Queen of the Depths

CHAPTER 12

Anton slumped over, panting, the end of the greatsword resting on the floor. For the moment, he was too exhausted to hold it up.

Cheering sounded from overhead. He looked up at the ledge. His fellow captives had won the fight against the cultists. Good for them. He didn’t blame the survivors for declining to climb down to the cavern floor and fight Eshcaz. The Red Knight knew, it was the craziest, stupidest thing he’d ever done, and the fact that he’d somehow prevailed didn’t make it any less idiotic.

Tu’ala’keth stalked around the great mound of Eshcaz’s carcass to remind him he hadn’t prevailed unaided. As was often the case, he couldn’t read her expression. Behind her, some of the afflicted ixitxachitls had finally recovered from whatever magical effect had ailed them. Bodies rippling, they glided forward.

He had no idea what to expect of the comrade he’d attempted to murder, or of her allies either. Until now, he and his band had avoided contact with the ixitxachitls. Partly it was because they were afraid the ‘chitls wouldn’t be able to distinguish between human captives and human cultists. But it was also because of the ‘chitls’ reputation as raiders and vampires. Under normal circumstances, they were hostile to mankind.

Still the current situation was far from normal, and he felt an obligation to try to look after his comrades. “My friends,” he said, pointing, “fought alongside you, even if you didn’t notice. They helped me kill the wearer of purple. I ask that they be allowed to take the cog on the beach and depart in peace.”

“The ‘chitls,” said Tu’ala’keth, “have no use for slaves who cannot live underwater. I expect I can persuade them.”

“Thank you.” He hesitated. “What about me? Where do I stand?”

“It appears,” she said, “that you have resumed your role as Umberlee’s champion.” A ixitxachitl with blistered hide and a cut above its eyes came flying up beside her. “How, then, can I do anything but accept you as my ally?”

He smiled. “I can think of one or two other things I might do in your place. So thank you again.”

“Eshcaz is dead. But it is possible some wyrms and cultists are still holding out. Let us rest for a while then go kill them.”

Despite the handicap of broken fingers, Diero had managed to fumble the belt from around his waist, loop it around his stump, pull the makeshift tourniquet tight by clenching the end in his teeth, and stanch the bleeding. It had been the most difficult thing he’d ever done, and now he wondered if it had been a waste of effort.

For a quick death might have been preferable to his current circumstances. The victors had locked him in the bare, stony misery of a slave cell. Tu’ala’keth had used her magic to, in effect, cauterize the end of his mutilated arm. But she’d done nothing to mend his fractured jaw and fingers, and all his injuries throbbed in time with the beating of his heart.

He suspected the pain, severe as it was, would pale in comparison to torments to come.

He needed to escape, which meant he needed his magic. He tried to articulate a simple cantrip, but garbled the words. He strained to crook his swollen fingers into an arcane sign, and that was hopeless, too.

“I respect a man,” a bass voice drawled, “who doesn’t give up easily.”

Startled, Diero jerked around. Anton and Tu’ala’keth stood outside the iron grille, looking in at him. He realized he was so weak from blood loss, shock, and dehydration, so sunk in his own wretchedness, that he hadn’t even noticed their arrival. He struggled against an unfamiliar impulse to cringe from them.

Anton recited a charm then swung the rasping door open. “I still haven’t found the key to this thing. I’m lucky I never needed it.”

Tu’ala’keth approached Diero where he slumped on the granite floor. “I am going to heal your jaw,” she said. “If you then attempt to conjure, Anton and I will kill you.” She recited a prayer, took his chin in her webbed blue fingers, and gave it a little jerk.

A bolt of agony stabbed through his head. But afterward, his jaw didn’t ache as it had before. He worked it gingerly, and it clicked. The bone seemed intact and in its proper place.

“We brought you a drink, too,” Anton said. He pulled the cork from a waterskin and held it to Diero’s lips. The magician gulped the lukewarm liquid. For a moment all he could think of was how wonderful it felt to slake his thirst.

Anton took the sloshing pigskin bag away. “That’s enough for now.”

“I know,” Diero sighed. He’d watched thirsty men guzzle too quickly and make themselves ill.

“Now,” said the spy, “let’s take a walk.”

Diero felt another jab of fear and struggled to mask it. “Where to? What do you want with me?”

“Explanations,” said Tu’ala’keth. She hauled him to his feet, and they marched him out of the cell, catching and steadying him when, in his weakness, he stumbled.

A miscellany of bodies littered the tunnels. Here and there, ixitxachitls glided and fish-men shambled about but not in great profusion. Diero suspected that after the battle, most of them had returned to the sea, thus conserving the magic that enabled them to function above it.

At one intersection lay the shredded carcass of a fire drake, still radiating warmth hours after its demise. “We only killed some of the wyrms,” Anton said. “The rest flew away when they realized the outcome of the battle was in doubt. Not very loyal to their devoted worshipers, are they?”

“No,” Diero said. He wished the invaders had killed them all. Had Eshcaz only heeded him, none of this would be happening.

His captors conducted him to the upper levels, where the cult’s mages, priests, and artisans had labored to produce dracoliches and where their conquerors had heaped amulets, swords, scrolls, battle-axes, quivers of arrows, vials, wands, and books atop a worktable. The pile seemed almost to glow, to radiate a palpable tingle of arcane force.

Diero recognized many of the items but not all. He inferred that in addition to plundering the shrines, libraries, and conjuring chambers, the invaders had located Eshcaz’s hoard wherever it lay hidden deep in the mountain. The bastards were clever, he had to give them that.

“Given time,” said Tu’ala’keth, “I could study these articles and learn all about them. But I do not have time, so you will help me. You will tell me what they are, how they work, and how they can best be employed to kill dragons.”

Despite repeated efforts to muster his courage,

Diero still felt weak and afraid. But if he hoped to help himself, now was the time. “Why should I?” he replied.

“The rack survived the battle,” Anton said. “I checked. Maybe you’d like to find out how it feels to be stretched. Or what life is like without any hands at all.”

Diero gave him a level stare. “You can certainly torture me. I’ll break eventually. Everybody does. But I’ll hold out as long as I can. Perhaps long enough to ruin the shalarin’s plans. Or maybe the stress will kill me outright. At present, I’m not strong.”

“What do you want?” asked Tu’ala’keth.

“Freedom, once I supply what you need.”

“No,” Anton said. “Even leaving my personal feelings out of it, my chief would flog me if I agreed to that. But I will offer this: When my fellow captives leave the island, you’ll go along as their prisoner. They’ll hand you over to the Turmian navy and earn themselves a bounty. They deserve some recompense for their suffering, and the ‘chitls won’t let them carry away any gold.

“From then on,” the spy continued, “my superiors will decide what becomes of you, and they just might spare your life if you cooperate. I’ve heard it said that one Cult of the Dragon coven knows nothing of the others. That way, no matter what calamity befalls it, it can’t betray them. But you’re a wearer of purple, and reasonably clever. I suspect you possess some information you shouldn’t, and in a season when everyone’s frantic to ferret out your conspiracy wherever it hides, you may be able to parlay it into soft treatment.”

Diero shook his head. “No. I insist you release me.”

“To Baator with that,” Anton snapped. “You claim you can last under torture? I doubt it. I doubt you can take much pain at all.”

Quick as a striking snake, he grabbed Diero’s broken fingers in his own and bore down hard. The agony dropped the magician to his knees.

“All right!” he sobbed. “All right! We have a bargain.”

“Good.” Anton shifted his grip to Diero’s forearm and dragged him back to his feet. “Drink some more water then tell us what we need to know.”

‹§›SSSS-SSSSSSSS

Anton found Diero a chair. In his weakened condition, the wizard might have fainted if required to remain on his feet much longer.

After that, Tu’ala’keth brought him the enchanted articles one at a time. She didn’t permit him to touch them, and Anton hovered behind him with a dagger in hand. In his experience, magicians were always dangerous, even when placed at a disadvantage.

It was difficult to remain vigilant, though, when Diero’s explanations were so intriguing, so promising. Some of the weapons possessed virtues enabling them to strike dragons with extraordinary force and precision. Scrolls contained spells to soften their scaly armor, blind them to the presence of their foes, addle their minds, or render the caster impervious to their breath. Shields and coats of mail possessed magics to fortify them against the bite of a wyrm or a swipe of its talons.

“Checkmate’s edge,” Anton exclaimed at length. “I suppose this is what we were hoping for, but I don’t understand it. I thought you cultists served the wyrms. Why did you stockpile arms specifically intended for use against them?”

Diero smiled a crooked smile. “We didn’t. Not as such. At its higher levels, the Cult of the Dragon is a fellowship of wizards and priestswhich is to say, scholarswho venerate wyrms. When scholars take an interest in a subject, they want to study it and learn all about it, and one way to study dragons is to examine artifacts that pertain to them. So, over the decades, our cabal assembled an extensive collection of such thingsincluding dragon banes.

“In addition to those,” the mage continued, “you have the items from Eshcaz’s horde. Before we mages woke him, he slept for so many human generations that most folk have forgotten him. But prior to that, he was the terror of the Sea of Fallen Stars. Armed with the finest gear desperate princes and hierarchs could provide, heroes used to challenge him on a regular basis. Obviously, after he killed them, he added their swords and staves to his treasure.”

Anton shook his head to think he’d helped to slay not just a dragon, but a legendary one. It was the kind of thing a paladin in an epic might have done.

But of course he wasn’t a paladin, and Tu’ala’keth and the rest of the sea folk had done the bulk of the slaying. He’d just landed a couple of cuts toward the end. With a snort, he resolved to put such fancies out of his head and focus on the matter at hand.

Which was to say, on a prospect that seemed brighter than he’d imagined possible before. He grinned at Tu’ala’keth. “Well, may the gods bless madmen and dragons both for hoarding because this means you’ve succeeded. You can use the blades and such to save Seros.”

The shalarin declined to enthuse along with him. The narrow face behind the inky goggles remained as dour as before. “No. They will be useful, but by themselves, insufficient.”

“You’re joking. I realize some of the items may not work underwater. But many will.”

“You have not have seen the dragon flight. Nor have I, but I have heard it described by survivors. There are dozens of wyrms. If my people are no stand against them, we need something more.”

Anton returned his attention to Diero. “Well,” he said, “you heard her.”

“Yes,” the wearer of purple replied, “but I don’t know what else to tell you. These are the weapons and talismans that were kept here. You found them all, and now know how to use them. I suppose I could give you some pointers on wyrm anatomy and how they tend to move in combat, but that wouldn’t be sufficient either.”

Anton placed the edge of his knife against the magician’s neck. “If you can’t help Tu’ala’keth enough for it to matter, you’re not going to make it back to Turmish.”

The touch of the blade made Diero stiffen, but when he answered, his voice was steady. “Break your word, slit my throat if you want, but I’m not holding back. Haven’t you realized I’m not one of the zealots? I joined the cult to further my ambitions, and I’d gladly betray it to save my life. That’s exactly what I have been doing.”

“All right,” Anton said. “In that case you need to tell us all you can about dragons and everything related to them.” He was hoping that maybe, just maybe, the magician actually did possess the key to destroying the dragon flight but simply didn’t realize it.

“You understand it’ll take a while.”

“Then you’d better get started.”

As Diero had warned, he talked through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Anton found parts of the discoursewhere to strike to cripple a dragon’s wing, for example, or what sort of fortifications were of actual use against a gigantic reptile that could fly-fascinating. But once the cultist ventured into genuine esotericasuch as the link between wyrms and various elemental forces of the cosmoshe simply couldn’t follow it. His own petty, intuitive knack for sorcery notwithstanding, he lacked the necessary education.

He could only hope Tu’ala’keth would pluck something useful from all the babble.

In the end his mind drifted. When Diero finally said something that tugged at his attention, he didn’t even realize for a while, and wasn’t certain what he’d truly heard.

“Go back,” he said.

“How far?” Diero replied, hoarse again from so much talking.

“You were explaining how to turn dragons into dracoliches.”

“Right. The details vary from one stronghold to the next, depending on which deities the priests serve, the particular strengths and conjuring styles of the wizards, and what have you. But in its essentials, the process is always the same. Artisans craft phylacteries, amulets of precious stones and metals, which the spellcasters enchant in a series of rituals. Even I can’t recite all the incantations from memory, but you have the texts in that purple-bound volume on the table. Meanwhile, the alchemists and apothecaries distill a special libation in a process just as magical and complex. When both elements are ready, the wyrm can transform. At the climax of a final ceremony, it drinks the elixir. That frees its soul to leap from its body into the medallion, establishing a mystical bond that will safeguard its existence thereafter. Unless someone destroys the phylactery, the dragon can never truly perish. Then, having ensured its immortality, the spirit returns to its body, which rises as one of the undead.”

“So what you’re telling us,” Anton said slowly, “is that basically, the drink is a poison? It kills the wyrms, and that’s what ‘frees’ their spirits?”

“Well… yes. Though we don’t usually put it that way. It’s difficult enough to win and keep the dragons’ trust without bandying words like ‘poison’ and ‘kill’ about.”

“Despite their heartiness, it slays them every time without fail?”

“Yes. A single drop of it would kill almost anything, but the formula was especially devised to stop a dragon’s heart.”

“What if a wyrm drank some when there was no ritual going on and no amulet for its spirit to inhabit?

“Why, it would die, pure and simple.” Diero smiled like a man who’d begun to believe his captors might permit him to live after all. “Let me anticipate your next questions. Yes, we brewed a supply of the stuff here on Tan, and yes, it’s ready for use.”

Supervised by the occasional hovering ixitxachitl, lines of koalinths and locathahs trudged through the stronghold, collecting treasure and carrying it down to the sea caves for transport to Exzethlix. Meanwhile, Tu’ala’keth stood watch over her share of the plunder. She didn’t think the ‘chitls would try to steal it. Puffed up with the glory of killing dragons, Yzil seemed satisfied with his share. But it was never prudent to underestimate the ‘chitls’ rapacity or fundamental scorn for any species other than their own.

Footsteps sounded outside the magician’s sanctum where she’d collected the dragon-killing gear and, later, the clay jugs containing the poison. It was the brisk, sure stride of an air-breather, not the slapping shuffle of a creature with webbed feet, managing out of water as best it could, and for a moment, she smiled.

Beard shaved and hair chopped short again, Anton appeared in the entrance to the chamber. He carried a sea bag slung over his shoulder, and the greatsword in its scabbard in the other hand. “I came back,” he said.

“I see that,” she replied.

“I seem,” he said, “to have picked up the habit of doing stupid things. Now that the cog is gone, I’ll have a bitch of a time getting back to Turmish. That is, unless you help me.”

“But you do not wish to return to Turmish. Not yet. You have decided to accompany me.”

He smiled wryly. “Yes, and judging from your attitude, you’re not surprised. Don’t you ever tire of being right?”

“Of late, I have often been mistaken. But not about your role in Umberlee’s design.”

“Just so you know, I still don’t see any ‘design.’ I simply think we’ve had a lot of luck. I came back because… well, I’m not sure why. Except that I tried to kill you, and you wound up freeing me and finishing my mission for me. So maybe I owe you.”

“You do not. You helped vanquish the cult, and in so doing, atoned for your apostasy. The goddess forgives you.”

“But do you?”

“Of course. You are my comrade in a great and holy endeavor.”

“If you say so. I admit, after coming this far, I’m curious to see the end of it.”

“Then let us proceed. I found some potions that will allow you to breathe under water and also some netting to fashion into bags. We will carry our plunder down to the water, and I will summon seahorses, those we rode before and others, too. Enough to bear us and our possessions away.”