Queen of the Depths (29 page)

“I’ll deal with it,” he said, spreading his wings.

“Wait, please!” Diero said. “Listen to me. We don’t know why the ixitxachitls attacked us or the full extent of their plans, but if they destroy the work we’ve been doing, it will set us back by months.”

Curse him! He was right again. “What needs protecting most urgently?” Eshcaz asked. “The grand pentacle?”

“Yes. A bit of chiseling at the right point, coupled with the proper counterspell, could ruin it almost beyond repair. I’m trying to head in that direction.”

“I will, too.” Eshcaz glared at the priest of Velsharoon. “Tell everyone I order them back inside to kill more intruders.” He lashed his pinions and sprang into the air.

Tu’ala’keth trembled as Eshcaz burst into the chamber. She reminded herself that she was a waveservant, and her reflexive dread subsided to a degree.

She glanced from side to side. Hunkered on the floor, crouched over their pages from the compendium of priestly magic, the ‘chitls were likely frightened, too. In some cases, their long tails lashed in agitation. But nobody tried to flee.

The red began to charge in eerie silence. That wasn’t his doing but theirs. They’d shrouded his side of the chamber in an enchantment that stifled sound to keep him from reciting incantations.

Perhaps Eshcaz realized what they’d done, for he gave them a sneer, as if to scorn the suggestion he needed sorcery to slaughter tiny creatures like

themselves. Then he bounded far enough to trigger a second ward.

Whoever had originally crafted the ixitxachitls’ book, he must have been a supremely wise and able priest of the sea because he’d stored extraordinary magic in the gemstone lines. A huge wave of saltwater surged up from the dry stone floor and smashed into the dragon. Even his strength, weight, and momentum couldn’t withstand the prodigious force. The wave tumbled him all the way backward to slam against the wall before dissipating into nothingness.

The impact didn’t even stun him, though. He scrambled to his feet in an instant, cocked his head back, and spat a bright jet of flame. The flare rustled as it left the zone of quiet, then hissed explosively when it met the enchantment the invaders had emplaced to counter fire. Blocked short of its targets, Eshcaz’s breath produced a gout of steam at its terminus, as if it had struck an invisible, freestanding wall of water. In a metaphysical sense, that was precisely what had happened.

Tu’ala’keth read the final trigger phrase from one of the pages, and the entire sheet of horn shattered in her grasp. Fortunately, the magic, once unleashed, could strike anyplace, even where silence reigned, and Eshcaz thrashed, stricken.

She’d filled his lungs with water, a bane that ought to kill him, but he mastered his convulsions and retched it forth. Because of the heat in his vitals, most of it burst out in another gout of steam.

By that time, Yzil and another ‘chitl had also conjured attacks. A cloud of luminous blue-green wraiths in the form of sharks appeared with the dragon at their center. They whirled around him biting and tearing until he leaped clear of the effect.

Canny enough to know that particular magic couldn’t shift to pursue him, he paid it no further heed.

Instead he oriented on Tu’ala’keth and the ‘chitls then jerked as the next spell took hold of him. His scaly hide withered, cracking and flaking. But it blurred back to normal a heartbeat later as resilience of soul or body enabled him to withstand the curse.

Enraged, his shark bites bleeding, he hurled himself at his tormentors, and another wave arose and threw him backward. He spat more flame, and it, too, halted short of the mark in a burst of steam.

“By the Five Torments!” cried one of the ixitxachitls. “We’re doing it! We’re killing a dragon!”

Though she saw no point in contradicting it—it would fight better jubilant than afraid—Tu’ala’keth thought its judgment was, at best, premature. For even the supremely powerful magic sealed in the book of horn hadn’t done Eshcaz any serious harm as yet. The second wave, moreover, hadn’t flung him backward as far as the first, while his second jet of flame had shot a little closer before their defense balked it. His exertions were eroding the wards, and it was impossible to guess whether they’d manage to kill him before he succeeded in breaking through.

But in essence, this was a clash between fire and water, and there was no flame Umberlee could not drown. She dragged down the sun and devoured it every night without fail, obliging Lathander, god of the dawn, to craft a new one each morning. If Tu’ala’keth could simply reflect the infinite majesty of her patron, then surely she, too, must prevail. She reached and from somewhere—inside herself or Fury’s Heart, it was ultimately the same thing—flowed the pure cold malice of the Queen of the Depths to steady and exalt her. She searched through the plates of horn for the spell she wanted next.

Diero peeked around the corner just as Hsalanasharanx collapsed with so many writhing, flapping ixitxachitls clinging to her that her serpentine shape was almost indistinguishable. Even so, he expected the green to heave herself to her feet again or roll and crush her attackers. She didn’t, though, and as they sucked and slurped at the wounds their fangs had inflicted, it became apparent she never would.

The magician cursed under his breath. He hadn’t liked Hsalanasharanx any more than he liked—well, any of the wyrms, to be truthful about it—but they were all important to realizing his own ambitions. Besides which, the victorious ‘chitls and their gill-men servitors were blocking yet another route to the grand pentacle.

He wondered if he and Olna, supported by the dozen other cultists who were following them around, could fight their way through this particular clump of invaders. Perhaps, but it would be a messy, time-consuming business. Better to go around if they could.

He and his comrades skulked back the way they’d come, through shadowy tunnels echoing with the muddled roar of combat. It was all but impossible to tell precisely where or how close the sounds originated, and he worried he might turn a corner and find himself instantly caught up in a melee. He knew a spell that could have conjured a phantom to scout ahead for him, and wished he’d had the foresight to prepare it at the start of the day. But who could have predicted insanity like this?

He suddenly felt the pressure of another’s gaze. He pivoted and cast about, but saw only the passageway and the murky irregular mouths of side tunnels and galleries.

“I don’t see anything,” Olna said.

“Neither do I,” he replied. “But somebody was

watching us. He simply ducked out of sight when I turned around.” As both mage and soldier, he’d learned to trust his intuition.

“Do you want to spend time looking for him?” the blond woman asked.

Frowning, he took a heartbeat to consider then said, “No. We have more important matters to concern us. Onward.”

In another minute, they came to point where a lava tube squirmed upward, the ascent steep enough that, at his direction, his followers and captives had chiseled stairs. He listened, trying to determine if any of the ambient noise was filtering down from above, and as usual, he couldn’t tell.

He led his companions upward and—praise be to the Lady of Mysteries!—encountered nothing lurking on the steps to bar the way. The twisting shaft opened onto one of the ledges overlooking the great chamber; after what had felt like hours of fighting and sneaking, they’d finally reached their destination. He raised a hand, ordering everyone else to hold his position, then prowled to the edge of the platform and peered downward.

The vista below was peculiar enough that it took a moment to make sense of it. Acrid smoke and warm, wet steam mingled in the air. Bloodied and to all appearances berserk with rage, Eshcaz beat his gigantic wings and ascended to the high, domed ceiling. But the pinions didn’t rustle and crack or make any sound at all.

Jaws gaping, foreclaws poised to catch and rend, Eshcaz dived at those creatures who were making noise, murmuring ixitxachitls strangely hunkered on the floor, a few terrified gill-men arrayed to guard them, and—Diero blinked. Was that the same demented shalarin who’d intruded here before?

A waterspout whirled up from the stone floor to

intercept the plummeting Eshcaz. It caught him, engulfed him, and whirled him backward before dissipating as suddenly as it had appeared. The red couldn’t sort out his wings and the rest of his body quickly enough to resume an attitude of flight, and he fell ingloriously, slamming down on the stone.

At the same instant, other spells assailed him.

Branching and extending like flowing water, a lattice of ice formed on his skin, binding him, searing his scales with its frigidity, until he flailed and shattered it.

A black cloud boiled into the air above the wyrm. Lightning flared in its belly, and thunder would surely have boomed an instant later except for the field of silence. Rain hammered down, mingled with a harsher liquid that blistered the reptile’s hide.

Diero scowled. He’d wasted a moment in professional appreciation of the rather neat trap Tu’ala’keth and her allies had lain for Eshcaz, and to be honest, in enjoyment at seeing the arrogant dragon discomfited. But it was time to intervene. If the acidic downpour could burn the red, it was conceivable it could mar granite and deface the grand pentacle as well.

Fortunately, with a wyrm to occupy them, none of the sea folk had noticed him perched on the ledge. So long as he was quiet about it, he should be able to conjure without interference, and better still, his foes had emplaced their defenses in relation to Eshcaz on the other side of the hall. He doubted they had anything oriented to deflect an attack striking down from his angle.

Diero extracted a bit of lace from the pocket of his vestments. Tied up inside were bits of phosphorus and saltpeter. He swept the bundle through the proper pass and whispered the appropriate words of power.

Tu’ala’keth burst into flame. She reeled and dropped a stack of clattering rectangular plates. Gouts of fire

leaped from her body to the nearest ixitxachitls and gill-men. They didn’t start blazing like torches in their turn. The spell wasn’t quite that deadly. But the secondary effect did sear whatever it touched, and the creatures thrashed and floundered at the pain.

The black cloud and its downpour wavered out of existence. It had required the concentration of one of the spellcasters down below to sustain it, and Diero had just disrupted that.

He could see that, in their shock, pain, and confusion, the sea creatures hadn’t yet determined where the attack had originated. He should have time to cast another.

It was a burst of glare, and he scrunched his eyes shut so his own magic wouldn’t blind him. Afterward, the rays and fish-men crawled or stumbled about helplessly, so bereft of sight they couldn’t even avoid Tu’ala’keth, still lurching to and fro like a living bonfire. Tendrils of flame lashed out at them whenever they blundered close to her, or she to them.

Diero waved Olna forward. “You see the water creatures,” he said. “They’re helpless for the moment. You make sure they stay that way, and I’ll dismantle the wards they set.” He glanced back at the remainder of his followers. “You fellows, watch for trouble coming up the stairs.”

Anton knew it would be stupid to outdistance his comrades, who possessed no supernatural means of enhancing their vigor and suppressing fatigue, or to make any more noise than necessary. Still it took an effort not to run up the steps.

He and the others had given a good accounting of themselves as they prowled through the caves. They’d killed a fair number of cultists and dragonkin, and

because of his hatred of these particular foes, reinforced by the greatsword’s bloodthirst, he’d enjoyed every second of it.

But such accomplishments paled to insignificance the moment he peeked from one tunnel to the next and sighted Diero, wearer of purple, master wizard, and the whoreson who’d sent him to the rack. Diero had to die, to satisfy Anton’s need for retribution and, quite possibly, to ensure the defeat of the entire enclave of wyrm worshipers.

Peering upward, trying to penetrate the gloom, Anton skulked around a twist and beheld the uppermost section of the shaft, lit by the wavering glow of a single oil lamp set in a nook halfway up. At the top was an opening, and on other side of it, barely visible in the darkness, two men stood gazing downward. They spotted him and started yelling.

Anton charged as best he could, dashing up a crudely chiseled flight of stairs. The shadows above him shouldered crossbows. He bellowed, “Archers!” and threw himself down on the risers. The quarrels thrummed over him, but one thunked into the body of someone at his back. The fellow made a low sobbing sound.

There was no time to turn and find out who’d taken the wound or how bad it was. The erstwhile prisoners couldn’t stay where they were, or the enemy would shoot them all dead. Anton jumped up and scrambled onward.

Figures scurried in the natural doorway above as the crossbowmen, their weapons useless until cocked and loaded once again, yielded their places to two other cultists. The new men pointed spears down at the captives then jabbed with them to bar the way and halt Anton’s ascent.

They had the advantage of the high ground and weapons even longer than the greatsword. So long

as they maintained their current defensive posture, it would be difficult to get at them, but it would be likewise difficult for them to score on Anton. That, however, didn’t matter. Behind them, barely visible between their shifting bodies, a woman with a long blond braid was chanting an intricate rhyme. The spearmen were simply giving her time to complete the spell unmolested.

Anton hacked at a lance. The greatsword sheared through the seasoned ash and chopped the point off. If the spearman knew his business, the remainder of the weapon could still pose a threat but not as deadly a one as before.

Anton paused for an instant, as if he’d overcom-mitted to the stroke and couldn’t come back on guard quickly. The second spearman took the bait and thrust at his exposed flank. The spy pivoted, used the greatsword to bat the lance out of line, and bounded upward, safely past the long steel point. He cut at the cultist he’d just outfoxed, and the dark blade smashed through his ribs and into his vitals.