Robyn spoke softly, but all of those at the table looked furtively toward her as she spoke. All except Newt, that is, who took the opportunity to steal another, and then a third sip from Tristan's mug. The red-haired woman licked her lips, while the others stared with expressions of apprehension or disbelief.
Grunnarch frowned. "Why should one of the Dark Gods desire the Moonshaes when there are rich empires?Calimshan, Thay, Waterdeep梐ll across the Realms? What do we have here?"
Robyn bit her tongue, holding back an angry reply. She realized that he really did not understand. "These islands have a life of their own! Perhaps that is one reason our people make war on each other with such regularity. The Ffolk have always felt that the men of the north do not treat our land with the reverence it deserves."
She suddenly leaned against the table, wincing in discom-
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fort, and Tristan took hold of her arm. Unnoticed by them all, the red-haired woman smiled and stared intently at the dniid.
"What is it?" Tristan asked. "Are you all right?"
Quickly she shook off his hand, sat upright, and continued. "The Moonwells are the proof. Genna toJd me that when her grandmother was a girl, there was a Moonwell in every village of the isles. Druids by the hundreds patrolled the wild places, working the will of the goddess."
"Indeed," agreed Friar Nolan. "These isles have a peculiarly sacred nature, obvious to those of us who worship the new gods, as well as to the druids. Remember, not all of these gods are of the same vein as the master of this evil. Many of these clerics, as you, regard the Moonwells as benign and sanctified places."
"But there are no Moonwells on Norland!" protested the Red King, and then he looked thoughtful.
"Precisely! And as the faith of the people wanes, as more of the lands are taken from the Ffolk, the power of the goddess grows weaker." Suddenly Robyn shook her head violently, and the color drained from her face.
"But the enchantment of the land remains?"
"Yes. And becomes more susceptible to corruption with each passing year, each new blow against . . . the Ffolk." Robyn was trying hard not to state her points accusingly, but she was only partially succeeding. She had trouble speaking the words clearly, and an acute nausea grew within her. All the while, the strange woman stared at her, piercing the druid's skin with those cold black eyes.
"But the land is here, like all other lands, for the using!" argued Grunnarch.
"The using, yes, but not the abuse or destruction! It is when humans destroy that which supports them that the goddess suffers most keenly."
"You, like your king, are wise beyond your years," mused the northman. "I do not like the thought that my people are responsible for bringing this evil to the land."
"Perhaps you can help us to remove it." Tristan spoke earnestly, staring his guest in the face.
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"I owe you my life. Ask what you will. If it is in my power to give, you shall have it."
"For now, I'll be happy to have your friendship," Tristan said warmly. "Let's toast: To peace between us, and between our children!" Both kings raised their mugs and drank deeply, thumping them back to the tabletop at the same instant. THstan realized, suppressing a belch, that he had had a lot to drink.
"Time for some dancing!" proclaimed lavish suddenly. She rose and unstrapped her lute, checking the tuning of a few errant strings. Eager Ffolk pushed some of the tables aside, and Tristan turned to Robyn, ready to kick up his feet. She shook her head in confusion, and he leaned over toward her, again concerned.
"I'm sorry," she said weakly. "I'm not feeling well at all. I think I'd better go to bed."
He offered to walk her to her room, but she declined. "Well, wake me at first light," he offered. "We'll ride at dawn."
She looked at him skeptically. "I'll wake you then," she said with a laugh, "but you'll surprise me if we leave before mid-morning!" With a forced smile, she left the hall.
Tristan turned back to the table and bumped someone who had not been there a moment earlier. With surprise, he saw the red-haired woman wiping the contents of a spilled mug from her apron.
"Excuse me," he said. "Let me?
"That's all right," she interrupted. She smiled at him, a rich, glowing look that caused his blood to race. He had not noticed earlier just how attractive she was.
"Sit here," he said, not knowing why he offered the seat Robyn had just vacated. "Move, Newt." He pushed the faerie dragon aside, and Newt, with an indignant "Hmph!" disappeared.
The woman handed him another mug as he sat heavily beside her. He stared at her mutely as Ffolk throughout the hall rose to dance to the strains of Tavish's lute. Something very appealing, and a little wicked, gleamed at him from her eyes.
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"You are a very handsome king," she said quietly. Her voice was soft and husky.
His head swirled, and lust rose unbidden within him. Her hand fell softly on his leg, and the pressure of her fingers burned into his flesh.
"Who are you?" He realized as he asked the Question that her answer would mean nothing to him. It didn't matter who she was. He did know that he wanted her with a physical yearning beyond anything he had ever felt.
Tristan was unaware, or chose to ignore, the uncomfortable looks of Pawldo and Randolph as his two friends cast sideways glances at their king. He took no note of Pontswain's sneer, nor even of the hot anger burning in Daryth's eyes. The Calishite glowered at the girl, but she squeezed the king's thigh more tightly.
Abruptly she stood and swirled away from the table, her loose gown flowing around the full contours of her body. Tristan stumbled to his feet as she slipped away. A desperate fear rose within him梙e mustn't let her get away.
"Sire?" came the call from behind him in Daryth's strained voice.
Friar Nolan stood and laid a restraining hand upon Tristan's arm, but the king angrily shook it off. The cleric shrank back into his chair under the intensity of Tristan's blazing stare.
But then the king had eyes only for the luscious creature that slid sinuously across the great room. She passed through the door, into a darkened hallway. He followed behind, eagerly hurrying to her side, but she twisted away and dashed up the stairs to the royal living quarters. Tripping on the first step, he regained his balance and followed her.
Somehow she found his bedchamber, and he followed her inside, pulling the door shut with a slam behind him. Her robe fell away, and the sight of her nakedness took his breath from him. He lunged toward her and they fell across the huge bed, his own tunic falling, unnoticed, around his ankles.
Desire took hold of his brain, giving him clear focus and
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strong purpose. Nothing could be more important than this warm, wanton woman beneath him.
Newt looked blearily at Tristan and Robyn from his invisible position next to a recently full pitcher of ale. Suppressing a belch, he squinted. What was wrong?
That wasn't Robyn! Sitting up in shock, the little dragon watched the woman梩hat floozy!條ead the unfortunate Tristan toward the door. This wasn't right, wasn't right at all! Where did Robyn go? What did that awful creature have in mind for his friend?
"I'll save him!" he vowed, blinking again. Already his mind whirled with illusions he could use, perhaps a nest of snakes in her hair, or a great, fat wart, right on her?
But he couldn't let them get away. Already the door was closing behind them. Newt sprang into the air, wings humming. But wait! His head was spinning uncontrollably from the effects of the ale. And what was wrong with his wings? Why were they flying him in this direction? And where had that great, looming pillar come from梩he one right in front of his nose.
No one in the hall heard the tiny thunk as the dragon crashed, and Newt knew only blackness as he fell lightly to the floor
Once behind the solid oaken door to her room, Robyn began to feel better almost immediately. The sudden queasi-ness passed, and she decided it must have been a combination of excitement and too much food and wine. She lay on her familiar down mattress and dwelled for a moment on her glowing pride in Tristan.
He made a splendid figure of a king! She had always sensed a great destiny before him, but now she began to see it take form. Would that he could end the centuries of strife between northmen and Ffolk! And after that accomplishment, where would he go next?
She hoped, very deeply, that she would be able to share
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that pride and progress with him, that they could have children and grandchildren who would see that legacy live on after them. And with him at her side, she felt confident that they could conquer the evil cleric and his legions in Myrloch Vale.
Suddenly she sat up, thinking of the celebration in the hall below. Her illness had passed. There was no reason she shouldn't go back and enjoy herself. And Tristan had been disappointed, she could tell, when she had left. She felt a twinge of guilt, knowing how important this homecoming was to him. There was no reason why they shouldn't have a night of enjoyment before embarking upon their quest. And she really did enjoy dancing.
She went downstairs and saw with surprise that Tristan was not there. Daryth left the party, too, as soon as he saw her come through the door. She thought he looked angry. Pawldo and Randolph didn't seem to know where the king had gone, though their answers when she questioned them seemed forced.
Perhaps he had been taken ill also. Could they have shared a piece of spoiled food? Concerned, she started back up the stairs. The first thing to do, she decided, was check his room.
Tristan didn't notice the door swing open behind him, but the sudden wash of torchlight broke his concentration. Robyn's voice, as if from a great distance away, reached him.
"Tristan? What's wrong? What?
And then he was cold sober as he turned to stare into the druid's shocked face. Robyn slowly lowered the torch, her mouth hanging slack in astonishment. The yellow flames reflected vast depths of pain in her green eyes. He tried to sit, but the tunic betrayed him and he sprawled across the woman, who laughed in delight.
And then the door to the room slammed shut with a force that shook the stones of the castle and sent its echoes reverberating through the long, empty passages of his heart.
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Shapes slipped past overhead, dark green against the purple of the sea. The stream of bodies continued for many minutes, sinuous forms swimming easily through the depths, dark and scaly and silent, always silent. Ysalla stared upward all the while, watching the army gather above her. Her mouth gaped slightly and her forked tongue darted, unnoticed by her, back and forth from her maw.
The force gathered like a cloud in the sea, blocking the scant sunlight that penetrated this far down and surrounding Ysalla with a welcome darkness. The throbbing power of the Deepsong filled the sea around her and brought a fierce joy to her soul.
Below her, along the floor of the vast undersea canyon, another army gathered. This was a plodding, methodical force, lacking the speed and grace of the swimming sahuagin, but it offered its own terrors to any foe.
For the second army was a force made up entirely of death. The shambling corpses, animated by the dark power of her faith, dumbly awaited a command.
Her command.
Ysalla was a cleric of Bhaal, in her own way as powerful as Hobarth. However, while the human Hobarth presided over a domain of air and land and light, Ysalla practiced her craft in the dark, chill regions below the surface of the sea.
As Keeper of the Eggs, she ruled her scaly congregation together with Sythissal, the king. Her priestesses梱ellow, sleek creatures, as opposed to the sturdy green warriors that made up most of her kind梕nforced the will of Bhaal as that will was made known to their mistress.
Now Ysalla and Sythissal had assembled an army more vast than any in the memory of the Deepdwellers. Beside the legions of fierce sahuagin warriors at their command fought the dead of (he sea梥ailors who had drowned in the oceans of the Moonshae and had been animated by the power of Bhaal to serve as mindless servants of evil. And now, too, they had the remnants of the army of the Black Wizard. These troops, humans mostly, but also the dead
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remnants of the Ogre Brigade, marched beside the dead of the sea in answer to Ysalla's command.
And over them all swam the sleek legions of sahuagin, ready to burst forth from the surf to lay waste to the lands of northmen and Ffolk alike. They awaited but the command to march.
Summoned by the thrumming cadence of the Deepsong, the army massed in the city of Kressilacc, deep beneath the narrow realm of men. They huddled among the towers and domes of the vast city on the bottom of the sea, gathering force and ferocity from the song.
Tb the east, they had suffered rebuff and loss against the skill of the new king and the might of the Earthmother. Ysalla sensed that the goddess was not the threat she had been, and the new king was now a hated enemy. The king gave focus to BhaaPs hatred, in a new direction, and so he directed his priestess toward the west.
Tbward Corwell.
Ysalla keened sharply from her temple, high on the canyon wall of Kressilacc, summoning her priestesses to the sword. Sythissal called his legions together, and they started on the march to the west. Propelled by the command of Bhaal, they would march to land and lay waste to all the settlements of man they found there. Northmen or Ffolk, it mattered not梩he Claws of the Deep would slay regardless.
The god of murder dangled a tempting prize before them. Should they slay the humans along the shore and destroy the ports of Gwynneth, Bhaal would reward them in a way Ysalla could only dream about.
For if they emerged victorious, Bhaal had promised to sink the island. Gwynneth, and the kingdom of Corwell itself, would fall beneath the waves, to become the permanent realm of the sahuagin.
The Earthmother had reigned over the Moonshae Islands far longer than any of the men who had made their homes there. Even the graceful Uewyrr, the elves who had once claimed the islands as their own, had come to a land where
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(he goddess already ruled unchallenged.
In those decades and centuries, she had witnessed the birth of creatures misformed by genetic accident. She had beheld the cruel ravages of disease, often deforming and crippling the animals that roamed her lands. All too often, she had been forced to bear the scars of war, the cruelest of such crimes for it was the most avoidable. Her forests had burned; whole villages had fallen to the sword, or the axe, or the fiery magic of evil sorcery.
