Reavers of the Blood Sea

by Richard Knaak

  Then, from the tiny figure’s right side, came an emerald gleam.

  “The Sword of Tears …” Aryx whispered. No other blade could have glittered with such life. Despite the impossibility of it all, he had found Delara, almost as if the two of them had somehow been drawn together.

  Aryx dared not call to her, suspecting that the demon blade still kept her in thrall. He wanted to wait until he got closer and could possibly even snatch the sword from her. At worst, Aryx intended to offer himself to the artifact as a more suitable host. His only fear lay in the question of whether or not the blade might turn Delara against him and force her to attack. Aryx would not, could not, kill her.

  What was she doing here? What had brought her all the way from the middle of the Blood Sea to this remote part of the mainland?

  Those questions the sword could answer once Aryx caught up. One way or another, he would find out the truth from the insidious weapon.…

  Delara maintained a strong but steady pace, never wavering from her path. Nonetheless, Aryx slowly cut the distance between them, enough so that he could at last make out her face. Delara looked worn, her expression almost strained. Her body bore a number of small wounds, but he could make out little more. Aryx wondered if she knew what the sword had done to her and struggled against it. He wished he had warned her about the blade.

  A glimmer on the horizon caught his attention. Aryx had sailed the sea long enough to recognize water. It was very distant, but if his calculations had been correct and this was the peninsula of Kern, then what he had noticed had to be the first glimpse of the Bay of Miremier, which continued far north until it opened into the Northern Courrain Ocean. It comforted him some to better know his position, but again the question of why the sword had brought Delara so far escaped him.

  Despite his earlier progress, Delara now outpaced him. Try as he might, Aryx could gain no more ground. She moved as one possessed, probably an apt image. He wondered if she, or more likely the Sword of Tears, knew that he pursued.

  The ground beneath his feet suddenly trembled. Memories of the quakes striking Nethosak returned. Aryx instinctively fell to the ground, riding the great tremor out. The ground shook for several minutes, but in a manner somewhat peculiar. The earth buckled in strange waves, as if a vast river flowed beneath it. Still, Aryx dared take no chances, for in the previously pastoral landscape, there now appeared cracks and crevices, more than one sufficient to swallow a foolish minotaur.

  Then at last the tremor passed—or rather, seemed to flow on, for Aryx saw that in the distance, the grasslands continued to shake for a time, breaking apart in many places.

  He rose, immediately looking for Delara, but the other minotaur had vanished. Aryx continued to search, certain that she, too, would have had to wait the tremor out even with the sword guiding her. Yet as precious minutes passed, Delara did not rise from cove,. nor did she appear in the distance.

  Anxious, Aryx ran toward the location where he had last seen her. He avoided one minor crevice, then nearly fell into another still covered by a thin layer of soil. The tall grass made his path deceptive. The tremor had created cracks everywhere, but he could not see most until he had nearly stepped into them. His anxiety grew as he approached Delara’s last location, for the ground seemed even more unstable. He marveled that the plains looked so innocent from a distance and yet hid so much threat.

  And where Delara had stood, Aryx found the worst of the ravines, a gaping, jagged hole running for several yards. It looked bottomless. He paused, trying to convince himself that the sword would have prevented Delara from falling in. Yet as he stared into the darkness, Aryx grew suspicious, for as the hole descended, it spread, becoming so large one could nearly walk upright in it. He took a few tentative steps.

  A few yards in, he found a footprint.

  Aryx hesitated but a breath or two before descending farther. He could not ignore the track nor the possibility that Delara might lie at the bottom, leg, or worse, broken, perhaps even unconscious.

  With no torch nor anything else to burn, Aryx moved on. For a time, the light behind him gave the minotaur hope. If Delara had fallen only a short distance, then he could still find her without too much trouble. If she had fallen deeper …

  However, as Aryx continued, he found no further trace. Deeper and deeper he descended, still hoping. Curiously, long past the point when it should have, the light never quite faded, instead taking on an almost greenish tinge. Realizing that, Aryx thought at first that the Sword of Tears might be somewhere nearby, Delara with it. However, he eventually noticed that he could see far better with the left eye than the right. Once more, Kiri-Jolith’s unsettling gift had come to his aid, yet Aryx took no joy from it, for still he could not find Delara. Only finding her—alive and unharmed—would satisfy him.

  How deep did this fissure go? He had expected it to level out, but it continued to descend. Surely it could go little farther.

  At that moment, the ground gave way beneath his feet.

  With a gasp, Aryx fell through, the axe slipping from his grasp as he tried to find some purchase. However, the earth he groped for crumbled easily, not even slowing his fall. Aryx reached out for anything, fearing that he had escaped drowning only to be buried alive.

  A stone half-buried in the side gave him momentary pause before slipping free. His descent slowed, Aryx managed to direct his path some, avoiding an abrupt drop that would have certainly spelled his doom. Unfortunately he could not completely stop himself, and with each second, the minotaur plummeted deeper into the earth. Aryx cursed, wondering if he would somehow end up in the Abyss when his journey finally ended.

  When at last it did come to a halt, his first glance almost made him think that he had indeed fallen into the Abyss, for before Aryx there opened up a tremendous cavern vast enough to swallow the imperial palace and much more. He looked up, and even with the dragon orb he could not locate the ceiling. Small wonder that the quake had left the plains above so riddled with dangerous crevices. Something had already eaten away the earth beneath. He was amazed that the entire region had not already collapsed.

  Such a thought did nothing to ease his worries, for even if he managed to locate Delara, the frustrated warrior had no idea how he might lead the pair of them to the surface. Worse, Aryx no longer even had a war axe with which to defend himself, which meant that the only weapon he and Delara would have between them would be the Sword of Tears.

  Aryx picked up a large, sharp rock, aware that it would likely do little for him but not liking to go completely empty-handed, then stumbled along the great expanse, hoping it wouldn’t run the entire width of the peninsula. The eye gave him something of a view, but even Kiri-Jolith’s gift proved limited this deep beneath the earth. Aryx could see several yards ahead, but in a cavern so extensive, that meant little.

  As he walked, he noticed that much of the ground lay strewn with recent rubble, no doubt from the tremor. In fact, the air itself remained so filled with dust that Aryx finally had to cover his nostrils and mouth with a piece of cloth from one of his belt pouches. Aryx wondered whether he might suffocate before he reached the end of his trek, but he could not go back. Even if an opening did offer itself, the determined warrior would not leave without Delara.

  He wondered again how the others had fared. Were they safe in some harbor or on their way to Lord Ariakan? Had Rand recovered? The last spell had taken a great deal out of him. It might even be that Rand would never be able to perform any sort of spell again, be it one granted through his patron or of his own innate power.

  Rumbling echoed from the darkness ahead, rumbling that set the walls to shaking and loosened more earth. Aryx planted himself against the nearest side. He paused, waiting for the entire ceiling to fall in, but after a few shakes, the area again stabilized.

  Even then Aryx could hear continued rumbling, an almost orderly noise, as if some great beast moved beneath the earth. Pressing on, the minotaur clutched the stone tightly. The deeper he jour
neyed, the more Aryx suspected that no ordinary quake had formed all this.

  Then, in the midst of the rumbling, he heard voices, voices of those who could not possibly be down here.

  “Prepare to disembark!” Lord Broedius called.

  “He’s still not opened his eyes!” shouted a frustrated Carnelia.

  “We will not risk our vessels for this,” Captain Brae argued.

  Other voices, many of them intermingling, rose from the cavern ahead. Curious despite everything, Aryx slowly wended his way toward them, listening as each rose and fell, seemingly in conversations in which each participant paid no mind to what the other said.

  “Undo that line!” an unknown speaker cried.

  “No one’s seen the Seahawk. The poor girl must’ve gone down back near the Maelstrom,” commented another.

  “We’ve no choice but to drag him with us or leave him on the ship,” Broedius replied.

  On and on the nonsensical conversation ran. Now and then Aryx recognized some speaker, generally the knight commander or his niece, and from them he gathered a questionable scenario in which the surviving ships of the fleet had been blown toward some shore, damaged, it seemed, by the very spell Rand had cast to save them. The spell now raged out of control, and the cleric appeared to be unconscious, unable to cancel its effects.

  Yet none of that explained why their voices came to him in this vast dark cavern.

  Needing to know more, Aryx crept closer. A dim light suddenly greeted him as he turned around a bend, a light that increased as he neared.

  The chamber before him not only rose to tremendous heights but also descended just as far. It looked to Aryx almost as if all the dwarves in the world had taken a year out of their lives just to mine this area out. Perhaps such a notion even had merit, for what the minotaur could see of the far walls revealed a uniformity that did not seem the work of nature. Rounded ridges formed much of the sides of the vast chamber, ridges with diameters three or four times the warrior’s height. Had he the time, Aryx might have studied them in detail, but more important to the minotaur was that which stood at the very center of the chamber’s deep floor.

  There an immense sphere of white fire blazed brightly, its light having appeared dim earlier only because of the immensity of its dark surroundings. More startling than the sphere itself, though, were the images floating within it, for as Aryx approached, he suddenly found Lord Broedius staring at him.

  No … not at him, but rather beyond the minotaur. Broedius stood as if seizing the rail of a ship tightly. Pale, weary, he nonetheless continued to shout out orders to someone unseen.

  “I don’t care if they’ve got to go three at a time! We’re not leaving any of the horses behind, not—”

  Before he could finish, his image rippled, twisted, and transformed into one of the minotaur generals Aryx had met in Broedius’s headquarters. For reasons that immediately became apparent once he spoke, the veteran warrior seemed to be standing at an angle. “Then swim if you have to! This ship’s beyond help! If it lists any more than it has, it’s going to sink! Make ready—”

  The minotaur general transformed, becoming Carnelia, who knelt somewhere, her arms cradling an invisible burden. “Damn you, wake up! We need you again—I need you again!”

  Her image twisted upward, regrew the horns it had lost during its previous transformation, once more shed the ebony armor, and at last became a taller, slimmer minotaur warrior, the Kazelati representative aboard the Vengeance. He leaned near somebody, whispering, but the words sounded loud to Aryx. “I warned against this madness! See if you can talk sense to Brae if we make it to shore! That we should risk our lives for the empire and these vermin of Takhisis—”

  Other minotaurs and humans flashed before Aryx, each talking or in the midst of some action. Yet throughout it all, a few specific individuals reoccurred most: Broedius, Carnelia, Brae, the minotaur generals, and the senior Kazelati captains. The pattern repeated itself over and over. Aryx found himself so caught up in it he had even forgotten his search for Delara.

  What had he discovered? Who had created this? They seemed terribly interested in the fleet, which did not bode well. Had he uncovered the Magori’s home? Doubtful, for even they would require more than this empty cavern, which he also suspected had been recently created. Who, then? Did someone else watch?

  Broedius reappeared. Now he stood at what might have been the edge of a gangplank, seeming to force some great object forward. The knight commander said nothing, working silently as if time had nearly run out. The Vengeance had surely run aground; Aryx could see no other reason for the knight’s desperate actions.

  Suddenly Broedius transformed once more, but not to any of the others that Aryx had seen earlier. Instead, the human shed his armored hide, shrank a little, and collapsed. The limp form refined itself in seconds, becoming a familiar sight that turned the watching warrior’s curiosity into despair.

  Seph. His lifeless body shifted slightly, gently rocking back and forth, the motions a ship at sea might cause. Eyes closed, Seph seemed to be contemplating something, most likely the ugly pale slash across his body. Moisture had washed away most of the blood, leaving only a dark pink stain.

  Aryx felt an intense desire to cradle his body. He reached out, not expecting to touch his brother’s body but wanting desperately to do so.

  Seph suddenly faded, and as he did, laughter echoed throughout the chamber, laughter loud and mocking. Loose rocks fell everywhere, forcing Aryx to press himself against the nearest wall. He looked around, trying to find the source and already suspecting that he knew it.

  The laughter grew, and as it did, a pale, sickly light spread throughout the cavern, a pale light that originated from the sides of the vast chamber. As the minotaur stared, parts of the walls began to move, to slide back and forth along one another. Now, even without the aid of Kiri-Jolith’s gift, Aryx could make out hundreds of glowing, coiling, writhing serpentine forms, all interconnected and all seemingly without beginning or end. To his horror, Aryx realized that each of the rounded ridges had actually been one of the massive serpentine shapes.

  He was surrounded. They were everywhere … everywhere.

  “A shame,” came the voice that he had heard through the Magori, the cold, mocking voice of the underdwellers’ master. Sometimes it sounded like one creature, other times like a chorus. “A shame that the Father of All and of Nothing will not preserve a few of you for memory’s sake! You are so entertaining, so amusing, so pathetic! Would that his most loyal servant could play with you forever and ever, little one, but the father has dictated that this little ball of mud must cease, as punishment to the betrayers, and his most loyal servant yearns to obey!”

  The serpentine forms writhed in what only could be described as great satisfaction. Aryx had found the Coil, and now it had him.

  The Coils of Chaos

  Chapter Seventeen

  The winds, the same winds that had swept them away from the dangers near the Maelstrom, now pounded the ships relentlessly. No longer simply filling the sails, the winds hurled vessels together, creating havoc and destruction. Two ships, both Kazelati, had already been sunk, the pair having collided with such speed that they had splintered one another.

  Many of those aboard had perished, but others had survived, for the terrible winds had swept the ships near enough to land for some to swim ashore. However, those same winds had also caused three other vessels to wash up on the rocks. One had already begun to sink. The other pair, including the Vengeance, listed terribly, some of the lower decks already flooded. No aid came from the rest of the fleet; they had their hands full simply keeping their own vessels from ending up like the others, a much too likely prospect. Another of the survivors of the empire’s once grand armada already moved helplessly toward the shoals, despite the crew’s valiant attempts. Only the fact that the minotaurs, whether of the empire or the Kazelati realm, maintained oars aboard had kept the rest from beaching or sinking.

  T
hat would not last long, Carnelia knew, for already she had seen the oars on the nearest ships snap off as the desperate minotaurs rowed for their lives. The winds had the strength of magic behind them, and only magic could end their threat. Unfortunately the one seemingly responsible for it lay cradled in her arms, still unconscious.

  “Come on, Rand, come on …” She rocked him back and forth, trying to revive him. He had collapsed after completing his stunning spell, a spell that had taken even more out of him than the last one had. She feared that he might never wake up.

  Her uncle had ordered her to get the cleric off the ship, but Carnelia could not do it herself, and all the other knights had their hands full. She had tried to move him, but despite her training, the battle had sapped her strength too much.

  The Vengeance listed more, causing Carnelia and her love to slide toward the rail. She held tight, letting her armored body take the brunt of the blow. The rail cracked under the weight but did not break.

  Somewhere she could hear Broedius shouting orders. The last she had seen of her uncle, he had been trying to get the horses off the doomed vessel. The rocks upon which the Vengeance had grounded itself connected to the main shore, and with some effort and sufficient time, they would likely save most of the crew. However, while the knights could provide the effort, the sorcerous winds and the turbulent sea seemed eager not to provide the time.

  A groan made her stiffen. Carnelia looked down to see Rand’s eyes flutter open. “What … what …”

  He said no more but simply stared at her. “Rand! Do you understand me?” After a long pause, he nodded. “Rand, that spell you cast … you’ve got to stop it! It’s tossing the fleet against the rocks! You saved us from the attack, but—”

  Carnelia broke off as the blond figure suddenly shook his head. “Not … not mine …”

  “Not yours? What do you mean?”

  He coughed. “My spell … gone … can feel it … not mine, but another …”