She trotted after Glawinn, avoiding the loose rock spills that had tumbled down into the ditch. The center of the island tended to be rockier than the outer edge. Loose limestone shale rose in pockets or showed in the parched, cracked land of the interior.
The limestone was a natural filter and removed the salt from the ocean in the numerous pockets and caves that formed in the island's heart. Rainfall added to the local water supply, trapped in natural and artificed cisterns. The limestone foundation also provided for the honeycomb effect of caves under the island. These caves were once the lair of brigands, who had been rooted out centuries before.
Her muscles ached from fatigue, short hours of sleep while they shared guard duty at night, and sleeping on the hard ground. Azla had decided that only the three of them would attempt to get close to Vurgrom's pirates. A dozen pirates from Azure Dagger waited at a hidden campsite half a mile away, providing them a position to fall back to if they were discovered.
Glawinn stopped ahead and pulled at a clump of brush that covered a narrow slash in the earth forming the knoll. It wasn't quite opposite the cave Vurgrom had entered, but Sabyna didn't think it missed by much.
The paladin turned sideways and fit himself inside. The slash extended up through the knoll, almost to the top, and allowed a narrow crack of the waning sunlight into the passage.
The ground was treacherous with loose rock and pebbles. Nearly forty feet into the passage, they lost the sunlight, and the air around them turned cool. Condensation chill to the touch glistened on the rocky walls and ceiling.
The passageway continued to go down and bear slightly to the left. Long minutes later, Glawinn waved her to slow down even more. They moved cautiously, deeper into the knoll.
Sabyna's hand trailed across the cracked surface of the passageway, feeling the jutting shale. The rock edges were sharp enough to cut if a person accidentally ran into them in the dark. Luckily, there was enough natural light coming from ahead to illuminate the passageway.
Azla, dressed in black chain mail and dark clothing, crouched on a narrow ledge ahead. She glanced at them briefly, a hand holding her scimitar across her knees, then returned her attention to the scene playing out before her. She wore a short bow and a quiver of arrows across her back. A spear rested on the stone floor at her side.
Glawinn touched a forefinger to his lip in caution as he hunkered down beside the pirate queen. He placed his shield against the wall at his side.
Sabyna crept closer, dropping to her knees between them to peer down into the cave below.
"Aye, and she was a feisty one," Vurgrom was saying. He sat on an ale cask in the center of a ring of seventeen pirates clustered around a campfire that poured oily black smoke against the cave ceiling thirty feet above. The cave looked at least three times that wide. He drank deeply and noisily from a tin mug, then wiped the ale foam from his lips. He touched a jagged scar on the top of his bald head.
"I had her," he said, "holding her down on the duke's own dining table and him crying for his life in the corner, preparing to take care of my business, and she reaches back for this damned great copper cook's pot. Next thing I know, the wench brains me with it."
The pirates laughed at their leader's story, but Sabyna noticed they waited until Vurgrom himself started laughing first.
"Like to split my head open, she did. If the wench had been swinging a slaughterman's mallet instead of that damned pot, why I'd a' been holding my own brains in."
"Bet you really gave her what-for then," one of the pirates stated.
"By the Bitch Queen's locked knees, are ye daft, man?"
Vurgrom roared. "Wench liked to killed me. Had blood a-seeping down into my face and me three sheets to the wind and truly not knowing how bad a shape I was in. I took up a carving knife from a nearby roast bird set for the duke's own table and shoved it through her heart. I was done, she had no complaints."
Gales of cruel, ribald laughter ripped through the cave.
Sabyna shuddered, involuntarily remembering her own brother's death at the hands of Bloody Falkane. She glanced around the cave, wondering what had brought the pirates there. Other than the long and tall stalactites and stalagmites, a few patches of lichen that glowed soft blue and green, and a few threads of streams running across the stone floor, there appeared to be nothing of interest in the cave.
A shimmering haze formed only a few feet from the group of pirates. The grim-visaged man Sabyna had seen four days ago leading the sahuagin pack that met Vurgrom stepped through the haze, followed by the elf woman who had been there as well.
"Vurgrom," the grim man said.
"Lord Iakhovas." Vurgrom handed the tin cup to the pirate beside him and stood. "As you see, we stand ready. As we agreed."
"Do you have the pearl disk?"
Vurgrom reached inside his blouse and took a cloth bag from around his neck. He loosened the drawstrings and poured the pearl and inlaid gold disk into his hand, then tossed it to Iakhovas.
Azla quietly slipped the bow from her shoulder and nocked an arrow to the string, aiming at Iakhovas. Sabyna wasn't sure that such a move was wise, but she kept her own counsel, readying her spells. Glawinn took up his shield and found a new grip on his broadsword. He kissed the rosy pink quartz disk that hung at his neck and whispered Lathander's name.
"No!" Anger flashed in Iakhovas's voice. He gestured at the thrown disk as the inlaid gold flashed the campfire light. It froze in mid-tumble, then glided back to Vurgrom, who caught it gingerly. Iakhovas's scarred face twisted, and the tattooing showed even blacker in the shadows. "I will not touch that thing!"
'''Beg your pardon, milord," Vurgrom said, turning the disk over in his fingers in open wonder. "I didn't know."
Iakhovas walked to the cave wall to his right. "Did you ever manage to find out what this disk was, Vurgrom?"
"No, milord."
"But you tried?"
Vurgrom hesitated only a moment. "Spent good gold on it, milord." He shrugged. "Maybe cut a few throats of them that demanded payment and them not telling me any more than I already knew!"
"It's a key." Iakhovas drew back his fist and pummeled the rock wall.
Stone split and splintered more easily than Sabyna would have thought. She breathed shallowly, waiting for Azla to release the bowstring.
"To what, milord?"
"I don't know," Iakhovas said as he hit the wall again, deepening the crack he'd started. He gestured to Vurgrom, who walked forward and thrust Lathander's talisman into the hole.
The talisman rattled a few times, the sound echoing clearly in the cavern, letting Sabyna know the crack Iakhovas had created reached far deeper than she'd have thought.
"I only know that it contains power I can use when I destroy it," Iakhovas said.
A ruby ray jumped from one of Iakhovas's eyes. The sound of a powerful detonation deafened everyone in the cave.
Sabyna might have cried out in pain. She wasn't sure. In the next moment the ground quavered and rumbled, twisting and turning like a storm at sea. Despite her familiarity with rolling waves, she stumbled and would have fallen had Glawinn not steadied her.
Below, the pirates spread out and drew their weapons, crying out to their gods and cursing. Vurgrom bellowed and pulled up his battle-axe, but whatever he was trying to say was lost in the tremendous cra-ack! that suddenly filled the cavern.
A chasm opened in the floor, spreading quickly from a hand's-span to several feet. Stalactites fell from the ceiling, one of them crashing through a pirate's shoulder and driving him to the ground. Blood pooled around the man as he quivered and died.