Jherek looked up into Madame litaar's watery brown gaze and wanted to tell her that nothing could hurt more than finding his belongings packed when he returned home. He said nothing, though why he should respect her feelings at the moment was something he didn't understand. What was really confusing was the way Madame litaar seemed so concerned about him now, after she'd packed him out of her house.
"I know," he said instead. He had trouble speaking around the tightness in his chest, caused from the blood-filled lung and his own inner turmoil.
"You're going to be all right, though, Jherek," the old woman promised.
Once, Jherek had been told, Madame litaar had been the most beautiful woman in all of Velen. Vestiges of that beauty still showed in the square lines of her face, in the broad forehead revealed by the way she wore her gray hair pulled back in a long braid. Her half-elven heritage showed in her pointed ears and the lines of her face. She didn't wear any of her accustomed jewelry due to the lateness of the hour. The cerulean blue bodice and long leather skirt she had on looked fresh, as if she'd dressed only a short time ago. She was usually early to bed, but tonight she'd been up waiting.
The young sailor sat on the porch as she'd directed, his legs splayed straight ahead of him. She'd cut his shirt from him in order not to jostle the quarrel embedded in his chest any further. Dried blood smeared his chest and stomach and stained his breeches. Streaks of it turned the hardwood floor of the porch brown in places. He regretted that; he knew how Madame litaar treasured a clean porch for her guests.
"Aye, ma'am," he gasped.
The pain in his chest had died away to a dull throb, but the increased pressure in his wounded lung was frightening. Even when everything around him had been out of his control, he'd always been able to control himself, his body. Now, not even that existed.
"Before I can give you a healing potion to cure your wounds," Madame litaar said, "I've got to get that quarrel out of you."
"Aye, ma'am."
She touched the feathered shaft carefully. Despite her advanced years, her hands remained steady. "I can't pull that quarrel out."
Jherek tried to talk, but his voice seemed caught for a moment. "I know."
She held his face in her work-roughened hands. "I could give you a sleep draught, Jherek, but I wouldn't be able to rouse you before dawn." She hesitated. "There's a ship you must catch tonight."
Jherek stared into her eyes, not knowing what to say. Madame litaar wasn't just kicking him out of her house, she was banishing him from the city.
"She's called Breezerunner," Madame litaar said. "Do you know her?"
"Aye, ma'am. She runs north, along Sword Coast." Jherek broke into a coughing fit and fresh blood bubbled up from his injured lung.
"She leaves port in only a few hours," the woman said. "I've paid for passage for you under another name. They won't know you. Do you understand?"
"Aye, ma'am."
Questions filled Jherek's mind, pricking at the hurt her words caused him. Before he could utter any of them, Madame litaar shoved an open hand at the quarrel, stopping less than an inch short of actually touching it. The young sailor thought he saw blue sparks flare from her fingertips, but he couldn't be sure because in the next moment pain ripped through his chest. He tried to scream but couldn't.
The arrow jerked inside him as if it had been shot yet again. He felt it pierce his back and come out the other side, propelled by Madame litaar's magic. He jerked, trying to escape the agony, but Madame litaar wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him to her until it passed. He made himself be still, not wanting to accidentally hurt her. Shudders quivered through his body like he was a tuning fork. Perspiration broke out along his brow and upper lip. Fresh blood spilled down his chest and back.
He tried to speak, but blood gurgled up from the wounded lung, a new torrent unleashed. He started drowning then as the other lung filled as well and couldn't find the heart to break free of Madame litaar's grip. He'd always feared he'd be alone when he died, and no one would care. At least here, in her arms, he could hold onto the illusion of family.
XIV
"Oghma grant us mercy."
Pacys hung onto the wagon seat as Hroman prayed and steered the pulling team along Dock Street beside him. The intersection to Ship Street lay just ahead, but the bard knew there'd be no passing along it. The sahuagin had risen from the waters of the harbor and taken their battle into the Mermaid's Arms festhall and to the shipbuilding shed of Arnagus the Shipwright, filling the streets there. Men ran with torches, but the light from the fires spreading uncontrolled across the harbor lit the area up. The storm out on the water lashed high waves over the docks, well above the normal waterline.
Looking further out into the harbor, Pacys looked across the burning husks of ships in the docks. Sailors ran the decks with buckets of wet sand and water, but Pacys knew it would never be enough to save them all.
Mystical lightning lit up the savage sky, streaking down from on high to targets in the water below. The electrical display looked at home in the whirling storm.
"Oghma damn all sahuagin for their black hearts and insatiable, hellish appetites," Hroman cursed. He pulled his team up short, causing them to whinny in protest. They reared and bucked in their traces, eyes rolling white.
"It isn't only the sahuagin," Pacys said in disbelief. He watched the heads of huge creatures breaking the water of the harbor and identified only a few of them. Never had he seen so many of them gathered in one place. "There's something very wrong here. The sahuagin alone could never bring all these creatures together."
A flaming catapult load from Castle Waterdeep flared through the night sky and burst against a giant turtle's shell. The huge carapace shattered and the dying creature sank beneath the water. The giant turtle had pushed its way through the temporary structures that had been built over the waters of Smuggler's Dock to celebrate Fair Seas Festival, leaving only carnage in its wake.
Griffon riders patrolled the sky armed with bows and arrows. Only a few had thought to arm themselves with pitch-pots to fire their arrows. The Waterdhavian air corps proved merciless in their attack, swooping out over the harbor as well as the dock area to track down their quarry. When a flaming arrow embedded in a sahuagin, the sea devil dropped at once, torn by painful convulsions.
A cog with its prow burned nearly to the waterline finally gave up its struggle to remain afloat. The ship went down with several hands aboard. None of them had a chance to make it back to shore. A savagery of sharks lay in wait below the water. The storm-tossed waters roiled even more when the marine predators attacked the men.
Hroman bellowed at his priests, urging them into the battle. He was as quick thinking as his father, Pacys noted, listening to how the younger man broke the priests off into groups, charging each with taking control of the other wagon loads of priests arriving from the Font of Knowledge. Some were told to aid in fighting, while others were commanded to set up communication lines and medical treatment centers.
A cold chill ran through the bard as he watched the priests. Pacys knew it would be too little too late. Corpses of the Waterdhavian Watch and Guard members littered Dock Street as far as the eye could see. Mixed in with them were sahuagin, aboleths, mermen, sea horses, men who were trapped in near-rat bodies or near-wolf bodies with flippers instead of hands, marine trolls, and even the twenty foot mottled green body of a giant bloodworm stretched halfway out of the harbor water. Pacys didn't know if the heaving waves had thrown the worm ashore or if it had followed its prey there.