  I knew she was angry at me so I decided to allow her the first attacks until her rage played itself out.

  Left, right, left, she slashed with her daggers, aiming not for me but for my blade. She meant to knock my sword out of line—her eight-inch daggers would not reach me if she could not move her body past my sword.

  With a simple twist of my wrist, I kept my sword in line with her through each contact. The numbness in my left side was almost a memory. The quality of my swordplay surprised even me.

  “Feeling better yet?” I asked sarcastically.

  “You’re still standing.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  She snarled and repeated her attack. If she meant to kill me, she surely could have in that initial strike. But neither was she dropping her weapons or her guard. My pulse quickened. Perhaps she did mean to kill me after all.

  Left, right, left; but that time, as the second left hit my blade, she took a quick step to her left and brought her right-hand dagger close to her chest. As I twisted the blade in, trying to keep her at bay, she stepped toward me. I had not reacted quickly enough to her step, and the angle was wrong. When I tried to compensate, to angle my sword farther in toward her, I merely hit her right-hand dagger.

  She shuffled toward me, quickstepping in and disengaging her left dagger at the same time. I tried to pull my sword in, to cut off her line of attack, but she pushed with her right dagger, and I could not maneuver my much longer sword into a good position.