"You all right?" she asked out of the darkness.

"Yes."

"Are the gnomes gone?"

"They - had to cut loose to save the ship." He coughed painfully.

Kitiara struck sparks from the sea captain's flint and lit a fat candle on the table. The wavering flame threw weird highlights on the dead captain's skull. Sturm wrung out his kerchief and draped it over the skull.

"He does tend to stare at you, doesn't he?" said Kitiara.

She put out a hand to steady herself. The deck was rising and falling with the regularity of a water wheel.

"We'll have to trim the sails," Sturm said. "If the right gust hits us, we'll capsize."

"I'm not going up any rigging in that blow," she replied.

Out came his sword. "You won't have to. I'll cut all the stays on the lowest sails. They'll blow away, and that should do it." He went to the cabin door.

"Wait," she said. She found a painter line in the captain's locker and brought it over. "Hold your arms up." He did, and Kitiara reached around his chest and tied the line.

"Don't do any swimming while you're gone," she said.

He lowered his arms. "I'll try not to."

Sturm threw open the door and received the storm's full blast. He staggered to the mainmast and slashed the lines to the mainsail. The torn canvas flopped like a live thing, crackling out from the main yard. He ducked under it and pushed on to the foremast, likewise hacking away the stays there. With only topsails and spritsail set, the going was eas- ier. Sturm made it back to the sterncastle.

"It is steadier," Kitiara said.

"What do we do now'!" asked Sturm as water dripped from his clothes and hair.

"Let's explore below," Kit suggested.

"Have you forgotten the curse?"

Her amusement evaporated. "I haven't forgotten. But if this is a sample of what's on board, I'm not much worried."

She patted the captain's kerchief-covered skull. The head toppled off the neck bones and hit the table with a thump. It lay, eyes up, staring at the mortal intruders on its ship.

Chapter 33

The Wizard's Seal.

A narrow hatch covered a ladder that led down into the caravel's dark bowels. Kitiara lay flat on her belly and poked the candle into the hole. Warm stagnant air waft- ed out, but no obvious danger loomed. She climbed down and Sturm followed, hand on the pommel of his sword.

They'd entered nothing more interesting than the ship's rope locker. It contained only rope, sailcloth, and chain.

Kitiara poked around, looking for more treasure. All she found were dead rats. Like everything else dead on the ship, the rats were a mere jumble of bones.

"Isn't it strange," Sturm whispered, "that all we ever find are bones?"

They passed through a light wooden partition into a larg- er space, a cargo area. Here Kitiara's candle shone on some- thing more sinister than rope and cloth. They had found an armory, replete with swords, spears, shields, bronze breast- plates, shirts of mail, lances, bows, blocks of lead for sling pellets - enough to equip a small army.

"These are dwarf-forged shields," Sturm said, pushing a round buckler aside with his toe. "See, they have the mark of the Thorbardin Armorers' Guild. That breastplate bears the mark of the Thanes of Zhaman." He picked up the breastplate. The cold iron was polished to a finish like mir- rored silver, and though fully a third of an inch thick, it was remarkably light.

"These are first-quality arms. Why would pirates need so many weapons?" he said.

"Maybe they are captured stocks."

"Maybe, but space is precious aboard a ship. They might keep good items for their own use, but not this many."

"What's through there?" Kitiara hissed, pointing forward.

"Forecastle. Where the crew sleeps."

They stepped over the door sill and beheld a terrible sight.

The forecastle was full of skeletons.

Row upon row of clean white bones lay huddled on either side of the ship. Some were stretched out, others knotted with the agony they had borne until death. Not all the bones were human. Some, by their shape and size, belonged to dwarves. Others, smaller bones, may have been kender or gnomes. There was one thing the skeletons had in common: They were all chained together at the ankles.

"I don't like this. There has been great evil here," Sturm hissed. "Come." He backed out.

"What's up front of that room?" Kitiara wondered.

"The bury of the bowsprit. Where the anchors are kept."

In the center of the armory was a large square hatch, which Sturm said led to the hold. Removing the hatch was not easy. Someone had secured it to the deck with a dozen large iron bolts. Sturm tried to figure out the best way to remove them, but Kitiara simply took a battle axe from the cache of weapons and bashed the heads off several bolts.

"Stop!" he demanded. "Did you ever think that hatch might be fastened down to keep something in?"

She paused in midswing. "No," she said and brought the axe down on the next bolt. --- Some txt --- , those poor dev- ils died of plague or something. You and I are the first living souls on board in months, maybe, so what we find is ours by right of salvage." She decapitated the last bolt. "If you want a share, you'd better help me."

Reluctantly, Sturm got his fingers under the hatch's flange, and together they lifted it off. The stout lid of oak and copper fell aside, landing on a pile of armor. The ringing boom echoed through the caravel.

Kitiara thrust her candle into the opening. A cold draft flowed out, so she shielded the flame with her hand. The weak amber globe of light fell over the open hold.

It was empty.

A wide set of plank steps led down. Kitiara lowered a foot to the first step.

"Don't," warned Sturm.

"What's the matter with you? A few skulls and bones, and suddenly you're afraid of your own shadow. Where's your curiosity? Where's your knightly valor?"

"Alive and well, thank you."

She dropped down a few more steps. "Coming, then?"

Sturm held up one finger and went to the pile of shields. He found a buckler of good dwarven make and slipped it over his arm. Thus reinforced, he followed Kitiara into the hold.

"It's very black in here," she said. A post at the foot of the steps proved to be coated with a greasy black powder.

"Soot?" she said.

"Hmm, yes." Sturm went down on one knee. The deck was charred. "There was a fire down here." He brushed off his fingertips. "This ship's lucky to be afloat." Fire at sea was one of the worst fates a ship could face.

"Is there anything below this floor?" Kitiara asked.

"Just the bilge." Something caught the candlelight. Sturm waved her to him. "Bring the light here," he whispered.

"What is it?" On the deck a few feet to the right of the steps were four long scratches, so deep that they scored through the charred wood's surface to the lighter, unburned wood beneath. The scratches were three inches apart and almost a foot long.

"What do you make of that?" Sturm asked.

Kitiara drew her sword. "Claw marks," she said grimly.

Toward the bow, a massive half cylinder descending from the ceiling divided the bulkhead in two. This was the lower end of the mainmast. On each side of the mast were doors.

Both had been hastily but solidly blocked with boards. The barricade on the right of the mast was intact; the one on the left was burst asunder - from the other side.

"Whatever it was, it came through here," said Kitiara.

"It?"

She didn't answer, but stepped carefully through the shat- tered barrier into the forward hold. Sturm couldn't fit through the hole, so he broke out a few more boards. The charred planks split loudly.

The forward hold was even colder than the aft one. It was not sooted by fire. They found more bones, broken swords and cutlasses, and smashed helmets - the remnants of a fierce fight. Kitiara almost tripped over another form, this one still clad in a moldering brown robe. Where she had dis- turbed the robe there was a glint of gold.

"This was a cleric," Sturm said. "The robe, the amulets, are the kind a holy man would wear." He groped in the folds of the robe and pulled out a necklace wrought in copper. He held it to the candle. "A rose. The symbol of Majere. At least he served a good god." He laid the necklace down rev- erently on the dusky cloth.

Kitiara moved on to the facing wall. A ladder was set in the wall, going up to the forecastle. Halfway up, someone had sawed the rungs off. The stout base of the foremast intruded into the hold here, too, and beside it was another boarded-up door. This one was intact.

"Sturm, come here!" He stepped over the cleric's skeleton.

Kitiara thrust her candle to the battened door. Scarlet threads were woven back and forth across the rough barrier and gathered in a knot in the center of the door. A blob of sealing wax held the threads together, and in the wax was the impression of a ring seal.

"Can you read it?" she asked.

Sturm squinted at the image. "'Majere protect us' and 'Obey the will of Novantumus'." He looked back at the cler- ic's remains. "He must have been Novantumus."

Kitiara put the point of her sword to the wax seal. "What do you think you're doing?" he said.

"There's something valuable on the other side of this door," she said. "I want to see what it is."

"It could be what killed all these men!"

She rapped on the door. "Hello, any monsters in there?"

The only sounds were the steady, muffled roar of the storm outside and the creaking of the ship's timbers. "See, no danger."

Sturm pulled her roughly away. "I won't let you tamper with it!"

"You won't - !" She snatched her arm free of his grasp.

"Since when do you give me orders, Sturm Brightblade?"

"I won't let you break that seal. It could mean our deaths."

Kitiara cut at the door. Sturm flung the shield out and deflected the blow. Kitiara uttered an angry snort. She set the candle down and assumed fighting stance. "Out of my way!" she declared.

"Will you think what you're doing? Do you want to fight, just to open that door? Look around, Kit. Do you think plague smashed up these armed men?"

"So they killed each other fighting over the treasure. Out of the way!"

Sturm started to reply, but Kitiara lunged at him. He backed away, unwilling to use his own sword. Sturm kept the shield up, fending off her cuts. This went on until Kitiara grew frustrated. She aimed a wild overhand slash at his head. Her blade hit the shield a glancing blow and skidded off. The arc of her cut ended against the door and shattered the brittle wax seal.

"Now you've done it," he said, panting.

Kitiara flung herself, sword and all, at the door. Sturm stared in amazement as she pressed herself against the wood. "At last," she said. "At last!"

There was a split second of silence, then a tremendous crash. Kitiara's sword was knocked from her hand as she flew backward and landed with a clatter among the bones. The center board was bowed outward and cracked. Sturm tossed the shield aside and went to help Kitiara stand. From inside there came another crash, and the board above the first one flexed out.

"What is it?" Kitiara cried.

"I don't know, but it's coming out of there. Let's go!"

They fled in such haste that they forgot the candle.

Through the sooty midnight of the aft hold they ran and stumbled up the stairs to the armory. Kitiara made for the rope locker. Sturm called her back. "Help me with the hatch," he said.

They wrestled the heavy hatch into place and dropped it.

Then it was through the rope locker and up the ladder to the captain's cabin. Kitiara dragged some heavy chests over to block the ladder well. Rain drummed on the poop deck above them, and wind whistled around the louvered shut- ters. They stood close together in the dark, breathing hard and listening.

The deck trembled beneath their feet and they heard wood breaking. The thing, whatever it was, was smashing its way out.

"I lost my sword," she said, deeply ashamed. She, a sea- soned warrior, had lost her only weapon when she fell among the skeletons.

"It doesn't matter," Sturm said. "Swords didn't save the crew of this ship."