Paul Kemp - Twilight Falling

It felt surprisingly good. It felt honest. And the truth was, Cale enjoyed being aboard ship. He remembered a favorite saying among Inner Sea sailors: A wild sea calls only wild souls. He supposed that he must possess a wild soul, because despite the open-sea squall of three days before, the sea spoke to him.

Not so for Jak, he thought with a smile. Or if the sea did speak to the halfling, it didn't say anything the halfling wanted to hear. Jak had spent the first five days of the journey sending puke over the railing. The squall had made the seasickness worse. Only when their journey was near its end did he seem to have found his sea legs at last. That, or his stomach simply had nothing more to offer Umberlee and her waves.

Unlike Jak, the voyage hadn't bothered Riven. Cale thought that he probably had been aboard ship before. The assassin had spoken little during the journey. Instead, he had daily donned his aloof sneer and his holy symbol, and practiced his bladework on deck. The challenge of maintaining his combat balance on a listing deck seemed to interest him. Cale and he had sparred twice, both to a draw. Even the hard-bitten sailors had watched those combats with admiration. They had hung from the rigging and hollered encouragement to one or the other. Other than that, though, the crew had kept their distance from the three comrades and asked no questions.

Exactly as Cale wanted it.

"Starmantle to fore!" shouted the boy from the crow's nest above.

Reluctantly, Cale turned from the sea and made his way off the aft deck to forward. From there, even without a spyglass, he could see Starmantle's spires and towers rising above the horizon line. The features of the cityscape grew clearer as Foamrider drew closer.

It was far smaller than Selgaunt, Cale saw, but seemed to have a lot of temples. Strange for a city with Starmantle's reputation.

Jak must have heard the call of the sailor announcing Starmantle. He emerged from below deck, hopped up on the foredeck, and followed Cale's gaze across the sea.

"So that's Starmantle, eh?"

"That's it," Cale said. He looked at the halfling sidelong. "You look better. Eat anything?"

Jak grimaced and replied, "I'll wait until we've got earth under our feet, thank you. When I was a boy, my father had a dwarf friend-Uncle Korik, we called him. Well, Uncle Korik said that a man could only keep his feet and his sense if he was standing on something solid. He'd never set foot on a ship. That's wisdom, Cale."

Cale grinned.

Jak chuckled and added, "Besides, these sailors have got nothing but saltpork and dried fruit. I need a piping hot stew." He snapped his fingers. "And speaking of pipes." He pulled out his ivory-bowled pipe, tamped, and lit with a tindertwig. After a time, he blew smoke at Starmantle and said, "I haven't heard good things about that city."

"You've heard right."

Though Starmantle had a reputation as one of the least violent cities along the Dragon Coast, it still made Selgaunt look as peaceful as a hamlet of halfling matrons. Thieves, pirates, orcs, and worse were as common in Starmantle as the rats.

"I've seen worse," Riven said, suddenly beside them. He spat over the railing and into the sea.

Cale had not even heard the assassin approach. Dark, but he was good! Almost as good as Cale.

"I don't doubt it," Jak said as he blew smoke rings into the air.

Riven sneered but said nothing.

In silence, the three watched the city approach. The marble facades of the many temples gleamed in the afternoon sun. Ships of all kinds, from galleys to caravels to longboats, filled the harbor.

The voyage had taken nine days. They had only three days to get into the Gulthmere, find the Fane, and stop Vraggen.

"We'll need to find a guide who knows the forest," Cale said.

"Shouldn't be a problem to find a guide," Jak observed, and he blew another smoke ring. "Just a problem to find one we can trust."

"I know one," Riven said. "Or did, if he's still alive. Magadon Kest. He knew the southern Dragon Coast well."

"A Zhent," Jak said, and managed to make the word not sound like an expletive.

"No," Riven said, and nothing else.

Cale looked the assassin in his one good eye and asked, "You trust him?"

"No," Riven said, and spat. "But he's a guide. And a good one."

Well enough, Cale thought, and looked back out to sea. At least they had a lead.

Jak blew smoke into the sky.

Riven turned to Cale and said, "You know that if the mage has spies in the city, he'll know when we arrive. These sailors will sell us for coppers."

Cale knew that, but there was nothing for it.

"It's a big city," he said, and left it at that.

They would have to hope that the crowds would make them anonymous.

Riven cleared his throat and drummed his fingers on the rail.

"We could kill them all," said the assassin, "scuttle this tub, and take a dinghy in."

Cale and Jak both eyed him in shock, and the assassin's sneer gave way to a grin.

"I'm jesting, Fleet. Close your mouth before a gull drops a turd down your gullet."

It took a moment for that to register. When it did, Cale couldn't help but smile. Even Jak chuckled, after he'd recovered himself.

"Drasek Riven making a joke," the halfling said, shaking his head and looking at Cale wide-eyed. "That, I thought I'd never see."

"You'll see everything if you live long enough," Riven said.

"Let's make sure we do, then," Cale said, turning the mood back to serious. "Gear up. We debark the moment we dock. First me, then Jak, then you."

He didn't want them getting off the ship as a group. If Vraggen did have spies watching incoming ships, they would be looking for a trio.

He turned back to the sea and watched as a four-man guide boat separated from the mass of ships in the harbor and oared for Foamrider. It would direct her to a pier. Behind them, Mres started barking orders. Above them, the sailors in the rigging began to furl the mainsail. Foamrider would float into dock under only the foresail.

Cale watched as the city grew larger and larger in his sight. He knew that beyond it were the Gulthmere Forest, the Lightless Lake, and Vraggen.

All they could do was hope that Brandobaris and Mask favored them with some luck.

"This place is a pit," Azriim said.

Vraggen wasn't sure if the half-drow meant their room at the Bent Chalice Inn or the city of Starmantle in general. Either way, he had little patience for Azriim's complaints. Time was short.

"Silence," he ordered. Though healing the hurt given him by the halfling had been a trifling thing, his wounded pride left him irritable.

He whispered the words to a scrying spell as he poured a ewer of water into the shallow silver basin he'd brought with him from Selgaunt. The surface of the water began to shimmer with color. Vraggen willed the scrying basin to show him the Lightless Lake, and an image formed in the water.

"There," he said. "Observe, Azriim."

The half-drow stepped forward and stared into the basin. Dolgan too crowded in to see.

The basin showed a still lake, its waters the color of slate, set in the midst of a reed-filled lowland. Cypress trees loomed on all sides. That was where the Fane would appear.

Vraggen willed the image to move eastward until it fixed upon a simple settlement.

Sod huts with woven reed roofs surrounded a communal fire pit. Goggle-eyed, froglike humanoids about the size of a large man, hopped about the settlement. Their smooth, green skin glistened with slime. The warriors among them wore reptilian scale armor and bore wooden spears with fire-tempered tips. Their females wore nothing and probably lived their lives in service to the males.

"Bullywugs," Azriim observed with distaste.

Vraggen nodded. He had scried the bullywug tribe several times before. They lived in the lowland swamp surrounding the Lightless Lake and numbered about eighty or so. The tribal chief and his shaman aide commanded obedience through a combination of physical strength and religious awe. Central to that religion was the Lightless Lake, which the bullywugs believed to be a manifestation of the mouth of their frog god, Ramenos.