Shadowbred (4 page)

As one, the crew of Night’s Secret backed away from the rail. Sailors exchanged alarmed glances.

“Steady, seajacks,” shouted the captain. “We’ve a sound ship under our feet and two princes of Shade aboard. Steady.”

“We have him,” Brennus said, and leaned over the railing.

Rivalen was uncertain.

The red glow flared as the kraken broke free of the net, shot upward, and breached the sea. A glistening, dun-colored mountain of flesh exploded out of the water. Spray flew as high as a bowshot into the sky. Tentacles as tall as towers squirmed into the air and blotted out the stars. The tatters of the net of shadows clung to the massive limbs and dissipated into nothingness.

The crew of Night’s Secret shouted in terror. Crossbows twanged but the bolts were too small to affect the kraken. The roiling sea set the ship to rocking, nearly tossing Brennus overboard. Rivalen grabbed his cloak and jerked him backward. Brennus steadied himself on the gunnel and cursed.

“At your stations, seajacks!” Captain Perin shouted. “At your stations! Harpooners to starboard!”

The tentacles retreated under the sea and the head of the kraken— sleek despite its enormousness—broke the surface. Rivalen saw what he had never expected to see outside of Shade Enclave: a Netherese mythallar.

Another shriek from the kraken split the night.

The glowing, crystalline shard of the mythallar, as big as a mature oak, stuck out of the kraken’s head like an enormous unicorns horn. The creature’s flesh had grown over to enclose the huge crystal.

One of the kraken’s huge eyes—partially visible above the waterline—fixed on New Moon, and the great creature dived under the surface. The mythallar’s glow highlighted the kraken’s form in silhouette. Its massive size surprised even Rivalen.

With a single undulation of its body, the kraken darted like an arrowshot toward New Moon. The panicked shouts of the crew carried over the water.

Brennus began a series of complex gestures and incanted the words to a spell to blast the kraken with dark energy. Rivalen took hold of his brother’s hands and interrupted the spell.

“No. You could damage the mythallar.”

Brennus’s eyes flared. “Those are worshipers of Shar, brother. Men serving us.”

“I know.” But Rivalen also knew that he could not risk the mythallar. He needed it; Shar needed it.

The kraken plowed into New Moon without slowing. The ship, a three-masted caravel from the Pirate Isles, disintegrated in a cacophony of cracking wood, roiling water, screaming men, and the shriek of the kraken. The creature dived under again, circling below the floating debris.

Flailing men and hunks of broken ship dotted the sea’s surface, lit from below by the light of the mythallar. The kraken’s silhouette glided under the men. They screamed in terror.

The crew of Night’s Secret watched it all in fearful, silent awe.

“My princes,” shouted Captain Piren, the fear evident in his tone. “No ship on the sea can outrun that beast.”

“We are not running, Captain,” answered Rivalen over his shoulder.

Two harpooners hurried to the rail. Rivalen eyed the powerfully built men bearing iron pikes tipped with sharpened hooks. Rivalen waved them back. Harpoons would not harm the kraken. Nor would

most of his spells, at least not before the creature could destroy the ship. He would have to try something else.

The kraken swam under New Moons surviving crew and jerked several of the men under the waves. They left behind only ripples; they did not even have time to scream. The kraken abandoned its sport with New Moons survivors and turned toward Night’s Secret.

The wide eyes of Night’s Secret’s crew darted back and forth between the onrushing kraken and the two princes of Shade. Rivalen felt Brennus’s gaze on him, too.

“See to the rescue of Moon’s survivors,” Rivalen said. “At least a dozen men are still in the water. Use the elementals.”

Brennus cocked his head in puzzlement. “What do you intend?”

“To end this,” Rivalen answered, taking his holy symbol in hand.

Brennus grabbed him by the wrist. Shadows coiled around them both.

“This is not a time to test your faith, Rivalen. A stronger shadow net might hold it still.”

Rivalen removed his brother’s hand from his arm. He had made a lifelong habit of testing of his faith, and Shar had rewarded him for it. He saw no reason to change his practice.

“No net will stop it, Brennus. But faith will. Watch.”

With that, Rivalen spoke an arcane word and empowered himself to fly. He stepped off the deck and streaked toward the kraken. The dorsal hump of the creature’s body rose above the surface, so large it could have been an island. The glowing mythallar spike rose from the sea like a standard and led its charge.

Rivalen felt the weight of the enormous creature’s gaze, but answered with his own. The kraken’s body pulsed, churning the sea behind it, and accelerated toward him. It shrieked from an unseen beak.

Rivalen pulled up, hovering just above the surface of the sea. He recited a prayer to the Lady of Loss and felt her presence near him, frigid and calm. He took comfort. He was her instrument and would not fail.

Drawing on the Shadow Weave—Shar’s Shadow Weave—he

spoke the arcane stanza for one of his most powerful charms. He completed the spell as water and tentacles exploded out of the sea and reached for him.

Rivalen’s magic reached into the mind of the kraken, established a link between man and beast. The spell pitted Rivalen’s will against that of the kraken.

“Stop,” Rivalen said, and the spell sent his voice careening through the corridors of the kraken’s brain.

The creature’s mind and comprehension were as immense as its body. The kraken had lived centuries, spent decades in contact with the sentient mythallar, learning, growing, knowing. Its mind was keen, incredibly powerful.

But it was no match for Rivalen Tanthul.

Rivalen had lived for millennia, had learned spellcraft at the sides of the most powerful arcanists Toril had ever known, had survived the horrors of the Plane of Shadow for centuries, had battled the primordial malaugrym on their home plane, had melded his physical body with the stuff of shadow, had served and continued to serve as high priest to one of the most powerful goddesses in the multiverse.

The kraken’s mind quailed before Rivalen. The huge creature submitted and stopped.

Rivalen hung in the air, surrounded on all sides by tentacles as thick as wine vats. He could have reached out and touched them. They smelled of fish and the sea. Suckers dotted the limbs, each of them as large as a war shield.

“Lower your limbs and be still,” Rivalen ordered.

The tentacles sank into the sea and the kraken held its position below him. Rivalen reached into the kraken’s mind and learned its name: Ssessimyth.

Behind him, the crew of Night’s Secret cheered and praised Shar. A cloud passed before Selune, obscuring its light. Rivalen knew it to be a sign of his goddess’s approval.

He looked over the sea to the survivors of New Moon and saw the water elementals scooping them up in turn, bearing them toward Night’s Secret. More than half the crew of New Moon had been lost

to the kraken. Rivalen felt pangs of regret. They had been loyal servants.

He flew along the kraken’s body until he reached its head. There, he studied the mythallar. The flesh of the kraken’s head grew along much of its length, and the open wound and folds of rubbery skin out of which the crystal protruded looked swollen and inflamed. Removing it from the creature would be difficult and painful for the kraken, but probably not fatal. That was well. Rivalen was certain he could find a use for the enspelled creature.

Rivalen found the swirling whorls of color within the artifact’s crystalline depths seductive, hypnotic. He lowered himself and placed a hand on it. The shadows around his body swirled about him defensively. The kraken spasmed as though startled.

“Be still,” Rivalen commanded the creature, and it was.

You are the Source, he projected to the mythallar. Do you understand me?

No response.

He frowned. He had neither the time nor the resources to spend repairing another mythallar. The arcanists of Shade Enclave had only recently repaired the damage Mystra’s Chosen had done to his own city’s mythallar.

Brennus, powered by his own spell of flying, flew out to him. The two brothers hung in the night air over the subdued kraken, in the light of the mythallar, while the crew of Night’s Secret took aboard New Moons survivors. Brennus eyed the kraken and shook his head.

“Shar favors you indeed, brother. Forgive me for doubting.”

Rivalen waved away the apology and ran his fingertips over the mythallar. His touch left fading streaks of shadow on the glowing crystal.

“I tried to contact it and received no response. It does not appear damaged. What can you see?”

Brennus cast a series of divinations. With each spell, his expression showed increasing puzzlement.

Rivalen knew his brother could study a subject for tendays at a time. “Speak, Brennus. What is it?”

Brennus shook his head. “I am not certain. The mythallar is weakened, though it appears to hold enough power for our purposes. But…”

“But?”

“But I cannot elicit even a superficial response from the sentience. For the moment, it’s as inert as any other mythallar.” Rivalen frowned. “Has its mind been destroyed?” Brennus shook his head.

“No. The intelligence still exists. My spells detect the mind. But it is … torpid.” He looked down on the mythallar in puzzlement. “As if hibernating.” He looked at Rivalen. “To heal, perhaps?”

“Can we awaken it?”

Brennus shrugged.

Rivalen offered his disappointment to the Lady of Loss as sacrifice. Even if the mythallar’s sentience was forever lost, the crystal might still be used.

“It can serve our purpose, asleep or awake.”

Brennus nodded absently, still puzzling over the mythallar.

“I am going below,” Rivalen said.

Brennus cocked an eyebrow and looked at his brother in astonishment. “Below? Now?”

Rivalen nodded and removed the ancient Sakkoran coin from his pocket. Thousands more were probably scattered on the sea floor. If he found a quality specimen, perhaps he would add it to his collection.

Seeing the coin, Brennus jested, “I do not think the kraken will charge you a fee for transport.”

Rivalen smiled and said, “I want to see the ruins.” Brennus grew solemn, nodded.

Rivalen lowered himself onto the kraken’s head. Ssessimyth’s flesh was rubbery, cold, and slick, but Rivalen sat on his knees and kept his balance. He took his holy symbol in hand and offered an imprecation to Shar. Magic coursed through him and the tingle in his chest told him the spell had taken effect—he could breathe water.

He followed with the arcane words to another spell and when he felt the magic charge his hands, he spun shadows from the air and

shaped them with his fingers into a short rope and a barbed piton as long as his forearm. By the time he was done, both were as solid as if they were real.

“What are you doing?” Brennus asked, but he must have guessed, for he floated backward a few paces.

“Remain still,” Rivalen ordered Ssessimyth, and he drove the shadow spike deep into the kraken’s flesh. The gargantuan creature seemed not to notice. Rivalen looped the rope of shadows through the piton’s eye and held both ends in his hands.

Brennus shook his head and smiled. His fangs—a royal affectation—glinted in the starlight.

“Descend to the ruins,” Rivalen said to Ssessimyth.

The kraken immediately dived under the surface and shot downward like a bolt from a crossbow. The terrific speed almost stripped Rivalen from his perch, but his great strength, enhanced by the darkness, allowed him to keep his hold on the shadow rope. He expelled the air from his lungs and inhaled to fill them with water. The ever-present shadows around him held the cold and pressure of the depths at bay.

Led downward by the soft red glow of the mythallar, the kraken dived for the bottom of the Inner Sea toward a city that had last been in the light of the sun over two thousand years earlier.

The silence and isolation underwater surprised Rivalen. Sediment clouded the sea, probably churned when the kraken had left the bottom. It was like moving through mist. Rivalen could see only a short distance in front of him despite the light of the mythallar.

After a time, the kraken leveled off, partly rolled its body, and began to wheel a slow circle. Rivalen clutched the rope, leaned over, and looked down.

The ruins of Sakkors materialized out of the misty murk like a specter. The destruction shocked Rivalen. The inverted mountaintop upon which the flying city had stood had come to rest on its side. The position made the once-horizontal plateau into a vertical cliff. Caves in the cliff suggested the activity of creatures, but Rivalen saw no life. Perhaps whatever creatures had lived there had moved on or died.

The sideways landing had dumped the city off the plateau. Thousands of buildings lay in a heap on the sea floor at the base of the artificial cliff. Rivalen recognized the outlines of some of the structures—the shattered dome of the temple of Kozah, the once-tall spire of Xolund’s tower. Rivalen wondered what Xolund s final thoughts might have been as his city fell into the sea. He wondered what the Source’s thoughts must have been. He shook his head and remembered a day, thousands of years earlier, when he had walked the streets of Sakkors, when he had taken counsel with Xolund himself. Sakkors had not been as grand as Shade Enclave, but it had been a beautiful city nevertheless.

And it would be again.

Rivalen thanked Shar for sparing Shade Enclave the fate of Sakkors. He promised her that he would resurrect the sunken city. He would bring it up from the bottom and back into the air, just as Shade Enclave had emerged from the shadows to fly again in Faeriin’s sky.

Through the mental connection of his spell, Rivalen willed the kraken to move closer. He longed to examine the mountaintop in more detail.

The powerful magic that had first severed the top of the mountain from its root appeared also to have preserved it nearly intact, despite the impact and the passing of years. This bade well. The Shadovar of Shade Enclave could repair a damaged mythallar, could use magic to rebuild a city in a month, but Mystra’s Denial—an edict issued by the goddess of magic in response to Karsus’s Folly, an edict that prohibited the casting of certain powerful spells once common in ancient Netheril—made it difficult and costly for even the most high to cast the spell necessary to remove the top of a mountain and use it as a base for a floating city. Mystra’s Denial meant that the empire could never be fully replicated.