Starspawn

by Wendy N. Wagner

  Jendara looked up just in time to see Vorrin slash at the deep one facing him. The dead deep one collapsed, and Vorrin paused, scanning the room, then wiped his blade on the creature’s shoulder with an expression of distaste. “That’s the last of them. Where in all hells did they come from?”

  “They came from over there.” Jendara strode into the shadowy corner where the creatures had appeared. She hadn’t noticed any exits when she’d first entered, but she’d been distracted. Kran moved to pass her, and she grabbed him by the arm, pulling him to her for a quick hug. She had wanted to protect him, but she had to admit she’d made the wrong choice. She’d left his side to charge into battle when she should have backed them both into a corner and let the enemy come to her.

  He wriggled in her grip. She squeezed him hard enough to feel the air go out of his lungs and then let him go. The boy rolled his eyes.

  “Hey,” Glayn called out. “There’s a set of stairs here!”

  They hurried across the library to the narrow flight of stairs set into the far wall. Glayn stooped to shine a bit of light down them.

  “Look at that.” Zuna pointed to two rust-colored bumps set into the floor. “I bet those were hinges. This was probably covered by some kind of trapdoor that fell apart hundreds of years ago.”

  “A secret door,” Glayn mused. “That would explain why it’s so narrow.”

  Korthax took a step forward. “It goes down long way, to an opening by the camp. We swim a bit.”

  Vorrin grabbed his arm. “How far is a bit?”

  The ulat-kini looked around the group, his round eyes profoundly froglike. “You can all swim, can’t you?”

  Vorrin narrowed his eyes at him.

  A clinking sound distracted Jendara from the incipient argument. Kran was still behind the group, and she knew before she even turned around that he had been poking at the heaps of debris.

  “What did you find?”

  He half turned from the heap he knelt beside and waved her over. As she got closer, she could see the remains of what must have been a stone bench built into the wall. Broken bits of flooring from the mezzanine overhead had fallen onto it, but a crack ran down the stone front, and now Kran pried at the crack with his dagger. Jendara squatted beside him.

  “It’s hollow, huh?”

  He nodded. He’d already broken off a bit of the stone, widening the crack. Jendara reached for the lantern on her belt and lit it while Kran broke off another bit of rock.

  Jendara held the lantern close to the crack. “Can you see anything?”

  His eyes widened and he nodded rapidly. Jendara glanced over her shoulder at the others. Korthax was sketching in the silt on the floor, maybe drawing some kind of map for Vorrin. No one was shouting, which was a good sign. She turned back to her boy and nudged him aside. “Let me try.”

  Once the bench had probably opened from the top, but there were enough mineral deposits from its years underwater to seal it shut. Kran’s idea of prying open the crack was probably the best option, but his little dagger wasn’t long enough to get any good leverage and she knew he’d never risk the new treasure of his seax. Jendara slipped the handle of her handaxe into the crack and hesitated. It was new, after all, and if Boruc had been there, he would have hated to see her scratch up the beautiful engravings. She sent him a mental apology and pulled back on the axe with her full weight.

  The stone front didn’t even grumble as it broke free from the bench’s walls. Jendara toppled onto her backside and Kran rushed in to see what she’d found. Jendara pushed aside Fylga’s concerned licking and brushed herself off while the boy rummaged through the debris.

  “Find anything good?”

  Kran brought out a small box, possibly made of lead, since it looked heavy and unaffected by water or corrosion. He opened it to reveal a string of lustrous black pearls.

  “Wow.” Jendara blinked at the treasure. “Do you know how rare these are? They’re worth a lot.”

  He tucked the pearls in his belt pouch and then returned his attention to the hollowed bench. He removed a flat object that had once been wrapped in some kind of heavy canvas. The canvas had rotted into an orangish slime over the centuries, and Kran pulled it off in handfuls. Fylga sniffed at the stuff and shook her head. The pungent smell didn’t discourage Kran in the least.

  He wiped off the last of the rotten fabric and held up a shining bronze disk. He made a questioning face.

  Jendara reached for the disk. Like the bars in the prison below, someone must have taken great pains to preserve the thing; it showed no signs of water damage or any kind of age. It could have been wrought yesterday. She brushed her fingers over the tiny engravings that ran around the thing’s edge. Another, smaller disk covered the top half of the larger one, its own edges engraved with unintelligible symbols, and a bronze bar, something like a handle, lay over the two pieces. A center pin secured the three layers. The bar had been fashioned with a sea snake’s face at each end, and their conjoined tails met in a complicated knot at the center. She tried turning it and found it still moved easily.

  “Glayn?” she called. “Can you come take a look at something?”

  The little gnome joined them. “Find something?”

  “Kran found it. Does it look familiar?”

  Glayn nodded. “I think it’s an astrolabe.” He saw Kran and Jendara’s faces and shook his head. “Not the kind we use on the ship for navigation. The kind that shows what stars are in which alignment.” He turned the sea snake bar. “This is probably a pointer for the outer ring. The inside disk probably adjusts in accordance with the date, or perhaps some other astronomical occurrence that interested these people. But these symbols mean nothing to me.”

  “May I see?” Zuna asked. Jendara hadn’t noticed her arrival. Glayn put the astrolabe in the other woman’s hand. She turned it over. There was something like a flattened tube on the back, as if perhaps the astrolabe had been designed to mount on a post. “Do you think they hung it on a wall or something?”

  “It reminds me of something,” Korthax said. He started to reach for the bronze thing, then whipped his hand back. “I’m not sure what,” he added, quickly.

  Kran jumped to his feet, waving a hand to catch their attention as he scribbled: Star Chapel!

  Jendara shook her head. “What about the Star Chapel, Kran?”

  Symbols on disk, he wrote, like symbols in chapel.

  Glayn nodded. “If it’s an astrolabe, that makes sense. And the stars seem to be important to these people.”

  Jendara remembered the huge templelike structures on the surface level of the island. She wished Boruc and his notebook were here. He’d sketched the buildings and some of the details from their remaining artwork. Maybe there was some clue as to the symbols’ meaning hiding in his notebook.

  “Well, whatever it is,” Vorrin said, “it looks valuable. Good find, Kran.” He nodded toward the stairs that Glayn had discovered. “In the meantime, we’ve got some friends waiting for us.”

  Kran slipped the astrolabe into his pack and he and the others made for the staircase. Jendara caught up with Vorrin.

  “I wish we could figure out what those symbols mean.”

  He gave her an odd look. “We’re here to save our friends, not solve mysteries.”

  “I know—there’s just so much here we don’t understand. It would be nice to know something for once.” A narrow landing broke up the staircase, and Jendara paused. “How much farther?”

  “Not much,” Korthax assured her. “After this, there is just a short corridor before we reach the exit.” They pushed on after the ulat-kini. The narrow and uneven stairs continued down into the darkness, far steeper and longer than any of the stairs they had taken before. Jendara had to imagine this was some kind of back door, a secret bolt-hole. The society that had built this city built beautiful things, but the prison and this staircase suggested it was a community with secrets and a suspicious nature.

  They emerged from the stairs into
a faint light. “This is it—this hole in the rock,” Korthax explained. “There is climbing to get down to the water, but like I told the others, it’s not too hard.”

  Jendara put out her light and tucked it into the depths of her pack. She hoped the oiled leather still protected her things as well as it had her last swim. She was tired of getting soaked, but at least her gear was holding up.

  Zuna led the descent into the water, and Korthax went down between Glayn and Vorrin. Fylga dove into the sea as confidently as if she’d been a seal. Jendara eyed Korthax as she paused on the rocks above. Even with his hands bound in front of him, he had no problem treading water, and he paddled beside Kran, making some quiet comment that made the boy smile. She still didn’t trust the hybrid, but she had to admit he had helped Kran back there. She just wasn’t sure why. She made her way down the slick rocks and swam for her son’s side, watching Korthax the whole time.

  “There.” Korthax pointed with his chin. “Camp is just around those rocks.”

  The group began to swim for the camp, and Jendara realized why they hadn’t seen this other entrance on their first trip. Not only were there rocks, but the spray from the waterfall they’d discovered blocked the view of this spot. If the ulat-kini were used to using this entry point, they might not have seen the humans moving behind the spray.

  But now she could see the ulat-kini camp. The ugly, makeshift boats were still gathered around the dock, but this time she saw far more of the full-blooded ulat-kini. They floated in little groups out in the water. Their air-breathing hybrid relatives looked paler and more spindly than the aquatic ones. She made a mental comparison between the ulat-kini and the deep ones. They shared a general resemblance to fish, although this group of ulat-kini reminded her far more of herring, while the more solidly built deep ones reminded her of anglerfish, all big jaws and needle teeth. The ulat-kini’s hands were more like hands and less like flippers, too.

  “If we come up behind this boat, I don’t think they’ll see us,” Zuna pointed out, so they swam around to the far side of the nearest ugly vessel, which stank of tar and spoiled fish. Zuna swam into the boat’s shadow, then pulled herself up onto the dock. Zuna took Korthax’s lead rope from Vorrin and reeled him close to her side while the others pulled themselves up onto dry ground.

  “Where are they?” Vorrin whispered.

  Korthax looked around. “Yerka’s scow can lock. It is the only one.” He pointed at the boat when Jendara had found Yerka. Jendara’s lips tightened. Earlier, he had claimed the vessel was Yerka’s home, but it sounded more like a prison.

  The group followed him quietly. But before they reached the scow, another hybrid scrambled up onto the dock. “Korthax!” It babbled something in its awkward-sounding language, and then its golden eyes went big. It reached for Korthax’s bindings, suddenly realizing he was a prisoner.

  Vorrin grabbed the hybrid and clapped his hand over the creature’s mouth. “If you want to live, you’ll take us to your prisoners.”

  The hybrid shook his head wildly, sending off droplets of water.

  Korthax frowned. “He tries to tell us something.” He leaned closer. “Tharkor, do not scream. Otherwise, we are both dead.”

  The smaller hybrid whimpered.

  Kran frowned. Jendara knew he had to feel sickened by the threats to the two ulat-kini. He had never seen Vorrin or Jendara in any position other than the defensive, and now his parents were the attackers. But he had to understand that this was an ugly situation, and it called for ugly measures. She reached for the boy’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “Can we get on board the scow?” Vorrin said in a low voice. “I’ll uncover your mouth when we’re inside.”

  Tharkor nodded and Vorrin pulled him on board the vessel. Jendara readied her axe. Out here on the deck, they were dangerously exposed. She nearly held her breath as Zuna opened the door to the scow’s cabin.

  “There’s no one inside.” Surprise colored Zuna’s voice.

  “Get in,” Vorrin hissed. They all hurried inside. Vorrin pulled his hand from Tharkor’s mouth. “If you scream, I’ll slit your throat,” he warned.

  Tharkor cringed away from the man. In the close space, Jendara could feel Vorrin’s arm trembling. Vorrin had faced down plenty of enemies, but there was a difference between self-defense and an execution. But he was worried for Tam and Boruc, and she knew he would do anything for his friends.

  They squeezed into the foul-smelling cabin. Some of the stink of urine and unwashed bedding had faded, but Kran still looked sickened by the stench and squalor. Jendara pulled him closer to the wall, away from the hybrids and Vorrin.

  “Where are our friends?” Glayn growled.

  “And no lying,” Vorrin warned him. “I’ll break your neck if I think you’re lying.”

  “Not know,” Tharkor whimpered. He flinched away from Vorrin’s raised hand. “No lie!”

  “Tharkor, tell them,” Korthax pleaded.

  “I see nothing. Please!” Tharkor shuddered. “Korthax, please.” He burst out in his native tongue.

  Jendara stepped forward. “Speak Taldane, ulat-kini.”

  Tharkor shivered. “Things bad here. Leng men not come back. Some of us missing. Korthax first, but now many. Full-bloods, hybrids, even Yerka.”

  “How many?” Korthax leaned in closer to the other hybrid.

  Tharkor’s fishy lips worked as he silently added up the number. “Nine,” he said. “No, eleven.”

  Jendara frowned. “Eleven of your people have gone missing.”

  Tharkor nodded vigorously. “Leng men not going to be happy.”

  “Leng men?” Jendara asked.

  “The black robes. Them that raised the island!” Tharkor’s eyes gleamed. “We help them, they take us with them to Leng. We live like kings. Soon, Skortti use star scepter to wake the Sea Lord. Then we all go to Leng.”

  Jendara tried to make sense of the creature’s words. The people on the black ship had made the island come up out of the sea? That spoke of some serious magic.

  Glayn folded his arms across his chest. “What in Desna’s skirt does that even mean? Star scepter? Sea Lord? Leng Men?”

  Vorrin narrowed his eyes at Korthax. “Why don’t you explain? Seems you left a few things out of your original story.”

  Zuna gave Korthax’s wrist bonds a twist. “Spill it, scum.”

  The cabin door burst open, letting in a torrent of enraged babbling in the ulat-kini tongue. Everyone spun to face the new speaker.

  From the doorway, an ulat-kini wearing an ornate miter leveled his trident at Korthax. He narrowed his eyes. “I do not know who you are, but if you are with Korthax, I will kill you all.”

  14

  THE POLITICS OF THE SHORE

  Jendara stepped sideways, subtly placing her body between the new ulat-kini and her son. “You’re just one frogman up against four well-armed adventurers. I don’t think you’re in any position to make threats.”

  In the dim light of the cabin, mother-of-pearl shone on the ulat-kini’s miter. The headdress had been shaped from what appeared to be white shell and carved to resemble lace patterned with bits of mother-of-pearl and threads of shining silver fish skin. She recognized it from her initial observation with the spyglass. Its wearer ignored her. It growled something else in its own language.

  Vorrin glared at the newest ulat-kini. “Drop your weapon before you get yourself killed.”

  The ulat-kini looked from one crew member to the other. The confidence slid off its face, and it dropped its trident with a clatter.

  “What you want?” it croaked.

  “We’re looking for—”

  Korthax cut Vorrin off. “Heretic! You sell the star scepter to the black robes!” He lunged toward the other ulat-kini, but hit the end of his rope with a hiss.

  Zuna reeled him backward. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “You are not strong like your father.” The other ulat-kini smirked. “The people have judged
you!”

  Korthax spat. “If I were not tied up—”

  “But you are.” The older ulat-kini turned to Vorrin. “Drylander. Why you come to this sacred place?”

  “We don’t want to get in the middle of your fight,” Vorrin said, his voice calm, almost friendly. “We don’t want to interfere with your people at all. We just want our companions. We assumed you took them, but Tharkor here insists our friends are not here.”

  Skortti took his attention off Korthax. “You are not working with the traitor?”

  “I am not traitor!” Korthax shouted. “You, Skortti! You and Fithrax! You agree to give star scepter to the black robes of Leng!”

  “Shut up,” Jendara snapped. “Skortti, don’t listen to him.”

  Vorrin said carefully: “We found Korthax in the tunnels and took him prisoner, assuming he could help us.”

  Jendara shifted uncomfortably. They’d been lucky to grab Tharkor and keep this Skortti under control. If any more of their kind arrived, it would mean a fight. She glanced at Kran. They’d been able to keep him safe back in the library, but in these tight quarters, he’d be in far greater danger.

  Skortti drew himself to his full height. The miter nearly scraped the roof of the cabin. For the first time, Jendara realized he was taller than Korthax. His shape was pure ulat-kini: webbed fingers, bandy legs, back hunched beneath a fairly substantial dorsal fin. Korthax was mostly human with ulat-kini qualities, while Skortti showed no hybridization. Moreover, he had a prosperous plumpness about him, and his fish-skin belt was ornamented with what appeared to be fish-bone scrimshaw.

  “If you not work with Korthax, then you not our enemy. You first of your kind I see on this island. Leave now, and we let you go.”

  “I think he’s telling the truth,” Glayn said.