City of Torment (10 page)

The creature gestured with her staff toward Seren and Japheth. She didn’t react to Anusha, who stood at the kuo-toa’s elbow in immaterial guise. “Nogah, these are the ones I promised who can help,” said the captain. “Seren is a wizard, and Japheth says he’s a warlock.” “They can access arcane magic?” she inquired, her eyes blinking rapidly. “Yeah, quick studies, they are. I seen ‘em both hurl spells, which is better than most the old mages can claim, except for all the liars.” “Good,” she crooned. Seren stepped forward. “Yes, I am here to help; I don’t know about him.” The wizard waved toward Japheth. “Thing is, I don’t know with what. The good captain wouldn’t tell me. He just kept repeating that meeting you would be worth my while.” The kuo-toa gazed a few more heartbeats at Seren, then swiveled to stare at the warlock. Japheth’s buzzing thoughts finally lined up enough for him to say “I have the proxy of the shipping magnate, Behroun Marhana of New Sarshel. While I have many talents of my own, I can also call upon my patron’s material and financial resources, if I judge what I hear today to be in Marhana’s interests.” Nogah rasped something in a tongue Japheth didn’t know, and then added, “Listen, then, and see.” The kuo-toa gestured toward the balcony opening. “What do you see?” she asked. Beyond the balcony’s stone railing rolled the wide sea. The Green Siren rode the swells, and the numberless marine creatures along the shore continued to fulfill ancient drives to eat and propagate. Japheth also saw the other kuo-toa below the surface, much closer now than they had been before. They must be moving closer in case their mistress needed help in dealing with her visitors. Captain Thoster said, “A whole lot of nothing. So?” “I see a world ready to be plucked,” replied Nogah. Japheth tried to ignore her squishy, lisping inflection to Common, like she was trying to suck the marrow out of a bloody bone with each word. His state of mind made it difficult to concentrate. She continued, “I see a world crying out for new direction. A world where those who align themselves properly will be rewarded with riches beyond their wildest dreams. What do you say to that?” “I see that every time I pull alongside a merchant ship and demand the contents of their hold,” boasted Thoster. “Baubles compared to what I offer.” Nogah sniffed. “What exactly do you offer?” asked Seren. “I offer you a measure of protection and even control when I summon up old lords and old races. When I call upon antique powers that dwarf any our world has heretofore known, everything changes. I’m offering you the chance to survive that change, and what’s more, profit from it. Perhaps even exercise some measure of control over the events that fate might otherwise dictate.” Neither Thoster nor Seren had an immediate reply. They seemed a little taken aback. Japheth said, “A very kind offer, to be sure. Especially since most of us have just met. You must want something from us, if you’re willing to give so much?” The kuo-toa whip nodded, her eyes blinking rapidly. She said, “Of course.” “If you have the strength to call up these ‘old lords and old races,’” queried Japheth, “beings that can reorder the world in the manner you describe, what help from us could you possibly require?” “Ah, that is the tangle, drylander. I have lost the talisman required to begin. It was stolen from me, and I need help to retrieve it.” “Sure,” said Thoster. “Why’s it you can’t get aid from Olleth itself, a city filled with kuo-toa? Come, Nogah, what need have you for me and folks I can gather?” “You are perceptive, Captain Thoster. One of the reasons I enjoy our dealings so much. But your assumption is incorrect; Olleth will not help me. In fact, they want me dead.” “You’re a whip. They can’t strip you o’ that.” “They can. They have. I have been named race traitor, blasphemer, and I’ve been excommunicated from the Sea Mother’s church. No kuo-toa will have anything to do with me, other than try to skin my hide as a trophy.” Japheth held his tongue, even though he could see kuo-toa below the water line with his crimson gaze. Obviously Nogah exaggerated the degree to which her own race reviled her. The kuo-toa he could see there were drawing closer still. Many had moved so close to the tower’s base that the warlock could no longer see them below the balcony’s floor. The kuo-toa had a strangely feral look to them�their eyes were smaller than Nogah’s, more bestial. Strange. Also, the day’s light was waning. A sea mist was rolling in across the waves. Already the Green Siren was enveloped and lost to sight. The fog’s leading face churned onward, sending streamers of mist snaking toward the shore and tower. Japheth had never seen anything like it. Then again, he rarely traveled by sea. For all he knew, the phenomenon was natural. The kuo-toa he saw converging through the wave-tossed shallows were not alarmed by the advancing mist. In fact, by their sudden unnerving grins, it seemed they welcomed its arrival. Thoster was saying, “For the sake of argument, let’s say you ain’t lying to me. You really do need my help and that of these others. Who stole this talisman from you, and where can we find the thief?” The warlock wanted to know more about these “old lords and old races.” Japheth had some experience with ancient beings who promised great power. Nothing was ever simple when it came to such extraordinary guarantees. The single “old lord” he had discovered and entered into a pact with had ultimately proved an alarming force in Japheth’s life. Certainly, if not for the Lord of Bats, the crimson road would have claimed the warlock long before now. Being alive, no matter the situation, had to be preferable to being dead. Right? It was a question he often asked himself. And despite his ties, he did delight in the various arcane tricks and amazing curses he was now able to call upon. And what about the impressive space hidden within the folds of his cloak? Other men would give far more than he to be able to wear such a thing as an article of clothing. On the other hand, if not for the pact he’d sworn to the Lord of Bats, he wouldn’t have to daily attend to the bidding of Behroun Marhana, a fouler and pettier man Japheth had yet to meet. What a convoluted series of events had put him in such thrall, he mused. If only� “You’re insane!” Seren’s sudden accusation brought Japheth back to the present. While he had been touring, for the hundred thousandth time, his past indiscretions and failures, the others had continued their discussion. Something had riled up the war wizard, and even Thoster’s eyes were wide with unexpected surprise. What had he missed? Nogah raised a conciliatory, webbed hand. “I grant that on its face, the task we must accomplish…” A rivulet of mist edged across the tower and into the balcony. It seemed a live thing, a fog tentacle seeking something. “How peculiar,” said the warlock. He wondered if the opaque cold front was natural weather after all. For one thing, his dust-enhanced vision was having difficulty piercing it. Alerted by his comment, the kuo-toa glanced at the advancing mist streamer. She shrieked, then lisped, “Gethshemeth knows!” She backed away from the advancing streamer. She rasped, “The mist is merely a cloak�it hides whatever force the great kraken has thrown at us!” Great kraken? Japheth repeated mentally. What folderol is this? The war wizard spat out a flurry of loose syllables and waved her red-runed wand. A gentle breeze issued from nowhere to blow toward the balcony opening. The mist’s ominous advance slowed, hesitated, and then began to retreat in the face of the mild but unrelenting draft. But how long would the woman’s casting keep it at bay? An ululation of feral anticipation soared up from somewhere below the tower, hollow yet somehow more threatening because of the muffling, mysterious mist. “The kuo-toa…” began Japheth, his voice a dry croak. He tried to shake off the lethargy the traveler’s dust sometimes produced when he didn’t succumb to its vision of the burning road. “The kuo-toa outside that are converging on us�are they with you, Nogah?” She hissed, blinked rapidly. She said, “Fool! I told you I am anathema in Olleth. The Sea Mother has demanded my head for my affront. But worse, all those I subverted with the Dreamheart now follow Gethshemeth, the great kraken. It sends them against me now, lest I contrive a plan to take back what it stole!” Seren broke in. “Fool? You’re asking us to go against a great kraken and call us fools?” The moist patter of many squishy feet sounded loud on the open stair. Captain Thoster drew his slender straight-sword from its silver sheath. Metallic disks inset flush in the blade’s side whirred and spun with golem-like precision. A greenish fluid pulsed within straight, hair-thin conduits that ran from hilt to tip, whetting the fine edge of the blade with an emerald sheen. Thoster called it his Blade of Venom, an antique but deadly weapon found among Lantan’s watery remains. A product of vanished gnome craftsmen, who infused knowledge of golems and gears into their works. Seren began the opening phrases of a spell. Anusha… Japheth couldn’t see her. Was she gone, or had the sensitivity granted by his traveler’s dust passed? “Are we facing the great kraken itself?” asked Thoster. The captain stared into the wide, fog-obscured opening on the balcony. “It could reach this high, I think.” Japheth replied, his voice growing surer, “I saw only kuo-toa converging, no kraken small or great.” “Well… maybe we ain’t all dead!” exclaimed Thoster. A small grin chased away worry lines with deeper grooves. “Fish-men I can handle. No offense, Nogah.” The captain turned to face the stairs, his blade whirring and clicking like a hungry insect. Unless the kraken has come in the meantime, thought the warlock. Better be sure. Japheth projected an arcane summons into the space hidden within his cloak, to his hidden fortress, shadow-drenched Darroch Castle. The call roused those he sought from their lightless roosts. Crying and chirping their eagerness in registers higher than men could hear, they emerged as a dark swarm from Japheth’s billowing cloak. Seren and Nogah both exclaimed in tones surprisingly similar for such disparate family trees. Thoster, familiar with the warlock’s many abilities, grinned wider. The cloud of flapping black motes arced straight into the wall of mist, immediately lost to sight. But bats did not rely on eyes alone, and now, neither did Japheth. Nay, he was the bat swarm. Closing his eyes on the tower interior, he opened his perceptions to the audibly sculpted, texture-defined world the bats inhabited. His fingers, grown long and composed only of sound, caressed the tower as its rounded sides fell away behind. The wet, uncertain boundary of the sea lapped up from below. Bipeds with large, noise-muffling eyes and hard scales scampered from the water’s edges up the beach of sound-scattering sand, to join their brethren already snorting and giggling at the tower’s base. Japheth directed the darting swarm out over the water. His touch-sight stretched down to pat the sea’s inconstant surface. The water was impenetrable, but its fluid, ever-changing nature betrayed the shapes of what lay beneath. Mostly, that was bulging swells of water that rolled endlessly to the shore, there to break and froth on the sand. But the swarm also discerned schools of fish as small mounds sliding along the surface, the edges of a half-formed coral reef, and what might even be a drowned shipwreck. Nowhere could he perceive what he most feared to discover: great, sinuous bulges in the water hinting at tentacles hundreds or more feet in length, or a great bulblike central body with a brain more ancient than the founding of Impiltur. Japheth had seen pictures of kraken in the Candlekeep stacks. He found no evidence of such a shape, but something else was fast approaching. A handful of ballista-like shapes arrowed through the water. They left V-shaped wakes behind each one’s single high fin that pierced the boundary into air. Sharks, and big ones. Worryisomely, the contours of reflected sound revealed each bore a rider, but the swirling seawater foiled him from teasing out real shape from fancy. The swarm veered closer, darting down to intersect the line of the onrushing fins. Japheth saw a warty arm rise from the water and point. He had just a heartbeat to study it, to recognize that its oozing, sound-absorbing flesh wasn’t the scaled arm of a kuo-toa, before pain cut his connection to the swarm. He opened his eyes, his mouth dry. “What?” said Captain Thoster. “Kuo-toa, maybe twenty. Well, maybe they’re not exactly kuo-toa; they looked warped somehow. And, I think… a covey of water witches.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren on the Sea of Fallen Stars The slushy, damp patter of kuo-toa feet on the stairs knifed terror through Anusha. She instinctively tried to get away� The girl woke in her flesh body as if from a nightmare, breathing hard and struggling to sit up. Pain smote her forehead. Dazed, she fell back, blinking in darkness broken only by a ruler-straight thread of light that ran from near her left temple down past her left foot. It was the seam of the travel chest’s lid, in which her body slept away her dream travels. Not for the first time, she imagined it was like this inside a sarcophagus. Unlike most sarcophagus residents, though, she could leave whenever she wanted. She slid open the custom-installed bolt that unlatched the lid from inside. With only a little effort, she pushed away the covering. Brightness brought tears to her eyes. Even though the light from the cabin’s porthole was dimmed by mist, she had to squint. The roiling fog beyond the porthole was the same mist she’d seen rushing across the water to blockade Hegruth Island. The same mist that cloaked the scaled, fishy kuo-toa as they converged on the tower. Her cheeks warmed. They couldn’t have hurt her, or probably even seen her. Yet she had done the equivalent of scream and run. Had Japheth seen her depart in fear? She hoped not. He probably had. “Am I such an infant, to flee at the first hint of danger?” she wondered aloud. “You can do better.” A gurgle of hunger diverted her self-rebuke. With one hand, she grabbed a piece of unwrapped hardtack from the clutter on the adjoining cot. Her other hand sought the wineskin Japheth had also provided. She bit and chewed the stale, unsalted biscuit-like texture, moistening it with the watered-down wine. She had incorrectly supposed that spending most of her time lying still and dreaming would cut her appetite by half or more. Instead, the yawning chasm in her stomach told her she must eat, if she was going to launch yet another dream walk. The activity seemed to suck far more out of her than a natural dream. Already her clothing was becoming loose and baggy. If she didn’t increase her food intake, she would waste away to a dream in truth. Anusha choked down the last of the biscuit, took another pull on the skin, and then pulled the lid closed as she reclined back into the travel chest. After several rafts of empty moments floated past, she recognized the hard truth her body already knew. She wasn’t the least bit sleepy. “Oh, please!” she whispered fiercely, frustration making her voice shrill. She spent a few more moments attempting to control her breathing and calm her thoughts. It simply wasn’t working. Her heart still pounded with the memory of kuo-toa on the tower stairs. Her hand moved almost of its own accord, feeling through the things she kept with her in the chest. She found the cold silver vial Japheth had provided two days earlier. The “elixir of somnolence,” he’d called it. A drug, she knew it to be in truth. One she was on the cusp of taking, despite her disdain for Japheth’s habit. “No time for prissiness,” she remonstrated. She twisted off the lid and brought the cold vial to her lips. The taste of blackberries bloomed across her tongue, and her lips tingled as if she’d bitten into a mint leaf. Recalling Japheth’s words about counting down from ten, Anusha quickly re-stoppered the vial. She didn’t feel any different. Had he given her colored water? Perhaps the warlock� everything blurred away. She stood outside the travel chest, intangible as a hallucination. Japheth’s potion wasn’t colored water that was certain. Anusha rushed from the cabin, slap through the door without pausing. The guard dog, Lucky, still standing vigil in the narrow hallway, yipped and wagged his tail. She took a moment to pat his head, saying, “I’ll bring you a treat later, I promise!” She emerged from below the stern deck onto the main deck. The crew stood in disorderly groups, weapons in hand, glancing nervously into the impenetrable vapor that pressed in on all sides. The high masts poked up into a ceiling of white, fluffy film. It was as if the entire ship was cocooned in a great down pillow. Now what? Could she swim in her condition? Walk along � the bottom? Her dream form didn’t need to breathe. She sup-1 posed she could pass through water as easily as solid walls. ,| A crewman at the starboard railing suddenly gasped f out a surprised oath. He pointed over the deck. He yelled, “Something’s coming out of the soup!” Anusha and several pirates joined the man at the Tailing. A woman emerged from the fog. She balanced on some sort of low raft, narrow and long, adorned with a protruding fin like a shark’s. A shape stroked alongside the woman on her strange raft, just beneath the surface, but lingering fog made the swimming thing impossible to identify. The woman was old! Her flesh was sickly and yellow, covered with warts and oozing sores. Her hair was filthy and appeared to be composed of rotting seaweed. The woman’s gruesome appearance pulled a groan of horror from the crew. Several crumpled, as if all the strength fled their limbs, like water pouring from a cup. The newcomer gurgled like a creature on the edge of drowning; it was a titter of delight. The crone locked her gaze on the pirate who’d first identified the old woman’s approach. A red pulse lit her eyes from within, flashing so brightly the scarlet glow illuminated the fog a dozen paces in all directions. The crewman gasped, then fell to the deck, his limbs and head suddenly as loose as a rag doll. He was dead. The remaining crew screamed and bellowed in a decidedly non-pirate fashion. They scrambled away from the railing, knocking into their fellows and, in some cases, trampling them. Anusha was right in among the retreating crew, voicing her own shock and fear, though her voice was lost among the others’ cries. Those who couldn’t run pulled themselves from the ship’s edge. In moments, the only one still by the railing was the one whose heart had been silenced with an evil look. All eyes stared at the railing, silhouetted against the roiling mist, dread thundering in their chests. Anusha listened for more gurgling laughter, or worse, the sound of something attempting to climb the ship’s side, but she discerned only harsh breathing, mumbled prayers, and water lapping against the side of the Green Siren. “Damn me for looking, I told the captain we’d signed scairt children instead of freebooters at our last stop. Looks to me I was right!” came a mocking voice. Anusha turned and saw the hulking first mate, Nyrotha. He stood by the great cavity that connected the lower decks, hands on his hips. “Nyrotha,” pleaded a woman to Anusha’s left. “A… a water witch is in the fog! She snuffed Roger with nothing but a look!” The first mate roared, “Damn Roger, he was a fool anyhow! Now, pay attention, I’m saying this just once: you ain’t paid to whimper and squeal when the Green Siren’s attacked! Get off your butts and repel boarders, you bastard children of diseased mudflats! Draw your weapons and defend this ship, or by Bane’s black nails, I’ll see all of you dance the hempen jig!” Several of the crew, apparently as frightened of Nyrotha as of the creature in the mist, drew their weapons. A few even took a few tentative steps toward the railing. A crunch sounded from below the water line, and the entire ship canted slightly. Pirates shrieked. Nyrotha cursed and strode forward, a great black scimitar clutched in his corded hands. Hands three times as large as the first mate’s appeared on the railing, followed by a hulking body of dark green scales and ropy hair. An overpowering odor emanated from the creature, like a barrel of unpreserved fish left rotting in the dark for three days. It roared, revealing a swath of blackened teeth in which the half-masticated remains of previous meals lingered. The crone Anusha had seen below rode the beast’s shoulders, clutching its ropy hair for balance. “To me!” shouted Nyrotha. The mate engaged the creature. Nyrotha no longer seemed hulking compared to that awful aquatic humanoid menacing the Green Siren. Half the pirates stumbled to help the first mate. Another quarter stood rooted in place, numb with fear. The remainder fled the deck, nearly weeping in their terror. And what shall I do? Anusha wondered. She glanced down on her unreal body, saw she was clad in the noble’s gown she unconsciously seemed to prefer while in a dream. Hardly the outfit of a warrior. She recalled then the panoply of Imphras Heltharn. Imphras was the great war captain who had rid the Easting Reach of hobgoblin marauders three centuries ago, ending the Kingless Years. The old king’s fantastic, golden armor was on display in New Sarshel in the Atrium of the Grand Council. She had looked on it many times. The armor’s significance was one of the bits of historical knowledge that had taken up residence in her memory. Her tutor would be proud. Could she effect a change in wardrobe merely by wishing for it, after the manner of regular dreams? Anusha concentrated. Her gown shimmered and flowed. A tall helm enfolded her head, a slender gorget spread across her throat, wide pauldrons defended and magnified her shoulders, cunningly articulated couters grew from her elbows, fluted vambraces enshrouded her forearms, and a golden cuirass of breathtaking strength and beauty hugged her torso. She flexed her gauntleted hands, articulated with flawless dream joints, and realized she required a weapon. Into her upraised hand flashed a long sword on whose slender blade burned the Marhana family crest. It was the same blade that hung over the fireplace in the great room of the family estate. In life, it was too heavy for her to wield. In dream, it was as light as a switch of hazelwood. She breathed deeply, exulting in the vision in which she’d clothed herself. Enough, she scolded herself. You changed your clothes, that’s all. Accoutered for a fight instead of a noble ball, Anusha advanced on the already raging skirmish. The smelly monster towered over the press of pirates, though several lay broken on the deck. Nyrotha still stood, wielding his scimitar with precision, managing to keep the great beast at bay with defensive slashes and sidesteps. The creature’s scaled arms streamed red from a dozen wounds. The sea hag had dismounted and remained with her back to the railing. The hag gestured with her water-wrinkled hands, chanting in her gurgling voice. The fog above her head stirred. Neither Nyrotha nor the crew noticed; their attention remained riveted on the monstrous, troll-like thing trying to eat them. Anusha traced the fight’s periphery until she reached the railing. Neither pirate nor attackers noticed her new dream form. She halfway wished they could see her fabulous new likeness. Her fear of discovery was vanquished by the elation of her successful transformation. The witch still chanted, and the writhing fog above her head was fast becoming a rotating whirlpool, growing wider and wider. At its center, a red light glimmered. The light reminded Anusha of the illumination that had twinkled in the hag’s eye, only to leap out and steal Roger’s life. This scarlet whirlpool looked big enough to encompass all the ship. Fear found Anusha again despite her armor. The urge to race away or wake up returned. What a mistake waking up would be, she thought. If the ship is holed and sunk, I�ll drown in my own body. Anusha strode forward and raised her dream sword high. Doubt ambushed her, blade still in the air, even as the alarming aerial vortex swirled wider and quicker. The “sword” she held wasn’t even real. She’d pushed things and touched things with her unreal hands. Why not her unreal blade? Why not do more than move them; why not cut them? She had to try to use her sword to affect the waking world. Should she try to imagine the dream blade steel hard and capable of cutting more than phantasms? Would that even work? She didn’t know. No, she decided, I’ll imagine the sword as ethereal as my hand and body, an extension of it. Her dream form could pass through anything, including living creatures, but as she’d learned down in the hold, she also adversely affected anything living through which she passed. Dream flesh and real obviously did not get on too well. Anusha advanced a final few steps and brought the sword down in an awkward slash. At the last instant, the sea witch’s eyes flickered, somehow sensing Anusha’s presence. The hag jerked to the side, but not enough to completely avoid the blow. Anusha’s dream blade grazed the hag’s forehead. A burst of dark blue flame briefly illuminated both witch and armored girl. The hag loosed a surprised howl of agony. The red swirl growing overhead instantly collapsed into so much disturbed cloud-stuff. When Anusha had touched the pirate down in the hold, he immediately collapsed into a quivering, unconscious heap. The witch quivered, yes, and was obviously hurt, but she did not fall. Instead she screeched, “Protect your mother!” The hulking sea monster glanced back, the gnawed boot of an unlucky privateer protruding from its mouth, the battered body of the coxswain in one hand. The monster had been using the screaming coxswain as an improvised club. Nyrotha took instant advantage of the creature’s distraction, making a deep cut across the creature’s stomach. The monster staggered and ichor spurted. It dropped the coxswain. It returned its full attention to the first mate, forgetting its “mother’s” command. For the first time, Anusha thought the pirates might just defeat the creature from the sea. If the sea witch was dealt with, anyhow. The water witch continued to back away from Anusha, her haggard eyes darting this way and that, squinting. She held her hands out in a warding gesture. She screamed out into the fog, “Sisters, I am assailed by a ghost! Gather near, that we may banish it to the Shadowfell from which it strays!” It wasn’t the first time Anusha had been mistaken for an empty spirit. Too bad the witch couldn’t see her new armored splendor. Then she’d know she faced more than a wandering apparition. Then again, when the hag looked at Roger, he’d flopped dead. “Sisters! Return! I am beset!” Anusha followed the retreating witch step for step. Yet she continued to hold her swing. She just couldn’t bring herself to strike down the hag. Anusha intellectually knew the woman was a monster, something that would kill and eat her… but now that she was at the cusp, she couldn’t follow through. If she struck down the hag, would it be an assassination? Would the hag scream and die, kicking? She lowered her sword, indecision growing into anguish. Instead of striking, Anusha said, “If you
promise to leave the ship and depart forever, I won’t hurt you?” Irresolution made her ultimatum a question. The wandering eye of the water witch tracked Anusha’s words. The witch muttered, “Gethshemeth can do worse than kill me. Look into my eyes, and I’ll show you!” Anusha’s gaze unthinkingly darted to the witch’s. The hag’s red eyes flashed the color of fresh-spilled blood. Anusha recognized death itself in that bloody gaze. It grasped her. A wave of nausea visually distorted her dream form, sending cracks and shivers through her. Hopes, memories, and hates dropped from her like dead leaves from a tree in winter. Wake! she commanded herself. Wake up, wake up! She did not wake up. The sea hag’s blazing eye held her rooted in place… or was it Japheth’s drug? He’d told her only to use it when she had a long time to sleep. She wouldn’t escape this peril so easily. Her choice was to kill or die. With dream armor unraveling like funerary linens, Anusha raised her shivering, splintering dream blade and plunged it into the sea hag’s stomach. Real blood spurted from the wound. The witch’s scream possessed a keening, yearning quality that nearly made Anusha pull back. But she persevered. She held her wavering sword so it transfixed the creature from the sea, willing it real and as sharp as a razor for this moment. She plunged the blade deeper, concentrating on its keen solidity. The witch’s final, sorrowful plea for her sisters’ aid trilled out into the fog. Then the hag collapsed and lay without movement or breath. In death she had the guise of a sleeping grandmother, placid and hardly a threat to anyone. Blood trickled from her wound, red as any human’s. The only response the sea hag’s entreaty elicited was the appearance of a swarm of darting bats, which rotated and swirled across the Green Siren from stem to stern. Even as the mist around the ship began to break up, the investigating bats twirled back out over the sea, toward the tower island. ***** “The Green Siren weathered the fog,” reported Japheth, his breath still coming in gasps between his sentences in the fight’s aftermath. “I knew I saw three hags! The one that didn’t attack us tried to scuttle the ship.” “What? What about my ship?” The warlock continued, “Your crew beat the hag.” His eyes remained closed as his servitor bats relayed the image of the wrinkled form crumpled along the ship’s railing, and something dark and large stroking away from the ship toward open water. “A… sea troll? Nyrotha drove some sort of sea monster back into the water. Good thing you left him aboard.” “An accident,” mused Captain Thoster. “The lout was so drunk on grog I couldn’t wake him.” Japheth’s winged servants swarmed through the open balcony window and into his bottomless cloak. Seren, her voice ragged from too many spells, commented, “Nice shawl you got there, Japheth.” He simply nodded. The woman didn’t need to know his cloak’s provenance. Seren stood near Thoster. Not far away, Nogah leaned against a wall, and the two surviving crew members watched the entrance. The unmoving forms of defeated kuo-toa littered the floor and choked the stairs beyond. Among them lay the charred and still smoldering sea witches who were finally downed with Seren’s last impressive spell volley. “We persevered,” said Nogah in her gurgling way. Seren whirled, pointed an accusing finger. “Because of you, we’ve gained the enmity of a great kraken! We did not agree to your ludicrous scheme, but already it sends servitors to eliminate us. I say we kill you now, and show this Gethshemeth we’re not its foes.” The woman looked to the pirate captain for support. Thoster put a hand on the war wizard’s shoulder, “Seren, mayhap we’ll do exactly that, but let’s talk a bit first, eh?” Japheth noticed that, despite the man’s solicitous air, the hand not on Seren’s shoulder rested on the pommel of his venomous sword. Seren huffed, visibly battling her desire to launch a particularly nasty attack on the whip from her armamentarium of spells. Finally, she spat, “So talk.” Captain Thoster nodded and said, “First, I want to know what sub-breed of kuo-toa we just faced? I’ve never seen their like before now.” The whip gave a slow nod, her eyes large compared to those of the many dead creatures lying around them. She said, “Gethshemeth’s doing, using the Dreamheart. It has corrupted their forms. It is a potential I sensed in the Dreamheart, but not one I ever called upon.” The captain frowned, seemed about to ask something else, then thought better of it. Instead he grinned and said, “Consider, all of you. This unprovoked attack is a message. Gethshemeth revealed its hand, so to speak. The great kraken’s afraid! It tried to scare us off, make us let fear drive us the direction Seren suggests we take. It hopes well run with sails at full mast from Nogah. Well, here’s how I see it: the great beast must think we have some chance of succeeding to go to such trouble!” “Rubbish,” replied Seren. “You’re seriously suggesting we engage something so powerful, so prescient, that it knew when and where to attack us even before we agreed to oppose it?” Nogah intruded, “Gethshemeth knew we gathered against it, likely through its study of the Dreamheart. But Thoster is correct. The great kraken knows I held the stone far longer than itself. It knows I have the greater mastery of its power. The closer I draw to it, the more influence I can exert over it and Gethshemeth too. Get me close enough, soon enough, and I can snatch it back! I’ve prepared for nothing else these last several months.” “If you’re so proficient with this rock, how’d the kraken steal it from you in the first place?” Seren countered. “It caught me by surprise. The possibility that something might attempt to take the artifact from me had not entered my calculations. But, as I explained, I’ve been making preparations. Next time I’m close enough, Gethshemeth will rue the moment it stole my birthright!” Greenish spittle flecked the kuo-toa’s wide lips. “Mmmm, yes,” mused Thoster, his zeal of a moment earlier fading somewhat. He looked at Japheth. “What do you think?” Japheth thought it possible Nogah was slightly insane. But he suspected insanity was a common condition among kuo-toa, something they had learned to deal with. The warlock answered, “Both of you are correct. Gethshemeth rightly worries about anything that would oppose it. But how much does it need to worry, really? Its abilities can’t be discounted; a great kraken could easily destroy us.” “Right!” said Seren. “However, despite its already considerable power,” continued Japheth, “Nogah explained the relic Gethshemeth stole could amplify its strength, magnify it so much it could threaten more than the denizens of the Sea of Fallen Stars. I would not like that to happen, if I could stop it.” Thoster smiled. The warlock knew the man didn’t care a whit about the safety of creatures below, on, or beyond the sea, but he was satisfied with the direction Japheth leaned. For his own part, Japheth was nonplussed as he vocalized his concern for others. Must be some remnant of the traveler’s dust talking. On the other hand, if the Dreamheart was as powerful a relic as Nogah claimed, it really wouldn’t do for a kraken to have it. Or, come to think of it, a mad kuo-toa whip. Then again, Lord Marhana wasn’t really a good choice of caretaker, either. No good choices were possible when it came to evil artifacts. Seren realized Thoster, Nogah, and even Japheth were on the same page. She reiterated loudly, “I refuse to be part of this. I will not�” “Then do not!” exploded Thoster. “We three will continue. Go your own way. We’ll find another to round out our number. But you are marked, Seren. The great kraken knows you now. If we fail, Gethshemeth will eventually find you, alone and without friends, and take its vengeance.” The war wizard sputtered her face red as she searched for a retort. Thoster didn’t give her a chance to respond; he regarded Nogah and asked in a voice returned to placidity, “So where is Gethshemeth?” Nogah shook her staff, perhaps connoting anticipation. She licked her lips with a sinuous tongue, and declared, “Thoster, you spoke more truth than you know. You said the great kraken gave us a message with this attack. I agree. It revealed to us that it fears it can be beaten. More than that, it also told us where to begin seeking it.” “Did it?” “The kuo-toa it used to attack us�they are not from Olleth, as I first thought. They bear the tribal markings of the only other kuo-toa colony in the Sea of Fallen Stars.” “Ah, clever of you to notice.” The captain nodded. “Where is this colony?” “These kuo-toa bear the markings of those who went to dwell in Taunissik.” The captain raised his eyebrows and waved his hand for Nogah to explain further. Nogah said, “For all your sea lore, it would surprise me had you heard of Taunissik, Thoster. It is a failed colony, of little consequence. A few hundred dispossessed kuo-toa left Olleth six years back. They were part of a subsect whose charter demands its adherents always seek to expand kuo-toa territory. So they departed Olleth to set up an outpost on a deep atoll. Taunissik, as old morkoth records called it, boasts a massive coral growth on a submerged mountain. Time passed, and no word of the colony’s progress ever came. In Olleth, we thought the colony dead. Apparently, we were wrong to assume Taunissik failed; Gethshemeth found the colony. The colonists were enslaved to the great kraken’s will.” The captain clapped his hands. “Aye! We have another voyage ahead of us! Back to the ship. We set course for Taunissik! Nogah will be our guide.” Seren scowled, but didn’t gainsay the captain. Japheth offered, “I am not a strong swimmer. How much of this colony is under water?” “Worry not, human,” said Nogah. “I have an elixir that will preserve you and the woman, should it be necessary to descend beneath the waves.” “What about him?” asked Japheth, pointing to the captain, whose back was turned as he stooped to retrieve his hat, which had been knocked off in the fight. Nogah shrugged. “Thoster needs no elixir.”