They nodded and tried to keep their feet on the slippery, rolling deck.
Riven and the rest of the crew still clutched their heads, grimacing at the pressure building in their skulls. Even Nimil released the tiller to hold his head. The ship started to turn.
Dolgan shoved the helmsman aside, took the tiller in his own hands, and wrenched it back into position. Azriim feared his broodmate's strength would break the rudder but it did not, and the ship straightened.
"I am seeing things!" Riven shouted, and finally took hold of a lifeline. "What in the Abyss is happening?"
The ship rolled up another swell, crashed down. A wave took another crewman over the side. Another.
The captain cursed through his haze.
Above, the rigging holding a sail on the mizzenmast finally snapped and the canvas flapped free in the wind. The sudden loss of the rigging sent a boom whirling a half-circle around the mast. It hit a sailor in the midsection and knocked him overboard.
Azriim feared that Dolphin's Coffer soon would not have enough crew to sail her.
Then, the mental torture ended as abruptly as it had started. The crew looked up and around, dazed, but hurriedly set to retaking their ship from the storm. Crippled but unbroken, Dolphin's Coffer sailed on.
Still shaking his head, Riven asked, "What was that?"
Azriim smiled. "Not what. Who."
The assassin and Dolgan both looked a question at him but Azriim offered no further explanation.
"The storm is breaking " said a crewman huddled on the forecastle. He pointed ahead, to a break in the clouds through which stars were visible.
Almost as soon as the crewman said it the rain slowed, then ended. The wind fell off entirely. The ship sails went slack and the vessel gradually coasted to a stop. A thankful rustle wound its way through the men, followed by a hoarse cheer.
"Well done, lads," the captain said to his crew. "Well done. Didn't I say she'd hold together?"
Azriim was not sure what to make of the calm. He found it portentous. Beside him, Riven must have felt much the same thing. The assassin eyed the sky, the black, rolling expanse of the sea, and said, I do not like this.
Azriim smiled. Not to worry, assassin. We are not remaining aboard.
Azriim held up the Sojourner's spherical compass on his palm. The needle within pointed straight down.
Vhostym appeared inside the sanctum of his tower, now safely removed to the top of the Wayrock. Still incorporeal, he floated into the outer wall of the tower and down to the root of the structure. There, he examined the bonds between the native stone and the transplanted tower. His spell had done its work well. The tower looked as though it had been built atop the Wayrock rather than moved from a secret mountain vale in the south of Faerun. He would need it to be well rooted when he began the spell.
He was pleased. Things had unfolded exactly as he had hoped.
He glanced skyward, to the stars, to Selune, to her tears. He already knew which of them he would use. He picked it out of the glowing field of silver points that trailed after their mistress. He imagined his spell taking effect, imagined how it would feel.
The time was drawing near. He needed only the power of Sakkors's mantle and he could begin.
Extending his consciousness across the Inner Sea, he reached out for Azriim's mind but could not make contact. He assumed that meant that his sons were in proximity to Sakkors. The ruined city's mantle had rebuffed Vhostym's attempts to scry it, so it surprised him only a little that it also interfered with mental contact.
A sudden, sharp pain ran the length of Vhostym's spine. He gritted his teeth and waited for it to pass but the pain lingered longer than usual. He bore it, hissing, and it passed at last.
He needed to complete his work soon.
He flew back up to the top of the tower, floated through a wall, and entered the former sanctum of Cyric. He dismissed the spell that made him incorporeal and his flesh solidified instantly. The sudden weight on his weak muscles and bones caused him to stumble. He fell to the floor, on all fours, and the impact sent knifing stabs of pain into his kneecaps and wrists. He screamed from the pain-the first time that he had ever given voice to his agony with more than a hiss-certain that the fall had cracked several bones.
Physically and mentally tired, he remained in the undignified posture for some time. He had taxed himself by using so many spells to claim Cyric's temple. It had been decades since he had done so much in so little time.
And there was more yet to do.
His breath came rapid and wet. He prepared himself to stand. He could have used a spell or mental power to assist himself but refused out of pride. He would stand under his own power; he had to.
He moved one leg, then another, gingerly asked them to bear his body. The memory of the pain still lingered in his knees, but he straightened them and made them bear him up. When they did, he allowed himself a moment's satisfaction, but only a moment.
Despite his fatigue, he had to prepare the tower.
He first whispered the words to a spell that summoned the Weave Tap from the pocket dimension in which he had left it. He pronounced the final couplet, energy flared, and the dendritic artifact appeared before him. It stood about as tall as a dwarf maple. Dim light pulsed along the silvery bark of its bole. Golden leaves dripping stored arcane power hung from its limbs.
Vhostym felt the Tap's distress at being removed from its nursery in the pocket plane. The twisting mass of its roots and the tips of its gilded limbs squirmed for a moment in agitation, seeking purchase in the Weave and Shadow Weave. Roots dug into the stone of the floor, found a home in the Shadow Weave and went still. Limbs reached upward for the ceiling but the tips disappeared into the net of the Weave before reaching the roof. They, too, went still.
Vhostym felt the Tap's agitation change to contentment.
Rest easy, he projected to it, though he did not think it could understand him. Or perhaps he could not understand it. The Tap had been born in shadow to serve the priesthood of the goddess of the night. Like Vhostym, it was vulnerable to the sun, but unlike Vhostym, it felt no loss from its vulnerability, no need to conquer its weakness.
The Tap simply existed, and in that existence found contentment.
Vhostym stared at the living artifact. He suspected that the Tap felt contentment only because its sentience was limited. Aware of little beyond itself, the Tap did not crave, need, or covet. Not in the way Vhostym did, not in the way all sentient creatures did.
The curse of sentience, Vhostym knew, was that it bred desire, ambition. And those birthed discontent. Vhostym exemplified the point. In the course of satisfying his own desires, he had razed worlds, killed millions.
He felt no guilt over his deeds, of course. Guilt required for its existence the failure to meet some moral absolute. Vhostym had learned better thousands of years ago. Mathematics was the only absolute in the multiverse-two and two were always four. Morality, on the other hand, was merely a convention with which men mutually agreed to delude themselves. There were no moral facts, just preferences, and one was no better than any other.
"Take solace in your simplicity," he said to the Tap.
He used a spell to lift his feet from the floor and floated out of the sanctum. He closed the doors behind him and warded them with a series of spells, a precaution born more of habit than necessity. No one knew of his refuge on the Wayrock. No one knew what he intended to do there, not even his slaadi, and by the time anyone did, it would all be over.
He floated through the halls of the tower until he reached the central room two floors below the sanctum, a chamber more or less at the midpoint of the tower.
Slowly, painfully, he lowered himself to the floor. Lying on his back on the bare stone, he placed his arms out wide and spread his legs apart. The floor felt cool through his robes. Attuning himself to the energy of the stone, he closed his eyes and started to hum. As he did, power gathered in him. He channeled it through his body and into the stone of the tower. When he felt the stone vibrate slightly in answer, he changed from humming to chanting. His voice, carrying power in its cadence and tone, rang out through the large chamber, reverberated against the walls, ceiling, and floor. The stone absorbed the power he offered and its vibrations increased to a mild shaking. He felt the floor softening under his body, as though it would embrace him. He ceased his inarticulate chant and recited words of power. They fell from his lips and hit the shaking stone. With the words he coaxed the power of the rock to the surface. He felt as if he were resurrecting the dead. He knew he had succeeded when the floor beneath him grew as warm as living flesh.