Chalice of the Crowns bucked again, surging up the next swell of the Trackless Sea. Water crashed onto the decks, spilling over the prow this time. Then she was clear again for the moment, plunging deep into another valley of waves.
Rinnah cast a hate-filled glance in Skyreach's direction, then turned and stalked off. He bellowed orders between his cupped hands, managing the water-slick deck with effort. In response to his orders, sailors clambered the rigging like monkeys. Sails were run up and let down. Cloth filled the rigging in broad expanses of sheet, eclipsing the dark sky. The fabric cracked in the irresolute grip of the storm winds.
Skyreach braced herself as the sails took hold. The ship surged into the wind. Before, Chalice of the Crowns had been a piece of flotsam trying to wait out the fury of the storm until calm returned. With the sails filled out, the vessel was a live thing fighting to free itself from the trap it was in, running mad as it was driven before the storm.
Rinnah scrambled up the stairs leading to the helm. He took the large wheel himself. Almost immediately, Skyreach could feel the difference the man's hand made upon the tiller. Chalice of the Crowns came about slowly, fighting the sea as it cut through the waves and gained speed. Gradually, her prow came around, putting the wind behind her sails. The ship suddenly dropped again as the sea slipped out from beneath her.
A wave, fully as tall as any sea giant Skyreach had ever heard of in any tale, whipped across the deck. The elven warrior lost her footing for a moment. Only her tight grip on the rigging kept her from being swept overboard.
Her hand burning like she was holding live coals, Skyreach pulled herself back to her feet. Out across the sea, the pirate ship drew even with them. White foam broke across the vessel's prow. Lightning split the sky, igniting the metallic scale and cut glass encrusted visage of the Eye of the Deep that had been worked into the prow. The beholder-kin lived only at great depths in the sea. The artist who had rendered the reproduction had worked masterfully, making the obscene round body as large as a man, including the ten eye-stalks, the great, staring, central eye above a slash filled with razor-sharp teeth.
Then the terrible sight was extinguished as the quick burst of illumination from the lightning disappeared. Skyreach tightened the grip on her long sword. Squinting against the drumming rain that came as hard as barbed darts, the elven warrior estimated the distance separating the two ships to be less than twenty paces.
The pirate vessel closed, coming up alongside Chalice of the Crowns.
"Milady, I am here." Verys came to an uncertain stop at the railing beside Skyreach. Thin and nervous, the old man looked bedraggled in his sopping clothes. Still, he carried his signal flags at his side.
"Is your group in place?" Skyreach asked.
"Yes, milady." Verys had marched as a boy with her greatgrandfather, quickly rising to captain of one of Faimcir Glitterwing's signal corps.
Skyreach didn't insult the man by looking around for his group. If Verys said they were there, then they were there. She watched the pirate ship cutting through the crashing waves of the sea. The prow of the other vessel cleared the water and hung for a moment, like it had suddenly taken wing from the gusting winds. Then it slapped back down, almost burying the prow under the sea. Chalice of the Crowns behaved in the same manner.
More men yelled in fear and anger. A man tumbled from the rigging above Skyreach. The sailor slammed against the main deck with a sickening thud and remained still. His neck was at an unnatural angle. The corpse stayed there only the space of a drawn breath, then the hungry waves came slavering across the deck. When the foamy sea water recessed as Chalice of the Crowns crested the next wave, the body had disappeared.
Skyreach murmured a quick prayer to Rillifane Rallathil, god of the wilderness that she found herself so far from now. Cormanthyr had been the only home she'd ever known. Evermeet was only a place her great-grandfather had bade her visit a few times, not home at all. And it lay days in her future. Provided she had a future. She swallowed hard and remembered her great-grandfather's words and the importance of the duty she was doing.
"Ready the mages," she told the signalman.
"Yes, milady." Verys chose his flags, one scarlet and one white, then waved them in prescribed patterns. "They are ready."
Peering across the roiling waves, Skyreach saw the humans lining the side of the pirate ship. Lightning flickered, burning reflections from the burnished pieces of the crew's armor and their bared weapons. She knew none of them, but she had no doubt that they knew her. Faimcir Glitterwing had acquired a number of enemies over his long life span. Her great-grandfather's stand against allowing humans into Cormanthyr despite Elminster's arguments that had swayed Coronal Eltargrim and the Elven Court had never wavered.
She didn't hate the humans. At least, she didn't hate all of them. There were many who'd been brave, and had died defending Cormanthyr against the Army of Darkness that had gathered to bring the city down. But there'd also been many who'd tried to ransack the city and the homes of the inhabitants on their way out of town. Some of those had died on her sword. What Chalice of the Crowns carried was only a fraction of what remained to be taken out of the doomed city. It represented her great-grandfather's legacy. She would not let it be taken.
The rustle and snap of fabric as well as the sudden movement to her right drew Skyreach's attention forward to the prow. The ship's spinnaker shot into the air, catching the rush of air as it blossomed from its storage area. The circle of cloth reached out like a giant fist and gripped the wind. Chalice of the Crowns pulled free of the sea, suddenly more sprightly.
"We're outrunning them!" Verys crowed.
"Not for long," Skyreach said. Though the woods were her home of choice, her great-grandfather had seen to her education even in boating. Sailcraft had been one of the old man's loves, an interest he'd carried with him since childhood. If they'd lived nearer the ocean, had more business there, Skyreach had no doubt that they would have owned a ship instead of her having to lease one for this voyage. "If the captain of that vessel has come this far, through storm and all to pursue us, I think he has a trick or two up his sleeve as well."
Captain Rinnah fought the wheel, his voice belaboring his men in hoarse shouts. They moved the sails, making the most of the wind.
Skyreach moved toward the knot of her warriors. Naked steel gleamed in their hands, desperation lighting dark fires in their hollowed faces.
"Milady," Scaif greeted. "The archers want to launch a few shafts at the enemy."
"Wait," Skyreach said. "The waves and the wind will only make their shafts too uncertain. Exposure to this rain will loosen the strings in short order, then they'll be worthless. We'll have need of them later."
Scaif nodded. "As you wish."
Abruptly, the pirate vessel dropped back as Chalice of the Crowns jerked forward with renewed speed. A ragged cheer started up among the ship's crew. Skyreach's men took up the cry, banging the flats of their swords against the railing. The elven warrior didn't give in to the emotion of the moment. Even if they managed to escape the pirates, the storm remained to threaten them.
She glanced forward, seeing Chalice of the Crowns's own spinnaker suddenly exploding forward as it continued the seize the wind. The cloth hollowed and filled, becoming an alabaster full moon against the dark sky.
Rinnah squalled orders to his men amid curses at them and promises to his god. In that moment, seeing the man at the wheel, Skyreach knew he was right about her. She had led them to their doom.
She hardened her heart and her thinking. There had been no other choice, no other way. And the cargo the ship carried was much too precious to let fall into the hands of humans. So much of Faimcir Glitterwing's life's work was wrapped up in that cargo. Yet so little of it had they been able to carry. The other journeys that would be required to claim the rest of her great-grandfather's legacy would require even more cunning to complete. Only certain knowledge that his legacy would be well guarded until her return had given her the strength to leave it.