by Mel Odom
“Gods,” Uziraff said, “I’ve never seen the like. That’s an elven ship, isn’t it, Baylee?”
The thrill of the discovery dulled the fear and wariness in the ranger. He felt the siren call of the ship. “Yes,” he replied. “Yes it is.” He walked across the uneven plain of the ocean floor.
“What was her name?” Uziraff asked.
“She was called Chalice of the Crowns.”
“What happened to her?”
The ranger shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“By the gods, she’s old. Look at the coral covering her.”
“I know.” Baylee kept going forward, less than fifty paces from the shipwreck now.
She had broken into two main pieces. Planks and spars, masses of rigging, and sailcloth lay strewn across the ocean floor. The chill at this depth, negated by the potion Baylee had drank, had preserved what was left of her. Parts of the ship had drifted away with the currents, torn free as the ocean had claimed her.
“Was she from Myth Drannor?” Uziraff asked.
“I believe her to be.” Baylee answered to the excitement that he heard in the pirate captain’s voice. He couldn’t believe he had only Uziraff to celebrate the moment with. Golsway should have been here at his side. Thoughts of the books that would have been in the shipment from the library swirled in his head.
“Gold!” one of the other pirates yelled. He crouched down, letting go of his lantern as he reached for the gold vase that thrust up from the silt.
No longer in contact with his body, and out of the reach of the potion’s magic, the lantern extinguished immediately, then collapsed in on itself as the pressure crushed it.
The display was a grim reminder to them all.
“You fool!” Uziraff snarled at the man holding the urn. “Now we’ve got one less light down here to work with.” He continued berating the man, using up even more time. Finally he ordered them to bring the net and start filling it.
Baylee walked onto the broken hull of the ship, making his way across the clusters of coral. He went carefully, knowing that one small tear across his skin could release enough blood into the water to draw predatory sharks—or worse—from miles away.
“Baylee!” Uziraff yelled. “Do not think you’ll get away with anything! Everything we can load into this net is mine! Don’t make me kill you for trying to hide any of it!”
The ranger ignored the threat. Gold and silver and gems littered the ocean floor. If Uziraff and his men were limited to the hour the potion gave them, they would feel the pressure of time passing and would be more inclined to pick up everything that was easy.
“Baylee!” Uziraff bellowed. “Where are you going? Come back here and help us load these things up! You’ll at least get to see them that way. Baylee!”
The last glimpse the ranger had of the pirate, Uziraff was digging something from the ocean floor and pointing to another object embedded in the silt only a few feet away.
Baylee knew the ocean floor was probably littered with artifacts from the ship for a ways back to the east. Chalice of the Crowns hadn’t gone down all at once. Her dive had evidently been steep, judging from the pressure marks on the broken planks, but time had passed before she’d finally settled. There would be a line of non-perishables along the path she’d taken.
Uziraff still bellowed in the background, his voice sounding garbled now coming through all the water separating him from Baylee.
In the center of the ship, Baylee found the true horror. Books and manuscripts, all precious vessels of knowledge, of learning, of history, lay scattered across the ocean floor. There were no bodies of the crew. Those would have been taken care of by the nature of the sea, dissolved back into the dust they’d first come from.
And some of the books had been dealt with as harshly. They held no pages, but the covers—of precious metals and other hard materials—remained behind.
Baylee stood on the side of the overturned vessel and played the beam of his magic lantern over the wreckage. So much was lost, possibly forever. The disappointment hit him like a physical blow.
Fish swam by lazily, watching him.
Then, glancing below, he spotted a stone tablet laying against the deck, partially shielded by the broken main mast. He made his way down carefully, swimming to the tablet.
Slipping his knife out, he pushed the blade against the side of the tablet. When it didn’t fragment or crack, he put the knife away and risked picking it up. Some cultures had been written on stone tablets with a heavy sand content. Baylee had watched inexperienced site diggers reduce hundreds of years of records to dirt in seconds.
The stone weighed his arm down. He held the lantern to shine the light over the tablet. The language looked familiar. It wasn’t the true elven tongue; it was something older than Myth Drannor, but it was human. Perhaps even something from Netheril, the civilization of human mages that had lived on floating islands in the sky.
He wiped at the built up silt and coral, but couldn’t clear the face of the tablet. He knelt and opened his bag of holding, taking out yet another bag. This one he hadn’t told Cordyan about when they’d talked about his journals. He shoved the stone tablet inside, then closed it. When he opened it again, the tablet was gone.
He smiled at his good fortune. He hadn’t known if the bag would work under water. Looking at the debris left of the books broke his heart. So much was so lost.
Still, he made himself continue the search. Most of the vases made of precious metals—as long as they didn’t have inscriptions or sigils—and other items he tossed onto a pile on the ocean floor. Items he found of interest went into the bag only to disappear a moment later. The bag stayed empty.
Scouring the ocean floor, he managed to find seven books that appeared to be fairly complete. Two of them had to do with the divination of ground water for the building of early cities. A quick glance through the slate sheets with runes carved on them let him know that spells were on the pages as well. All of the books went into the bag.
He was freeing a large display case of early arrowheads and gemstones from the sand when Uziraff and his two companions swam over the top of Chalice of the Crowns. They dragged another net with them, this one empty.
Spotting the pile of gold and silver on the ocean floor, Uziraff waved his men over to the pile. He grinned at Baylee as he landed on the ocean floor and took a look around. “If you keep this up, I may have to give you a cut.”
“You told me I’d have a chance to catalog them,” Baylee replied.
The pirate captain nodded, his attention drawn to the booty spread out around him.
Knowing he couldn’t gather anything else up into the bag without Uziraff seeing him, Baylee abandoned the search outside the ship. He chose the front half of the vessel, walking around it till he found a narrow gap under coral studded planking and the sea bed.
Baylee crawled down and pulled himself through the gap. The silt flowed around him, spilling into the interior of the ship as he went through.
The first part of the ship consisted of what remained of the hold. Baylee found three more books intact but didn’t take the time to try to decipher the language in them. He put them into the bag at once. He tracked through the silt, searching through the rooms. A jewel encrusted sword hilt lay in the center of one of the rooms, the blade eaten away by time and the brine.
The fifth door he tried was locked. He stepped back and rammed a foot against the jamb, splintering the wood and shoving it inside.
Moving silently, bleached white bone against the murky depths of the sea, four men boiled out of the room and came at him. They resembled corpses, bloated and discolored flesh padding out their frames, faces holding only empty eye sockets. Tatters of clothing clung to them, whipped about by the ocean currents.
Baylee gave ground at once, hoping that the potion would allow him to escape them. He recognized them as drowned ones, men who had died at sea and been granted a vengeful unlife. He experienced a momentary bout with n
ausea, but it passed quickly.
The ranger moved faster than they did, but he knew they would never allow him to simply escape.
He hung the lantern on a stub of a broken spar, knowing the magic within it would keep it from being crushed or extinguished by the water, then drew the long sword and parrying dagger Cthulad had purchased for him in Caer Callidyrr. He dropped into a fighter’s crouch and met the first drowned one’s sword thrust.
“Shallowsoul!” Krystarn Fellhammer stood at the wall and waited for the dimensional door to open.
What is it? the lich asked irritably, his voice echoing inside her head.
“I have found the ranger. And I have found the ship.”
The wall wavered at once.
Krystarn stepped through, met immediately by the lich. The part of the library she appeared in held two stone benches sitting in a magical arboretum where flowered plants wended up through stacks of books for over forty feet. This wing of the library carried an atmosphere unlike any she’d ever been in before. Where the others had primarily been closed in and reverential, this one seemed somehow gay and open. The area above the arboretum even looked like an open sky, even though the drow knew that couldn’t be so.
Where are they? The lich took the crystal ball from her grip, peering into the device’s depths with its hollow-eyed gaze.
“North and east of Mintarn,” Krystarn answered. The image trapped in the glass clearly showed Baylee Arnvold in the shipwreck’s hold, battling animated corpses. For days she had been following the Waterdhavian contingent of watch officers under Junior Civilar Cordyan Tsald. At first, the drow had believed Baylee to be aboard the watch’s ship, but it had taken two days before she realized that, in truth, the ranger had eluded them too. Watching the Waterdhavians had taken precious time away from her.
They have found it, the lich said. And now, so have I. The creature reached beneath his jacket and took out a pouch. Placing the crystal ball in the air, he left it levitating there at eye level. He poured the contents from the bag into one bony hand.
Krystarn got only a glimpse of the figurines there. The one the lich chose was a carving of a whale.
Shallowsoul spoke aloud old words in the elvish tongue that Krystarn did not understand. Some of them seemed familiar, but she couldn’t be sure. She felt the magic weighted in them, causing sporadic backlashes in the shield she kept in place against the lich.
When he was finished, Shallowsoul closed his hand over the whale figurine. “Now,” the lich said in a quiet voice, “now it will be finished.”
Krystarn watched the floating crystal ball, seeing Baylee Arnvold fighting for his life. She waited to see what form the lich’s magic would take, an uncontrollable shiver racing through her.
Baylee pressed the release on the parrying dagger, unleashing the two side blades and making a proper claw out of it. He turned the first drowned one’s blade with the dagger, then slashed with the long sword, caving in the drowned one’s head.
The animated corpse went slack, floating away on the ocean currents circulating through the hulk.
Baylee dodged the next attack, moving to his right for greater freedom of movement. He slashed at the next drowned one’s leg, shearing it at the knee. It flopped feebly, trying to get at the ranger. Baylee crushed its skull with the dagger hilt.
The other two drowned ones met similar fates at the end of his long sword. Cautiously, he closed the spring blades of the parrying dagger and sheathed it. He took up the lantern again and walked into the cabin the drowned ones had guarded.
He searched the cabin, finding an overturned trunk with an iron lock that had rusted closed. Using the long sword’s hilt, he shattered the lock. It took a moment longer for him to pry the lid open.
The trunk was filled nearly to the brim with gems and gold pieces. It was a king’s treasure, perhaps the treasure of several kings.
But on top of it all was a book.
Picking the book up, Baylee full well expected it to start falling apart. The tome was put together of parchment, but there must have been magic in it because the pages turned easily and showed no signs of distress from either time or brine.
He ran his hand across the embossed surface, feeling as well as reading the name in the lower right-hand corner. Gyynyth Skyreach.
The leader of the whales heard the old call in his head. The knowledge of the call had been passed down from generation to generation, as well as the story of the debt that they owed the one who called.
The whale leader sounded his mournful cry and heard it echo through the nearby waters. His pod came to him, falling into line in his wake immediately.
“A way will be made,” the voice inside the whale leader’s head said. “You are very far from your goal. But if you trust me, I will get you there.”
The whale leader trumpeted in agreement. A moment later, the water rippled in front of him. He swam through without hesitation. The debt his people owed the one who called was immense.
And he felt the dimensions shift around him, just as the Elders had described in their stories.
A light nimbus approaching from the hallway outside warned Baylee that he was no longer alone inside the ship. He opened the bag and shoved the book through. He closed the bag and looked inside a moment later. The book was gone. He was relieved, because he’d never tried to shove through so many things at one time.
He bent down and grabbed the corner of the trunk, barely able to get it started moving.
Uziraff came around the corner. “I saw the drowned ones,” the pirate captain said. “I thought perhaps something had happened to you.”
“Thought, or hoped?” Baylee asked. He waited for Uziraff to grab the other end of the chest. Together, they managed to stagger through the doorway with the chest.
“Have you found anything else of interest in here?” Uziraff asked.
“This chest,” Baylee answered. “But I’ve not gotten the chance to search much further. Most of the cargo appears to have been lost.”
“We’ve picked up a lot of it outside.” Uziraff grinned in the lantern light.
Baylee kept silent, struggling to get through the gap and bringing the chest with them. They had nearly made it to the waiting net when one of the two pirates pointed and screamed.
Turning, Baylee looked back in the direction they’d come from. The lantern lights were barely bright enough to illuminate the huge gray bodies as they swam into view. The alien eyes, bigger than the ranger himself, stared at him.
Then the whales swam into the wreckage of Chalice of the Crowns, smashing it into even smaller bits than it had been. The turbulence created by their passing shoved Baylee from his feet. For a moment, he was tangled in the net with the treasure Uziraff and his two men had gathered. Then he was free, the lantern in hand as he swam for a rocky outcropping.
Uziraff joined him a moment later. “Where in the nine hells did they come from?” the pirate captain demanded.
“I don’t know,” Baylee said. “But I’m glad they didn’t arrive while we were still inside.”
Both major parts of Chalice of the Crowns crumbled to pieces under the giant whales’ assault. In the gathered darkness, Baylee wasn’t sure how many of the creatures there were.
On their next pass through the area, they opened their mouths and shoveled in the broken pieces of the ship, swallowing them whole. More whales glided through the water and raked the silt in the nearby areas, dredging up huge tracts of the ocean floor.
Miraculously, they did not see the two nets Uziraff had been using.
A moment later, they were gone. Baylee pushed himself away from the rocky outcropping, staring at the long ditches where Chalice of the Crowns had lain for hundreds of years.
22
“I’ll want a boat before I let you strand us out here,” Baylee said. They were back aboard Windchaser, his clothes still dripping cold brine. The whales had completely left the area and, according to the pirate crew, never even broke the surface.
Baylee was aware of Civva Cthulad shifting beside him. The old warrior’s hands were already on his weapons. “That would be a misadventure on your part,” Baylee said.
“How can you stand there and say that?” Uziraff demanded. “You’re outnumbered almost nine to one!”
“Think about it,” Baylee said in a neutral voice. “How often have you seen me go armed?”
Uziraff leaned on the railing, gazing down at the ranger.
Baylee knew what he was saying was true, and it gave the pirate captain pause.
I promise, Xuxa said, opening her thoughts to Uziraff, that I will kill you if Baylee falls.
“They’re only two men,” one of the nearby pirates shouted out. “I say kill ’em and be d—” His voice froze in his throat, blocked by the quivering throwing knife that suddenly took shape there. The pirate gurgled, finally managing to yank the throwing knife free of his throat. But it was too late, his life was already spent.
“Anyone else want to venture an opinion?” Baylee asked. He fanned three throwing knives out in front of him, then made them disappear with the grace of a fan dancer. “If you try to attack me, I have nothing to lose.”
None of the other pirates said a word.
“I await your answer,” Baylee said.
Uziraff hesitated only a moment, then gestured to his men. “Give them a lifeboat. We’ve got the treasure. They can’t take that away from us.”
“Well, lad,” Civva Cthulad said in a whisper as they faced the pirate crew, “I must admit I didn’t expect you to kill that man outright so quickly. You seem to be rather laid back for that kind of thing.”
