Plague of Spells as-1 Page 20

  All but the rowers disembarked. A high wave poured shockingly cold water down Japheth's boot, and he hissed.

  To the right and left, a thick tangle of mangrove roots and branches prevented easy access to the shore. Nogah had cleverly selected a site of their landfall not visible to the rest of the island. Small fish, shrimp, crabs, and mollusks played in the clear seawater washing between the reaching mangrove roots.

  The ex-whip took the lead, pressing into the dense tangle on something that wasn't so much a path as a small, salty estuary. The kuo-toa had yet to cease her rhythmic humming. Japheth looked up. He couldn't immediately spy sentinels, but he didn't doubt they still flew.

  He wondered if he should chance a little magic of his own, but decided against it.

  What he really needed was the extra perception granted by a grain of dust.

  It was foolish, he told himself, not to call on all his resources now that things were becoming so desperate. He'd take only a half grain. That would be enough to enhance his perception without dulling his reactions too much. Or worse, pull his mind out onto the road.

  The tin was already in his hand. He popped it open and plucked out a crumb. It was one of the smaller ones. Proud of his restraint, he dropped the ruby red particle into his left eye.

  "Oh! Japheth, why now?" came Anusha's voice from nowhere.

  Captain Thoster glanced back. "Eh, what's that?" His eyes squinted with vague puzzlement.

  Japheth asked, "What was what?"

  "Thought I heard someone say your name. Not happy with you, neither."

  Japheth shrugged. "You're hearing things, Captain."

  Thoster frowned, but turned back to sloshing along the trail after Seren.

  Japheth cocked his head slightly to regard Anusha's armored form, which was blurring into his perception. He gave the phantom a half smile and winked. "I'll be all right," he whispered. The armored head gave a small shake, and then faded. Either he hadn't taken enough dust to perfectly resolve her presence, or she'd decided to leave. Because she was disappointed in him? The thought concerned him. But it was a pale sort of concern, attenuated by the euphoria that accompanied the first moments after partaking of traveler's dust.

  Japheth melted into the moment.

  The mangroves thinned ahead, revealing the first of several greenish gray structures. Like coral in texture and in their seamless solidity, the structures were not rough jumbles of growth, but rather stood in coarse parody of more mundane buildings. Walls, doors, windows, towers, and spires were visible, separated by plazas and courtyards, and many clear pools. Structural lines sometimes seemed to converge too sharply, or diverge where they should have stayed parallel.

  Or perhaps the lines were perfectly straight, mused Japheth. Maybe it was just the dust.

  The kuo-toa settlement lay in murky dimness under the debris of sentinel wakes. The smoky veil overhead gave the illusion the village lay within a subterranean cavern. Bestial kuo-toa moved purposefully between the structures, but a few played in the pools, cavorting and splashing as if human children. These kuo-toa were not goggle-eyed and sticky-skinned, like Nogah and her kin, though they were just as awkward when moving on land. But the creatures gained something like grace when they darted through the surface pools. Watching them move, an undercurrent of something Japheth couldn't quite name brushed him. Some churning dread, squirming just below the surface, like worms hidden in an apple.

  That last feeling was certainly the dust, he thought. Or, then again, perhaps it was a true perception-perhaps his enhanced senses were picking up the traces of Gethshemeth's control over these hapless and partly metamorphosed creatures.

  Nogah sidled up to a particularly large building. Glyphs, disturbing in their sinuosity, were carved in a frieze all over the edifice. The ex-whip motioned the rest of them to follow her, and then slipped into a small side entrance.

  Not a single kuo-toa noticed their passage. Their guide was proving as good as her word. She'd said her previous ownership of the Dreamheart would empower her, and she hadn't lied.

  Nogah waited for them in a low-ceilinged vestibule. Three basins were carved into the walls, each resembling an open-mouthed, upward-facing fish. Clear liquid spilled onto the floor from each gaping mouth. Beyond the basins, two arched corridors provided deeper access into the structure, both lit by a wan yellow radiance.

  "What do the scaled ones get up to in here?" asked Thoster.

  Nogah merely pointed to the right-hand archway and grunted, "This way leads, past many windings and disputed ways, to Gethshemeth's audience chamber."

  "You don't say?" blurted Japheth.

  "The Dreamheart. It tells me much. Now do not distract me with prattle, either of you. We are close! I must fully concentrate on hiding my connection to the relic from the great kraken. If he discovers my presence too soon, before I actually stand in his presence, Gethshemeth will slay us all easily, or command his minions to do so."

  Japheth looked at her, squinting. He could almost see the merest hint of something, a thread of energy spiraling out from the kuo-toa's forehead. The thread plunged across the chamber and into the passageway she indicated. However, overlaying that, Japheth's dust-enhanced eyes noted a glimmering haze, something superimposed that was less like a thread and more like a long, sucker-covered appendage…

  "Are you certain he doesn't already know we're here?" Japheth asked.

  "Of course," huffed Nogah. "I spent far longer with the relic than this upstart creature."

  Thoster laid a hand on Japheth's shoulder. "She's our only hope, mate. If she's right, we've got a shot. If she's wrong, we're all dead already. We just ain't figured it out yet."

  The warlock frowned, but he was having a difficult time working up enough concern to argue. It could be, in truth, the dust was feeding him untrue visions, and he was drawing unwarranted conclusions. That was its downside, he philosophized. Well, one of its downsides.

  Nogah advanced, following her thread. The more Japheth looked at the sensory impression, the more it appeared as a wriggling tentacle. He tried to blink the association away.

  The hall quickly became a narrow staircase leading downward. Relief-carved kuo-toa heads emerged from each wall at intervals, their eyes gleaming yellow.

  "We've just descended below the water level," Nogah commented. "If we were outside, we'd be swimming now." She said this last bit somewhat wistfully.

  "And I'd have turned back," replied Seren.

  The stairs continued their descent, mercifully clear of water.

  Past a switchback, the stairs leveled into another straight passage. The passage was slightly narrower than the stairs, and the lights Were less frequent.

  The sound of falling water slowly grew, as did Seren's frown.

  The tunnel opened into a wide space lit by a trio of sculpted kuo-toa busts some thirty or forty feet above. The area was dominated by a central pool, around which several shrub-like plants grew. An aroma that mingled honey and blueberry hinted at flowers, though Japheth spied no blooms. A dry platform rose marginally above the water's surface at the pool's center. Bones lay scattered upon the platform, along with bits of cloth, spilled coins, and other objects. On the far side of the pool, Japheth discerned an archway leading into a completely lightless passage.

  Ripples dappled the pool. Thoster advanced alone and gazed down. "Albino fish, everywhere," he reported, "and a spiral staircase, drowned beneath the pool. It descends a long way…"

  "It is not a pool, it is our path," intoned the ex-whip.

  "What!" exclaimed Seren. "I told you I cannot and will not swim!"

  "Don't you have a spell to give yourself gills?" asked the first mate, Nyrotha, his voice hoarse from disuse.

  The wizard replied, "Not since the Spellplague, damn it all! I'm heading back to the ship. I'm done with this foolish expedition!"

  The ex-whip strode to stand next to Thoster, then looked back to regard the rest of them. She said, "Fear not. You may descend these stairs withou
t drowning. The pale fish, see them? They are rune-charged creatures. In their presence, you could walk the depths of the sea floor as if strolling through a green meadow."

  "Really?" Seren's interest in magical lore battled with her anger at the thought of drowning. Anger that cloaked healthy fear, Japheth figured.

  Seren and the warlock both eased up to the pool's edge, Japheth saw eyeless slivers darting about, each pulsing with pale radiance. Seren extended a hand, her brow furrowed with concentration. Then she smiled. She reported, J "How extraordinary! I'll have to take a few of these with me after-"

  A twinkle of greenish light wrenched Japheth's attention up. Concern struggled to pierce his dust daze. He should probably warn the others. When they approached the pool, he had I vaguely noticed several figures on the garden's periphery, hiding in the shadows. Perhaps the figures were not mere statuary as he'd first assumed. Perhaps…

  Crossbows snapped. Twin bolts appeared in Nogah's body, one in her chest, the other protruding crazily from one eye. An acrid odor curled Japheth's nose even as the whip began to scream. Poison! „1

  Nyrotha and Thoster dropped as quarrels buzzed the space formerly occupied by their heads. A third struck Thoster in the shoulder, but he made no sound. Seren stood unmoving, shock momentarily freezing her limbs, but no quarrels found her. Japheth felt a faint tug as two or three bolts struck his cloak, without conscious direction from the warlock, the black folds of his garment deflected the bolts onto a trajectory beyond the world, one that ended in the darkness of a bat-filled cavern.

  His pulse quickened, and the lackadaisical demeanor lent him by the dust shattered. Japheth gasped, "Ambush!" Too late.

  Someone grabbed him, pulled him clear. A line of coruscating acid just missed him. "Thank you," he mumbled, assuming his rescuer was Anusha's dream.

  The ex-whip yelled, her voice shaking with pain, "Gethshemeth knew!"

  A granite block boomed down from the ceiling, neatly filling the passage they'd used to enter the strange garden hollow. The light fell by half.

  More figures scurried around the periphery of the chamber. All kuo-toa except for one-a giant quadruped with too many limbs and skin darker than coal. Were those wings unfurling, and a serpent's tail? It was hard to make out through the odd growths surrounding the pool. It loosed a primal hunting scream that tried to root them all in place with fear alone.

  "The pool! Into the pool," gurgled Nogah.

  As if on cue, the rippled water disgorged a blob of bluish green slime. The amorphous mass poured forward, extruding long pseudopods ending in starfish-like appendages of goo.

  "Nogah," said Thoster, rising, "what…"

  The ex-whip fell to her knees, staring dumbly down with one good eye at the blood-soaked bolt buried in her chest. "My species… will become as these? How could I have been so blind? The Dreamheart poisoned my mind! Sea Mother, forgive-"

  She coughed a spray of vicious fluid, shivered as if devil-possessed, then collapsed. Nogah lay without breath on the beslimed flagstone.

  Thoster tore the quarrel from his shoulder with hardly a flinch. The air around him seemed to burn, and he drew his clicking, whirring blade.

  Nyrotha stumbled upright and began to hack at the tentacle-like streamers of slime. His eyes bulged, and spittle flecked his lips. A pseudopod lanced forward. The flayed grasping pad struck the man's face full on, sealing his voice behind a gag of putrescent ooze.

  Flesh and blood began to boil under the grasp. In moments, there was only bone and cartilage where Nyrotha's face had been.

  Disgust and stomach-churning terror dispersed the last of Japheth's dust haze. He grabbed for Seren's and Thoster's shoulders, one in each hand, and tried to propel them around the pool toward the arched passage he'd spied upon entering. "This way, or we all die!" he yelled. Seren was weakly accommodating in his grip, but Thoster shrugged away.

  Savage, small-eyed kuo-toa converged from all sides. Japheth grabbed the captain again, mouthing a spell as he did so. They all fell into his cloak.

  And immediately appeared on the opposite side of the pool, as if having made a single step. A warlock's transposition-the spell had only strength enough to move him, and him alone, hardly more than ten paces. But with the Lord of Bats's own skin wrapping his body, he was able to bring others along.

  "Now follow me!"

  Japheth ran into the darkness, Thoster and Seren at his heels. Behind, a great roar of fury drowned out the gurgling of slime-digesting flesh.

  The tunnel punched downward into stone-lined darkness.

  Behind him came the swish of the wizard's slippers, and Captain Thoster's iron boot tips ringing on the stone floor. Following them, monsters scrabbled and shrieked.

  Japheth uttered three fell words, and his vision returned, though distant objects remained cloaked in black haze. He said, "I can find-"

  The tunnel beneath their feet fractured. They plunged into ice-cold saltwater.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Plague-wrought Land, Vilhon Wilds

  City-sized blocks of granite churned within the crater, forming a vortex that sucked air and anything unfortunate enough to fall within its grinding grasp. The clamor of stone on stone was a physical thing. The sound threatened to dislodge Raidon Kane from the wooden span that somehow, even without visible supports, bridged the ravenous gap.

  Streamers of blue fire scudded across the sky, like rivulets of water finding their way down a cliff side. Or, Raidon thought, like blue veins pulsing close under the skin of a giant's fleshy back.

  The monk blinked away the unwelcome image and fixed his attention on his companions.

  "Well? What have you decided? Leave the bridge here or continue across the vortex?"

  Finara, the gray-haired former mage, shook her head with exaggerated care. "Both choices could prove fatal. I cannot decide."

  "I can!" broke in the youth. "The bridge, we stay on the bridge! The path is safe, up to its terminus-we all know this to be true!"

  "The Granite Vortex has moved. That is a change. Other things may be different too," explained Finara. "Nothing is certain here."

  "We stay on the bridge," Hadyn repeated, defiance hardening his face.

  Raidon considered. He couldn't predict which route was safer. If the bridge spanned the horrendous gap, they should be able to do the same by staying on it. Perhaps leaving the bridge sooner than necessary was the worst choice. He said, "Hold tight to the handrails as we cross. The vibration will try to shake you to a long fall."

  They passed over the vast empty gulf, ringed by swirling stones whose fluid mobility and resounding impacts attempted to knock them physically from their footing and mentally from their belief in the world's comprehensibility.

  Though he owed his traveling companions nothing, the monk found himself periodically glancing back to monitor their progress. They were nearly across when Raidon saw a portion of the old wood railing give way beneath Hadyn's desperate clutch.

  Hadyn pitched out over the chasm, his face convulsing in terror. The ringing granite crashes blotted out his scream.

  Raidon lunged for the man's hand. His fingers found the flailing youth's wrist. The weight yanked the monk down to his chest against the bridge's wooden slats. Pain jangled up his arm. Raidon gritted his teeth and retained his hold.

  Hadyn dangled over the churning maw, his eyes fixed on Raidon's, pleading. Save me, they said.

  The monk began to haul Hadyn up. From the periphery of his vision, Raidon noticed a single streamer of blue fire. Its flow dipped uncomfortably close to the bridge. The streamer bucked, became erratic, and dispersed into disconnected globules of blue fire.

  A second streamer twisted out of the sky and speared the youth in the chest.

  Regardless of its flickering, flame-like guise, it wasn't fire. The radiance spreading across the youth's suddenly convulsing body was naked, potent, active spellplague. It was a germ that infected earth and stone, flesh and blood, magic, and even
space itself.

  Raidon overrode his first instinct to let go.

  The youth's convulsions redoubled. His skin began to glow blue. Hadyn's eyes gleamed like those in the grip of a divine vision. His hair whipped and sawed as though underwater. Unaccountably, he grew heavier.

  Muscle suddenly rippled on Hadyn's forearms, shoulders, and chest. The youth's frame lengthened, as if to accommodate even more strength, and yet more muscle rolled onto him. The pressure of Hadyn's grip on Raidon's hand doubled, and then redoubled. Raidon heard the bones in his hand grind together.

  "I feel… strong!" yelled Hadyn.

  Then the youth screamed.

  Already Hadyn's boots were a blaze of fire, and Raidon could see naked bones in his lower legs. White sticks burning. His upper legs were like translucent wax melting inside a stone oven. Or like Hadyn was a candle, and spellplague, the flame.

  In three more heartbeats, Hadyn was consumed. Burning ash dispersed in the wind.

  Raidon rose, looked into Finara's terrified eyes. He didn't really see her.

  His mind remained fixed on Hadyn's death. Or, more accurately, the manner of his death. A vision of the dissolving caravan chief who died so long ago assaulted him for the hundredth time. As always, he couldn't help wondering if Ailyn had perished similarly. Had she screamed like Hadyn? Had she called his name? Or cursed it?

  The monk's gritted teeth couldn't restrain the groan at the image of Ailyn's death clawing its way into his mind.

  If he wanted to end that personal misery, now would be an easy time to do it. Just a step or two…

  No. The weakling's way was not his, no matter the provocation, even his own failure to follow through on his promise to protect Ailyn. He let the images flow away from him like a river until his mind was empty. Let focus be his only emotion.

  The sound of the Granite Vortex returned. The past faded, for the moment.

  Ahead, the bridge terminated in a meadow of tall, scarlet grass strewn with boulders. The boulders didn't actually rest in the grass; each hovered a foot or two off the ground. Some were stationary, but several drifted in random directions. By the scars each bore, it seemed likely they'd all survived impacts.