by Mel Odom
“You mean she’s giving you time to think. She hasn’t been in contact with anyone else.”
Shang-Li nodded. “She wants me to translate Liou Chang’s books.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know. Possibly. I’m good at what I do.”
“I thought you were a monk with ranger training.”
“I’m also good with translations. My father trained me to work in the monastery library. I’m nearly as good as he is.”
Amree smiled. “I’ve seen the two of you fight. That isn’t all he’s trained you in.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Her smile faded. “Translating those books is going to endanger a large portion of the Sea of Fallen Stars.”
“If not all of it.” Shang-Li took a deep breath to clear his mind and let it out. “So doing that isn’t an option. I don’t trust the Blue Lady.”
“Good. If you did, I’d be tempted to tie an anchor around your neck and leave you here.”
“Thanks.” Shang-Li smiled.
“Why don’t you try to get back to sleep? I can keep watch for a while. If you look like you’re starting to dream again, I’ll wake you.”
Shang-Li closed his eyes and tried to think of good thoughts, but they seemed really far away at the moment. Finally, he slipped over into the darkness of true sleep.
After he woke, the salvage started in earnest. Iados, Thava, Shang-Li, and Swallow’s quartermaster and ship’s pilot had pieced together a map of the terrain drawn it onto the interior of the cargo hold. They had also marked sites they could retreat to if the Blue Lady came calling.
Back at Swallow, Shang-Li swam through the hold and found the area better organized and better lighted. Chunks of glowing coral in short lengths of fishing nets hung from the hold. The combined light made the submerged cargo hold more navigable.
“Put it here,” a sailor instructed Shang-Li, Thava, and Iados as they carried in a stretch of canvas holding salvaged goods. Thankfully the load of casks, barrels, and crates resting on the canvas remained buoyant in the sea, and they were easy to manage.
Shang-Li guided the canvas down to the bottom of the hold. “Nothing’s marked,” he told the sailor. “These might be anything.”
“Anything’s better than nothing. I will hope for a cask of wine that has not yet soured.” The sailor smiled. “Do you have any idea how long the ship this is from has been down?”
“I’ve never heard of her. The name didn’t turn up in the research my father and I did.”
“We will hope it has not been overlong. If there is anything to be had.”
“Where can I find my father?”
The sailor pointed toward the mass of coral lighted in one corner of the hold. The light blazed through a sheet of canvas.
“Amree has managed something of a ship’s galley there where we can eat and drink,” the sailor said.
Shang-Li thanked the man and swam up toward the hold. Thava and Iados joined him and they floated above the floor of the cargo hold.
Tentatively, Shang-Li pressed his hand against the belled canvas. Surprising strength pressed back against his palm.
“Is there not a way in?” Iados asked.
“Go under,” Amree called. Shadows moved across the rounded canvas. “If you pull apart the canvas, we’ll lose the air.”
Shang-Li swam under and immediately spotted a rectangle cut out in the center of the floor. Catching hold of the opening, Shang-Li hauled himself up and through. As soon as he emerged into the air, he felt drenched. His sodden clothing dripped all over the floor. He looked down at the mess he’d inadvertently made and was fascinated.
“You’ve dived before?” Amree sat on the floor in the corner of the small area created by the canvas. Fatigue darkened her eyes. A bloody bandage wrapped her right hand.
“Yes,” Shang-Li responded as he made way for Iados and then Thava, who both experienced the same waterlogged effect he’d suffered. “Many times. Nothing like this, though.”
“Nor have I.”
Kwan Yung sat on a wooden cask and grilled fish fillets over heated coals. A large pot of clam chowder simmered on another set of coals. He worked quickly to keep the food coming.
Sailors sat on the floor and scooped thin wine from an open cask. They ate quickly from bowls, tearing at the fish with their fingers and drinking the chowder. Then they headed back out to keep the rotation going. The canvas covered area was filled to near bursting.
“One of the sailors that came in earlier said you were attacked,” Amree said.
“We encountered a group of spellscarred humanoids,” Shang-Li said. “I think they were changed by the wild magic.”
“From this world or hers?”
Shang-Li shook his head. “They wore remnants of sailors’ clothing, but there was no way to identify them.”
“There wasn’t much left of any humanity in them,” Thava said. “They were little more than predators.”
“That seems to be the way of everything in this place,” Amree said. “Did you find any salvage?”
“Planks. Sailcloth. Some goods, though we don’t know what they are yet.”
“You’ve given them to the quartermaster?” his father asked.
“Yes.”
His father handed them three bowls, then quickly ladled soup into them.
For the first time Shang-Li noticed that he smelled the food. “Why couldn’t I smell the food outside?”
“It’s part of the spell I used to create this bubble.” Amree laid her head back against the canvas. It shifted and rolled slightly, marking the constant movement of the sea that Shang-Li hadn’t noticed while in the water. “I drew the air from the ocean and I have to cycle the good air in and the bad air out. Otherwise the air in this place would make us sick.” She smiled a little. “It’s strange to know that the bad air we gather in here could be more harmful to us than the sea outside.”
Kwan Yung took fillets from the coals and passed them out. There was enough for Shang-Li, Iados, Thava, and all the sailors presently inside the canvas to have one.
“Have you found any sign of Grayling?” his father asked.
“Not yet. But we didn’t go any farther than the ship we found today.”
“How big is this place?” Amree asked.
Shang-Li shook his head. “It would take days to find the edges, and we’d lose too many in the forests. Finding Grayling is going to be difficult.”
“Yet it must be found,” his father said, tugging on his beard. “You cannot fail in this.”
“I know.”
“If we do not take back the journals of Liou—”
“Father, I know,” Shang-Li said. He stood, irritated and exhausted. What did he have to do to get his father to see he was doing what he could? The weight of the missing books lay heavy on his thoughts. The others were staring at him.
“I’m going to sleep,” he said, and abruptly left the air pocket, still seething.
Shang-Li sat up on the floor of the cargo hold, his heart pounding and his mind jumbled with thoughts.
Around him, the ship creaked and rolled with the constant movement of the ocean. Several small fish had invaded the ship and pestered sleeping sailors. Every now and again a startled yelp would wake everyone as a sailor discovered a crab had wandered into his clothing. Thankfully the guards posted at the cargo hold entries had turned away most of the tentacled things that tried to creep in as well.
“They keep getting in.” Shang-li turned to see Amree sitting on a crate, watching him.
“You should sleep,” she said. You’re going to need your rest.”
“And you don’t?”
Amree sighed and folded her arms. “I’ve got a ship to watch over, and she’s currently in unsafe waters.”
Shang-Li glanced at the canvas-covered air bubble in the corner. “Does that spell strain you?”
Amree shook her head and her red tresses floated on the water. “No. It’s set. Maintaining it isn’
t necessary. It’s self-sufficient for the moment.” She paused. “What is going to be difficult is expanding that air bubble to bring the ship to the surface.” She gazed around the hold. “Even if we manage to get enough canvas to hold the air necessary to lift the ship, we’re not going to lift quickly. Nor will we be able to steer Swallow. She’ll go where she has need to, mostly up, but there will be some drift with the currents and the tide. More than likely we’ll still be far out to see and away from any help. We may even drift into the territory of the sahuagin. Or the aboleths.” She pulled at the bandage on her hand.
“Let me see your hand,” Shang-Li said.
“My hand is fine.”
“Has anyone tended to it?”
“No one’s had the time.”
“Not even my father?” Shang-Li found that hard to believe.
“Your father,” Amree said, “has been busy feeding everyone. He’s still up there now taking care of that. He’s the one you should be worried about.”
The sharp ache of guilt twisted in Shang-Li’s stomach. He hadn’t given a second thought to his father’s chosen task.
“Where is the ship’s cook?” Shang-Li asked.
“Lost. Somewhere in the sea. A few of them were, you know.”
Shang-Li did know. He also knew more had been lost to the predators in the strange forest.
“May I please see your hand?” he asked.
“Now you’re a cleric?”
“I’m a monk,” Shang-Li replied. “One of the first things we’re trained to do is care for the body. Our own or someone else’s.”
Gently, noting how tense the young woman was, Shang-Li took her hand and guided her to a sitting position in front of him. He carefully unwrapped the cloth from her hand. The fact that the cloth didn’t feel saturated still amazed him, especially when he considered how wet it would be when she entered the air bubble.
“How did you injure your hand?” Shang-Li asked.
“A broken timber slipped,” she said as she watched him. “I tried to grab it.”
“Not a good idea.”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
Beneath the bandages, the palm of her hand was red and swollen with infection around a four-inch gash that ran crossways across her flesh. The tear wasn’t very deep, though the flesh was thin enough there that the muscles and tendons were revealed. Fresh blood rose from the wound and faded into the water.
A fish swam over to her and hovered over her palm. Shang-Li brushed the fish aside and it swam away.
“I don’t know how you did anything with this hand,” Shang-Li said.
“I tried not to.”
“You should have told someone.”
“Everyone was busy trying to stay alive.”
“Who cleaned the wound?”
“I did.”
“You didn’t do a very good job of it.”
“Is criticism one of the services you throw in with your care?” she asked sharply.
“Yes,” Shang-Li said, “but thankfully it’s just as free as everything else I’m doing.”
Amree tried to withdraw her hand.
Shang-Li held onto her fingers. “There are splinters in there that have to come out. And I’m going to have to suture your palm back together.”
Involuntarily, Amree closed her hand and didn’t look happy.
“What’s wrong?” Shang-Li asked.
She grimaced and looked embarrassed. “I don’t much care for needles.”
Shang-Li retreated long enough to get a small knife and tweezers from a cleric kit. He added a curved needle and fine gut. Then he sat cross-legged in front of Amree once more.
“This is only going to make me dislike you more,” she threatened.
“That’s a risk I’ll have to take.” Shang-Li took her hand and held it gently but firmly. “This is going to hurt.”
She turned her head away and didn’t move while he removed eight good-sized splinter fragments. Once he was satisfied the wound was clean, he threaded the needle.
“You were lucky,” Shang-Li said in a soft voice. “None of the muscles, nerves, or tendons were damaged. Except for the tear in your flesh, your hand is fine. Once I close the flesh up, it will heal fine.”
“If it doesn’t it’s going to be expensive to have a cleric bless it back to normal.”
Shang-Li looked into her eyes. “If we leave it untended, you could lose your hand. Maybe sicken and die before we get out of this place. At the very least you’ll bleed and attract predators. And if you’re going to create enough air to raise this ship to the surface and keep us protected while you do that, you’re going to have to be healthy.”
“You don’t look the part of a seamstress.”
“Are you ready?”
She took a deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out. “I am.”
Shang-Li pushed the needle through her flesh, felt her tense, then slowly relax a little. He pushed the needle through the other side of the slash, then pulled the ravaged flesh together and tied the first stitch.
“I’m going to put a lot of small ones in,” he said. “Spacing them out might discourage scar growth. This should leave little in the way of damage.”
“All right.”
“Just keep breathing.” Shang-Li threaded the needle once more and began again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Shang-Li swam with a heavy spear clutched in one hand. Given their present circumstances, the spear seemed a better choice than his fighting sticks. Thava and the sailors who followed him also kept their weapons out, ready for the Blue Lady’s creatures to attack.
Iados swam and scouted a head of them. The tiefling’s tail twitched like a cat’s as he surveyed the sea floor. They’d already learned many creatures liked to conceal themselves in the loose silt and the brush. And all of them appeared ravenous.
The forest continued on as far as Shang-Li could see. He’d never seen anything like the environment he watched around him. As a ranger, he’d been trained to feel at home in the forest. But though he’d tried to find some familiar bits of this one, there was no closeness, no safe harbor. The forest just felt wrong. It didn’t feel dead, but it felt something close to that.
Ahead, Iados waved and indicated that he’d found the first shipwreck of the day. Dodging through trees and brush, Shang-Li swam forward and Thava picked up her pace. The rest of the salvage crew trailed after them.
Holding the spear in both hands, Shang-Li dropped toward the sea floor near the ship wreckage. The vessel hadn’t fared as well as Swallow. She lay broken almost in half, her masts broken and splintered, and her deck largely gone. Cracked timbers and shattered planks lay beside the ship.
“She’s a cargo ship, isn’t she?” Iados asked. Like Shang-Li, he carried a heavy spear.
“I believe so.” Shang-Li used his spear to test the ground in front of him. He stabbed the long blade experimentally into the silt to see if anything lurked beneath the debris.
Curious fish swam nearby, and a few of them fell prey to the tentacled things that hid in the nearby brush. The hunters brought the writhing fish to their maws and ate greedily. Sharks had followed the scavenging crew from Swallow and now circled lazily overhead. The predators were patient hunters but every now and again one would drop down and hit the unseen barrier. Whatever force contained them discouraged them time after time. Shang-Li hoped that continued to be the case.
Thava stood at the keel and brushed away the algae that covered the bowed planks. “Her name was Bokhan’s Pearl. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” Shang-Li replied. “The ship we’re searching for is called Grayling.”
“Judging from the shape of most of the ships that the Blue Lady took under,” Iados said, “I wouldn’t hold out hope that you’ll find much of her.”
“I don’t need to find much of her,” Shang-Li replied. “I only need the captain’s cabin to be intact.” And somehow airtight, he thought, gods willing. “Let’s see what we can salv
age.” He swam down toward the broken ship but remained vigilant.
He touched down on the ground a short distance from Bokhan’s Pearl. With Thava on one side of him and Iados on the other, Shang-Li boarded the ship.
The interior was dark. Cargo lay broken open and in disarray. Nothing looked as if it had been disturbed since the ship settled on the sea floor, but the damage from the storm that had taken the vessel down was apparent.
Skeletons, their bones picked clean and gleaming in the blue glow that permeated the area, lay scattered around the hold.
“What killed them?” Iados shifted one of the skeletons with a foot, making certain it didn’t rise up to grab hold of them.
Shang-Li knelt next to the nearest one and surveyed the remains carefully. The skeleton was intact and didn’t show any signs of combat damage or residual harm from the ship’s sinking. Tattered clothing clung to the skeletal legs and ribcage. An amulet hung around the dead man’s neck.
“I don’t see any signs of past wounds,” Shang-Li said.
“This one suffered combat injuries,” Thava said from a few feet away. “Axe blows. A sword thrust through the ribs. But all the bones show signs of healing. This person lived through those attacks. Whatever killed them wasn’t violent.”
“Storms are violent,” Iados observed. He remained on guard and watched the ocean around them.
“They didn’t die in combat,” Thava said.
“Then how?”
“Drowning would be my guess,” Shang-Li answered, and he felt the grim reality of the situation close in on him.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Iados shook his head. “Why did they drown if we don’t?”
“I don’t know,” Shang-Li replied. He didn’t bother to point out that could at any moment since he felt certain the thought lingered constantly in their minds. “Perhaps they drowned before they reached the blue light. Maybe the Blue Lady chose not to help them.”
“And where is she?” Iados asked impatiently. “If it was so important for her to have us down here, why hasn’t she come to claim her prizes?”
Shang-Li couldn’t answer that either.
“I’m tired of waiting,” the tiefling declared with an angry snap of his tail.
