He let his arm drop and said, 'It's a symptom of my withdrawal. Without my pact to hold it in check, the consequences of too much traveler's dust are coming to a head.'
'How long until you succumb?' said Yeva.
'A few days, maybe a tenday…'
Anusha wondered which would happen first, Japheth falling to his addiction or she and Yeva to the Eldest's unremitting wakening.
The thundering, echoing thrum of rushing water fell away to a whisper, still present only because they now recognized it. In the stillness, a different noise became audible-a sucking, sliding sound issuing from the passage below. All turned to see. The faintest glimmer of purple light reflected on the slick sides of a cluster of aboleth eggs down where the tunnel bowed out of sight.
'A lamplighter's coming,' Yeva hissed.
A bluish aboleth rounded the corner, sliding forward on a thin layer of slime. It moved until it reached a stubby obelisk. It touched a tentacle-fin to the obelisk's top, and another purple flame blossomed.
The creature slid around the protuberance and advanced toward them. Everyone took a step back.
Anusha had made herself visible so Japheth could see her, so she knew the creature could see her too. She called her sword and set it aglow with golden light. She raised it, imagining its blaze as bright as the sun.
The aboleth stopped dead in the tunnel. Its three eyes blinked in unsynchronized rhythm. Two eyes swiveled to fix on her, and one stared at Japheth.
Japheth spoke three syllables and thrust his hands forward. Except for the way his fingers shook like the gnarled digits of an old man, nothing happened.
The aboleth's T-shaped mouth opened and it made noises like the sound boots make when walking through mud. Yeva stiffened on hearing the sloshing, sucking noises as if she understand their meaning.
Japheth dropped his hands and shook his head, confused and miserable. 'I… I must find-'
The warlock's foot caught a ridge in the floor and he fell over backward.
The monster rushed forward. Its tentacles lashed across the width of the corridor. Its tri-slit mouth gaped wider, and the sucking sounds transformed into a high-pitched keening. The air around the charging monster churned with a fine mist of slime. Anusha interposed herself between the creature and Japheth. Seizing every advantage, she let go her visibility to waking creatures. She recalled how she'd used her sword against the water- wrinkled hag back on Green Siren and against the black wyrm Scathrys on the kraken's island.
Yeva lurched ahead of the advancing creature until she came even with Anusha. It was obvious the aboleth couldn't see the woman. Anusha whispered, 'Remember, it can't hurt us with a merely physical attack.'
'The tentacles aren't our concern. What worries me is whether we can kill it before its birthing scream quickens too many of these eggs!'
Then the monster was before them. The mucous haze surrounding it whispered around the women with no apparent effect. Anusha brought her dream sword down at an angle. The creature charged full into the intangible blade, forehead first, oblivious to the weapon's presence.
A burst of blue flame limned the creature. Its highpitched utterance paused briefly before resuming. One of the creature's tentacles fell limp, and one of its eyes dulled and closed. But it kept moving toward Japheth.
Anusha instinctively stepped out of its path to its left, Yeva to its right.
As it swept past, Yeva glared at the monster, her eyes achieving a lethal focus. A barrage of rainbow colors swept across the aboleth. It shuddered and twisted as tears and cuts spontaneously appeared on its skin in a dozen places. Dark blood oozed forth to mix with the aboleth's coat of slime.
The aboleth shuddered to a halt mere paces from where the warlock struggled to regain his feet. It began to flail the space around it with its still-functioning tentacles. The few times one swept through where either she or Yeva stood, the creature shuddered. Its keening continued unabated.
Anusha slashed and hewed at the slick bulk with abandon.
'Be quiet!' she yelled, and cut the beast again. Its maddening scream finally began to gutter. 'Anusha!' came Japheth's yell.
She followed the direction of his pointing finger with her gaze, back down the corridor where the aboleth had emerged.
A jelly sac of eggs on the ceiling containing three or four particularly large white orbs was quivering and swinging like a pendulum.
One of the eggs in the mass deflated. A flaccid abolethic bulk slid forth and slumped to the tunnel floor. Then another. And another. Two were nearly as large as the aboleth she and Yeva had just dispatched, and one was only half that big. But the smaller eggs also gave up their progeny, producing toy-size aboleths that plopped directly onto their larger siblings or slid down the walls on either side.
The creatures jerked and shuddered, slowly blinking their newborn eyes. They righted themselves within the corridor, flexing their slug bodies and grabbing with their questing tentacles. They looked like nothing so much as a writhing swarm of worms.
Then each and every one cried out, keening like the first one they'd just slain. The sound nearly dashed Anusha from her dream body. Up and down the corridor, the egg sacks that hadn't reacted to the first aboleth's scream twitched and shuddered.
'Run!' she shrieked. She needn't have said it. Yeva and Japheth were already dashing away up the corridor.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Green Siren, Beneath the Sea of Fallen Stars
Seren entered her cabin, closed the door behind her, and slid the latch. She was alone again. Finally.
Her cabin didn't rate a porthole. Part of the compensation she'd received when Thoster retained her services was a space to call her own. On a ship packed with cargo and crew, privacy was a luxury. She'd argued that if anyone needed time by herself, it was a wizard. Thoster had relented but given her the smallest, meanest cabin on Green Siren. Truth was, she was glad to be without a porthole. A window, even on the sea, would have been one more place the world could spy on her. Even though she no longer did Thoster's bidding, she held on to her room.
With a wave of her hand, she illuminated the confined space, revealing a table and stool, a bunk, and a narrow wardrobe crammed into the far end of the cabin. Scrolls, tomes, charts, and diagrams were heaped on the table. Chalk marked the walls, and dried ink dribbled the floor.
Seren settled on the stool and closed her eyes. She could only stand the company of others so long before she needed to get away. Her basic dislike of people was something she previously hid, but on a ship filled with pirates, no one really cared that she kept to herself. Concealing her distaste for company hadn't been necessary since she'd left the Red Wizards.
She snorted. She hadn't left willingly. She'd been the victim of circumstances beyond her control. How could anyone have predicted the Spellplague would sweep across Faerun when it did? No one could have. But she was being held to account for it regardless.
Seren seemed to have a knack for collecting ungodly powerful enemies. First Szass Tam, then Gethshemeth… and soon enough, probably this Eldest monstrosity Raidon described.
From his place in the circle on deck, the monk had claimed a couple hours of descent lay ahead of Green Siren.
Time enough for her to sneak a nap, she'd thought.
Of course, now she was too keyed up to sleep.
Seren sighed and rose. She turned to the wardrobe and opened it. Her assortment of personal effects hung from the wooden rod or lay folded on the standing closet's single lower shelf. Everything was white, including her spare sari, a long leather coat, a robe, and extra sandals and boots. Everything-except for one heavy crimson robe.
Seren ran her hand along the red robe's dramatically flaring collar. She recalled how much she'd enjoyed wearing the colors of Thay's elite wizard body. People made way for her based solely on her association with the
