“Uh, did I miss something?” Doc said dubiously. “Did we get killed already and just now woke up in Grixis?”
I extended an arm, and the sculler bent his course toward me. Lacking leisure for haggling, I wasted no time in clambering aboard.
The shadowy cloak turned the infinite black of its hood toward me, and one clawlike hand held the skiff pole vertical, motionless in the water. I extended my right hand for the creature’s inspection, but the sculler did not react.
“What’s going on? Why isn’t it moving?”
“They don’t start until they’re paid.” I touched my left eye. “We’re negotiating the price.”
“This is negotiating?”
I touched my temple with a single finger. “They don’t speak. No one knows if they understand language, or even hear. They don’t make noise of any sort. A habit you should cultivate.”
The sculler did not move.
Two fingers, and still no response.
A glance back to check on the magma scorpion’s progress gave no reassuring news; even though the monster was picking its way with great caution, we had perhaps a minute.
I put four fingers against my temple.
“What do these buggers charge?”
“Something of value.”
“Erm.”
“Something of value to me. Or I would have offered you already.” I laid my whole hand against my temple.
“What’s with the fingers?”
“I’m offering memories.”
“Memories?”
“Five of them. There are some experiences I cherish,” I said. Few enough, but some. “It doesn’t appear to be interested. Nor in my eye, and it doesn’t want my right arm.”
“Neither do you.”
“Which is the problem.” Another glance back, and the magma scorpion twitched its metasoma at me, squeezing a handful of its burning venom from its barb. With a jerk of its tail, it flicked the white-hot glob of magma in my direction.
The venom fell a few yards short. The steam burst it created rocked the skiff.
“How about some of that etherium?” Doc was starting to sound desperate.
“I’ll die first,” I said.
“I can make you-”
“You can make me pass out. Then we both die. Good plan.”
The magma scorpion hurled another glob of venom, which blew apart when it hit the surface of the water and managed to splatter enough of itself up onto the bulwark to start a small fire on the far side. And, apparently understanding that we were not going to be escaping back into Tidehollow, the other magma scorpion had taken to the cavern wall as well, and was working its way toward us rather more swiftly than had its companion.
“Wait-how about the sangrite? You’ve been hauling that chunk of petrified blood from the hells to Grandma’s and back again-it has to be important to you!”
I reached behind my neck and had the etherium deliver the sangrite to my hand, which was as close to admitting he’d had a good idea as I intended ever to come.
As its dull rose glow warmed my hand, the sculler-for the first time in my experience-showed interest in an item before it was even offered. It released its pole and took a step toward me, leaning forward to get a better look. The sculler extended one long-fingered, skeletal hand, as though the creature wished to feel the warmth of the sangrite with its own withered flesh.
This gave me considerable confidence in my bargaining position.
The etherium of my trap device had never been tempered or treated for hardness; it would be useless to try and form it into a blade capable of cutting the crystal. However, the near-infinite ductility of the metal offered an option. One of the hair-thin wires that had been feeding strength to my legs detached itself and quested over the surface of the crystal until it found one of the glowing flaws. There, I had it insinuate itself into the crystal, forcing more and more metal into the flaw until the sangrite cracked, calving a sharp-pointed shard roughly the size and shape of my forefinger.
The sculler’s hand struck like a snake, snatching the shard from the air. It shook its other hand free of its cloak and cupped the crystal with both, bringing it up before the shadow gape of its hood as though entreating the blessing of a holy relic.
A magma bomb now came from the other monster, and this one managed to strike full on the stern, setting the entire rear of the skiff on fire. The sculler didn’t seem to notice; it stood enraptured by the sangrite. I stood, grabbed the sculler’s forgotten pole, and shoved us away from the shore.
“What’s with the boatman?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come again?”
“I don’t know,” I snarled, leaning into the pole to gain velocity. “We have bigger problems.”
The magma scorpions seemed to be unwilling to let us simply float away, even though the aft quarter of the skiff was now burning merrily. They cast aside caution and began scampering after us at a profoundly dismaying speed.
Leaning upon the pole for all I was worth, I managed to get us out through the cavern’s mouth into the echoing reach of the Hollows before the scorpions could catch up-but the Hollows are no place to sail blind. The numberless caves and caverns extend for tens or even hundreds of miles; some are navigable, some are dead ends, and some present in various hazards, from razor-sharp slashcoral to periodic sinkholes and tide spouts.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?”
“Away from the monsters.”
“Well, that’s reassuring. I meant, do you know your way around down here?”
“No.” My breath was going short again, but at least I didn’t have to run anymore. “Nobody does.”
“Oh, great. What about a map?”
“If there were maps,” I wheezed, “no one would need scullers.”
As if triggered by this exchange, the sculler standing at my back suddenly screamed.
The earsplitting shriek it unleashed was like nothing I’d ever heard: a horrible ragged ululation that rose and fell by no pattern I could discern. I discovered that even despite Doctor Jest’s phantom soldier ants, I could distinctly feel every hair on my body attempt to stand on end at once. I was possibly the first living creature in the history of Esper to hear a sculler’s voice… and that voice was eerie as a banshee’s wail and horrible as the death scream of a berserk dragon.
“Uh, yow,” Doc said. “And probably yikes. Plan B?”
Through the rising flames of the stern, I could see the magma scorpions scuttling up toward the gloom- shrouded ceiling. Without the sculler to take us to the open sea, we could only hope to keep ahead of the monsters until the summoning expired. This, given my physical exhaustion and mana-depleted condition, would be more difficult than it sounded-and it sounded impossible. Not to mention the further complication of the skiff being on fire.
On top of all this, the skiff-pole lost contact with the tide pool’s bottom suddenly enough that I very nearly pitched over the side; without knowledge of the caverns’ submarine topography, I had blundered into water too deep for the pole. And there weren’t any oars.
We were adrift.
With a long, slow sigh, I sat down, unshipped the pole, and laid it across my knees.
“What are you doing?”
I was too exhausted to play any more banter games. “Getting ready to die.”
Before either of us could pursue this line of conversation, the sculler suddenly spread its hands, raising them wide to the ceiling as though imploring a benison from some dark god. The ragged edge left its shriek, making it
