Riven offered his own sneer in return.
Cale doubted that it was that simple. Still, Magadon had not yet led them astray; he knew he could trust the guide and his judgment.
"You mentioned a guardian?" he said.
"Indeed. The fey keep the Crossroads, and each Crossroad has a single guardian. We'll have to bargain our way past. Sometimes the guardians are .. . temperamental."
"What in the Nine Hells does that mean?" Jak asked.
"You'll see," Magadon replied.
Cale took his cloak from the peg on which it hung and said, "I can only teleport us at night. Gather your gear. We leave as soon as we're equipped."
"Can you teleport with a boat too?" the guide asked Cale. "We'll need a boat. Big enough for the four of us."
Cale nodded.
"A boat?" Jak asked.
Magadon grinned, a feral smile, and said, "You'll see."
"You say that a lot," Jak said.
Cale looked to Jak and said, "Little man, can you get us a boat at this hour?"
Jak exhaled a cloud of smoke, snapped his fingers, and snuffed his pipe.
"Easy. You'll see," he said, smiling at Mags. "Meet me at the docks in a half hour."
CHAPTER 11
RUNNING THE RIVER
Even by night, Starmantle's harbor bustled with activity. Laborers and ships' crews-some composed of humans, some not-unloaded crates of cargo by torchlight and glowball and stacked them high. Cale could imagine the illicit contents of many of the crates. Starmantle traded in vice as much as legitimate goods, the same as any other city of the Inner Sea.
The shouts of the sailors carried along the shore through the salt-tinged night air. Laughter, smoke, torchlight, and shouts carried from the open windows of the many dockside taverns. Pedestrians walked the wharves in small groups: revelers, sailors, whores, pimps, and worse.
Cale felt at home there in the night, surrounded by sin.
He stood with Jak, Riven, and Magadon on the rocky shore of an out-of-the-way inlet, down the shoreline and east of Starmantle's main harbor. Small wooden piers and docks, large enough only for small fishing craft, dotted the shoreline there. Jak led them to one such pier, a rickety wooden construct that extended a long dagger toss into the bay. There, tethered with thick hemp rope, several small rowboats floated in the gently lapping water.
The breeze off the sea smelled fresh and clean. As he had when he'd been aboard Foamrider, Cale felt the water pull at his spirit.
"That's it," Jak said and gestured at one of the row-boats near them, "on the left side of the dock."
Cale eyed the boat doubtfully. Even with his limited exposure to the sea, he could see it was a creaky tub, with rusty fittings, splintering oars, and no less than ten seasons of wear on its hull. Worn fishing nets lay piled aft. A coiled rope affixed to a rusty anchor lay fore. On the positive side, the boat was big enough that they could all fit in it. It also appeared to float. . . sort of.
"Did you pay for that, Fleet?" Riven asked.
"Of course I paid for it, Zhent. If Cale wanted it stolen, he'd have asked you to get it."
Riven gave a hard smile and replied, "No. He would have asked me to do it if he wanted the owner dead and the boat burned to ash. And after selling you that, the owner deserves no less."
"It floats," Jak grumbled. "Now let's just get in the damned thing."
"I'll row," Magadon said.
They all walked down the wood-planked pier. Jak lowered himself into the small boat and took a seat on the rear bench. Still sneering, Riven hopped into the boat and sat beside the halfling. Jak scooted away from him and looked in the opposite direction.
Before getting in, Cale asked Magadon, "Are you sure this is going to do? We're not going to be on the open sea, are we?"
"This will do," replied the guide. He nodded for Cale to get in. "And we won't be on the sea at all."
Cale nodded, climbed into the boat, and sat fore. Magadon, after unmooring the small craft from the pier, came last and sat on the middle bench, facing aft toward Jak and Riven.
The guide took the oars and over his back, Magadon said to Cale, "Allow me to get a feel for it before you . .. move us."
Cale replied, "You say when you're ready."
As Magadon rowed them out into the bay, Cale looked up into the clear night sky, alit with stars. The starlight reflected off the surface of the water, reminding him of the basin he had used to track Azriim to Skullport, of the starsphere that he still carried in his pack. The transformation of his soul had begun with the stars, he knew, had been foreordained thousands of years earlier when the makers of the starsphere had captured in magical crystal the periodic appearances in Faerun of the Fane of Shadows.
Somehow, he thought that everything would end with the stars too.
Two and two are four, he thought, and let his fingertips crease the water.
The oars thumped in their settings as Magadon rowed them out a bowshot and turned the boat sharply hither and yon, finally spinning it in a tight circle.
"Well enough," the guide said, seemingly comfortable with the boat. "This is the best we have, so we'll make do. Are you ready, Erevis?"
Cale pulled his gaze from the sky and nodded.
Magadon reached back and gripped Cale's forearm.
"Be at ease," he said, and Cale felt Magadon's mind reach for his. "This is where we need to go."
Motes of silver light formed before Magadon's eyes, flared, and floated over to surround Cale's head. In his mind's eye, Cale saw the image Magadon had transmitted, as clear a "memory" as if Cale had seen it himself: a wild river-the Wet River-racing northward from a long lake, coursing through a jagged canyon, and finally spilling over a high cliff to empty itself, in a torrent of foam and violence, into the Dragonmere.
Towering maples lined the river's winding course, ancient watchmen guarding the waterway and giving the river the appearance of a processional. There was no sign of human habitation. The area looked untouched and untraveled, pristine.
The silver motes winked out but the memory of the place remained fixed in Cale's mind.
How strange the mind works, Cale thought.
He caught an inkling of something that had happened back on the Plane of Shadow. But before he could recall it, it dissipated like a puff of smoke.
"Can you see it?" Magadon asked.