Dargonesti

Chapter 14

Four Dargonesti warriors towed Vixa back into the city. They heaved her out of the water and onto a quay. No sooner had her flukes left the water than she felt great heat wash over her. Concentrate, she told herself wearily. Visualize yourself as elven.

Without the water to cool her, the heat of her dolphin form continued to build. She shuddered and closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind of everything except the desire to be elven once more. She felt the strange stretching of her limbs as first arms, then legs returned. Instantly, cold flooded her elven body. Goosebumps rose on flesh that was still fading from dolphin-black to Qualinesti-pale. The quay upon which she lay felt like an ice floe.

Coryphene emerged from the pool. For the first time Vixa saw the many injuries he’d sustained in battle. Slashes, scratches, and violet bruises covered his bare torso and limbs. He beckoned to a waiting elf who held a long cloak of woven seaweed for the Protector. She was surprised when Coryphene had the cloak draped around her instead of himself. Then he helped her to stand.

Vixa’s teeth chattered uncontrollably. Her knees buckled, but Coryphene supported her with one arm.

“I’m ill,” she muttered through blue lips.

“Your body is not meant to take the shape of a sea brother,” Coryphene said.

She shrugged free of his arm. “What punishment do you have planned for me?”

Wiping his wet hair back from his face with one hand, he exhaled gustily. “I am tired, lady. I must bear tidings of our victory to Her Divine Majesty now.” Coryphene stepped away from her. Giving her a brief, unreadable look, he turned away. “I will consider your disposition later.”

“Will you keep your word, Protector of Urione?” she called to his back. “Will you free the dryland captives?”

He gave no sign that he heard, but went to where his guard had formed up, in the archway leading into the city. The narrow street beyond was jammed with hysterical Dargonesti, intoxicated by the defeat of their enemy. Coryphene visibly steeled himself, squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath, before plunging into the crowd.

He marched away with his warriors. Thousands cheered him as he passed.

The Qualinesti princess pulled the cloak more tightly around her shivering body and made her weary way toward the House of Arms.

The victory over the chilkit transformed the status of Gundabyr and the Qualinesti. No longer were they despised, for the population of Urione knew how the drylanders had contributed to the defeat of the enemy. Hostility turned to generosity. Armantaro and the dwarf could not show themselves in the street without being inundated with gifts and praise.

“If I eat any more, I’ll burst!” Gundabyr said. His vest buttons were straining to contain his protruding belly. Edible gifts filled the House of Arms-dried, seasoned fish, exotic sauces and jellies made from seaweed, live shrimp in tanks of water, Dargonesti nectar-on and on the list went. Armantaro divided the spoils among the remaining dryland captives. It was the best eating any of them had done in a long, long time.

Armantaro was staring into space, preoccupied with his own thoughts, so Gundabyr repeated his complaint.

“Then stop eating so much,” the colonel snapped. He’d eaten very little himself. The fiery sensation in his chest had killed his appetite. He spent his time worrying about his absent princess.

“What in the name of the Abyss has happened to her?” Armantaro demanded. It had been two days since they’d last seen Vixa. She had returned to the House of Arms after the final battle, wan, worn, and barely able to stand. After sleeping all that night and half the next day, Vixa had departed, refusing to tell even Armantaro where she was bound.

Any news the colonel and the dwarf had of the great battle, they’d gleaned from passing soldiers. Vixa had told them nothing. They knew she’d fought as a dolphin. They also knew that Naxos, the chief of the sea brothers, had crossed Coryphene and had been killed for his disloyalty.

“Maybe she’s with Coryphene,” suggested Gundabyr.

Armantaro stood up suddenly. “If he harms her …” the colonel rasped darkly.

“Why should he? She helped win the war, too.”

“If he trifles with her, he’ll wish the chilkit had taken him!” The vehemence of this statement surprised Gundabyr. He hadn’t realized the depth of fatherly feeling the old Qualinesti colonel had for his young commander.

“If she can fight off red-shelled monsters, she can probably handle one blueskin,” Gundabyr said dryly “She did pretty well as a dolphin.”

Armantaro frowned. That aspect of the situation did not please him either. The colonel felt Naxos had manipulated her into becoming a shapeshifter. The more he thought about it, the angrier it made him. He stalked away from the dwarf.

“Where are you going?” Gundabyr called.

“To find Princess Vixa.”

Gundabyr, opening a fresh pot of caviar, sighed. “You know how the blueskins are these days. You’ll be mobbed by adoring Quoowahb before you get five paces out the door.”

This was only too true. Armantaro rummaged through the gifts of clothing piled in the center of the great room. Among these was a fine sharkskin cape covered in silver scales. He whipped this around his neck and pulled the hood up.

“I’ll pass for one of them,” he said confidently. “They’ll leave me alone.”

“Oh, yes, a short albino Quoowahb-that’s you all right. You’re a stubborn cuss, you know that? Here the Dargonesti are finally beginning to make up for their treatment of us, and you want to go and antagonize their leader, a fellow with a temper the size of the whole southern sea. Don’t you remember Nissia, Colonel? Do you want to end up a prisoner again?”

“As far as I can tell, I still am a prisoner. Better fed and warmer, maybe, but a prisoner nonetheless.”

Armantaro swept from the room. No Dargonesti stood guard, so no one challenged him.

The victory celebrations had finally died down, and the streets were nearly deserted. Armantaro kept the hood close around his face. The House of Arms was some twenty levels below the palace. Climbing the wide ramp upward took most of Armantaro’s strength. More than once he had to sit down and gasp for breath. On the floor just below the palace, he left the central way. No sense barging right in-Coryphene’s magical barrier would warn him if anyone entered the palace by that means.

This level housed the armory, the barracks of the Protector’s guards, storehouses of food and drink for the royal residence, and the Dargonesti treasury. Armantaro avoided the well-guarded barracks and treasury, skulking instead beside the silent warehouses. There ought to be a back stair around here somewhere.

Sure enough, down an alley between a row of stone storage huts, Armantaro found steps leading up. From the wear on them, he guessed servants had been using them for many, many years. Cautiously, he climbed into the darkness.

He could smell cooking-most unusual, since the Dargonesti ate their food raw or dried.

The steps led up through a large slot cut in the thick granite floor. Armantaro had entered the palace larder. The only light came from an open doorway. A rattle of pottery and a few distant words came through the opening as well. He crept forward, peering through the doorway.

Two Dargonesti were dipping dirty plates in a kettle of water to clean them. Both were grimacing ferociously.

“What a stink!” said one of the sea elves. “What is the Protector doing out there?”

The other glared at the dishes, saying tartly, “Does His Excellence tell me his business? What an awful smell!”

Armantaro got to his hands and knees and crawled behind a long table laden with kitchen implements. The servants had their backs to him and never heard him pass. In the pantry beyond the kitchen, the colonel got shakily to his feet. Curtains wavered in the doorway. He peeked through, saw an empty corridor, and started down it.

When he drew near the far end, he saw to his right the audience hall used by Queen Uriona. Vixa had described in detail her meeting with the queen there, and he had no trouble recognizing the place. To his left was a smaller chamber, set up as a dining room. Coryphene stood by a waist-high brazier, atop which blazed a stone crucible filled with hissing gnomefire. Thin smoke rose from the fire. Coryphene laid a bit of white meat atop the crucible. A few paces from the brazier was a single small table, and seated at it was the queen herself.

Armantaro halted, momentarily taken aback. This was his first sight of Queen Uriona, and he had to admit the princess’s quick description of her had not done her justice. Her complexion was dark blue, her eyes large and lustrous violet, like twin amethysts. She had silver hair of a metallic sheen he’d never seen before. It was pulled back from her face in gentle waves, leaving her upswept ears free. Seated as she was, the thick braid of her hair-twined through with strands of shells and pearls-brushed the floor. Her cheekbones were high and prominent, her nose narrow and tilted slightly upward at the end. She appeared to be somewhere in her second century and certainly looked the part of a goddess. Her words, which came to Armantaro’s acute ears, were frighteningly at variance with her elegant beauty.

“-your cleansing of the chilkit vermin,” she was saying. “We could not afford to let a single beast live. They would certainly have returned to harass us someday.”

“It is possible that some still live on some far-off abyssal plain,” Coryphene reminded her.

She waved a slender hand. “They will not bother us again. As I look into the future, I see no chilkit to impede us.” Uriona lifted to her lips an exquisitely fashioned goblet of shell and silver inlay. “Put more on the fire, Coryphene,” she commanded.

The Protector dropped another bit of white meat on the gnomefire. “It smells terrible, Divine Queen,” he said, his face stony with disgust.

“If I am to rule on land, I must become accustomed to eating food burned by fire. Bring me more of the chilkit.”

With Armantaro’s own dagger, Coryphene speared a chunk of some slain chilkit-and transferred it to a scallop-shell plate. The meat was seared on the ends, but the middle was still pink. Though it smelled remarkably like crab, Armantaro felt his stomach twisting with nausea. A warrior did not eat his enemies-even if his enemy was a chilkit. It was nothing short of cannibalism.

Coryphene presented the dish to Uriona like a priest making an offering. She picked apart the meat with her long nails. Wordlessly, she ate a tiny tidbit.

“Divinity?”

“Yes?”

“Is it-is it necessary that the drylander girl be slain?”

The words speared Armantaro through the heart. He held his breath as Coryphene continued. “She has become one of the sea brothers. Now that Naxos is dead, Kios has given me his fealty. In time I believe Vixa Ambrodel will become your loyal servant, like the others.”

Uriona smiled. She really was remarkably beautiful. Yet the light that shone behind her startling eyes was not the light of wisdom, courage, or love. Armantaro saw only madness there.

“You admire her, don’t you?” she murmured. Coryphene’s blue coloring deepened. “Do you want her for your own?”

“Your Majesty knows I love only you! There is no other for me!” he said loudly. He returned to the sputtering fire. After a moment, he said more calmly, “Naxos was an insolent, traitorous wretch. I felt no pity at his death. The old dryland elf can die as well, but I feel it is unjust to slay the Qualinesti princess and the dwarf. It is because of them that we have our victory.”

Uriona’s customarily serene expression dissolved into a flash of anger. She stood abruptly and swept the table clean of implements. “Fool!” she cried. “Your victory is due to me, the divine queen of the sea! How dare you share my honor with mortal drylanders!”

Instantly, Coryphene went down on one knee, begging forgiveness, but Uriona turned away and stalked to the far end of the room, keeping her back to Coryphene. Armantaro ached to have his dagger in hand.

The Protector rose and went around the table. He stopped only a few feet from the angry queen.

“No one has served you better than I,” he said, his voice tight and low. “From the day I saw you in your father’s court in Watermere, I have loved you. Because of this love I have performed many difficult tasks for you-some shameful, some a stain on my warrior’s honor. You owe me a boon, Uriona.” He closed in, taking her by the shoulders. “Give me these two lives!”

“Release me!” she hissed, shocked at this liberty. Yet, he did not obey. She lifted one hand, palm facing the warlord. A surge of power shot out. Even from his hiding place, Armantaro felt it. It was like standing too near the open door of a dwarven blast furnace. Naked heat seared his body. He trembled. The Qualinesti colonel was amazed that Coryphene could withstand the queen’s magic at such close range.

“Strike me dead, if you choose,” the Protector said flatly, “but I will not be dissuaded.”

The need to cough finally became too much for Armantaro. Coughing exploded from his mouth. He reeled away, blundering against the wall. He’d gone only a few paces back toward the kitchen when strong hands seized him from behind.

“So! You dare spy on Her Divine Majesty?”

Coryphene dragged the weakened Armantaro into the room and hurled him to the floor. The Qualinesti couldn’t control his coughing, and blood from his spittle stained the white marble. Once the spasm had ended, Armantaro pushed himself up on his hands and knees.

“You see, Coryphene!” Uriona said triumphantly. “The drylanders invade my sacred precinct! And these are the people you would spare. We will never be safe from such as he.”

“Foolish drylander,” snarled Coryphene. The warlord hauled the old colonel to his feet, gripping him by the neck of the sharkskin cape. His words were as icy as the deep ocean. “Had you stayed in your place, I might have saved your princess. By your treachery you have condemned her to death as well.”

“Your designs cannot succeed,” Armantaro said hoarsely.

Coryphene drew the dagger from his waist. “No mortal hand can stop us. My queen rules all destiny. You brought the instrument of your own death with you. I give it back to you now.”

There was steel yet in the old colonel’s limbs. He’d hung limp in Coryphene’s grasp. Now he grabbed the dagger hilt in both hands, surprising the warlord and wrestling the weapon from him. The Protector’s reaction was that of a seasoned fighter: he threw himself back, out of Armantaro’s reach.

Without pause, the colonel thrust the knife at the unprotected queen. Uriona put out her hand-not to ward off his blow, but to deliver one of her own.

A blast of heat hit Armantaro in the chest. He was lifted off his feet and flung backward. The dagger hilt was still in his hand, but the blade was gone. Spatters of molten iron on the floor testified to the force of Uriona’s power.

“Finish him,” she said disdainfully. Coryphene took Armantaro by the throat and lifted him. His powerful webbed fingers closed around the Qualinesti’s neck. Blood thundered in Armantaro’s head, and a red haze closed in around him.

A servant ran in and prostrated himself on the floor, careful not to look upon the divine face of his queen. “Gracious goddess!” he cried. “Lord Kios of the sea brothers begs for an immediate audience with Lord Protector Coryphene!”

His fury distracted, Coryphene released his death grip on Armantaro. The colonel dropped to the floor, racked with gasping coughs. Coryphene took two deep breaths. His gills flared out and relaxed again behind his ears.

“It is not fitting for you to see death, Divine One,” he said to Uriona. “I will take the drylander out and dispose of him.”

He gestured to the servant, who dragged the helpless Armantaro into the audience hall. Coryphene strode out after them.

“I have not given you leave to go,” Uriona said sharply.

He turned. “I did not ask it. I will hear Kios and dispose of the drylander. Then I shall return, Majesty.”

He walked out, proud and fierce. Alone in the chamber, Uriona smiled. It had taken a long time, but she had finally provoked Coryphene into asserting himself. If he was to be her consort, as she fervently wished, he’d better learn to speak up and stop playing the toady.

Vixa swam slowly along the bottom, probing the gloom around her. The Mortas Trench was hardly an inviting place at the best of times. In the aftermath of the climactic battle, it was hellish. Moray eels, sharks, and other carnivores prowled the dark recesses, feeding on dead chilkit drifting in the current. Strange how they lost their vivid crimson color after death. The chilkit bodies had turned pure white.

For two days Vixa had searched for Naxos in the unfamiliar environs around Urione. She had been encouraged by not finding his body, but her hope was giving way to despair. There were no clues at all. The gardens of kelp and coral were empty. No trace of the sea brothers’ former chief could be found near the shrimp pens, the quarry, or the shell heaps where the Dargonesti discarded all the shellfish debris from the city. That left only one other place to search: Mortas.

Vixa had learned that as a dolphin her hearing was her greatest strength. Swimming slowly along the floor of the trench, she heard a constant background of noises, but nothing that sounded like the wounded Naxos.

She called to him. There was no response. She called more loudly. The only answer was the susurration of water lapping against the excavations made by the chilkit.

She cruised over to a large opening in the mountainside. This must be the tunnel the chilkit had made to enter Nissia Grotto. Cautiously, she swam inside the black pit. Small creatures scurried away as she approached. The sea was already claiming the tunnel for its own.

Ripples above her indicated a surface to the water. Her beak broke into air. She found herself in a small air pocket, perhaps ten paces wide. It was very cold in here. Mist jetted from Vixa’s open mouth. She swam quietly in a circle, surveying the walls of the cave. By the marks on the stone she could tell that this area had been carved out by the chilkit.

Suddenly, Vixa saw something protruding between the rocks. She moved closer. It was a foot. She reared up and nudged the foot with her beak. To her shock, it moved.

“Who’s there?” asked a weak voice, speaking Elvish.

She squeaked in response. A pale face appeared among the dark rocks. Naxos!

“Vixa Ambrodel, how nice to see you,” he said as casually as though they were meeting on the street.

She called up her human form. Though she’d transformed several times now, the sensation still astonished her. Her limbs stretched and the world changed. The dense muscularity of the dolphin was replaced by the tall litheness of the elf maiden. Soon she was treading water, her teeth chattering with the chill. She levered herself onto the narrow shelf of rock.

“Forgive me if I don’t rise,” Naxos whispered, gesturing to his injury. Coryphene’s spear had taken him in the hip. The wound was clean, but large.

“Praise Astra! You’re alive!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been looking for you for days!”

“Looking for me?” His face twisted. “For Coryphene, I suppose.”

Her eyes flashed. “You say such a thing! Coryphene thinks you’re dead, you stupid blueskin!”

He smiled wanly. “I beg your pardon, Princess. Pain and hunger have taken away all my charm, I fear.”

He lay in a depression in the rock, with nothing to soothe his wound or make his berth comfortable. Vixa couldn’t believe he still lived after lying in this damp, cold place for three days. She knelt beside him.

“So Coryphene thinks me dead? Let us hope that mistake will prove fatal for him,” Naxos said softly. He winced as he shifted position.

“Kios has pledged his loyalty and that of the sea brothers to Coryphene and Uriona.”

“Ah, brotherhood,” Naxos sighed, but his heart wasn’t in the sarcasm.

Vixa said, more cheerfully, “Now that I’ve found you, we can all escape. You and I can carry Armantaro and Gundabyr to land.”

He gestured to his hip. “I’m not going anywhere like this. The muscle’s damaged, and if I start bleeding in the water, the sharks will finish what our Protector started.”

They looked at each other silently, pondering their predicament. Water dripped from overhead. “I’ll bring you food and find some medicine,” Vixa said firmly. “We’ll heal your wound, then we’ll escape.”

“No.”

“What?”

“Coryphene will notice your comings and goings. If he suspects I still live, he and that witch-queen of his will smell me out with their magic.”

Naxos sat up, aggravating his injury and causing him to give vent to a howl of pain and anger. His breath hissed between his teeth, and he went on more calmly, “Listen, Princess. Do you know the precinct of the temples, in the city?” She nodded. “In the temple of Zura you will find a cistern fed by fresh water pouring from the mouth of the god’s image. You must go there, fill an amphora with the water, and bring it back here to me.”

“Why? Will it heal you?”

“Yes.… Yes, it will.” There was a slight hesitancy to his words.

“And what else?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nothing that matters. Bring me the water, but be certain to seal the amphora before you swim out here. Don’t let the water of Zura mix with seawater.”

Vixa slid back into the pool and resumed dolphin form. She caught some small fish and brought them back for Naxos. The ravenous Dargonesti ate them with gusto. At his instruction, she brought him several long strands of kelp. These he made into a thick pad, pressing it to his wound.

“Bring back the water of Zura, Princess, and we will escape the same day!” he adjured her.

She bobbed her dolphin head vigorously in reply and sank beneath the water.