“There’s another stair,” Rhaf whispered. “Mark it, Billy. I counted eighty-three strides from the last chamber, at about thirty degrees to starboard.”
“Got it,” Billy said, scribbling notes on a roll of parchment. The notes would be used to expand the map that Cynthia, Ghelfan and Feldrin were putting together. But despite numerous exploration parties, all returning at the end of each day to add new pieces to the puzzle, it seemed to Edan like they had barely scratched the surface of Akrotia’s labyrinth.
“Down or onward, Master Ghelfan?” Rhaf asked, looking to the shipwright for direction.
“Down, I think, Mister Rhaf. We are not likely to find the Chamber of Life so high in the structure. My readings about Akrotia led me to believe that the chamber lies at the very center of the city. Since the mer-occupied sections are considered part of the city, the chamber must lie deeper still.”
“Great,” Edan muttered, peering down the peculiar staircase. They had seen many of these: long rectangular bronze frames with a hinge at one end, connecting the stair to the frame. The stair itself was a narrow box, also of bronze, topped with flat panels hinged side by side. When the room below was empty of water, the box swung down to the floor, the panels rotating to remain horizontal, acting as the steps. Should water flood the room below, the air in the box made it float up until it met the frame, effectively sealing the portal. While Ghelfan had been fascinated by the unique safety precaution, Edan was decidedly less so. He had visions of being trapped in the room below as water rushed in and sealed the hatches above, allowing the sea to smother him in a cold, wet embrace.
“Do not worry, Master Edan,” Ghelfan said, one slim hand patting his shoulder. “We are still many levels above the main hull. We should encounter water no time soon.”
“But you said the mer were letting the water in, flooding the lower sections.” Edan descended the stair behind Rhaf and two other sailors from Orin’s Pride. Ghelfan followed, with another five stout hands from Peggy’s Dream behind him. All of them were armed to the teeth, which made Edan feel marginally safe, though weapons did nothing to ease the claustrophobia that clenched his chest ever tighter the deeper they went. Their troop reformed at the base of the stair, which occupied the end of a corridor. There was only one way to go.
“Yes, I believe that to be the case,” the shipwright continued, as they proceeded down the corridor. “Eventually we should reach one of these hatches that is closed, and that will signify that the levels below have been compromised.”
“By compromised, you mean sunk, right?” Edan asked, letting a little sarcasm into his comment. He looked to Ghelfan and almost laughed at the indignant expression on the half-elf’s features. “You don’t have to try to make me feel better about this, Ghelfan. I don’t think anything could do that.”
“It was not my intent to patronize you, Mas—”
“Sssst!” Rhaf raised a hand, and everyone froze in their tracks.
For an instant, the sputtering torch was the loudest noise to reach Edan’s ears. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, and even Flicker had fallen silent, sitting on the end of the torch, her eyes glowing yellow in the flames.
“What is it?” Ghelfan asked, his whisper echoing about the stone walls of the corridor.
“Thought I heard somethin’,” Rhaf replied. “There’s a bend up here, or maybe a fork. I can’t tell yet.”
He motioned for Jamis to move up with his torch. Billy tucked his parchment and quill into a satchel slung about his shoulders, pulled out his sword, and joined his two fellows. They moved forward three abreast, swords at the ready as they neared what resolved into a branching of the corridor. Between the branches loomed an open door, an oval pit of black in the gray wall. Rhaf tapped Jamis’s shoulder and motioned toward the door. The sailor moved forward flanked by Rhaf and Billy, who watched the branching corridors. They had done this dozens of times, checking rooms as they passed and adding their dimensions to the growing map. It was tedious and nerve-wracking, but their actions had become rote.
Edan caught a flicker of motion in the torchlight an instant before Jamis’ scream shattered the silence.
Something large stepped through the doorway. It was half again as tall as a man, three times as broad, and covered from head to foot by matted gray-green hair. With no visible neck, its face sported four round, black eyes under a protruding brow, and the light seemed to madden it. One long arm lashed out. A hand with webbed fingers as thick as Edan’s wrist and tipped with two-inch claws grasped Jamis’ arm and lifted him toward a maw that seemed to have too many teeth. Jamis thrust his torch into the beast’s face by reflex, and its howl shook the stone under Edan’s feet. It flung Jamis aside like a ragdoll, and the sailor hit the wall hard, his arm red with blood, his torch tumbling to the floor.
“Swords!” Rhaf shouted, lunging at the thing with his cutlass. His thrust seemed to strike home, but the creature just howled again and swung one of its massive arms. Rhaf ducked under the blow and slashed, but the weapon did not penetrate the thick mat of hair. Men rushed forward, but only three could effectively reach the creature at one time. Edan backed away, while Ghelfan advanced with the second rank of sailors, his ornate rapier glinting in the torchlight.
The cries of the men rang in Edan’s ears, their swords unable to deter the beast. Dagger-like claws glinted in the torchlight as the beast swept its arms in wide arcs. Billy was caught on the shoulder by such a blow and knocked flat. The creature stepped forward, pinning the man’s leg beneath one huge, clawed foot. Billy’s screams and the beast’s incessant howling beat at Edan’s ears like great wings, nausea and terror gripping his stomach as he saw blood darken the man’s trousers. He stared, unable to move, and not sure how to act if he could.
“Edan!”
Ghelfan’s shout snapped Edan’s paralysis, and his eyes flicked to the half-elf. He and the sailors had retreated to avoid the creature’s advance, but Billy still lay pinned beneath its foot.
“Edan, burn it!”
Fire, he thought, recalling how the beast had recoiled from Jamis’ torch. Of course!
All his hours of practice rose to the fore, and he reached without thought for the bottles at his belt. With the men so close, he would have to use the wind to control the flames, and doubt gripped him as he wondered if he could even call on the winds down here. But his questing plea brought a howling tempest down the corridor, and he felt a smile begin to tug at the corners of his mouth.
“Everyone down!” He flipped a small bottle over the heads of the men, right at the creature. The instant before it struck, Edan called to the fire, and it leapt in his mind like a hungry beast to devour the combustible liquid.
The bottle of alcohol exploded into a blue nimbus that enveloped the creature, and Edan urged the wind into a cyclone to keep the burning liquid from raining down onto the men. The creature howled in terror and stepped back, and Rhaf lunged in low to grab Billy’s arm, pulling him to safety. But the alcohol burned away quickly, and already the monster was stepping forward again. It had been frightened, but Edan knew that alcohol did not burn with great heat; the matted hair was singed, but the fire had dealt little real injury.
Edan let the torch slip down in his grip until his hand was in the flames, reveled in the sensation, drew strength from it as Flicker chattered in his ear, egging him on. He barely saw the men in front of him, just the massive creature…that feared fire. And he was fire.
“Get back!” Edan shouted as he stepped forward through the line of armed men.
Time for something hotter, he thought, freeing another bottle from his belt. This one was made of clay, with a wide mouth and a waxed cork. Creosote, harder to ignite than the volatile alcohol, but once alight it burned long and hot, and it stuck. He threw the heavy bottle at the beast’s broad chest, and called both the hungry fire and playful wind. The jar explode
d in a cascade of burning creosote and shards of shattered pottery, but he caught the deadly spray with a twitch of his wrist to shape the wind. The flaming syrupy liquid struck the howling creature, and clung to the thick mat of hair.
The creature’s cries changed from howls to shrieks, and it stumbled back through the oval door into the room beyond. In the light of the flames, Edan could see that there were three more creatures, one large, two smaller, crouched within a nest of dried seaweed. Edan followed the burning creature, now gibbering and batting at its flaming fur, into the room. With the power of the fire surging through him, his fear waned. The chaotic light illuminated the room, a perfect half sphere of onyx set with a glittering mosaic of colored stones in a flawless semblance of the night sky. The starscape was marred only by the ovals of three additional exits, and the mounded nest on the far side of the room.
Edan flung another bottle, arcing it high. He called the winds, and at the apex of the missile’s path, he detonated it in a fiery cyclone. The creatures howled in fright, throwing up their wooly arms as the burning liquid rained down on them. Edan grabbed yet another bottle, this one distilled naphtha, and smashed it on the floor in front of the nest. It went up with a whoosh, and the winds carried it forward to ignite the dried seaweed.
The creatures fled, screeching in terror as the flames rose. Edan gloried in the multi-hued display, the inferno and the thousand-fold reflections from the starscape overhead. The fires raged, and Edan breathed deep of the sweet smoke. Over the roar in his ears and Flicker’s screeching delight, the howls and the sound of men’s voices, Edan’s laughter rose like flames on the wind.
≈
Something skittered in the darkness, tiny sharp claws on stone. Camilla stirred from her torpid state, stamping her foot and swishing her skirts to scare the rat away. The rats were a problem; she’d received several bites during her bouts of fitful sleep. At first, she had been heartened by their presence as a sign of life. Rats needed water to survive, and Camilla was determined to find the source. But after days of searching the dungeon—she thought it had been days, though she couldn’t tell in the eternal darkness—all she had found were empty cells and racks and torture devices that Bloodwind had used to coerce information from his captives before giving them to Hydra.
“Hydra…” she muttered through parched lips. Camilla gritted her teeth and pushed herself to her feet, felt her way back up the stairs. There was a door that opened onto a landing here, and another door, one she had not yet opened…one she dreaded opening. She had been through that door and down the stairs into the cavern many times, pulled along behind Bloodwind on a leash into Hydra’s lair. She shuddered, and tried to push back the memories of the horrors she had witnessed there: the blood, the screams… Only Bloodwind had kept Camilla from Hydra’s grasp, for Hydra had wanted her—wanted her badly.
Camilla felt chilled despite the warm air. If she was to survive, she would have to explore thoroughly. There was no water in the dungeon, so she would have to keep looking, and that meant through the door and down to Hydra’s lair.
She felt the door and found the latch, the iron cool in her hand. She wondered if rust and time had frozen it in place—secretly hoped it was so—but when she pressed the thumb catch it opened easily. Too easily. The air from beyond the door wafted up like the breath of some deep-dwelling dragon, fetid and wet, cloying. She shuffled slowly forward to find the edge of the stair, then put her hand on the wall to guide her way down, and felt a dampness.
Moisture, she thought, pausing to cautiously lick her fingers. A mineral tang tickled her tongue, but there was no salt. She felt the stone again with a flicker of hope, but it was only damp, not dripping; there was not enough to drink. Maybe deeper… She knew there was abundant fresh water on the island; the keep had two wells that drew sweet water from underground, and rainfall fed the stream that splashed down the cliff face near the keep. So it made sense that there might be water down here in the cavern. Surely Hydra drank something besides blood.
Camilla eased her way down the shallow, rough-hewn steps, one hand on the wall. The sole of her shoe slipped on a stair, and she gasped, envisioning a tumble down the rough stone in the dark, broken bones, dying in agony… She steadied her stance and felt with her fingers a thin layer of slime on the stairs; the result of the humid environment and more than two years with no foot traffic. It was slick as ice, slick as blood…and in the dark, she had no way to tell. What if it is blood. More memories of this place rose in her mind, unbidden and unwelcome. Her steps faltered and she stopped, knees quaking. She steadied herself against the wall, eyes closed, marshaling her nerve.
“Hydra is dead,” she reassured herself as she closed her eyes against the darkness and coaxed her fear into submission. “I watched her die. The witch is dead.”
In her mind’s eye she saw Hydra again, sometimes a beautiful young woman, other times an old crone, and at the last, as the tentacled demon fought its way out of its mask of human flesh. The visions nearly broke her fragile nerve, and she was about to flee back up the stair before remembering that she had nowhere to run. Parek could still be waiting for her up there, would be waiting for her until something drove him away, either Cynthia’s return or the arrival of another warship. Camilla had no idea how long Cynthia would be gone, but she knew there would eventually be a response to Emil’s messages from the emperor. She occupied her mind by estimating the days since the departure of the Flothrindel, the number of days it would take to ready an expedition, then the return trip from Tsing, warships slower than the shipwright’s nimble craft by at least a day.
“Six more days, at least,” she said through clenched teeth. She had no way to tell the passage of time, of course, other than her own hunger and thirst. Six more days…she wouldn’t survive that long without water. She was already parched, her lips cracked, her tongue swollen in her mouth. “Water…” She focused her mind on survival—as she had in the past with Bloodwind, and more recently with Parek—all the things she had done in the name of survival.
She opened her eyes and blinked; eyes open versus closed had been the same for so long, she had forgotten what it was to see. Perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her, but now she thought she detected a faint glow from the cavern below. Not enough to reveal details of her surroundings, but enough to lead her onward.
Light… But, from where?
She moved forward, taking one careful step after another, trailing her fingers along the wall as she descended. Camilla navigated the familiar turn in the passage; the walls receded, and the cavern opened wide before her. Camilla blinked again, startled that she could actually see. The walls and floor were as rough and uneven as when nature had formed them long, long ago. Stalagmites and stalactites jutted from the floor and ceiling like huge teeth, all illuminated by a blood-red glow.
Camilla’s blood froze in her veins, her pulse hammering in her ears. Ahead of her, in the center of the cavern, stood a stalagmite carved into a pool-topped pedestal. It was Hydra’s pool, and it glowed with a crimson light that pulsed like a beating heart.
≈
“What happened?” Cynthia asked, aghast to see Ghelfan’s disheveled party limp out of the main entrance of the city. They were the last to return from the day’s exploration, and she could see why they had been delayed: of the ten men, two were injured. Billy was limping badly, supported by Ghelfan on one side and Rhaf on the other, and Jamis had several nasty gashes on his arm, his sleeve torn and bloody. Edan was flushed, but seemed steady on his feet and unharmed. Feldrin and several sailors rushed forward to help with the wounded.
Ghelfan relinquished his burden and sighed in relief. “We met with some…opposition,” he explained, smiling weakly. “Elves call them hukkol—water trolls, in the tongue of men. Big, dumb brutes, very tough and evidently territorial. Fortunately,” he clapped Edan on the shoulder, “they are not fond of fire.”
“You were attacked?” Cynthia asked, and furrowed her brow. This was the first sign of animal life they had found besides bird nests and some fish bones. She had thought the mer their only danger; apparently she had been wrong yet again.
“I don’t know if it attacked us, or if we stumbled into its nest,” Ghelfan said, grinning down at the red-haired pyromage. “But without Edan’s talents, things would have been much worse.”
“Aye, I’ll say!” Jamis said, raising his lacerated arm. “Bloody beastie near took my arm off! Would have if Master Edan hadn’t put the fire on it.”
“Take ‘em to the Pride,” Feldrin ordered. “Janley’s good with wounds, and we’ve got medicines to keep those cuts from goin’ septic.” He turned to Edan with an appraising look. “Well, lad, it looks like that fire of yours is good fer somethin’. One roasted beastie, ay?”
“There were four, and though I don’t think the fire killed them, it certainly ran them off!” Edan smiled through the soot as Flicker made a rude gesture at Feldrin from her perch upon the young man’s shoulder. The gesture looked suspiciously like something she might have learned from Mouse, and the seasprite’s cackle of laughter all but confirmed it. “Master Ghelfan’s right; it didn’t like fire at all. Everyone should carry torches, just in case there are more.”
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