Queen of the Depths

CHAPTER 13

A3 Anton had initially suspected, all Myth Nantar lay under a benign enchantment enabling visitors from the world above to breathe, withstand the pressure of the depths, and even see clearly despite the hundreds of feet of water filtering out the sun. Thus, he could discern the preparations for war. Mermen strung enormous nets between the luminous spires and equally massive spurs of corals. Sea-elves shot crossbows at targets, and shalarins jabbed in unison with tridents, as the alliance’s raw new army, hastily scraped together to replace the superior one the wyrms had already annihilated, doggedly trained for the struggle to come.

It was the loan of Tu’ala’keth’s coral ring, however, that permitted Anton to eavesdrop on passersby as he and the waveservant swam through the canyonlike streets. He heard variations of the same fearful conversation repeated again and again: “The dragon flight has turned.” “The wyrms are headed straight at us.” “I’m taking my family out of the city today.”

Tu’ala’keth had been correct about the need for haste. As it was, she’d only barely returned in time.

They swam through a plaza where a fountain miraculously spewed yellow flame, noticeably warming the water. Beyond that lay a blue marble temple, with columns shaped like chains of bubbles, and a frieze of a triton adoring the facade. Adjacent to that stood the imposing five-story keep that was the Council House.

Sentries stood watch before the arched entry. According to Tu’ala’keth, the allied races supplied the honor guard on an alternating basis, and today was evidently the locathahs’ turn. Advised to expect the waveservant and her companion, the gill-men ushered them inside with a minimum of fuss. It reminded Anton of his own countrymen, who, as citizens of a republic, often took a sort of pride in eschewing aristocratic airs and elaborate ceremony. But he suspected that in this case, the city’s desperation had more to do with it.

The council chamber turned out to be a spacious room with an enormous table made fashioned from a dragon-turtle shell at the center. Around it sat the councilors, one for every allied race, another for each of the three orders of Dukarsa sort of highly regarded wizard who could evidently come from any raceand one for an elven High Mage, for a total of ten. Still, the Serosians called it a Council of Twelve, and two chairs sat empty, the first representing an extinct order of Dukars and the second reserved for any god who might care to manifest and address the assembly.

The word chairs was somewhat misleading. Fashioned in different shapes to accommodate the varying anatomies of the councilors, some resembled cages as much as anything else, and in a realm where everyone floated, each functioned to hold the occupant effortlessly in position at the table at least as much as it did to provide a comfortable resting place for a rump.

A merman functionary announced Anton and Tu’ala’keth. The spy hung back a little as they swam toward the assembly. The councilors were the waveservant’s people. Let her do the talking.

The muscular sea-elf representativeMorgan Ildacer, if Anton remembered the name correctly wore a shirt of sharkskin armor and had brought a barbed lance and crossbow along to the meeting. He was evidently a high-ranking warrior, who, by the look of him, might have just come from drilling the troops under his command. He regarded the newcomers without discernible enthusiasm. “Priestess. Forgive us if we receive you with little courtesy, but we’re trying to deal with an emergency. You told our deputies you have a way to help us.”

“I do,” said Tu’ala’keth. “Umberlee sent me on a mission to find our salvation in the world above the waves and provided a champion to aid me. To put the matter succinctly, we succeeded. If you follow our guidance and use the weapons we procured, you can destroy the dragon flight.”

Ri’ola’con, the shalarin councilor, sat up straighter. Gray of skin, with a white mark on his brow and milky stripes on his dorsal fin, he was skinny even for one of Tu’ala’keth’s kind, with deep wrinkles etched around his eyes. “Can this be true?” he asked.

“I pray it is.” Pharom Ildacer said. Though less overtly athletic, the High Mage bore a familial resemblance to his handsome cousin, but his sympathetic air was in marked contrast to the warrior’s brusque and haughty manner. “Please, tell us more.”

“In good time,” said Tu’ala’keth.

Anton felt a twinge of unease. What did she think she was doing?

“As I explained,” said Morgan, “time presses. Speak if you actually have something to say.”

“I have a good deal to say,” she replied. “Have you wondered why this affliction has come upon us in this season?”

Arina, a youthful-looking mermaid and her people’s representative, shrugged bare and comely shoulders. In less serious circumstances, Anton could have spent a stimulating time ogling the upper half of her. “It’s just something that happens every couple centuries,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“It is,” said Tu’ala’keth. “But you would do well to remember that nothing happens without the permission of the gods, and that calamities can embody their displeasure.”

Ri’ola’con blinked his round black eyes. “What god have we offended?”

“Do you not know?” Tu’ala’keth said. “Of all those assembled here, you and Tu’ola’sara”the shalarin Dukar”are the ones who should. None of the allied peoples honors Umberlee as much as is her due. But some never did, and perhaps considering their lack of reverence beneath her notice, she did not deign to avenge herself. But until recently, the shalarin people did worship her, and now, for the most part, we have turned away. She will not tolerate that affront.”

“Nonsense,” Morgan snapped. “Any time misfortune strikes, some priest pops up to claim it’s because folk failed to heap pearls on his deity’s altar. But the world doesn’t work like that.”

A hideous blend of sailfish, octopus, and crustacean, Vualdia, the morkoth councilor, stirred within her “seat,” a lattice of intricately carved bone. “Sometimes it does,” she said. Accurately or not, Tu’ala’keth’s ring, translating for Anton’s benefit, gave the creature the quavering voice of a cranky old lady accustomed to having her way. “History records a number of instances where the gods chastised cities and whole kingdoms that displeased them.”

Morgan sneered. “You’re a scholar, so I’ll take your word for it. But where’s the proof it’s happening now?”

“Those of you who profess mystical abilities,” Tu’ala’keth replied, “should be able to read the signs. If not, I swear on Umberlee’s trident that matters are as I say.”

“I trust your oath,” Pharom said. “I believe you think you’re speaking the truth. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right.”

“Had I been wrong, had Umberlee not prompted me to do as I have done, I surely could not have procured the means of saving Myth Nantar.”

“Good,” said Nalos of Pumanath, the triton councilor, “now we’re circling back around to the point. I don’t care why the dragons are attacking. We can argue that later. I care about killing them. Do you truly have a way, waveservant, and if so, what’s your price?”

“I have the way,” said Tu’ala’keth, “and will give it to you in exchange for a pledge. After we destroy the wyrms, Myth Nantar will hold a festival of thanksgiving to Umberlee. The lords and captains of every allied race will offer at her altar.”

“Impossible,” Morgan said. “Deep Sashelas is the god of the sea-elves, and supreme above all others. I’ve never prayed to a lesser deity, and I never will.”

“Still,” Pharom said, “we know he isn’t the only god.”

Tu’ala’keth continued as if she hadn’t heard either of them. “There is more. For the next year, once every tenday, every shalarin in As’arem and Myth Nantar will pay homage in Umberlee’s shrines and temples.”

Gaunt Ri’ola’con shook his head. His crest, which had a limp and withered look to it compared to Tu’ala’keth’s, flopped about. “We can’t tell people which god to worship.”

“The Rulers Caste can order them to do anything within reason, and this is within reason. I have not stipulated that they forsake the weak, ridiculous powers to whom they have lately pledged allegiance. They may continue praying to them if they wish. But they must give Umberlee their adoration as well.”

“This is outrageous!” Arina exploded. “How can you bargain with us when the survival of everyone and everything is at stake? Seros is your home, too!”

“So it is,” said Tu’ala’keth, “and I would grieve to see its people slaughtered and its cities laid to waste. But I have pledged my loyalty to one power, one principle, beside which nothing else matters. I serve Umberlee, and the rest of you who owe her reverence must acknowledge her as well. Or perish beneath the fangs and claws of dragons.”

“I know,” said Vualdia, tentacles squirming, “some of us are squeamish about torture. But with our survival at issue, perhaps they could put their qualms aside and agree to force this creature to help us.”

“If I ask,” said Tu’ala’keth, “Umberlee will surely take my soul into her keeping and leave you a lifeless husk to question.”

“If I tortured you,” said Morgan, “it would be to punish you for impudence, not to extract the secret of Myth Nantar’s deliverance. Because you don’t have it!” He raked his gaze over his fellow councilors. “Don’t you see? It’s a trick, a game she can’t lose. She’ll give us some meaningless blather, and if we wind up defeating the dragons, she’ll take the credit. If we lose, and anyone survives to confront her, she’ll claim it’s because we didn’t pray hard enough.”

“If you lose,” said Tu’ala’keth, “it will be because

Umberlee offered you salvation, and you spurned it.”

“If a priest of Deep Sashelas, or any proper, civilized god”Anton had a hunch that what Morgan actually meant was any patron god of the sea-elves”made that claim, I might take it seriously. But Umberlee is just a spook for human sailors to dread, because she sinks their boats and drowns them. But what influence can she exert over those of us who dwell in the sea?”

“She is the sea,” said Tu’ala’keth. “You live your life in her embrace, and at every moment, only by her sufferance. But we need not argue about her majesty. If you accept my help, its worth will prove my contention. If you refuse, perhaps you will achieve greater insight in the afterlife.”

“All right,” said Jorunhast, frowning, wisps of his hair and beard wafting in the gentle current drifting through the room. Once the Royal Wizard of Cormyr, now, in his exile, a Dukar, he was human, the only such expatriate on the council. “Let me make sure I understand. You’ll hand over whatever weapons you collected, advise us how to use them, and we’ll decide whether to employ the strategy you recommend. If we do and emerge victorious, it’s then and only then that we all need to abase ourselves at Umberlee’s altar. Is that the bargain?”

“Yes,” said Tu’ala’keth, “but I will reveal nothing until I have the oath of every member of this council.”

“You won’t get them,” Morgan said.

Pharom frowned at him. “That’s not for you to say, cousin. Not by yourself. Not before we deliberate.” He turned to Tu’ala’keth. “Would you and your companion please withdraw so we can talk among ourselves?”

Tu’ala’keth inclined her head. “As you wish.”

The merman functionary conducted them into a waiting area, where dolphins, carved in bas-relief, swam on creamy marble walls. Anton managed to wait until the servant left them in privacy, but then could contain himself no longer.

“What in the name of Baator are you doing?” he demanded.

“You heard the discussion.”

“Yes, but you didn’t warn me you were planning this… extortion. The way you explained it, you’d help your people, and afterward, they’d return to Umberlee out of gratitude.”

“Originally,” she said, “that was my intent. But I meditated on the journey back from Tan, and the goddess whispered that my simple scheme would not achieve its goal. The common run of folk are blind and heedless. You are a case in point. You are Umberlee’s knight and cannot even perceive it. In the aftermath of victory, Seros would rejoice. People might even think me a hero. But if I proclaimed the credit belonged to Umberlee, would the masses heed me? Would they flock back to her temples? I suspect not, and so I must compel them.”

“Doesn’t it matter to you that they won’t be praying out of honest devotion?”

“Aboard Teldar’s sailboat, you yourself observed that most folk pay homage to Umberlee only because they feel they must. They never have and never will comprehend her magnificence, and that is all right. She is well content with their dread.”

“So really, you’re just trying to put things back the way they used to be. All right. I see that.” He lowered his voice. “But I need to know: Are you bluffing? If the council refuses your demands, do you mean to help them anyway?”

“No.”

“Damn you!”

“You have sometimes thought me mad, and now you suspect it again. Or at least believe me devoid of feeling. But I am not. I can rejoice to behold Umberlee’s face in the burst of blood when predator seizes prey and still not desire to see my entire race slaughtered. If the council denies me, I will withhold the weapons we have found. But otherwise, I will place myself at the disposal of the new army and fight and die with the rest of the soldiers.”

He threw up his hands, a gesture that, thanks to the city’s pervasive enchantments, he could perform as quickly as if flinging his arms through thin air. “Don’t you see how perverse that is?”

“You cannot judge the will of Umberlee by mortal standards.”

“They’re the only standards I have. I don’t hear the Bitch Queen telling me what to do. I’ve explained that time and again. I’ll tell you what I can perceive. Everything in Myth Nantar is strange to me. I see a creature, and I’m not even sure if it’s a person or just a fish. I notice workers carrying tools and have no idea what they’re for. But I do recognize that this is a splendid city peopled, more or less, with honest folk. Folk as worthy of protection as my own.”

“Yes,” she said, “they are.”

“Well, consider this: I can protect them. I know where you cached the poison and the rest of the loot. I listened to that whoreson Diero explain how to use it all. Why shouldn’t go back into the council chamber and give the representatives what they want?”p›

“Do as your spirit prompts you. I will not stop you. It is no longer fitting for one of us to compel or constrain the other. We have come too far and achieved too much together.”

“Look, if you know I’d do it anyway, doesn’t it make sense for you to do it instead? Wouldn’t it be better for your standing among your people, and for your goddess’s as well?”

“Umberlee does not wish me to take that course, and in any case, I do not actually know what you will do. Perhaps you do not know yet, either.”

With a pang of annoyance, he realized she was right.

He knew he ought to do precisely as he’d threatened. Common sense allowed no other option. Yet he’d come back to Seros to help Tu’ala’keth, not betray her a second time.

Maybe it wasn’t really treachery to thwart an addled mind in pursuit of disastrous folly, and she was right, often enough, she did seem crazy to him. He just couldn’t see what she saw or feel what she felt.

But sometimes he wondered what it would be like. How it felt to stalk fearlessly about the world, armored in faith and certainty, to steer one’s life by absolutes, not pragmatism and compromise.

It’s insane, he thought, but I could do it this one time. I could let go of my own notions and trust hers, if I’m willing to live with the consequences.

“Fine,” he growled, “I’ll keep my mouth shut. Just don’t tell me you knew all along how I was going to decide.”

“I did not. Umberlee has called us, but nonetheless, we are always free to swim with the current or struggle against it. Now be of good cheer. The councilors are wise after their fashion. They will see reason.”

They didn’t have to wait long to find out if she was right. Piscine tail flipping up and down, the merman servant arrived only minutes later to conduct them back to his masters.

For the most part, the councilorsthose whose expressions Anton could read, anywayscowled and glowered as if a physician had forced them to swallow vile-tasting medicine. He felt a sudden urge to grin, and made sure he didn’t.

“For the record,” Pharom said, “this council regards compelling the worship of any deity as a reprehensible practice. It could easily undermine the mutual tolerance necessary for the six races to live in peace together.”

However, Anton thought.

“Yet at the same time,” the High Mage continued, “we naturally recognize the existence of all the gods, and understand that over the course of a lifetime, a sensible, pious person may offer to many of them, according to his circumstances. So, waveservant, if you, acting in the name of the Queen of the Depths, can help stave off the dragon flight, then we would deem it appropriate to proclaim a festival of celebration in her honor. As far as obliging the shalarin people to worship her on an ongoing basis, that’s an internal matter for As’arem. This council can’t command it.”

Tu’ala’keth turned to Ri’ola’con. “Then, High Lord,” she said, “as eadar, it falls to you to say yes or no on behalf of our folk.”

The wrinkled, frail-looking shalarin frowned. “You know very well, Seeker, that As’arem is five realms, not one, and that my authority has its limits.”

“Swear to do your utmost to meet Umberlee’s requirements, and that will suffice.”

In the end, the councilors all vowed in turn, each by his patron god, by one sacred principle or another or simply on his honor, though several offered their oaths with an ill grace. Morgan was the last and surliest of all.

“All right,” he said, “enough mummery. Enough stalling. Tell us your secret, and by all the powers we just invoked, it had better be worth the wait.”

“Very well.” Tu’ala’keth provided a terse account of the weapons they’d seized and what they proposed to do with them. Anton, who rather prided himself on making clear, concise reports to his superiors, appreciated the brevity.

When she finished, the other councilors looked to Morgan. “What do you think, cousin?” Pharom asked.

The warrior scowled and hesitated. Anton could all but see the feelings clashing inside him, resentment of Tu’ala’keth on one side, hope and the need to keep faith with his own martial pride by giving an honest appraisal on the other. “It’s… interesting,” he said at length.

Tu’ala’keth responded as if this equivocation settled everything. “I noticed you have started preparations to defend the city. That is good, for even if the army readied itself in time to engage the dragons elsewhere, this is the best place to make our stand. The damage will be significant, but we can turn the architecture and reefs to our advantage. I suggest evacuating all those unfit to fight.”

“We haven’t yet agreed to your plans,” Morgan said.

“That’s true,” Pharom said. “So should we? You’re as able and canny a soldier as anyone here, so speak plainly. Are you in favor, or against?”

“Yes,” sighed the other sea-elf. “This plan gives us more hope than anything we’ve thought of hitherto.” The truculence came back into his manner. “But only if her liquids and baubles perform as she claims.”

“If they do not,” said Tu’ala’keth, “I will be among the first to suffer for my stupidity. As it is my scheme, it is only proper that I play a central role in attempting it.”

Anton said. “I’ll be in the vanguard, too.” Nose to snout with more dragons, may the Red Knight stand beside me.

Tu’ala’keth watched Anton swim experimentally back and forth and up and down. She understood the reason for it. Though they’d passed beyond the field of helpful magic enveloping Myth Nantar, the Arcane

Caste had, at her behest, supplied him with enchantments that should enable him to function just as well in the open sea. A bone half-mask allowed him both to breathe and to see in what he would otherwise regard as impenetrable gloom. A fire-coral ring warmed him, and eel-skin slippers and gloves enabled him to swim with the speed and agility of a shalarin.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t had much time to practice with the latter items before Morgan Ildacer led the company forth. He still felt uncertain of their capabilities. It was natural, but though she maintained her composure, as a waveservant should, his fidgeting was making her restless, too. “You will be fine,” she said.

Beneath the mask with its amber lens, carved scales, and gill slits, his mouth quirked into a smile. “Can I take that as a guarantee from Umberlee?”

“Umberlee does not deal in guarantees. It is simply that I have found you to be a quick study.”

He gazed right, left, up, straight ahead, then down at the dark, silt-covered slopes of Mount Halaath falling away beneath them. Many of their comrades were similarly peering about and making a point to check in every direction. In open water, an enemy could strike from anywhere.

“I don’t see the brutes,” Anton said. “It would be funny if they just decided to veer off and go somewhere else entirely. They could, you know. A dragon flight can do any crazy thing.”

“Not this one,” she said.

“Because Umberlee sent it?”

“I have spoken of pattern precipitating from the randomness of life. As it begins to articulate itself, it either breaks against some form of resistance or increases in implicit strength and complexity, until, if it thrives beyond a certain point, it inevitably fulfills itself. You and I have followed such a pattern. Or we created it. One perspective is as valid as the other.”

“So now the dragons have to come.”

She smiled. “I think that no matter how many times I explain, you will never truly permit yourself to understand. They do not have to. They can do as they like. But they will.”

He stiffened then said, in a softer voice, “Yes, I guess so."

She turned and looked upward as he was. At first, she couldn’t see forms, just a great burgeoning agitation in the water. That, however, was enough to send a pang of fear stabbing through her, because she comprehended just how many dragons it took to create that seething, onrushing cloudiness.

Many of her comrades were plainly frightened also, staring wide-eyed, shivering, and unconsciously cringing backward. She gripped the drowned man’s hand and murmured a prayer. A pulse of clarity and resolution throbbed within her, cleansing much of the anxiety from her mind, and streaming outward to enhance the courage and vigor of every ally within range.

“Steady,” she said, “steady. The Queen of the Depths is with us. All our gods are with us.” Well, give or take the feeble frauds from the Sea of Corynactis.

Throughout the company, other folk in authority did what they could to maintain morale and order. Priests of every race prayed for good fortune. Magicianssea-elves, shalarins, and morkoths mostlyprepared to cast spells in as showy a manner as possible, brandishing staves of bone and coral and wands of polished semiprecious stone, leaving fleeting, glimmering trails in the water, tacitly assuring their comrades of their arcane might. Officers talked confidently to common warriors. A squad of tritons lifted their tapalscrystalline weapons with both a point extending beyond the fist and a long blade lying flat against the forearmand shouted, “Myth

Nantar! Myth Nantar! Myth Nantar!” Other soldiers took up the chant.

Still nothing could take away all the fear. A merman started swimming upward, and his sergeant bellowed at him to get back into position.

“They’re above us,” the soldier pleaded. “We’ll be caught between them and the mountain below.”

“They’re where we want them!” the sergeant snarled. “Get a grip, and remember the plan!”

A locathah dropped its crossbow, whirled, and started swimming away. Its captain put a quarrel in its spine then rounded on its gaping comrades. “Anybody else want to turn tail?” the leader demanded. If so, the others kept it to themselves.

Now Tu’ala’keth could make out shapes… or at least the suggestion of them. Prodigious wings beat, hauling wyrms through the water almost as fast as they could fly through the sky. The flippers of the dragon turtles stroked, and the tails of the colossal eels lashed, accomplishing the same purpose. On Tu’ala’keth’s right, a shalarin started making a low, moaning sound, probably without realizing he was doing it.

“This is it,” came Morgan’s cool, clipped voice, magically augmented so everyone in the company could hear. “Start the attacks.”

He meant the order for those spellcasters who, either by dint of exceptional innate power or formidable magical weapons, had some hope of smiting the wyrms even at long range. Thanks to a scroll from Eshcaz’s hoard, now sealed in a yellowish transparent membrane to keep the sea from ruining it, Tu’ala’keth fell into the latter category.

She read a trigger phrase and felt the magic pounce from the page, supposedly to rip at a cluster of the onrushing wyrms, though at such a distance, she couldn’t tell if it was cutting them up to any significant degree. It certainly didn’t kill any of them or even slow them down.

Other spells began to strike in the dragons’ midst, swirls of darkness and blasts of jagged ice. Those didn’t balk them either.

A jittery koalinth discharged its crossbow, and the dart lost momentum and sank only halfway to its targets. Tentacles writhing in agitation, the creature’s morkoth master screamed for it and its fellow slave warriors to “Wait, curse you, wait!”

More magical attacks exploded into being among the dragons, close enough now that most of the spellcasters could assail them in one fashion or another. The barrage still didn’t slow the reptiles down. Indeed no matter how intently she peered, Tu’ala’keth could see only superficial cuts, punctures, and abrasions marring their scaly hides. It was almost as if the allied priests and mages were merely treating them to a harmless display of flickering light and dancing shadow.

But perhaps they’d done a bit more harm, or at least caused a little more annoyance, than that. For now the wyrms retaliated in kind.

Aquatic dragons commonly lacked the sorcerous talents of their kindred on land. As a rule, it was only the species that thrived in either environment who cast spells beneath the waves. Some suchblacks and at least one topazhad joined the dragon flight, but Tu’ala’keth had hoped that by now, their madness might have rendered them incapable of using arcane talents.

Alas, that was not the case. Water became acid, searing the flesh of the thrashing sea-elves caught amid the transformation, diffusing outward to blister the skin and sting the eyes of other warriors. Black tentacles writhed from a central point to batter and clutch at a dozen mermen. The morkoth who’d snagged

Tu’ala’keth’s attention a moment before wailed, froze into position, and turned into a thing of translucent glass sinking downward toward the mountaintop. Its koalinth thralls exchanged wild-eyed looks as if silently asking one another what to do now.

“Hold!” called Morgan’s disembodied voice. “Hold fast. Bowmen, the enemy’s in range. Start shooting!”

“About time,” Anton muttered. Feet kicking lazily, he’d been floating with his crossbow already shouldered. Now he pulled the trigger, and though he hadn’t had much time to practice shooting under water either, the dart streaked forth to pierce the silvery scales of a dragon eel just above its black, deep-set eye. He instantly worked the lever to cock the weapon again.

Countless quarrels hurtled at the oncoming dragons. For their part, the wizards and priests switched to a new set of spells. Tu’ala’keth read another trigger, and a colossal squid coalesced into being in front of the wyrms. Her comrades materialized enormous creatures akin to whales, sharks, octopuses, eels, and jellyfish, counterparts to mundane animals drawn from spirit realms or elementals like those she and Yzil had battled. The conjured servants surged forward to engage the reptiles. Meanwhile, other mages evoked sudden booms among the dragons to stun them and pain their sensitive ears, or sweeping their hands to and fro, wove hanging patterns of multicolored light to arrest a wyrm’s gaze and hold the creature stupefied.

The allies hoped this magic, even if it ultimately did little damage, would slow the dragons’ advance, giving the crossbowmen time to shoot them repeatedly. It did, for a few heartbeats, and one by one, the reptiles started breaking through whatever barriers, living or inanimate, tangible, phantasmal, or psychic, the spellcasters had placed in their way. A sleek, glimmering, silver-blue water drake caught Tu’ala’keth’s squid in its fangs and snapped and raked it to shreds.

A black with a withered, cadaverous countenance snarled a counterspell to thrust an elemental back to its native level of existence. Glittering like the jewel for which it was named, its eyes blank yellow flame as bright as Eshcaz’s, the topaz simply stared at a priest of Deep Sashelas who’d attempted to shackle its will. The sea-elf screamed, convulsed, and clutched at his head. Blood billowed from his nostrils.

Abruptly, or so it seemed, on the far left flank of the company, a dragon turtle was much too close. It opened its beak and spewed its breath weapon. Water boiled to steam, and the mermen caught in the effect boiled with it. Furious with bloodlust, not hunger, the huge creature didn’t pause to gobble its victims. Rather, flippers lashing, it rushed forward to attack new ones.

Coral-headed spear in hand, other sea-elf warriors swimming frantically to join him, Morgan set himself in the dragon turtle’s way. The imminent threat didn’t keep him from giving further orders in the same crisp fashion as before.

“It’s time to fall back. Remember the route you’re supposed to take, and wait for a mage to enchant you before you retreat.”

Tu’ala’keth belatedly realized the morkoth wizard had been the nearest conjuror to her and Anton, and it now lay on the slopes of Mount Halaath in the form of a glass statue. She cast about and spied a sea-elf warlock not too far away. She pointed, and Anton followed as she swam in that direction.

Others were racing there as well, sometimes shoving their comrades aside in their haste. The company had held its position as well as anyone could have expected, but now, with the dragons nearly on top of it, many warriors were on the verge of panic.

In fact, in their eagerness to converge on the magician, they threatened to crush him. A shrill edge of fear in his voice, he cried, “Give me some space! I can’t conjure if I can’t move my arms!”

Tu’ala’keth gripped the drowned man’s hand and invoked a surge of Umberlee’s majesty. It granted her a moment of mastery over her fellow sea-dwellers, and when she shouted for them to calm themselves, they heeded her.

“Thank you,” said the wizard, understanding she’d helped him even if he didn’t comprehend precisely how. He swept a scrap of vegetable matter through a mystic pattern and rattled off words of power.

Tu’ala’keth’s muscles twitched and jerked. Other folk cried out as the magic jolted them. After the initial shock, she felt no different. But when she looked at those among her allies who were still awaiting enchantment, or at the dragons, they seemed to move sluggishly. In actuality, she knew, the reverse was true. The spell accelerated the reactions of those it touched.

“That’s done,” Anton said, sliding another quarrel into the groove atop his crossbow. “Now let’s get out of here.”

“Yes,” she said

As if it were the signal for everyone clustered around the warlock, the spherical mass of bodies burst into a ragged, streaming mass. Everyone swam downward and southeast, toward Myth Nantar and the plateau on which it sat, as fast as their magically quickened limbs could speed them along.

The spellcasters still had a responsibility to slow the pursuing drakes. Otherwise, the reptiles might overtake and slaughter everyone, the charm of acceleration notwithstanding.

So Tu’ala’keth turned periodically to release another spell from her parchment, to summon a demon to assault the dragons, or plunge an area into darkness and hinder the reptiles about to pass through it.

Whenever she did, she felt a surge of awe at the spectacle of the onrushing wyrms. They dwarfed the allies as sharks dwarfed minnows, loomed above and extended to either side of the company like a titanic wall of glaring eyes, bared fangs, and curved talons. They were as terrible and beautiful as her vision of the Blood Sea, and she realized that even if this venture cost her her life, it was worth it simply to behold them.

Whenever she wheeled to work magic, Anton turned, shot another bolt from the crossbow, and cursed to see wyrms slaughtering folk who hadn’t fled quickly enough. Another burst of dragon-turtle breathTu’ala’keth wondered fleetingly if this was the same creature Morgan had engaged, if the councilor was now deadboiled locathahs so that lumps and strands of flesh slid loose from their bones. A sea dragon spread its gigantic jaws and swallowed two shalarins at once.

Then Anton shouted, “Watch out!”

Tu’ala’keth cast about and couldn’t find the threat.

“Below us!” Anton cried.

She looked down. Somehow, a shimmering water drake had been able to swim fast enough to overtake the rearguard but hadn’t been content simply to tear into the folk at the very back. Instead, it had dived beneath the fleeing company then ascended in the obvious hope of taking someone entirely by surprise.

It had nearly succeeded. Its jaws spread wide to seize Tu’ala’keth, and she doubted she even had time to evoke more magic from the scroll’s ever-dwindling supply. Instead she extended her trident at the creature’s head and asked Umberlee for a burst of spiritual force sufficient to cow any sea creature, even a drake.

The power flared, but the wyrm simply failed to heed it. Its essence was too strong. It swiped a forefoot and knocked the trident out of line. She tried to twist out of the way of its jaws and, when it arched its body to compensate, realized that wouldn’t help her either.

Anton dived at the drake, the point of Umberlee’s greatsword poised to pierce it like a spear. He’d considered trading it for one of the weapons specially designed for slaying wyrms, but in the end, had opted to stick with the blade that had served him well against Eshcaz. Behind the amber lenses, his eyes burned with the contagious fury of the sword. Or perhaps it was simply his own innate determination.

The dark blade plunged deep into the reptile’s head. Flailing, it couldn’t follow through on its intention to bite, and Tu’ala’keth wrenched herself away from its teeth.

She hoped the drake would die, for surely the greatsword had driven in deep enough to reach the brain. It didn’t, though. It roared and whipped around to threaten Anton. Its wing, slightly torn where someone had managed to hurt it a little, swatted her tumbling away.

She refused to let the bruising impact stun her and oriented on the wyrm once more. The greatsword was still sticking out of its mask. Anton had lost his grip on it when the creature turned. Now unarmed except for the pitiful dagger in his hand and the unloaded crossbow dangling from his wrist, he dodged and retreated as the reptile clawed at him. If not for the spell of quickness, it likely would have torn him to shreds already. As it was, it was plain that, bereft of any weapon that could deter the drake from attacking with every iota of its demented aggression, he couldn’t survive much longer.

She hastily peered at the scroll. Two spells left. She triggered the first.

Water surged, churned, and spun around the drake. Caught by surprise, engulfed in a miniature maelstrom, even a creature of prodigious strength had difficultly swimming in the direction it intended to go, and as it floundered, Anton kicked and shot beyond its reach.

The drake flailed, trying to break free of the bubble of turbulence. Tu’ala’keth unleashed the final spell. A ragged blot of shadow appeared before her then shattered into flat, flapping shapes like mantas. Untroubled by the violent, erratic currents, the apparitions whirled around the dragon. It was impossible to see how they attacked it, if, in fact, they made physical contact at all. But gashes ripped the reptile’s hide, and a hind leg, a foreleg, and half the tail sheared away completely. Head nearly severed, wings shredded, the drake drifted toward the bottom in a billowing cloud of blood.

Anton dived after it, gripped the hilt of the greatsword, planted his feet on the wyrm’s head, and pulled the weapon free. By the time he managed that, most of their comrades had fled past, leaving him and Tu’ala’keth at the rear of the throng.

Tail lashing, a dragon eel streaked at them. A vertical plane of azure force abruptly appeared in its way, and it slammed into the obstruction beak-first. Amid the chaos, Tu’ala’keth couldn’t tell who’d conjured the effect, but it stopped the creature for a critical moment.

She and Anton raced onward with the great frantic horde of their fellows. People slowed abruptly as their charms of quickness exhausted their power. Time would tell which ones had seized enough of a lead to keep ahead of the wyrms.

It would have been easy for anyone to break away. The officers were too busy trying to save their own lives to interfere with anybody who did, and with scores of potential victims to pursue, the wyrms might well not veer away to pick off a single stray.

But as far as Tu’ala’keth could judge, most of the company were keeping to the plan. A plan, she realized, that now required her and Anton to bear left. She turned, and others began to do the same, their courses crisscrossing as each headed where he’d been ordered to go.

The soft luminescence of Myth Nantar flowered before and below her. Muscles burning with strain, she put on a final burst of speed, passed among the first of the coral-girded spires, then dared to turn and look back.

Most members of the advance forceor what was left of ithad already entered the city via one of several avenues, and diving lower than the rooftops, the wyrms were splitting up to chase them down the same thoroughfares. It was as the allies had hoped. In normal circumstances, dragons were cunning, but addled by the Rage, infuriated by the harassment they’d already suffered and the frustration of prey fleeing just beyond their reach, the reptiles either didn’t realize or didn’t care that their foes were luring them into a trap.

Of course, it was possible they didn’t need to care. Their power might well prevail against every ruse and tactic Myth Nantar had prepared.

But Tu’ala’keth refused to believe it. Not after she and Anton had come so far and achieved so much. The Bitch Queen had no mercy, nor concern for fairness as mortals understood it, but still the pattern would not complete itself in such a bitter fashion.

She and the human swam onward, past dozens of their exhausted, frightened comrades rushing to get indoors, to the keep that was supposed to be their particular refuge. They hurried through an entry on the third story, an opening blessedly too small for even the least of the wyrms to negotiate, and the shalarin warriors waiting on the other side gaped at them.

“What’s happening?” an officer asked.

Somewhere outside a dragon roared.

“That noise pretty much says it,” Anton gasped, slumping with exhaustion. “We drew the dragons into town. Now you go kill them.”

Anton watched as the shalarins made their last-second preparations for combat. Most were soldiers of the Protectors Caste, with bony spines stiffening their dorsal fins rigid as the crest on a human knight’s steel helm. But they had spellcasters to support them.

Across the city other squads drawn from all six allied races were no doubt doing exactly the same thing, and Anton silently wished them luck. It was their fight now. He and his comrades had done their job by luring the dragons down the proper streets in the proper heedless state of mind.

But maybe he didn’t want to hold back while others finished the battle. It was strange, really. As a spy, he’d rarely been present when the Turmian fleet or army, acting on intelligence he’d provided, eliminated a threat to the republic, and he’d rarely cared. But this time, for whatever reason, he wanted in at the kill.

The greatsword rejoiced at his witless impulse, at a new opportunity for bloodshed. Calm down, he told it sourly, meanwhile casting about for Tu’ala’keth.

Clasping her skeletal pendant, the waveservant was murmuring a prayer. At the conclusion, she shivered, rolled her narrow shoulders as if working stiffness out, then took a firmer grip on her trident.

He swam to her. “What did you just do?” he asked.

“I suppressed my fatigue,” she said, “making myself fit to fight once more.”

“Cast the same charm on me, will you? If you’ve got another.”

She flashed him one of her rare smiles. “I do. I expected you would want it.”

The spell stung like a hundred hornets, and he grunted at the blaze of pain. It lasted only an instant, though, and afterward, he felt as though hed rested for a day.

Tu’ala’keth made her way to one of the warriors bearing a satchel. “I will take that,” she said, indicating the bag.

The Protector eyed her uncertainly. “I volunteered,” he said.

“Your bravery does you credit,” she said, “but unless you have experience fighting dragons, I am better suited to the task.”

“All right. If you put it that way.” He handed her the bag just as a roar from the street outside agitated the water and shook the walls of the keep itself.

Anton hurried to a window. Beyond was a dragon turtle, its spiky shell nearly broad enough to fill the canyonlike avenue. Its beaked head twisted from side to side, and its eyes glared as it sought the elusive prey who’d fled inside the buildings to either side.

Quarrels flew from windows and doorways. Anton shouldered his own crossbow and started shooting. Many of the missiles glanced harmlessly off the reptile’s shell or scales, but some lodged in its hide. Meanwhile, the magicians threw darts of light and raked the beast with blasts of shadow. Blood tinged the water around its body.

The reptile pivoted toward one of the larger entry-ways across the street, a circular opening midway up a marble wall. Anton prayed that everyone inside recognized the danger, that they were already bolting deeper into the structure. But even if so, many wouldn’t get clear in time.

With a screech like the wail of a god’s teakettle, the dragon turtle vomited its breath weapon, boiling the water in front of it. Framed in the windows to either side of the entry way, shalarins convulsed then floated lifeless.

But other defenders endured elsewhere, to shoot darts and fling attack spells, and it would take the reptile’s breath time to replenish itself. Maybe, despite its derangement, it now began to understand it was at a disadvantage. With a stroke of its flippers, it shot a few yards farther down the street then halted as it evidently perceived it couldn’t escape in that direction. Myth Nantar was a city half buried in reef, and like many of its byways, this particular street terminated in an upsweep of coral.

The dragon turtle wheeled just as, rippling with rainbows, a curtain of conjured force abruptly blocked the other end of the avenue. The leviathan angled its body upward, preparing to ascend, but a gigantic net, the magically toughened cables thick as a strong man’s thigh, now covered the street like a lid on a pot to complete the killing box. A team of warriors had stretched it across while the reptile was looking elsewhere.

Even so, it swam upward. Maybe it had wit enough to realize the net was the least substantial component of its cage. Its prodigious beak could likely nip through, or failing that, its raw strength and immensity could probably tear the mesh loose from its moorings.

Though not entirely unexpected, the dragon turtle’s sound judgment was the allies’ misfortune. They’d hoped to harry it from the relative safety of the buildings for a while longer, hurt it a little more, anyway, before anyone ventured out into the open. But they couldn’t permit it to breach the netting and maneuver freely. So officers shouted the command to go forth, and Anton, Tu’ala’keth, and dozens of others obeyed.

Some of the warriors bellowed war cries to attract the reptile’s attention. Anton yelled, “Turmish!” The dragon turtle peered downward then, trailing billows of blood, dived at the foes who had at last dared to come within its reach.

Midway through its plunge, it spat more of its breath. Some of the shalarins recognized the threat, but nobody managed to dodge. Everyone caught in the path of the blast boiled and died amid the burst of bubbles. By pure luck, Anton was safely to the side, but even he had to grit his teeth at a brush of scalding heat.

The dragon turtle hurtled down into the midst of its foes. The crested head at the end of the long neck swiveled left then right, biting a shalarin to fragments at the end of each arc. The elongated flippers bore talons like the feet of a land-born wyrm, and they clawed with equally devastating effect, tearing warriors to tatters and clouds of gore.

How could anything so gigantic maneuver so quickly? The confines of the street were supposed to hamper it!

It spun toward Anton, its beak gaping. He started to dodge, and a jagged block of ice materialized in the creature’s open mouth. Finally, one of the wizards had balked the creature in its furious assault. It flailed in shock and pain.

Anton kicked, shot into the distance, and cut at the reptile. The greatsword bit deep into the side of its beak. Maybe a mage had succeeded in cursing it with one of the enchantments devised to soften a wyrm’s scales, for other warriors, likewise taking advantage of the behemoth’s sudden incapacitation, were also piercing its natural armor.

Unfortunately, its incapacitation lasted only a moment. Then it bit down hard, and the ice jammed in its mouth crunched to pieces. Its head whirled toward Anton, and he wrenched himself out of the way.

More ice! he silently imploredit worked for a secondor, if not that, some other magic to hinder the brute.

But it didn’t happen. The warlocks were still trying. Power glimmered on the dragon turtle’s shell, and leering, lopsided faces formed and dissolved amid the swirls of blood in the water. Yet now, for whatever reason, the spells simply failed to bite.

So it was up to the warriors. Anton cut, dodged, slashed, feinted low and kicked high. When he’d battled Eshcaz, he’d tried to stay on the red’s flank, away from his deadliest natural weapons. But now he couldn’t even do that, because it would be futile to hack at the shell. A combatant had to hover within easy reach of a dragon turtle’s head and flippers, trusting to his reflexes to save him from its attacks, because there was nowhere else to hit it.

Anton lost another comrade every couple of heartbeats. He wondered how many were leftwith his attention fixed on the reptile, it was impossible to countand if anyone else would have the nerve to come forth to engage the creature once it had torn the first squad to drifting crumbs of fish food. Then he spotted Tu’ala’keth swimming up from below the behemoth’s jaws.

He’d lost track of her early on. But he’d known that if she still lived, she was skulking around the periphery of the battle, seeking a chance to slip in close to the dragon turtle’s beak while it was concentrating on other foes, because that was what the plan required her to do.

A couple of other shalarins, also carrying satchels, should have been attempting the same thing, but he still saw no sign of them. Maybe they hadn’t been quick or stealthy enough to escape the reptile’s attention.

If so, then Tu’ala’keth absolutely had to have her chance. He opened himself fully to the greatsword’s malice, kicked forward, and attacked furiously.

The dark blade sliced deep, once just missing an eye. The dragon turtle snarled, and the gaping beak shot forward at the end of the long scaly neck.

Tu’ala’keth hurtled up from below it, a crystalline bulb in her hand. Unused to working with liquids requiring containment, the artisans and spellcasters of Myth Nantar had experienced a certain amount of trouble transferring the cult’s poison into those silvery, translucent orbs, but had finally managed to devise a method.

Tu’ala’keth lobbed the ball into the dragon turtle’s open mouth. Necessitating close proximity, the move was insanely dangerous, but at least it brought the virulent stuff to the target. Had they simply released the poison in a cloud, it might well have diffused to harmlessness without slaying a wyrm, or drifted unpredictably to kill the wrong victim. If they’d dipped an arrowhead or blade in it, the sea would simply have washed it off.

Anton couldn’t tell for certainthe angle was wrongbut assumed the ball shattered as soon as it entered the dragon’s mouth. That was what Pharom, Jorunhast, and their fellow mages had enchanted the orbs to do. Tu’ala’keth instantly whirled, kicked, and stroked in the opposite direction, less afraid now of attracting the wyrm’s notice than of poison reaching her gills or mouth.

Her desperate haste didn’t matter. The dragon turtle still didn’t notice her, but neither did it react to the poison. Flippers stroking, it kept on lunging and snapping at Anton, twisting its neck to compensate when he zigzagged in a futile effort to shake it off his tail.

He kicked high, cut downward, and finally tore an eye in its socket. He’d have that little victory to cherish in Warrior’s Rest, anyway. But he didn’t expect it to stop the leviathan, and sure enough, it didn’t. The creature’s throat swelled, and the water abruptly grew warmer as it prepared to loose another burst of its breath. He had scant hope of evading it when he was right in front of its head.

From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Tu’ala’keth, trident poised, swimming in to fight beside him. He waved her off, but she kept coming, pig-headed to the last.

Then the dragon turtle shuddered. It tried to spit its breath, but now evidently lacked the strength, for no blast engulfed them. Rather, the heat simply boiled the water around its own head and directly above it; the rising bubbles like flame leaping up from a torch.

In the wake of those, a cloud of blood and slime erupted from the reptile’s gullet, as if something had ripped and corrupted its flesh from the inside. Anton shrank from the miasma, not because he feared it would hurt him, but simply repelled by the foulness. Tu’ala’keth did the same.

The dragon turtle drifted toward the bottom. For a moment, the spectacle of such a colossus brought to ruin held everyone awestruck. Then a crossbowman in an upper-story window cheered. An instant later, everyone was doing it.

Tu’ala’keth turned to Anton. “The poison,” she said, “simply takes a moment to do its work.”

“Evidently,” he wheezed. It seemed unfair that he was always the only one gasping and panting. But she had gills instead of lungs; exertion didn’t affect her the same way.

“If we swim above the rooftops,” she said, “we should be able to see how Myth Nantar as a whole is faring.”

“Good idea.”

They peered about before completing the ascent, making sure no wyrm was lurking nearby. Once they determined it was safe, it was easy enough to squirm through the interstices of the net. Its weavers had fashioned it to hold dragons, not creatures as small as themselves.

Gazing down on the city from above, they beheld battle raging on every side. The screeching, roaring clamor stung the ears. Drifting blood clouded everything, the taste and smell of it vaguely sickening. Spires had fallen and spurs of reef shattered where dragons had torn them apart in their frenzy. Everywhere, bodies sank slowly, or already lay on the bottom, and as Anton contemplated them, he felt a swell of elation. For while too many of the corpses were mermen, locathahs, allies of one species or another, several were immense.

“It’s working,” he said. “The poison, the strategy, all of it.”

“Praise be to the Queen of the Depths,” replied Tu’ala’keth.

A yellow shimmer at the edge of his vision snagged Anton’s attention. As he twisted his head, it flickered into two shimmers.

Slender and black, covered with luminous mosaics of purple and golden wyrms winging over a benighted sea, Jorunhast’s tower constituted one wall of a dragon trap. In it, he and his comrades had snared the topaz.

Judging by the gouges on the decorations, the topaz had been trying to claw and batter its way into the human magician’s spire, either to slaughter those assailing it from within or simply to crash on out the other side. Thus far, the structure had withstood the abuse. Now, however, a pair of identical topazes swam before it, wings beating, yellow eyes burning. By dint of enchantment or some innate ability, the dragon had duplicated itself.

Ignoring the crossbow bolts streaking from neighboring structures and the swimmers swirling about them jabbing with their spears, the twin wyrms launched themselves at the tower and, striking together, tore an enormous hole. The folk inside, many Dukars with the coral bonded to their bones now manifest as ridges of external armor or blades sprouting from their hands, quailed from the oncoming wyrms then flailed and thrashed as some unseen power overwhelmed them.

But one figure floated calm and untroubled. Despite the distance, Anton could just tell that it was Jorunhast, strands of his hair and beard tossing in the agitated water. He held out a crystalline bulb in either hand, as if casually proffering them to friends, and they vanished.

The display made the topazes pause for a heartbeat, maddened though they were. Anton assumed they couldn’t understand the purpose of such a petty, pointless conjuring trick.

They found out when pain ripped through them, and they, too, flailed in helpless spasms. The exiled wizard had magically transported the poison into their throats.

Tu’ala’keth nodded. “We are going to win. But there are many dragons left. The sooner they die, the less harm they will cause. Shall we rejoin the battle?”

Anton grinned. “Why not?”

Yhe festival of thanksgiving proved to be as solemn an observance as any cleric might have wished, and it seemed to Anton that for the most part, Myth Nantar offered at the Bitch Queen’s altars willingly enough. Even Morgan Ildacer wasn’t overtly grudging.

After the prayers and sacrifices, however, solemnity gave way to jubilation, and the human enjoyed that a good deal more, especially since he didn’t lack for companionship It turned out that a good many folk regarded him as a hero even if they were vague on precisely how he’d helped Tu’ala’keth procure the poison and other weapons that had saved the city. His well-wishers gave him morsels of spiced shrimp and candied sea urchin as intoxicating as any brandy, and sea-elf ladies and mermaidsthe latter coping superbly despite the obvious handicapstendered more intimate rewards.

But eventually even such exotic delights lost a bit of their savor. Maybe it was because he craved the sight of the sky and the touch of the sun or heard duty whispering it was past time to report to his superiors, but in any case he felt in his gut it was time to go.

Fortunately, nobody had asked for the bone mask back. He’d mastered the tricks of riding a seahorse, and he knew where Tu’ala’keth kept her animals when not in use. He could leave whenever he liked. He threw himself into a final night of revelry then swam into Umberlee’s house early the following morning.

The sanctuary positively glittered with new offeringsso many that the vast majority had to sit on the floor. But that wouldn’t do for his purposes. He cleared a space on the largest and most sacred of the altars then laid the greatsword down. Wordless thought surged into his mind, reminding him how brilliantly he fought with the blade in his grasp and what ecstasy it was to kill with it, pleading with him to reconsider. Then he took his hand away, and the psychic voice fell silent.

“Are you sure?” asked Tu’ala’keth.

He turned to see her floating in a doorway. In her own shrine, her own home, she had no need of silverweave or a trident, but the drowned man’s hand hung on her breast as always.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll never have a better sword, but I’m not myself when I use it. I’m worried that eventually I wouldn’t be me even when it was in the scabbard.”

“You might be something greater. If you wished, you could remain here, continue to bear the blade in Umberlee’s service… but I see that is not what you desire.”

“No. I’m sorry, but I never felt what you feel. Not once.” If it wasn’t quite true, it was certainly true enough.

“I know, and you have Umberlee’s blessing to depart. But if you are leaving her service, you may not wear her badge. Allow me.” She swam to him, murmured a prayer, and stroked his forearm with her fingertip. His all-but-forgotten octopus tattoo, inscribed when they’d first reached Dragon Isle, vanished in a flash of burning pain.

He rubbed his smarting skin. “If you’d asked, I could have erased it, and it wouldn’t have stung.”

“My apologies,” she said, though he almost thought he heard a hint of laughter in her voice. “What will you do now? Will you stop being a spy as you have ceased serving Umberlee? Be your own man in every respect?”

He shrugged. “I’m going to have to think about it. In many ways, I’m sick of spying. But bringing down those whoresons on Tan, helping at least some of the captives to freedom, was… satisfying. Maybe I’m not finished quite yet.

“I don’t need to ask what you’ll do,” he continued. “Your destiny is clear. You’ll go down in the annals as the greatest priestess Seros has ever seen.”

“You speak as if my work is done.”

“Well, the hard part. Isn’t it?”

“I have won a year, during which the shalarin people must pray at Umberlee’s altars and listen to me preach whether they want to or not. It remains to be seen whether they will continue when the time expires. I suppose it depends on my eloquence. On whether I can show them the goddess as I know her to be, or failing that, at least persuade them of her limitless might and appetite for slaughtering those who neglect her worship.”

“You’ll manage it.”

“I pray so. At least I have my chance. No one can ask more.”

“Well…” He had the witless feeling, which often came to him at partings, that he ought to say more but didn’t know what. At length he settled for: “We fought well. Better than well. Checkmate’s edge, we’re dragon slayers! How many folk can claim that?”

She smiled. “All the warriors in Myth Nantar now but perhaps not with as much justification.” Then, to his utter astonishment, she opened her long blue spindly arms for a parting embrace. He took care returning it so as not to crush the fin running down her spine.