Queen of the Depths Read online

  She and Anton scrambled into the house—all one sparsely furnished room, with rushes strewn on the dirt floor—and he shot the bar behind them. A human mother and two small, snaggletoothed boys of mixed blood sat up from their pallets to goggle at the intruders. Perhaps the children’s orc father was away at sea.

  Anton pointed his cutlass at the family. “Stay where you are, and don’t make a sound,” he said.

  White-faced, the woman gave a nod.

  The windows facing the street were made of canvas as well, so as to admit a little light. Anton cut a peephole in one then knelt behind it. Tu’ala’keth crouched beside him.

  “You must realize,” she whispered, “this structure is no refuge. Chadrezzan can blast it apart with a flick of his fingers.”

  “I know,” he said, “but first he and Kassur have to find us, and that’s the point. With luck, they’ll need to get close, and we’ll have a better chance than we would with them lobbing flame and lightning from a hundred paces away.”

  “I understand.”

  “Then hush and use your ears. We may well hear them coming before we’re able to see them.”

  He was right. After a few moments, something hissed out on the street. At first she couldn’t see it, but then Anton tore the peephole larger, expanding their field of vision.

  It was fire making the sibilant sound. Shrouded in yellow flame, turning his head from side to side, Chadrezzan stalked along with a look of intense concentration on his face. Kassur followed behind, spear at the ready. He too had cast some sort of defensive enchantment, revealing itself as an outline of scarlet phosphorescence around his body.

  “They are not peering into doors or windows,” whispered Tu’ala’keth. “They must be seeking us with magic. My guess is Chadrezzan has given himself the ability to read minds. He is sifting through all the thoughts in the area, trying to pick out ours, while Kassur labors to sense the enchantments in your cutlass and my silverweave.”

  “That’s how it looks to me, too. Here’s what we’ll do: I’m going to go out the back and circle around. Give me a few seconds then start thinking, Umberlee, help me, over and over again. If Chadrezzan is listening to thoughts, that should point him at you. You should cast spells, too, to snag Kassur’s attention—defensive magic, if you’ve got some prepared. The Grandmaster knows, you’re likely to need it.”

  “I am to distract the Talassans while you take them from behind.”

  “Right. As soon as I do, you hit them, too.” He turned toward the rear of the home.

  “Wait.” She murmured a prayer and wrote a glyph on his brow with her fingertip. It glowed blue for a moment then faded. “A ward against flame … I’ve had them ready for the casting ever since we first quarreled with the Talassans.”

  “Thanks.” He scuttled to the rear of the cottage, slashed through the canvas wall, and disappeared.

  She counted to ten then started doing as he’d instructed her, invoking the goddess and shielding herself in a structure of interlocking enchantments like the components of a suit of plate. Before long, it had the desired effect. Kassur whirled in her direction and pointed with his spear.

  “Yes, storm priest,” she called, “we see you, too, and we are ready for you. Flee before I call the wrath of Umberlee down on your heads.”

  Kassur laughed. “Such threats might be more intimidating if you weren’t cowering behind a wall. As if that could save you.” Declaiming rhymes in some grating, infernal language, he raised his lance over his head, and the weapon flashed bright as lightning. Chadrezzan planted the butt of his iron staff on the ground, and the soil writhed at its touch. Power pulsed from the two humans, blurring Tu’ala’keth’s vision and cramping her guts. Gripping her drowned man’s hand, she commenced her own spell.

  Then a shaft of force, visible as rippling distortion in the air, shot from the shadows behind the Talassans. It slammed into the center of Chadrezzan’s back and knocked him stumbling forward, spoiling—Tu’ala’keth hoped—his silent conjuration. Anton instantly charged out into the open to continue the work his spell had begun.

  Kassur surely realized what was happening, but didn’t permit it to distract him from continuing his own conjuring. He and Tu’ala’keth finished simultaneously.

  Glare and heat blazed at her. The stained, torn cloth in the window frame burned to ash in an instant, but that was the second she needed to save her sensitive deepwater vision. She frantically twisted away from the flash, and though the magic seared and blistered her skin, afterward, she could still see. She pulled her goggles back on—stupid not to have replaced them before—and peered out the opening.

  The flying trident of luminous force she’d conjured jabbed at Kassur. He had two bloody grazes on his arm where it had gored him already. He parried with the lance and shouted words of power at it, trying to dispel it.

  Meanwhile, Anton rushed Chadrezzan. But the wizard didn’t rely solely on his burning aura to protect him. Instead, he sneered and soared up into the air. Tu’ala’keth had wondered how the Talassans had arrived on the scene so quickly, and now she knew at least a part of the answer. Chadrezzan had empowered himself with the ability to fly.

  She chanted a counterspell to strip the enchantment away, but before she could reach the end, a wave of sickening terror assailed her. She faltered in her recitation, and the botched magic wasted itself in a feeble flickering.

  Kassur had exerted his power to chastise the denizens of the sea. Shuddering, Tu’ala’keth silently cried out to Umberlee, praying for the strength to shake off the crippling fear. A measure of the deity’s own inexhaustible wrath surged into her and washed the dread away.

  In her fury, she yearned to kill Kassur up close, with her hands. Unfortunately, on Dragon Isle, her stone trident was too conspicuous a weapon to carry if she hoped to walk abroad incognito, so she’d left it behind in Vurgrom’s mansion. But her magic could arm her. She whispered a prayer, the air seethed green, and sharp, bony spines extruded themselves from her skin. It hurt for a moment, but the pain didn’t balk her. It only served to heighten her rage.

  She strode to the door, unbarred it, threw it open, and found herself facing Kassur, now rid of the harassment of the disembodied trident. Judging from the way he held his spear, he’d planned to use it to force his way in. He gaped at Tu’ala’keth in surprise, no doubt because he’d expected to find her still crippled with fear.

  She shouted a shalarin battle cry and sprang at him.

  Her first blow ripped open his face to the bone, snatched away the patch that was a part of his regalia, and revealed what appeared to be a normal, functional eye underneath. She drove in again, trying to grapple, so dozens of the spines jutting from her body could pierce him all at once.

  He scrambled back and swung the spear into line to threaten her. She struck at it and knocked it away from her heart, but the point still slid into her biceps. The lance flashed and sizzled, and her body shook. The odor of her burning flesh mingled with the smell of ozone.

  The spear went dark, its power expended until the next thrust. Kassur yanked it back out of her arm. Her knees buckled, dumping her on the ground. Blooding streaming from his shredded profile, the storm priest lifted his weapon for a killing stroke.

  Tu’ala’keth kicked at his lower leg, the only part of him she could reach. Thanks to the paralyzing effect of the lightning pent in the spear, it was a spastic, floundering attack. But she still had her goddess-granted fury to lend her strength, and the thorns on her foot sliced deep into the limb. Kassur gasped and toppled down beside her.

  Now she had her chance to wrestle, to pull and grind him against her and let the blades cut. She clambered on top of him.

  The spear, though deadly, was too long to wield at such close quarters. He dropped it and snatched a dagger from somewhere. The point banged against her silverweave, surely bruising her ribs but as yet, not piercing the coral armor.

  He was all bloody gashes and punctures now, yet fought on with a ferocit
y akin to her own. He gasped out the opening syllables of a spell.

  She resolved to silence him short of the conclusion, cut the tongue from his mouth or mangle the larynx in his throat if necessary. But then, as they thrashed and rolled, she caught a glimpse of Anton and Chadrezzan.

  Still suspended in the air, the mute pointed the wand stolen from the Red Wizards at the foe below his feet. Jagged flares of shadow exploded from the tip of the arcane weapon, while Anton lunged back and forth, trying to dodge. When a discharge caught him anyway, he convulsed.

  It was plain he had no chance, not while Chadrezzan hovered above his reach. Tu’ala’keth gathered her spiritual strength and screamed, “Fall!”

  The magical command smashed through the wizard’s psychic defenses, and momentarily helpless to disobey, he allowed himself to plummet. He slammed down hard enough to snap bone but evidently not to kill or even stun him, for he immediately rose once more. Supported solely by his gift of levitation and not his flopping, shattered legs, he resembled a marionette hauled upward by its strings.

  Despite the punishment he’d taken, Anton somehow found the strength to charge and, when Chadrezzan soared above his head, to leap. He caught hold of the burning wizard’s garments with his free hand, and his foe carried him aloft as well. He slashed and stabbed with his cutlass, and Chadrezzan—who must have lost the wand when he’d fallen—jabbed and battered with the butt of the serpent-wrapped staff.

  At which point, agony ripped through Tu’ala’keth’s body. By diverting her attention to Anton and Chadrezzan, she’d given Kassur the chance to complete his spell, a blast of malignancy that savaged her from the inside out.

  For a moment, the pain made her spastic. Kassur broke free of her spiked embrace and scrambled to his feet, nearly fell again when the torn leg threatened to give way, but shifted his weight to compensate. He snarled an incantation, and a fan of flame exploded from his outthrust hands.

  Flame. Thanks to her wards, she was in some measure immune to it. But Kassur presumably didn’t know that.

  Though she might have tried to roll aside, she let the hot, hungry flare wash right over her. Its kiss seared her, but it was bearable. She screamed and flailed as if it weren’t then lay shaking, to all appearances incapacitated, or so she hoped.

  Kassur scrutinized her then looked about for his spear. He surely didn’t mean to take his eyes off her, and only did so for an instant. Still it was the opening she needed.

  She reared up onto her knees, flung herself forward, tackled him, and carried him back to the ground. He banged his head, and perhaps that finally jolted some of the fight out of him, for she landed a slice across the throat, ripped his eyes away, and hammered her fists on his chest, driving her spikes between the ribs and into the heart and lungs.

  Some time after that, her fury abated sufficiently for her to comprehend it was impossible to hurt him any further. She looked around for Anton and Chadrezzan then froze in dismay.

  The spy and the wizard, his corona of flame now extinguished, lay tangled together on the ground. Neither was moving, and it was impossible to tell if either was alive.

  She tried to stand. The world seemed to tilt, and she flopped back down. She was on the verge of passing out and would have to help herself before she could aid another.

  She chanted, and vigor surged through her limbs. It wasn’t enough to silence all her pains, but that could wait. She rose and hurried to Anton.

  He was still breathing. Indeed, except for the contusions where the butt of the iron staff had caught him, he was unmarked. Yet even so, his skin was icy and his pulse raced, making it plain he was sorely wounded. Chadrezzan’s wand was surely as lethal a weapon as any crossbow or trident, despite the fact that its shadowy discharge didn’t break the skin.

  Gripping the bony symbol of Umberlee’s power, Tu’ala’keth declaimed the most potent charm of healing at her disposal. Anton thrashed, and his eyes flew open. He coughed hard several times as if he had a bone caught in his throat.

  When the fit passed, he wiped his teary eyes and said, “Why is it that whenever you heal me, it hurts? The priests of Ilmater are gentle as doves.”

  Ilmater, martyr god of the weak and helpless—she sneered at the mention of his name.

  “Never mind,” Anton continued. “I’m grateful anyway.”

  “What now?”

  “It’s convenient that we made for the edge of town. If we can just drag the corpses on into the hills a little ways, we’ll come to a cliff where we can dump them into the sea.”

  “As an offering to Umberlee?”

  “If you like. But mainly to make life easier for me. People will assume I killed the Talassans, and I want them to. It will help convince the other factions I’d make a valuable recruit. But I don’t want Shandri Clayhill to try to punish me for slaughtering members of her crew. Without any dead bodies to prove Chadrezzan and Kassur didn’t just run off, she probably won’t make an issue of it.”

  “What of the woman on whom we intruded? She witnessed what happened, or enough of it.”

  “Good point. I’ll threaten her again, and give her some Thayan gold, too. I imagine the combination will keep her mouth shut.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Pondering how best to broach the matter at hand, Tu’ala’keth shadowed Captain Clayhill through the benighted house. Long skirt whispering against the floor, jaw clenched, and body stiff, the human strode rapidly, oblivious to the fact that someone was trailing along behind her.

  The pirate’s path ended in the deserted, moonlit courtyard, where she took up a boarding pike with a blunted point and edge and squared off against a straw practice dummy. Slashing and stabbing furiously, she grunted and snarled. Her jewelry lashed and clattered about her body, and the muscles in her bare, tattooed arms and shoulders bunched and flexed.

  Tu’ala’keth watched from the verandah for a time then asked, “What troubles you, Captain?”

  Shandri Clayhill jerked around. “Waveservant. I didn’t know you were there. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just practicing.”

  Tu’ala’keth descended the steps into the yard. “You cannot deceive me. I am your shadow. Your destiny, by Umberlee’s command.”

  “Well.…” The human wiped sweat from her eyes. More of it plastered her bronze-colored hair to her brow. “It galls me to lose Kassur and Chadrezzan.”

  “We will have better fortune with Shark’s Bliss, and all who sail aboard her, devoted solely to Umberlee.”

  “So you say, but their magic served us well in the fights with the Thayans. It will vex me if we lose Anton, too. It’s his right to seek a place on another ship, but you’re supposed to be his comrade. Can’t you convince him to stay?”

  “Perhaps I can. Perhaps I will. But why are you, to whom the Queen of the Depths has given her favor, so concerned? Can you not see that you are the luck and strength of Shark’s Bliss?”

  The human’s mouth twisted. “That has a brave sound to it, but I can’t take prizes without good men at my back.”

  “You will find many reavers eager to sail with a captain who bested Red Wizards, and were you not distraught, you would know it. Let us speak, then, of that which oppresses you and clouds your visions: of the man you dream of killing when you batter this mannequin. It is plain you have just come from his chamber. I smell him on you.”

  Shandri Clayhill glared, and for a moment, Tu’ala’keth wondered if the human would tell her to mind her own affairs. But then she sighed and said, “I thought that after Saerloon, things would be different.”

  “Yet Vurgrom still treats you as his harlot.”

  “Maybe I should have expected it. The Lord of Shadows knows, I’m not his only woman, but for the past couple years, I’ve been his favorite.”

  “As you sought to be.”

  “I don’t deny it! I meant to use him, and it got me what I wanted. But I didn’t know what I was getting into. He’s fat, getting old, and drinks too much. He’s grown jaded bedding hundreds of women an
d even females of other races. He often needs … perversity to stir his desire.”

  “Daughter, you need feel no shame. You stalked and claimed a victim to satisfy your wants. That is the dance of predator and prey, blessed in the sight of Umberlee, though in this guise a far lesser thing than the bloodshed and slaughter for which she intends you. But if you continue to humble yourself when it is no longer necessary, when your fate beckons you onward, then you truly will be at fault.”

  “Can I refuse him when he’s still the chief of our faction? When he could demand that I give back Shark’s Bliss?”

  “Yes! Because he lusts for the plunder you will bring him more than he aches for your flesh. Because he knows that if you forsake him, some rival faction will be overjoyed to recruit such a successful captain. You have power now, the power to command respect. You simply have to muster the courage to use it.”

  Shandri Clayhill drew a deep breath, as if preparing for some great exertion. “You’re right.”

  Vurgrom and Shandri whirled to the rhythm of the reel, while the yarting, longhorn, and songhorn wailed, the double-headed hand drum clattered, and the spectators clapped and stamped out the beat. He tried to press against her as he was accustomed to. She shoved him away, maintaining a bit of space between them.

  At the end of the dance, he sought to cling to her for another. But she’d fulfilled the requirements of courtesy, done what was required to maintain the impression that she and her superior were on amiable terms, and she twisted away from him and snatched hold of Durth’s hand. She and the grinning, gray-skinned orc pranced away, stepping high and kicking on the final beat of every other measure.

  Sweaty, breathing heavily—when had he grown so old and fat that a single dance winded him?—Vurgrom turned and headed for his customary seat overlooking the torch-lit courtyard. One of the serving wenches gave him a lascivious smile as if offering herself in Shandri’s place. But he’d had the girl—he’d had them all—and as he dimly recalled, she was nothing special. He sneered, and she hastily lowered her eyes.