Richard Byers - The Reaver

There, he roared words that sounded like a raging gale and surf pounding against rocks. Unlike common waveservants, he’d never studied the secret languages of the sea or any form of magic. But his ascension had put the knowledge in his head.

The spell didn’t agitate the pool below him in any visible fashion, yet he could sense it changing. It felt like a door opening, and when it finished swinging wide, he jumped in.

He then swam down the shaft as quickly and agilely as any squid or eel. That was another of Umberlee’s gifts. So was the inhuman sight that allowed him to see despite the rapidly gathering gloom.

The well twisted just where it always had, but shortly thereafter, he swam across a kind of threshold. He couldn’t see the discontinuity, either, but he felt it as a surge of exhilaration. Grinning, he kicked and stroked faster, until he shot out the end of the passage.

The mouth of the tunnel was likewise invisible when he glanced back around. The whole of Pirate Isle was gone. Instead of emerging adjacent to the promontory on which the temple rose, or near any other land, he was in open water.

Specifically, he was floating in the heart of Umberlee’s watery realm. He had only to open his mind to sense currents flowing endlessly on through a thousand reefs teeming with huge, brightly colored fish and the dark gliding or lurking things that preyed on them. Before his transformation, he might have felt alarm upon perceiving the latter, for the least of them could have gobbled up a mortal man without difficulty. But now, fearing them would have been like fearing himself.

In other places, the sea floor dropped away to frigid gulfs where different predators dangled glowing lures on fleshy tendrils, and blind things crawled and slithered in the ooze. Those creatures were Evendur’s kindred, too, and their grotesqueries made him smile like a child beholding a clown’s capers.

In fact, had he permitted it, he could have drifted for a long while marveling at the wonders swimming or scuttling on every side. But that was unlikely to please Umberlee, so he thrust the temptation aside.

Thanks to the esoteric lore the goddess had implanted, he knew that every body of water in the mortal world linked to this ultimate ocean. More, he knew a further secret, one that ordinary priests and mages might never discover in decades of study: Any spot here connected to every place in or on the mundane world’s seas. But only if a mystic possessed the might and skill to force open the way.

Evendur pulled his rotting hands in gathering motions and croaked words that made it sound as if he were drowning all over again. At first, intrigued by the power they sensed accumulating in the water, gigantic hammerheads and rays came swimming close to investigate. Before long, though, the alternating waves of hot and cold became intense enough to alarm them, and they fled.

On the final word of the incantation, awareness pierced Evendur like a hundred arrows hurtling from as many different directions. It was like possessing countless eyes and using each one to peer through a different porthole.

But people, even undead Chosen of Umberlee, were meant to possess only two eyes and use both to look in a single direction. Evendur could make no sense of his jumbled perceptions and felt as if they were punching holes in his mind.

He imposed order by willing his ethereal eyes shut one at a time until only one still peered at a stretch of the rolling gray surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars. He cast about. When certain no ship was in view, he closed the first eye and opened another on a vista that was nearly identical.

The third perspective revealed squawking seagulls perched on the floating carcass of a pilot whale and pecking and tearing at the meat. But still no ship.

Evendur wasn’t counting on spotting the Red Wizards’ galley. That would take considerable luck. But he needed a vessel of some sort. Feeling increasingly impatient, he opened more eyes in quick succession.

On his twenty-seventh try, he found what he was seeking, a caravel on a starboard tack off the southern coast. In fact, it was the Iron Jest, a vessel that had sometimes cooperated with his own now-sunken Abattoir in raids on ports and merchant convoys.

That was good. The Iron Jest was a fast ship, and the hard men aboard should be eager to help him catch Lathander’s Chosen and collect the price on his head. In fact, she’d be ideal if not for her captain.

Evendur had never liked Anton Marivaldi. He’d never liked any of the rare men who refused to defer to him, even in subtle ways, as tougher and more cunning than themselves, and the Turmishan was one such. On occasion, he’d even made his fellow captain the target of his jibes.

But now, surely, those days were over. Because Anton was the same little mortal he’d always been, and Evendur was a demigod. Thinking that it would be satisfying to make the knave grovel, he allowed all his other ethereal eyes to wither out of existence.

Then he focused his will on the connection to the Iron Jest ’s vicinity and set about transforming it from a spy hole to a passage like the one that had brought him from Pirate Isle to Umberlee’s ocean. He visualized his hands gripping the edges of the opening and pulling them apart.

When the gateway was wide enough, he swam through then kicked and stroked upward until his head broke the surface. Rain pounded down on him, and the seas were heavy enough to dismay any human swimmer, but he took pleasure in the heaving peril that was no threat whatsoever to him.

He looked around, found the Iron Jest , and swam after it. A trailing line hung off the stern, and he caught hold of it and climbed hand over hand.

As he started to clamber over the railing, a shaven-headed pirate with rings in both ears noticed him and gave a squawk of alarm. The fellow looked wildly about, found a belaying pin, grabbed it, and rushed Evendur with the obvious intent of knocking him back into the sea. Maybe he’d mistaken the newcomer for one of the marine ghouls called lacedons.

Though it was awkward when he was straddling the rail, Evendur ducked the makeshift cudgel, caught the human by the throat, and gave him a single brutal shake. Combined with the pressure constricting his windpipe, the jolt was enough to make the pirate falter.

Evendur pulled his assailant close and glared into his eyes. “Do you recognize me now?” he asked.

“Yes,” the pirate croaked.

“Good.” He gave the mortal a second, harder shake, heard his spine break, and tossed him overboard.

Then he finished climbing onto the deck and ran his gaze over the other men who by now were gaping at him. “Is there anyone else who doesn’t know me?” he asked.

A man with a long, somber face under a broad-brimmed hat cleared his throat. Evendur thought he ought to recognize the fellow, and after a moment, the memory came to him. The rogue was Naraxes Corieth, the Jest ’s first mate.

“We know you, Captain,” Naraxes said. “Or am I supposed to say Wavelord?”

“Captain will do,” Evendur said. “Where’s Marivaldi?”

“Gone. I’m captain now.”

Well, perhaps that was better. Naraxes might prove more tractable than Anton would have. But why did the fool seem so nervous?

“But the trouble is,” Naraxes continued, “when Anton left, he took the boy with him.”

The words were so unexpected that it took Evendur a moment to truly comprehend them. “You’re telling me you had the child? The one who preaches that Lathander’s returned?”

“Well, yes. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Evendur decided it wouldn’t look especially demigod-ish to admit he didn’t know the apparently tangled tale of how the paths of the Morninglord’s Chosen, Anton Marivaldi, his estranged crew, Red Wizards, and the stars only knew who else had converged and diverged over the course of the past tenday or so. Fortunately, he didn’t need to know to address the current situation.