by Mel Odom
The men, one dead and the other grievously wounded, sagged. Droust’s legs and body dropped but he saw the woman stride out of the clouds.
“She’s walking on water!” One of the nearby crewmen scuttled away, in awe of what he witnessed.
“Umberlee sent her! We’ve angered the Bitch Queen!”
Lightning blazed and reflected on the woman’s seashell armor and small clam shell shield. A long sword hung at her side, but she left it there. She stretched forth her hand and closed it. When she did, the spear vanished from the bodies of the crewmen and reappeared in her grip.
“Bayel Droust.” Her voice sounded loud during a lull in the thunder.
The headache throbbing between Droust’s temples increased its unrelenting ferocity. It felt like his mind was slowly shattering.
“Let him go.” The woman’s words carried a curious inflection, as if she weren’t used to the common tongue. Her black cloak twisted behind her.
Then Droust saw her inhumanly silver eyes for the first time.
Eladrin, the scholar thought.
“Arm yourselves.” Captain Porgad lifted his blade and stood his ground. Around him, his men took up cutlasses, battle axes, and belaying pins. Droust knew they would have run if they’d only had a place to go.
The woman vanished in a blaze of lightning. For a moment Droust thought she’d disappeared or fallen into the sea. In the next, she reappeared on the deck.
Highly trained and experienced in battle, Captain Porgad and his crew wheeled on the woman. She thrust the spear forward and pierced the captain’s throat. Blood cascaded down the front of his blouse as he stared dumbly at the weapon that had killed him.
The death of the captain paralyzed the crewmen like spider venom for a moment, but-pushed by self-preservation and past combat experience-they rallied and attacked. With a gesture and a quickly spoken word, a blast of wind lifted the woman’s attackers from their feet and knocked them backward. Three of them sailed over the stern railing and dropped into the sea. She gestured and once more the spear reappeared in her hand. Calmly, she turned to the three men standing near Droust.
“This will be your only chance to flee,” she said.
The crewmen sprinted amidships. One of them heaved himself over the sterncastle railing and crashed to the deck.
The woman focused her attention on Droust. He pushed his feet against the deck and tried to inch away.
“Bayel Droust,” she said.
The scholar didn’t know if he heard her musical voice with his ears or inside his head. He gazed at her.
“I don’t know you.” He didn’t hear his own whisper.
“But I know you.” She stood effortlessly in the midst of the storm’s onslaught.
Renewed fear locked cold fingers around Droust’s heart. Her announcement sounded like a threat.
She approached and gazed down at him. Her skin shone blue in the glare of lightning. The water elves, the alu’Tel’Quessir, that lived in the Sea of Fallen Stars were sometimes blue like that. But this was no sea elf.
“Lady, I thank you for my life.” Droust didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Instinct told him he wanted as far from her as he could get.
Grayling strained against the storm. Her timbers continued to creak and a few of the yards snapped off to jerk at the ends of the rigging. Hoarse voices sounded from amidships. The sailors would regroup and try to attack. Onboard the ship, they had nowhere to go.
“You will pay for it.” A cruel smile curved the woman’s lips. She slid her shield up her arm and transferred her spear to her left hand. Then she grabbed the front of Droust’s robe and lifted him with no apparent effort.
Before Droust could attempt to stand on his own, the woman kicked the stern railing. Wood split and fell away. She strode forward and dropped at once, still holding onto Droust as if he weighed nothing.
A scream ripped from the scholar’s throat as the sea sped up at him. He expected the cold water to engulf him. Instead, he stopped only inches above the heaving surface. The woman righted him and turned back to gaze at the ship.
Grayling drew away and remained barely visible against the swarm of black clouds. The lanterns serving as her running lights faded one by one, but the fire atop the mizzen remained bright.
The woman gestured with her spear. The storm’s fury lashed the ship. Lightning struck Grayling repeatedly and lit fires along her. Winds ripped away her yards in a tangle of rope, then snapped off her masts. A black wave rose up and heeled her hard to starboard.
When the wave passed, Grayling was gone. The storm abated, breaking up with astonishing quickness. Stars peered from the black sky.
“What have you done?” Droust demanded in a hoarse voice.
The woman released Droust and he started to plunge through the water. When she caught him again, this time by wrapping her long fingers around his head to buoy him, he was submerged to his waist.
“Bayel Droust.” She eyed him calmly. “You will pay for the life I give you. If you don’t, I will take it back.” Then she squeezed her hand.
Pain filled Droust’s head. He would have sworn he heard his skull fracturing. Incredibly, he felt her fingers sinking through his flesh, through his bone, then she touched his mind.
Until that point, Bayel Droust had foolishly thought he’d known what pain was. The Blue Lady taught him the true meaning of it.
Bayel Droust woke, thinking he was rousing from another nightmare. As he gazed around, he saw that he was inside a ship, but it was one that was unfamiliar to him. Light issued from outside the vessel, but everything held an unaccustomed blue tint.
“No.” He pushed himself up from the strange bed and walked to the porthole to look outside. Just before he reached it, a school of small fish swam inside the room. As one, they turned and darted away from him. “Not here!”
The undersea world spread all around him. Strange trees and plants, things that should not have grown at these depths, stood all around. Before he could move, a vine reached for him and tiny teeth latched onto the palm of his hand. Droust yanked his hand away and burning pain invaded his flesh.
He put his mouth to the small wound and tried to suck out the poison. As he spat, he watched the spittle pass slowly before him then spread out. Mesmerized, he waved his hand through the spittle. The blob broke into parts and spread out like a spider before disappearing, absorbed into the sea.
“This can’t be.” He whispered so lowly he scarcely heard himself. He took a deep breath to reassure himself. He wasn’t drowning. He was underwater and he wasn’t drowning.
Trembling, walking on legs that he felt certain would betray him and collapse beneath him, he walked toward the cabin door. When he pulled on it, the door moved slowly and he felt a lot more resistance to his effort than he should have. He could move freely under the water, but the door couldn’t. Whatever the spell was that allowed him to breathe and walk normally, it didn’t have the same effect on the ship.
Outside, Droust peered up at the blue, blue water. At some distance, he wasn’t certain how far, the blue turned to black. There was no hint of the sun. He had no idea to what depth he had sunk. High above, sharks and other things circled through the water. Ivory bone, limbs as well as skulls, lay half-buried in the sand and vegetation that had a stranglehold on the sea bottom.
“Droust.” The familiar feminine voice drew the scribe’s attention at once.
When he glanced up, he saw the Blue Lady standing on the sterncastle of the wrecked ship. A tentacled monstrosity Droust couldn’t identify lay coiled and restless on the deck behind her. Its great eye kept watch on him and never blinked.
“Yes.” Droust wanted only to flee, but he knew he wouldn’t get far.
“I have given you your life that you may serve me.”
Droust swallowed hard. “I understand, lady.”
She gestured and the water around Droust seized him and lifted him to the sterncastle. Droust didn’t try to fight. He was still bruised and
battered from his harsh treatment at the hands of Grayling’s crew. He came to a rest in front of her. The monster lying behind her flicked out a tentacle with blinding speed and stopped within inches of his flesh.
Droust stared at the suckers that lined the underside of the tentacles. “What is it you would have me do?”
“I have walked your dreams. I know you for what you are. You are a scholar. I have learned much from you, but I would know more.”
“Anything, lady.” Droust was so scared he thought he was going to throw up.
“This is my realm.” The Blue Lady waved at the strange land spread out around them and the shipwrecks scattered about it. “What little I have left of it. This world is new to me. You will be my guide as I secure my empire. More than that, you shall help me find a way to leave this place once I’m ready.”
“Lady?” Droust peered at her in confusion.
The Blue Lady frowned and anger radiated from her. “Those who cast me forth from the Feywild bound me to this piece of land they sent with me. Only a powerful spell can set me free.”
“I’m no mage, lady. I’m but a scribe.”
“I know that. But you read books.” The Blue Lady waved to the sunken ships. “Aboard these ships, there are books. You will locate and read those books. Some of those books will have spells.”
“Spells like that won’t be revealed in just any books.”
“I know that. I have brought down mages as well as ordinary sailors and merchant ships. Somewhere in those books, you will find the knowledge that I need.”
“Lady, there was one such book that I had in my hands, but I don’t know if it had the magic you seek.”
“What?”
Immediately, the beast flicked out a tentacle and wrapped it around Droust. The cold flesh lay hard and heavy against him.
The Blue Lady shoved her cruel, beautiful face into Droust’s. “You had such a book? Where is it?”
“I don’t know, lady. I swear. Perhaps it’s still aboard Grayling. It’s a history, perhaps more, by a Shou monk named Liou Chang. He wrote histories about his people and the monastery. He also knew the secret of opening magical gates that allowed people to travel from one place to another. I was studying his books. They’re very precious. Few of them remain in existence. The monastery was attacked and razed to the ground at one point by General Han, a man who swore vengeance against the monastery and the Standing Tree Order. Han knew the secret of opening the gates to transport his troops.”
“The monk wrote of this?”
“Yes, lady.” Droust was squeezed so hard that he almost couldn’t get his answer out. “I believe that Liou wrote down Han’s secrets. The monk was the last man to talk to Han before he was executed.”
“You had this book and you let it slip away?”
“Lady-” Droust thought quickly. He didn’t want to point out that her decision to sink the ship, and the crew’s intention of keelhauling him, had removed him from those books. “Perhaps those books are still aboard Grayling.”
The Blue Lady waved her hand and the monster unwrapped its tentacle from Droust. The scribe fell to the deck and gasped for his breath as fish swam impossibly around him.
“Find your ship, manling. And find those books.”
“But you have to know that the sea may have harmed the books.” Droust peered up at her. “If they are ruined, I can’t read them.”
“I allowed no harm to come to any books.”
Only a short time later, they stood on Grayling’s deck. the ship lay broken in pieces in a canyon. All hope of finding the books by Liou Chang that Droust had brought with him instantly disappeared. A thorough search of the cabin only frustrated the Blue Lady and alarmed Droust.
“They were lost, lady.” Droust stood before the Blue Lady and prayed for a quick death.
“Then you will find them.” The Blue Lady’s face held threatening anger like an unleashed storm.
Unable to stop himself, Droust gazed at the wide open sea in dismay. “Lady, those books could be anywhere.”
“You will find them. There is not another reason I would suffer you to live. Do you understand?”
“Yes, lady.”
“Then get busy.” Without another word, the Blue Lady launched herself into the sea and swam away.
Feeling an inch from death, Droust watched her go, then he looked at the immense forest and tried not to think that the task she’d set before him was impossible. Then he started his search for books, beginning with the immediate area around him. The books couldn’t have fallen far,
Unless they were caught in a current or still afloat with the wreckage above. Or any of a dozen other reasons Droust could think of.
Captain Porgad’s body had landed on the deck of this ship at the foot of the mizzen. Small scavengers were already at work on his body, feasting on his eyes and crawling through the gash at his throat. Droust couldn’t help feeling that could be him at any moment.
CHAPTER TWO
Pirate Isle
Sea of Fallen Stars
Year of the Ageless One (1479 DR)
I told you they were Nine Golden Swords warriors.” Kwan Shang-Li gazed at the group of rough looking men standing in the gloom gathering in the alley behind Ottard’s Alehouse. The night truly hadn’t gotten off to a good start and it looked like things were going to get worse.
“Feh,” his father grunted. “Those thugs could be anyone’s.”
The Nine Golden Swords was a criminal organization that operated out of Westgate. They robbed, raided, and sold protection to businesses. According to his father, they were far too coarse to have any interest in Shang-Li and his father’s plans, and were nothing to worry about.
However, there was no mistaking the identity of the warriors. To anyone that would know, the tattoos on the arms and necks branded them as Nine Golden Swords warriors. Shang-Li discreetly pointed these out.
“Evidently they like the alley as a staging point for burglary as much as we do.” Shang-Li glanced up the tall, crooked tower not far from the alley.
“If this book wasn’t as important as it is, I’d say leave them to it. Let them deal with the wizard. He will kill them all.”
“Do you think Kouldar’s defenses are that good?” A slight trickle of fear ran through Shang-Li, but he felt excitement as well. His father had always considered that mixed feeling as a failing. Shang-Li lived for the rush of adventure. That was one of the first things that had led him out of the Standing Tree Monastery and out into the world.
“He’s supposed to be one of the best wizards on the isle.” His father shrugged. “I do not believe the Nine Golden Swords would have anyone skilled enough to defeat his defenses.”
“You know I’ve got to break into that tower tonight.”
His father clapped him on the arm. “Perhaps you will be lucky.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll find out later.” His father nodded toward the Nine Golden Swords warriors. “In the meantime, it would be better if they didn’t get brave enough to attempt to break into Kouldar’s tower tonight. Maybe if we reasoned with them.”
Shang-Li stared at his father. “We’re going to reason with the Nine Golden Swords? For all we know, they’re after the books too.”
Kwan Yung was a slightly built man with gray hair and a forked beard. He stood only as tall as Shang-Li’s shoulder. Kwan Yung was full-blood Shou but he had married an elven ranger in spite of his family’s traditions, and had only one son: Shang-Li.
At twenty-four, Shang-Li was barely considered an adult by his father. His father had contributed his dark, buttery complexion and the black hair Shang-Li wore close-cropped. His pointed ears and turquoise eyes came from his mother, and from somewhere between the two he had ended up with a lean, compact build. He wore leather sandals and a black server’s uniform that fit him loosely. The small leather pack over his shoulder showed years of hard use and had accompanied him through his travels for the last twelve years.
&n
bsp; His father grunted in disappointment. “Perhaps reasoning with them is too much to ask.”
“Knowing the Nine Golden Swords are here is going to alter our plan.”
His father shot him a look. “Our plans altered the moment you broke the last jar of hot sweet-and-sour sauce and angered the most dangerous pirate on these isles.”
“It was an accident.” Shang-Li hated the way the lie sounded so false in his ears.
“An accident that got you fired and earned you a death threat from Captain Trolag. As I recall, that wasn’t part of the plan.”
It wasn’t, and Shang-Li was embarrassed he’d jeopardized the plan. Not only that, now that his father knew about the incident, Shang-Li knew his father would never let him live it down. Once they returned home, Shang-Li trusted everyone at the monastery would hear the tale. Years of woe stretched out before him.
And then there was Captain Trolag’s death threat. Captain Trolag had brandished his displeasure and menace around like weapons. Few on the Pirate Isle would stand against him, and Captain Trolag stayed away from those men. Instead, he enjoyed stringing up men too helpless to defend themselves. The corpses of three that had angered the captain that morning danced from gibbets at the harbor entrance. Shang-Li had seen the dead men from the kitchen window where he worked at the Blinding Onion.
Had worked. Shang-Li’s dismissal from the tavern had come suddenly and without any chance of misinterpretation. He’d been surprised at how much getting fired from the tavern had stung. The job had merely been a cover, but he had worked hard to do his job well for as long as he had need of it.
Except for the mishandling of the spice tureen. That was truly unfortu-
“I’m not convinced that the sweet-and-sour sauce was mishandled by accident,” his father said, interrupting Shang-Li’s thoughts.
“Maybe we could deal with our friends here now, and talk later?”
“If you must.”
Shang-Li walked out of the shadows and approached the Nine Golden Swords warriors standing in the alley. He kept his hands open, showing no weapons. His server’s uniform from the Blinding Onion offered no clue as to who he was.