Dear Jveddek,
Endurance. I see now the irony of the name, and I shall call her nothing else from now on.
The sailors, bless them, cheered at the sight of that accursed ship. At first, I blinked and shook my head, wondering if the stress of the passing night had exacted more of a toll on my sanity than I thought. Gradually, though, I began to trust my senses again. After all, in a realm where the dead scream, how odd is it for a ship to...return? While the wet and exhausted sailors celebrated, thinking of dry clothes and warm bunks, I was entirely torn. Perhaps all of their belongings were dry and the rum was ready to be poured, but who knew for certain? Who was to say that she wouldn't be an even worse prison for having been at the bottom of the sea?
I turned to Peregrine, still nearby as we regarded the ship.
"I hope you're as surprised by that as I am," I pointed to the inexplicably floating Endurance.
He seemed surprised at the concern in my voice. "But-it's the ship! We're saved from this icy fate!"
"Well, I guess that's one way of looking at it," I murmured. Poor Peregrine's goose bumps from the cold were the only part of him that didn't look exhausted, so I suppose that might have been clouding his judgment on the matter a bit.
While the cheering continued around us (including Ester's cry of "Oh boy! Oatmeal!"), I couldn't help but wonder what Kariya made of this development. As it happened, I didn't have long to wait.
"How are we going to get there?" Kariya was asking herself (although I'm sure she would have welcomed constructive suggestions from anyone in earshot).
Of course, the sailors immediately next to her stopped cheering to look at her, aghast that salvation, while brushing our fingertips, was hardly within reach after all.
"Oh...well..." Daniel, the nearest sailor, mumbled with a stricken look on his young face.
Realizing that she'd been thinking aloud to the possible detriment of morale, she replied, "I didn't mean to spoil your fun."
"You're the spell-slinger," he looked at her imploringly. "You made these things. Just make them go over there!"
"Huh?"
"She can do that?" the guy next to Daniel cut in, astonished.
"No!" Kariya denied emphatically.
Our level-headed mage wasn't entirely comfortable with the mantle of omnipotence the boys had thrust upon her. Funny thing, they don't seem quite as awed by Canliss' power, but then Canliss isn't so much a force to be reckoned with as a force for silliness. Both have their place, I suppose.
That ship was a good mile away, and we needed to figure out if and how we wanted to reboard her. Seeing no way out of another long planning session, I reluctantly stepped away from Peregrine to join my friends. He didn't accompany me as I'd hoped. I suppose he might be a bit intimidated by the hero-types among my companions.
Of my chilled friends, Nikita looked by far the worst. Before I'd even reached them, I could hear the chattering of her perfect teeth. My Torodinite friend was staring into space, largely unresponsive. She doesn't do well with any kind of chill, and spending the night in a bowl of ice is a lot to ask of anyone.
We'd all had a rough night. Even though my tolerance for cold had mercifully returned once we left Sailors' End, I still hadn't slept much. Perhaps if I'm granted another opportunity to stay up all night with Peregrine, it will be more fun for him...not that I was thinking about that as I joined my friends...much.
Ester and Rhavin definitely could have used a nap spell, but I was even more disappointed to see that Kariya didn't appear to have slept much, either. Too disciplined to complain, Kariya nonetheless wore a tired expression that meant she was in no condition to cast spells. Her weariness confused me. Hadn't she been going to cast the spell for her hut? When I asked her about that, she just muttered something about a question on her "advanced spell theory" final exam in mage school and shivered.
Apparently, while I had been otherwise occupied, Kariya had put together a makeshift tent with items scavenged from Endurance's cargo hold. The more seriously wounded sailors now lay within it, awaiting healing. Nikita and I couldn't possibly heal all of these people, so it was best not to start unless someone took a turn for the worse. Besides, in her present condition, poor Nikita was no good to anyone.
The Torodinite stood shivering, moving little except to maintain balance as we bobbed on the huge waves. Once in a great while, her vacant eyes darted from one spot to a new place to stare, but her expression remained disconnected from her surroundings.
Rhavin, Kariya and I talked for a long time--Ester listened, waiting for one of us to come up with something she could do. We had few ideas as to how to transport us all to the ship. I loathed the idea of returning to that abomination, but the sailors around us were little better off than my Torodinite friend. They'd never survive being shipwrecked on snowy Todstein Island. For their sake, I made no argument about reboarding Endurance.
The others asked if I could calm the waves between our ice bowls and the ship. My faith has grown stronger since we last talked, Old Man, but you will not be surprised to learn that I remain unworthy of such power.
In the pause while we reflected on our available resources, Rhavin's eyes flicked from Kariya's tent of broken planks and sails to Endurance, by all appearances none the worse for the starfish attack that sank her.
"What else do we have that really should be on the ship?" he asked suddenly. "Everything we have, the boat can't have."
Well, that was an important question. Unfortunately, we were ill-postured to hazard any guesses about what might or might not be aboard her. What about the longboat, for example? We couldn't speculate as to whether or not it would be waiting on deck for us, let alone what condition it might be in.
"This is all an academic discussion unless we can actually get to the ship," I sighed to no one in particular.
We didn't waste time on further speculation about Endurance's condition. Dawn was maturing into a beautiful day, and we needed to get moving one way or another. Canliss, who had opted for spending the night on Todstein Island, still hadn't appeared. It would be just like him to scout out the island (hell, fly all over the entire plane) before returning to the group. I ceased looking for him.
"Well," Kariya turned to me. "What have you got in terms of good spells?"
I replied quietly, so as not to alarm Daniel or the other sailors nearby. "I, uh, haven't been able to come up with anything."
The float spell I'd used to liberate the contents of the cargo hold from the ship came up. I tried to recall the words to the prayer for it as well as how it worked, but to my alarm, I couldn't even remember how the prayer began. How odd. I still can't recall it, but I'm not mentioning that to my friends. Instead, I allowed as how the weight of the hemispheres full of nearly a hundred adult men, supplies and Ester was too much for the spell to work. Then I changed the subject.
"Who's this guy?" I nudged the sleeping stranger at our feet with my boot. Despite the pitched wave action, the cheering and the present discussion around him, he was the only one of us to have gotten a good night's sleep. For that reason alone he deserved a taste of my boot, I thought uncharitably.
"Mar-Marcus?...No, Marius," Kariya replied.
"He's not a sailor," I said, pointing out the obvious. The stranger had metal armor and a helm. A helm for heavens' sake!--talk about not knowing how to blend.
"No."
"And he's not us."
Ester piped up. "He's from Hurva! Didn't he tell us?"
What?!
I scarcely registered the giantess' next bit of information.
"He's a bard," she continued.
Kariya confirmed this Marius' profession and added, "We found him last night. He was just sitting there, playing some music."
"I did hear music!" I exclaimed. That brought a laugh from everyone within earshot, including Rhavin. I flushed.
"It wasn't just you," our paladin teased me.
I straightened up and got serious as quickly as I could before the crew joined in the teasing.
"So he's a bard?" I gestured skeptically at the well-armored man. "Why is he wearing so much...um...metal."
The others looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.
"For an entertainer-type, he's awfully...uh..." I looked pointedly at the sword at his belt.
"He is awfully..." Kariya quietly agreed.
"Armed?" Ester finished.
"Anchored?" Rhavin put in with a faintly amused smile.
"That too."
"Now that you mention it, maybe he's not a bard. Maybe he can just sing," Kariya mused.
Rhavin shook his head. "Nikita said he was a bard."
"He said he was a bard," Kariya corrected.
Rhavin quietly indicated that Nikita knew for certain that Marius was a bard.
"So, are we gonna go to the boat, or is the boat gonna come to us?" Ester asked, impatient for something to do. With her prompting, we returned to the real problem at hand, temporarily abandoning further discussion about Marius.
The idea of ferrying a small party of sailors to the ship to bring it to our location came up, but we eventually dismissed the idea. Even in the best sailing conditions, the enormous ship simply required too many hands on deck for Canliss to practically transport. That fact and the plan's dependence on the shapeshift ability of someone nowhere in sight made that prospect unattractive.
Then we thought about towing the ice hemispheres over to the ship.
"We could definitely do that," Rhavin said with confidence. "We've got enough people to tow."
Huh? I only counted one dolphin among our present assets in the towing department. In theory, I could summon another sea mammal, but the most likely creature to answer a summons would be another dolphin. Besides, since having seen the zombie sharks, I didn't care to discover what perversions of nature might be down there to answer my call. How would two dolphins tow a few tons of ice, sailors and salvaged material anyway?
"Once Canliss gets here, we could tow," Rhavin reasserted, evidently seeing my doubt.
"What makes you think Canliss is coming back?" I asked.
Towing the hemispheres had another important problem, even if we did somehow manage to amass sufficient towing power. We had no means of assuring stability for the unwieldy hemispheres while we towed. Most of the salvaged rope was already in use, lashing together the three ice hemispheres and keeping the coffins tightly shut.
Rhavin wanted to know if using the float spell to float sailors over to the ship could work.
"Uh, I don't think I could float enough of them over to matter," I shrugged. I wish they'd stop bringing up the float spell. It really bothers me that I can't remember how I cast it.
Ester asked if Kariya was sure we couldn't use the magic box to transport the sailors over the ship. In the course of Kariya's explanation that yes, she was sure, we were treated to an incomplete list of classes the mage had been required to take in her training as an invoker (e.g. "Invokers and the Need for Discipline"). The theory of extradimensional spaces, like her folding box, was a requirement. As an aside, I guess that means she would know whether the Vast Gate in Firestorm was intradimensional, interdimensional, or extradimensional...that still bothers me, now that I think about it. I should have listened to her more closely at the time. I'm definitely not asking about it now.
"How is this going to get us to the ship?!" Daniel broke in frantically.
I guess we had been getting a bit distracted.
"Well, anybody have any good ideas?" Kariya looked at the rest of us. Nikita continued to stare and shiver, unresponsive.
"I like the whale idea," Ester endorsed.
If that was really the best we could do, then we needed help. I suggested waking up the bard. Hell, we were desperate for a plan. I prodded him gently with my boot.
"So," Kariya regarded the bard, who was slow to rouse, "you a spellcaster? Sorry to wake you."
"Whaddya want?" he growled. "Why are you waking me up? We still on this damn ice?"
Well, that last bit was a pretty gutsy question for a guy who hadn't lifted a finger to get us elsewhere so far. Especially since he was still in range of my boot.
"Yes. So have you got any way of getting us off?" Kariya asked. The creator of the "damn ice" got right to the point with no further discourse on her college years. "Spells?"
"Magic items? Folding boats?" Ester chimed in.
Folding boats?
"Well, I certainly don't have anything like that," Marius replied with a puzzled expression on his face. I guess the "folding boats" thing confused him, too. Where does Ester come up with this stuff?
"Let's just say we're taking stock of our resources," I told the bard.
"I could lift something magically out of the water," Marius replied helpfully.
Kariya raised her eyebrows. "How much weight? And can you be on it? Sorry to ask all these detailed questions, but it's vitally important."
"It won't go anywhere," he elaborated. "It will just go up."
By Azkal's left nut, Old Man, is every bard as divorced from reality as that Temmer guy? I thought maybe if I prodded him
with my boot again, he'd say something useful.
"Well, that is an important detail," Kariya responded diplomatically.
"I'm not sure how that would help," Marius admitted.
Kariya thanked him for mentioning it and began thinking aloud about how to combine it with available material or additional spells. Unfortunately, even the plan to levitate something came back to Canliss being available to tow in whale form. He was entirely unavailable, and the morning was half over already.
While the two of them discussed Marius' ability to levitate something, Rhavin asked me about spells that might protect Nikita from the cold. I could help with the coldness, but that wasn't the same as making her warm, which would be important for her to fully recover. I could do nothing to make her dry. Nikita would have to hang on without much help from us.
"What's going on?" someone yelled from another ice hemisphere. "Haven't they come up with a plan yet?"
"Start paddling!" Kariya shouted back, mostly to give the crew something faintly useful to do besides wait for us to save them.
"I got an oar!" cried one haggard-looking man at the rear of the third bowl, holding it up to show us.
Men began grabbing bits of available scrap wood and paddling. We didn't travel very far, of course, as there was no order to their efforts. We needed to organize them if paddling was to have any result whatsoever, so Rhavin enlisted Brummet's help toward that end. Gradually, they managed to get the men all working together. I suppose there was some barely measurable progress, and the activity kept the men occupied.
Kariya looked at me while the men paddled. "What's causing these waves? Do you know why the waves are churned up like this?"
I shook my head. "No. It can't be natural."
"Obviously. But you were under the water. Is there something down below that's causing it?"
"It's extremely rocky down there, so that would create some turbulence, but this is ridiculous."
Kariya readily agreed with that assessment.
"And not in a perfect circle, which is the way it's charted," I added.
"Which must mean there's something on the island that's causing this," Kariya reasoned. "Maybe if we get a small crew over to the island, we can knock out whatever's causing this."
Now there was an idea, but we had no inkling what that might be or how to put a stop to its effects. Todstein looked about two miles long, much too much area for us to cover, even if we could get over there and knew what we were looking for.
"Time is not on our side," I pointed out.
"I know that," Kariya nodded. "We'll check the ice."
Her immediate determination was that the ice was still quite thick and solid. At least we could rely on that for some hours more. She proposed that we leave the sailors temporarily to explore the island. I wasn't so sure the crew would take our levitating away (pulled along by me or Canliss) in the proper spirit.
"We wouldn't be abandoning them," Kariya protested. It would definitely look that way, though. Would even charismatic Brummet be able to maintain order if we, the people the crew looked to for their preservation, took off regardless of the explanation we gave?
That was about the time Canliss the Seagull flapped down to land at our feet.
"Canliss, what have you got to contribute?" Kariya asked as he shifted shape. "Can we get everybody back over to the boat?"
"I can carry people over," he answered just a bit too loudly. The sailors nearby began cheering again when they heard his confident suggestion.
But he could only carry two or three at a time, which prompted a discussion of who needed to go over to the ship first.
"You and you," Canliss pointed to the two men closest to him while the rest of my friends debated which sailors should go first. "I'm going to pick you up and carry you over there. Don't be afraid."
Far from afraid, the two eagerly nodded. I'm sure they felt warmer and drier already. Canliss changed into a giant bird, causing an unpleasant shift in the lie of the ice hemispheres in the water. The sailors quickly boarded and they were off.
Kariya and Brummet were the next passengers for Canliss. Kariya needed sleep to recover spellcasting ability, and Brummet needed to be available to direct the crew as they reboarded (after all, we had not seen Captain Garvyn since the starfish attack).
Rhavin was already picking up Nikita, ready to pass her to Canliss the Giant Bird, before I'd even heard the flapping of his wings. Canliss took the paladin's suggested passenger and one other while I regarded Marius, still rubbing his eyes and stretching. He hadn't seen the ghosts or experienced the anti-magic zone. He probably didn't even realize we couldn't just sail straight home to Hurva. I pushed that last thought away before I could get upset. Someone was going to have to give him a talking-to before...well, pretty much before things had a chance to get even weirder. I tried to explain things to him as gently as I could.
"What?" He cut me off gruffly before I'd gotten through half of the story. "What are you talking about? It's too early in the morning for this."
His sparkling morning personality did little to hide his obvious opinion that I was out of my mind. Maybe I am, just a little, from the business of the last two months or so, but he doesn't know me well enough to guess that.
I sighed in frustration. "I'm really not the best person to be explaining this."
I gave it another go anyway, since Rhavin was busy keeping order among the sailors clamoring to be Canliss' next passengers. Kariya was already aboard Endurance by now, and Nikita was in her own world.
Marius stared at me, all cynicism and disbelief in those hazel eyes of his.
"You're not absorbing any of this, are you?" I asked.
He pulled out his flask off his belt. "Would you like a drink?"
I think he was hoping I'd make more sense if I had some liquor in me, but I wasn't above taking him up on his offer anyway.
"Oh gods, yes."
I took a long drink from his flask, true refreshment after days of that dreadful rum, and began to think that this Marius character might not be so bad after all.
"Bless you," I smiled and returned his nectar to him. "At any rate, you're not in Hurva, and you can't get there from here."
"Well, if we're not in Hurva, where are we?"
"We're in Ravenloft."
"And why are we floating in big bowls of ice?"
"Because most of you would drown if we weren't." Finally something I could answer concretely.
"How did you get here?" he asked, missing or choosing to ignore the sarcasm.
"Oh, boy, is that a long story," I sighed. To really tell him, I'd have to start in Longbridge.
Before I could give him a real answer, though, he said, "I was off the coast of Hurva when I fell overboard."
So it was true. He was from Hurva.
"What part of Hurva?"
"I think we were near the Barrier Islands."
"What?" I stopped just short of shrieking the question. The Barrier Islands were quite close to Istur. Was there a passage between Ravenloft and Hurva? And so close to Istur? I wasn't sure whether I hoped it was true or not.
"You've got to tell me all about this later," I insisted.
Marius was taken to the ship not long after we concluded this conversation.
Thanks to Canliss' efforts, the ice emptied throughout the course of the day. He used all of his ability to shapeshift for the day, nearly eleven hours, to ferry people over to Endurance. At one point, Canliss made a trip with the coffins. I checked the knots securing the lids before my friend flew away with them. As the day stretched on, it became apparent even to the sailors that some of us would have to stay behind for another night. There were simply too many of us for Canliss to take in one day. Our six-fingered friend was going to be exhausted as it was.
I stayed behind, of course, since I could take the cold better than anyone, but twenty-five sailors also stayed another long night on the ice. Despite some protests from my friends, Rhavin also stayed behind. We persuaded all of the officers to reboard Endurance that day, however. Don't misjudge the officers, Old Man: for all we knew, there was much to do aboard the ship, and we'd had no news of her captain, who seemed to have gone down with her.
Before Canliss ferried Peregrine over, I took a moment to talk with him. I suggested that we'd have to inventory the navigation equipment in the morning, and he nodded. It was obvious, I suppose, but I thought talking business would help him cope with the events of the last twenty-four hours or so. And, let's be honest, I hoped it would help me, too. I encouraged him to hold on while Canliss ferried him over, and watched them fly away. I hoped he had the sense to roll when he hit the deck, since it didn't look like Canliss was landing between trips.
I did my best to buoy up the spirits of the remaining men, but it was a losing battle. No one was happy to be there, thinking of their fellows warm and dry on the ship we could just see in the fading daylight. We settled ourselves into one bowl to stay warm and pulled out the furs. This night, everyone got more fur to curl up into. Rhavin did some calisthenics to try to keep warm, but I just huddled with the sailors under the furs (the boys were as polite about this arrangement as could be expected—they'd all seen me openly kissing an officer a few hours earlier).
I also created plenty of ale and herring. I had to create the ale in one of the now-vacant ice bowls, which at least chilled it nicely. To drink, one person had to be held upside-down by the ankles and essentially dunked into the ale. It became something of a game, and even Rhavin participated. In retrospect, I may have overdone the ale just a tiny bit. Nonetheless, the ale flowed and we sang drinking songs long into the night.
I had just finished my prayers by the time that Canliss returned in the morning for the rest of us. We were all plastered by that time, of course, so some of the boys weren't totally sure that they were seeing a giant bird flying toward them for real.
"I see something!" one of the sailors shouted out and pointed vaguely in Canliss' direction.
"No you don'...you tried tha' one before," Rhavin slurred, his face flush from more than just windburn. Maybe I should have kept more of an eye on Mr. Self-Control, but, honestly, I'd scarcely been in a condition to take care of anyone myself before starting my morning prayers.
Seeing our condition, Canliss decided to capitalize on such a beautiful opportunity. He rolled. He dove. He looped. He made hard turns. All while I cursed up a blue streak, naturally, and Lucky Pete, the sailor accompanying me turned green. He threw up a lot of herring and even more ale between the ice and the ship. Nevertheless, we both arrived on deck unhurt. This despite Canliss' careful aim so I would miss the mattresses laid out on deck to cushion our fall. I had to laugh in spite of myself. The wild ride had been kinda fun. Now that his stomach was empty, even Lucky Pete was laughing between dry heaves.
As soon as I was helped to my feet, I beat a hasty retreat. Nikita would be seeing Rhavin soon, and I didn't want to be
anywhere nearby when that happened.
I was napping in a corner of the cargo hold when Kariya, Marius and Ester came down. Thankfully, Nikita wasn't with them. I was a little concerned about how Rhavin was doing, but I was afraid that asking would be taken as an admission of guilt for not babysitting the paladin better. Instead, I just bid them good morning.
"Canliss retrieved the other body," Kariya gestured toward the coffin nearest her. It had been empty. "If you wouldn't mind doing a little service?"
Naturally, I agreed readily. Without Rhavin's "supervision", it took a sensible amount of time instead of nearly an hour. Marius played a funeral hymn. The bard was quite good, really.
Ester asked to say a few words as I was wrapping up the ceremony, and I encouraged her to go right ahead. I indulge the requests of giantesses with really large weapons whenever it's at all practical.
She cleared her throat and began. "Uh, Jacob was a good cooper, and he was just trying to do his job when the Grabens killed him...so, uh, we're burying you now, Jacob, and those Grabens are going to be in big trouble for what they did to you."
You don't hear a lot of eulogies that end with a threat of violence, but that's our tenderhearted warrior for you.
"Good job, Ester. That was really touching," I patted her on the back. I couldn't quite reach her shoulder when she was standing.
At dinner, Nikita passed out copies of her most recent notes to us. The others asked Rhavin how he was feeling and so forth. He didn't seem any more comfortable with their questions of him than I was. I suppose I should have paid more attention to the amount of ale he'd consumed the night before. In the meantime, Canliss had picked up his dinner and started to walk away from us. His copy of Nikita's notes sat untouched in his usual spot.
"Canliss, where are you going? We need to plan," Nikita called, annoyed. I had the impression that she was even more irritated with him than usual, but the gods only knew why this time.
"Nikita, it's Canliss," I said. I didn't think I needed to elaborate. Asking Canliss to plan is like asking a seagull to pay attention to what it shits on.
"Don't you have a 'hold person' spell?" Rhavin asked. Of course, Nikita and I both did. We'd even used one on Canliss before.
"A 'hold person' spell would be wasted on Canliss. I don't have a 'make listen' spell," I replied.
"Canliss," Rhavin said. "I wish you would stay and listen to what the others have to say."
Canliss sighed and settled onto his space on the bench. "Okay, since you asked."
Nikita informed us that she'd learned we could put the ghosts to rest in the mausoleum on Graben Island. Apparently, Ester had learned from Madeleine that the Grabens took the dead to their estate prior to burial. The ghost claimed that the Grabens robbed them while the bodies were there. Madeleine's ring had been stolen, according to what she'd told Ester. Given those revelations, there was a lot of talk about how to properly bury the bodies to put the ghosts to rest. Canliss began studying at the table about halfway through this conversation. Ester, who is fascinated by Nikita's time pool spell, asked if we should watch one of the bodies being exhumed (she didn't use the word "exhumed"). Actually, it wasn't a bad idea, but Nikita only had one of her most powerful spells left for the day. She had also been thinking of casting a genius spell to find out who cursed the Endurance, so we'd have to pick one or the other for tonight.
I honestly don't recall who brought up the question of whether more than one curse was at work. At the suggestion of secondary and tertiary curses, I put my head down on the table and groaned. It finally became clear: I'd been placed among these adventurers after losing that bet in Istur not because they were doomed to die, but rather because they would theorize and speculate the sanity right out of me. Basil came by, patted me on the back and slipped me a tin cup of rum. The man is unusually wise for a cook, and I blessed him for his kindness.
About that time, Nikita abruptly changed the subject to introduce Marius. She proudly pointed out that he was an innkeeper as well as a bard, although I have no idea why she should care if he was an innkeeper or a pig farmer.
Marius seemed unphased by the fact that none of us had heard of his inn, The Imperial Dragon. He just assumed that we hadn't traveled much outside of Istur. I couldn't help but think that "The Imperial Dragon" was an awfully pretentious name for some backwater cow shed and watering hole, but it did seem to fit Marius' high opinion of himself so far as I could tell.
After the dinner bowls had been cleared away, Marius turned to me. Clearly, he wasn't interested in the ongoing discussion about proper burials.
"So, where did you get that ale that you were drinking last night?" he asked. I'm beginning to suspect that our new friend is something of a lush. I certainly hope so; everyone should have at least one redeeming quality.
"From Jvelto," I answered simply.
"From Jvelto? Would Jvelto be willing to provide more ale?"
I liked where this was going.
"He has been recently."
About that time, Basil happened by.
Seeing Marius, he asked, "Got your rum ration yet, man?"
Of course, if the cook doesn't know for sure that a sailor has had his daily allotment of rum, there's only one answer he's going to get.
"Why no, I haven't," Marius smiled gratefully. For a guy with an inflated ego, he has a truly disarming smile. I wondered how long that would last after he tasted the rum, but I didn't say so.
"You get a rum ration every day," Basil explained as he poured out half a cup, "if you choose to drink it."
"Well, it's rum," Marius replied, taking the proffered cup. "Why would anyone not drink it?"
The bard took a sip and suppressed a sour face. I decided that was my cue to fill Basil's tubs and pots with ale. I quietly got up and started casting the spell, to the delight of the cook and the bard. The rich ale had barely finished welling up in the tub closest to Basil when he dipped his cup into it.
"May I partake of your ale, young lady?" Marius asked. I guess he could be polite when alcohol was at stake.
The three of us stood around the tubs, savoring the ale and talking amongst ourselves. I sighed and started to relax.
"Jven?" I heard Nikita call from behind. "Can you make us some water?"
"Sure," I replied. "But what about the water I created before?"
That meant they'd settled on the time pool spell instead of the genius spell. So much for relaxation. Who knew they'd be ready to do something so soon after dinner?
We all filed out of the galley and arranged ourselves around the barrel. Once we were all settled, Nikita asked to see the theft of Madeleine's ring. The emerging scene was of Madeleine's corpse, laid out in a richly furnished bedroom. Madeleine, laying on a four-posted bed, was surrounded by unfamiliar men. The men were talking amongst themselves. One man, perhaps in his late fifties, twisted a ring off of Madeleine's stiff finger, then checked for other jewelry. He looked a bit like Horst. Evidently satisfied that he hadn't missed something of value, he left the room. He walked down the hall, past doors and tables full of odd, expensive-looking little knick-knacks. How can people live with all that clutter? I glanced up at Nikita without thinking.
The man entered another room, approached a landscape painting in a gilded frame. He reached behind the frame, and we heard a soft click before he swung the painting away to reveal a wall safe. He opened the safe with a key. He took a black pouch from the back of the safe, dropped the rings in, and closed up the safe. Our last image was of this person returning the painting to its prior position.
As the scene faded, our group erupted in a torrent of chatter. So, it was true that the Grabens were taking things from the dead. But why? And were those items needed to put the ghosts to rest? The only thing that seemed clear is that we needed to look over Todstein Island while we were here, and we'd known that before the time pool spell.
"What are you all looking at?" Jacob demanded. I startled. I suppose that the sound of footfalls requires a corporeal form, but I wish the ghosts wouldn't just appear like that.
"Jacob! Madeleine!" Ester grinned. She's always happy to see the dead, even though Jacob is rude and Madeleine is loud and thick as tar in winter.
"We've been talking," Jacob announced.
"And? What have you come up with?" Kariya asked cautiously.
"And we want to help you," he replied.
"That would be wonderful," Canliss said politely. I wasn't so sure "wonderful" was the word I'd pick. We still didn't know for sure we could trust what the ghosts were telling us. Now wasn't the time to say so, though.
"Oh, not again," Marius groaned. I took a long look at him before deciding that he was handling exposure to the ghosts. I didn't like to think about my initial reactions to the ghosts. Fortunately, I could smell enough ale on his breath to figure he'd be fine.
"How are you planning to help us?" Nikita asked.
"We've decided that we want revenge," Jacob replied firmly. "We don't just want to be at rest."
I wasn't the only one who groaned at that. Madeleine was nodding silently, but she seemed to hesitate just a little. Was Jacob pushing her into this?
"We want to make sure that justice is served," Rhavin replied diplomatically.
"Yes," Kariya affirmed. "We will do this for justice."
I still didn't like the way this was going.
"Did you think about where you wanted to be buried? We asked you to think about that before," Nikita changed the subject.
"Yes," Jacob answered. "I don't want to go to the mausoleum."
Because that would be too easy. I must have said that out loud because Canliss looked over at me before returning his attention to the ghosts.
"Why don't you want to go to the mausoleum?" our six-fingered mage asked.
"That's not where I was supposed to be," he told us.
"It's just not right," Madeleine finally spoke. "All those...our families were there."
"And you want to be buried with your families," Canliss finished for her. Given the blonde ghost's history of getting stuck on a particular point, I couldn't blame him for trying to speed up the process of communicating with her.
"But they're not there," Madeleine went on. "That's not the point."
There was a point? Please, merciful pantheon, let her come to it.
"That's where everyone's supposed to be," Madeleine concluded. I think she meant that she wanted to be buried in her family plot rather than the mausoleum, which is reasonable, I guess.
"Have your families been moved to the mausoleum as well?" Kariya asked. The ghosts looked at each other wordlessly. It
was as if some communication was passing between them. Very creepy, and certainly not inspiring our trust.
"We're not sure," Jacob answered for them.
"I think they dug up everybody, but I don't know for sure," Madeleine spoke up.
"Madeleine, can I ask you a question?" Nikita asked, then waited for Madeleine to nod. "That ring they stole from you--do you want us to get back and bury you with it? Is that important to you?"
"Would that be petty?" Madeleine asked softly.
Nikita and the giantess both answered that it wasn't petty.
"Was it special to you?" Nikita asked gently.
"It was my engagement ring," Madeleine replied sadly.
I groaned. "We had to ask."
"Jacob, was anything stolen from you?" Kariya asked with a sigh. I guess we couldn't leave him out if we were adding more to our "to-do" list.
"Oh, who the hell cares? I just want them to pay."
"But things like that matter-" Madeleine sobbed.
"No they don't!" Jacob cut her off. "No they don't!"
"YES THEY DOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" Madeleine wailed. There was the ghost we knew.
Jacob and Ester had some sort of exchange that I couldn't hear over the wailing. He walked right through the other ghost, still wailing, to finish saying something to Ester.
Jacob faded away with a frustrated look on his face. The others were yelling some kind of question to Madeleine, but I suspected that any remaining chance at meaningful conversation with the ghosts had disappeared with Jacob. Given that, I might as well have some ale, right? I hoped there was some left.
By the time I returned with my tin cup brimming, Madeleine had faded away, too.
"Have to remember--one question at a time," Kariya was chastising herself.
"You have to speak slowly and use small words," I took a swig of ale. "Even in the afterlife, she's still blonde."
A look of realization crossed Ester's face. It looked horribly out of place there. "Hey, we haven't seen Charlotte for a while."
At that, Nikita got up and looked in Charlotte's usual spot in the cargo hold. She was sleeping peacefully, Clara snuggled close to her.
“She doesn't need us anymore,” Nikita whispered to herself.
Canliss comforted her. “We're doing good things here.”
There was a shuffle behind me as pale Marius got to his feet and made for the stairs. He looked a bit unsteady for climbing steps. I thought someone should help him.
“Whoa, Marius!” I got up, too, ready to support him as needed. “Slow down.”
When the bard and I left, Nikita was holding vigil over Charlotte's sleeping form, and Rhavin was watching Nikita. I could tell he was worried about her—they've been such good friends to each other, and her nightmares are troubling both of them.
Under different circumstances, I wouldn't have thought that taking Marius back to the galley for ale was such a great idea. However, his inebriated state had definitely helped him accept the presence of Jacob and Madeleine. In my professional opinion, he just needed another cup or so of ale to help him cope with having seen Charlotte. With that in mind, plus the fact that he weighs easily twice as much as I do, I allowed him to stagger toward the ale in Basil's tubs.
Even though I'd made less of it than before, there was still plenty of fine, smooth ale waiting for us when we arrived. Basil hadn't spread the word that there was an alternative to rum to be had, and he was sitting near the ale with the satisfied glow of one who was becoming pleasantly drunk. Ester arrived sometime later, and the four of us sat together, drinking.
The next morning, we gathered at the longboat for the trip ashore. Yes, Old Man, the same longboat that had been smashed to bits during the starfish attack: I don't get it either, so don't ask. The damn thing was as close to seaworthy as it had been before the last time we'd been in it, which wasn't saying much. Stubbs and the usual boys, oars in hand, had been waiting for us to finish breakfast.
Marius accompanied us, looking none too happy about being awake. I thought about how much ale he'd put away the night before and wondered if he might not be the tiniest little bit hung over. I thought about asking, but he looked like he'd rather be alone with his pounding head.
Ester and Rhavin had each donned their armor for the trip to Todstein. Canliss had mentioned that he'd heard the howling of wolves when he spent the night on the island (while the rest of us were on Kariya's ice hemispheres), but somehow I thought our warrior-types wanted to be ready for more sinister encounters than just the usual woodland fauna.
“Canliss?” Rhavin turned to the mage as we set out. “You slept on the island; therefore you were able to cast spells on the island?”
Canliss confirmed that magic had worked for him while on the island.
“Just checking,” the paladin nodded grimly.
“Stop making so much noise, dammit!” Marius groaned. He'd been trying unsuccessfully to let the waves lull him back to sleep.
We asked the sailors to keep an eye out for us, but Canliss also explained that they should expect whoever was taking a shift in the crow's nest to hear his voice asking to be picked up.
“Wow…okay,” said Stubbs, astonished at Canliss' explanation of the whispering wind spell. Nikita hastened to add that the boys should tell the man keeping watch in the crow's nest what to expect.
The boys wasted no time getting back to the ship after leaving us on Todstein's chilly beach. It made me wonder what the crew had experienced of Todstein, and put me in mind that some of these men were the same who had panicked and dumped the bodies in the first place.
Nikita looked miserable on the beach. The dismal, rocky beach was a far cry from the sunny illusion we'd all experienced before the unpleasant reality of Sailor's End. Canliss had pulled on his fur cloak tight as the wind came up from the sea. The cloak had to be worth a fortune.
“Blade of steel,” Ester commanded Hilt as she scanned our surroundings for movement. I followed the giantess' gaze up a steep path that wound into the snow-covered trees.
Kariya noticed some rabbit holes, plus some tracks suggestive of wolf or fox. A snowy owl slept in a tree as we wound past it on the trail. Judging by the few places where the branches had been hacked away from the trail, someone attempted to maintain it…sort of. I got the impression that the absence of significant underbrush had more to do with the thick canopy of pine needles choking off the weak sunlight than any serious attempt to clear the path.
As we approached the top, the snow became noticeably deeper. I caught only occasional glimpses of the sea through the snow-covered pines. We were clearly above the level of Endurance's mizzenmast.
“I found something,” Kariya called from up ahead. She started digging out something.
The mage had found a purple pouch, the contents of which she spilled out into the snow. It contained small wooden carvings, clearly meant to represent people. When we gathered around her for a closer look, we saw an especially large one with a big stick, another painted in purple and gold, another in black from head to toe, and still another with painted red hair…one for each of us, including Marius.
“That's really upsetting,” I said, suddenly feeling very exposed.
Canliss asked for the one resembling him, but Kariya allowed as how she didn't think we should handle them any more than necessary. The two mages used a gather cantrip to put them all back into the pouch, which Kariya drew shut with a disturbed look on her face.
“So what do you make of those?” I asked her.
“I don't know,” she replied grimly.
In the meantime, Nikita had stepped over to the exact spot where Kariya had found the figures and begun casting. She seemed to finish the spell, but then she suddenly paled and sank to her knees, crying out. Naturally, we all helped her up and asked her what happened, but she snapped at us, making it clear that she didn't want to discuss it. The rest of us exchanged looks at let it drop. Rhavin would find out what had happened eventually.
If we hadn't already been on edge, Nikita's reaction to whatever she'd cast would have certainly put us on guard. As it was, we were all more wary, pressing our exploration of the island forward to have done with it before nightfall. We encountered nothing, although we did hear some howling of wolves.
At the top of the hill, the trail widened into a small clearing, just open enough to make two mausoleum buildings visible. They were essentially identical—at least, they were to me. I don't notice the details of architecture the way Nikita and Canliss do.
“I could scout out the area,” Canliss suggested. No wandering off? He must have been feeling a bit uneasy to stick around to talk.
Rhavin nodded. “That is a good idea. Be careful, and tell us what you see.”
At that, he cast invisibility on himself and polymorphed (we heard wings flapping). Moments later, one sturdy-looking pine bough bobbed up and down, sending all its snow crashing to the ground. I laughed in spite of the tension surrounding this place: that invisibility spell had certainly been put to good use so far.
Kariya was also unimpressed, but she wasn't half so amused as I was by Canliss' scouting skills. She called out a suggestion, pointedly in his direction, that he shift into something of a more sensible size. He must have decided she was right because the branch he leapt into next shook much less.
While he was looking around, Kariya motioned us together to tell us what she'd seen when she touched the wooden figure representing Canliss.
“Someone was asking Canliss if he'd slipped the potion into ´their' drinks, and Canliss said ´yes',” she revealed in a hushed tone.
Everyone frowned at that. Canliss does some things of questionable wisdom, but he'd never deliberately hurt any of us. None of us believed that was true.
“Do you think you were seeing the future?” I asked doubtfully.
I was pleased when she answered with a firm, “No.”
“I agree,” said Rhavin. “Someone is trying to divide us.”
“We need to find out what those things are,” Nikita put in nervously.
Kariya looked around at all of us. “Don't say anything to Canliss.”
When Canliss returned, he reported nothing unusual, which I supposed meant we were going to have to approach the mausoleums after all. Two large, masculine statues stood guard on either side of the enormous, frost-covered doors. Reflexively, I cast the spell to detect traps in the direction of the doors and statues. No traps, but the frost on the doors reformed as fast as Rhavin and Nikita wiped it away.
“That is not natural,” Rhavin stated with certainty. No one contested his opinion.
That was about the time that Kariya mentioned that Brummet hadn't actually said anything about how to get into the mausoleum.
“You'd think he would have mentioned that we needed a key to get in,” she rolled her eyes.
Ester shrugged dismissively. “He's just a pretty boy.”
Canliss volunteered to fly back for instructions on how to enter the mausoleum. The rest of us paced and tried to keep warm in the meantime. Marius pulled the flask off his belt. Nikita, typical Torodinite, does not bear boredom well, particularly if there is something of interest in the area. She cast “detect magic” while we waited for the mage to fly back.
The doors and the statues glowed, so Nikita then tried to dispel the magic. The frost disappeared with a shimmer in the fading afternoon light. For a moment, we could plainly see three rows of identical symbols. Then they disappeared, leaving us to try to recall what they were.
“Cool!” Ester exclaimed.
“A skull, a snowflake, a fanged bird…” Nikita counted on her fingers. A fanged bird? I didn't see that. I had seen a tree and a skeletal hand. There had also been an eye, a quill, a crescent moon, flames and a sun, if our collective recall was good.
Ester touched the doors, discovering that the frost would briefly disappear with contact. She made a game of touching the frost in different places until we asked her to stop. We knew the doors were magical, and we didn't want her to set off a trap. I couldn't help but think of the last time she'd touched a magical door, in Firestorm Peak. The memory of that portal's blackness creeping up Ester's arm made me shudder.
Rhavin watched the statues throughout all this, as if he thought they might attack us. That must sound preposterous, but given some of the things I've seen in the last few months, I didn't blame him for being a tiny bit paranoid about magical stuff.
We discussed the wooden figures for a bit. Everyone seemed to agree that they'd been left for us to find. We had kept them, in Kariya's careful charge, for lack of a better, safer alternative. Nikita detected magic, and in the process learned that they had some sort of divination powers. Were they used to spy on us? Divination implies use to find information, not to disseminate misinformation, like the idea of Canliss poisoning us. The logical follow-up question to that was who would spy on us? It wasn't clear that the Grabens knew we were here or cared.
About that time, Canliss returned with notes onto which Brummet had scrawled his instructions. We had to touch the eye and the moon on the second row, the hand and the flames on the first row, and the skull and the feather on the third row. At least, that was the code last time Brummet had been here—it was changed periodically. They'd been warned that “something bad” would happen if the symbols were pressed in the wrong order. Given the magical glow of the doors and the statues, I could have told you that, Old Man. Hardly enough information to prepare for the “bad” thing to happen, but we touched the symbols anyway.
The doors slid open into silent, empty-feeling darkness. Somehow, the mausoleum felt bigger on the inside, but I think that was the effect of so many rows of vaults. Instead of names, the doors of the vaults were carved with symbols. With the doors open behind us, the wind howled in, striking the unyielding walls.
“How did Brummet know where to put the bodies?” I asked.
“He said that the names appeared on the doors,” answered Canliss.
We had little more we could do here, given our current information. We left this building to explore the other, but learned nothing new for our efforts. Disheartened by a long trip to learn so little, we trudged back down toward the beach to await the longboat's arrival.
“So, we're not going to bury them here?” Kariya asked, trying to set a plan straight in her head.
“The problem now is, we can bury them here, but we just used the combination that opens the door,” Rhavin tried to clarify. “We know the combination changes each time.”
“We need the ring, though,” Kariya replied, referring to Madeleine's engagement ring.
“They said they didn't want to be buried here,” Nikita put in.
I couldn't blame the ghosts now that I'd seen Todstein Island firsthand. That mausoleum was seriously creepy: what kind of person covered a charnel house with magical frost and posted magical statues as guards? And for what purpose? Inconvenient as the ghosts' request to be buried in their family plots was, we had no concrete evidence that we shouldn't honor it.
The question of whether or not we should bury the bodies here was, as Rhavin had been trying to point out, made irrelevant by the fact that we couldn't get back into the mausoleum anyhow. Well, not without setting off whatever “something bad” referred to in Brummet's warning.
While Rhavin was making this point, Ester had focused on the promise to recover Madeleine's ring. She wondered if that was going to be all we had to recover for the reburials.
“Jacob didn't want anything,” Rhavin reminded her.
“Except revenge,” I rolled my eyes. I had a feeling we were going to get mighty sick of hearing the “r” word from the ghosts.
“Which reminds me,” Nikita turned to Ester. “We all want to help the ghosts, but I think we should be careful about making
promises to them.”
Kariya and Rhavin firmly agreed. The giantess still didn't look too sure, but she had always respected their judgment in the past. I thought she'd probably go along with their assessment despite her obvious attachment to the three ghosts.
“We shouldn't promise anything until…” Nikita started, but Ester cut her off.
“Well, we're going to get the people who got them,” the giantess straightened up and set her jaw.
Kariya tried to settle Ester down. “Well, we don't know that.”
“We don't know who those people are,” Nikita added.
“But, you promised them that we would,” Kariya turned her face up to look Ester in the eye.
The giantess nodded. “Get the people who got them. Of course we're going to get them.”
We all looked at each other. Ester had actually promised to “get the Grabens,” which wasn't necessarily the same thing.
“I don't think we should make any more promises to the ghosts,” Nikita reemphasized, looking frustrated.
Ester took on the familiar look of confusion. “What other promises do we need?”
Kariya and I sighed simultaneously. Explaining the hard stuff to Ester usually fell to Nikita, Kariya or Rhavin. I wasn't good at it, and I wasn't about to jump in now. The others decided to let it go for now.
“So,” Kariya looked around at us. “we have to sail the ship out of here, huh?”
“We could always sink it again,” Ester suggested helpfully.
Rhavin considered Kariya's supposition for a moment. “Did they always sail through the waves? They made it to the island before. I don't understand.”
“I don't know, actually,” Kariya replied. Then she looked over at me. “We should talk to Peregrine.”
We meaning “me,” not that I was complaining about talking to my handsome friend. I nodded and said, “I'll discuss it with Peregrine and find out how they made it in and out.”
“Maybe there's a way to calm the waves,” Kariya speculated.
I shrugged. My range for calming waves was far too limited for the kind of control needed. “Don't look at me.”
“Peregrine might know some secret way or angle they have to approach…?” Kariya went on.
“That reminds me, Jven,” Nikita turned to me as we reached the cold beach. “There was something else I was hoping you could ask Peregrine. Do you remember how that one time the ghosts appeared and they couldn't speak to us, and when we asked them about it later, they didn't remember? I'm wondering if maybe when we're in different realms the ghosts have different levels of abilities to communicate with us, or perhaps they're even being controlled by someone?”
“Yes,” Rhavin nodded. I did remember that—how could one forget Madeleine's single totally silent appearance?
Kariya said, “Is that something that shows up on the maps? Maybe they know where the different realms are?”
I thought about it for a moment before I answered. “Well, there isn't any obvious marking on the charts I've seen, but maybe we can all put our heads together and see if we can't figure it out.”
Some part of me questioned the wisdom of bringing two beautiful women with me to Peregrine's cabin, but I pushed the thought aside. Now was hardly the time to nurse my insecurities.
Kariya readily agreed that we should work together, but Nikita said, “I think Jven and Peregrine are really the only ones who are going to understand the charts.”
Hopeless romantic that my Torodinite friend is, I think her motivation for that comment was to maximize the amount of time Peregrine and I spent alone together. Nikita knew damn well that she and Kariya didn't have to be able to read the charts for them to contribute with regard to the ghosts' behavior.
“Look at the charts carefully, keeping in mind that we might be crossing realms,” Kariya advised me.
“Well,” I replied, “that suspicion has been longstanding—pretty much since we boarded—but the real question is how does it relate to the behavior of the ghosts? That we're going to need help for. My memory is not quite as precise as yours.”
I looked over at Nikita specifically for the last bit. She was the one who was compulsive about recording everything in her journal, including, I suspected, which days the ghosts behaved in one way versus another.
“Oh, I can give you a list of which days the ghosts were here, and what they said to us, how they behaved…” Nikita was already mentally compiling this list while we waited for the longboat's arrival. “Rhavin, could you help me with that when we get back?”
About that time, Stubbs and the boys were pulling the longboat onto the beach so we could board easily. Once we had all piled into that sorry vessel, we shoved off and headed for Endurance, the other sorry vessel in our lives.
I looked back at Todstein Island as we rowed away. Despite its relatively small size, it seemed to loom large nonetheless. Perhaps it was the effect of the dark cliffs, but somehow the island seemed foreboding, daring us to return.
Bah! My imagination. Ravenloft is taking its toll on me, and if I'm not careful, I'll end up as crazy as that Temmer Longfellow. Pray for me, Old Man, and I'll try not to become so paranoid that I believe islands are out to get me.
Drink deeply,
Jven