The Lost Library of Cormanthy - Mel Odom [2]
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 great-grandfather, 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