“Could be. But you forget the value of the ship itself, and its weird construction. If you don’t believe me, you can borrow one of my salvager’s air bottles and—”
“And get myself drowned for my efforts? No thank you. But I’ll be taking a look. I have a wizard aboard my ship and we keep a small supply of water breathing potions to hand. I want you to take us down so we can look this ship over. Before we make any kind of final arrangements.”
She tried to eye him without guile.
“Or don’t you like the sound of that?”
She liked the sound of that very much. She’d hoped to lure him overboard, but she didn’t want Ensara to know it. “A deep dive’s no simple thing for the untrained,” she warned him. “There’re dangers down there. And it’s a night dive. Do you have lights? Do your men know how to fight underwater?”
“You let us worry about all of that. You just show us this treasure ship.”
“If that’s what you want.”
4
THE THING IN THE HOLD
MIRIAN
Ensara led the way to the Daughter’s side. With him came a half-dozen pirates, chief among them the mate Sarken and what looked to be a man stretched out a bit after he was pulled from the same mold. Ensara introduced the latter as his wizard, Kavel, who was thinner and taller than Sarken but otherwise shared his same beady eyes and blunt nose. My brother, Sarken had said.
“You’ll be wanting to take off your boots,” Mirian pointed out to the captain, who smiled good-naturedly as some of his men laughed.
“And do you have anything to see by?” she asked.
“I’ll manage something,” Kavel answered. His voice was even more gravelly than Sarken’s.
Mirian meant to press home her expertise to make herself more valuable. And to make them a little nervous. “It’s more dangerous down there than it looks. I almost ran straight into a giant crab in the seaweed. In the depths, things might look placid, then something can spring out at you. It’s like the jungle, except creatures can pop out from every direction. It can take a while to get used to looking six ways.”
“It’s not our first venture overside,” Ensara said, “but the warning is appreciated.”
“I never dive without weapons,” Mirian said.
Ensara wagged a finger at her. “You’ll have plenty of protection below, Captain Raas.”
“If we wander into a nest of rot worms down there,” Mirian said, “you’ll want every sword you can lay hands on.”
“A rot worm?” Ensara asked.
“A sort of undersea centipede that loves to forage among fungus and mold and disintegrating wood. They’re poisonous.”
“I see.” Ensara frowned. “Well, you’ll have to tell us where to look for them. I’ll warn you again not to try anything clever, as we have you outnumbered. And Kavel has other magic at his command. Speaking of which—Kavel, the potions.”
One by one the wizard handed over five red bottles, and Ensara and his team pulled free the corks. The captain’s nose wrinkled as he lifted his bottle to his nose. “Smells like seaweed. Couldn’t you have made it a little more appetizing, Kavel?”
“The important thing is that it works, Captain.” Kavel tipped the stem to his lips and she watched his hairy larynx bob.
“Down the hatch then,” the captain said, and as he drank, the rest of his team followed suit. “Tosten, you’re in charge. Overside, lads. Captain Raas, lead the way.”
She touched the dulled glow stone still hanging about her neck and lit it with a soft word before anyone could ask what she was doing. “All right then. Follow me.”
And over she went.
She couldn’t be sure where Jekka had gone and it had occurred to her that something very bad might have happened to him.
More likely, though, he’d had some inkling of what was going on and waited for an opportunity to move in and protect his adopted sister and ship. She wished there was a way for her to signal that the wizard Kavel was most dangerous. Then it occurred to her that there was.
After the men splashed in, Mirian played the glow stone over them as they blinked away the stinging salt and rubbed their eyes. She settled the light upon Kavel the longest. If Jekka were watching, he had to have seen the emphasis she placed upon the wizard.
But she didn’t leave it on him for long before turning and swimming slowly down. Since she wasn’t moving at her magically enhanced speed, and she’d asked Ivrian to leave details about her equipment vague, the pirates couldn’t know one of her rings provided her a distinct advantage: that she could move freely underwater, even at great depths.
Really, all she had to do was get them below and disoriented in the darkness. She wouldn’t need any help ditching them if it weren’t for that thrice-damned wizard, who surely knew offensive spells.
There was another hope: that the druid had remained, waiting to assist, or to at least take vengeance against men who’d dared to hold her prisoner. But Mirian had no idea what the druid was capable of, or really, how she might feel about the pirates. With her ability to slip in and out of elemental form, the druid might very well have moved on for Eleder and left Mirian and the crew to their fates. After all, Djenba hadn’t been paid anything but the promise of a return favor.
Mirian couldn’t predict what Jekka would do, either. He was a skilled and experienced warrior, but he didn’t think the same way as a human. What she hoped was that he’d follow and use any distractions as an opportunity to pick off the pirates to sow further confusion.
The safest bet was to carry on as though she had only herself to depend upon.
And so she led them down and farther down into the darkness. They followed in a clump, Ensara and Kavel near the front. Kavel conjured an eerie white beam from an amulet he held in one hand, lighting the area immediately before him and his captain. Mirian supposed that might be as good a signal as any to Jekka to indicate the best target.
She swam on and on and still there was no sign of her blood brother, only the glowing denizens of the deep water. A few yards off her right side swam a whole flotilla of pink-and-blue jellyfish, and farther on a school of pineapple fish, the patches along their jaws glowing an eerie white, like pupil-less eyes. By day they looked far less fierce, their scales being of the same shape and color as unripe pineapple skins.
Mirian reached the ridge of the seafloor at last, her light playing along the gently undulating fronds of seaweed. She’d never before hoped to run across a giant crustacean, but she did this time. Where was that damned crab, or its cousin? Really, that’s all she needed, and so she kicked along the bed of fronds, eyes sharp. It was a dangerous game she played, for if one of the beasts should surprise her, it might very well snip her in half.
Yet the crab was gone and no other seemed anywhere close. Without really meaning to, she arrived within sight of the lizardfolk shipwreck.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Ensara’s divers had spread out only a little. They tended to hover close to Kavel’s light.
Mirian swam slowly forward to the hull, playing her light along it so Ensara could see the perfectly preserved black planks, barely affected by any coating of mold or fungus.
He was close enough that the expression on his face was perfectly clear, and it was so genuinely curious she briefly considered changing her course of action. If they were to drop here repeatedly, they might very well need some kind of guard.
But then she thought of Ensara’s casual willingness to sell her men into slavery and take her ship. He was no prospective business partner and his men seemed even less civilized.
She swam up the side, waving Ensara and his crew to follow. She moved on up over the prow, where she pretended to examine the figurehead before Kavel drifted on with the light.
Mirian kicked on without approaching the wheelhouse. There should be any number of distractions down in the hold, and she didn’t want them seeing the control panel.
Except that the control panel might ju
st be the finest way out of this mess, now that she’d led them here. She mouthed a curse that would have earned a slap from her mother. This was the find of a lifetime—a discovery that could benefit not just her crew, but Sargava and maybe the entire world. Yet because of the pirates, she would have to abandon it.
Mirian stopped at the hold and motioned her companions forward. Ensara and Kavel preceded her, swimming awkwardly. She hesitated, and Sarken pushed her ahead into the gangway. She shot him a dark look and he grinned at her.
She went inside, still swimming at normal speed. She caught up to Ensara in the hold, already considering the contents of the two chests they’d opened. One empty, one with the strange bottles.
He grinned at her and mouthed something she couldn’t make out. He took in the surroundings, then stuck out his hand, beaming at her. Apparently he was satisfied and wanted to shake on the deal.
But that wasn’t what she wanted at all, and perhaps the gods sensed it, for at that very moment a tentacle writhed out of the dark opening into the next hold and seized one of the pirates around the head, jerking him into inky blackness.
Even as the other pirates whirled in horror and reached for swords, more tentacles lashed out.
Mirian was never sure quite why she did it, but she grabbed Ensara’s arm, still hanging there as he turned, slack-jawed in horror. She pulled him off-balance so that the tentacle missed him by a handspan.
And then she turned and swam for it.
She’d held back while leading the pirates. Now she moved at full speed, her magical ring leaving her unhampered by the resistance that slowed and tugged at everyone else, forcing them to fight through the weight of water and its currents and eddies. She dimmed her glow stone as she hit the stairs, pushing past Sarken.
She heard the dull sound of shouts, saw the orange glow of a spell behind her, and then she was up the gangway and out.
And very near the quarterdeck and the wheel and the strange control panel beside it.
She slowed herself by grabbing the pedestal beside the wheel, then activated her glow stone and shined it on the panel. She spun the “no wind” gem to life. The old ship shook.
She spotted Sarken rising at the top of the stairs, saw the snarl on his face even as the ancient vessel shot forward on its last voyage, rumbling and shaking across the seafloor, a cloud of silt rising behind her like the train of a wedding gown.
Mirian shot toward the surface.
Pirates be damned, and the priceless shipwreck with them.
She and Jekka had been incredibly lucky the squid or devilfish or whatever the hell that thing was hadn’t come out after them when they went into the hold, or that they hadn’t probed into the next chamber where it laired. She almost pitied Ensara, and then she remembered how he’d meant to steal her ship and sell her crew into slavery, and told herself she didn’t care.
She surfaced in the darkness and spotted the glow from a light high on Ensara’s ship.
The last time she’d faced off against pirates, a few months back, she’d had her wand. This time it was undersea along with Sarken, probably lost forever. There’d be no blasting Ensara’s ship open as she’d done with that Chelish privateer.
No matter. She’d been incredibly lucky when it came down to it. She hated the loss of the wand, hated the loss of the shipwreck, but she was free, and her crew’s freedom would follow shortly.
She sped on toward the side of the Daughter and was closing on the ladder when she saw a flash beside the ship—just a wink. A glow stone had come on, then off, revealing Jekka floating below the ladder. He held the stone and stared right at her.
They surfaced quietly together, and the lizard man pushed the air tube from his mouth.
“The pirate sentries on the Daughter are done,” Jekka reported. He tended to confuse words like finish, killed, and complete. “I was coming to look for you.”
“Is the crew all right?”
“Yes. They stand post where the pirates were. Easy to manage once you led their leaders away. Clever, my sister. I knew what you intended then.”
She nodded, letting him think she’d had a more complex plan. “What about the watch on Ensara’s ship?”
“They’ve called over once.”
She hadn’t gotten a terrifically good look at the enemy vessel, but she hadn’t seen any ballistae or shipboard weapons. “Any sign of the druid?”
“I am here,” a quiet voice said beside them, and suddenly she was, boiling out of the depths in a swirl of water, regal and strange.
“Where’ve you been?” Mirian asked. What she’d meant was why hadn’t the priestess helped them, and the priestess seemed to sense that.
“I don’t take lives,” she said, “unless it’s something I mean to eat.”
“Can you work a spell that won’t take life, to help us get away?”
“I might.”
“I’m going to cut their anchor line,” Mirian said. “If my brother will swing out his scythe. I know you can bless a ship with current, Djenba. Can you set Ensara’s ship spinning away to give us time to unfurl sails?”
She knew this was within the druid’s power. She’d witnessed her send forth powerful blasts of wind as vessels launched.
“I can do you this favor,” Djenba decided. “It would be a long swim back to Eleder.”
Of course. “Right. Jekka?”
She sensed reluctance on her blood brother’s part, but he moved nimble fingers over the surface of the staff and its spearpoint retracted. He quickly flipped it on its other end and another press of inlaid sigils conjured up the long scythe blade. She’d studied both blades a few times and determined they were fashioned from some high-grade steel. The lizardfolk had once been incredibly advanced.
“All right,” she said. “Get up there and get ready.”
“Rendak is prepared to cut grappling lines as soon as he gets the signal,” Jekka said.
“All right. I’ll be back any second.” Mirian dropped below once more.
For a brief moment as she followed the outline of her ship’s hull, she thought about the men trapped on that ancient wreck rumbling along the ocean bottom, the tentacled horror grasping for them, and felt another twinge of remorse.
She put it from her mind as she traced the hull of the other ship with gloved fingers and found her way to its cable.
As always, the freedom her ring provided made working underwater easy. Between that and the sharpness of Jekka’s blade, the cable was soon parted.
Immediately she darted away, Jekka’s scythed staff carried before her, and in moments she was slipping up the ladder of the Daughter. In the darkness, she heard Gombe whisper that Mirian was back, and then the chunk of lines being severed, the slap of waves on the Marvel’s hull. As she hurried to the quarterdeck she saw the pirate ship spinning away as figures ran back and forth along its deck, calling to the crew they thought still stood watch on the Daughter.
Rendak shouted her crew into action, but they were already unfurling sails, and the priestess sent a blast of wind into them before they were fully sheeted home. The ship surged ahead and Rendak bellowed at the sailors to get the lines secured.
“Everyone’s really all right?” Mirian asked, breathless.
Rendak, at the wheel, glanced at her. “Aye, we are. Rutting pirates. How’d you ditch the whole lot of them?”
“A story for another time,” Mirian answered grimly. “We had a hell of a find, too.”
Jekka had come up on her left and she looked at him. “I’m sorry, Jekka. I don’t think we can get back to the ship again. There was something on it.”
“What kind of thing?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” Mirian fought down a shiver. “But it seemed hungry.”
“Don’t worry, Sister. I am certain your brother-in-marriage will have answers for us.”
Jekka was so damned hopeful about that spoiled rich man that Mirian didn’t have the heart to nay-say him again. He’d have to learn that disappointment o
n his own.
But it turned out she didn’t have to do so at all, because once they’d finally docked and secured the ship and made their way to their home on the hill, a packet from her brother-in-law was waiting for her. Tradan had found the map.
5
DRAGON TEARS
IVRIAN
Another thrilling adventure was passed, but I’d played no part, for I’d been ashore contemplating deck plans. Rest assured I was far from bored, for I had a fine mansion, select wines, and the company of the charming Jeneta, warrior-priestess of Iomedae.
Once I learned my friends had been in mortal danger, I all but smote my breast, wishing I might have been there to protect them! All I could do was pledge to shield them from any travails that followed. So it was that the morning after their return I found myself trundling across the streets of the old city, rocking over ancient stones in an allegedly luxurious carriage in the company of Mirian, Jekka, and my dear friend Kalina.
—From The City in the Mist
Kalina sat forward on the cushion, her long-fingered hand to the carriage door curtain so she might peer at each street they passed. In contrast, Jekka was motionless across from her, all but his snout hidden by the hood of his robe. If the carriage hadn’t been jarring them over the rutted road every few feet, Ivrian might have assumed he slept.
The lizard woman was smaller than Jekka, with a shorter snout and duller coloring, but it was her manner that differentiated her more. Even after a month among her human friends, her curiosity about their customs hadn’t ebbed. “What a long beard that man has,” she said brightly, and Ivrian smiled to himself without bothering to look. “How long does it take to grow a beard, Ivrian? Can you grow one?”
“I could,” Ivrian answered. “They’re not really in fashion right now.”
“That’s strange,” Kalina said. She whipped her head around on a disturbingly flexible neck to consider Ivrian. “There are a lot of men with beards.” She looked out the window again. “There’s another.”
“Probably sailors,” Mirian said. “Beards never go out of fashion for sailors and pirates.”
Pathfinder Tales--Through the Gate in the Sea Page 4
