by Mel Odom
“When you regain your strength, go and search the ship.” The Blue Lady swam upward. “You were in luck. The ship carried no scribes more talented than you. However, I do want to know what else it carried. When you have performed an inventory, find me.”
“Yes, lady.”
“And let your hired men know that I’m not happy with their progress regarding the book. Tell them I want the book found. And this monk. Perhaps he can help you with the riddle Liou Chang left regarding the gate.”
“Yes, lady.” Weak and shivering, Droust lay on his back and stared up at the blue depths of his prison. And, more than likely, his grave.
“Be still.”
Shang-Li gritted his teeth and sat on a bench down in the ship’s galley. “I am being still.” He held his head at an awkward angle. His neck burned like molten metal had been poured on it. Before, he’d hardly noticed the pain. Beneath his father’s aggravating ministrations, though, he felt the throbbing ache now.
“You’re flinching.” His father gripped his shoulder and set him straight again.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Nonsense. Pain is only weakness making itself known.”
Shang-Li concentrated on the steady flame inside the lantern resting in the middle of the table. He pulled air into his lungs through his nose and pushed it out through his mouth as he’d been taught.
Shadows of his father’s hands played on the wall. They moved as delicately and smoothly as doves, and the string they pulled through the wound in Shang-Li’s neck appeared as thin as spider silk.
“Even a novice to the monastery handles pain more easily than you.” His father shook his head in disappointment. “You should have been more disciplined in your lessons instead of running through the forest with your mother.”
“I excelled at my lessons at the monastery. And I excelled in the lessons Mother taught me as well.”
“See? Modesty was one of the most important lessons you failed to learn. An immodest man challenges both friend and foe, and will know no safe harbor.”
Nor any peace from his father, Shang-Li thought and took a deep breath, pushing the pain further from his mind.
He tried to turn his thoughts to the journal lying in the middle of the table. Curiosity had always been his greatest balm. Unfortunately, it was also his greatest weakness.
To his surprise, his father had chosen to forego the opportunity to explore inside the pages and instead concentrated on tending Shang-Li. One of the sailors had rushed to get the old monk’s healer’s kit. Swallow had a cleric on board, but Kwan Yung had insisted on treating the wound himself.
“Be still.” His father hissed in frustration when Shang-Li flinched. “Even a novice to the monastery knows how to sit quietly.”
Shang-Li groaned inwardly and hoped that his father was soon finished. It felt like a hive of angry bees had taken up residence in his skin.
Presently, though, his father pronounced the wound properly cared for. After Kwan Yung put his medical things away, they turned their attention to the journal. Despite the pain in his neck, Shang-Li touched the bandage to find out how large an area it covered.
“Don’t touch that.” His father caught his hand and pulled it back. “You’ll foul the poultice.”
Shang-Li drew his hand back. “Thank you.”
His father bowed his head slightly. “You’re welcome, my son.” His hand trembled slightly as he finished wrapping his kit in a waterproof cover. “That arrow came close, Shang-Li. Another inch or two, or if it had been poisoned, you might not have made it back to us.”
Surprised by his father’s concern, Shang-Li hesitated a moment. He didn’t know whether to feel thankful or insulted.
He faced his father directly. “But I did make it back.”
“Yes. Hopefully this will be the worst of it.” His father shook his head. “If Grayling did not rest on the floor of the Sea of Fallen Stars somewhere, if she hadn’t carried the books we’re looking for, and if those books weren’t so dangerous, I wouldn’t worry any more. There are still a great many things that can go wrong.” He put the wrapped kit away. “Let us have a look at that journal you brought back.”
The journal’s author’s name had been Farsiak, an older sailor from Impiltur, He’d had a poor acquaintance with the written language, and poorer still with handwriting. The script was in the common tongue, mercifully not in a seafarer’s personal code, but the man couldn’t spell very well and often used the wrong word when he wasn’t writing about the ship or sailing. Shang-Li struggled through the tangled weave of letters to find the tale.
“Grayling took men and stores aboard in Impiltur.” Kwan Yung stroked his beard and made notes in his personal journal. “Many of the crew were from the area. Including Droust.”
Shang-Li was familiar with Bayel Droust’s life. He knew the scribe’s story probably as well as his father. Most of Farsiak’s comments were no surprise.
Except for the entry that was tucked away, nearly illegible, near the end of the journal.
By the time Capn Porgad chose to throw Bayel Droust over the side of the ship, it were already too late. She were coming for us. Werent nothing nobody could do.
If we had slit Droust’s gullet sooner, maybe Grayling and all my mates would have lived. But we didnt. And that night the Blue Lady caught up to us.
CHAPTER FIVE
What Blue Lady?”
Shang-Li looked up from the pages of the journal to his father. “I don’t know. A Blue Lady wasn’t mentioned in any of the materials you gave me to study.”
His father frowned and crossed his arms over his thin chest. “I’ve read of no Blue Lady. Are you sure you are reading from the section dealing with the loss of Grayling?”
Shang-Li held up the journal for his father’s inspection. The binding showed a craftsman’s hand and the stitching remained tight. “We know when the ship went down. I’ve read through the other entries. The one before this dealt with a trade with sea elves and a brief battle with kuo-toa. And this section details the sinking of the ship. If you’d let me read further.”.
“Feh.” His father waved Shang-Li’s complaint away.
“Was there any mention of the Blue Lady in anything you read?”
“No. I’ve never heard any mention of a Blue Lady. Perhaps, it is an epithet of Umberlee.”
“You’re certain Umberlee didn’t sink Grayling?”
“No one knows what sank that ship.” His father sipped his tea and squinted his eyes in irritation. “More reading. Less questions.”
“I seem to recall someone telling me that reading was not to give information, but to lead the reader to ask more informed questions.” Shang-Li gave his father an innocent look. “Or has the monastery stopped teaching that?”
“If my eyes could read that hen scratching, or if I had all my tools, I wouldn’t have to sit here while you baited me.”
Shang-Li grinned. “But they are and you don’t.” He turned back to the pages. “This Blue Lady seems to have made quite an impression on Farsiak.”
“Can we verify the journal’s veracity?”
Carefully, Shang-Li flipped the journal’s weathered pages. They showed a lot of harsh wear. Judging by the wrinkled and smudged condition of the pages, the sailor-Farsiak-hadn’t always taken the best care of it.
Only a few pages on, Farsiak listed the sailors that had gone down on Grayling and been lost in the brine.
Shang-Li reached into his bag and took out his own journal. He flipped through the pages until he found the list of crewman they’d confirmed had been aboard the ship. Most of the names matched. There were a few he didn’t have, and there were a few he had that weren’t on Farsiak’s list.
Farsiak had also listed the ship’s cargo manifest as well as he knew it. Grayling had carried several trade goods and supplies.
“Most of these names are the same.” Shang-Li showed his father the list but knew his old eyes couldn’t make out the writing.
; His father sipped tea. “Continue.”
Shang-Li read through the description of the Blue Lady’s attack on Grayling. With the sound of the ocean all around them and the creak of the sails grabbing the wind above them, he couldn’t help but feel a little trepidation. For all the exploration that had been done, the sea-even the Sea of Fallen Stars-was huge and held many secrets. While he read, his father remained silent and attentive.
When he finished, Shang-Li marked his place with a forefinger. “If such a being exists-”
“We don’t know that she does. Men who sail the seas are oftentimes bored. They tend to make up stories and stretch the truth. Much of what you’ll hear from them will be idle gossip. This could merely be another fabrication.”
Shang-Li raised his eyebrows. “Farsiak seemed fearful of her.”
“It could be a tale he told many times in taverns. Or even one that he heard.”
“Perhaps.” But Shang-Li didn’t think so. The description and the awe the sailor had had of the woman rang true. He continued reading.
“I may have found the reason for hiding the journal.” Shang-Li looked over the page again and made certain of his translation
“What?” His father peered over his shoulder.
It hurts me to think what went down aboard Grayling. That vessel carried a lot of my friends to their deaths, but I know there must have been some gold on her as well. And I never found none of it during my frantic scurry to save my life.
Cap’n Porgad was ever a man to set store by gold and gems. I never seen him go on a voyage that he didn’t turn a tidy profit. And he was tight-fisted with what he got, Cap’n Porgad was. I was never one to begrudge him his good fortune like some was. The cap’n was always good to me.
But we all wondered how much gold that scribe carried on him. The Grand Council put him aboardship and give him enough gold to keep us sailing, and he spent it like it was water. We knew he hadn’t reached the bottom of that particular purse. Me and Tholan were looking for that gold in his berth while the captain set to keelhaul the scholar when the Blue Lady struck.
More than that. We were searching for the scribe’s secrets. There was books he had, books he put a lot of store by and protected from everbody. Now and again, me and Tholan would take Droust his supper and we’d catch him studying them books. He always looked angry at them, like they were miserly things and he wasn’t getting what he wanted from them.
Me and Tholan took a peek at his journal one night while he was sleeping. He was certain that if he could find the secret of them books, some kind of key to a lock, he would be a rich man. Said wizards would pay him a lot for them secrets.
But then the Blue Lady come. By then it was too late. For all of us. Grayling was sent to the bottom with them books and everbody else, and I was clinging to a timber. If it hadn’t been for them pirates that picked me up the next day, I’d have died. The sharks was already circling for their next meal.
“Fools,” Kwan Yung snapped bitterly. “Whatever gold was aboard that ship, including the captain’s profits, couldn’t have been much.”
“I thought you just warned me to remember the nature of the covetous eye,” Shang-Li said. “If Farsiak believed the gold was there, it didn’t matter if it really wasn’t.”
“Even so.” His father trailed thoughtful fingers through his wispy beard.
“Evidently Farsiak intended to go back down there.” Shang-Li flipped to the end of the journal. There were a lot of blank pages. “Obviously he didn’t live much longer himself.”
“Or he lost the book.”
Shang-Li nodded, agreeing with the possibility. “This also leads us to believe Bayel Droust knew something about what was contained in the books.”
His father grimaced. “Just one more reason we need to find those books and get them back in a safe place. The gate spells General Han used to move his troops have almost been forgotten. That knowledge must not fall into the wrong hands.”
“I know.”
“Is the location of the wreck marked?”
“Not yet.”
“You should find that part.”
“Do you want a translation as I go or for me to read it and tell you what I find?”
His father scowled in displeasure. He could be the most patient man in the world, then abruptly change into the demanding sort. “The translation. I want to read his words for myself.”
In case I miss something, Shang-Li thought and bent back to the task.
Hours later, Shang-Li heard his father’s soft snores coming from the corner of the galley. His small body lay curled on the bench as the oil lantern burned the dregs of the reservoir. His personal journal lay open on the table and the pages rode restlessly as the ship rolled across the unsteady sea. His ink-stained fingers still held a quill.
Shang-Li stood and felt his stiff muscles protest the movement. His flight from the wizard’s tower had banged him up considerably, and the continued crouch over a text was never physically relaxing.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a thick blanket. Despite the number of things the bag held, the magic within it always made sure whatever Shang-Li reached for was immediately to hand.
Gently, Shang-Li repositioned his father and wrapped him within the comfort of the blanket. The fact that his father didn’t wake as Shang-Li moved him spoke volumes about Kwan Yung’s fatigue and sense of security aboard Swallow. These days his father didn’t often leave the monastery. Not out of any sense of vulnerability, but because he felt his time was better spent there among the books.
One of the sailors walked down the steps, then eased his stride when he saw the old man huddled under the blanket in the corner.
“Sleepin’, is he?” The sailor was in his graying years, thick with muscle and scarred by conflicts. His shaggy beard hung to his chest. His complexion was almost the color of burnt butter.
“Yes.”
“He’s a right insufferable man when he chooses to be.”
Shang-Li looked down at his father and smiled. “He is that.”
“My da was mean as a snake. Took the hide offa me whenever I did something he didn’t like. Which was too often by my lights.” The sailor shrugged. “This one, he’s a mite too demanding and onerous, but he’s smart.”
“He is. He’s a good man.”
“If you ask me, he’s lucky to have you.”
“We’re lucky to have each other.” Shang-Li didn’t like thinking about the hole his mother’s death had left in their lives. But it was there every day.
“Well, at least one of you feels lucky. I hope you can feel lucky enough for the both of you.”
“Yes,” Shang-Li said quietly. “I do.”
The sailor poured himself a cup of tea, then offered one to Shang-Li, who politely turned it down. A moment later and the man was gone back up the steps.
At the table where his father had been working, Shang-Li looked at his father’s journal. The page his father had been studying showed much of the same information on Grayling as Shang-Li had copied into his own journal. But there were also new passages that contained Shang-Li’s name.
For a moment, Shang-Li was tempted to read the passages. When he’d been a child, he’d sometimes gotten the opportunity to read his father’s journals. Kwan Yung was a close-mouthed man regarding his adventures and travels, and he’d never glorified any of the explorations he’d taken part of.
But in those pages Shang-Li had come to know his father as another man. In his younger years, Kwan Yung had traveled much of Faerun, seen beautiful things and passed through horrific events. He had loved and battled and sought knowledge of ancient days and places. He had won and he had lost, as the books he’d written and the scars he carried attested to.
Often, Shang-Li had wanted to ask his father about his travels, but he hadn’t been able to. Talking about the knowledge he’d gotten from the journals would have revealed the fact that he’d sometimes borrowed and read his father’s work. As a private man, Kwan Yu
ng would have taken more care about where he left journals lying around, then Shang-Li wouldn’t have gotten to know the views his father held or the experiences he’d had.
All in all, Kwan Yung hadn’t been one to loiter around the monastery either.
Gently, Shang-Li closed the book and bound it with the strap again before one of the sailors felt compelled to leaf through it. He placed the journal on the bench beside his father and returned to his work. Only a few pages further in, he found more mention of the Blue Lady.
Shang-Li worked while his father slept. Swallow sailed on gracefully, and the ship’s crew came and went without interrupting his work. He was surprised at how soundly his father slept, and for how long. When he was a child, his father seemed to stay up for days or existed only on catnaps.
As his hand idly grazed the back cover of the book, Shang-Li felt an almost imperceptible ridge. He selected a small knife from within his bag and carefully lifted the covering from the backboard.
Inside was a sheaf of paper. It was folded once, in halves, and covered with fine penmanship that showed long acquaintance with writing tools. Carefully, Shang-Li slipped the paper free of the hiding place and took it out. He laid it gently on the table.
Glancing at his father, he knew he should wake Kwan Yung. His father would want to know of any discoveries he might make. Shang-Li started to rise and shake him, then relented. Whatever the paper dealt with, and it might have nothing to do with Grayling or Liou Chang’s missing books, it could wait until after his father caught up on his rest.
Shang-Li, though, knew he wouldn’t rest until he knew what the paper held. He moved the candle lantern closer to shed more light.
Dark blue ink formed carefully articulated symbols on the page. Despite the neatness, however, none of the writing made any sense to Shang-Li. He couldn’t read any of it. As he watched, the ink took on an unnatural luster, like it was still wet and about to run on the page.
Hypnotized by the effect, Shang-Li slid his finger onto one of the symbols to make certain it was dry. Consciously he knew that there was no way the ink could be wet. More than seventy years had passed since it had been written.