Queen of the Depths (20 page)

“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.

ŚŠ• ŚŠŚŚŠŚ•ŠŚ

As they approached Eshcaz, wending their way through the kneeling, toiling slaves, Tu’ala’keth realized the air was growing warmer. The dragon’s body radiated heat like a bed of coals, and his blank golden eyes glowed like twin suns. He was so gigantic-She scowled and ordered herself not to feel the dread and awe that gnawed at her composure. The emissary of Umberlee mustn’t quail before any creature, even this one.

Soon enough, Eshcaz twisted his head around to glare at her. The white-haired man studied her with curiosity and calculation in his narrowed eyes. She could see now that his dark robe was in fact wine-red, and reckoned he must be the “wearer of purple,” human master of the enclave, but subservient to the “sacred” dragons nonetheless.

“I brought a waveservant,” the dragonkin called, “and… uh… some prisoner.”

“Greetings, Lord Eshcaz,” said Tu’ala’keth. “I am indeed a waveservant, the keeper of Umberlee’s temple in Myth Nantar, in Seros beneath the sea. I bring gifts and a message from the goddess.”

The red made a rumbling sound. It might have been a chuckle. “Give me the gifts first.”

“As you wish.” She relieved Anton of his burdens then emptied the sea bags to make a glittering, clinking pile of coin and gems, topped with Anton’s red cape. The greatsword, however, she set aside. She remained convinced it partook of Fury’s essence. Thus, it belonged on Umberlee’s altar, or in the

hands of a warrior devoted to her service.

Eshcaz stared at the gold and jewels like a starving creature regarding food. His eyes shined brighter, and his forked tongue flickered forth as if to taste the treasure.

“This too is a gift,” said Tu’ala’keth. She shoved Anton stumbling forward. “He is one of your enemies, a Turmian spy. He discovered your whereabouts and planned to muster a host to attack you. By the grace of Umberlee, I made him captive before he could report to his superiors. Accordingly, you are safe.”

“I’m always ‘safe,’” growled Eshcaz. “Do you think any fleet or army could challenge me?”

“Now that she’s seen you in all your majesty,” said the wearer of purple, “I’m sure she doesn’t. Still, if things happened as she claims, she’s at least spared us some inconvenience. Now, I suspect, she’s going to ask for something in return.”

“It is not what I ask,” she said. “It is what the Queen of the Depths commands.” She began to tell them of the dragon flight menacing Seros and of their role in its obliteration. The slaves’ chisels clanked and scraped in the background.

It didn’t take her long to realize that, despite the enchantment still in place to heighten her powers of persuasion, her declaration wasn’t having the desired effect. Eshcaz, the wearer of purple, and the dragonkin officer all peered at her as if she were babbling nonsense. Anton gave her a sardonic look that said, I warned you.

Refusing to let it rattle her, she kept her tone cool and matter-of-fact as she pressed on to the end. For after all, she hadn’t expected them to accede immediately. It would take some palaver back and forth.

“Waveservant,” said the wearer of purple. “I regret the devastation of your home, but you must understand. …” He spread his hands. “To put it bluntly,

we’re on the side of the dragons. All of them.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “You have no way of reaching out to dragon eels, dragon turtles, and their ilk. They don’t figure in your plans and prophecies.”

“They may,” the human replied. “Even we don’t know the full extent of the First-Speaker’s designs. He may indeed shepherd some of the undersea wyrms to us before we’re through. Indeed, I have good reason to anticipate it. But even if he doesn’t, we could never conspire to harm any dragon. We venerate them.”

Eshcaz snorted, suffusing the air with a sulfurous haze. “Compared to me, Diero, such fishy things are vermin, as is every lesser wyrm slithering about these caves. Your true purpose is to serve and ‘venerate’ me, and I suggest you keep it ever in your mind.”

Diero bowed. “I do, Sacred One.”

Tu’ala’keth felt a thrill of hope. “Do I understand, Lord Eshcaz, that you have no objection to helping Seros?”

“None… in principle.” The red leered, and she realized he was toying with her. “But I see no advantage in it, either. My servants have more important work to do.”

“I have called upon you in the name of the greatest of the powers of darkness, whom we both serve in our fashions.”

“You aren’t listening. I bow to no one and nothing. Others serve me or perish.”

“You are proud,” she said, “and given your strength, it is proper that you should be. But surely your long life has made you wise as well. Wise enough to understand that even the mightiest of dragons ought not to offend the cruelest, most implacable goddess of Fury.”

“I see no goddess hereabouts.”

“Then open your eyes. She stands here with me.”

“I don’t care if she does. She has no dominion over

me. I’m a creature of air, stone, and most of all, flame. Let her appear, and I’ll boil her to steam.”

“As long as you live on an island, you sit in her hand. She need only close it to crush you.”

“I’m bored with this,” said Eshcaz. “Someone, take that trident away from her and tie her up. I’ve never eaten a shalarin. I believe I’ll have her for supper.”

Tu’ala’keth could scarcely comprehend that matters had gone so disastrously wrong. But when her escort lifted its spear to club her with the shaft, the threat jarred her into action.

“Stop!” she cried. The reptile froze in place long enough for her to drive the trident into its guts. She yanked the weapon free. The dragonkin toppled.

She pivoted, seeking the next threat, and didn’t have to look far. Half a dozen other dragonkin were advancing on her, whips and batons at the ready. Braided leather struck at her. She jumped to the side, and cracking, the lash missed.

Anton ran toward the greatsword where it lay on the floor. Perhaps he had some desperate hope of using the preternaturally keen edge to cut his bonds. A dragonkin diverted its attention from Tu’ala’keth for the moment necessary to bash him over the head. Anton collapsed and lay motionless, blood flowing from his scalp.

Tu’ala’keth cast about, seeking a way out of the circle of dragonkin closing in on her, and beyond that, a way of escaping the entire situation. Thus far, she could see neither.

She brandished her trident above her head and bellowed words of power in as theatrical a manner as possible. Maybe the aura of grandeur in which she’d previously cloaked herself made the display intimidating, for the reptiles balked for a moment, giving her precious time to conjure.

Then, however, they scuttled forward once more.

Whips surged through the air, too many for her to keep to the precise, demanding measures of the spell and dodge them all as well. Lashes slammed her, staggered her, split her skin.

Ignore the pain. Articulate the prayer.

Magic rustled through the cave with a sound like a breaking wave, and darkness followed in its wake. Even she, with her sensitive deepwater eyes, couldn’t see through the heightened gloom, nor, she was certain, could the dragonkin.

The difference was that, knowing the shadow was coming, she’d fixed the precise location of one of her foes in her mind. She immediately charged, and when instinct told her she was close enough, thrust with the trident. The attack crunched through the dragonkin’s scaly hide and into its broad body. It grunted and fell, dragging the weapon along as it went down.

The slap of rushing footsteps and swish of a dragging tail sounded to her left. She freed the trident, pivoted, ducked, and thrust. Though she was still fighting blind, her luck held. The three-pointed lance punched into another target. The reptile floundered backward, dragging itself clear of the tines, and kept on reeling away.

By now, she could hear the wearer of purple declaiming the tongue-twisting rhymes of a counterspell. Violet phosphorescence seethed through the air, scouring the darkness away.

That at least enabled her to see the two dragonkin she’d just speared. As she’d hoped, both were hurt too badly to continue fighting, and by neutralizing them, she’d cut a gap in the noose that had been tightening around her. Beyond lay one of the tunnels, admitting shafts of sunlight.

In all probability, running out onto the mountainside would only delay the inevitable. Still she bolted in that direction.

At that point, Eshcaz reared and cocked his head back. His throat swelled, and Tu’ala’keth realized that even a few more seconds were too great a boon for a blundering fool like her to ask. The red was going to incinerate her here and now.

But the wearer of purple screamed, “No! Please! You’ll burn the slaves, too, and we need them!”

Eshcaz spat a plume of dazzling flame. But it was directed at the ceiling, not the floor. Perhaps he was venting his wrath at being balked.

Tu’ala’keth sprinted onward, around cowering thralls, until another dragonkin, one she hadn’t noticed hitherto, jumped in front of her. Ruddy with yellow markings and a scarred, truncated tail, this one was armed like a warrior, with shield and sword. It cut at her head, she tried to block with the trident, and it deceived the parry to slash at her flank. The stroke hurt her ribs and knocked her lurching off balance. But it didn’t cleave her flesh; her silverweave had spared her any lasting harm. She thrust low; the trident crunched into the reptile’s knee; and it went down. It tried to heave itself around into position to threaten her anew, and she finished it off with a stab to the torso.

At that moment, something snapped, a sound like the crack of the whips, or the noise the sails on Shark’s Bliss made when a sudden gust of wind swelled them, but vaster. The cave darkened as something cut off much of the light spilling in through the gaps in the upper walls. Slaves screamed and scrambled. Tu’ala’keth realized Eshcaz had spread his prodigious wings and was jumping off the ledge, intending to kill her with fang and claw instead of fire.

Heart hammering, she sprinted. As the dragon slammed down behind her, jolting the floor, she reached the opening, saw it was only a few more strides to the other end, and pounded onward.

She felt heat and sensed immensity at her back. She plunged out of the passage and wrenched herself to the side. Flame boomed out of the tunnel, blistering her skin even though it didn’t actually touch her.

Now what? she wondered wildly. She was no safer than before. In another instant, the wyrm would lunge from the hole-But no. If it was going to do that, she’d already hear it coming. She took another look at the opening and registered what, in the course of her frenzied flight, she’d failed to realize before. This particular passage was too narrow for a creature as huge as Eshcaz to negotiate.

But of course he had other ways to go in and out. She’d only increased her lead by a matter of moments. That was how long she had to find a way to save herself.

She cast about and saw a chance.

She clambered along the steep slope. She thought she’d grown used to this strange world where people had to worry about slipping and falling but suddenly she felt slow and clumsy again. The bloody trident was merely an encumbrance now, and she dropped it to slide and bounce down the escarpment.

She resisted the temptation to glance about. It would only slow her down, and anyway, she was sure she’d still know when her pursuer burst out into the open.

At last she reached her goal, a spot beneath which the face of the island became a sheer vertical cliff. The green sea crashed to white foam against the jutting rocks far below.

Someone had once told her air-breathers had an instinctive fear of falling. She doubted sea-dwellers did, but nonetheless, the prospect daunted her. Could anything plummet such a distance without dashing itself to pulp?

Maybe it was possible, with the aid of magic, and

certainly she had no option but to try. She gripped the drowned man’s hand and chanted, and Eshcaz exploded from a breach farther up the mountain. He unfurled his crimson wings with their purple edges, obscuring much of the sky, and the bright sunlight shining through the membrane made them glow like stained glass.

Tu’ala’keth rattled off the final syllables and hurled herself over the edge, endeavoring, as best she could in her unpracticed way, to imitate the divers she’d observed among the pirates. She tried to fall head down, with her body straight, so she’d enter the water like a knife stabbing into flesh … if she didn’t crash down on one of the rocks.

She silently spoke to the wind she’d summoned, bidding it to blast up at her from below. Afterward, she couldn’t feel any difference, but perhaps it was slowing her down a little.

Gloom engulfed her. She glanced upward. Wings folded, foreclaws poised to catch and impale, Eshcaz was plunging toward her and looming larger by the instant. Because of the braking power of the wind she’d summoned or through some trick accomplished flyers mastered, he was dropping faster than his prey.

Tu’ala’keth reversed her instructions to the wind. Her only hope now was that it could blow her down even faster than she would naturally fall.

The heaving surface of the sea was dull and gray with the dragon’s shadow. She smashed into it with stunning force, missing one of the fanglike rocks by less than the length of her arm, and plunged deeper. The stone swelled wider toward the base, and she had to shake off the shock of impact to stick out her hands and push off, lest she batter and scrape herself against it.

Above her, Eshcaz leveled out of his dive and hurtled along just above the waves. Had he tried to follow

her into the water, he would have slammed his huge body into one or another of the rocks, but perhaps he would have turned aside regardless. As he’d said himself, he was a creature of earth and sky, not the sea.