Evendur looked up at her. “Your men have better sense than you,” he said.
Umara sneered back at him. “They’ll follow where a Red Wizard leads.” She stepped back, spoke a word of power, ran at the rail, and leaped.
Magic made her jump like a grasshopper; she cleared the obstruction and landed forward of Evendur in the caravel’s forecastle. Encouraged by her example, her countrymen resumed their attack.
But Evendur laughed. He ripped the dangling flap of flesh loose from his forehead, exposing a patch of bare skull, and started toward her.
Stedd now understood what Lathander wanted him to do-or at least he hoped so-but not how to do it. The fight was out to sea, and he was here.
Then the god gestured to draw his attention to the chanting celebrants inside their circle of stones. A column of hazy green light rose into the air above them. When it was taller than the tallest tree, it started turning west and ultimately became a verdant thread winding across the slate-gray vault of the sky. Thanks to the Morninglord’s unspoken guidance, Stedd realized it was like a river of power the druids here were sending to their counterparts in the battle. And a person could swim down a river.
Stedd squared his shoulders. It was something he’d seen Anton and the Thayan fighting men do when they were about to start some hard or dangerous task. Then he moved to the center of the circle, still without any of the druids noticing him. He settled himself, stared up at green phosphorescence, and wished himself to the middle of what he imagined to be a tangled mass of dozens of warships attacking one another on the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Nothing happened.
So then he pictured Anton and Umara. They were his friends, and he wanted to be with them.
That made something happen. The emerald luminescence suddenly felt different, almost as if Stedd were above it instead of the other way around. It was like the pond back on the farm, daring him to jump from the high overhanging willow branch, or like a steep, snowy hillside challenging him to make a running start with his toboggan pressed to his chest.
Shadowmoon turned in his direction, and the slanted eyes in her delicate face widened in surprise. “Stedd!” she said.
He thought about pausing to explain what was happening. But now that he could feel the green current, he felt an urgency, too, as if he were running out of time to do whatever it was he needed to. Hoping the elf would understand, he gave himself over to the power.
He shot up faster than an arrow, faster than he’d ever imagined anything could fly. In a heartbeat, the druids were tiny as bugs below him. The moment after that, he’d left them, the House of Silvanus, and the whole flat mountaintop behind.
There was barely time to note the courses of the island’s three rivers, peer down into its forests, or note the locations of Sapra and the half circle of farmland that supported it as he flashed along. Then he was hurtling over the sea.
He had the notion he ought to be afraid, but his flight was too exhilarating, and now that he was in the midst of it, he could feel the river of emerald light bearing him up. It was as real, as mighty and trustworthy, as anything in the world.
At least until it started to thin.
He noticed the change first as a slowing down. The current wasn’t pushing him along as forcefully as before. Then he realized the storm clouds above and the waves below didn’t look as green, which meant the verdant haze surrounding him wasn’t tinting them to the same degree. After that came a sense of giving way that made him think of plants withering, or the bottom tearing out of an overstuffed sack.
Maybe the problem was that, distracted by the thrill of flying, he wasn’t concentrating hard enough anymore. Once again, he fixed his mind on Anton’s face.
Unfortunately, it didn’t make any difference. He kept on slowing down, and the trace of green that was left continued fading.
Apparently, his loss of focus wasn’t the problem. Rather, something was interfering with the flow of the Emerald Enclave’s power.
And Stedd couldn’t do anything about that. He didn’t have the ability to channel the Treefather’s magic; he was just riding it. Nor did he have any idea how to use Lathander’s gifts to achieve a comparable effect.
Drifting like thistledown on the faintest of breezes, his heart hammering, Stedd peered at the sea far below. It seemed that even though Evendur Highcastle and all his waveservants and pirates had failed to catch him, Umberlee was going to get him after all.
Umara rattled off words of power, whipped her hand like she was throwing an ordinary knife, and a blade made of flame streaked from her fingertips. Without even breaking stride, Evendur blocked it with a twitch of his axe.
Two Thayan marines scrambled to flank the undead pirate. As Evendur split the skull of the one on his right, the one on the left drove a boarding pike into his torso, but that didn’t even make him flinch. Using his off hand, he grabbed the pikeman by the throat, jerked him off the deck, and gave him a single brutal shake. When he opened his fingers, the unfortunate mariner dropped with a broken neck, whereupon Umara decided she liked being cornered in the forecastle of the caravel about as little as she’d ever liked anything in her life.
Not that she’d seen much choice but to jump aboard the Turmishan vessel. Assuming it wasn’t already too late for them, she’d needed to distract Evendur from the stricken Anton and Shinthala. And the Thayan men-at-arms had required a leader’s display of boldness to keep from losing heart.
That didn’t alter the fact that she’d just broken one of the fundamental rules of combat wizardry: stay well clear of the melee. Worse, she’d done it while battling the most formidable foe she’d never faced.
With the overcast blocking the sun, shadows barely existed. Still, she found the vague gray streak below a yard. Hissing and snarling words of command in one of the languages of Thanatos, she turned it black and brought it writhing up from the deck in the form of a tentacle.
The shadow whipped at Evendur to coil around him and bind him in place. But before it could, a wave leaped up and crashed across the deck. It didn’t even make the Chosen stumble, but it washed away every trace of the tentacle as though it had been made of ink.
Evendur continued his advance. A few more strides would bring him to the forecastle.
There were two companionways connecting that elevated position to the main deck. Perhaps Umara could dart down one while the dead man was climbing the other. But by itself, that elementary trick would only keep him away for a few extra breaths at most.
She rattled off a different incantation and swept her hand in a horizontal arc at the end of it. A half dozen duplicates of herself, each mimicking her stance and movements perfectly, appeared around her.
Evendur glared up at her. “Oh, that spell,” he sneered. He brandished his axe, and another tower of water heaved up from the waves. Umara realized he intended it to smash across the forecastle, obliterate all her decoys, and bash her in the process.
But it didn’t. Instead, it lost coherence and poured back down to merge with the rest of the sea.
The attack had failed because Evendur had for the moment exhausted his ability to channel Umberlee’s might. Somewhat encouraged, Umara hurled another burning knife at him.
Raising his axe, he blocked that missile, too. Clearly, his physical prowess was a different thing than his ability to work miracles, and despite the gashes and burns various foes had inflicted on him, he still possessed it in full measure.
Evendur started scrambling up the companionway to starboard, and Umara and her illusory twins scurried down the steep little flight of steps to port. He whirled, sprang back onto the deck, rushed her, and closed to striking distance a mere heartbeat after she finished her descent.