Queen of the Depths (4 page)

“Well… maybe.”

“I proclaimed that only Umberlee could save us. I preached it as clearly as I explained it to you. But no one heeded. Finally I forsook Myth Nantar for the wilds of the open sea. It is there one feels closest to the Queen of the Depths, and there, I hoped, I would hear her speak, instructing me on how to achieve her ends.”

“That’s when you stumbled across me?”

“Yes. I lingered to watch your death as a form of meditation. When the sea takes a life, it is a holy event. Umberlee reveals herself to those with eyes to see “

Anton reckoned he, too, might be starting to “see.” “But I didn’t die.”

“No,” said Tu’ala’keth. “Hour after hour, you endured. Even the octopus could not kill you. It became clear that Umberlee wished you to survive, and since she guided me to you, it had to be so you could aid me in my mission. So, quickly as I could, I fetched the items and prepared the spells that enabled me to rescue you.”

“I’m grateful, but truly you’ve made a mistake. I have no idea how to help you. I’m no priest or philosopher or orator, to lure your truant followers back.”

“What are you, then? Tell me, and it will become apparent exactly how you are to serve.”

“There isn’t much to tell. I’m a trader. I took a ship to sell lumber and buy metals. During the voyage, I passed the time throwing dice. I was lucky two days straight, only not really so lucky after all, because a couple of sailors decided I was cheating and attacked me. One knifed me, and I fell overboard. I can only assume that no one but my ill-wishers realized what had happened because the carrack sailed on and left me.

Her black eyes bored into him. “You lie. You use magic. You fight well. You cannot belong to the Providers Caste.”

“I don’t know how it works among shalarins, but there’s nothing to stop a human merchant from learning a little sorcery or training with a blade. Sometimes it comes in handy.”

“It may be so. Still you are a liar.”

Anton was actually a highly proficient liar. Otherwise, someone would have killed him long ago. Either Tu’ala’keth was suspicious by nature, she had an enchantment in place to tell truth from falsehood, or she possessed an unexpected and inconvenient knack for reading human beings.

However she’d caught him, he had a hunch a second lie would prove no more convincing than the first. It might simply provoke a disciple of cruel Umberlee into trying to torture the truth out of him.

In other circumstances, he might have risked it, and if it came to it, resisted the torment as best he could. But what would a shalarin care about the true nature of his business or the manner in which he’d come to grief? With no stake in the affairs of the surface world, what would she do with the information? Maybe it would do no harm to confide in her.

“All right,” he said, “the fact is, I’m a spy in the service of my homeland.” He hesitated. “Do you have spies here under the sea?”

She sneered. “Of course.”

“Well, my usual chore is to ferret out information concerning pirates and smugglers, so others can catch and punish them as they deserve. But a month ago my superiors set me a new task. Have you ever heard of the Cult of the Dragon?”

“No.”

“I guess you sea folk aren’t susceptible to their particular kind of madness. Lucky you. They’re a secret society of necromancers, priests of Bane, Talos, and similar powers, and common lunatics, laboring to make a certain prophecy come to pass.”

“If the prophecy is true, it will come to pass regardless.”

“Don’t tell me, tell them. The prophecy says that one day, undead dragons will rule the world, and the cult intends to make it sooner rather than later. As near as I can make out, they believe the dracolich kings will favor them and elevate them above the common herd of humankind.

“Anyway, a couple months back, the paladins of Impiltur—a land on the northern shore—discovered that of late, the cultists have been more active and advanced their schemes farther than any sane person could have imagined. They’ve established a number of hidden strongholds across Faerun. The purpose of the refuges is to transform dragons into liches, and supposedly, wyrms have been flocking to them and consenting to the change as never before, because they fear losing their minds to frenzy. Evidently undead dragons are immune.

“The Rage has produced destruction and misery enough—you shalarins seem to know all about that— but it’s nothing compared to what a horde of dracoliches will do. So the Lords of Impiltur sent out the word: People in every realm need to find and destroy the cult enclaves before they can accomplish their task.”

“You were one of the seekers.”

Anton grinned. “Yes, and it was just my rotten luck that it turns out the whoresons do have a stronghold somewhere in the region. My guess is on one of the Pirate Isles. If I were pursuing a plan to topple every monarch and ruling council in the world, I’d hide out in a place without governance or law.”

“You say you guess. You did not learn for certain?”

“No. I had a lead and tried to follow up. At some point I apparently made a mistake, and some cultist tumbled to the fact that I was sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. The maniacs sent abishai—winged demons with a dash of dragon thrown in—to deal with me.

“They caught up with me on a carrack sailing out of Procampur. We fought, and I got the worst of it. Finally they cornered me against the rail, and I jumped overboard. If I hadn’t, they would have torn me apart.

“The move worked, after a fashion. For whatever reason, they didn’t keep after me. But the ship didn’t come back for me either. Maybe the abishai killed all the sailors. Or perhaps the captain decided he didn’t need a passenger who lured demons down on his vessel.

“The rest you know. I drifted, and you found me.” Tu’ala’keth floated silently, pondering. Suddenly she grinned. “Of course! It is clear!” “What is?”

“This Cult of the Dragon. They must be mighty wizards with a profound knowledge of wyrms to warp their lives into undeath and leave their minds intact.”

“I suppose.”

“You will help me find them, for that is your craft. They will then tell me how to stop the dragons threatening Seros. I will do so in Umberlee’s name, and afterwards, the other shalarins will return to her altars in penance and thanksgiving.”

Anton shook his head. “You don’t understand. There’s no reason to assume the cult has what you need, and it wouldn’t matter even if they do. They worship dragons. They won’t help anybody hurt or hinder them.”

“If they won’t give up their secrets willingly, we will take them.”

He laughed. “Just you and me, you mean, against a dragon or three, a whole coven of spellcasters, and the Grandmaster only knows what else? I know you’re a reasonably powerful cleric in your own right, but that’s ridiculous.”

“You only believe so,” she said, “because your lack of faith blinds you. You look at this moment and you see only chance—coincidence. These elements are there, but they make a pattern, and the pattern conveys meaning.”

“Look: If we were to march into the cult’s fortress and announce ourselves, all it would do is alert them to the fact that people are searching for them, and that they haven’t covered their trail well enough to keep from being found. Then, after they killed us, they’d take additional precautions. That would make it all the more difficult for somebody else to locate them, descend on them in force, and wipe them out.

“And that needs to happen, for everyone’s sake. A horde of dracoliches will pose a threat to your Seros and Myth Nantar as much as the surface world.”

“What matters is the restoration of Umberlee’s worship. Everything else must fall out as it will.”

“Lady, I respectfully disagree.”

Tu’ala’keth peered at him as if honestly mystified by his intransigence. “You must help. As I explained, your life, like mine, belongs to the Queen of the Depths to spend as she sees fit. If I must punish you to convince you, I will.”

“No. You won’t. I’m leaving.” He swam toward the arch, and she centered herself in the space to bar his way.

Hoping it would persuade her to stand aside, he pulled the cutlass from its scabbard. At the moment, she had no weapon but her spells. Of course, those were formidable enough.

She sneered. “Do you truly believe a blade Umberlee put in your hand will cut a waveservant?”

“I think it might,” he said, though her apparent faith in her own invulnerability, crazy as it appeared, was almost enough to make him wonder.

“Think on this, then. Even if you could kill me, what would happen then?”

“Myth Nantar is supposedly full of sea-elves, mermen, and by your own account shalarins who don’t care a snake’s toenail about Umberlee anymore. Maybe I can talk one of them into helping me back to dry land.”

“After you’ve killed one of their own? How would your folk treat a stranger who’d done the same? Even if somebody did decide to help you, do you really believe it would do any good? You, the slayer of Umberlee’s servant, would still be at the bottom of the sea, where all creatures live only at her sufferance. Rest assured she would avenge me before you could escape.”

He hesitated. If it was a bluff, she was selling it well.

Maybe the sensible course was to play along at least until he was back on land. It was possible that with her powers, Tu’ala’keth could even help him locate the cult’s lair. Tymora knew, he hadn’t had any luck on his own.

He let his shoulders slump as if in resignation. “All right. You win. I’m at your—and your goddess’s— service.”

For now. But, Lady, you will never see your goal.

When they reached the shallows, Tu’ala’keth stroked the neck of her seahorse, and the animal obediently came to a halt. Anton stopped more awkwardly, nearly slipping from the back of his steed, and the creature tossed its ruddy, black-eyed head in annoyance.

The riders dismounted, Tu’ala’keth waved her hand in dismissal, and the seahorses swam away to roam and forage as they would so long as they didn’t stray too far from the island. She wanted them to hear and come if she called.

That accomplished, she and the human swam up the slope of the seabed. They soon reached a point where a person could set his feet down and wade with the upper part of his body out of the water, and Anton chose to do so.

She compelled herself to do likewise, meanwhile striving to conceal her trepidation. Such an emotion was weak and unworthy. She had come on Umberlee’s business, and the goddess would protect her.

Still it was one thing to be certain of her deity’s power and another to place her confidence in the contrivances of the Arcane Caste. If the talismans they’d provided failed to work properly, she was in for discomfort, even pain.

When she raised her upper body out of water the sun was even brighter, but with her goggles in place, she could see. The air passing through her gill slits felt strange, thin, but sustained her nonetheless. The latter benefit was due to the enchantment woven into her silverweave armor, a fine mesh tunic of worked coral.

Anton made a retching sound and, as she turned to look, finished coughing the water from his lungs. He straightened up, wiped his mouth and shaggy black whiskers, and asked, “Are you doing all right?”

“Of course.” She hefted her stone trident. “Onward.”

They sloshed toward the white-sand beach. Tu’ala’keth had done a bit of walking in her life, but not much, and it made her feel as clumsy as Anton had looked trying to manage the seahorse. She resolved to master the trick of it as quickly as possible.

She supposed she might have quite a bit to learn, for the landscape before her looked dauntingly unfamiliar. In its essence, Dragon Isle—a name of good omen, surely—was a mountain like any other, just one so tall its crest rose high above the surface of the sea. But it had no abundance of fish swarming about its stony crags, just a few gulls swooping and wheeling. The odd-looking vegetation was equally sparse.

Everything seemed muted, too, as if she’d gone partially deaf, and what she could hear was different. Absent was the ambient drone she’d known her entire life, a hum composed of the noises generated by the tides, currents, and countless marine organisms striving to survive. In its place was only the susurrus of the breaking waves and a bit of clamor rising from the town at the end of the strand, where humans and their ilk shouted to one another, scraped barnacles from a beached ship, or pounded pegs into the half-completed hull of a new one.

Bracketed by fortifications where land met water, the settlement was as peculiar as the rest of the scene. Naturally, Serdsian towns had no use for docks or boats floating at anchor, but something else struck her as even odder. All the doors were at ground level, and that was where everyone moved about. Some of the rough coquina structures were several stories high, but even so, it was plain that in a real sense, humans lived their lives in only two dimensions.

The cloth rectangles—fields of black emblazoned with skulls, crossed swords, and similar devices—flapping atop several of the most imposing structures added a final note of strangeness.

Anton shivered and gave her a grin. “It’s funny. When I was under water, I never really felt wet. Now that I’m in the air, I can feel I’m soaked.”

“What do we do next?” asked Tu’ala’keth.

“The sea turned my clothes to rags. I need new ones. Even more importantly, I need a barber. The cult identified a spy with long hair and a proper Turmian square-cut beard. Accordingly, I mean to turn into a clean-shaven fellow with close-cropped locks.

“So here’s the plan. At the end of the beach, there’s a path that runs up around the edge of the town. If we take it, we can reach the fellow we need without everybody in town gawking at us.”

“But surely some people will see us.”

“Oh, yes, the lookouts manning the battlements at the very least.”

“What if one of them is a cultist and knows your face?”

“It’s unlikely, but should it happen, life may get interesting very quickly. If the prospect frightens you, you can always turn around and jump back into the water.”

She scowled. “I would never shrink from anything Umberlee requires of me.”