Queen of the Depths

CHAPTER 7

Arms aching, one hand resting on the tiller, Anton peered back along the sailboat’s wake. He still couldn’t see any sign of pursuit, nor, for that matter, could he see much of Dragon Isle itself anymore, though the towering promontory called the Earthspur still blocked out a section of the stars.

As the island was fading from view, so, too, was it time to put it from his thoughts, as he’d put so many comparable episodes behind him. But as yet, he hadn’t managed to close the door on the memories.

Tu’ala’keth sat in the bow. “You are troubled,” she said, “even though we have now accomplished the first portion of our task. Do you regret killing Shandri Clayhill?”

He didn’t feel like talking about it. But by confiding in Tu’ala’keth, he would inspire her trust in turn, and that was what he wanted. So, as was so often the case, his honest inclinations didn’t matter. “I shouldn’t. She was an enemy of my homeland, and anyway, you gave her a chance to save herself. But I do.”

“You and I should not have attachments. Not now. Nothing should distract us while we are blades in Umberlee’s hands.”

His lips quirked upward in a bitter smile. “That’s the way I always live: Only the task matters.”

“It is the best way to live. You should rejoice in possessing such a spirit. But I see you do not. Not tonight.”

Off to starboard, something splashed. He wondered if it was one of the seahorses keeping pace with them. “No, not tonight.”

“I do not blame you. We must strive to emulate Umberlee, but we cannot be as fierce and dauntless as a goddess, no matter how we try. I, too, have my weaknesses and doubts.”

“You hide them well.”

“Nevertheless. I misjudged Vurgrom twice. I never dreamed he’d assault me, no matter how I teased him, and I imagined the threat of humiliation would deter him from sending his underlings to kill us.”

He shrugged. “It’s understandable you made mistakes. Humans are strange to you.”

She hesitated. “But I also lied to you, Umberlee’s champion, my comrade in a sacred venture, and for that I am truly sorry.”

He squinted at her, but even though she wasn’t wearing her goggles, he couldn’t read her narrow, fine-boned face in the dark. “What are you talking about?”

“I said that when we shalarins reestablished contact with our kindred in the Sea of Corynactis, the vast majority of us forsook Umberlee for the gods of our ancestors, and that much is true. That was the impetus. But this is what I did not tell you: The others did not abandon all the deities of Faerun. Though they pay homage to the old powers, they also still gather at the altars of Trishina, Persana, and Eldath. It is only the Queen of the Depths whom they have scorned.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand why you bothered to lie about that. For our purposes, what’s the difference?”

“None. But it reflects poorly on me, does it not? Were I as able a priestess as the clerics of Trishina and the other deities, I too could convey the glory of my patron and inspire her worshipers. Or so it seems to me when I grow discouraged. I misrepresented the situation to hide my shame.”

“You’re too hard on yourself. You talk about the beauty and grandeur manifest in Umberlee’s cruelty, but surely you understand that no matter how eloquently you describe it, most people will never understand.” The Grandmaster knew, he didn’t. “They’ll keep praying to her solely out of fear, and look for excuses to turn away.”

“Hmm. It may be so.”

“Anyway, don’t fret over what you told me. It was just one tiny, insignificant deception in a whole life of lies, hearing and telling them both.” He sighed.

“Plainly, I do not understand humans. I hoped conversation would brighten your mood, but thus far, I have failed at that as well. Does it help to reflect that you only knew Shandri Clayhill briefly and that she never really knew you at all?”

“No, because that’s true every time I take a lover. I’m always playing a part, and I always slip away when my job in that port is finished. But I’ll tell you what does cheer and frighten me at the same time: I may be done with it now. Out of the game.”

“Spying, you mean?”

He nodded. “I know two ways to go about it. The first is to be as inconspicuous as a mouseor ratand sniff around the edges of secrets. It’s safer, and because nobody really notices you, you can come back and spy on the same rogues another day.

“So that’s the way I’ve always preferred, but it won’t always yield the information you need in time to do anybody any good. When it won’t serve, you have to hobnob with the chief scoundrels. You have to establish yourself as a friend, an important accomplice… or a lover.”

“But then,” said Tu’ala’keth, “it is more likely your foes will recognize you for what you truly are and remember you thereafter.”

“Yes, and that’s what’s happened to me. I can’t spy on pirates and smugglers anymore, not with Teldar and Vurgrom themselves knowing my identity. Of course, Turmish has other enemies. My masters could reassign me somewhere removed from the sea. But I don’t know if I want that. Maybe this turn of events is a sign it’s time to try something else.”

“My friend,” said Tu’ala’keth, her cool contralto voice unusually gentle, “you must remember: Your life is not your own to use as you wish. You belong to Umberlee. Someday, if we are victorious, she may release you from her service. But for now, perhaps it is unwise to anticipate, lest it make you discontent.”

“Right.” He realized he had more to say to her, and even though he knew it would be futile and counterproductive, the sudden urge was too strong to resist. “Tu’ala’keth, our errand… I warned you before, the Cult of the Dragon will never help you kill wyrms. It’s contrary to everything they believe.”

“They pay homage to the dark powers. They will bow to the will of Umberlee.”

“No, they won’t. They may have priests among them, but even so, their truest gods are dragons and their own delusions. You need an impressive achievement to convince the other shalarins to return to your faith, I understand that, but helping me fight the cult will do it. I explained they’re a threat to your world as much as mine.”

“Even if that is true,” said Tu’ala’keth, “no one in Seros knows of the menace, so no one would notice its elimination. What people do perceive is the dragon flight, slaughtering everything in its path. That is the doom we must avert.”

“All right, I’ll concede that. But after the Turmian navy takes the cult enclave, you and I can pore over the papers, spellbooks, and what have you. Maybe the answer’s in there.”

“What if they destroy the records when they see their cause is lost? What if the only man who could help us dies in the assault? What if it takes so long to summon your fleet that Seros perishes in the meantime? No. We will do it my way.”

“Let’s at least approach the cultists like spies as opposed to rapping on their front gate like peddlers.”

“Impossible. They are members of a secret fellowship ensconced in a remote and hidden stronghold. How could we, or any strangers, pass among them without attracting notice? Oh, we could scout their fortress from a distance, perhaps even sneak in and out in the middle of the night, but that will not further our purpose.”

“It might. Somehow.”

She smiled, her teeth a gleam of white in the gloom. “I realize you think I am reckless, foolish” “Suicidal.”

“But you must have faith. Never forget you are Umberlee’s knight, now graced with her sacred sword, a mark of greater favor even than the blade she permitted you to take from her altar.”

Enough of this, he thought. I tried, but you wouldn’t listen. What happens next is your own fault.

They talked a little more then fell into a weary, companionable silence. Sail distended, propelled by the wind Tu’ala’keth had conjured, the boat rose and fell as it cut through the swell. The motion was soothing, and he hoped it might soon rock her to sleep.

Tu’ala’keth marveled as Anton, face cold and intent, cut down the pirates. He’d always been a formidable fighter, but at this moment, with the greatsword in hand, he was magnificent. She’d never been more certain that Umberlee had appointed him to be her comrade.

Then, unexpectedly, her pride in him gave way to a twinge of apprehension then to full-blown dread. Her emotions changed for no reason she could comprehend until the filthy street transformed into Captain Teldar’s sailboat, with the mast rising above her recumbent form like a finger pointing at the stars.

The slumber of her people differed somewhat from that of mermen, or, she assumed, humans, because of the membrane that veiled a shalarin’s eyes. Unlike those flaps of opaque flesh called eyelids, it was translucent enough to allow unconscious recognition of prominent shapes, which often then figured in the sleeper’s dreams.

Thus, she’d registered Anton’s proximity. The spy had risen from the bow, drawn the greatsword, and crept to within reach of her. Now he was poising the blade for a death stroke. The mast and triangular sail were in the way, hampering the sort of cut for which the weapon was designed, but he’d evidently decided a thrust would do.

She tried to spring to her feet, but her wounded leg throbbed and made the action slow and awkward. She realized she had no chance of avoiding the blade.

In desperation, she silently called to the wind. She’d conjured it sometime ago, long enough that it might no longer heed her, but it seemed her only chance.

The wind howled, gusting from a different quadrant than before, and the boat bucked violently. Anton lurched off balance and flailed, fighting to avoid toppling overboard. In such a condition, he couldn’t complete the attack, and Tu’ala’keth dived over the side.

As always, she felt a thrill of relief as the sea embraced her. She belonged in the water, and no silverweave or goggles, no matter how artfully crafted, could make it seem otherwise. But she didn’t pause to savor the familiar sensations of her natural environment, the caress of the currents and the perpetual background drone. She was too angry.

After all they’d endured together, she’d believed Anton accepted his role in Umberlee’s plan. She’d certainly done everything in her power to teach, inspire, and reassure him. Yet evidently her efforts had gone for naught. The human had betrayed herand, far more important, the goddessas soon as he discovered an opportunity.

He could have known glory as Umberlee’s faithful champion. Now, by his own choosing, he was only a tool for Tu’ala’keth to use, of no more intrinsic worth or significance than Vurgrom or Shandri Clayhill.

He was a tool, moreover, that had evidently outlived its function when they escaped from Dragon Isle. Now the intelligent course of action was to kill him, just to ensure he never found another chance to hinder her schemes.

She sneered to think how easy it would be. She was safe below the waves where he couldn’t reach or even see her, and he was afloat on a vast expanse of water that would answer to her whims. Her battles in Immurk’s Hold had depleted both her magic and her stamina, but she had enough of both remaining to obliterate a single apostate air-breather.

She gripped the drowned man’s hand, reviewed the deadliest spells she had left for the casting, chose one… and hesitated.

She’d leaped to the conclusion that Anton had nothing more to contribute. Such was her disgust that she was eager to believe it. But perhaps she was being too hasty, for after all, Umberlee had taken care to place this particular instrument in her hands. The signs had been unmistakable.

Tu’ala’keth thought for a moment then smiled anew. She understood what role the traitor had yet to play, and in all likelihood, it would involve a more painful demise than a quick death at sea.

Her objective, then, was to subdue rather than slay. It would require more finesse, but still should prove easy enough.

One of the seahorses came flitting inquisitively around her. She shoo’d it away and swam to the surface. Anton crouched in the boat gazing out over the swells. He’d exchanged the greatsword for the crossbow they’d found packed away with the other supplies, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t notice the top of her head sticking up into the air.

Well, if he didn’t see her now, he’d missed his chance. She whispered an incantation, and fog came steaming up from the water, hiding the boat in billowing masses of vapor.

Or at least, the fog hid it from anyone above the waves. She could make out the tapered shape of the hull perfectly well when she dived back under the surface, and thus had no difficulty aiming her next spell.

The water immediately beneath the boat heaved itself up into a towering crest. The vessel hung at the top for a moment then plummeted down into the trough beside it. She allowed a heartbeat or two for the sea to come smashing over the sides then lifted the boat and dropped it again.

Though she kept it up until the spell expended all its power, Anton never did tumble into the sea. He must have been hanging on tight. Still he was surely soaked and battered, half drowned, and blind in the mist as well.

She reached out with her mind, meshed her thoughts with the simpler, nonverbal ones of the seahorses, and visualized what she wanted them to do. Obedient as ever, they swam astern of the sailboat, ascended to the surface, and splashed about, raising a commotion to hold Anton’s attention.

Tu’ala’keth glided to the bow and pulled herself up. Her wounded leg gave her a twinge, but she still managed to clamber quietly aboard.

The fog veiled everything. The mast and sail were blurred and ghostly. Anton appeared as the vaguest shadow at the far end of the boat. But she’d pinpointed his location, and that was enough.

She stooped and picked up her trident, still lying where she’d left it in her haste to escape. She reversed it to use the heavy stone shaft as a cudgel then crept toward the stern. She picked her way around the sail and continued.

She aimed the butt of the trident at his head, and at the last possible moment, he sensed her presence. He jerked around, lifted a fold of his cape to guard himself, and discharged his crossbow, one-handed, in a single flurry of motion.

Her thrust glanced off the enchanted garment as if it were a sturdy turtle-shell shield. Fortunately, haste, or the soaking his weapon had received, spoiled his attack as well. The bolt flew wild.

He raised the crossbow to use it as a bludgeon, but she was quicker. She smashed the blunt end of the trident into his solar plexus, where, at this moment, the cape didn’t cover. That froze him in place, and she bashed him over the head. He collapsed. She kept beating him until he stopped moving.

|_ike the rest of the Pirate Isles, Tan was in its essence a huge rock sticking up out of the sea, with some greenery on the lower slopes but little on the heights. But unlike Dragon Isle, it was volcanic, its flanks sculpted by ancient lava flows.

As Vurgrom had warned, Tu’ala’keth could see no sign of habitation beyond a few abandoned-looking cottages and shanties, and the beached, decaying husks of a couple of fishing boats. Yet the cove where the empty village rotted appeared to be the only safe or convenient place to land. Should she put in there?

No, she decided, definitely not. If the cultists were as jealous of their privacy as their reputation indicated, they might well have set a trap. It would be awkward if she had to fight her way clear, perhaps hurting or killing someone, before she even had a chance to explain her purpose.

She rummaged through her sea bag, found the pellet that would enable Anton to breathe underwater, and crouched down beside him. His face bruised, cut, and bloody from the thrashing she’d given him, he lay bound and gaggedand thus unable to conjurein the bottom of the boat.

She pulled the cloth from his mouth and showed him the spherule. “Eat this,” she said.

“No,” he said. “Tu’ala’keth, don’t do this.”

“Refuse if you wish,” she said, “but you are going beneath the waves either way. I may still have a use for you, but I no longer need you, and it would please me to watch you drown.”

Glaring, he opened his mouth, and she gave him the pellet. After he chewed and swallowed, she replaced the gag.

She had no further use for the sailboat, so didn’t bother lowering the sail, dropping anchor, or otherwise securing it. Let the sea have it for a toy, to toss about and finally sink or shatter. She bound Anton and her other possessions to the seahorses, who disliked it but suffered it at her behest. Then they swam for shore.

As when approaching Dragon Isle, she and her unwilling companion parted company with the mounts in the shallows and waded onward. They had to clamber over a jumble of rocks, with waves crashing to spray all around them and an undertow dragging them backward, to exit the water. She’d loaded Anton with the baggage. Denied the use of his hands, he couldn’t manage by himself. She grabbed his forearm and heaved him up, then waited for him to retch the water from his lungs. With the gag in place, it mostly came out his nose.

“I intend,” she said, “to circle around and approach the village from higher up the slope. You will move quietly, or I will kill you.”

He jerked his chin at one of the sea bags she’d tied to him then gave her a sardonic look. She understood: His bonds and burdens were scarcely conducive to stealth.

“You must do the best you can.” She jerked the length of rope she’d knotted around his neck. “Onward.”

Once they climbed above the settlement, it was easy enough to discern that which had been imperceptible from the water. A cog, entirely seaworthy by the look of it, though the crew had taken down the two masts to facilitate concealment, listed on one side behind a screen of brush. Voices muttered from one of the dilapidated shacks.

Brandishing her skeletal pendant, Tu’ala’keth whispered a prayer to augment her force of personality. Then, gripping her trident in one hand and Anton’s leash in the other, she stepped out into the open. “Men of the Cult of the Dragon,” she called, “come forth!”

But the startled creatures who emerged from the shanties weren’t “men,” but rather, to all appearances, hybrids of human and wyrm. They walked on two legs and carried spears but stood half again as tall as a manor shalarin. Their hides were scaly, and batlike wings sprouted from their shoulder blades. Tails lashed behind them, and they had the faces of lizards, framed by jagged bony ruffs and manes of coarse black hair.

Before their falling out, Anton had told Tu’ala’keth of such brutes. They were called dragonkin and sometimes served the cult. She’d already been surewell, nearlythat the wyrm worshipers had established themselves on Tan, but it was nonetheless gratifying to behold incontrovertible proof.

But the reptiles gave her scant time to savor the moment. They glowered at her and Anton for a second, and one hissed and hefted his lance for throwing.

“Stop!” she cried, and the magic locked his limbs in position. Before he could recover, or any of the others could decide to attack, she advanced on them, glaring. She wanted them to think her fearless, and to assume she had good reason to be. She wanted them to imagine her powerful enough to strike them all dead in an instant.

“Do you not see my amulet?” she demanded. “I am a waveservant, a priestess of Umberlee, who holds you all in the palm of her hand so long as you dwell in the midst of the sea. Now, who else wants to strike at me?”

None of them did, apparently.

“Good,” she said. “Which of you is in charge?”

The largest of the dragonkin snapped its leathery wings and sprang forward. Its hide was ocher with brownish spots and bands, and in addition to its spear, it wore a scimitara symbol of rank, perhaps. Its flesh had a dry, musky smell. She sensed it was leery of her but, even so, averse to appearing meek in front of its underlings.

“How you get here?” it growled.

“We swam.”

“Why?”

“I must see the master of this place. To deliver a message from the Queen of the Depths.”

The dragonkin grunted. “Not supposed to take strangers up mountain. Supposed to kill.”

“You cannot thwart the will of the greatest of all goddesses, but you are welcome to try. If I have to walk over your corpses to reach my destination, so be it.”

“Uh, no. We go up. No fish-woman come here before. Maybe Eshcaz or wearer of purple will want to see. Or maybe Eshcaz want to eat.” The creature waved its clawed hand at the trail snaking up the mountainside.

The cult enclave was larger than Anton had imagined it could be. He started to realize it during the hike up the mountain. In certain hollows, where no one out at sea could spot them, slaves toiled, tending crops, and dragonkin lashed them with whips and bastinadoes when they faltered. Perhaps some of the thralls had dwelled in the empty village on the beach before the wyrm worshipers staked their claim to Tan. Others must be captives purchased from the pirates of Mirg Isle. All were gaunt and haggard from hunger, ill treatment, and despair.

The actual stronghold was equally grim, and even more impressive. Anton had suspected a honeycomb of caverns inside the cone of the volcano but hadn’t dreamed they’d prove so extensive, so well populated, or so a-bustle with activity. Goldsmiths labored over glittering gems and precious metals, crafting intricate medallions too large for a human to wear. Sweating alchemists squinted into fiery kilns or supervised heated liquids as they bubbled, steamed, and streamed through twisting, forking mazes of glass pipe. Black-robed priests of Velsharoon, god of liches and necromancy, chanted before a sarcophagusor an altar carved in the shape of onein a chapel reeking of carrion. Wizards declaimed their own spells, invoking spirits Anton could glimpse at the periphery of his vision, but which vanished when he looked at them directly. Seers tossed bones and examined the patterns or stared into churning mirrors. The discharge of so much magic in a single place made the eyes water and the stomach squirm.

A smell somewhat like the body odor of their dragonkin escortthe reek of actual wyrms, Anton assumedlingered everywhere, and he spotted at least three of the colossal creatures, prowling restlessly through gloomy passageways or napping in unused galleries. As most dragons were powerful spellcasters, he assumed it was pride that kept them from pitching in to help with the arcane chores their worshipers had undertaken on their behalf.

He’d never seen a dragon before, not even from a distance, and the immense creatures were as frightening as he’d heard. But his predicament had already been about as dire as could be. Dragons only worsened it in a notional sort of way. Perhaps that was why he managed to cling to his composure until he and Tu’ala’keth reached what was evidently the end of their journey.

The dragonkin led them to a huge chamber near the apex of the volcano, where gaps in the walls admitted shafts of sunlight from the summer sky outside. Another breach in the rock, this one a chasm in the granite floor, quite possibly plunged all the way down to a reservoir of still-smoldering magma. Yet plenty of space remained for more slaves to pursue the prodigious, backbreaking task of chiseling a huge, complex geometric design and array of glyphs.

All this Anton observed in a moment, before movement at the far end of the cavern, atop a ledge midway up the wall, arrested his attention. He’d already noticed a shape hunkered there in the gloom, but had interpreted it as a protruding swell of rock. For surely it was too immense to be alive.

Alas, no. A gigantic wedge-shaped head, studded with horns on the beak and chin and larger ones sweeping backward from the brow, shot forward at the end of a serpentine neck. The striking motion carried it into a patch of sunlight, revealing the deep, glossy vermilion of the scales. The titan opened its jaws and roared. The echoing bellow shook the cave, brought bits of stone showering from the ceiling, and suffused the air with a stink of smoke and sulfur.

Everyone cowered, slaves and dragonkin overseers alike. Anton recoiled, somehow tangled his leg with one of the sea bags, and fell hard enough to evoke a jab of pain from his cuts and bruises. But he barely noticed the discomfort. He was too afraid.

Reds were the most terrible of all malevolent wyrms, and he hadn’t realized any dragon could grow so huge. It looked ancientand thus, powerfulas the volcano in which it made its lair.

He waited, petrified, for the red to annihilate him and everyone else, for at the moment he took it for death incarnate. Accordingly, it never occurred to him that it would do anything but kill.

But evidently the roar had served to take the edge off its ire for a little while, anyway, for it didn’t follow up with a burst of sorcery or a flare of fiery breath. It simply swiveled its head to glare down at the man beside it. Compactly built, clean shaven, and white haired, clad in a darklikely purplerobe, the cultist looked tiny as a beetle next to the object of his adoration.

“Why are they not finished?” the dragon snarled.

“It’s exacting work,” the cultist replied in a prim, well-educated baritone voicethe voice of a tutor or clerk. Some trick of the acoustics in the chamber enabled Anton to make out his softer tones even from dozens of yards away. “They have to cut the symbols precisely.”

“Sammaster promised that by now, I would already be a dracolich!”

“The First-Speaker said many things then wandered off and left me to perform the actual work. I’m doing the best I can. It’s partly a question of manpower. We need more slaves.” He hesitated. “Your hoard is greater than the wealth of many a prince. If you could spare just a small fraction, purely to help us bring about the consummation you desire”

“You dare,” the wyrm thundered, the noise so loud it made Anton feel as if someone had slammed him in the head with a club, “ask for my treasure? You dare?”

The cultist abased himself. “I’m a donkey. I beg forgiveness.”

“Know this,” said the red. “Should you fail me, you won’t die easily, not even if frenzy has me in its claws. I swear it by the thousand fangs of Tiamat.”

Anton realized his terror had ebbed to a degree. He’d stopped shaking, and his heart was slowing.

Maybe the example of the snowy-headed cultist, who was able to stand up to the colossal wyrm to a point, anyway, had shamed him. Maybe he’d found some encouragement in the fact that the madmen had yet to create a single dracolich, for surely the impatient red was first in line. Or perhaps it was simply his manhood reasserting itself. But in any case, he resolved that whatever happened next, he’d meet it with a fortitude worthy of even a paladin of Torm.

As he struggled to his feetno easy task with his hands tied behind him and the sea bags weighing him downhe looked over at Tu’ala’keth then sighed in grudging admiration. To all appearances, she was the one person who hadn’t flinched from the red’s display of temper. Her features composed behind the goggles, she still stood straight and tall.

Of course, like the cultists, she was crazy in her fashion. In certain circumstances, it was evidently an advantage.

She turned to their escort. “You will present me to the wyrm,” she said.

The dragonkin stared at her. “To Eshcaz?” it asked, plainly astonished that anyone would seek to approach the red when he was in such a vile humor.

“If that is his name,” she said. “It is why you brought us here, is it not?”

The hulking dragonkin shrugged, a gesture that tossed its wings and made them rustle. “Come, then.”

They all tramped deeper into the chamber. Anton noticed he was starting to hyperventilate, and forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply.