Jaleigh Johnson - Mistshore

That left Bellaril. She would anchor all of them, and she would make Cerest's men answer for her master. It worried Icelin that she would be walking into a potential den of spellplague, but she knew the dwarf woman would not be dissuaded.

"What will you do when this is all over?" she asked.

Bellaril looked up from her rowing. "Go back to the Cradle," she said, as if it was a foregone conclusion. "No one to run it, the champion should step in. I don't think he's going to be doing it," she said, nodding at Ruen.

"The title's yours," Ruen said. "I have no interest in the Cradle."

"Don't know what you're missing," Bellaril said. "What do you love so much about the fighting?" Icelin asked. Bellaril shrugged. "I like the crowd, like it when they cheer for me. It's what everyone wants." "She likes to be seen," Ruen said.

"Isn't that what I'm saying?" The dwarf woman looked irritated. "What of it?"

"Bells grew up in a family with eight brothers," Ruen said.

"Eight? Isn't that quite… prolific, for a dwarven family?" Icelin said.

"Not so much these days," Bellaril said. "I'm thinking our sire wanted a small army, not a family, so he got all of us on my mother. As far as he was concerned, I would grow my cheek fuzz and be indistinguishable from my brothers. Nine soldiers, nine sons. That's what he wanted. He cut my hair himself, when I refused to do it. My brothers held me down."

"Gods," Icelin said. "Your own family?"

"Blood doesn't mean much. The next time he came for me, I bruised him good before he could get the shears on me. After that, I almost took out his eye. Each time I hurt him a little more, until he stopped coming for me."

"That's when you came to Waterdeep?"

"Not at first. I wandered a little, busied my hands at different jobs before I ended up in Mistshore. But the Cradle." Bellaril shook her head. "They'd never seen a dwarf woman pretty as me who could fight as hard as the boys they bet their coin on."

Icelin smiled at Bellaril's pleased expression. "No one ever tried to make you grow a beard?"

"And they know better than to touch my hair," Bellaril said.

In the distance, Icelin could see the behemoth outline of Ferryman's Waltz. Wraiths circled in an endless dance in the water, occasionally swirling up to curl their bodies sinuously around the broken masts of the inverted ship.

The leviathan's bones twined seamlessly with the rotting greatship. There was no flesh left to suggest what the creature might have looked like in its original form, but the thought of it driving the massive ship straight into the air was boggling. The leviathan's remains kept the Ferryman from plunging into the deep by sheer force of an old will, a need beyond death to remain locked in battle.

Bellaril looked unimpressed by the sight. "How you thinking of getting past them?" she asked, nodding at the wraiths.

Icelin closed her eyes. She hummed the familiar ballad to brace herself against the magic. The lost boy, trying to find his way home. She didn't look at Ruen to see his reaction to the song. She couldn't let herself be distracted.

"Find a path into the wreckage," Icelin instructed rhem. She reached into her pouch for foci, careful this time to make sure they were the correct objects. "When the wraiths scatter, make for it with all possible speed."

Bellaril snorted. "They're not just going to let us glide in-" "Quiet," Ruen said. "Let her work."

Help me, Nelzun, Icelin thought. The raft drifted closer. One by one, the wraiths slowed their restless circling. They sensed a change in the chaotic usualness of their domain and turned theit attention to the small raft and its three distinctly human occupants.

Icelin finished the spell and threw her arms into the air. She released a handful of coin-sized stones, three in each hand. They soared high and burst into orange flame. She pictured them in her mind, the wild, soaring orbs, pulsing with arcane energy.

To the wraiths, arcane energy released from a body steeped in spellplague was like a bone cast in the path of starving dogs. Their bodies glowed in concert with the flames. They streaked after the orbs in clusters of three and four, leaving a clear path between the only three living souls on the water and a cavernous hole snugged between the wrecked Ferryman and the leviathan's bbnes.

The raft drifted up to a slash of sail draped across the upper half of the opening. Ruen pushed it aside with his oar. He maneuvered the raft between hull and rib and they floated on, into the Waltz.

Cerest listened to Trik's report in fascination. "You're certain it's only the three of them?" he said. Trik looked uncomfortable. Cerest narrowed his eyes. "I'm sorry for the loss of Borion, but if you're lying, it won't go badly for just me. We've lost Cearcor and Rondel."

Trik's eyes bugged out and he half-swayed on his feet. "How?"

"Arowall's guards," Cerest said. "They caught them just after we split up. I underestimated their loyalty. But don't worry, Feston is safe. He's gone to get three more of your fellows to aid us."

"Six of us," Trik murmured. "Six of us against three of them."

"More than passable odds, if Icelin is willing to cooperate."

Trik shook his head. He looked at Cerest in a way that made the elf s skin prickle with anget-disgust swimming in pity. But Trik wasn't looking at the elf s scars.

"You go find her on your own," he said. "Take the others if you want. Hells, they'll all fight 'til they're dead, if there's coin in it."

He turned away, the torchlight burning his profile orange. "Don't you want revenge?" Cerest asked him. "They killed your friend."

"And I killed hers, or near enough," Trik said. "I'm out of it."

Cerest watched the man walk away. It didn't affect him the way it had when the Locks had left him. He felt nothing now, not in light of what Trik had told him about Icelin.

He'd finally worn her down. She was coming to him, and she was coming angry. He would have to fight to bring her to heel, but he wasn't worried about that. He would have the uppet hand, because he had the truth Icelin wanted.

All he had to do was make her give up everything to get it.

Ruen's lantern flickered and went out. Icelin started to cast a light spell when she felt Ruen's hand on her arm.

She knew it was him by the cool touch of leather.

"Save your strength," he said. "I'll get the lantern going. Bells, keep rowing."

The dwarf grunted acknowledgment. Ruen moved away in the darkness. Icelin could only assume he was feeling his way.

She tried to get a sense of the interior of the Waltz by the moonlight filtering through the gaps in the rigging, but the sheer bulk of the vessel and bones prevented much detail from being discernible. The structures had massed together in one hive shape, eclipsing all the individual parts.

The raft bumped against something solid about the same time Ruen got the lantern lit. Icelin thought it was debris floating in the water. It took her a breath to realize that it was a boot, propped against the front of the raft. The boot's owner floated six inches above the water.

Icelin looked up into the most frightening collage of a human face she had ever beheld. Naked above the waist, the man's torso and shoulders were disproportionately wide. Veins and bone bulges stood out from his pale skin. Thin patches of hair grew like scrub grass all over his head. His bottom lip folded over on itself in one corner, giving him a perpetual sneer and allowing a stream of drool to escape from his mouth in a needle-thin waterfall. This type of deformity, the godscurse, Icelin had seen before. But the gods weren't done with their jest at this poor soul's expense.

From the man's neck sprouted a quartet of bulbous gray tentacles. He had them draped-across his shoulders like a mane that ended at his belt. The tentacles were moving, seemingly independent of any conscious mental direction on their owner's part.