Plague of Spells

by Bruce R Cordell

  Thus, the senior whips decreed Nogah’s plan would divert resources that could be better used elsewhere. Threats to the people were always gathering. The Weave’s failure, combined with the ongoing realignment of the celestial dominions, put even the Sea Mother at risk!

  Nogah growled. As if her current task were not meant to stem just such a threat! Hadn’t the Sea Mother directed her on this venture through her strange silences, as if urging Nogah to investigate the mystery? The other whips were blind. Always decisive, Nogah committed to the exploratory dive despite the consensus building against her, and before that consensus solidified into official directive. She used up the last of her favors to gain the use of this fabulous sea coach, its harnessed beast, and a leave from her duties in the city of Olleth.

  Now here she was, miles below the seafloor in the vent she’d first glimpsed in dreams. The strange flavor of the water all around her seemed to promise grim consequences to those who failed to heed its warning. The odd scent seemed to go hand in fin with the interference that made communion with the Sea Mother difficult. Nogah took it as further evidence the Sea Mother wanted her here, to investigate that which lay at the shaft’s nadir.

  Nogah’s translucent, third eyelids snapped open. She decreed, “No, we shall push on. Time grows short. The … taint? The … hindrance grows stronger each day we fail to discover its source!”

  Curampah merely nodded. Perhaps her junior whip did not share Nogah’s sense of urgency. She guessed Curampah prefered the majority opinion in the kuo-toa ruled city of Olleth. Not that what he thought mattered. The beliefs junior whips harbored in their secret hearts were unimportant. Their duty was only to obey. Curampah would do as she commanded.

  Nogah twitched the reins, and the great catfish surged straight downward once more, jolting the coach. The immense nautilus shell descended through a sudden rush of silvery bubbles born in the thrashing wake of the fish’s wide tail.

  Nogah woke to her name voiced in air. Splinters of the dream faded, the same dream she always had, of the Sea Mother beckoning to her from across a vast gulf of sea-fine particulates and rushing water, warning her, warning …

  She lay in her crèche within the inmost chamber of the spiral nautilus.

  A voice, Curampah’s, said again, “Nogah, Daughter of the Sea, wake!”

  Blinking toward full awareness, but not yet stirring her limbs, she said, “I am awake. I …” She could still hear the groaning water from her dream. The walls of the shell moaned and vibrated, as if being squeezed. Had they struck the vent wall? Nogah mentally checked the status of all the divine rituals she’d applied to the sea coach.

  The subsidiary rituals of maintenance and protection lacing the nautilus’s shell were intact. The bubble of air trapped within the coiled corridors of the shell was stable and fresh. The magic that maintained the equilibrium between air and water was firm. She mentally expanded her examination of the ritual prayers underlying the sea coach and was relieved to find the enchantments holding the catfish also remained active. The protective prayers warding off crushing pressure seemed intact, but …

  “Mother preserve!” The linchpin charm was half unraveled! The groaning noise was precursor to the nautilus shell’s collapse.

  She lurched upright, her webbed hands already tracing the runes necessary to renew the prayer. She worked quickly, invigorating the lines of divine force required. A heartbeat later, the frayed linchpin was repaired. But how could it have failed so precipitously?

  She looked at Curampah. “Explain,” she commanded.

  “Daughter of the Sea,” he said, “I found a side cavity in the vent. As I slowed the coach to study the hollow space, the nautilus began to buckle and shudder. So I woke you.”

  “What lies within this cavity?”

  “Crumbled and blasted dwellings, Daughter. Ruins of structures unable to withstand the crushing weight of water this deep.”

  “A drow city caught in the backlash of Mystra’s demise?” Nogah half smiled to think of a city of their old tormentors so overcome.

  Curampah’s silver-black eyes blinked rapidly. “No. It is illithid.”

  Nogah grabbed her staff and arrowed past Curampah.

  The cavity was riddled with half-exposed, winding passages striated with the cryptic textures of illithid text carved in stone. The crust’s split that created the vent a decade ago broke this deep dwelling mind flayer cyst wide open. The illithids likely hadn’t even picked themselves up from where the quaking earth had thrown them before a weight of seawater had smashed through the breach, a quantity too great for even the wizened entity at the community’s hub to deal with. The elder brain’s basin was split asunder. All that remained of this illithid community’s nascent proto-deity were fragments of flash-petrified cerebral tissue. Dried husks of larval illithids floated here and there throughout the ruin. Remnants of mind flayer garb, implements, and unidentifiable trash were everywhere, but of the adult illithids themselves, no sign remained.

  “Did any survive?” wondered Curampah, as he stared over the side. Nogah had maneuvered the sea coach into the side cavity.

  She replied, “The Spellplague’s hunger did not spare those who derive their power from mind. Of course, it seems this community was destroyed as an indirect consequence of the catastrophe. We would have been attacked already, if any mind flayers remained in this drowned cyst.”

  Curampah inclined his head.

  Despite her words, an irrational fear tightened her scales. She was a competent whip, but she couldn’t hope to stand before a mind flayer’s vicious brain blast. She didn’t want to end up a meal, or worse, a mind-dead thrall. But she was being foolish, of course; how could that happen? The cyst was obviously long bereft of its former dwellers.

  The senior whip urged the catfish deeper into the demolished community. It could be that which drew her into the depths below Faerûn would be found in this very space! The far wall of the hollow remained obscured in haze, and she wanted to be sure of the cavity’s bounds.

  The sea coach was drawn inward. It passed only feet over crumbling edges of unspecified structures without roofs, now only unmarked crypts where many monstrosities had met a sudden, moist end.

  A new structure began to resolve from the swirling water. Its architectural style was different from the foregoing ruins. It retained most of its walls and many of its roofs. It was several stories high, unlike any of the other structures in the cyst, and it had no windows. Something about the new structure reminded Nogah of how the linchpin prayer had almost failed. Was it coincidence the divine ritual most vital to their foray would show instability just as they descended to the depths of the dead illithid community?

  Perhaps the charm’s collapse and the ruined cyst’s proximity were no accident.

  Nogah pulled back on the reins. “Curampah—”

  The catfish screamed, a scale-shivering sound so intense Nogah dropped the reins. A region of free-floating detritus whirled in on itself, becoming a tight column of spinning water. Nogah scrambled for the reins. A moment later the whirling column expanded into a humanoid shape. Violet slime glistened over its rubbery skin. Its awful head riveted Nogah’s attention. Four long tendrils writhed there, muscular tentacles with bloodstained tips. Its eyes were darkened hollows, empty save for seawater.

  “It’s undead!” croaked Curampah, bubbles escaping his mouth in two exclamatory clusters. His pincer staff quivered in his unsteady grasp. “Mind flayer undead!”

  Nogah forgot the reins. She yelled, “Curampah! Think!” If Curampah would stop panicking, they could—

  Malign influence burst upon Nogah’s brain, trying to insinuate alien desires into her core awareness. The catfish’s scream burbled away. Curampah gasped and let his pincer staff float free.

  The vacant-eyed mind flayer drifted toward them, making no movement yet accelerating. It had gained a facility in the water in undeath that its kind did not possess in life. What hoary god empowered this husk? It should have rotted to n
othing like all its compatriots.

  The very fact she could still formulate questions meant she had avoided the brunt of the blast that had left Curampah drooling. But without her fellow whip, she couldn’t co-generate an answering stroke strong enough to offer salvation.

  She tried to think through the terror. Curampah wasn’t dead. It should still be possible …

  She slapped Curampah’s limp shoulder with her empty palm. Instantly, the tingle that alerted fellow whips to each other’s presence intensified into a full-fledged connection. An electric spark burned between them, an eel of chaotic, fluctuating light.

  The contact literally jolted Curampah from his mind-numbed haze. The junior whip blinked witlessness from his eyes.

  Thank the Sea Mother! In the Spellplague’s wake, many whips had lost the ability to co-generate the storm’s sword. But not her, and not Curampah. Its call to destruction burned away the aftereffects of the mind flayer’s blast.

  The illithid undead slowed its approach, its tentacles suddenly writhing in some new configuration.

  Nogah drew back her hand, and the lightning bridged the two whips. The crackling arc widened, then began to curve, bowing out toward the approaching illithid. The creature’s tentacles writhed so fast now, the water began to froth. The hollows of its empty eyes glimmered with red light.

  The connecting spark widened, grew into a ravening bolt that seared the water, creating a shroud of twinkling bubbles. Jittering shadows danced madly across the cavity’s walls.

  Nogah released the bolt. The stroke discharged the full brunt of her and Curampah’s redoubled strength into the mind flayer’s necrotic flesh. Its left arm, half its torso, and its left leg flashed away into ash.

  Another mental assault blossomed from the illithid, but its aim was off. Only the merest edge of the psionic cacophony brushed her awareness.

  “Finish it,” she commanded. But what could they do? They couldn’t produce another lightning stroke immediately. They would have to call on ranged battle prayers—

  Curampah tensed to launch himself from the sea coach’s deck. Nogah snagged his harness with her free hand, restraining him. She hissed, “Fool! Don’t stray from the coach or the sea’s heavy foot will smash you!”

  The illithid squealed something, a warning, Nogah thought, then melted into a column of spinning water. The column widened and dispersed, leaving nothing behind but drifting silt and sediment.

  “That was more than a corpse reanimated by chance,” breathed Curampah. “It was dead, yet could still call upon the mental abilities it possessed in life. I think it may have been partially vampiric. Yet we defeated it!”

  “We chased it away—but we failed to destroy it,” interrupted Nogah. “Because of your incompetence.” She pointed at the junior whip with her staff. “If I were less merciful, I would slay you here and now and offer your unworthy hide as a sacrifice to the Sea Mother.”

  The junior whip froze, uncertain. He knew she didn’t make threats lightly.

  Nogah considered ramming the pincer tip through his throat, despite her talk about being merciful. No—but it wasn’t mercy that stayed her hand. It was practicality. Despite nearly killing himself, and allowing the undead illithid to slip away, she still needed him. If Curampah hadn’t been present, the illithid would likely even now be supping on the contents of her skull.

  “Bah,” she said. “We wounded the thing, nearly tore it apart. It won’t seek us out again soon, at least until it has regained its strength and form. We have some time. Let’s investigate what it guarded all alone down here in the depths.”

  The structure was nestled into the great cavity’s rear wall. Though some of its outer rooms had crumbled, an inner core structure of greenish stone remained intact. A jade dome emerged from the rougher surrounding stone. Tools were scattered everywhere: shovels, picks, buckets, and a variety of more arcane equipment apparently useful for digging. Most had almost rusted away. Nogah also finally recognized the strange mounds arranged around the greenish outcrop. They were tailing piles, the refuse of a mining operation.

  She saw no open mine tunnel. The mine mouth must be under the dome.

  “The illithids thought they were digging up something special here,” she murmured. “Special enough to protect the mine mouth with this building. Not that it offered much protection when the water broke in.”

  “The dome reminds me of a temple, almost,” volunteered Curampah. He gestured. “It even has a ceremonial entrance.”

  A six-sided extension protruded from the side of the smooth green rock like a tumor.

  Nogah guided the sea coach to rest next to the extension and saw Curampah was correct. Within the protrusion was a dull black metal door, also six-sided. It was apparently still sealed against the surrounding water. She leaned over and touched the door’s matte black iron. A familiar feeling thrilled up her arm and into her heart.

  The strange influence of her dreams lived behind the door! The Sea Mother had guided her truly.

  “We must enter,” she directed.

  “How, Daughter of the Sea? If we stray from the nautilus …” Curampah finished by squeezing his hands together.

  “Do you think I am so ill-prepared?”

  Curampah looked at her with half-lidded eyes, waiting.

  “Bring me my chest. Be quick!”

  The junior whip soon returned from the nautilus’s interior with a delicate chest fashioned of polished mother-of-pearl plates and placed it at her feet. Nogah whispered the pass phrase that bypassed the magical trap, and popped the lid.

  Amid the clutter of needful things lay several vials. She selected a few and closed the chest before Curampah was able to see and understand the nature of all her treasures.

  “These,” explained Nogah, “are magical draughts brewed in Sembia. I got them from Captain Thoster. You remember Thoster? His birth was an unlooked-for complication, but it has proved useful. In any event, if imbibed, this liquid allows humanoids to breathe water.”

  Curampah merely blinked, but Nogah recognized the confusion that tightened his scales.

  “You wonder what use these are to us; after all, as a superior breed, we can already breathe air and water both. However, another effect of the elixir renders the imbiber immune to the crushing weight of extreme watery depths. It shall work for us as well as for any humanoid.”

  She handed the junior whip one of the vials. He carefully removed the wax-sealed stopper and sucked its contents down without mixing too much of it with the surrounding water. She did the same with her own elixir. It tasted of salt and kelp.

  Curampah examined his hands and scaled forearms. He said, “I feel no different.”

  “We shall see,” she replied.

  Nogah gave a slight tug on the reins, enough that the nautilus shell moved several body lengths away from the green stone and the black six-sided door.

  “Now, Curampah—open that metallic door. Let us discover what these mind flayers worked so feverishly to uncover.” She gestured to the entrance with her staff.

  The junior whip pushed away from the coach deck and swam toward the door embedded in the green mantle stone. To his credit, he merely hesitated, saying nothing, when he realized he swam alone while she remained behind, watching.

  She judged the protective effect surrounding the coach ended somewhere half-way between the nautilus and the door.

  When he made it all the way to the six-sided valve without ill effect, Nogah joined him.

  Unsealing the valve was a lengthy process. Having no other way to force it, the two whips were finally reduced to directing co-generated strokes of lightning against the dull metal. Again. And again. They rested between each blast just long enough to rekindle their capacity to produce the next electrical discharge. Each subsequent blast showed some effect, just enough to hint that persistence would eventually sear the metal through. The only question was, how many bolts?

  Nogah fretted. The effects of the elixir were temporary. Worse, the undead m
ind flayer was likely regenerating its own strength while they spent theirs against the stubborn entranceway.

  Finally, the valve seared through.

  Inrushing water snatched both her and Curampah, wrenching them through the irregular, red-hot puncture. Agonizing heat seared her flank. A mesh of madly spinning bubbles blinded her. The inrushing water dredged her forward, down an irregularly dug tunnel. She tumbled wildly, end over end. She flailed, trying to get a hold on something, anything. A muffled scream sounded somewhere within the roar of rushing water. Was it Curam—

  A jutting rock smashed her temple, and she screamed too. She was hurtled along, her voice lost in the boil of crushing water. Nogah’s mind whirled as she tried to gain her bearings.

  She was able to do so only when the inrushing water finally filled the space beyond the door. Though remnants of turbulence still spiraled around the narrow tunnel, Nogah managed to halt her forward momentum.

  Bruised and burnt, the whip praised the Sea Mother for her survival. She floated in cold darkness. A figure drifted past her, limp and slowly revolving. It was Curampah. His arms were broken, and his head bore a terrible puncture from which dark fluid thickly jetted into the water, spiraling around his drifting body.

  She hissed, a loss assaulting her like a physical blow. Poor Curampah; his faith had proved too weak.