Queen of the Depths

CHAPTER 9

What.”

Diero Agosto asked, “will the shalarin do now?”

“I don’t know,” the spy answered through gritted teeth, his bruised, scabby, bloodstained face glistening with sweat. He lay spread-eagled on the long, splintery table that was the rack, wrists and ankles wrapped in sturdy leather cuffs.

“Will she return here?”

“I doubt it. You made it clear you won’t help her. But I don’t know.”

From the corner of his eye, Diero saw the dragonkin take hold of the windlass. From his stance, it was plain he meant to give it a vigorous turn or two.

The wearer of purple rounded on the hulking reptile. Annoyance made his voice shrill: “No! I didn’t tell you to do that.”

The creature grunted. “Want truth, right?” Diero sighed. “He’s telling the truth. He did from the start.”

As far as the wizard was concerned, his fellow Turmian had behaved with admirable good sense. He had nothing to reveal that would cause additional problems for his superiors or his people, so why not speak and spare himself unnecessary pain? It was simply his misfortune that candor couldn’t forestall all of it. Diero had still needed to torture him for a while, just to make sure his story didn’t change as the agony tore away at him.

The dragonkin shook its head. “Lying, I think.”

It verged on being comical, in an irritating sort of way. “You just want to cripple him, so he’s of no use except as food.”

“Well… hungry! Can’t eat beans, peas, and other muck humans grow. Can’t hardly fish, or somebody sailing by sees us. Don’t hardly get any of slaves, when they diedragons always take.”

Diero sighed in grudging sympathy. “I know it’s difficult, being on short rations. I assure you, I have my own problems and frustrations.” Such as the constant need to pander to Eshcaz’s vanity, demeaning work for one of the ablest magicians for hundreds of miles around. “But it will all be worth it when we rule Faerun as the dracoliches’ deputies.”

“Hope so,” the dragonkin grumbled.

“Well, to reach that joyful tomorrow, we must observe some discipline today. Look at the arms and shoulders on this one. He can do a lot of carving before the work breaks him down.” Diero studied the reptile’s lizardlike features. It was tricky to interpret dragonkin expressions, but he was finally picking up the knack. “So I can count on you to give him to the overseers with his limbs still in their sockets?”

The torturer bared its fangs, but in such a way as to convey disappointment, not defiance. “Yes.”

Tu’ala’keth lingered in the niche in the bedrock long after Eshcaz wearied of fishing for her and flew away, and she was still there when night darkened the waters. For she felt she had nowhere else to go.

Her burns, whip cuts, and bruised ribs smarted. She could have eased the discomfort with a prayer, but chose to endure it instead. It seemed a fitting if insufficient rebuke for her misplaced self-assurance and general ineptitude.

The worst of it was that Anton had readily predicted the fiasco, and she’d ignored him. She’d only been able to see one path to her goal, and assumed her constricted vision equated to revelation.

But perhaps Umberlee had never revealed anything. Maybe it was merely Tu’ala’keth’s deluded self-importance that made her believe the goddess had charged her with a vital task or provided aid and guidance along the way.

Perhaps Anton was right, and the powers didn’t care about anything mortals attempted during their brief little lives.

Suddenly, after a lifetime of certitude, Tu’ala’keth was sure of only one thing: She’d failed and survived to rue it. It would be better, perhaps, if Eshcaz had burned her to ash, or torn her apart.

But he hadn’t, and in time, when the emptiness in her belly made her feel weak and ill, the same brute instinct for survival that had made her flee the dragon drove her forth from her hiding place. She glided with the current until she spied a perch large enough to satisfy her hunger then veered in its direction.

Recognizing the threat, the fish fled, but she put on a burst of speed and closed with it anyway. If she’d still had her trident, she would have speared it, but as it was, she had to kill it as one wild thing killed another. She seized it with her hands, sank her teeth into its scaly back, and biting and rending, tore the thrashing creature apart.

Fine bones crunched between her teeth. Blood billowed, tingeing and perfuming the water. Despite her bleak mood, the perch’s raw flesh was sweet, and she knew a sudden exultation at the success of the hunt, at extinguishing another’s life to perpetuate her own vitality.

With that unexpected ecstasy came a renewed comprehension of what every creature ought to understand, but which even priestesses sometimes failed to appreciate. This act of predation was sacred. It was Umberlee.

In grasping anew the essential nature of the goddess, Tu’ala’keth discerned that even if her schemes had been flawed, her intentions had not. If the Queen of the Depths manifested herself whenever one creature devoured another, then plainly, the worship of sentient beings wasn’t too small a matter to engage her interest. She craved it, demanded it, and punished those who denied it, just as her creed declared.

Accordingly, it actually had been Tu’ala’keth’s duty to reinvigorate such worship. She needn’t doubt when the pattern implicit in all that had happenedthe coming of the dragon flight, her discovery of Anton, the convenient vulnerabilities of needy Shandri Clayhill and vain, lecherous Vurgromproved it.

The problem was that she’d ultimately lost her way. She’d misunderstood what was necessary. But that didn’t mean she’d failed, not yet, not while she could still fight, kill, and embrace her goddess in the holy act of shedding blood. She simply had to see more clearly.

Though they hadn’t in fact confirmed it, she remained convinced the cultists had the answer she needed. The flow of events had borne her to Tan for a reason. But the wyrm worshipers refused to help her. How, then, was she to proceed?

It was plain enough: She’d have to wrest their secrets from them. Anton had even told her so, and she now realized he’d still been speaking as Umberlee’s champion, even if he didn’t know it himself.

But obviously, she couldn’t do it alone and had no idea where to turn for assistance. Seros had lost one army to the dragon flight and was frantically piecing together another. In such dire circumstances, it was inconceivable that the Nantarn Council would give her any troops for what they’d view as a purely speculative venture in the strange, irrelevant world above the waves. Nor would Anton’s folk be any quicker to heed a stranger, a member of an unfamiliar race and the cleric of a deity they dreaded rather than loved.

Still, she abruptly realized, that left one possibility. Flicking bits of perch from her fingerstiny fish came rushing and swarming to vie for the scrapsshe silently summoned her seahorses.

Anton’s hands were raw and cramped, his knees sore, his shoulders on fire. He was accustomed to swinging a sword and sailing a ship. He’d performed many sorts of manual labor as he played one role or another. But none of it had prepared him for the grueling work of chiseling unholy symbols in a granite floor.

Part of the problem was the residual ache in his joints. At the wearer of purple’s insistence, the torturer had stopped short of mangling him for good and all, but that didn’t mean he’d escaped unscathed. Maybe, in time, he’d find the toil easier to bear.

Or maybe he’d gradually wear out, starve, and die, as the other slaves did. All things considered, he’d rather not remain a prisoner long enough to find out.

Accordingly, weary and wretched as he felt, it was time to start acting like a spy again. He lifted his head to survey his fellow thralls.

Checkmate’s edge, what a dismal lot they were, slumped in the malodorous little cave that served as their pen. It wasn’t their emaciation or festering whip marks that dismayed him, those were unavoidable. It was the fact that they weren’t even whispering to one another, just sitting or sprawling in silence. Misery and hopelessness had hollowed them out inside.

Still they were the only allies he was likely to find. He pondered whom to approach first, and how, and the wrought-iron grate rasped open. Dragonkin emptied wooden pails of vegetables and hardtack onto the floor.

As the grille clanked shut again and the key twisted in the lock, the slaves lunged for their daily meal. Though desperate to grab as much they could, most stopped short of actually laying hands on their fellows. But a tall man, with a broken nose and a livid ridge of scar on his jaw that even shaggy whiskers couldn’t hide, seized two of the frailest-looking captives by the shoulders and flung them backward, in effect usurping their shares for himself. Maybe it was such merciless theft that had kept him looking vital and strong, and his movements, quick and sure.

At any rate, sore and spent as he was, Anton felt little enthusiasm for the prospect of accosting the resident bully. But it was an opportunity to claim a leadership role for himself. So, joints aching, he clambered to his feet. “Leave those fellows alone. Everybody eats.”

The tall man sneered. “You’re new, so I’ll explain how things work in here. My name is Jamark, and I decide what happens and what doesn’t. So you sit back down, shut up, and you can go without your supper tonight to teach you respect.”

“If you want me to respect you,” Anton said, “you’ll have to beat it into me.”

Jamark shrugged. “We can do it that way, too.” He raised his fists and shuffled forward.

When Anton tried to close his own hands, they throbbed. He wasn’t sure he could make a good, tight fist, or grip and hold an adversary with his accustomed strength. But he’d just have to cope.

Suddenly Jamark abandoned his mincing boxer’s advance for a bellow and a headlong charge. Caught by surprise, Anton tried to twist out of the way but didn’t make it. His adversary slammed him back into the granite wall, jolting pain through his ill-treated body. Some of the other slaves exclaimed at the impact. Well, at least he’d succeeded in getting them to make some noise.

Jamark reached for this throat. Anton jammed his arms up between those of the other man, breaking the chokehold, then hammered his opponent’s face with the bottoms of his fists. The blows stabbed pain through his hands.

But they didn’t balk Jamark, who hooked a punch into his temple. Anton faltered for a split second, time enough for the other man to bull him back into the wall. It bounced his skull against the stone, splashing sparks across his vision, and drove the wind from his lungs. Jamark caught him, threw him to the floor, and heaved a leg high to stamp on him.

Anton couldn’t avoid the attack. Caught between his foe and the wall, he had nowhere to go. His only hope was to stop it. He grabbed just in time to catch the descending foot and yank and twist it viciously. The ruffian lost his balance and fell.

Anton threw himself on top of Jamark and pounded elbow strikes into his kidneys and any other vulnerable spot he could reach. The ruffian reared up and cocked his arm back for a particularly brutal punch. But it was a mistake to wind up that way; it afforded Anton a good opening to smash him in the teeth. Jamark’s head snapped backward, and blood flowing from his gashed lips, he collapsed. Maybe he was still conscioushis eyes were openbut that final blow had knocked the fight out of him.

Anton turned to the other slaves. “After all that,” he panted, “I hope you bastards saved some food for me.”

They had, and once he caught his breath, he settled down to eat it. Alas, it only took a few bites. As he finished, Jamark sat up and gave him a glower.

“You were lucky,” the bully said, “and you’re stupid, too. Those men I pulled back are dying anyway. That little bit of food won’t do them any good. It could make all the difference to the rest of us.”

Anton smiled. “Somehow, I had the impression you didn’t mean to share it with anyone else.”

Jamark wiped his bloody lips then spat. “So what if I didn’t? I was loyal to my shipmates in my time, but in here, it’s every man for himself. It’s your only hope of stretching your life out as long as possible. Though it’s up to you whether you’d rather do that or die fast and end the pain.”

“I’d rather escape, return with the Turmian fleet, and kill Eshcaz, the wearer of purple, and all their flunkies. Maybe we can if we all hang together.”

Jamark smiled sadly. “I thought that, too, when I first got here. But it’s hopeless.”

“Even for a sorcerer?”

The other man eyed him dubiously. “I haven’t met many mages who could brawl like you.”

“Still, I know a few tricks, and the cultists aren’t aware of it.” Tu’ala’keth hadn’t mentioned it, and since Diero hadn’t known to ask about it, Anton had experienced no difficulty withholding the secret, even when the torment was at its most excruciating.

“Then… you can whisk us all away from here?”

It pained Anton to dowse the other man’s sudden flicker of hope. “No. I’m nowhere near that powerful. But I can at least get out of this cage. I assume a guard comes by from time to time?”

“Yes.”

“Does heor ittake a head count?”

“Not as I’ve noticed.” Jamark grinned. “Dragonkin aren’t all that clever. I doubt it could count unless it did it out loud, pointing with its finger.”

“That’s all right, then.” Anton rose, and everyone pivoted to look at him. He explained that he planned to find some food and that they needed to stay put. One could leave, but if they all disappeared, it would be noticed. He pressed a finger to his lips then turned his attention to the iron grille sealing the chamber.

He whispered the charm of opening, and the lock clacked as it disengaged. The difficult part was easing the door open. In dire need of oil, the hinges squealed as they had before, and he winced at the noise. But no one came rushing to investigate.

He pushed the grate almost back to its starting position, but left it unlatched. With luck, no casual observer would notice the difference. Then he skulked down the passage.

To his relief, creeping through the benighted caverns wasn’t quite as difficult as he’d feared. The reptiles might be able to see in the dark, but the humans couldn’t and had mounted flickering oil lamps at intervals along the walls. A good many creatures and people were still up and moving aboutprobably necromancers slept by day, like vampiresbut the acoustics were such that he could hear them coming, and the complex was so maze-like that it was usually possible to duck into a niche or side gallery until they passed.

Finally he found what he was seeking, a nook the cultists had converted into a makeshift larder. With a frown of regret, he passed by the freshest and most appealing fooda smoked ham, cherriesin favor of dried and preserved stuff the madmen had presumably laid in to eat when everything else ran out… or to grudgingly feed to their captives. One box yielded ship’s biscuits, hard as oak and crawling with mites. Another contained leathery venison jerky and a burlap sack full of dried apples.

He gobbled some of each then stuffed more inside his shirt. As he was finishing up, he heard noise in the passage outside: trudging footsteps and the swish of a dragging tail.

Most of the crates and barrels were flush with the wall, and he had no time to shift them. He hastily crouched down behind one of the few boxes someone had left in the center of the chamber.

The cursed thing just wasn’t big enough. If the dragonkin glanced in his direction, it was almost inevitably going to spot him. The Red Knight knew, he was in no shape for another fight, but he whispered an incantation and sprouted a sharp, bony ridge from the bottom of his hand.

The footsteps halted, and he heard the rasp of the dragonkin’s respiration. It was standing in the doorway, peering in, without a doubt.

Could he kill such a formidable creature with a single strike, before it raised an alarm? To say the least, it seemed unlikely. Still he gathered himself to jump up and charge, and the dragonkin grunted and slouched on its way. It hadn’t noticed him.

Miraculous. It occurred to him that Tu’ala’keth would attribute the luck to Umberlee. Or she would have, before he tried to murder her.

He gave the dragonkin time to move off then slipped back to the cell, closed the door behind him, and divvied up the pilfered food. The other captives wolfed it down as voraciously as before.

“This was dangerous,” said Jamark through a mouthful of jerky. “If the cultists find out, they’ll punish us.”

“I notice the risk didn’t stop you from grabbing a portion. I didn’t take too much, and only the stuff they’re least likely to miss. If they do, they may well assume one of their own has been pilfering since I gather even they’re a little hungry.”

“Well… yes. They haven’t been to Mirg Isle to reprovision in a while. Too busy preparing for their hellish rituals.”

“Right, and on top of that, we’re locked up, so how could we possibly steal? But I will. Enough food to keep us strong, and weapons, too. That may be trickier. But I’ll wager I can at least find a knife or two no one will worry about and a place to hide them until we’re ready.”

“For what?”

“Here’s one possibility. The cultists have a cog. You and I know how to sail her.”

“So we steal her and put out to sea. Then Eshcaz and the other wyrms fly after us and kill us.”

Anton smiled. “All right, maybe it isn’t a perfect scheme. But we’ll keep thinking… and watch for an opportunity.”

Yhe realm called the Xedran Reefs was not, in fact, all coral reef. Most of it was open seabed lying under shallow, sunlit water aglitter with a multitude of flitting multicolored fish.

Tu’ala’keth had plotted a course through the region so as to skirt all the reefs but the one that was her destination then proceeded warily. It was the only way to avoid sentries and patrols who would otherwise attack her on sight. But now that her goal was within reach, she guided her seahorse, and its riderless counterpart swimming along behind, through clear, open water some distance above the sea floor. She wanted Yzil’s guards to spot her, and with luck, recognize her.

Where were they? It had been years since she’d visited Exzethlix, but it was hard. to believe the xenophobic inhabitants had grown so lax. As the minutes passed without incident, a ghastly thought occurred to her: The dragon flight had passed this way and destroyed the city, denying her the aid she so desperately needed.

But finally, as the suspicion was taking hold of her in earnest, a patrol peered out from the cover of a floating, tangled mass of dark green sargasso weed. She halted the seahorses and waved her hand.

Locathahs, thrall warriors with piscine faces and jutting ridges of fin on their arms and legs, aimed their crossbows at her. Curse it! This, too, came as a surprise. She’d been prepared for an initially hostile response, but not a murderous one. Ixitxachitls were inveterate slave takers, and would normally try to capture a lone and unarmed traveler alive.

She urged her mount into motion, it dodged, and the first quarrels hurtled harmlessly past. She called out to the leader of the patrol and didn’t need the magic of her ring to translate. She’d mastered the language of the ‘chitls on previous visits.

“I am Tu’ala’keth, a waveservant known to your devitan. He has given me leave to come and go as I please.”

The locathahs reached into their arrow sacks for fresh bolts. A voice said, “Reload, but don’t shoot unless I order it.” With that, their officer emerged from the hanging mass of weed.

At first glance, a human might have mistaken the ixitxachitl for a common ray, a flat, soft, rippling thing, dark on top and pale on the underside, with a long, thin tail snaking out behind. But a predatory intelligence lurked in its blood-colored eyes, and fangs like needles ringed its maw.

“I remember you,” it said.

“Good. What ails this place? Why are there no sentries posted farther out?” For that matter, how was it this particular patrol only had a single ‘chitl leading it, and that one of low rank? She could tell it hadn’t yet achieved the vampiric condition to which they all aspired by the condition of its teeth. It lacked the pair of elongated upper fangs.

“I won’t harm you,” it said. “I don’t think the devitan would wish it. But you must go away.”

“Impossible,” she said. “Umberlee sent me here.”

“Whatever you’re talking about,” the demon ray said, “now is not the time.”

“I ask again: What is amiss? I am willing to help you mend it so long as you promise to aid me in return.”

The ‘chitl hesitated. “It’s not my place to tell outsiders what goes on Exzethlix.”

“Then take me to Yzil, and let him do it.”

“Unless the devitan has rescinded the order granting me safe passage, it still stands. You can obey it as is your duty, bring help to your city, and earn your ascension to vampirism in the process. Or you can discover how the Queen of the Depths chastises those who seek to hinder her servants. In the unlikely event you survive, Yzil will no doubt have further punishments to inflict on what is left of you.”

With a flutter of its body and a lash of its tail, the demon ray turned toward its minions. “You’ll stay here and obey your orders until I return.” It wheeled back toward Tu’ala’keth. “Follow me.”

Exzethlix came into view a few minutes later. To Tu’ala’keth’s eyes, it rather resembled the decaying corpse of a coral reef, largely denuded of the life that generally flourished about such sprawling growths and carved into grotesque and uncouth shapes. But it looked the same as it always had. Whatever misfortune had overtaken it, the maze of chambers and tunnels remained intact.

As she’d anticipated, her guide led her toward the primary temple, likewise the seat of government, for in the Xedran Reefs, the clerics of Ilxendrenin her view, a mere demon, albeit a powerful one, posing as a deitywere preeminent in everything. Gliding ‘chitls and toiling thralls watched as she passed. Misliking the place, her seahorse tossed its head, and she gentled it with the touch of her hand and mind.

Constrained by magic, the mermaid lay motionless atop Ilxendren’s green marble altar. Despite her paralysis, she managed to roll her eyes wildly and shoot Yzil a look of mute appeal.

Did she actually imagine her master might spare her? Perhaps so, for she’d proved to be a particularly useful slave. But unfortunately for her, that was the point of the ceremony, to offer up someone of actual value.

The devitan wrapped the tip of his tail around the greenish claw-coral knife, recited the concluding prayer, and opened the thrall from throat to waist. Even in her agony, the spell held her immobile. Blood billowed up from the gash.

Blood was bloodthe warmth, coppery scent, and taste, always delectableand even at such a solemn moment, Yzil felt a greedy urge to bury his lips in the wound and drink his fill rather than let it diffuse into the water. He quashed the impulse and stared intently, looking for images or, failing those, patterns in the swirling stain.

There! It… but no. The ixitxachitl realized that in his desperation, he’d perceived the suggestion of a runic form where, in fact, it simply didn’t exist. This augury was as useless as all the others, and he twisted away from it in frustration.

But that only brought him face to face with Shex, looking on with an expression of concern that, Yzil very much suspected, masked an underlying satisfaction.

“I fear,” said Shex, “that I saw nothing.”

For a moment, Yzil was tempted to say he had. But it would be blasphemy to claim Ilxendren had communicated with him when it was untrue, and besides, the lie probably wouldn’t hold up.

“Nor I,” he admitted.

“A pity,” said Shex. He pursed his lips, sucking at his fangs in a display of deep thought that made Yzil want to smite him with one of his most virulent spells. “Devitan, I hesitate to propose this again”

“Then don’t.”

“but since all your efforts have proved unavailing, and the life of the city itself is at stake, I suggest you journey to Xedras to consult with His Holiness. Surely he can provide an answer.”

No doubt, Yzil thought bitterly. The problem was that the Vitanar had long suspected himcorrectlyof embracing the Qyxasian heresy, of believing that commerce and dialogue with lesser races would facilitate their ultimate subjugation. If he entered the capital as an abject failure, unable to defend his own domain, His Holiness would surely take it as an opportunity to strip him of his rank, his liberty, and quite possibly his life.

But how much longer could he refuse? In theory, Shex was a mere vitan, chief priest of a single temple, unable to compel a devitan, the primate of an entire city, to do anything. But in actuality, he’d come as the Vitanar’s representative, and a time was rapidly approaching when Yzil would be able to deny him no longer, lest continued resistance make matters even worseassuming such a thing was possible.

“I’m reluctant,” Yzil said, “to trouble His Holiness when I’m certain that, with more study and prayer, Exzethlix can solve its own problems.”

“He wouldn’t consider it ‘trouble,’” Shex replied. “Like the god who speaks with his voice, he cares for the strength and vitality of all our race.”

“Still,” said a new voice, managing the ixitxachitl tongue with facility despite the handicap of a tongue and voice box never intended for the purpose, “it would be unnecessary. I will help you, for a price.”

Baring their fangs, tails lashing, all the vampire rays in the shadowy coral hall with its dozens of irregular arched doorways turned toward the shalarin. Yzil understood their startled outrage. No one but ixitxachitls and sacrifices ever entered this holy place. Tu’ala’keth had not only intruded, but presumed to speak unbidden. Her escort, a common warrior, looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to attack her or grovel in apology for her insolence.

Yzil felt a pang of anger himself, though it was more out of concern for his own well-being that the sanctity of the shrine. Years ago, Tu’ala’keth had approached him with a bargain. Like all spellcasters, the two of them were eager to acquire esoteric lore and the power that came with it, and it was certain that, pursuing their separate paths, each had discovered secrets unknown to the other. Such being the case, they’d share as much as they could, without, of course, forsaking or betraying their respective faiths.

It had actually worked out quite well. The tricks Tu’ala’keth had taught Yzil helped him ascend and cling to his high rank while scores of ambitious wretches such as Shex strove to usurp it. In the end, Yzil might even have grown a bit “fond” of the shalarin, if he understood what that alien concept truly meant.

Still after an absence of a decade, why did Tu’ala’keth have to turn up now? If one cared to take it that way and Shex undoubtedly wouldher intrusion here was further evidence that Yzil had lost control. Worse, his collaboration with her could itself be construed as proof that he’d embraced Qyxas’s forbidden views.

Yet she’d spoken of providing help, and really, now that she’d already interrupted the proceedings, could she make things much worse? Perhaps it would be sensible to hear her out.

The other ixitxachitls had all pointed themselves in her direction. In another moment, they’d swarm on her, and she hadn’t made a move to protect herself. She simply gave Yzil a cool, level stare.

He’d often thought her arrogant self-assurance would someday be the death of her. It still might, but not just yet. “Stop,” he said. “For the moment, the shalarin is under my protection.”

She inclined her head as if acknowledging a simple courtesy

“Who is this thrall?” Shex demanded.

She answered before Yzil could. “Tu’ala’keth, waveservant and keeper of Umberlee’s shrine in Myth Nantar.”

“And envoy for the Nantarn Council,” Yzil added, knowing she was quick-witted enough to go along with the lie. Despite their general disdain for inferior races, as a practical matter, ixitxachitls sometimes had to negotiate with them. He reckoned it was safer to present Tu’ala’keth as an emissary than to admit the two of them had traded conjuring techniques and lists of the true names of netherspirits and elementals.

Still the explanation elicited a dubious stare from Shex. “Does His Holiness know you’re treating with the allied peoples?”

“About matters of consequence only to my own city,” Yzil said. “That lies within in my authority, as you presumably know. Waveservant, you… claim you can help us?”

“I do,” said Tu’ala’keth. “But I must know the details of your plight.”

“No!” snarled Shex. “Say nothing.”

“You’re not in charge here,” Yzil said. “I am. Don’t presume to give me another order, or I’ll kill you before you finish speaking.”

Shex folded himself small in apology but for only a moment. It was a token gesture, not a show of true respect. “Please, forgive me, devitan. I expressed myself poorly. But surely you see you can’t confide weakness to a shalarin. She’ll tell our enemies. We already need to kill her just for overhearing the little bit she has.”

Tu’ala’keth smiled. “If you mean to kill me, it cannot hurt to tell me everything.”

That startled a chuckle out of Yzil, who couldn’t recall the last time that anything had amused him even slightly. “She has you there, Shex.” He faced Tu’ala’keth. “Do you understand how ixitxachitls reproduce?”

It took her a moment to respond. Plainly, whatever she’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that, which meant her claim that she could end the crisis derived from nothing more than her confidence in her own abilities and the power of her goddess.

“I do not know a great deal about it,” she said at length, “but I have always assumed the females lay eggs.”

“You’re right,” Yzil said, “and something is coming in the night and smashing them.” “‘Something?’”

“No one’s seen it, even though I’ve pulled nearly all my troops back into the city to stand watch. I’ve also performed divinations, but some opposing power prevents them from revealing anything helpful.”

Or conceivably, the difficulty could be that he’d fallen from favor with Ilxendren, and accordingly, the god declined to communicate with him. He didn’t believe it himself, but knew his minions had begun to wonder, and that Shex would unquestionably suggest it to the Vitanar as soon as he had the opportunity.

“I assume,” said Tu’ala’keth, “you gathered all the eggs in one repository, then sealed and shielded it with magic.”

“Yes, but it didn’t keep the… entity out.”

“How many eggs does it destroy?”

“A dozen or so each night. One such loss is of little consequence, but over time, the sum will become catastrophic.”

“Does it eat the embryos?”

“No. It simply kills them.”

“Hmm.” The shalarin frowned, pondering.

After a few seconds, Yzil could contain himself no longer. “Can you help us?”

“I already told you, yes.”

“Then you understand what’s attacking us, and how to deal with it?”

“Not yet. But Umberlee does, and she will aid me.”

“This is preposterous!” said Shex. “The shalarin is a slave creature and the priestess of a lesser power. It’s blasphemy for her to claim she can do what priests of the one true god cannot, and sin for us to hear it without striking her down.”

“Then strike me down,” said Tu’ala’keth, “if you can.”

“Done.” Shex declaimed the opening phrases of a prayer intended to riddle her body with wounds, as if she’d been stabbed by a dozen spears at once.

But Tu’ala’keth simply gripped the skeletal hand dangling around her neck and cast forth a flare of raw spiritual power. Her goddess had a measure of dominion over all sea creatures, even ixitxachitls, and because she had no need to recite an incantation, she was able to strike first.

Still Yzil reckoned she’d made an error. Shex was a cleric, too, strong of will and spirit. This, moreover, was a shrine of Ilxendren, where the influence of the god of vampirism, vengeance, and cruelty was exalted, and other forces, muted.

Yet even so, power, the strength of her faith made manifest, hammered and burned from her pendant. Every ray in the shadowy hall flinched, and Shex, the target of the attack, simply couldn’t bear it. Abandoning his spell halfway through, he wheeled and bolted into a corner, where he cowered helplessly

Yzil supposed he should be outraged to see the servant of an inferior power best a vitan, but despite his honest devotion to Ilxendren, it just wasn’t in him. It was too gratifying to see Shex humiliated.

Tu’ala’keth pivoted back toward Yzil. “Now,” she said, “I will tell you Umberlee’s price. Above the waves, on one of the islands to the southeast, stands a stronghold. You will help me take it. It will be a difficult battle, perhaps the costliest one Exzethlix has ever fought, but profitable as well. The caves are full of treasure, and you can keep most of it.”

Though still shuddering uncontrollably, Shex managed to turn around, face his tormentor, and swim back out into the center of the chamber. “You can’t go to war,” he said, “without the Vitanar’s permission.”

“I couldn’t launch a major campaign against another part of Seros,” Yzil said. “I can lead a raid against air-breathers. Devitans do it all the time.”

Shex glared. He looked as if he were about to blurt out something unforgivable, punishable, but to Yzil’s disappointment, mastered his temper in time. “Devitan… with all respect… it signifies nothing if, by a fluke, this creature momentarily afflicted me. It’s still wrong for you to defer to her and look to her to protect Exzethlix. You know it, I know it, and your people know it.”

Unfortunately, according to an orthodox interpretation of Ilxendren’s creed, he was right. Yzil struggled to think of a convincing rebuttal.

But Tu’ala’keth spoke first: “Vitan, it is no wonder that, even in your deity’s holy place, you could not stand before me, for you are a wretched excuse for a priest. Like mine, your god embodies the chaos that underlies all things, yet you are deaf to the dark powers when they speak through chance eventslike the fortunate chance that brought me here when you need me.”

Yzil bared his fangs. “Don’t you dare presume to preach to a servant of Ilxendren.”

“Then perhaps I can bargain with you. Give me a single night to solve your problem. If I fail, you may indeed kill me, and the devitan will accede to your judgment in all matters pertaining to the defense of the city.”

Shex turned to Yzil. “Will you?” the emissary demanded.

Yzil started to say no, absolutely not, then hesitated. As matters stood, he couldn’t hold on to his position much longer, and the sad truth was he had no idea how to resolve the crisis by himself. Perhaps Ilxendren truly had sent Tu’ala’keth to help him. The ways of the Great Ray were strange and unfathomable, maybe even strange and unfathomable enough to manipulate the priestess of another faith into doing his bidding. In any case, Tu’ala’keth was cunning, and perhaps that made her worth gambling on.

“If the shalarin fails,” he said, “you and I will set forth for Xedras in the morning. I swear it in Ilxendren’s name.”

Shex leered. “Then I’ll see you when the waters brighten.”

‹s› SSSSSSSSS SSS

The vault was another spacious chamber hacked from the living coral. As was the case in most sections of Exzethlix, the curves, angles, and vague implications of big sculpted glyphs had an indefinable wrongness to them. Tu’ala’keth’s head started to ache and her belly, to squirm if she let her gaze linger on certain details for very long.

Like the rest of the ‘chitls’ works, the place had no doors. Though their prehensile tails afforded them a limited capacity to manipulate objects, the rays would have found such contrivances inconvenient, and didn’t even use them to safeguard their most precious possessions. But the symbols incised around the arched entry way should have done the job just as well. When someone spoke the trigger word, they’d generate a barrier of magical force.

But that had proved useless. So, floating at the threshold, Tu’ala’keth scrutinized the inscription, looking for some deficiency that would enable an intruder to breach the ward. Everything appeared to be all right.

Yzil flipped the winglike edges of his body in a gesture denoting impatience, derision, or both. “Every priest in the temple has already inspected that.”

“But I had not.” Gripping the new trident the devitan had given her, an enchanted green claw-coral weapon keener, lighter, and sturdier than the one she’d lost, she swam on into the vault. The devitan followed. The sentries curled themselves smaller and bobbed lower in the water, saluting him.

Small, pale, and soft-looking, in some cases gummed together with slime, the eggs lay heaped in glistening mounds as high as Tu’ala’keth was tall. “I did not realize,” she said, “your race was so prolific.”

“When they hatch,” he said, “the newborns strive to eat one another. The majority die to feed the fiercest and most deserving of life.”

She nodded, pleased to see Umberlee’s spirit manifest in the process, even if the foolish rays didn’t recognize it. “As far as I can tell, you have made no effort to differentiate one egg from another. I take it the parents have no desire to reclaim and rear their particular offspring.”

Yzil scowled. “I don’t even know what it is you’re babbling about. Do you know how to protect the eggs or not?”

“Umberlee will guide me.”

“Then let’s get on with it.”

“As you wish. Send the guards away.”

Yzil hesitated. “Is that wise?”

“They have accomplished nothing so far and could prove a hindrance tonight. You and I will eliminate the threat.”

“Go,” the devitan said. Bodies rippling, the ‘chitls glided from the vault. “Shall I activate the ward?”

“Why? It has proved to be of no use, either.”

“All right, then what are we going to do?”

“I am going to meditate. You will remain quiet, so as not to disturb me, and keep watch.”

“What’s the point of meditating now? I’ve already done that, too, in this very spot, without gaining any insight.”

Tu’ala’keth smiled. “Now you are the one wasting time with needless questions.”

“I’m the ruler here, and I’ve staked everything I possess on your assertions. I demand to know what you think you’re doing.”

“Very well. Consider this: Whatever unseen agent is destroying the eggs, it has to move through the water which surrounds them, and my goddess is empress of the sea. It lies within my power to attune myself to the water in this chamber, to feel through it as if it were an extension of my own skin. If I succeed, I should sense the intruder, no matter what its nature or how stealthily it skulks about.”

“Have you ever attempted this trick before?”

“No. It will require a deeper trance than I have ever entered.”

“Then… never mind. It’s still a good idea. I should have thought of it.”

“You could not do it. Your Ilxendren rules over sea-dwellers, but he is not a deity of the sea, and therein lies the difference. Now be still and let me concentrate.”

When it was clear he meant to hold his tongue, she began. She studied the water around her, trying to perceive the salty fluid itself, not the objects it contained. She tried to hear it murmur over surfaces, and feel its warmth and sliding pressure against her skin.

Once she’d fixed her mind on her impressions, she brought the membranes slipping across her eyes, blinding her to all but the brightest lights and most prominent shapes. Simply by focusing her attention inward, she dulled her remaining senses. Yet at the same time, she kept her preexisting sensations as vivid as before. Now, however, they rose primarily from memory and imagination. They were a concept of water, a mental construct to manipulate as she saw fit.

With a clear sky high overhead, and tamed by the countless barriers comprising Exzethlix, the waters therein were placid and so, too, was the simulacrum Tu’ala’keth had conjured for herself. That was the first element she had to change. She imagined insistent currents shoving her, increasing their strength by degrees until she would have had to swim vigorously to hold herself in the same position. She understood she wasn’t truly moving. The sensation was an illusion, a trick she was playing on herself. Yet in a mystical sense, it was altogether real.

Next, she purged everything except the raw, elemental sea from her imaginings. The reef, carved into grotesqueries pleasing to the ixitxachitls’ alien aesthetic, flowed into a form entirely natural but no less threatening, with coral spikes and edges to sting and tear, and countless crannies with moray eels lurking in their murky depths. Beyond, in a limitless ocean, krakens, sharks, squids, and demons pursued their prey, seizing and rending eternally, insatiable no matter how many victims they devoured.

She made the sky above scab over with inky storm clouds. Lightning flared, thunder roared, and rain hammered down. The wind screamed.

A corresponding violence erupted within the sea. The currents, strong and treacherous before, surged and became irresistible. They tumbled Tu’ala’keth from one impact to the next, slamming and scraping her against the coral.

A spell might have quelled the water, but it would also have defeated her purpose. She had to submit to the turmoil. She went limp and allowed the ocean to abuse her however it wished. The coral slashed and ground away her skin. Bones snapped in her foot and arm. Her right profile plunged toward a stony, branching growth, and even then, clenching herself, she managed not to flinch. The coral stabbed out her eye.

It was agony, but gradually, it became something greater as well, a transcendent state in which she was both the victim and the malevolent ocean smashing the life from its toy. The sea’s vast joy so eclipsed her pain that the latter became insignificant, and as her blood streamed away, and her heart stuttered out its final beats, she became aware of something greater still, a splendid dance of slaughter that was everything… and silence and peace at the core of the frenzy.

The fierce current bashed her once more then whirled her lifeless, flopping body beyond the reef. Small fish came to feed on her then fled when a colossal shadow engulfed them all.

Though dead, Tu’ala’keth could still see the prodigious octopuses and weresharks when they writhed and glided across her field of vision. What she couldn’t do was turn her head to behold the far huger entity whose familiars they were. She both yearned to see and was glad she couldn’t. Her instincts warned that the sight would be too much to bear, that ecstasy or terror might extinguish her utterly.

But she could pray, if only silently, and it seemed appropriate that she do so: I am trying to do my duty, great queen, as best as I understand it. It has taken me to strange places. Places where I am clumsy and ignorant. Places where I lose my way. Still I persist.

The answer came back as a wordless surge of passion as nuanced and intelligible as speech. At its core was malevolence. Umberlee hungered to destroy any creature who engaged her attention, her own priestesses included. But cruelty wasn’t the dominant note in the complex harmony that was her thought, but rather, subordinate to exhortation and a sort of cold, conditional approval.

The message, reduced to its essence, was this: You are on course, but the time grows short. Kill for me. Kill everything that stands in the way of your goal.

With that, the goddess and her retinue moved on, disappearing as quickly as they’d arrived. Tu’ala’keth’s heart thumped and kept on beating thereafter. The water flowing into her gills washed the blighted immobility from her limbs. Her broken bones knit, and new skin flowed over her wounds.

It was time to reconstruct physical reality. She quelled the currents then added the contours of the vault, the heaps of eggs, and Yzil to her visualization.

In so doing, she shifted her awareness back to the mundane world, but remained deep in trance even so. Though free of pain, her body was exquisitely sensitive, as if from the battering her spirit had endured. It enabled her to feel water flowing and yielding all the way across the chamber.

She was reluctant to move or unveil her eyes for fear it might dull her newfound powers of perception. Still, Yzil, an acute observer in his own right, discerned a change in her.

“Can you speak?” he asked.

She decided she could. “Yes.”

“You traveled a long time.”

“I journeyed all the way to the Blood Sea, in Fury’s Heart.” It was there Umberlee herself had deigned to recognize her. She felt a pang of wonder and wished she could speak of it, but it was too holy and private an experience to share with an unbeliever.

“Did it do what it was supposed to?”

“Yes, but this is new to me. I did well to send the guards away. As I suspected, their movements might have confused my perceptions and blinded me to the emergence of our foe.”

“I hope it does emerge. While your spirit was away, it occurred to me that the enemy, if it understands our situation, need only take a night off. Then we won’t be able to vanquish it and will have to endure the consequences of our failure.”

“Nonsense. If the entity does not destroy any eggs, we will claim victory, and how can Shex refute us?

The ‘chitl chuckled. “When you put it that way, I don’t suppose he can. I’ve missed that shrewd mind of yours. I’m lucky you returned just when I could make use of you.”

“As I am fortunate your situation is desperate enough that you were willing to promise aid in return.”

Except that it wasn’t truly a matter of luck. It was possibility, pattern, and energy rising from the boil of coincidence that was the universe to guide and empower those who embraced the furor. But she knew she didn’t need to explain it. Yzil, himself a cleric of chaos, albeit vowed to a lesser deity, already understood.

“You never really told me who it is you want to attack,” he said.

“Dragons and the coven of necromancers who worship them.”

He eyed her askance. “I’m not sure I ever heard you joke before.”

“Nor have you now. I told you it would be difficult, but-“

She sensed surreptitious motion and pivoted in that direction. Something was there, hovering above a pale mound of eggs, but she couldn’t make out what. It clutched one of the soft orbs in its jaws, fingers, or claws and squished it to jelly then it was gone.

“Do you see it?” Yzil said.

“Almost,” she said. Trailing strands of slime, an egg bobbed up from another pile and ruptured into goo and drifting specks.

“We need better than ‘almost,’” the ixitxachitl snarled. Flat, flexible body writhing, lashing tail defining mystic figures, he rattled off a prayer. A virulent darkness billowed across the chamber like an octopus’s ink, but lacking a clear target, failed to achieve an effect. As it faded from existence, a third egg crumpled and burst.

Tu’ala’keth focused… focused… gradually discerned intermittent flurries of motion… then suddenly saw the creatures clearly.

They weren’t invisible in the technical sense, but might as well have been, for they were made of the same saltwater that surrounded them, congealing from it to break the eggs then dissolving back into it. It was the reason no ward could keep them out. They could manifest wherever water was, and in Seros, that was everyplace.

Their forms were flowing, inconstant, swelling and dwindling from one second to the next. A double-headed eel became a crab then passed from existence into lurking potentiality. A dolphin-thing abandoned any semblance of a fixed shape for the oozing bell-shaped body and trailing tendrils of a jellyfish. The constant transformations made them difficult to count, but there were at least half a dozen.

That was too many, but Tu’ala’keth reassured herself that at least she had a fix on them now, and they were some breed of water elemental, subject to the innate authority of a waveservant no less than fish and ixitxachitls. She gripped the drowned man’s hand and evoked a flare of Umberlee’s majesty.

The intangible blast hurled them backward, and their presence on the physical plane became more definite. Though still twisting from one shape to the next, they were no longer bleeding in and out of the world entirely, and Yzil exclaimed as he spotted them at last. Tu’ala’keth’s display of faith hadn’t destroyed or cowed them, but it had, for the moment, frozen them in a condition that would enable her and the ‘chitl to come to grips with them.

If Yzil’s eyes could make out the elementals, so could hers, and the profound relaxation of a trance could slow her in battle. With a pang of regret at sundering her mystical communion with the waters, she unveiled her eyes and embraced her normal state of consciousness. A thrill sang along her nerves as her physical senses regained their former immediacy.

The elementals charged, agitating the water around them and blowing apart two of the egg mounds. The gleaming ovoids tumbled and rolled.

Yzil snarled an incantation. The spirit in the lead, currently clad in the form of a hammerhead shark, frayed apart and crumpled in on itself at the same time as the magic cast it back to the otherworld of limitless water that was its natural home.

The others kept rushing forward.

Trident leveled, Tu’ala’keth declaimed a prayer of her own, to exert a momentary mastery over the watery substance of the remaining spirits’ bodies. When she felt the elements of the spell lock into place, she bade the creatures rip apart. Two of them faltered, flailed, and when the spasm passed, continued the advance as if afflicted with palsy.

But they kept racing in as best they could, and their comrades with them. A murky thing shaped like an enormous angler fish opened its jaws wide to seize Tu’ala’keth in jagged fangs.

She drove the coral trident into its face. Its substance writhed, and she hoped she’d struck it a mortal blow. But it started to resolve itself in the guise of a squid, its long, fleshy lure becoming one of the tentacles. The limb lashed her across the face.

The blow snapped her head back and mashed and cut her lips against her teeth. But she refused to let it stun her, and when the elemental reached to enfold her in its arms, she dived beneath the writhing tangle, rolled, and speared it in the body. It gave a cry like a wave shattering on a rock then burst into a thousand droplets, which at once lost cohesion in their turn.

Two more elementals were maneuvering to close with Tu’ala’keth but weren’t in position quite yet. She had time to begin another incantation and to look about and check on Yzil.

Despite his needle fangs and toxic vampire bite, the devitan, like most members of his race, had no liking for close combat. Accordingly, he’d fallen back into a corner and sealed it with a curtain of seething, whispering gloom. Elementals probed it and battered it but hadn’t yet managed to break through. He proclaimed another banishment and shoved a spirit in the form of a sea snake back to its proper level of reality. In so doing, he punched a hole in the wall between the worlds that, in the instant before it healed, made Tu’ala’keth’s entire body ache like a rotten tooth.

She retreated, dodging attacks, giving herself time to complete her conjuration. Fangs locked on her shoulder. The pressure was excruciating, but the bite didn’t pierce her silverweave or spoil her prayer either. A second blue-green trident sprang into existence and launched itself at her attacker, a malformed, translucent mockery of a tiger shark. The elemental recoiled from the stabs, releasing her in the process.

Just in time: her other adversary lunged at her. Presently in mid-shift from lobster to fish, it was pincers, eye stalks, and segmented shell in front, fins and undulating piscine tail behind. Alas, the ongoing metamorphosis didn’t make it awkward or unsteady.

Tu’ala’keth faked a dodge in one direction then kicked in the other, flummoxing the spirit for an instant. She rattled off a spell, and an earsplitting howl roiled the creature’s liquid body. It didn’t kill it, though.

Pincers stabbed and snapped, trying to shear her to pieces, then flowed together and became a set of gaping jaws big enough to swallow her whole. She cried Umberlee’s name, praying for rage and the power it brought, and lashed out with all her strength. The green coral tines of her weapon plunged deep into the roof of the elemental’s mouth. She reached inside herself, evoked another measure of the pure raw essence of soul and faith, and sent it blazing up the shaft. The spirit exploded into harmless water.

Once the threat disappeared, she realized Yzil was declaiming the rhyming words of a spell. His shadowy shield was gone. An elemental in the guise of a moray had him in its gnashing jaws and was chewing him to bloody shreds but without disrupting his concentration

The eel-thing wavered. Holes burst open at various points along its form as though several unseen blades had stabbed it all at once. It screamed and flew apart, and across the vault, its kindred suffered the same fate.

All but one. “Wearing the guise of a porpoise, it fled for the exit. Yzil called the trigger word, activating the magic pent in the arch. Seething with a hint of gnashing jaws, darkness bloomed in the opening.

Trapped, the elemental wheeled to face its foes. Yzil rattled off the opening words of another banishment. His body was a patchwork of gory wounds, but thanks to his vampirism, they’d already started to close.

“No!” said Tu’ala’keth. “Do not!”

Yzil abandoned the spell uncompleted. The spirit rushed him. Fortunately, the disembodied trident Tu’ala’keth had conjured remained in existence and, at her silent command, hurtled through the water to interpose itself between the porpoise-thing and its target. The elemental veered off to avoid being impaled.

“Why shouldn’t I kill it?” Yzil demanded.

“Because,” she replied, “it is unlikely the elementals found their way from their world to ours by themselves or would have cared about smashing the eggs even if they had. Someone conjured them, and if we break this one to our will, it can tell us who.”

“You have a point,’ said Yzil. “What about the V’greshtan binding?”

“If you carry it ready for the casting, I can supply the responses.”

They began the intricate contrapuntal incantation. The gathering magic turned the water hot one moment, chill the next. The elemental lunged at them repeatedly but couldn’t slip past the darting trident of force.

As Tu’ala’keth declaimed the final syllable, a complex symmetrical structure of glowing red lines and angles sizzled into existence around the elemental. It looked like a geometer’s model of an essential three-dimensional form rendered in light. Additional strands of power passed through the center of the cage, connecting the vertices defining one face with corresponding points elsewhere. Suddenly transfixed by dozens of the needle-thin scarlet beams, the spirit howled and thrashed.

“Submit,” said Yzil, “and I will lessen the pain.”

“I submit,” groaned the elemental, its voice like the hiss and rumble of the surf. Its porpoise body melted into shapelessness.

“Who sent you?” the devitan asked.

The spirit hesitated. “Master, you bound me, I acknowledge it, but I still bear another’s yoke as well. I cannot” Tu’ala’keth felt Yzil assert his will, bidding the magical cage to hurt its prisoner. The elemental broke off speaking to scream and flail anew.

When the paroxysm passed, Yzil said, “I control you now. I have the power to torture and kill you. I and no one else. Answer my question.”

The spirit shuddered as incompatible compulsions fought for dominance. Finally, it whispered, “Wraxzala.” Its liquid substance churned with agony.

“Wraxzala,” Yzil echoed, surprise in his voice.

“Who is that?” asked Tu’ala’keth. Her torn lips throbbed, and she evoked a small pulse of healing energy to blunt the discomfort.

“The vitan of one of the temples here in the city,” Yzil said. “She’s ambitious, like all of them, so it makes perfect sense that she’d try to discredit me. If His Holiness strips me of my offices, it makes room in the hierarchy for her to move up. I’m only surprised because I imagined Shex responsible for this particular treachery.”

“Because, being the Vitanar’s envoy, he seemed by far the greater threat.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then,” said Tu’ala’keth, “let us consider our options.”