Queen of the Depths (17 page)

Her eyes seething with shadow like the greatsword, Shandri struck blow after furious blow, until Anton’s arm felt half-numb from the stress of parrying. It seemed impossible that anyone could hit so hard with

such a ponderous blade and recover quickly enough to attack again just an instant later. He realized he’d never seen the pirate wield the living sword in actual combat, when she and it were united in their avidity for the kill. He hadn’t understood what a fearsome weapon it truly was.

She was pressing him so hard that already, it was difficult to attack or riposte, and if anything, she kept striking faster and harder, as if battle-rage were making her steadily stronger when by all rights, she should be tiring.

To make matters even worse, she was using the superior length of her weapon to good effect, keeping a measure that allowed her to attack him but not the other way around. He needed to adjust, to slip inside the critical space where his cutlass could cut and stab but a greatsword was unwieldy.

He parried repeatedly, looking for the opening he needed—until a sweep of the dark blade snapped his own in two, leaving just a jagged stub protruding from the bell guard.

Shandri laughed and sprang at him, swinging the greatsword at his neck. He blocked with the shattered cutlass—until the bell crumpled or broke beneath her hammering blows, it could still serve as a makeshift buckler—and snatched a dagger from his sash.

It was a pathetic weapon compared to the greatsword, especially considering that, by pushing him so relentlessly, Shandri wasn’t even permitting him to shift it to his right hand. But it was all he had left.

“I love you,” he said and, hoping the words might make her hesitate for a split second, lunged. Shandri instantly took a retreat, opening up the distance again, and the greatsword leaped at his belly. Somehow he stopped short, and the stroke whizzed harmlessly by. He blocked the next one with the broken cutlass.

Such good fortune couldn’t last. She was going to

penetrate his guard eventually, most likely within the next few heartbeats. He risked another glance at Tu’ala’keth, and saw she was still in no position to help him. A couple of her opponents sprawled on the ground, dead or incapacitated, but the rest were still assailing her, and one of Sealmid’s arrows was sticking through her bloody calf.

Anton would have to save himself, and it was plain his combat skills were insufficient. He supposed that left sorcery.

The problem was magic would require him to focus his attention on the intricate business of conjuring, which was all too likely to slow his reactions as he tried to parry and dodge the greatsword. But still, it seemed his only chance.

He threw the knife at Shandri’s head, but it flew wide of the mark, and she didn’t even bother ducking. He told himself it didn’t matter. The real point had been to free up a hand. He reached into his pocket, fumbled out his bit of ram’s horn, and she feinted high and cut low. He recognized the true attack just in time to leap backward and avoid a fatal chop to the guts. Still, the dark blade sliced his arm. His fingers flew open, and he dropped the spell trigger.

The greatsword pounced at him. It was a blur now. It was like dark lightning flickering in an infernal sky. He realized he had no more time to grope for and manipulate another talisman, even if she’d permit him to hold on to it, nor could he possibly stand still long enough to execute any sort of cabalistic pass without her burying the sentient blade in his body. His only hope was a spell purely verbal in nature.

He couldn’t believe it would actually save him, but he gasped out the rhyming words. The greatsword leaped at him, and as he’d feared, with his attention divided, he failed to defend as nimbly as before. He caught the blow on the ruined cutlass, but the

dark blade smashed through the battered guard and sheared deep into his arm just below the wrist.

Perhaps because of the virulence in the living sword, the shock of the blow, harbinger of pain to come, was nearly enough to arrest thought. Nearly, but he wouldn’t let it ruin the spell. He fought to maintain the cadence, to enunciate precisely, to grit the remaining syllables out.

Magic sighed through the air, and responding to the charm of opening, each of Shandri’s many bracelets and necklaces unfastened itself to drop clinking and glittering to the ground. The diamonds even fell away from her earlobes.

Anton had suspected that even if he managed to complete the spell, it wouldn’t matter. Furious as she was, she wouldn’t care when the baubles dropped off. She might not even notice.

Yet she did. Maybe it was because she so loved the jewelry or simply because she was so surprised, but she stopped attacking. She took her eyes off her adversary to glance down at the treasure strewn around her feet.

Anton rushed her.

The greatsword cut at him but too late. At last he was too close for it to threaten him. He drove the broken cutlass at Shandri’s face, half slashing with the jagged stump of blade and half bashing with what remained of the bell. He grabbed her, hooked his leg behind her, and threw her down. The back of her head cracked against the ground. He cut at her neck, and his ruined sword made a ragged cut. Blood gushed. The pirate thrashed for a moment, and she was gone.

Panting, Anton looked around. Tu’ala’keth was still fighting, the outcome of the battle still in doubt. He twisted the greatsword’s hilt from Shandri’s death grip.

As soon as he grasped it himself, a surge of gleeful

viciousness washed away his weariness and the throbbing in his wounded arms. For a moment, the influx of the greatsword’s savagery sickened him, but he accepted the contamination anyway because he suspected that, in his spent and injured condition, it was only by surrendering himself to the weapon’s bloodlust that he could prevail.

He jumped to his feet and charged Sealmid. The bowman was aiming another shaft at Tu’ala’keth but must have glimpsed Anton from the corner of his eye, because he pivoted and sent the arrow streaking directly at him.

Anton should have died then, pierced through the heart. But the greatsword, of its own volition, shifted across his body and knocked the arrow off course. Anton struck Sealmid down, and felt an exultation as the blade bit deep. He jerked it free and turned to find the next foe.

After that, he lost himself in the dizzying joy of slaughter. Until only one target remained within reach. He raised the sword to cut it down.

“Enough!” said Tu’ala’keth. “I am your comrade. The fight is won.”

With that, he recognized her but yearned to kill her even so. Fortunately, though, revulsion at the cruelty welled up from deep inside him, a sort of counterweight that enabled him to push the alien passions back into the sword. He threw the weapon down, sensing a twinge of its irritation just as it left his hand.

“Umberlee has blessed us,” the shalarin continued. She knelt, gripped the arrow transfixing her leg beneath the point, and drew the fletchings through the wound. “We were outnumbered. I had not wholly recovered from my mistreatment at Vurgrom’s hands. Yet we are victorious.”

“For now,” whispered Sealmid, still lying where he’d fallen. Anton was surprised the first mate was alive,

but it was plain he wouldn’t be much longer. Blood soaked his clothes from neck to crotch, and more of it bubbled on his lips.

“What do you mean?” asked Tu’ala’keth.

“Vurgrom’th thending everybody to kill you bath-tardth, not … jutht uth. Had to round everyone up,

haul them out … of the tavernth, but____” The dark

froth stopped swelling and popping in his mouth.

Anton found it easy enough to complete the dead man’s thought. “But by now, Vurgrom’s got men patrolling the waterfront to cut off our escape. Curse it, anyway!” He gripped the more serious of his gashes in an effort to stanch the bleeding.

“After I heal my leg,” said Tu’ala’keth, “I will help you with that.”

“Do it fast. We need to move away from here. Somebody else may have heard Shandri yelling, or all the commotion afterwards.”

“Where shall we move to?”

“Good question, considering that the whole island hates a spy.” But wherever they went, he meant to go well armed. He stepped over the greatsword to examine one of the pirate’s cutlasses.

Tu’ala’keth rose stiffly to her feet. “Take Shandri Clayhill’s sword.”

“It clouds my mind.”

“It purifies you. When you hold it, you are truly fit to serve Umberlee. It would not surprise me to learn that some of her worshipers here on land had a hand in the forging of it.”

“Then they can have it back.”

“It is the finest weapon here. You are too shrewd to spurn such an instrument.”

He realized with a pang of resentment that she was right. He survived by his wits and shrank from using any magic that could muddle them, but in the present desperate circumstances, the greatsword might prove

more useful than any lie or ruse. He still chose a cutlass, but when he and Tu’ala’keth skulked onward, he carried the living blade, drowsing in its scabbard once more, as well.

<§>ŚŚ<§>Ś ŚŠŚ

Teldar gazed out over the entertainments his largess had provided, at his followers guzzling grog and ale, gnawing chicken legs and slabs of pork and beef, ogling and pawing the dancing girls, and flinging clattering dice or slapping cards down on a tabletop in a game of trap-the-badger. As the clamor attested, everyone was having a good time, and he reckoned he’d lingered long enough to play the part of a proper pirate chieftain. Now he was free to retire to diversions more in keeping with his own humor, a volume of old Chon-dathan verse and a dram of cinnamon liqueur.

He pushed back his chair, nodded goodnight to anyone who might be looking in his direction, and exited the hall. Outside in the lamp-lit gloom of the corridor, the relative quiet and fresh air, untainted by the odor of dozens of sweaty, grubby reavers packed in too small a space, came as an immediate relief.

He took a deep breath, savoring the moment. Then Anton Fallone—if that was his real name—stepped from a doorway farther up the passageway. Teldar reached for the hilts of his short sword and poniard, drew them, and came on guard. He accomplished it all in one quick, smooth motion, as a master-of-arms had taught him in another life, more years ago than he generally cared to recall.

“You don’t need your weapons,” Anton said.

“What are you doing here?” Teldar asked.

The younger man grinned. “Well, you did tell me I’m welcome anytime.”

“That was before Vurgrom put out the word that

you and the shalarin are spies. Where is she, by the way?”

“Hiding outside. I reckoned that even if one of your people spotted me sneaking in, he might not take any notice if I just kept these hidden.” He pushed back his scarlet cape and lifted his arms, displaying torn, bloodstained sleeves and the scabby gashes inside. “But Tu’ala’keth’s harder to overlook.”

“What do you want?”

“Could we talk about it in here?” Anton nodded toward the doorway through which he’d just emerged. “It’s a nice room and more private than a corridor in a busy house.”

Teldar frowned, pondering. All he had to do was shout, and his men would come running to take Anton prisoner. Then he could question the spy in complete safety. Yet his instincts told him the intruder meant no harm, and even if he did, the pirate was confident of his ability to handle a lone assassin. So, as Anton had piqued his curiosity, why not grant him a private conversation? At the very least, it promised to be interesting.

“After you,” Teldar said.

As Anton had said, it was a pleasant room, with shelves of fragrant leather-bound logs and rudders taken from scores of prizes, framed charts from places as far away as Lantan decorating the walls, and a lanceboard with its sixty-four squares of alternating red and white. The chessmen sat neatly centered in their starting positions, ivory on one side, carnelian on the other.

“All right,” the pirate said. “You’re a spy. For Impiltur, Cormyr, or whomever. I suppose you and your accomplice have gleaned the most about Vurgrom’s business, but you’ve had ample opportunity to pry into my affairs, and the dealings of all Immurk’s Hold, as well. Should you escape to report your findings, you

could do all us reavers incalculable harm. Perhaps you even know the disposition of the breakrocks, and the rest of our defenses. Maybe you’ve stolen all the secrets your masters need to launch a full-scale assault on Dragon Isle. What, then, can you possibly expect from me?”

“You’re a shrewd, careful man, and you built this fortress. Accordingly, I suspect it has an escape tunnel, with a well-provisioned sailboat at the end. If you saw fit, you could help Tu’ala’keth and me get away, and even your own followers—who, I realize, might take exception—would know nothing about it.”

Teldar snorted. “I could also stick feathers in my ears and squawk like a gull. But it’s unlikely.”

“Look,” Anton said, “you’re right: I am a spy. I’d deny it if I thought it would help, but I can tell the game is up. I’ve worked against you pirates for a while now. The intelligence I’ve gathered has sent your ships to the bottom and their crews to the gallows.

“But I swear on the Red Knight’s sword, this summer, I have a different target: the Cult of the Dragon.”

“Then why trouble Dragon Isle?”

“Because it was a way to pick up their trail.”

“And did you?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. My next move is to make my report. Then my superiors will send a fleet to wipe the madmen out.”

“Interesting, but I’m still unclear as to why I should help you. You’re a dangerous man, and have, by your own admission, injured me in the past. It would be sensible to ensure you won’t do so again.”

“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you. But this is a unique time. Do you understand the cult’s ultimate goal?”

“To turn live dragons into undead ones?”

“Yes, and this is their moment. As I understand it, wyrms who haven’t yet contracted frenzy are scared

of getting it, and changing into dracoliches renders them immune. So they’re seeking out the cult in record numbers, and the necromancers and such are making a supreme effort to transform them as quickly as possible. By the end of the year, we could have a dozen dracoliches bedeviling the Sea of Fallen Stars. Maybe more. Imagine what that would do to your business.”