The Harbor in the Mist

Deacon woke with dead voices in his head.

He sat upright before he knew where he was, one hand already reaching toward the weapon beside his bunk. For several breaths the cramped cabin of the Wind Dancer refused to replace the dream. He could still feel the presence of figures gathered just beyond sight, their words overlapping in a language he could not understand.

They had not been attacking him.

That was what troubled him.

They had been trying to tell him something.

Deacon rubbed a hand across his face and listened to the ship around him. Timber creaked with the slow rhythm of the sea. Water moved along the hull. Somewhere above, a sailor crossed the deck with the measured tread of someone accustomed to keeping quiet while others slept.

Normal sounds.

The dream remained.

He had known ordinary nightmares. After enough years, a man learned the difference between memory and imagination. He knew the dreams that came from old blood and old places, the ones that left Ashlyn burning somewhere behind his eyes no matter how many years separated him from it.

This had not been one of those.

These spirits were strangers.

Deacon swung his legs to the floor.

Across the narrow passage, Xil's door was closed.

The cleric was the obvious person to ask about dead people who refused to explain themselves properly.

Deacon knocked once.

No answer.

He knocked again.

“Xil.”

A pause.

Then movement.

The door opened far enough for a pair of pale eyes to regard him from the darkness. Xil's white hair hung loose around his shoulders, making him look more drow than he usually allowed himself to appear around strangers.

“What happened?”

Deacon leaned against the frame.

“I had a dream.”

Xil waited.

“That expression is unnecessary.”

“You woke me because you had a dream.”

“There were spirits.”

The irritation left Xil's face.

Deacon explained what he could. Shapes without features. Voices without words. A sense not of threat but urgency, as though they were trying to reach him across some distance neither side knew how to cross.

Xil listened without interrupting.

When Deacon finished, the cleric looked past him toward the dark passage.

“Did you recognize any of them?”

“No.”

“The language?”

“No.”

“Anything about where you were?”

Deacon shook his head.

Xil considered.

“You could go back to sleep.”

Deacon stared at him.

“I woke you for that?”

“If they are trying to reach you through dreams, they may try again.”

“And if they aren't?”

“Then you get more sleep.”

Deacon disliked how sensible that was.

He was about to answer when something struck the side of the ship.

Not hard.

A dull thump somewhere above and to starboard.

Both men stopped.

A second impact followed.

Then another.

Deacon reached for his crossbow.

Xil was already moving.

They came into the passage together, barefoot and half dressed, listening as something scraped against the outer hull.

Not waves.

Claws.

Deacon looked toward the ladder leading to the deck.

“Wake the others.”

Xil opened his mouth.

The first scream came from above.

That did it for them.

Deacon climbed.

Cold air struck him as he emerged onto the deck.

The night was moonless, though patches of starlight broke through the cloud cover. The sea had darkened to a moving black plain around them.

Shapes were climbing out of it.

One vaulted the rail less than twenty feet away.

The creature landed low, water streaming from scaled limbs. It was roughly man-shaped but built for a world without roads or dry ground: slick hide, webbed extremities, wide jaws and eyes that reflected what little light reached them.

Another appeared at the opposite rail.

Then another.

“Sahuagin,” someone shouted.

Deacon had heard the name.

He had never particularly wanted to meet one.

The first charged a crewman near the wheel.

Deacon fired before it reached him.

The bolt struck high in the creature's side. It twisted, snarled and kept moving.

Deacon fired again.

The second bolt buried itself in its chest and dropped it across the deck.

A sailor to his left shouted a warning.

Deacon turned just as another sahuagin came over the rail.

It lunged.

He stepped backward and brought the crossbow between them, catching the creature's jaw against the stock before its teeth reached his arm. Its claws scraped across the wood.

Deacon shoved.

The sahuagin was stronger than he expected.

Then Jandar came through the cabin door behind it wearing trousers, boots and very little else.

“Absolutely not.”

His moon-touched rapier cleared its sheath in a pale arc.

The blade went through the sahuagin's back.

The creature stiffened.

Jandar pulled the sword free.

Deacon looked at him.

“What?”

“You're not dressed.”

“I brought the important parts.”

The ship rolled.

Jandar moved with it effortlessly.

Deacon hated people who could do that.

More creatures reached the deck.

Whatever chance they had possessed of containing the attack quietly disappeared.

Sailors shouted from bow to stern. Captain Tawetta's voice cut through all of them, assigning stations and ordering two men to keep the Wind Dancer on course no matter what came aboard.

The ship could survive enemies.

It would survive running onto rocks much less gracefully.

Deacon reloaded.

Zook burst from below with his sword already in hand, his small frame moving so quickly through the confusion that one of the sahuagin turned too late to stop him. The gnome struck low, opened the creature's side and ducked beneath the answering claw.

Xil emerged behind him.

Divine power gathered around the cleric.

Then something appeared in the air beside Deacon.

A spectral weapon.

Not Xil's.

It swung.

Deacon barely got an arm up before it struck him across the shoulder.

Pain ran down to his elbow.

Across the deck, a different sahuagin had climbed aboard.

This one wore bone, shells and strips of worked metal instead of the crude harnesses of the others. Sea-dark hair hung against a narrow face.

A priestess.

She lifted one hand.

The spectral weapon swung again.

Deacon stepped aside.

“Spellcaster!”

Xil saw her.

So did Jandar.

Jandar started across the deck and immediately found two sahuagin between himself and the priestess.

He smiled.

Deacon knew that smile.

It usually meant everyone else's evening was about to become more complicated.

Jandar met the first creature at full speed. His rapier struck once, then he slipped past before the sahuagin could turn. The second snapped at him and found only empty space as Jandar ducked around its shoulder, using the creature itself to block its companion.

He was not fighting toward the priestess so much as moving through everyone between them.

Deacon fired over his shoulder.

The bolt took one sahuagin through the throat.

Jandar did not look back.

“Thank you.”

“Wasn't for you.”

“Still counts.”

A flash of blue light filled the deck.

Lightning struck Deacon squarely in the chest.

For an instant he felt nothing.

Then every muscle tightened.

He stumbled backward against the rail.

Smoke rose from his shirt.

The priestess smiled.

Deacon tried to raise his crossbow.

His arms refused.

Not paralysis exactly.

Something held him.

Magic.

He hated that more.

“Deacon?”

Zook saw him.

Deacon forced the word out through clenched teeth.

“Busy.”

The spectral weapon swung again.

He could not dodge.

It struck his ribs.

Somewhere behind him Vegon reached the deck and immediately nearly fell when the Wind Dancer rolled beneath his feet.

The wizard caught himself against the cabin wall.

“What is happening?”

Jandar shouted from across the fight.

“We're making friends.”

Vegon reached for magic.

The spell formed.

Then collapsed between his fingers.

The wizard stared at his hand.

Deacon would have enjoyed that more if he could move.

Vegon tried again.

This time the power answered, but poorly, a spray of arcane light dying before it traveled more than a few feet.

The taint.

Or the sea.

With Vegon, perhaps both.

Xil pushed through the fight toward Deacon.

The priestess saw him and spoke a sharp word.

The invisible pressure holding Deacon tightened.

Xil answered with a prayer.

His magic spread across the deck in a warm pulse.

Deacon felt some of the pain ease, though the spell itself seemed to catch for an instant as if moving through resistance.

The corrupted magic did not care that one caster served a god and another studied from books.

Everything was damaged.

Xil's jaw tightened as he forced the healing through.

Several sailors nearby straightened as wounds closed.

Deacon managed to move one finger.

Then another.

The hold weakened.

A sahuagin rushed Xil.

Zook intercepted it.

The creature swung down with both claws. Zook took the first strike on his blade, slipped outside the second and drove his sword upward beneath the jaw.

He was becoming disturbingly efficient at killing things larger than himself.

Deacon approved.

The priestess began another spell.

Jandar finally reached her.

She turned too late.

His rapier found the gap beneath one arm.

The priestess hissed and staggered away.

Jandar moved with her, refusing to give her space.

She struck him with a trident.

He turned enough that the weapon scraped across his side rather than entering it.

The moonlit rapier answered.

Deacon felt the magical hold break.

He nearly fell from the sudden freedom.

Then he raised the crossbow.

The priestess had her back to him.

Deacon fired.

The bolt struck her high between the shoulders.

She lurched forward.

Jandar's blade met her from the front.

The priestess went down.

The spectral weapon vanished.

That changed the fight.

Without her, the remaining sahuagin lost whatever coordination had brought them onto the ship together. One tried to reach the wheel and was cut down by Captain Tawetta. Another jumped back into the sea rather than face Zook and two sailors at once.

Deacon reloaded.

He found the largest remaining creature near the bow.

It was battering one of Tawetta's men against the rail.

Deacon shot it once.

The creature turned.

He shot it again.

It charged.

Deacon dropped the crossbow.

The sahuagin reached him.

He caught it by one forearm, turned with its momentum and drove it hard into the mast. It twisted faster than he expected and bit into his shoulder.

Pain flared.

Deacon drove his forehead into its face.

The creature reeled.

Jandar arrived from the side and put the rapier through its ribs.

The sahuagin collapsed between them.

For several moments, neither man moved.

Jandar looked at Deacon's shoulder.

“That seems unpleasant.”

Deacon looked at Jandar's bleeding side.

“So does that.”

“Yes, but mine is stylish.”

Deacon picked up his crossbow.

“Go away.”

Jandar smiled.

The final sahuagin died near the stern.

Then only the sea remained.

They spent the next hour clearing bodies, binding wounds and repairing what damage could not wait for daylight.

The sahuagin had come from both sides of the ship.

That bothered Captain Tawetta.

“It wasn't random,” she said.

They stood near the wheel while two sailors replaced a severed line.

Jandar had put on a shirt.

Deacon appreciated the improvement.

“They knew where we were?” Zook asked.

Tawetta looked across the dark water.

“Or we crossed somewhere they hunt.”

Jandar leaned against the rail.

“They favor shallower water.”

Everyone looked at him.

He shrugged.

“I grew up on ships.”

Vegon, who had finally stopped looking pale, studied the sea.

“If the water is shallower here, then we're closer to land.”

Tawetta nodded.

“Closer than you think.”

She pointed ahead.

At first Deacon saw nothing.

Then he realized the darkness in front of them was not uniform.

Mist covered the horizon.

Not ordinary fog drifting in scattered banks.

A wall of pale gray stretched across the sea.

The Misty Isles.

Mills appeared from below carrying his lute.

Deacon looked at him.

“Where were you?”

“Safe.”

“You missed a fight.”

“I noticed.”

Jandar pointed at him.

“That is exactly where you should remain during those.”

Mills looked around at the blood on deck.

“I agree.”

He noticed Deacon's shoulder.

“You all right?”

“Yes.”

“You don't look—”

“Yes.”

Mills wisely stopped.

Deacon looked toward the fog.

He remembered the dream.

Spirits speaking words he could not understand.

For the first time, he wondered whether they had been trying to warn him about something ahead.

He decided not to share that thought.

Xil probably would.

That was enough.

They entered the mist the next morning.

The world vanished gradually.

First the horizon disappeared.

Then the sky.

The sails above them blurred at their edges until the mast seemed to rise into nothing.

Sound changed too. The creak of the ship became louder while the sea itself seemed to retreat, every noise reflected back from somewhere beyond sight.

Captain Tawetta reduced speed.

Jandar stood with her near the stern, no longer pretending he was simply another passenger. The two of them spoke quietly about current and depth while a crewman called soundings from the bow.

Deacon watched from amidships.

Jandar belonged here in a way he belonged nowhere else.

It was obvious now that Deacon knew to look for it. On land, Jandar moved like someone prepared to leave any place at a moment's notice. On a ship, every motion had purpose. Even the jokes changed. Fewer of them. Better timed.

Deacon wondered how much the Order had taken from him.

Then he decided Jandar would hate the question and let it go.

The sunken ship appeared without warning.

A mast emerged from the mist to starboard, leaning at an angle impossible for anything still afloat.

Tawetta ordered the Wind Dancer farther away.

As they passed, the wreck took shape beneath the fog.

Half a ship.

The bow had sunk completely. The stern remained caught against something beneath the water, timbers black with age.

No movement.

No birds.

No sign anyone had survived.

Mills stopped playing.

Ahead, darker shapes appeared.

Land.

The harbor of Oron.

What remained of it.

Two piers reached into the water. One had partially collapsed. The other leaned but appeared capable of taking the Wind Dancer long enough for passengers to disembark.

Beyond them, stairs climbed from the harbor into dense vegetation.

Something that might once have been a road disappeared beneath it.

Buildings showed through the mist only as broken angles.

Vegon stepped beside Deacon.

“That was a city?”

“Apparently.”

“It isn't now.”

Deacon looked at him.

“You spent too much time with Jandar.”

Vegon frowned.

“I was stating a fact.”

“That is how it starts.”

Captain Tawetta brought them alongside the eastern pier.

The crew secured the ship.

No one waited ashore.

No fishermen.

No harbor officials.

No children watching newcomers.

Only mist.

Tawetta joined them near the gangplank.

“I won't remain here.”

Jandar turned.

“You're abandoning us?”

“Yes.”

“So casually.”

“I like my ship.”

“That makes two of us.”

Tawetta ignored him.

“When you're ready, contact me.”

Xil nodded.

“I can send word.”

“Good. Give me time to reach you. Depending on weather and current, I may not be able to approach immediately.”

Jandar looked toward the ruined harbor.

“What exactly are we looking for?”

Tawetta smiled without humor.

“That is why Eticus sent you instead of me.”

She returned to the deck.

Deacon adjusted the crossbow across his back.

Mills looked toward the stairs.

“Do I have to go?”

Jandar stared at him.

“You insisted on coming.”

“I was younger then.”

“That was eight days ago.”

“I've matured.”

Zook stepped onto the pier.

“If you two are done.”

They weren't.

They followed anyway.

The jungle had eaten Oron slowly.

That was Deacon's first impression as they climbed from the harbor.

There had been no single destruction here, at least none he could see. No shattered walls thrown outward from an explosion. No blackened center where fire had consumed everything in one night.

The city had simply been abandoned to time.

Roofs had collapsed.

Walls leaned beneath vines.

Trees grew through rooms that once belonged to people.

Stone roads disappeared beneath waist-high plants.

Mist moved between the buildings, turning every street into something seen through memory.

Zook led.

The gnome moved quietly despite the wet ground, studying the ruins and the vegetation with equal attention.

Jandar followed several paces behind.

Deacon stayed near the center with Xil.

Vegon brought up the rear with Mills, who had stopped making jokes shortly after they left the harbor.

That worried Deacon more than the ruins.

They reached the remains of a small square.

A crack split the earth ahead.

Not a narrow fracture.

A crevice broad enough that Deacon could not see the bottom from where he stood.

Zook approached carefully.

“Thirty feet. Maybe more.”

Vegon looked down.

“Natural?”

Zook shrugged.

“Probably.”

“Comforting,” Jandar said.

They moved around it.

The ground trembled.

Everyone stopped.

Deacon knew earthquakes.

This was not one.

The vibration came from beneath them and moved.

Zook felt it too.

His head turned.

“There.”

A mound of earth shifted twenty feet away.

Jandar drew his rapier.

Deacon reached for the crossbow.

The ground erupted.

Something armored burst upward in a shower of stone and soil.

It was enormous.

Four-legged, plated across the back and shoulders, with a head built almost entirely around teeth.

The creature did not climb from the earth.

It launched.

Zook was directly beneath it.

“Move!”

Too late.

The beast crashed down.

The impact shook the street.

Zook disappeared beneath dust and debris.

Deacon fired into the creature before he knew whether the gnome was alive.

The bolt struck one armored plate and glanced away.

The second found softer flesh near the shoulder.

The creature turned.

Zook rolled out from beneath it.

Alive.

Bleeding.

Angry.

He came to his feet with his sword already moving.

Deacon had known soldiers who needed time after being hit.

Zook apparently needed revenge.

The beast snapped at him.

Zook backed beyond the jaws.

Jandar came from the side and struck between two plates. His rapier slid in farther than Deacon expected.

The creature roared.

Vegon rose from the ground behind them.

Literally.

His enchanted boots carried him upward until he floated above the broken street.

Deacon looked at him.

“What are you doing?”

“Improving my position.”

“You're hovering.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Vegon ignored him.

Arcane power gathered around his hand.

Lightning struck the creature.

The bolt crawled across its plated body.

The beast shuddered.

Still stood.

Xil reached Zook and laid one hand against his shoulder. Divine light flowed through the gnome.

The magic flickered once.

Held.

Better than it had been.

Not clean.

Never clean.

But enough.

The creature turned toward them.

Deacon shot it again.

“Here.”

The beast looked toward him.

Good.

It charged.

Less good.

Deacon moved aside just before it reached him. One plated shoulder clipped him and sent him against the wall of a ruined house.

He hit hard enough to lose his breath.

The creature turned.

Jandar attacked its flank.

Zook went for the opposite side.

Deacon pushed himself up.

“Keep it there.”

“That was already the plan,” Jandar called.

Deacon reloaded.

The beast swung toward Jandar.

The swashbuckler slipped backward, boots finding space among broken stones without looking.

Zook struck.

The creature turned again.

They were doing what they had learned to do.

Not planning.

Not discussing.

Moving.

The realization came to Deacon while he aimed.

Jandar knew when Zook would attack.

Zook knew when Deacon needed a clear line.

Xil had already moved before Vegon descended far enough to become vulnerable.

They had stopped requiring instructions.

Deacon fired.

The bolt entered the creature's open mouth.

It recoiled.

Vegon's next spell struck from above.

This time the creature staggered.

Jandar drove the moonlit rapier into the same gap he had opened before.

Zook followed.

The armored beast took one final step.

Then collapsed.

Its weight cracked stone beneath it.

For several moments, no one spoke.

Vegon slowly lowered himself.

Jandar looked at the dead creature.

“What is that?”

Zook wiped blood from his mouth.

“Large.”

Vegon looked at him.

“Thank you.”

“I was answering accurately.”

Deacon sat against the ruined wall.

His ribs hurt.

Xil approached.

“No.”

“You're injured.”

“I've been injured before.”

“That has never stopped me.”

Xil healed him anyway.

The warmth passed through Deacon's side.

He disliked being grateful.

Mills emerged from behind a wall.

Jandar looked at him.

“Again?”

“I am developing a system.”

“A system.”

“Yes. When something enormous appears, I stand somewhere it cannot eat me.”

Deacon nodded.

“Keep doing that.”

Mills looked pleased to have received professional approval.

Zook walked to the edge of the crevice and looked down.

The beast had left tunnels through the exposed earth where it had burrowed toward them.

“Think there are more?”

Jandar joined him.

“Why would you ask that aloud?”

Zook smiled.

“No tracks.”

“It lives underground.”

“Exactly.”

Jandar moved away from the hole.

“A compelling argument to continue anywhere else.”

Deacon looked north.

The ruined city stretched beyond the mist.

More broken houses.

More streets disappearing beneath green growth.

No people.

No smoke.

No movement.

The fog made distance impossible to judge, but Oron had been large once. Large enough that they could spend days walking through it and still miss whatever mattered.

Deacon thought again of the dream.

The spirits had been agitated.

Trying to speak.

He could not understand them.

Now he stood in a dead city on an island people no longer visited, and the thought felt less like coincidence than it had aboard the ship.

Xil came beside him.

“You're thinking about the dream.”

Deacon glanced at him.

“Stay out of my head.”

“You woke me.”

“That was a mistake.”

“Probably.”

Deacon looked toward the ruins.

“Do you think this is connected?”

“I don't know.”

Deacon grunted.

He had been spending too much time with Vegon too.

Behind them, the Wind Dancer slipped away from the pier.

They watched through gaps in the ruined buildings as the ship moved back into the mist.

Within minutes, it disappeared.

The sound of its rigging faded next.

Then the harbor became silent.

They were alone.

Mills tightened his grip on the lute.

“I liked it better when the boat was there.”

Jandar looked toward the city.

“So did I.”

Zook started forward.

The others followed.

Deacon went last for several steps, watching the empty street behind them.

Nothing moved.

Yet he could not shake the sensation from the dream.

Something had wanted his attention.

He had failed to understand it.

Now Oron waited in the mist ahead of them, empty for decades and silent enough that even their footsteps seemed unwelcome.

Deacon rested one hand on his crossbow.

The dead had tried to speak.

Perhaps the city would do better.