Queen of the Depths (3 page)

oval-shaped object sticking up, beyond the float but almost within arm’s reach.

It was the shalarin’s head. The creature had returned and ventured close. Perhaps it reckoned he was finally weak enough to attack without any risk to itself.

The thought stirred the dregs of the resolve he generally felt in the face of danger. He tried to rear up so he could use his hands for self-defense but found he lacked the strength. All he could was flop around a little, like a dying fish in the bottom of a boat.

The shalarin surged up onto the float. The wooden surface rocked, but its new occupant centered its weight before it could overturn.

The creature gripped Anton. He struggled to shake it off but couldn’t manage that, either.

The shalarin rolled him onto his back. They were now closer than they’d ever been before, with no distorting layers of water between them, and despite the dark, he picked out details he hadn’t discerned hitherto. Slim as it was, it had a certain subtle fullness in the area that would be a woman’s bosom, as well as a breadth to its hips, that told him it was a she. Gill slits opened along her collarbone and above her ribs. A round mark—the paucity of light prevented him from making out the color—adorned the center of her brow just below the beginning of the fin. The pendant was a skeletal hand—human, by the looks of it—and she also wore a belt around her narrow waist. Attached were several pouches.

She unlaced one of the bags; extracted something small and roughly cubical in shape; and pressed it to his dry, cracked lips. He found the action mildly reassuring. She probably wouldn’t try to poison a man who was already dying, for what would be the point? The action suggested that, inexplicable as it seemed, she’d finally decided to help him.

Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to understand that his

most pressing need was water, not food. He wondered if his swollen throat could even swallow anything solid without choking. But he’d try. Maybe the pellet, whatever it was, would help him a little, anyway.

When he sank his teeth into it, it burst into fragments and a copious quantity of oil. The liquid tasted so bitter that in other circumstances, he might have spit it out. But when he swallowed some, it assuaged his thirst like water.

He greedily consumed it and the solid matter—some sort of preserved fish?—too. “Thank you,” he gasped.

The shalarin fed him two more cubes then produced a different sort of pellet. It was rounder, tasteless, and as tough to chew as the stalest ship’s biscuit he’d ever sampled. Still, hoping it would do him as much good as the other morsels had, he gnawed until it softened and broke apart.

As soon as he swallowed it, the shalarin gripped him with her long, webbed fingers. She half rolled, half shoved him toward the edge of the float.

“No!” he said. “Wait!”

But she wouldn’t relent. He struggled to resist and in other circumstances might have succeeded. He was an able wrestler and brawler, and his brawny frame surely outweighed her spindly body. But while the pellets had snatched him back from the brink of death, he was still weak as a baby, and his attempts to grapple and punch were pathetically ineffective.

The float tilted beneath him. Clasping him, the shalarin rolled down the incline, and they tumbled into the sea together. Kicking, she dragged him downward.

He kept struggling but still couldn’t break her grip. After a minute the burning in his chest demanded release. He let out the breath he’d clenched in his lungs and gulped in water instead.

It felt different than inhaling air. Water was heavier, more substantial, in his chest. But the sensation wasn’t

unpleasant, and more important, he wasn’t drowning. Something the shalarin had fed him—the round morsel, he suspected—enabled him to breathe. Maybe it helped him to ignore the heightening pressure, too, considering that he didn’t need to pop his ears.

But the magic didn’t help him see. As he and the shalarin descended, the benighted waters rapidly became impenetrable to human sight. He couldn’t even make out his captor hauling him along. It reinforced his sense of utter helplessness—not that it needed reinforcing—and he simply hung limp in the shalarin’s grasp and allowed her to do as she would.

It was cold in the depths, though not insupportably so. Perhaps he had the pellets to thank for that as well. He had the feeling he was drifting in and out of awareness, but the unchanging blackness made it difficult to be certain.

Finally, a soft glow flowered in the murk. Below him stood a vast, intricate riot of coral, portions of it shining with its own inner light. Spires rose, or partly rose, from the tangled reefs like trees mired in parasitic vines. Anton might have assumed the city, half buried as it was, was an uninhabited ruin, except that the bluish cryscoral wasn’t the only source of illumination. Lamps shined in windows and along the boulevards. Altogether, the lights sufficed to reveal the tiny forms of the residents swimming to and fro.

Fascinated, Anton wished the shalarin would swim faster. He wanted to get closer and see more. But he passed out before he could.

Testing his strength and stamina, Anton swam back and forth and up and down at the end of the tether binding his ankle to the marble couch. The leathery cord reminded him unpleasantly of the octopus’s tentacles dragging him down.

Fortunately, barring a ring-shaped scar or two to go with all his others, nasty memories were all he retained from his ordeal. He was whole again, thanks to the shalarin. When he’d seen the skeletal hand hanging from her neck, he’d suspected she was a priestess of Umberlee, and she had in fact employed a cleric’s healing prayers to mend his damaged body.

What she hadn’t done was talk to him. Not once, no matter how he entreated her. Such indifference made him suspect she intended

him for sacrifice or slavery. She was, after all, a servant of the Bitch Queen, goddess of drownings, shipwrecks, and all manner of deaths at sea, a power notoriously malign.

But if she did mean him ill, he didn’t intend to meet his fate like a sheep placidly awaiting the butcher’s pleasure. He didn’t know if he could truly escape, but now that he’d recovered his vigor, maybe he could at least free himself from the rope and find out what lay beyond the nondescript room in which the shalarin had imprisoned him.

Floating in the center of the chamber, he turned his attention to the complex knot securing the cord to his ankle. He’d spent hours picking at it, but it remained as tight as ever. Evidently it bore some enchantment.

With luck, his own magic would counter it. He murmured a charm, marveling once again that he could speak as plainly as if he were on land. In fact, he could function here without much difficulty of any kind. He saw clearly and moved quickly, without the water hindering him. Plainly, the enchantment must have been responsible for that as well, and he wondered if such conditions only prevailed within this one building or if the entire submerged city was equally accommodating.

The knot squirmed and untied itself. He smiled, swam to the doorway, and peeked out into the larger room beyond.

As he’d suspected, it was a temple of Umberlee, dominated by a towering statue of the Queen of the Depths herself. Bigger than a giant, clad in her high-collared cape and seashell ornaments, the deity had risen from the waves to smash a cog with her trident. Sharks cut through the water to seize the mariners toppling overboard.

Smaller sculptures, representations of predatory sea creatures and hideous things that might be aquatic demons, lurked in alcoves. Mosaics depicting Umberlee’s battles against Selune, Chauntea, and other gods adorned the high ceiling and walls. Heaped offerings covered the several altars and overflowed onto the floor.

It was all rather magnificent in a grim sort of way, but somewhat surprisingly, at the moment no one else was here to tend or marvel at the splendor. Anton hesitated then swam to the nearest of the altars to see if some worshiper had given Umberlee a weapon.

A cutlass caught his eye. He pulled the short, curved sword from its scabbard and came on guard, testing the balance and weight. It felt good in his hand, so light and eager that, like his lost dagger, it must have magic bound in the blade. He sheathed it, buckled it onto his belt, turned, and froze.

The shalarin floated in a big arched doorway that likely led outside the temple. In the days she’d tended him, he’d had a chance to observe other details of her appearance. Her dark blue skin wasn’t scaly like a fish’s, as he initially imagined, but smooth like a dolphin’s. The round mark on her brow was red. Here in the depths, she dispensed with her goggles, revealing eyes that were glistening black, all pupil. They gave him a level stare.

“It is death to rob Umberlee,” she said in a cold contralto voice. “Fortunately, you have not. It is her will that you take the blade.”

“You’re talking.”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t before.”

“I did not understand your language and doubted you understood mine. I had to trade for this.” She extended her hand, drawing his attention to a striped tiger-coral ring. “Its magic enables me to speak to you.”

“Oh.” His ordeal and its bizarre aftermath must have muddled his wits because that simple explanation for her silence had never occurred to him. “Lady, I’m grateful for your care, and I mean no harm. I only took the cutlass because it alarmed me that you kept me tied and never answered when I spoke.” She might at least have given him a reassuring pat on the shoulder or something.

“I kept you secured so you wouldn’t wander and come to harm. And because you now belong to Umberlee.”

He hesitated. “Exactly what do you mean?”

“What I say. Tell me your name.”

“Anton Marivaldi, out of Alaghon, in Turmish.” He wondered if the place names meant anything to her.

“I am Tu’ala’keth, waveservant, member of the Faiths Caste, keeper of Umberlee’s house in Myth Nantar.”

He assumed Myth Nantar was the name of the city. He’d heard vague reports of such a place, a metropolis where the various undersea races, and even a few expatriates from the surface world, dwelled together. “I understood that you’re a divine. Are you saying you laid claim to me somehow, in your goddess’s name?”

A glimmering membrane flicked across the blackness of her eyes. Perhaps it was a shalarin’s equivalent of a blink. “Yes. What is unclear?”

“Among my folk, you can’t just take possession of another person, even if you save his life.”

“I did not; Umberlee did.” She waved a hand at their surroundings. “What do you see?”

He didn’t know what she wanted him to say. “Riches. Sacred things.”

“Neglect!” the shalarin snapped. “All the treasures here are old. Who now offers at Umberlee’s altars?”

“In my world, every seafarer who wants to come safely back into port.”

“But few here, where every creature should adore her. I will tell you the tale, Anton Marivaldi, and you

will understand why and how she has chosen you.”

“Please.” He needed to comprehend what she had in mind so he could talk her out of it.

“How much do you know of shalarins?”

He shrugged. “You live in the Sea of Fallen Stars. You’re no great friends to humanity but no foul scourge like the sahuagin, either.”

“We did not always live here. Our race was born in the Sea of Corynactis.”

“I never heard of it.”

“It lies on the far side of the world. Three thousand years ago, some of my folk found their way here. But the mystic gate connecting the two seas closed, trapping them, and so they, and their descendants, were exiled from their home.”

“That’s unfortunate,” he said, but he couldn’t imagine what it had to do with him.

“The exiles endured many griefs and misfortunes. One was losing touch with the gods of their forefathers. Those deities apparently had no interest in Faerun or lacked the ability to project their power into these waters.”

Anton waved his hand, indicating the statue of Umberlee. “It looks as if your ancestors adapted. They started worshiping the gods who rule hereabouts.”

“Yes,” said Tu’ala’keth, “and were surely the better for it, for no deity is greater than Umberlee. Her favor enabled them to prosper. Yet now the faithless idiots turn their backs on her!”

More puzzled than ever, Anton shook his head. “Why?”

“Because two years ago the gate to the Sea of Corynactis opened again—permanently this time.” She smiled grimly, or at least he took it for a smile. He wasn’t sure her changes of expression always signified the same emotions they would in a human face. “That is a shalarin secret, by the way. It is death for you to know.”

“In that case, thanks so much for telling me.”

“You must know in order to understand. Since the gate opened, the shalarins of the two realms can communicate, and with that communication has come a great curiosity, an enthusiasm”—her tone invested the words with bitter scorn—”for the religions of our ancestors, even though those feeble godlings still lack the strength to manifest here. Folk pray to them in preference to Umberlee.”

Anton could understand why a worshiper might prefer another deity—most any other deity—to the savage, greedy Bitch Queen, but saw no advantage in saying so. “Maybe they’ll return to Umberlee once the novelty of the new cults wears off.”

Tu’ala’keth glared at him. “I am a waveservant. I can’t simply wait for them to change their foolish minds. It is my duty to bring them back.”

“With my help?” What in the name of the Red Knight could she possibly be thinking?

“If they weren’t blind and deaf, they would have returned already, gashing their flesh and shedding their blood to beg their goddess’s forgiveness. At her bidding, a host of dragons has banded together and started ravaging Seros, to punish those who failed to give her her due. The entire commonwealth is in peril.”

Anton frowned. “Lady, with respect, for the past few months, something called a Rage of Dragons has been occurring. All across Faervin, wyrms are uniting to slaughter and destroy. The shalarins’ problem isn’t unique.”

“It still embodies the wrath of Umberlee. Otherwise, the army of Seros would have destroyed the drakes, instead of the other way around.”