by Mel Odom
Still aware of Moonwhisper sitting in a tree with a full stomach only a short distance outside the cave, Shang-Li pushed away all thoughts and placed the paper on a stone in front of him. He held his open hand above the sheet and gave his senses over to the magic he felt inside the writing.
At first, nothing happened. Then a vortex swept him into darkness. He thought he heard Moonwhisper call out to him, but if the owl made a noise, it was lost in the sharp crack of thunder.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wake, manling.”
The imperious command focused Shang-Li’s attention. Lost in the soft darkness, the voice drew him like a beacon.
“Did you not hear me?” the voice asked again more sharply.
This time Shang-Li was certain the voice was that of a woman. He was also certain that he knew which woman it was, but he didn’t understand how that could be.
Without warning, a strong hand closed around his shoulder and yanked him forward. The blackness went away and was replaced by muted blue. Shang-Li noticed at once that his movements were uncoordinated, slower and heavier as he flailed for his balance.
During his travels in the Sea of Fallen Stars and along the Sword Coast, he had sometimes ventured to the sea bottom in search of sunken cities and broken ships. The gentle rolling hills reminded him of those experiences immediately. Brain coral and reefs dotted the ocean floor, and myriad fish swam all around him.
His breath locked in his lungs at once when he realized he was deep underwater. Frantic, he glanced up and wondered how far he was from the surface. The immediate dark pall above looked daunting.
Surely it was too far to swim.
Instead of gradually growing lighter as it should have, the sea turned pitch black overhead. A few glittering stars flashed in the distance, but from the way they moved he was certain they were luminous fish.
Despite the certainty that he’d never reach the surface, he leaped from the ground and started to swim. A strong iron band closed around his left ankle and jerked him to a stop. Precious air bubbled from his lips as he twisted to free himself.
The Blue Lady stood beneath him and seemed to hold him effortlessly with one hand. Cruelty filled her cold eyes and twisted her full lips into a smile. She looked as beautiful and deadly as Farsiak had described in his journal and as Shang-Li had dreamed her.
“You’ll not escape me too easily, minnow.” She yanked him back without apparent strain.
Desperate, Shang-Li opened his mouth, thinking maybe she had ensorcelled him. As deep as he was, and he thought he was perhaps deeper than he’d ever been before, the weight of the sea should have crushed him. Yet he lived.
When he opened his mouth, however, salt water trickled between his lips. The thick brine immediately turned him queasy and he thought he was going to be sick. He sealed his lips tightly against the sea.
“Are you drowning, manling?” She mocked gasping for air and took delight in his vulnerability.
Shang-Li doubled over and reached for slim hand that held him with incredible strength. He gripped her thumb in one hand and started pulling. No matter how strong an opponent was, bones still joined together in the same fashion. They still had weaknesses that could be exploited.
If they’re human, he told himself.
She yelped in surprised pain and released him. Fire burned within Shang-Li’s chest and he thought he could feel his lungs dwindling. He swam upward again, but from the corner of his eye he saw the woman gesture and heard a growled command in an unknown tongue.
Gray bodies knifed through the water around him. In the next heartbeat, the distorted images of six sharks appeared before him. One of them streaked for him and he was unable to get away in time. The hard muscled body slammed against him. His breath left his lungs and he felt hot scratches that scored his chest from the impact.
When he glanced down, he saw that the wounds were deep enough to draw blood. He knew the scent of the fresh blood in the water would send the sharks into a feeding frenzy. He shook his sticks into his hands and knew that he was about to be torn apart.
“Don’t try to be too much trouble, manling.” The Blue Lady stared into his eyes. “I find myself curious about you, but that won’t save you from my irritation.” She cocked her head and regarded him again. “You are not totally human.”
Shang-Li tried to swim away but wasn’t able to elude the sharks. Another collided with his side and scratched him again. He wasn’t sure if the impact had broken ribs, but it felt like it might have. The last of his breath escaped him in a cry of pain that slid from his mouth in a stream of silver bubbles.
The Blue Lady gestured toward him and passed her open palm over his face. “Breathe. If I had wanted you dead, you already would be so. You’re worth much more to me alive at this point.”
For a moment longer, Shang-Li tried to hold his breath. He didn’t trust the Blue Lady, and he didn’t want to take anything from her. Characters in stories oftentimes became cursed for eating or drinking or taking gifts from a malicious host. And he was certain the Blue Lady meant nothing good.
Then, when he felt about to pass out and his head thudded painfully—no longer in control of his body, he took a breath. He expected to feel the cold rush of the sea fill his lungs and spin his senses away.
Instead, he breathed air. The heaviness and slowness left him as well. When he moved through the water now, he could move as well as he could on dry land. He knew he’d been spelled. He had a ring in his bag that allowed him the same kind of freedom underwater.
“If you try to leave me again,” the Blue Lady told him imperiously, “then I will remove my protection from the sharks. And you will once again drown. But I don’t think the sharks will let you live long enough to do that.”
Shang-Li gazed at the predatory creatures circling him. The black eyes and severely curved mouths left him no doubt about what they would do to him. They were more agitated now, and he knew the blood scent in the water affected them.
Gracefully, Shang-Li swam back down to face the Blue Lady and landed just beyond her reach. He knew the sense of safety brought about by the distance was false, but he chose to take comfort in it anyway.
“Why did you bring me here?” He met her gaze with effort because she seemed so threatening.
“Why do you come seeking me?”
“I’m not seeking you.”
She smiled mirthlessly at him. “Yet our paths converge.”
“I don’t even know where we are.”
“You are there, on that ship. Headed for here. I know this.”
“How?”
“Don’t try my patience, manling.” Though her voice was sweet, the Blue Lady’s tone dripped with threat.
At her mercy, knowing all she had to do was withhold her spell so he could no longer breathe the sea, Shang-Li nodded. “Lady, I’m looking for books that Bayel Droust had.”
“Why? What makes those books so special?”
“The monastery I serve searches for those books. They are important histories.”
His form of address and his apparent willingness to tell the truth pleased her and her smile held a bit more warmth.
“Do you know Bayel Droust?” Interest flickered in those silver eyes.
“No. He died long before I was born.” Shang-Li didn’t bother to correct her reference to Droust. She hadn’t spoken of him in the past tense. Common obviously wasn’t a tongue she was used to.
“Where are these books you seek?”
“They went down in the ship that Droust sailed on all those years ago, lady.”
“How many years?”
Surprised at the strange question, Shang-Li hesitated.
“Come now,” the Blue Lady rebuked him. “Surely you know how many years it’s been. Manlings have a love of counting years gone by.”
“Over seventy, lady.”
The sharks continued to circle. Shang-Li still bled into the open water. They tasted him, but they couldn’t have him.
“A
pittance,” the Blue Lady said.
“A lot to my people.”
“Half of your people, don’t you mean?” She reached out and delicately stroked Shang-Li’s left ear tip with her fingers. The touch seemed casual but was delicious. Shang-Li felt as though he were about to melt. “You are elven.”
There was no denying that. Nor would he want to. He took pride in both of his heritages. “My mother was an elf.”
“I knew of your elven nature. I could sense that about you.”
Shang-Li remained silent as the sharks continued to swim around them.
“What makes these books so important that you have to come looking for them seventy years gone?” she asked.
“As I said, they’re part of a history of interest to my people.”
“The elves?”
“No, Lady.”
“These are books that manlings are interested in?”
“Yes, Lady.”
“Why did Bayel Droust have the books?”
“He was studying them.”
The Blue Lady frowned and her sharply arched eyebrows knitted. “He has not mentioned these books to me.”
The constant referral to Droust in the present tense was unsettling to Shang-Li. “Perhaps there was no time.”
“There is time now.” The Blue Lady grabbed her seaweed robe and whirled around. “There is time now. Come.” She started walking away.
Shang-Li thought momentarily of breaking away and trying to swim for the surface. The sharks crowded in, though, and made it obvious that they weren’t going to let him swim away.
This is a dream, Shang-Li told himself. All you have to do is wake up. He tried, but in the end he trailed after the Blue Lady.
Something had changed the ocean floor. Where normally only coral and a few plants would grow, riotous life filled the seascape all around Shang-Li. He had been down to the ocean’s floor enough times to know that what he was looking at now was in no way normal.
Monstrous crags became cliffs and mountains that offered high precipices and sudden death to a climber on land. In the ocean the fall would only require someone to start swimming. Strange plants, most of them luminous to some degree, stood out against the dead hulks of forests. Blackened tree trunks lay spilled haphazardly in all directions.
And amid those dead forests and new growths lay broken ships. Cargoes of gold gleamed on the sea floor, thrown in all directions by whatever had ripped the ships asunder.
Only a short distance farther on, one of the plants near the trail the Blue Lady followed lunged out at Shang-Li. He caught the movement in the periphery of his vision and spun away as his fighting sticks dropped into his hands.
The plant was easily ten feet tall and stood supple. Vines trailed from branches and struck like whips. Seven purple blossoms with leafy fringes whirled toward Shang-Li. Two of them opened to reveal fanged mouths.
Four of the vines wrapped about Shang-Li’s right forearm. Three more caught him by his right leg. Pain filled him when the vines constricted and dragged him toward the gaping mouths. All the blossoms bent toward him.
Shang-Li struck the vines with the fighting sticks and succeeded in tearing them free of his arm. Bloody furrows showed where the vine had taken hold. Before he could set himself to swing again, the vines holding his leg gave a mighty yank and pulled him from his feet. Helpless, he flailed for a moment as the vines reeled him in like a fisherman taking his catch.
He doubled up, folding himself in half, and managed to thrust one of his fighting sticks into the nearest blossom. Greenish pulp exploded from the flower as the weapon plowed through the leafy head. The blossom shivered and let out an ear-piercing shriek.
Shang-Li watched the thing’s death throes as he swung his other fighting stick at the next blossom. Even as that one erupted into another gush of viscous green ooze, the third and fourth blossoms bit into his calf and thigh. Burning pain shot through his flesh and pounded through his temples. He’d been poisoned.
One of the sharks broke free of the Blue Lady’s spell and streaked at Shang-Li. Thinking the shark was the greater threat than the blossoms biting into him, he blocked the creature’s jaws with one of the fighting sticks and swung the other at his opponent’s nose. The shark turned aside and sped away, then spun in a tight circle and headed back more fiercely than before.
The Blue Lady spoke in that unknown tongue again. A whirling mass of black flames formed in the palm of one of her hands. She threw it at the plant. Shang-Li was close enough to feel the sudden heat that warmed the sea. The water boiled up around the plant, then the vines and blossoms drooped in submission.
Shang-Li broke free of the withered vines and crouched to face the oncoming shark. But before the shark got close enough to threaten him, the Blue Lady slammed her fist into the shark’s nose. Blood spewed and the predator ricocheted off in an oblique angle to Shang-Li. Breathing hard, feeling the pulse of the poison coursing through him, Shang-Li set himself again and brought up the sticks in a defensive position.
A dozen paces away, the shark’s lifeless corpse hung in the water. The black eyes dulled and glazed as Shang-Li watched
She’d killed it with a one blow. He looked at the Blue Lady in surprise. Her slight form didn’t look like it could carry that much power. She glanced at him.
“Did the plant bite you?” Concern tightened her features.
“I’m fine.” Shang-Li was surprised that he nearly thanked her for asking. But if she hadn’t yanked him here to this place, he wouldn’t be in danger now. And he was convinced the danger was not yet past.
The Blue Lady walked toward him and studied his leg. “Remove your garments, manling.”
Shang-Li felt embarrassed at the request. “I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re a fool,” she told him harshly. “The dekalinag vine carries poison. That poison is even now spreading throughout your body.”
“I can take care of it.” Shang-Li concentrated on one of the magic spells he’d learn from his mother. He touched the corded leather bracelet he wore around his right wrist and brought forth the spell.
A cool wash started at the top of his head, shot down his spine, then split and ran to his toes. In the next moment, the chill flared out to his extremities. When he searched again, the fever that had been building inside him from the poison was gone. A spinning sensation remained within his head and made him feel slightly nauseous.
“It appears you have a few surprises within you, manling,” the Blue Lady stated.
Shang-Li met her gaze. “I can take care of myself.”
“If the dekalinag vine had not gotten you, the sharks would have.” She nodded meaningfully at the circling predators. “And if I chose to remove my spell from you, you would no longer be able to breathe and would drown.”
“If you say so, lady.”
The Blue Lady’s silver eyes flashed. “That’s how it would be.”
“Or I might simply wake up in my hammock aboardship.” Shang-Li gestured at the surrounding sea floor. “This might all be just a bad dream.”
“You’re a fool.”
“If you’d wanted to kill me, lady, you’d have already done it. You’ve seen me in my dreams during life-or-death situations plenty of times before now.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“No. But I won’t stand here and be threatened so casually. Why did you bring me here?”
For just a moment, an almost imperceptible smile curved the Blue Lady’s lips. “You should be very afraid of me.”
“Lady, I am,” Shang-Li said honestly.
She gathered her seaweed cloak and turned again to walk down the broken crags. “Come. I would show you something.”
Shang-Li forced himself to breathe out. He had fully expected the Blue Lady to strike him down as she had the plant and the shark. Nearby, sea currents tore the burned plant to black ashes that floated away. Overhead, the living sharks ripped gobbets of flesh from the dead one.
When he followed the Bl
ue Lady, it was with a mixture of fear and curiosity. The latter had always been the one that had gotten him into the most trouble.
Shang-Li trailed the Blue Lady by a few steps. He gazed in wonder all around him as he saw the strange plants mixed in with the dead trees.
This land isn’t from the sea bottom, he realized. He thought of the Spellplague and how the two worlds had been torn apart and put back together again.
“Where did this place come from?” he asked.
“From my home,” the Blue Lady answered. She walked alongside a sunken cog buried prow first in the soft sand of the sea bottom. Her boots stirred up puffs of sand that eddied on the current.
“Lady, where is your home?”
“Far.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Very far by human standards. But I want to go back.”
Shang-Li gazed out across the dead wilderness now filled with sea. “Did no one come with you?”
“No one.” Her voice hardened. “Make no mistake, manling, I need no one.”
Despite the delicate nature of his situation, Shang-Li couldn’t help asking another question. “Then why did you take Bayel Droust and the ship he was on?”
The Blue Lady stopped near a huge dead tree that was at least five or six men thick. Its gnarled roots showed through the sand surrounding it, but it looked unsteady enough to fall over at any moment. She turned and stared at Shang-Li.
“Because Bayel Droust had something I wanted,” the Blue Lady answered. She folded her arms over her breasts and for a moment Shang-Li forgot that she was so dangerous and thought of her only as a beautiful woman. “I have taken other ships over the years. His was not the first, nor was it the last.” She smiled. “And there will be more.”
Shang-Li studied the graveyard of sunken ships and thought of all the lives that had been lost. Thousands of people had perished at her whim, their skeletons littering the strange sea floor.
“This is my new home, your world.” The Blue Lady looked content as she made that announcement. “At least for the time being. I don’t plan on being here any longer than I have to. In order to make better use of it, I need to understand more of it. There are resources here that I can use.”