Solon, looking resolute despite his wounds, said, “Well, if the escaping prisoners haven’t sorted them out, we’ll just have to do it ourselves, won’t we?”
James nodded. “Come on. Let’s go raise a ship.”
They started their return to the surface.
EIGHTEEN - Tear of the Gods
The sun was low in the west as they left the cavern.
James asked Kendaric, “Can you raise the ship?”
“Now?” He shook his head. “I can try, but I thought that after all we’ve been through, we’d wait until morning.”
“Actually, after all we’ve been through, I’m not inclined to wait. Bear is out there somewhere and the faster we can find the Tear and get it back to Krondor, the happier I’ll be.”
Solon nodded. He was bleeding from several small wounds all over his body. They had encountered a few servants of the dead liche during their escape - a pair of goblins who had put up a struggle, and two more of the skeleton-warriors. They had also come upon the mayhem that had been visited upon other servants of the Black Pearl Temple as they worked their way back to the surface. The escaping prisoners had clearly found weapons in the barracks armory and had been unkind to any who attempted to stop them.
Jazhara nursed a rough compress she had fashioned to staunch the bleeding in her shoulder. She said, “I fear that if we encounter trouble from here on, we may be outmatched.”
James motioned to the others to walk out to the end of the rock spire. “We’ve been outmatched every step of the way,” he said. “But we’ve been lucky.”
“Luck is the result of hard work,” Solon said, “or at least my father told me so.”
“I’ll still make a large votive offering to Ruthia when I get back to Krondor,” James observed, mentioning the name of the Goddess of Luck, the patron goddess of thieves. He added in a mutter, “Even if she is a fickle bitch at times.”
Solon overheard this remark and chuckled.
They reached the end of the rocks, and Kendaric said, “If this works, the ship will rise and a fog will form from here to the hull and it will become solid. It should last long enough for us to get to the ship, offload the Tear and return.”
“Should?” asked James. “How long is ‘should’?”
Kendaric smiled and shrugged. “Well, I never had a chance to test it. I am still working on duration. Eventually, the spell will hold a ship on the surface until all the cargo can be offloaded. Now, well, maybe an hour.”
“Maybe an hour?” James shook his head in disgust. “Well, we can’t start any sooner.”
Kendaric closed his eyes, and held out his hand to Jazhara, who had carried the spell-scroll in her backpack. She handed it to him and he began reading.
First the sea around the ship calmed, the combers and breakers seeming to flow around the ship in an ever-widening ring of calm water. Then a fog appeared on the surface and suddenly the mast of the ship began to twitch. Then it shook, and the ship began to rise. First broken spars and tattered sails could be seen, then dripping ropes that dangled from yardarms and limp banners that hung from the flagstaffs. In minutes it was floating upon the surface, bobbing as water flowed from its decks.
Seaweed clung to the railings and crabs scuttled off the deck to fall back into the sea. The fog around the base of the ship thickened and solidified and after a few moments the ship stopped moving.
Kendaric turned to Jazhara and James, amazement lighting his face. “It worked!”
Solon said, “You had doubts?”
“Well, not really, but you never know . . .”
James regarded Kendaric with barely-concealed rage. “Try not to think what I would have done to you had we discovered the artifact in the temple had nothing to do with you failing last time. If it had just been ‘the spell doesn’t work’ . . .” He forced himself to calmness. “Let’s get to the ship.”
Kendaric touched the toe of his boot to the solid fog experimentally, then put his whole weight on it. “A little soft,” he observed.
Solon stepped past him. “We are wasting time!”
The others followed the monk as he hurried across the mystic fog toward the ship.
They reached the side of the ship and found several dangling ropes to climb. James and Kendaric climbed up easily, but the wounded Jazhara and Solon took some time and needed help. When they all had reached the deck they looked around.
Slime covered the decks and decaying bodies trapped by falling timbers or ropes were already beginning to fill the air with a malodorous reek. The scent of rotting flesh, brackish water, and salt was enough to make Kendaric gag.
“Where do we go?” asked James.