The water carrying him grew faster and rougher, and several times he was banged against the walls of the passage. He smelled blood in the water and knew it was his own. Once or twice his head struck against the walls of the passage. He felt as if he had lost consciousness, but he could not be sure. When he opened his eyes, everything was exactly the same as it had been: the same hurtling motion, the same blur of water and walls around him.
Faster and faster. Now he had no conception of the speed at which he was traveling. His body felt as if it were being stretched before and behind, as if he were being pulled to an infinite thinness that could only end with him shattering into a myriad of pieces.
From ahead of him came a dim light that grew stronger. Suddenly the rocky walls fell away, and space and light surrounded him.
He looked behind him. A shaft in the dark wall was slowly closing by some unseen mechanism. In a moment the edges ground together with a resounding boom, and the rocky wall looked as impervious as the barrier he'd encountered on the other side of the passage.
How far have I come, he wondered, and where in all Faerun am I?
As far as a preliminary look could tell him, he was in a shallow lake of some sort. Twenty or thirty feet above, the surface was flooded with light, almost blinding to him after the darkness of the passageway. He rose toward it, and hi a moment his head burst above the water.
Nearby was the shore against which soft waves were lapping, while dark firs ringed the water. Their tops whispered softly together and made a kind of accompaniment to the sound of weeping.
Thraxos looked about. Some ten yards beyond the water's edge was an overturned caravan. Smoke smoldered from the ashes of a nearby campfire, while various bags and bundles were scattered roughly about the ground. They had been torn open and the contents plundered-by human robbers, Thraxos suspected. In his travels along the shores of the Sword Coast he'd seen enough to realize the extent of human barbarity practiced against other humans. But where was the crying coming from?
A young girl, scarcely more than eight or nine, her golden hair twisted around a tear-stained face, sat next to two of the bundles. They were bigger and more compact than the others, and it took Thraxos a moment to realize they weren't bundles after all but bodies. From where he floated on the water's surface, he could see the rivulets of red that ran along the stony ground from beneath them and found then- meandering way to the waters of the lake.
Thraxos had little interest in the details of the affair, but he urgently needed to know where his unexpected journey had brought him.
'Hey,' he called softly.
The crying did not cease, so he tried again. 'Hey, there!'
Now the girl lifted her face from her hands and looked about wildly, fear suffusing her face. Thraxos flipped his tail and glided up against the rocks that ringed the lake.
'Girl… where am I?'
She stared at him, her eyes wide, then a fresh storm of sorrow seized her. She threw herself on the mossy ground, kicking her heels, screaming and wailing.
'Stop it!' Thraxos yelled. 'Stop it at once, do you hear?'
His voice, which contained every ounce of force he could put into it, seemed to shock her back to some semblance of calm. She sat up and rubbed her eyes with grubby fists.
'Where am I?' Thraxos asked again.
'Mummy and Daddy are…' Her voice trailed off, and she looked as if she might burst into tears again.
Thraxos's scales itched with impatience, but he tried to keep his voice even. 'Yes. I'm sorry. Were you attacked?'
She bobbed her head. 'Robbers. Mummy told me to hide under the bed in the wagon. I did, and I heard Daddy yelling. Then Mummy screamed, and then the robbers were laughing, and then the wagon fell over and I was under the bed. I almost couldn't breathe. I don't remember anything else for a while. Then I crawled out, and Mummy and Daddy…' She began sobbing again, punctuated by hiccups.
Some part of Thraxos's mind noted that bein knocked unconscious had probably saved the girl's lif The robbers had evidently been in too much of a hun to search the caravan thoroughly. They'd ransacke what they could easily find and fled, leaving the bodic of their victims for whatever scavengers prowled th; land.
The girl had finished her crying and was now lool ing at him more calmly. 'Are you a ghost?'
'What?'
'Are you a ghost?' Her tone was matter of fac 'Mummy told me this grove and this lake wer haunted. We wanted to get through here quickly, bi our horse went away and we had to wait before gettin a new one.'
Thraxos realized that she had no idea of his tru nature. All she saw was the head and shoulders of man protruding above the water. He shook his hea‹ 'No, child, I am no ghost. I do not even know where am. Can you tell me?'
This is the Frahalish Grove.'
The name meant nothing to Thraxos. 'How far ar we from Seros?'
She said nothing, but looked puzzled. Clearly th name meant nothing to her.
Thraxos remembered Narros calling the sea b some other name, the name the surface dwellers i Waterdeep had used. What was it?
The… Sea of… Falling… Fallen Stars. That's i How far from here?'
'A long way.' She shook her tresses briskly. 'A lonj long, long way. We were going to Cormyr. Daddy tol me we wouldn't get there for days and days an days.'
Thraxos looked around him. The lake was really not much more than an extended pond. The far shore, rocky and looking very much like that against which he leaned, was not more than a mile away. He sighed inwardly and tried again.
'How far are we from the Sword Coast?'
She considered gravely. 'Ever so far. My Uncle Aelias lives in Waterdeep, and we never see him because Daddy says it's too far away to travel.'
Thraxos's heart sank. The passage he'd been through, though evidently not a gate in the precise meaning of the word, had deposited him at incredible speed in this lake in the middle of-nowhere. He was trapped here as surely as if he'd swum into a fisherman's net. The passage behind him was blocked. There might, of course, be an exit elsewhere in the lake, but the gods only knew where it would take him.
The girl was watching him with solemn eyes. 'Why don't you come out of the water?' she asked abruptly.
Thraxos ignored the question, and she asked it again more loudly. He turned back to her with a sigh. 'Because I cannot. I am a merman.'
Her mouth fell open, and several high-pitched squeaks emerged before she got her voice.
'Really? I've never seen a merman. My Uncle Aelias says there are mermen who live near Waterdeep and who help protect it. My friend Andriana says that if you catch a merman by his tail he'll give you three wishes, but I don't think I believe that. I mean, if you caught a merman by the tail you'd have to swim faster than him, and no one can do that, because everyone knows that merfolk swim faster than anything, even than fishes, but I don't know about that because I had a pet fish once, its name was Berf-'
'Silence, child!' Thraxos roared. His head was splitting. The little girl stared at him in astonishment for a moment, then burst into tears again.
'Oh, for Tyre's sake!' Thraxos flipped his tail impatiently. 'Child, I did not mean to be angry, but you must understand, I have an urgent message to be delivered to the ruler of our people in the Sea of Fallen Stars. The fate of all Faerun may easily depend upon it, but now I do not see how I am to accomplish this mission.'
Bile rose in his throat. 'They trusted me! They depended on me. I have let them down. That is what they will say of me! They will say Thraxos was given an important task, and he failed miserably. No one ever even found his body. He was lost somewhere in the distant waters of-''
'Wait!'
The little girl had stopped crying and was looking at him again, her eyes large. 'Why don't we take a mount?'
Thraxos shook his head. The pounding behind his eyes grew stronger. He plunged his head beneath the surface, drawing a deep breath of water before returning to the surface. 'What do you mean, child? I have no
