by Mel Odom
Unless it was a trick Kouldar set up. That thought didn’t set well with Shang-Li. He didn’t want to have to explain that to his father.
As soon as his finger touched the symbol, a spark flared to life and popped loud enough to echo in the galley. Pain shot through Shang-Li’s finger and he yanked it back. The spark was strong enough that he fully expected the paper to catch fire the way a tree did after lightning struck it. For that matter, he expected his finger to be wreathed in flames as well.
His finger turned blue, and went numb. Then, as he watched, the blueness crept up his finger and slid onto his palm, and the numbness moved with it.
Panic welled within Shang-Li and he started to call for his father. There was strange and powerful magic at work here. Then, as he watched, the mark settled onto his palm. It lay there like an animal, burrowed under his skin.
Shang-Li flexed his hand and couldn’t feel anything. There was no pain, no pressure, nothing. His hand moved freely. But his heart thudded inside his chest like a wild thing gone mad.
Mielikki, watch over me, Shang-Li prayed. I may have done something incredibly stupid.
“Do you see him?”
With his eyes closed and the Blue Lady’s hand upon his brow, Droust did see the young monk. Her spell tied him to the paper he’d written all those years ago. If he hadn’t been witness to her power, he would not have believed it.
“Yes, lady. I see him.”
“When I first arrived here, the sea was new to me, manling. But I was strong enough to make it mine. I am bound to this wretched piece of my homeland for the time being, but that will not always be so. I won’t allow it. I will not be subjugated as I have been in the past. They thought the depths would kill me, but I found power in this sea, and a way in my dying moments to make it mine. Then I grew strong enough to make the sea nourish the land as well.”
Droust had heard the story before. He guessed that Caelynna had arrived during the Spellplague, when the riven worlds found their way back together. Wild magic had been loosed upon Toril and so many changes had been wrought. So many things had been destroyed while others changed forever.
“People are made mostly of water, manling.” The Blue Lady changed her grip on Droust’s head, somehow finding a way to make it even more painful. But he felt the link to the young monk grow stronger as well. “I rule the water. And I will rule the sea stirred inside men by their hearts.”
Droust struggled to cling to his senses only because he knew the Blue Lady would punish him for passing out. He didn’t know how he endured the pain. But at last she withdrew her hand from him.
“Good. You did well, manling.” The Blue Lady smiled in satisfaction. “Now this monk is mine. We’ll find out how good he is, and I’ll bring him here.” She paused. “You had better hope that he isn’t any smarter about Liou’s books than you have been.”
“Lady, even if you get him here, even if he can break Liou’s code, you don’t know that you can trust him.”
“Do I know that I can trust you?”
Droust hesitated, wondering if it was a trick question. “Yes, lady. I still want to live.”
She regarded him pitilessly. “We are both prisoners, you and I. But I live to be free and would risk my life in the doing of that. But you-you want only to live. Even if it is in a miserable existence.”
In his fear, Droust didn’t have room to be ashamed of his cowardice. That fear was a part of his life. He was certain that the only way he could be free of it was to be dead. He wasn’t ready to die.
“We can track the monk now. Soon I will be inside his mind, as I was in yours, and I will draw him to us. In the meantime, order the Nine Golden Swords to find him.”
“Yes, lady.” Droust watched her go, then turned back to his desk and took out the crystal she had enspelled to allow him contact with the Nine Golden Swords. His fear throbbed inside him. But he did as he was bade.
“Who was the Blue Lady?”
Shang-Li tore a bite-sized portion from the deep-fried bread he held and dipped it into the fish-flavored congee. The rice gruel stuck to the fry bread and he popped it into his mouth.
His father gestured for him to speak. “You were up all night studying the journal. You have a better idea of her from the entries, surely.”
Shang-Li did, but he knew his father wouldn’t like it. “Farsiak believed she was a goddess.”
“Nonsense.” Across the breakfast table in the galley, Kwan Yuan dipped his fry bread into sweetened milk and let it soak for a moment. “We know all of the gods and goddesses.”
“We did until the Spellplague. Things have changed.” Shang-Li’s eyes burned. He’d only dozed a short time before his father had wakened him to breakfast, and none of that had been restful. His mind had churned constantly. Stiffness from his exertions and bruising the day before filled his body. He needed to stretch them out and promised himself that he would.
“Why would a goddess make herself known to Bayel Droust?” his father asked. “Why would she destroy Grayling?”
“Farsiak felt Droust had been chosen by the Blue Lady.”
“Chosen for what?”
“Droust was the only one that the Blue Lady didn’t kill that day.”
“Except for this sailor.”
“He felt he escaped only because she didn’t care if he lived or died.”
His father nodded. “However, Farsiak could also have chosen to view his continued existence to her generosity.”
“He chose not to see it that way. As evidenced by his journal. And the fact that he never put to sea again.” Shang-Li reached for another piece of fried bread.
“Feh. Wouldn’t Droust have known he was the chosen of a goddess before that night?”
Shang-Li sipped his green tea. “Does one always know when the gods have favored them?”
“Of course.”
“We don’t all worship the same gods.”
His father looked at him.
“Perhaps,” Shang-Li said, “some gods choose to follow different paths and enjoy surprises as well as the next person.”
Kwan Yung licked sweetened milk from his fingertips. “Some clerics would argue that point.”
“I found something else of interest in the book.”
“What?”
Shang-Li reached for the sailor’s journal and laid it before him. “While I was working with it last night, I discovered a hiding place.” He pulled at the cloth and separated it from the binding. Revealed within, the single folded ivory sheet stood out against the dark binding.
Kwan Yung reached for the paper, but Shang-Li closed the book before his father could reach it.
“Not yet.” Shang-Li knew he was enjoying the moment too much. Anger flared in his father’s hazel eyes and he took that as a warning. Still, he couldn’t simply tell his father what he had discovered.
“You try my patience. This mission that we’re on is very important.”
“I know. That’s why I think we both need this instruction.” Shang-Li tapped the book in his hands. “We were so intent on what was contained within the book that we didn’t question the book itself.”
His father looked at book with new eyes. “This is a well made book.”
Shang-Li smiled, confident that his father had caught on to their mistake. “The book has been hard used. It was easy to miss the quality of its construction.”
Irritation tightened his father’s frown. “Feh. The stitching alone gives away the nature of the book. I should not have overlooked that.”
“We should not have overlooked that.”
“Why would a sailor keep a journal in a book so fine?” His father pulled thoughtfully at his chin whiskers. “A captain who wants to make a favorable impression on merchants trusting their cargoes with him might keep such a book. He would be able to afford and justify the expense of such a book. A light-fingered sailor might pilfer such a book from his captain.”
“A captain would consider such a book an investment,”
Shang-Li pointed out.
His father nodded. “The captain of Grayling was an honorable man, and a stickler for details. That’s why the Council chose him and his ship. If someone had stolen this book from him, he would have turned the ship inside out to find it.”
Shang-Li tapped the journal again. “We’re in agreement then. There was only one person aboard that ship who had extra books and might not notice if one went missing.”
“Droust.” His father smiled. “Perhaps your lessons at the monastery were not squandered after all.”
“Mother taught me how to read sign in the wild. She taught me to notice variances in everything I looked at. Especially things I thought I already knew. If anything, I’ve neglected what she taught me this time.”
Kwan Yung pursed his lips and shook his head slightly, but he didn’t argue the point. “Did the sailor know this paper was here?”
“There’s no indication of the binding having been disturbed before I lifted it. If I hadn’t felt the discrepancy beneath my fingertips, I wouldn’t have noticed it either. The paper was very well hidden.”
“You’ve looked at it?”
“I have. And it only offers yet another conundrum.” Shang-Li fished out the paper, unfolded it, and left it there for his father to peruse.
After a brief inspection, his father leaned more closely to the paper and gave it a more thorough examination. He traced the lines with his forefinger, then quickly drew back in surprise.
“Did you feel that?” his father asked.
“The shock?” Shang-Li inquired.
His father nodded and rubbed his forefinger against the ball of his thumb.
“When I touched paper, there was a spark. It bit into my hand.” Shang-Li showed his father the indigo spot that had been left on his palm.
Concern darkened his father’s eyes. “Are you sure you are well? Books have sometimes been treated with all manner of traps.”
“I know. I had the ship’s mage examine my hand.” Shang-Li made a fist and still felt some of the dull tingling he’d experienced since touching the paper. “He said magic had lingered within the paper, but it was nothing that would harm me.”
“We’re going to put into port soon. Perhaps we should have someone check your hand there.”
“If there are any problems, we can do that, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”
“I’ve touched the paper several times since the first shock,” Shang-Li said. “It didn’t affect me again. I think whatever residual force remained within the paper has been expended. I think it was just the remnants of a defensive spell, nothing more. I was surprised it affected you.”
“Not in the same manner that it has affected you.” His father offered his hand for inspection. His forefinger was unblemished.
An uneasy feeling twisted through Shang-Li’s stomach as he cast a surreptitious glance at his marked palm. It’s nothing, he told himself again. Still, he made a fist and tried to will the faint numbness away.
“I can’t read this page.” His father frowned in displeasure. Kwan Yung ran his fingers through his wispy beard. “This looks more like a code than a language.”
That was the consensus Shang-Li had reached. “Which leads us to a bigger problem: Droust knew many languages.”
“Deciding whether he chose to construct a code in his native tongue or in some other … Have you matched this handwriting against a sample of Droust’s handwriting?”
“You’re better at confirming that than I am.”
His father nodded. “I’m also better acquainted with Droust’s works.” He sighed. “Let me work on knowing Droust better while you remain focused on transcribing the journal. Maybe I can find something that will help us with this code.”
Shang-Li tried not to let his disappointment show. He knew his father would divide the labor as he had, but he wished he could pursue the mystery of the note.
“Ship’s hit a reef! We’re going down! Man the lifeboats!”
In the dream, Shang-Li woke in the hold, where he’d retreated after a storm the night before had liberally drenched Jakkar’s Fox, soaking her decks. He grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder, and grabbed the sword he’d carried then.
Although he knew he was asleep and dreaming, the old fear of sinking returned to him. He felt the cold mist and the light breath of the fog as it surrounded him when he reached the deck. Jakkar’s Fox was quickly sinking. The merchant ship took on water in her busted prow like a sieve. She waddled and rolled like an ungainly duck.
All around Shang-Li, merchants and their wives screamed in fear. The pleasant trip they’d expected had ended suddenly. A few of them had died that day, and Shang-Li was surprised at how well he remembered their faces in the dream. There had been the silk merchant from Chessenta, a guildsman from Impiltur who was relocating to Westgate in hopes of better business, the twin sons of an investor in the Dragon’s Reach that had fancied themselves as ladies’ men.
As he had done on that deadly day, Shang-Li helped the passengers into the lifeboats.
Only this time, every person Shang-Li tried to help turned to a corpse as soon as he touched them. They turned to him, hollow-eyed, and breathed their last rancid breath on him, then crumbled into butcher’s slops at his feet.
Blessed Mielikki, what was happening? Shang-Li froze as a young girl watched him drop her dead mother to the deck. The little girl ran screaming through the panicked crew and passengers already swamping through water that rushed across the floundering ship’s deck. The captain and his crew drew their weapons.
“What are ye a doing there?” Blikaga, the ship’s first mate, drew his sword and strode toward Shang-Li.
Shang-Li tried to protest and tell all them that it wasn’t his fault, he was only trying to help. But his voice wouldn’t work. No matter how hard he tried, no sound would emerge. He backed away, unwilling to fight the men he’d accepted as casual friends. Only a few days before they’d risked their lives together to repel a pirate attack.
“Stop!” The woman’s imperious voice rang out.
Everyone aboard Jakkar’s Fox froze in place.
A moment later, she strode through the billowing fog. Her blue skin marked her immediately, Her beauty was breath-taking and she knew it. Despite the fact that the ship was sinking fast, every person aboard Jakkar’s Fox watched her, spellbound.
Then she faded from view and a row of monstrous tentacles at least forty feet long burst from the fogbank. Some flailed into men and knocked them overboard while others grabbed men and crushed them to death.
Shang-Li tried to run but there was nowhere to go. With the tentacled monster weighing the ship down, it sank even more quickly. Before he knew it, Shang-Li was in the water. Something grabbed his foot and dragged him down. He fought but couldn’t escape.
The Blue Lady’s face somehow formed in the water. It wasn’t flesh. It looked more like the gelatinous, translucent mass of a jellyfish.
“Come to me, manling. If you’re brave enough.” She mocked him with her laughter.
Shang-Li woke in a cold sweat and stared around the cabin he shared with his father. He had escaped Jakkar Fox’s sinking, but it had been a near thing. He’d been tangled in the rigging when he’d gone down. But there had been no tentacled monster, and no Blue Lady.
He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs. He knew it had been a dream, but he couldn’t help feeling it had been more than that as well. He worked on his breathing, leveling off all the anxiety and panic the dream had brought with it.
Knowing he wasn’t going to be able to sleep belowdecks, he grabbed his gear and went out onto the deck. It was the darkest hours before the dawn, the time when the world seemed its quietest. After hanging a hammock, Shang-Li sat there for a long time, then the familiar rocking of a ship under sail finally lulled him back to sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
Vibrations in the wooden floor of the crow’s-nest drew Shang-Li from the ske
tch he was working on. He’d summoned images from the dream and brought them to life on the paper, surprised at how much that effort had given new birth to the fear he’d felt the previous night. Even before he saw who climbed into the crow’s nest, his fighting sticks were in his hands.
Yugi, the young sailor that often occupied Swallow’s crow’s nest as lookout, hesitated as he hung onto the ratlines that ran to the top of the ship’s mainmast. Constant exposure to sun and salt air had given his black hair an orange sheen and his buttery skin baked pink every day until it looked like coals burned within his flesh. He held up one hand and grinned at Shang-Li.
“Easy. I just came up because the captain ordered me up here.” Yugi returned his hand to the ratlines. “We’re hoping to be within sight of the coast before long.”
Shang-Li put the sticks away and searched for the book he had been working in. The copy he had made of Farsiak’s journal sat beside him. The wooden case containing his writing implements sat atop it where he had left it. He pushed himself into a sitting position and folded his legs so that Yugi could enter the crow’s nest.
The young sailor leaned back nonchalantly against the edge of the crow’s nest. He scented the air like a hound.
“Storm’s coming.” He scowled. “It’ll probably catch up with us toward sundown.”
Shang-Li shaded his eyes against the westering sun and spotted the storm clouds rolling off in the distance. “Where are we?”
“Not far from the coast. Close to Urmlaspyr. The captain didn’t want to be caught out in the middle of the sea in case a big squall rose up, so we’ll hug the land for the next day or so. We’ll probably reach the coast in time to drop anchor for the night.”
That announcement probably hadn’t gone over well. Shang-Li knew his father was in a hurry to return to Westgate for supplies. At least the city wasn’t much farther. Weather and wind permitting, Swallow would reach her destination in three or four more days.
By that time, Shang-Li hoped to have a location in mind to search. Of course, Westgate offered difficulties of its own. Not to mention the menace of the Nine Golden Swords. He yawned creakily.
