Richard Byers - The Reaver

“I warned you,” she told him. Louder now, deafening, her voice was both the roar of the wind and the hiss of the waves, and it held gloating laughter as well as rage. Perhaps he should have expected as much. She was the drowner of sailors and the breaker of ships, and every opportunity to torment and destroy excited her.

Instinct prompted him to try to drag himself all the way up onto the rock. He couldn’t. He was still aware and undead but as incapable of movement as any ordinary corpse.

The alternating push and suck of the waves shifted his center of gravity and tipped more of his body into the water, immersing his legs up past the knees. He kept slipping a bit at a time until he slid wholly into the water.

The waves bumped him into the waving seaweed on the side of the boulder. Then a riptide seized him and dragged him away from shore.

He wondered what Umberlee had in mind. She could feed him to sea creatures willing to eat carrion, or scrape him through corral reefs and cut and pull him apart a bit at a time. But he suspected she meant to dump him back where she’d found his drowned corpse to deliver a more protracted initial torment. Whatever punishment she intended, it could only be because she’d decided he’d failed her yet again.

Previously, Evendur had deemed it wise to remain mute in the face of her rage. But he sensed that tactic would no longer serve. His only hope was to convince her he could still achieve her ends.

But how? He sensed his paralysis was no impediment. Linked to him as she was, she could still hear his voice if she condescended to do so. But what was he to say? He struggled to frame some sort of argument, and finally, the words came to him.

“Fine!” he snarled. “Cast me away! Surrender !”

He felt the pressure of the rip current diminish for a moment, as though his insolence had startled her. Then it swept him onward.

“I know what your holy books say,” he continued. “The mighty Queen of the Depths never surrenders. But maybe it isn’t true. Because I’m still your champion, and if you take me out of the contest now, you’re abandoning the Inner Sea to Lathander.”

The racing current tumbled him.

“Leave me in place,” he pleaded, “and I can still win! I’ll bring together every iota of the church’s might into a great armada and lead it against the boy and any who dare to stand with him. Whatever miracle he’s worked, I’ll unmake it. Whatever hopes his magic and preaching have raised, I’ll dash them. And when I’ve done all that, and drowned him in your name, no one will doubt your supremacy any longer!”

Suddenly-and rather to Evendur’s surprise-the riptide ebbed away to nothing. He felt something in his upper back grinding together, and strength surged back into his hulking frame.

“Kill everyone ,” Umberlee hissed. “Everyone but those who grovel before me. Turn the green sea red if that is what it takes.”

Then the crushing sense of divine presence disappeared.

Evendur kicked upward until his head broke the surface. The howling, hammering storm was already subsiding into just another gray, rainy day. The harbor was half a mile away, an inconsequential distance for a fellow who could swim like a shark.

Anton put his hand on Stedd’s brow. That morning, it had been cold. Now, it was hot. The temperature swung back and forth for some reason the druids had failed to explain in terms a pirate could understand.

The boy’s eyes, vividly blue even in the subdued light of the House of Silvanus, fluttered open. “Papa?” he croaked.

Anton winced. “No, Stedd, it’s me.”

“I wanted to say goodbye. But you wouldn’t have believed. You would have tried to stop me.”

“Your father’s not here. I’m Anton. Try to remember.”

“I wanted to say it! I promise!” Stedd squirmed under his blanket like he was trying to sit up but couldn’t manage it.

“I believe you,” Anton sighed, “and everything’s all right. Why don’t you drink some water?”

The earthenware cup was ready to hand. But in the moment it took him to pick it up and turn back around, Stedd had lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Anton felt an urge to throw the cup at one of the granite slabs bordering the space that served as Stedd’s sickroom. He settled for growling an obscenity.

“At least he woke up,” Umara said.

Anton gave her a sour look. “Is that what you’d call it? Why doesn’t he have a druid sitting with him all the time?”

“I’m sure they check on him often.”

“Even if they do, why aren’t they healing him?”

Umara took a breath. “You heard what Shadowmoon said. This isn’t an ordinary sickness amenable to the usual cures. And in any case, it does no good to grouse at me.”

Nor was it fair. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She cocked her head, listening to the drumming on the roof. “The rain’s slacking off. Let’s get some air.”

As they negotiated the turns of the sanctuary, a structure that, with familiarity, had come to feel less labyrinthine, he said, “I’m not truly angry with the druids or the boy, either.”

“I hope, not with yourself,” she replied.

“No!” he snapped. “With Lathander. Surely, he could help Stedd. But now that the boy’s served his purpose, his god’s tossed him away like a broken tool not worth the mending.”

“In Thay, we expect spiritual powers to favor the strong, not help the weak.”

Anton snorted. “Whereas I used to think they don’t truly care about anybody. Then Stedd nattered on and on about hope and goodness until, perhaps, he blathered the common sense right out of my head. Well, now I have it back.”

They stepped out under the gray sky. Anton took stock of how hard it was currently raining, and then, on impulse, squashed his drum-shaped Turmishan hat flat and tucked it in his sword belt. His hair was going to get wet, but he got tired of having it covered all the time.

Then a white horse and a rider in green and brown scrambled onto the plateau. The steed was lathered and rolling its eyes, and Anton wasn’t surprised. He wouldn’t have cared to take a horse up the steep last leg of Hierophant’s Trail, certainly not at any kind of speed.

But the ranger in the saddle showed no consideration for his mount’s weariness or frazzled nerves. He dug in his heels and urged it onward to cover at a gallop the remaining distance to the edge of the pool.

“The Elder Circle!” he half shouted, half gasped in a way that showed he was nearly as exhausted as the horse. “I have to speak to the elders at once!”

No doubt impressed by his urgency, druids came scurrying to assist him. A couple took charge of the horse and started to relieve it of its saddle. Others conducted the ranger across one of the chains of steppingstones.

Umara looked at Anton. “Whatever it is, I don’t care,” he said. Then they followed the ranger and his escorts back into the temple.

Once apprised of the woodsman’s arrival, the Elder Circle opted to receive him in a relatively spacious area where, on other occasions, Anton had watched older druids instructing novices five and six at a time. It was less imposing than the circular space at the center of the temple, but it was also drier, and the cryptic symbols daubed on upright surfaces gave it its own air of mystery and magic. Sometimes, they seemed to change when a person wasn’t looking, although afterward, Anton could never identify what was different.

A bench carved into one of the stone slabs afforded Shadowmoon, Ashenford, and Shinthala a place to sit. Everyone else-the ranger, those who’d brought him in, and curious souls like Anton and Umara who simply wanted to find out what was going on-stood.