When the little man finished his spell, he pointed his holy symbol at the slavers. Three went wide-eyed, turned, and fled in terror as if chased by a prince of Hell; two others turned with a snarl and began punching their comrades; three more stopped where they stood, let their blades fall from their hands, and babbled nonsensically in their native tongues.
"It will not last long," Jak said.
"There's only two, jacks!" shouted one of the crew, to bolster his comrades.
The rest nodded, brandished their blades.
With a mental command, Cale formed the shadows around him into a confusing, constantly shifting jumble of illusory images. When he was done, there were not two but seven.
Still the crew advanced, wary but determined. Fifteen paces. Ten.
From nowhere, two slavers landed in a crouch beside Jak and Cale. Cale had only a moment to curse himself for forgetting the two men he had seen atop the forecastle. They must have avoided the blast from Azriim's ball of fire.
The approaching sailors cheered at the appearance of their comrades and rushed forward as one.
"Ware!" Jak shouted, and dodged back from the slash of the smaller of the two, a hard-eyed Thayan. The larger, his three gold earrings glinting in the moonlight, seemed confused by the shifting array of shadow duplicates that surrounded the actual Cale. He hacked wildly with his cutlass at the nearest and the touch of his blade dispelled the image. Cale answered with a slash across the man's chest and finished him with a stab through his throat. He whirled around to see Jak driving his shortsword into the gut of the little slaver, who fell to the deck, screaming and bleeding.
They turned to face the rest of the charging crew and watched with surprise as one of them fell face first to the deck, an arrow sprouting from his back. The slavers around the fallen man shouted, stopped their charge, looked around the deck. Cale, too, tried to pinpoint the source of the fire as another arrow took a second slaver in the throat. Another hit a third in the arm and sent him spinning to the deck, screaming with pain.
The shots were coming from the crow's nest.
I'll explain, Magadon's voice said in their heads.
Cale gave a shout, stepped through the shadows and into the midst of the crew, slashing with Weaveshear. The blade opened the throat of one surprised slaver, pierced the chest of a second. One of those whose mind was clouded by Jak's spell took an awkward cut at Cale, slipped on the deck, and fell at Cale's feet. Cale stabbed him through the chest. He died clutching Weaveshear's edges.
A cutlass slashed across Cale's back, a blow that would have felled him but for the protection granted by the shadows. Instead, the weapon merely opened a painful gash that his skin soon closed. Cale spun around with a reverse slash from Weaveshear but the slaver parried the blow, snarled, and bounded back. Cale followed up, at the same time mentally commanding his summoned blade to attack the slaver. It streaked in from the side and opened a gash in the man's shoulder. While he screamed, Cale decapitated him with a crosscut from Weaveshear.
From the forecastle, Jak shouted the words to a spell and a white beam of energy streaked into a slaver near Cale. The energy seared the man's skin and drove him to the deck, where he lay prone and unmoving.
"This ship is ours!" Magadon shouted down from the crow's nest. "Flee on the ship's boat or you all die!"
An arrow thumped into the deck, vibrating, near a slaver's feet. Another arrow went through the chest of a second slaver.
With an effort of will, Cale caused a cloud of impenetrable shadows to surround him. Cale could see through the blackness perfectly, but he knew the slavers would be able to see nothing. He took up Magadon's call.
"Run, you whoresons!" he shouted, and advanced on the slavers. "This ship is ours!"
Those who were not still enspelled turned and fled for the ship's boat. Cale slammed his pommel into the heads of those still under the mind-muddling effect of Jak's spell. They fell to the deck, dead or unconscious.
Let them go, Cale projected to Magadon, as perhaps six slavers worked to lower the ship's boat from its rigging. They had it lowered within a few breaths and all of them leaped over the side and scrambled into it. They cursed their conquerors as they rowed away. They would die or not on the sea. Cale did not care.
The ship was quiet.
Cale and Jak stood on a deck littered with corpses, a handful of unconscious slavers, and the still-enspelled helmsman. Jak called on the Trickster and healed himself with a prayer. Cale let his flesh repair the wounds he had suffered.
They watched with disbelieving smiles as Magadon descended from the crow's nest. Just to be certain that Magadon was Magadon, Cale spoke the prayer that empowered him to see magical auras. Magadon showed no aura, though his bow and several of his arrows glowed in Cale's sight. The guide was himself.
Cale and Jak met him at the bottom of the mast, full of questions.
"I felt you die," Jak said.
Cale took the guide by the shoulders and shook him. "As did I. Or so I thought."
"A play," the guide said and smiled. "Riven wanted the slaadi to believe he killed me, so I projected a false sensation to you two and to them."
The guide let the words register with Cale and Jak.
"Riven?" Jak said. "A play?"
"Why?" Cale asked. "If he's with us, why not just help us kill the slaadi here and now? We could have done it had he not interfered."
Magadon looked at Cale and answered, "I asked him the same thing. He said Mask wanted it this way, that Mask wanted the slaadi to escape. This time. He said you would understand."
Cale considered that, finally gave a slow nod. He did understand. The Shadowlord had an agenda that he had not yet seen fit to share with either his First or his Second. Riven was just doing what he thought Mask wanted. Cale had been on that path once.
"The Zhent's playing us," Jak said, and could not keep the hostility from his tone.
Cale knew that it was not Riven but Mask who was making the play.
Magadon shook his head. "I do not think so. I have a latent visual leech on him. He suggested it, so that we could follow. He said he would stay with the slaadi until the time was right. I believe him, Erevis. He's with us."
"Agreed," Cale said softly.
Jak shook his head and muttered, "That Zhent has more angles than a prism. I hope we know what we're doing."
Of course, Cale did not know what they were doing. Mask had directed Riven to help the slaadi escape Demon Binder. Cale could not imagine why.
CHAPTER 8
AGENDAS
Vhostym prepared to leave his pocket plane. He knew that he would not return. He would send for the Weave Tap when the time arrived.
He felt no nostalgia over his departure. The place had served him well as an isolated location from which to put his plan into place, but its utility was at an end. And Vhostym retained nothing that did not have utility.
The binding spells with which he had confined the demons, devils, and celestials he used in his research would degrade over the coming centuries. Eventually, the creatures would be free to slaughter one another or to return to their home planes. Or not. Vhostym did not care what became of them. Their utility too was at an end.
In his mind, he cataloged the threescore spells he had spent the last few hours preparing. He inventoried components for the spells, checked the magical paraphernalia that adorned his person. He reached into a belt pouch and counted the twenty magical emeralds he had personally crafted to prepare for this night. They were all there, with the exception of the one he had provided to Azriim.
He was ready.