Seren lightly elbowed Japheth in the side, murmured, “What do you think of our chances, really? I am not without power, and my foes would not call me a coward. But a great kraken! Are you not concerned?” Seren was companionably close, even though he’d edged away twice. Each time he’d done so, she’d bridged the distance again. Was she needling him purposefully?
Japheth rewarded the woman’s persistence with a nod. He said, “Our task will not be easy. But I have no choice. I must see this through to the end.”
Seren smiled suddenly and said, “You are a noble one, aren’t you? You come off all hard and nasty, but it turns out you have a soft spot running through you a mile wide.”
The warlock frowned, uncomfortable in the woman’s overly wide smile and eyes that kept trying to meet and hold his own.
He looked away, only to feel the wizard’s hand on his shoulder. She said, “It’s an endearing trait, you know. Thoster, here, he cares for nothing but himself. But you! You have a heart large enough to care for others. That is something I could come to admire.”
Seren’s hand remained on Japheth’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. Even through his thick, batskin cloak, he could feel the warmth of her palm.
Japheth took a step away, so that her hand fell loose. He said, “If you think I am softhearted or noble, you have woefully misjudged me.”
Seren gestured so that both palms lay open and empty, a gesture of entreaty. Her wrists were thin and shapely, her hands well formed. Japheth looked up to her face. She asked, “Why do you constantly pull away from me, Japheth? I like you. Are you so wrapped up in your gloomy thoughts that you haven’t noticed that?”
“Yes, I have been preoccupied,” allowed the warlock. He recalled Anusha’s sleeping body in his arms as he’d carried her from his fey castle.
“Well, there’s no more excuse to ignore me, now that all our cards are on the table, so to speak.” Seren grinned with a certain ferocity.
“I … I am flattered, Seren. But now is not the time. We go into the lair of the beast. Best we do not even begin down that road.”
“Are you lonely?” she inquired, her voice soft. “I know I am, by myself in my cabin each and every long night.”
An image of Anusha on his bunk eating trail rations briefly obscured Seren’s form. She was wearing a shift that left her neck and shoulders bare. His cheeks warmed, though he doubted the wizard could see him blush under the shadow of his hood. If she could, she’d likely misinterpret it. He and Anusha were working toward something, it was clear, something more than friendship. His heart beat faster.
What Seren wanted was something like that, but without the friendship. He kept his face hard.
“Well?” asked the wizard, her own face also beginning to redden, not from embarrassment, but from the anger of incipient rejection.
“Hoy!” Thoster’s call cut through the line of tension running between them. “Japheth! Seren! What’re you two squabbling about? Step up here! We have little time to devise our strategy!”
The wizard studied him a moment longer. Then, instead of letting her face break into a scowl, she chuckled. She winked and said, “This trip isn’t over yet. If we defeat the great kraken, perhaps you’ll be in a more celebratory mood.”
She joined Thoster and Nogah at the railing, leaving Japheth shaking his head. The white-clad wizard was not used to being denied, that was clear.
He approached the group, putting the kuo-toa between himself and Seren. Nogah was responding to some biting question the wizard had just asked. “It isn’t as hopeless as you suppose, human. I can safely guide us through the city and down to where the kraken rests. I can sense the Dreamheart even now. I’m close enough to obscure our approach, and the closer I get, the stronger I’ll become!”
Japheth and Thoster exchanged a quick glance. The captain flicked his eyes to the kuo-toa, then back at him, then gave a slight negative shake of his head. Was he saying Nogah shouldn’t long be allowed to keep the Dreamheart, if they successfully retrieved it? Perhaps. Or perhaps the warlock was merely projecting what he wanted to read in the captain’s signal. Regardless, Japheth would have to take it for Behroun, whatever Nogah thought or Thoster wanted. The warlock decided he wouldn’t volunteer his intention just yet. It was possible Thoster no longer considered himself in Behroun’s employ, with such a great prize at hand.
“May I see?” Japheth asked Thoster, gesturing for the spy tube.
Thoster passed over the viewing glass. Japheth raised the cylinder to his eye and squinted. The distant mote leaped into focus. He saw an island on which oddly canted structures sprawled between dry land and a sickle-moon-shaped lagoon. A noticeable dimness suffused the air over the island, as if the day’s sunlight was reluctant to illuminate the kuo-toa community.
“There is a quality to the light I mistrust,” the warlock noted. He wondered if he shouldn’t take a grain of traveler’s dust, just to make certain nothing slipped past his perception. With that thought, he perceived tiny ants crawling across his palm. He didn’t look—he knew the sensation was in his mind.
Nogah interjected, “We should go now. Prepare a small craft for those of you who can’t swim.”
“Which would be all of us,” Seren replied.
Nogah glanced at Thoster but only nodded.
“If you can protect us from being detected, shouldn’t we take the whole ship closer?” the wizard pressed.
“I can obscure a small craft but not something as large as the Green Siren.”
Thoster bawled out orders for the small launch to be readied. When it was lowered over the side, the captain, Seren, Japheth, six crew members assigned to row, and even the first mate, Nyrotha, climbed down into the rocking craft. Though he couldn’t see her, Japheth supposed Anusha accompanied the landing party. Again, more powerfully this time, the urge to withdraw a speck of dust from his hidden tin made his throat feel swollen. The ants now felt like they were crawling up his forearms too. He gripped the gunwale to keep his hands occupied.
Nogah simply dived off the side of the Green Siren. She arrowed into the chop with barely a splash. A moment later, the kuo-toa’s scaled head reappeared near the launch, her wide eyes blinking through the bluish gray waves.
Thoster loosed the knots, and the rowers began their backbreaking sculls. Slowly, the launch began to close the distance to the isle. Nogah swam alongside, gurgling a half-audible chant. Japheth at first thought she was praying, then remembered she was outcast from her goddess. She must be drawing power from the Dreamheart in some ritualized fashion. Presumably the chant provided protection against the observers on the island, though he couldn’t perceive any obvious effect. The warlock was impressed she could call upon the stone’s power from so far. He hoped Gethshemeth didn’t notice.
Tiny spots became visible in the gloom above the island. He pointed them out to Captain Thoster. The captain trained his glass on them. He swore.
“What is it?” demanded Seren.
Thoster wordlessly passed the glass to the wizard. She looked, and her pale skin turned even whiter. “How can that be?”
Japheth took the spyglass from the woman’s nearly limp hands.
The glass revealed five flitting sentinels circling the island’s periphery in lazy loops. The sentinels were kuo-toa, their forms predatory like the ones earlier encountered. The strange kuo-toa rode steeds that appeared to be great masses of seaweed. Each mass trailed a writhing nest of suckered arms that undulated in wavelike synchrony as they glided across the sky. Streamers of inky blackness marked each rider’s wake, slowly dispersing in the wind, but accounting for the general gloom that cloaked the island. Each kuo-toa clutched a lancelike spear under one arm.
“It is the power of the Dreamheart!” called Nogah’s voice from the water.
“How? Why?” demanded Thoster.
“The stone taps some greater font of energy that liberates creatures formerly consigned to life below the waves. To the few selected, the boundary between sky an
d sea is erased, and movement and breath in both are as if one vast realm! See? Those creatures flitting about are enslaved morkoth! Gethshemeth has repurposed them as flying mounts!”
The ex-whip’s words came fast and furious, becoming almost indecipherable as the kuo-toa began to thrash in the water.
“Easy, Nogah,” cautioned Thoster. “Are you all right?”
“Let us hope,” interrupted Seren, “Gethshemeth does not give itself this ability to glide through the air like a bird.”
“Actually,” Japheth found himself saying, even as his eyes stayed locked on the spiraling sentinels inking the air, “that would make it far more convenient for us. I don’t look forward to swimming down to meet the great beast.”
Nogah huffed and wheezed, but began to calm. Finally, she continued, “I foresee Gethshemeth will meet us halfway.”
Japheth wondered what that meant, but Nogah silenced his query unasked with a quick shake of her head. She said, “Now, quiet your tongues. I must redouble my efforts. I didn’t expect such sentinels.”
The launch resumed its journey. The isle drew ever closer. Japheth kept his eyes on the unfettered squid things and their riders, waiting for the least hint of alarm. When the bottom of the boat suddenly scraped up on the rocky coast of the isle, he started.
The dripping form of Nogah rose from the rolling breakers. She still hummed some atonal tune under her breath, and merely pointed.
All but the rowers disembarked. A high wave poured shockingly cold water down Japheth’s boot, and he hissed.
To the right and left, a thick tangle of mangrove roots and branches prevented easy access to the shore. Nogah had cleverly selected a site of their landfall not visible to the rest of the island. Small fish, shrimp, crabs, and mollusks played in the clear seawater washing between the reaching mangrove roots.
The ex-whip took the lead, pressing into the dense tangle on something that wasn’t so much a path as a small, salty estuary. The kuo-toa had yet to cease her rhythmic humming. Japheth looked up. He couldn’t immediately spy sentinels, but he didn’t doubt they still flew.
He wondered if he should chance a little magic of his own, but decided against it.
What he really needed was the extra perception granted by a grain of dust.
It was foolish, he told himself, not to call on all his resources now that things were becoming so desperate. He’d take only a half grain. That would be enough to enhance his perception without dulling his reactions too much. Or worse, pull his mind out onto the road.
The tin was already in his hand. He popped it open and plucked out a crumb. It was one of the smaller ones. Proud of his restraint, he dropped the ruby red particle into his left eye.
“Oh! Japheth, why now?” came Anusha’s voice from nowhere.
Captain Thoster glanced back. “Eh, what’s that?” His eyes squinted with vague puzzlement.
Japheth asked, “What was what?”
“Thought I heard someone say your name. Not happy with you, neither.”
Japheth shrugged. “You’re hearing things, Captain.”
Thoster frowned, but turned back to sloshing along the trail after Seren.
Japheth cocked his head slightly to regard Anusha’s armored form, which was blurring into his perception. He gave the phantom a half smile and winked. “I’ll be all right,” he whispered. The armored head gave a small shake, then faded. Either he hadn’t taken enough dust to perfectly resolve her presence, or she’d decided to leave. Because she was disappointed in him? The thought concerned him. But it was a pale sort of concern, attenuated by the euphoria that accompanied the first moments after partaking of traveler’s dust.
Japheth melted into the moment.
The mangroves thinned ahead, revealing the first of several greenish gray structures. Like coral in texture and in their seamless solidity, the structures were not rough jumbles of growth, but rather stood in coarse parody of more mundane buildings. Walls, doors, windows, towers, and spires were visible, separated by plazas and courtyards, and many clear pools. Structural lines sometimes seemed to converge too sharply, or diverge where they should have stayed parallel.
Or perhaps the lines were perfectly straight, mused Japheth. Maybe it was just the dust.
The kuo-toa settlement lay in murky dimness under the debris of sentinel wakes. The smoky veil overhead gave the illusion the village lay within a subterranean cavern. Bestial kuo-toa moved purposefully between the structures, but a few played in the pools, cavorting and splashing as if human children. These kuo-toa were not goggle-eyed and sticky-skinned, like Nogah and her kin, though they were just as awkward when moving on land. But the creatures gained something like grace when they darted through the surface pools. Watching them move, an undercurrent of something Japheth couldn’t quite name brushed him. Some churning dread, squirming just below the surface, like worms hidden in an apple.
That last feeling was certainly the dust, he thought. Or, then again, perhaps it was a true perception—perhaps his enhanced senses were picking up the traces of Gethshemeth’s control over these hapless and partly metamorphosed creatures.
Nogah sidled up to a particularly large building. Glyphs, disturbing in their sinuosity, were carved in a frieze all over the edifice. The ex-whip motioned the rest of them to follow her, then slipped into a small side entrance.
Not a single kuo-toa noticed their passage. Their guide was proving as good as her word. She’d said her previous ownership of the Dreamheart would empower her, and she hadn’t lied.
Nogah waited for them in a low-ceilinged vestibule. Three basins were carved into the walls, each resembling an open-mouthed, upward-facing fish. Clear liquid spilled onto the floor from each gaping mouth. Beyond the basins, two arched corridors provided deeper access into the structure, both lit by a wan yellow radiance.
“What do the scaled ones get up to in here?” asked Thoster.
Nogah merely pointed to the right-hand archway and grunted, “This way leads, past many windings and disputed ways, to Gethshemeth’s audience chamber.”
“You don’t say?” blurted Japheth.
“The Dreamheart. It tells me much. Now do not distract me with prattle, either of you. We are close! I must fully concentrate on hiding my connection to the relic from the great kraken. If he discovers my presence too soon, before I actually stand in his presence, Gethshemeth will slay us all easily, or command his minions to do so.”
Japheth looked at her, squinting. He could almost see the merest hint of something, a thread of energy spiraling out from the kuo-toa’s forehead. The thread plunged across the chamber and into the passageway she indicated. However, overlaying that, Japheth’s dust-enhanced eyes noted a glimmering haze, something superimposed that was less like a thread and more like a long, sucker-covered appendage …
“Are you certain he doesn’t already know we’re here?” Japheth asked.
“Of course,” huffed Nogah. “I spent far longer with the relic than this upstart creature.”
Thoster laid a hand on Japheth’s shoulder. “She’s our only hope, mate. If she’s right, we’ve got a shot. If she’s wrong, we’re all dead already. We just ain’t figured it out yet.”
The warlock frowned, but he was having a difficult time working up enough concern to argue. It could be, in truth, the dust was feeding him untrue visions, and he was drawing unwarranted conclusions. That was its downside, he philosophized. Well, one of its downsides.
Nogah advanced, following her thread. The more Japheth looked at the sensory impression, the more it appeared as a wriggling tentacle. He tried to blink the association away.
The hall quickly became a narrow staircase leading downward. Relief-carved kuo-toa heads emerged from each wall at intervals, their eyes gleaming yellow.
“We’ve just descended below the water level,” Nogah commented. “If we were outside, we’d be swimming now.” She said this last bit somewhat wistfully.
“And I’d have turned back,” replied Seren.
The stairs continued their descent, mercifully clear of water.
Past a switchback, the stairs leveled into another straight passage. The passage was slightly narrower than the stairs, and the lights were less frequent.
The sound of falling water slowly grew, as did Seren’s frown.
The tunnel opened into a wide space lit by a trio of sculpted kuo-toa busts some thirty or forty feet above. The area was dominated by a central pool, around which several shrublike plants grew. An aroma that mingled honey and blueberry hinted at flowers, though Japheth spied no blooms. A dry platform rose marginally above the water’s surface at the pool’s center. Bones lay scattered upon the platform, along with bits of cloth, spilled coins, and other objects. On the far side of the pool, Japheth discerned an archway leading into a completely lightless passage.
Ripples dappled the pool. Thoster advanced alone and gazed down. “Albino fish, everywhere,” he reported, “and a spiral staircase, drowned beneath the pool. It descends a long way …”
“It is not a pool, it is our path,” intoned the ex-whip.
“What!” exclaimed Seren. “I told you I cannot and will not swim!”
“Don’t you have a spell to give yourself gills?” asked the first mate, Nyrotha, his voice hoarse from disuse.
The wizard replied, “Not since the Spellplague, damn it all! I’m heading back to the ship. I’m done with this foolish expedition!”
The ex-whip strode to stand next to Thoster, then looked back to regard the rest of them. She said, “Fear not. You may descend these stairs without drowning. The pale fish, see them? They are rune-charged creatures. In their presence, you could walk the depths of the seafloor as if strolling through a green meadow.”
“Really?” Seren’s interest in magical lore battled with her anger at the thought of drowning. Anger that cloaked healthy fear, Japheth figured.
Seren and the warlock both eased up to the pool’s edge. Japheth saw eyeless slivers darting about, each pulsing with pale radiance. Seren extended a hand, her brow furrowed with concentration. Then she smiled. She reported, “How extraordinary! I’ll have to take a few of these with me after—”
Plague of Spells Page 20
