Realms of the Deep a-7

by Lynn Abbey

  Thankfully, "extreme care" was a concept most take embraced, and no sahuagin really understood. If onlj Mlav could be taught to use some measure of it before it was too late.

  "Perhapsss we could now deliver our important re portsss," the sahuagin Narardiir said, in a tone thai made it clear he was neither requesting nor waiting foi permission to do so.

  Sardinakh carefully did not glance at Mlawerlath's approaching form as he said in a cool, almost flippant tone, "Why don't you?"

  Both sahuagin hissed to show their displeasure at that, but when he neither looked at them or made any reaction, they were forced to move on. Their black eyes were staring, always staring. Ineffectual gogglers. He turned his back on them to show fish-heads held no fear for this wrinkled old tako.

  "There is newsss both good and bad from our ssspiesss assshore," Narardiir began stiffly. "The dragon Hoondarrh, the one called 'the Red Rage of Mintarn,' has not long ago begun a Long Sssleep in his cave. Ssshould we invade, he won't intervene."

  "The good news," Sardinakh agreed calmly, his eyes now on Mlawerlath as the tako passed over the outermost sentries, regarded but unchallenged. "And the bad?"

  The other sahuagin spoke this time-and, by the mercy of whatever god governed sea refuse, did so plainly. "Recent dryland pirate smuggling and slaving has driven the human Tarnheel Embuirhan, who styles himself the Tyrant of Mintarn and is the dryland ruler of the isle, to hire a company of mercenaries to serve Mintarn as a harbor garrison. A human force, and highly-trained, by name the 'Black Buckler Band.' It is thought, and we concur, that they won't hesitate to wake the dragon if beset by foes who seem on the verge of victory."

  "There isss little elssse to report," Narardiir added, "but-"

  "That is a good thing," Sardinakh interrupted smoothly, "because Mlawerlath is here."

  As he spoke, the younger tako flung out his tentacles in all directions, to serve as a brake to his powerfu journeying, and slid into Sardinakh's office with hi: tentacles rippling, water swirling around them, am grace hurled to the currents.

  Befitting an underling in disgrace, Mlawerlatl passed between the hissing sahuagin and Sardinakh': desk, and struck the far wall of the chamber with i solid thump. The old but coral-buttressed bulkhea(scarcely quivered.

  "Hail Sardinakh, master of all our voyages, Mlawerlath said hastily, venting many bubbles in hii haste and nervousness. This one salutes you and a the same time humbly beseeches your pardon at nr lateness. This one has devised a cunning plan, a! promised, and has come to unfold it before you."

  He glanced at the two sahuagin and blushed a littli in his nervousness. His purpling promptly deepene‹ when the fish-heads hissed mockingly, "Cunning plan cunning plan," and leaned forward to hear with exag gerated sculling of their webbed claws.

  "My officers are somewhat excited," Sardinakh ex plained in dry tones, ignoring fish-head glares. "Ignon them, and speak freely. Keep me not waiting."

  Mlawerlath jetted forth bubbles in a sigh, slid somi tentacles around the nearest mast-pillar, more for thi reassurance an anchor-point brought than for any thing else, and said, "This one's plan should eliminati both the merfolk who dwell in the harbor, and the nev dryland garrison of human mercenaries."

  The sahuagin hissed loudly at the thought tha their news was obviously old tidings elsewhere ii Downfoam, and Sardinakh took care that the beak fluttering that signified tako mirth was well hiddei from his underling. Mlawerlath's tone of speech woul‹ have better matched the announcement: "This one has devised a plan that this one hopes will win this one back a place in good favor with Sardinakh."

  "Please excuse this one's plain recitation of simple facts," Mlawerlath began haltingly. "It is intended as no insult, but to anchor the scheme. Thus, then; for some years, the merfolk of Mintarn have praised and hungrily devoured oysters brought from the Shining Sea nigh eastern Calimshan and the Border Kingdoms, where the waters are warmed by the outflow of the Lake of Steam. Suldolphans-the humans of the city whose dwellers harvest most of the oysters-like these oysters, which have somehow acquired the name 'Mabadann,' done in lemon. So, too, do the merfolk of Mintarn."

  The two sahuagin showed their fangs in unison, hen, in great yawns designed to display their bore-lorn. Sardinakh ignored them, but Mlawerlath, obviously flustered, continued his speech in stammering haste. "I-in the friendship feasts th-they hosted to welcome the new garrison, whom after all they must trust ind work with, the merfolk fed the human warriors these oysters."

  In his quickening enthusiasm, the young tako forsook his anchor to flail the canted deck with his tentacles as he moved restlessly across the room, then back again. The humans so dote on these oysters now that the water-filled barrels of live Mabadann oysters are the most eagerly awaited shipments into Mintarn. The drylanders have even taken to sneaking some shipments past the merfolk to get more for themselves."

  The sahuagin were drifting a little closer now, their heads turning to hear better; a sure sign of interest.

  Mlawerlath wanned to his telling. "Now, in coasta caves nigh Suldolphor dwells a malenti, Jilurgah Rluroon by name, who owes this one a debt. Long age she perfected a magic that puts creatures into stasis- unbreathing, unseeing, as if dead-for short times with set trigger conditions."

  The tako's tentacles were almost dancing with ex citement now. "If she can be induced to cast her spell or a hundred or so armed bullywugs," Mlawerlath added his voice rising, "of those who dwell near at hand, or the Border Kingdoms coast, south of Yallasch-anc Jilurgala sets its trigger to awaken them when theii barrel is opened, they can be the next shipment of oys ters smuggled past the merfolk and into the drylandei kitchens of Mintarn."

  It is rare for a tako's mirth to be loud, but Sardi-nakh's quivering, loud venting of raging bubbles was uproarious laughter. It drowned out the amused hooting of the sahuagin, and left the commander of Down-foam barely able to signal his approval to his flushed and quivering underling.

  To it, O Master of Oysters!" Sardinakh roared, tearing apart a waterlogged bench with a sudden surge oi his tentacles. "Go, and come back victorious!"

  "Truly," Brandor muttered, as two of the tallest, most muscular Black Buckler warriors minced out oi his way, twirling their hands in mockeries of spellcast-ing and crying out as if in mortal fear as they rolled their eyes and grinned at him, "this is The Place Where Guards Snore At Their Posts."

  He ignored their shouts of laughter and the inevitable bruising of hilt-first daggers bouncing off his slender shoulders-insulting reminders that as a Black Buckler himself, Brandor had recently been publicly reminded by a senior warrior that he must be ready to do battle with his fingers and dagger, should his spells prove too pitiful. The apprentice pounded down the slippery steps that led to the kitchens… and his current punishment.

  Brandor was forever collecting punishments. Since the arrival of the Bucklers on seawind-swept Mintarn, his daily acquisitions of reprimands and duty-tasks had reached a truly impressive rate, even for the youngest weakling ever to wear the Black Buckler badge.

  It did not help that he was the sole apprentice of the accomplished but aging Druskin, supreme sorcerer of the Black Buckler Band. That made the other two band mages see "the little grinning fool Brandor" as a future rival, to be ridiculed and discredited at every opportunity. Most of the strapping Buckler warriors, he knew, saw him as a pitiful excuse for a man, to be made sport of until he fled into the sea and rid them of his face and his pranks.

  Ah, yes, his pranks-his only source of fun, and his only weapons. Long ago he'd fallen into the habit of responding to bullying with his quick wits and nimble fingers. Those who pestered Brandor the Fool paid the price, be they ever so mighty-and their colleagues roared with laughter.

  Mintarn was small and mostly bleak, its folk suspicious of armed outsiders and guarded in their deeds, slow to welcome curious wanderers-and slower still to welcome one who wore both the Black Buckler badge and the robes of a wizard. Boredom had led

  Brandor to dub the islan
d The Place Where Guards Snore At Their Posts," and that arch observation had earned him no love among the Tyrant of Mintarn's own warriors.

  It had done so just as Brandor's boredom was chased away forever by the sight of dark-eyed, darker-browed Shalara, her hair the hue of the sun as it kissed her slender shoulders and vanished down her beautiful back. He began to hurry down the steps at the thought of her. She often stopped to talk with Halger; she might be down there right now.

  The Tyrant's daughter slipped around Mintarn's ramparts and windswept stairs like a shy shadow, free to wander at will. Folk said she was the image of her dead mother-who'd never had any use for brawn and bluster, but had admired a keen mind. Hence her voyage from far Suldolphor to the meager splendors of this lonely isle, despite the coughing chills that had finally claimed her.

  The Tyrant was said to dote on Shalara, but Bran-dor was utterly smitten with her. He would wait on bone-chilling ramparts for hours just to catch a glimpse of her, and Halger had finally forbidden him the kitchens-save when he was working therein for punishment-after he'd lurked and loitered for the better part of a tenday, staring intently at Shalara whenever she poked her head in.

  She'd obviously been reluctant to enter and speak freely with him swallowing and staring at her, and Halger had said so. Yet he'd have done anything-anything, even endured a public beating from the fists of the hairiest, most sneering of the brutish Buckler warriors, or foresworn his paltry magic-to have earned her smile and friendship.

  Instead, he'd fallen back on the only way he had to get noticed. Pranks.

  Brandor the Fool had staged a series of increasingly spectacular pranks to impress Shalara Embuirhan. He'd begun with guards' boots stealthily hook-spiked to the flagstones as they dozed at their posts, just to prove the fitness of the catch-phrase he'd coined, then he switched around all the garrison stores orders.

  That had been followed by the switching of officers' undergarments, then the swapping of those same smallclothes with those of the haughtiest ladies of the Tyrant's castle. Then all of the shields hung on the castle walls had mysteriously begun changing places, and the castle chamberlain's usual feast welcoming speech had been hilariously rewritten, just on the night when the chamberlain had taken ill and the understew-ard had been called upon to read out the speech in his place, with the stem admonition to "change not a word."

  Not a night later, the moaning ghost of Mintarn had been heard again, just outside the windows of the shuttered house near the docks where the Buckler warriors were wont to take their coins and their restlessness to the doors where plump and smiling lasses beckoned. Then someone had let out a paddock-full of mules to clatter and kick around the docks, and…

  The inevitable results had come down upon Bran-dor's head. He'd seen kitchen duty and more kitchen duty, washing mountains of dishes, pickling jars upon jars of fish, and staggering down the long, spray-slippery path out of the castle, to dump slimy basket after slimy basket of kitchen-scraps in the breeding pools where the tiny silverfin boiled up like fists reaching out of the water, their miniature jaws agape, to greet his every visit.

  All of these panting, sweaty tasks had been done under the watchful eye of the old cook of Castle Mintarn, and Halger was not a man to miss noticing 01 tolerate a single moment of prank-preparation or malingering. A fat-bellied, greasy ex-pirate whose left arir ended in a stump (which he usually fitted with a blackened, battered cooking-pot), Halger stumped and huffed around the lofty, smoke-filled hall that was his domain, somehow contriving to keep no less than three cooking-hearths alight and a steady stream of food going forth on dome-covered platters to feed the folk oJ the Castle, the Tyrant's guards, the Bucklers, and whomever was in port and at the Tyrant's guest table

  Down the years, Halger had also found the time tc be Shalara's confidante, trusted confessor, and wise old guide to the wider world. He knew her secret thoughts and yearnings, and her judgments of the world around her and the people in it. The amused look in his eyes when they fell upon a mutely staring Brandor made the apprentice squirm and sometimes want to shriek in sheer frustration.

  As he ducked through the dogleg of archways designed to keep gusting storm winds from blowing oul the kitchen-hearths, Druskin's apprentice let out a sigh of relief. Someone had piled too much wood on the blaze in the corner hearth. The smoke and sparks were roaring up the tallest chimney, the one that soared up through the thick walls of the beacon tower for a long bow shot, into the skies. Halger was shouting and red-faced men were running hither and yon with fire-tongs and soot-blackened aprons, while the women bent grimly over their pots and waited for the tumult tc blow over. The lofty, many-balconied kitchen was ruled by swirling smoke and chaos.

  There among it all was his waiting pile of potatoes, blessedly bereft of the old pirate cook standing with arms folded across his mighty chest and a soft but razor-edged query as to the tardiness of a certain apprentice. Thankfully Brandor snatched up the peeling-knife Halger had left waiting on the stool, eyed the waiting bucket of similar knives that he was supposed to turn to whenever the knife he was using grew dull, and realized he was doomed.

  The corner hearth had held leek-and-potato soup, almost certainly scorched down the insides of its caldrons and ruined. Halger was going to be striding over here all too soon, in his flopping sea boots, expecting to find thrice his own weight in fresh-peeled potatoes waiting. If a certain diligent apprentice worked in frantic, finger-cutting haste, he might-might-have six potatoes ready by then.

  Brandor swallowed, sat down on the stool, and closed his eyes. If he changed the incantation of the dancing dagger spell just so, it should serve to cause the blade to cut in a curve. Add four… no, six would be better… such phrases to the casting chant, and the cuts should come around the surface of a single roughly spheroid object. Treble the crushed mosquitoes and the iron filings, and add the trebling phrase to the summation, and he should have four knives whirling in their own dance, peeling his potatoes for him. All he need do was stand back-with stool and bucket-out of harm's way, and watch for idiots blundering into the field of flight. A simple snap of his fingers would still cause the knives to fall to the floor in an instant. By Azuth, it couldn't fail!

  Casting a quick look around at the subsiding chaos to make sure Halger wasn't watching, Brandor drew in a deep breath, then performed the spell in mumbling haste. He almost lost a finger when the knife in his hand tugged its way free to plunge into the waiting mound of potatoes, but it worked. By Mystra, it worked!

  He was drawing breath for a satisfied laugh when he saw that the knives were whirling ever faster, and the brown, wet shavings they'd been strewing in all directions were now pale white. The air was full of wet slivers of potato! The-oh, gods!

  He snapped his fingers, but the cloud of carving before him only whirled faster. Desperately he stammered the summation chant backward-and with a gasp of relief that was almost a sob, Brandor saw the knives plummet to the floor. Their landings made no clatter, because that floor was now knee-deep in fresh, wet potato hash.

  Staring at this latest disaster, Brandor suddenly became aware that he was drenched-covered hi slivers of cold, wet potato that were slowly slithering down his face, off the ends of his fingers, and past his ears- and that a vast and sudden silence had fallen in the kitchen.

  He hardly dared lift his eyes to meet Halger's gaze, but there was no ducking away now. Shaking diced potato from his hands, Brandor reluctantly raised his head.

  And found himself looking into the eyes of Shalara Embuirhan-eyes in which mirth was swiftly sliding into disgust.

  "Uh, well met, Shalara," he mumbled, hope leaping within him when there should have been no hope. Gods, but his humiliation was complete.

  "When are you ever going to grow up and stop wasting your wits?" those sweet lips said cuttingly, anger making them thin. "Pranks are for children- grown men foolish enough to play pranks end up very swiftly dead."

  No, he'd been wrong a moment ago. Now his humiliation was c
omplete.

  She stood staring at him with contempt for what seemed like an eternity before whirling away in a storm of fine gown and long, flared sleeves, storming back out of the kitchen.

  Brandor hadn't managed to do anything more than blush as red as a boiled lobster and nod grimly at her words. He was still standing crestfallen, covered in wet slivers of potato, when the entire kitchen heard the dull boom of the door to the beacon tower stairs slamming. It was a crash that could only have been made by a young lady deep in the grip of anger.

  Brandor looked down at his hands, and discovered they were shaking. A pair of all too familiar battered sea boots came into view as they stopped in front of him. He raised his eyes with no greater enthusiasm, this time.

  Halger was standing with his hairy arms folded across his chest, and a twinkle in his eye. Of course. He met the miserable gaze of the apprentice, chuckled, then grunted, "Want to impress the ladies, do we? Peel yon mountain before we finish, and I'm sure she'll be impressed."

  A familiar knife flashed out of his fist, spinning down to an easy catch. Brandor fielded it grimly, looked glumly at the mound of untouched potatoes beyond the slippery heap of hash, and made his sliding way across it, to set to work peeling-the old way.

  Tve nothing of import to pass on to you, goodsirs," the Tyrant of Mintarn said quietly. "You know as well as I that no ships have called here, or even been sighted from atop the beacons, these six days past. It's as if the seas have swallowed every last ship, and given us-silence."