Plague of Spells as-1

by Bruce R Cordell

  Anusha listened for more gurgling laughter, or worse, the sound of something attempting to climb the ship's side, but she discerned only harsh breathing, mumbled prayers, and water lapping against the side of the Green Siren.

  "Damn me for looking, I told the captain we'd signed scairt children instead of freebooters at our last stop. Looks to me I was right!'' came a mocking voice.

  Anusha turned and saw the hulking first mate, Nyrotha. He stood by the great cavity that connected the lower decks, hands on his hips.

  "Nyrotha," pleaded a woman to Anusha's left. "A… a water witch is in the fog! She snuffed Roger with nothing but a look!"

  The first mate roared, "Damn Roger, he was a fool anyhow! Now, pay attention, I'm saying this just once: you ain't paid to whimper and squeal when the Green Siren's attacked! Get off your butts and repel boarders, you bastard children of diseased mudflats! Draw your weapons and defend this ship, or by Bane's black nails, I'll see all of you dance the hempen jig!"

  Several of the crew, apparently as frightened of Nyrotha as of the creature in the mist, drew their weapons. A few even took a few tentative steps toward the railing.

  A crunch sounded from below the water line, and the entire ship canted slightly. Pirates shrieked. Nyrotha cursed and strode forward, a great black scimitar clutched in his corded hands.

  Hands three times as large as the first mate's appeared on the railing, followed by a hulking body of dark green scales and ropy hair. An overpowering odor emanated from the creature, like a barrel of unpreserved fish left rotting in the dark for three days. It roared, revealing a swath of blackened teeth in which the half-masticated remains of previous meals lingered.

  The crone Anusha had seen below rode the beast's shoulders, clutching its ropy hair for balance.

  "To me!" shouted Nyrotha. The mate engaged the creature. Nyrotha no longer seemed hulking compared to that awful aquatic humanoid menacing the Green Siren. Half the pirates stumbled to help the first mate. Another quarter stood rooted in place, numb with fear. The remainder fled the deck, nearly weeping in their terror.

  And what shall I do? Anusha wondered. She glanced down on her unreal body, saw she was clad in the noble's gown she unconsciously seemed to prefer while in a dream. Hardly the outfit of a warrior.

  She recalled then the panoply of Imphras Heltharn. Imphras was the great war captain who had rid the Easting Reach of hobgoblin marauders three centuries ago, ending the Kingless Years. The old king's fantastic, golden armor was on display in New Sarshel in the Atrium of the Grand Council. She had looked on it many times. The armor's significance was one of the bits of historical knowledge that had taken up residence in her memory. Her tutor would be proud.

  Could she effect a change in wardrobe merely by wishing for it, after the manner of regular dreams? Anusha concentrated. Her gown shimmered and flowed.

  A tall helm enfolded her head, a slender gorget spread across her throat, wide pauldrons defended and magnified her shoulders, cunningly articulated couters grew from her elbows, fluted vambraces enshrouded her forearms, and a golden cuirass of breathtaking strength and beauty hugged her torso.

  She flexed her gauntleted hands, articulated with flawless dream joints, and realized she required a weapon.

  Into her upraised hand flashed a long sword on whose slender blade burned the Marhana family crest. It was the same blade that hung over the fireplace in the great room of the family estate. In life, it was too heavy for her to wield. In dream, it was as light as a switch of hazelwood.

  She breathed deeply, exulting in the vision in which she'd clothed herself.

  Enough, she scolded herself. You changed your clothes, that's all.

  Accoutered for a fight instead of a noble ball, Anusha advanced on the already raging skirmish.

  The smelly monster towered over the press of pirates, though several lay broken on the deck. Nyrotha still stood, wielding his scimitar with precision, managing to keep the great beast at bay with defensive slashes and sidesteps. The creature's scaled arms streamed red from a dozen wounds.

  The sea hag had dismounted and remained with her back to the railing. The hag gestured with her water-wrinkled hands, chanting in her gurgling voice. The fog above her head stirred. Neither Nyrotha nor the crew noticed; their attention remained riveted on the monstrous, troll-like thing trying to eat them.

  Anusha traced the fight's periphery until she reached the railing. Neither pirate nor attackers noticed her new dream form. She halfway wished they could see her fabulous new likeness. Her fear of discovery was vanquished by the elation of her successful transformation.

  The witch still chanted, and the writhing fog above her head was fast becoming a rotating whirlpool, growing wider and wider. At its center, a red light glimmered. The light reminded Anusha of the illumination that had twinkled in the hag's eye, only to leap out and steal Roger's life. This scarlet whirlpool looked big enough to encompass all the ship.

  Fear found Anusha again despite her armor. The urge to race away or wake up returned.

  What a mistake waking up would be, she thought. If the ship is holed and sunk, I’ll drown in my own body. Anusha strode forward and raised her dream sword high.

  Doubt ambushed her, blade still in the air, even as the alarming aerial vortex swirled wider and quicker. The "sword" she held wasn't even real.

  She'd pushed things and touched things with her unreal hands. Why not her unreal blade? Why not do more than move them; why not cut them? She had to try to use her sword to affect the waking world. Should she try to imagine the dream blade steel hard and capable of cutting more than phantasms? Would that even work? She didn't know.

  No, she decided, I'll imagine the sword as ethereal as my hand and body, an extension of it. Her dream form could pass through anything, including living creatures, but as she'd learned down in the hold, she also adversely affected anything living through which she passed. Dream flesh and real obviously did not get on too well.

  Anusha advanced a final few steps and brought the sword down in an awkward slash. At the last instant, the sea witch's eyes flickered, somehow sensing Anusha's presence. The hag jerked to the side, but not enough to completely avoid the blow.

  Anusha's dream blade grazed the hag's forehead. A burst of dark blue flame briefly illuminated both witch and armored girl. The hag loosed a surprised howl of agony. The red swirl growing overhead instantly collapsed into so much disturbed cloud-stuff.

  When Anusha had touched the pirate down in the hold, he immediately collapsed into a quivering, unconscious heap.

  The witch quivered, yes, and was obviously hurt, but she did not fall. Instead she screeched, "Protect your mother!"

  The hulking sea monster glanced back, the gnawed boot of an unlucky privateer protruding from its mouth, the battered body of the coxswain in one hand. The monster had been using the screaming coxswain as an improvised club.

  Nyrotha took instant advantage of the creature's distraction, making a deep cut across the creature's stomach. The monster staggered and ichor spurted. It dropped the coxswain. It returned its full attention to the first mate, forgetting its "mother's" command. For the first time, Anusha thought the pirates might just defeat the creature from the sea. If the sea witch was dealt with, anyhow.

  The water witch continued to back away from Anusha, her haggard eyes darting this way and that, squinting. She held her hands out in a warding gesture. She screamed out into the fog, "Sisters, I am assailed by a ghost! Gather near, that we may banish it to the Shadowfell from which it strays!"

  It wasn't the first time Anusha had been mistaken for an empty spirit. Too bad the witch couldn't see her new armored splendor. Then she'd know she faced more than a wandering apparition. Then again, when the hag looked at Roger, he'd flopped dead.

  "Sisters! Return! I am beset!"

  Anusha followed the retreating witch step for step. Yet she continued to hold her swing. She just couldn't bring herself to strike down the hag. Anusha intellectually knew the
woman was a monster, something that would kill and eat her… but now that she was at the cusp, she couldn't follow through. If she struck down the hag, would it be an assassination? Would the hag scream and die, kicking? She lowered her sword, indecision growing into anguish.

  Instead of striking, Anusha said, "If you promise to leave the ship and depart forever, I won't hurt you?" Irresolution made her ultimatum a question.

  The wandering eye of the water witch tracked Anusha's words. The witch muttered, "Gethshemeth can do worse than kill me. Look into my eyes, and I'll show you!"

  Anusha's gaze unthinkingly darted to the witch's.

  The hag's red eyes flashed the color of fresh-spilled blood. Anusha recognized death itself in that bloody gaze. It grasped her.

  A wave of nausea visually distorted her dream form, sending cracks and shivers through her. Hopes, memories, and hates dropped from her like dead leaves from a tree in winter.

  Wake! she commanded herself. Wake up, wake up!

  She did not wake up. The sea hag's blazing eye held her rooted in place… or was it Japheth's drug? He'd told her only to use it when she had a long time to sleep. She wouldn't escape this peril so easily. Her choice was to kill or die.

  With dream armor unraveling like funerary linens, Anusha raised her shivering, splintering dream blade and plunged it into the sea hag's stomach. Real blood spurted from the wound.

  The witch's scream possessed a keening, yearning quality that nearly made Anusha pull back. But she persevered. She held her wavering sword so it transfixed the creature from the sea, willing it real and as sharp as a razor for this moment. She plunged the blade deeper, concentrating on its keen solidity.

  The witch's final, sorrowful plea for her sisters' aid trilled out into the fog. Then the hag collapsed and lay without movement or breath. In death she had the guise of a sleeping grandmother, placid and hardly a threat to anyone. Blood trickled from her wound, red as any human's.

  The only response the sea hag's entreaty elicited was the appearance of a swarm of darting bats, which rotated and swirled across the Green Siren from stem to stern. Even as the mist around the ship began to break up, the investigating bats twirled back out over the sea, toward the tower island.

  "The Green Siren weathered the fog," reported Japheth, his breath still coming in gasps between his sentences in the fight's aftermath. "I knew I saw three hags! The one that didn't attack us tried to scuttle the ship."

  "What? What about my ship?"

  The warlock continued, "Your crew beat the hag." His eyes remained closed as his servitor bats relayed the image of the wrinkled form crumpled along the ship's railing, and something dark and large stroking away from the ship toward open water. "A… sea troll? Nyrotha drove some sort of sea monster back into the water. Good thing you left him aboard."

  "An accident," mused Captain Thoster. "The lout was so drunk on grog I couldn't wake him."

  Japheth's winged servants swarmed through the open balcony window and into his bottomless cloak.

  Seren, her voice ragged from too many spells, commented, "Nice shawl you got there, Japheth."

  He simply nodded. The woman didn't need to know his cloak's provenance.

  Seren stood near Thoster. Not far away, Nogah leaned against a wall, and the two surviving crew members watched the entrance. The unmoving forms of defeated kuo-toa littered the floor and choked the stairs beyond. Among them lay the charred and still smoldering sea witches who were finally downed with Seren's last impressive spell volley.

  "We persevered," said Nogah in her gurgling way.

  Seren whirled, pointed an accusing finger. "Because of you, we've gained the enmity of a great kraken! We did not agree to your ludicrous scheme, but already it sends servitors to eliminate us. I say we kill you now, and show this Gethshemeth we're not its foes." The woman looked to the pirate captain for support.

  Thoster put a hand on the war wizard's shoulder, "Seren, mayhap we'll do exactly that, but let's talk a bit first, eh?" Japheth noticed that, despite the man's solicitous air, the hand not on Seren's shoulder rested on the pommel of his venomous sword.

  Seren huffed, visibly battling her desire to launch a particularly nasty attack on the whip from her armamentarium of spells. Finally, she spat, "So talk."

  Captain Thoster nodded and said, "First, I want to know what sub-breed of kuo-toa we just faced? I've never seen their like before now."

  The whip gave a slow nod, her eyes large compared to those of the many dead creatures lying around them. She said, "Gethshemeth's doing, using the Dreamheart. It has corrupted their forms. It is a potential I sensed in the Dreamheart, but not one I ever called upon."

  The captain frowned, seemed about to ask something else, then thought better of it. Instead he grinned and said, "Consider, all of you. This unprovoked attack is a message. Gethshemeth revealed its hand, so to speak. The great kraken's afraid! It tried to scare us off, make us let fear drive us the direction Seren suggests we take. It hopes well run with sails at full mast from Nogah. Well, here's how I see it: the great beast must think we have some chance of succeeding to go to such trouble!"

  "Rubbish," replied Seren. "You're seriously suggesting we engage something so powerful, so prescient, that it knew when and where to attack us even before we agreed to oppose it?"

  Nogah intruded, "Gethshemeth knew we gathered against it, likely through its study of the Dreamheart. But Thoster is correct. The great kraken knows I held the stone far longer than itself. It knows I have the greater mastery of its power. The closer I draw to it, the more influence I can exert over it and Gethshemeth too. Get me close enough, soon enough, and I can snatch it back! I've prepared for nothing else these last several months."

  "If you're so proficient with this rock, how'd the kraken steal it from you in the first place?" Seren countered.

  "It caught me by surprise. The possibility that something might attempt to take the artifact from me had not entered my calculations. But, as I explained, I've been making preparations. Next time I'm close enough, Gethshemeth will rue the moment it stole my birthright!" Greenish spittle flecked the kuo-toa's wide lips.

  "Mmmm, yes," mused Thoster, his zeal of a moment earlier fading somewhat. He looked at Japheth. "What do you think?"

  Japheth thought it possible Nogah was slightly insane. But he suspected insanity was a common condition among kuo-toa, something they had learned to deal with. The warlock answered, "Both of you are correct. Gethshemeth rightly worries about anything that would oppose it. But how much does it need to worry, really? Its abilities can't be discounted; a great kraken could easily destroy us."

  "Right!" said Seren.

  "However, despite its already considerable power," continued Japheth, "Nogah explained the relic Gethshemeth stole could amplify its strength, magnify it so much it could threaten more than the denizens of the Sea of Fallen Stars. I would not like that to happen, if I could stop it."

  Thoster smiled. The warlock knew the man didn't care a whit about the safety of creatures below, on, or beyond the sea, but he was satisfied with the direction Japheth leaned. For his own part, Japheth was nonplussed as he vocalized his concern for others. Must be some remnant of the traveler's dust talking.

  On the other hand, if the Dreamheart was as powerful a relic as Nogah claimed, it really wouldn't do for a kraken to have it. Or, come to think of it, a mad kuo-toa whip. Then again, Lord Marhana wasn't really a good choice of caretaker, either. No good choices were possible when it came to evil artifacts.

  Seren realized Thoster, Nogah, and even Japheth were on the same page. She reiterated loudly, "I refuse to be part of this. I will not-"

  "Then do not!" exploded Thoster. "We three will continue. Go your own way. We'll find another to round out our number. But you are marked, Seren. The great kraken knows you now. If we fail, Gethshemeth will eventually find you, alone and without friends, and take its vengeance."

  The war wizard sputtered her face red as she searched for a retort.
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br />   Thoster didn't give her a chance to respond; he regarded Nogah and asked in a voice returned to placidity, "So where is Gethshemeth?"

  Nogah shook her staff, perhaps connoting anticipation. She licked her lips with a sinuous tongue, and declared, "Thoster, you spoke more truth than you know. You said the great kraken gave us a message with this attack. I agree. It revealed to us that it fears it can be beaten. More than that, it also told us where to begin seeking it."

  "Did it?"

  "The kuo-toa it used to attack us-they are not from Olleth, as I first thought. They bear the tribal markings of the only other kuo-toa colony in the Sea of Fallen Stars."

  "Ah, clever of you to notice." The captain nodded. "Where is this colony?"

  "These kuo-toa bear the markings of those who went to dwell in Taunissik."

  The captain raised his eyebrows and waved his hand for Nogah to explain further.

  Nogah said, "For all your sea lore, it would surprise me had you heard of Taunissik, Thoster. It is a failed colony, of little consequence. A few hundred dispossessed kuo-toa left Olleth six years back. They were part of a sub-sect whose charter demands its adherents always seek to expand kuo-toa territory. So they departed Olleth to set up an outpost on a deep atoll. Taunissik, as old morkoth records called it, boasts a massive coral growth on a submerged mountain. Time passed, and no word of the colony's progress ever came. In Olleth, we thought the colony dead. Apparently, we were wrong to assume Taunissik failed; Gethshemeth found the colony. The colonists were enslaved to the great kraken's will."

  The captain clapped his hands. "Aye! We have another voyage ahead of us! Back to the ship. We set course for Taunissik! Nogah will be our guide."

  Seren scowled, but didn't gainsay the captain.

  Japheth offered, "I am not a strong swimmer. How much of this colony is under water?"

  "Worry not, human," said Nogah. "I have an elixir that will preserve you and the woman, should it be necessary to descend beneath the waves."