“I know, and you have Umberlee’s blessing to depart. But if you are leaving her service, you may not wear her badge. Allow me.” She swam to him, murmured a prayer, and stroked his forearm with her fingertip. His all-but-forgotten octopus tattoo, inscribed when they’d first reached Dragon Isle, vanished in a flash of burning pain.
He rubbed his smarting skin. “If you’d asked, I could have erased it, and it wouldn’t have stung.”
“My apologies,” she said, though he almost thought he heard a hint of laughter in her voice. “What will you do now? Will you stop being a spy as you have ceased serving Umberlee? Be your own man in every respect?”
He shrugged. “I’m going to have to think about it. In many ways, I’m sick of spying. But bringing down those whoresons on Tan, helping at least some of the captives to freedom, was … satisfying. Maybe I’m not finished quite yet.
“I don’t need to ask what you’ll do,” he continued. “Your destiny is clear. You’ll go down in the annals as the greatest priestess Serôs has ever seen.”
“You speak as if my work is done.”
“Well, the hard part. Isn’t it?”
“I have won a year, during which the shalarin people must pray at Umberlee’s altars and listen to me preach whether they want to or not. It remains to be seen whether they will continue when the time expires. I suppose it depends on my eloquence. On whether I can show them the goddess as I know her to be, or failing that, at least persuade them of her limitless might and appetite for slaughtering those who neglect her worship.”
“You’ll manage it.”
“I pray so. At least I have my chance. No one can ask more.”
“Well.…” He had the witless feeling, which often came to him at partings, that he ought to say more but didn’t know what. At length he settled for: “We fought well. Better than well. Checkmate’s edge, we’re dragon slayers! How many folk can claim that?”
She smiled. “All the warriors in Myth Nantar now but perhaps not with as much justification.” Then, to his utter astonishment, she opened her long blue spindly arms for a parting embrace. He took care returning it so as not to crush the fin running down her spine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A resident of the Tampa Bay area, the setting for much of his horror fiction, Richard Lee Byers spends a good deal of his free time fencing foil, epee, and saber, often competing in local tournaments. He’s a devoted gamer (GMing mostly, since his lazy friends never want to do it) and a frequent guest at Florida SF conventions.
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