by Tim Pratt
Obed sat cross-legged on the almost-level deck of the largest wreck, the gills in his neck fluttering in a way that Rodrick found vaguely obscene. He held a medallion in the shape of a starfish in his hands, its five arms pointing off in five different directions, the tip of the topmost arm glowing green. "Good," he said as they settled around him, his voice a bit on the gurgling side, but comprehensible. "You lot took your time. We must continue north, along a fairly straight line. If the currents are with us, we should reach our destination before midnight."
"Midnight?" Rodrick said. "How far are we going?"
"The lake is perhaps five hundred miles wide from east to west," Zaqen said. "And, say, three hundred miles long from north to south. This body of water is larger than some countries, Rodrick—probably larger than Brevoy itself. We're hardly going any distance at all. But ...we're going deep enough."
"I suppose Aroden would refuse to hide his life force in the shallows," Rodrick said, "where any fool with a net might scoop it up. Shall we swim, then?"
"If you're done talking, yes," Obed snapped. "Cilian will scout for threats ahead of us."
"Danger beneath the water can come from all directions, from any side and above and below," the huntsman said. "But I will do my best."
"Zaqen will swim at my side, protecting me. You, thief, and your sword, will follow us and defend us from any attack that comes from behind—"
"Like, for instance, the four scaly lake-ogres creeping up behind us?" Hrym said. "You might want to start wielding me now, Rodrick."
Chapter Thirty-Three
Abyss of the Bizarre
Aquatic ogres!" Obed said. "I've never seen freshwater ones before. Puny things, aren't they?"
"They appear to be roughly twice as tall as I am." Rodrick tried to get his footing on the slick deck, Hrym in hand, watching as the ogres spread out in a fan-shaped formation. While ogres on land favored clubs, bludgeoning weapons were impractical in the water, and these green-scaled, web-fingered variants were armed with javelins and their own wicked claws.
"Pah," Obed said. "They grow to twenty feet tall in the oceans. The water ogres I fought in my youth hunt whales. This lot could barely kill a hydra."
"I am, alas, not a hydra," Rodrick said. "Still, I believe they could kill me adequately."
"So kill them first," Obed said. "But do it quickly. We have a lot of water to cover."
Cilian took the knife from his belt and Zaqen began surging forward, tentacles writhing, but Hrym shouted, "Stop! You people always make things harder than they need to be. Zaqen and Cilian, stay out of the way. Just wave me in their general direction, Rodrick."
Grinning, the thief gave Hrym a great swing, a ripping arc through the water, and threads of ice shot out from along the blade at brief intervals along the curve, like lances of crystal flying straight at the approaching aquatic ogres. One tried to swim upward, but his huge bulk moved too slowly. Another attempted to parry the ice with his lance, which only caused the stream to split and strike his body in two places. The remaining aquatic ogres were caught entirely by surprise, ice striking them squarely in the chests and spreading to cover them in a shell like translucent armor. They struggled, but the ice wound around them all, thickening, spreading like a cold wildfire, until within mere seconds all four ogres were bound in great irregular lumps of ice, the creatures visible only as faint green tints deep inside, like the flaws in a gem. The icy prisons floated gradually upward, drifting slowly until they were out of sight.
"That was remarkable," Obed said, something like awe in his voice.
"Freezing someone in solid ice on land is harder," Hrym said. "You have to suck a lot of moisture out of the air. But down here? This is my element. Literally. We should do all our adventuring underwater, Rodrick."
"How long before they thaw?" Cilian said. "They'll surely be angry when they get free."
"They're encased in ice," Rodrick said crossly. "They're suffocating to death as we speak."
"At least they won't stink much," Hrym said. "My ice is magical—it doesn't melt the way normal ice does. They'll be sealed up for years, or until someone chips them out or sprays them with fire—or until I'm shattered or melted in a volcano, I suppose. There's no reason to think my magic will outlast me. But I've lasted thousands of years—I think—and don't plan on going anywhere soon."
"If anything else attacks us, do that to them as well," Obed said. "It is a most efficient way of dealing with those who would delay us."
"We're going to end up littering the surface of the lake with monsters-on-ice, aren't we?" Rodrick said. "Think of all the shipwrecks we're going to cause, all the holes we're going to knock into hulls. But that's the price of bringing on a golden age, eh? I'm sure Aroden will provide everyone in Brevoy with free fish for life once he's resurrected."
"Do not blaspheme," Obed said. "I cannot tolerate blasphemy."
"Any god who can't take a little mockery isn't much of a god," Rodrick said. "But you're the one in charge here. I obey, as always."
Obed gave him a long, dark stare, then jerked his head toward the north. Cilian shrugged and swam off ahead into the darkness, followed by Zaqen and Obed side by side. Rodrick put Hrym on his back and kicked along after them, hanging as far to the rear as he could without losing sight of them. Maybe the guardians of the vault they were going to breach would slaughter Obed. Rodrick wouldn't lift a hand to help him if it came to that. He might even lend the guardians his sword.
The next few hours of swimming—with only occasional breaks to eat soggy jerky, a decidedly unpleasant experience—were strange and spectacular. The lake contained multitudes. Once they got past the shallows, the lake floor dropped sharply away, and it seemed as if they journeyed in a great hazy void for a while. But Obed angled ever downward, and before long the ground was in sight again, but different, now. Where there had been wrecked ships before, there were now things that had nothing at all to do with the human world.
A sort of temple made of heaped black rocks, larger than the Arena of Aroden, filled a hollow place on the lake floor, and a high-pitched keening that was not quite music could be heard emerging from the thousands of cave mouths that led inside. A steady stream of silver and blue fish swam into those caves, as if called by the monotonous song. "Do you think those fish go into those caves expecting heaven?"
"If so, they're even stupider than I expect fish to be," Hrym replied. "Let's swim a bit higher, all right? That song makes my ice resonate unpleasantly."
Later they passed near an oval of shimmering silver, no larger than a wagon wheel, that hovered in the water, and when Rodrick kicked toward it to investigate, he found it was a sort of window, and on the other side was a vaguely man-shaped creature made entirely of frothing water. It flinched back when it saw Rodrick, and then reached out with a hand of flowing dark water, as if to try and touch him, so the thief kicked away as rapidly as he could. "What in the Abyss?"
"Water elemental of some kind," Hrym said. "Maybe he's an arcanist or researcher, keeping an eye on all the bodies of water on this plane?"
"Or he just likes watching fish fornicate," Rodrick said. "Deep-water pornography."
"Fish don't marry, so I doubt they can be said to fornicate, but he could be some sort of extraplanar pervert, I suppose."
They passed over a crack in the lake floor, around which scurried man-sized shrimp in shockingly beautiful rainbow colors, some of them using crude tools to scrape fungus or other vegetable slime from the rocks. Later a pair of sea snakes, each bright pink and dozens of yards long, writhed together beneath them, either mating or fighting or both. Past that, a cone-shaped depression in the floor began to swirl and spin, and a cow-sized fish passing overhead was dragged down, thrashing wildly, as it was pulled bloodily into a hole far too small for its body. "Remind me to avoid swimming over depressions like that," Rodrick said. "
"Do you really think you'll need a reminder?" Hrym asked.
Off to the west, they saw shimmering spires of
gold, silver, and pearl, with vague dark shapes flickering among the towers. "Is that a city of some kind?" Rodrick said.
"It doesn't look like a natural formation," Hrym said. "There may be nations beneath this water that are unknown to people of the surface. Whole societies. Cultures, wars, entire histories."
"How much wealth must you possess to make towers that glimmer like that?" Rodrick mused.
"How much gold could you possibly drag around behind you while swimming?" Hrym said. "I imagine you'd just sink to the lake floor under the weight."
"I'm sure with the right magic ..." Rodrick mused. "But I don't suppose Obed would approve a side expedition."
"The priest is certainly very focused," Hrym said. "That never made sense to me before—Aroden can hardly be impatient, being dead, so why all the hurry? But if your true masters are demons, I imagine you learn the importance of carrying out their wishes in a timely fashion."
There were a few attacks that had to be dealt with, too, mostly by simple dumb animals who thought their party might be food: great toothy beasts with long, narrow jaws; things a bit like huge eels, but with vestigial forelimbs; reptilian creatures covered in spines and fins, with excessive numbers of mouths. Hrym froze them all and sent them floating to the surface. Eventually, as the hours wore on, the attacks became more frequent, and Rodrick began swimming closer to Zaqen and Obed. After the third attack in ten minutes by an entirely different group of creatures, Rodrick said, "Is this normal? Are sea beasts always so aggressive?"
"This is not the sea." Obed rotated slowly as he hovered in the water, peering into the murk on all sides. "All aquatic realms are savage places, but we have been attacked by predators who should not be in one another's territories. I believe they are being sent against us deliberately by some enemy. I feared that some ancient, misguided guardian might try to prevent us from reaching our glorious goal. We must prepare ourselves to meet more intelligent opposition as our destination grows nearer."
"Intelligent enemies freeze just as well as the mindless—" Rodrick began, but then the water swirled and frothed beneath them as the lake floor showered up great gouts of churned mud. Something huge—or many things that were merely very large—burst from hiding places beneath the sand, the force of the emergence setting up currents that sent Rodrick, Zaqen, and Obed spinning wildly away from one another. A tentacle as big around as Rodrick's body shot past him, and he instinctively lashed out with Hrym, who sliced the tentacle cleanly through. Unfortunately, that released great clouds of black blood or ichor, which only served to further ruin visibility. Obed was shouting somewhere in the distance, and Rodrick started to shout back, but Hrym screamed "Watch out!" at the same moment.
Rodrick was already watching, but whatever Hrym saw, he couldn't see—at least, not until it was on top of him. A net woven of thick sea grasses surrounded him, and it took all his effort to hold onto Hrym as the net constricted around him. He tried to slash at the net, but the threads squeezed him so tightly that his arms were pressed against his chest, making it impossible to do more than twitch his wrist ineffectually, the flat of Hrym's blade pressed against him. "Are you sure you can't move? Just a little?" He thrashed, but only succeeded in binding himself tighter.
"If I could, I would have done it before now," Hrym said. "I could encase us in ice, and let us float up to the surface, if you think that would help—"
Suddenly the net jerked, and Rodrick and Hrym were dragged rapidly downward, through the clouds of mud and blood and the distant lashing of monstrous tentacles. Rodrick wondered if Zaqen and Obed had been caught and crushed—the thought of the sorcerer being squeezed by black tentacles was terribly ironic, considering the way she sometimes dispatched her own enemies. Zaqen's tentacles weren't nearly this big, though.
Rodrick realized he was focusing on the potential deaths of others so he wouldn't have to contemplate his own likely demise. "It's been a good run, Hrym," he said. "I do wish I'd never answered the summons Zaqen sent me, though. That little bag of gold she paid us in advance looks like it's going to cost me my life. I hope you aren't stuck at the bottom of this lake for too long when I'm gone."
"I'll just cocoon myself in ice and float to the top," Hrym said. "Some pirate will be thrilled to find me. But let's hope it doesn't come to that, all right? You aren't dead yet."
Rodrick swore as he banged against something sharp on his left side. The net was dragged along a rough rock, and he was glad he had the net wrapped around him then, its fibrous threads protecting him somewhat from being shredded against the stones. "Am I being dragged into a hole in the ground?" he said as darkness closed in.
"As far as I can tell. We may both end up in the belly of some beast. At least you'll be dead. I'll have to know I'm in the belly of a beast. How tedious."
"People-devouring leviathans don't usually hunt with nets," Rodrick said. "Or so I'd assume. Admittedly, I'm no expert on such things." How often in his life had he responded to panic with a false front of airy jocularity? Dozens, at least, probably more. It occurred to him that this might be the last time. But he might as well die as he'd lived.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Thieves Go Below
The net changed direction, pulling them sideways now. Rodrick and Hrym were pulled through a tunnel of some kind, into an underwater cave complex. Eventually the orientation of the tunnel shifted sufficiently that Rodrick found himself hanging upside down, being dragged upward—or so the blood rushing to his head seemed to indicate, though it was hard to be sure of anything in the pitch-black water.
The steady tug became a sharp wrench, and the net was dragged out of the darkness into light. Rodrick lay on his side, gasping—and realized he was breathing air again, instead of water. His vision was obscured by the net, but they seemed to be in a damp cave, lit by clean-burning torches on the wall—probably magic. The cave walls were decorated with paintings in vibrant reds and blues and greens, both abstract patterns of shapes and more representative images, of giants wielding swords and axes against monstrous insects.
The triple points of a trident appeared before his eyes, and then the weapon twisted deftly, snapping the woven fronds one by one to expose Rodrick's face and throat while leaving his body bound. The weapon's wielder crouched and looked at Rodrick with a blank expression.
Rodrick had never seen a man like this before, but strangely, the closest comparison was Obed. The demon-priest resembled a human who had been transformed by generations in the sea, losing hair and gaining gills and taking on certain watery adaptations. This fellow with the trident looked like an elf who had undergone a similar racial transformation—the pale skin and pointed ears were recognizably elven, but the fingers clutching the trident were webbed, and there were gills on his neck. He wore necklaces of shells and very little in the way of clothing, and his body was lean, hard, and covered in scars. "Is there a dragon?" the man said, his voice a rasp.
"Ah—what?"
"A. Dragon." The lake-elf pointed his trident at Rodrick's face. "I saw a gillman in your party, and someone in the form of a devilfish, and a half-elf, but no dragon."
"Ah, no, we do not travel with a dragon—"
The elf nodded, and the tension seemed to drain out of him. He lowered his trident, letting the longest point touch the floor. "Good. Then all is not lost. I sensed the keys, all four keys, and so I feared, but—" He raised the trident again. "One of those keys could only have been gained by killing the last living creature I called a friend. Were you the one who broke into her lair in the Icerime Peaks and slew her? I felt her die—"
"Her?" Rodrick said. "That is, no, I didn't kill her! I saw her, if you mean who I think you mean—she was inhabiting the body of a yeti. The devilfish in our party is a sorcerer, and it was a monster of hers that killed the yeti. I didn't want to kill anyone, I was just hired to steal the key—"
The aquatic elf sniffed. "You are a dupe, then. Merely a hireling. I can smell truth, you know. It is one of my many gifts."
/> I wish I had his nose, Rodrick thought. It could have saved me a lot of trouble.
"Do you even know what the keys are for?" the elf demanded.
"I was told ...well, various things. But the last thing my employer told me was that the keys would open a vault where they could find an artifact belonging to the dead god Aroden, and use it to restore him to life."
To Rodrick's astonishment, the elf threw his head back and laughed. "That is a bold lie. Very bold."
"I didn't believe them, either. I suspect their real goal has something to do with demons. I realized not long ago that my employers were lying to me, and ..." He shrugged as best he could, given his bound condition. "I wanted to find out what they had planned, and to try to stop them, of course. I have another ally in the party, a half-elf—"
"He still lives. They all still live, unfortunately, according to the reports I've received. I sent many of the beasts of the sea against them, against all of you, but you are a formidable group. Which is why it's so astonishing that you failed to bring a dragon! I suppose the true nature of the ritual must be lost, or at least misunderstood, after all these centuries ..."
"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," Rodrick said. "My name is Rodrick, by the way"
A strange expression crossed his captor's face—was it wistfulness? Regret? "Of course. I forget my manners. I have been here, alone, for so long. I came from the Steaming Sea when I was a young druid, to fight for glory, and never expected to be trapped in this cold lake ..."
"The yeti told me there was only one other living guardian," Rodrick said. "I assumed she meant a guardian of a key, but you—you guard what the key opens?"
"I do," the elf said. "My name is Neiros."
"Are you some species of gillman, or ...?"
He snorted. "Gillmen! They are a race of pawns, used by powers greater than themselves, scrabbling to recover past glories that none of them were even alive to see. No, I am an aquatic elf. We are not a populous race, but we are a proud one." He sat down cross-legged, sighed, and then flicked his trident forward a few more times, severing the fronds that held Rodrick bound. "There. Please refrain from attacking me with that peculiar sword of yours. Or anything else."
