Caught by surprise, she hesitated, and the boarding axe flashed out. Fortunately, it struck one of the phantom Umaras. The illusion winked out of sight like a bursting bubble.
Retreating, the Red Wizard spoke words that shot a pang of pain through the core of her. She was transforming a bit of her own vitality into a force that was anathema to the undead.
She thrust out her hand, and white light flashed from it. Bits of Evendur’s flesh charred and sizzled, but he didn’t even appear to notice. The axe swung, and this time, it chopped at the right target. Umara snatched her hand back lest the weapon clip it off.
Still backing away, she conjured flares of flame and lightning, a lance of ice, and then, in increasing desperation, wrapped herself in a veil meant to befuddle Evendur by making it seem that she too was undead. He just kept coming, the axe popping her duplicates one by one. It was pure luck that it hadn’t cleaved real flesh as of yet.
Umara refused to acknowledge the truth for as long as she could. But when she found herself down to her last decoy and had all but exhausted her own power, it became inescapable. It didn’t matter that Evendur was presently unable to draw down his deity’s magic. She still couldn’t stop him.
The blast of magical cold had chilled Shinthala to the bone. The frost encrusting the left size of her body was freezing her still, and she suspected she had frostbite underneath it.
Yet even so, the cold scarcely mattered. The squeezing in the left side of the chest, the pain jabbing through her left arm, and the grinding aches in her neck and jaw hurt worse and alarmed her more. Being a healer, she understood what they meant. The shock of the initial chill had sent an artery into spasms and made it impossible for her heart to do its work.
Ashenford and Shadowmoon were right, she thought. None of us should have come here. All I’ve done is throw away my last few years and whatever good I could have accomplished with them.
And then, as if to validate her despair, she felt the torrent of magic that the druids in the House of Silvanus sent through her attenuate. In a few moments, it dwindled from a river to a trickle.
She knew it was her fault. Her participation was necessary to draw Silvanus’s magic here, where it was needed, and her stuttering heart had disrupted that process as summarily as it had ended her efforts to destroy Evendur Highcastle.
Paradoxically, though, the realization that her failure was even more complete than she’d first imagined replaced her despair with resolve. Because she wasn’t the only one who’d depended on the power coursing down from the Elder Spires. The druids aboard dozens of ships, faithful servants of Silvanus who’d trusted an elder of the Enclave to lead them, were relying on it, too, and by the First Oak, they were going to have it for as long as she lasted, even if that was only a breath or two.
She wheezed a prayer to Silvanus. Perhaps it helped a little, but her debility made a shambles of the precise pronunciation and cadence spellcasting generally required. It was mostly by pure stubborn will that she reached into the eastern sky, gathered the power diffusing there, and drew it pouring down like a waterfall once more.
Something else poured down with it. Through dimming eyes, she saw a blond-haired little boy appear before her. Stedd Whitehorn looked as surprised as she was.
Stedd had done enough healing to sense that Shinthala was in a bad way, and that even if he saved her life, she likely wouldn’t be able to fight anymore today.
The thought flashed through his mind that with the battle still to win, that might be a reason not to spend any of his power helping her. It was a coldblooded choice he could imagine Anton or Umara making.
But he wasn’t them. He squatted down beside the old woman, put a luminous hand on her shoulder, and murmured, “Lathander.”
Warmth flowed from his flesh into hers, and her clenched jaw relaxed. That would have to do for now. He took his hand away, straightened up, took a first good look around, and gasped.
He’d seen a lot of fighting since the start of his travels but never before dozens of men locked in hand-to-hand combat aboard a ship. It was so crowded! He was lucky Shinthala had fallen amid ropes connecting a mast and its sails to the deck. They made a little clear spot amid the clanking, grunting press that had likely kept him from being knocked down and trampled the moment he arrived.
At first, the frenzied hacking and stabbing confused him, and though he peered around desperately, he couldn’t spot Anton. But then a pirate pushed his opponent backward, momentarily opening a gap in the tangle of fighters and revealing his friend sprawled on his face beside the starboard rail, where the side of a bigger ship loomed over the one they were aboard.
Clutching Dawnbringer, dodging this way and that, Stedd darted through the mass of combatants. A blade glanced off a shield and he had to jerk to a stop to keep it from hitting him in the face. A heartbeat later, he sidestepped to avoid the jabbing point of a poorly aimed pike. Then a retreating Turmishan sailor bumped into him and knocked him staggering.
But his smallness let him slip through narrow gaps as they opened up. It also likely kept warriors busy fighting foes their own size from paying him any mind. Certainly, none of Evendur’s followers seemed to notice that here was the very boy for whom the church of Umberlee had offered a huge bounty, in easy reach at last.
When Stedd finally reached Anton, he saw that his friend’s head lay in a pool of blood flowing out faster than the rain could wash it away. The pirate wasn’t moving and maybe not even breathing. The boy flung himself to his knees beside him, put his hands on Anton’s back, and sent light, warmth, and vitality streaming across the points of contact.
For a moment-long enough for Stedd to feel a pang of alarm-nothing happened. Then Anton jerked and gasped in a breath. That started him coughing, but when the fit ended, he raised his head without difficulty.
“Stedd,” he rasped. “First, I couldn’t catch you. Now, I can’t get rid of you.”
“Lathander sent me.”
Anton swiped blood from his face. The cut underneath looked as if it had been healing for a tenday. “I guess he wants you in at the finish.”
“He wants me to give you the power to kill Evendur.” Stedd held out Dawnbringer only to see it vanish from his grasp. He gasped in dismay.
But then he realized it was all right; the mace hadn’t entirely disappeared. Rather, it had melted into a red-gold light that settled into the reaver’s saber and cutlass and set them aglow.
Something about the process drained what was left of Stedd’s own mystical strength, and when it was done, he slumped down panting. “Are you all right?” Anton asked.
“Yes.”
“Then keep yourself that way.” The pirate sprang to his feet, looked around, and started pushing toward the bow.
Having spotted Evendur, Anton would have liked nothing better than to charge and attack him instantly, but with the deck crammed with combatants lurching unpredictably back and forth, it wasn’t that easy. He had to weave, backtrack, and periodically kill someone to make his way toward Umberlee’s Chosen.
A waveservant pivoted toward him and thrust with a trident whose tines seethed with some malignant blue-green glow. Anton parried with the saber, stepped in, and drove the cutlass into the sea priest’s guts. Shortly thereafter, a pirate who’d sailed aboard the Iron Jest two or three years back bellowed, “Traitor!” and sprang at him with a falchion. Anton cut first and sent his former crewman reeling backward with a face split down the middle.
At least such hindrances gave him a chance to test his weapons now that Stedd had blessed them. The differences he discovered had more to do with the way he perceived and reacted than the simple heft of the blades. At certain moments, the men around him almost seemed to move sluggishly because he was so keenly aware of every tiny preparatory motion and the attack that was likely to develop from it. He felt fresh, strong, and clearheaded.