“No. But I won’t stand here and be threatened so casually. Why did you bring me here?”
For just a moment, an almost imperceptible smile curved the Blue Lady’s lips. “You should be very afraid of me.”
“Lady, I am,” Shang-Li said honestly.
She gathered her seaweed cloak and turned again to walk down the broken crags. “Come. I would show you something.”
Shang-Li forced himself to breathe out. He had fully expected the Blue Lady to strike him down as she had the plant and the shark. Nearby, sea currents tore the burned plant to black ashes that floated away. Overhead, the living sharks ripped gobbets of flesh from the dead one.
When he followed the Blue Lady, it was with a mixture of fear and curiosity. The latter had always been the one that had gotten him into the most trouble.
Shang-Li trailed the Blue Lady by a few steps. He gazed in wonder all around him as he saw the strange plants mixed in with the dead trees.
This land isn’t from the sea bottom, he realized. He thought of the Spellplague and how the two worlds had been torn apart and put back together again.
“Where did this place come from?” he asked.
“From my home,” the Blue Lady answered. She walked alongside a sunken cog buried prow first in the soft sand of the sea bottom. Her boots stirred up puffs of sand that eddied on the current.
“Lady, where is your home?”
“Far.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Very far by human standards. But I want to go back.”
Shang-Li gazed out across the dead wilderness now filled with sea. “Did no one come with you?”
“No one.” Her voice hardened. “Make no mistake, manling, I need no one.”
Despite the delicate nature of his situation, Shang-Li couldn’t help asking another question. “Then why did you take Bayel Droust and the ship he was on?”
The Blue Lady stopped near a huge dead tree that was at least five or six men thick. Its gnarled roots showed through the sand surrounding it, but it looked unsteady enough to fall over at any moment. She turned and stared at Shang-Li.
“Because Bayel Droust had something I wanted,” the Blue Lady answered. She folded her arms over her breasts and for a moment Shang-Li forgot that she was so dangerous and thought of her only as a beautiful woman. “I have taken other ships over the years. His was not the first, nor was it the last.” She smiled. “And there will be more.”
Shang-Li studied the graveyard of sunken ships and thought of all the lives that had been lost. Thousands of people had perished at her whim, their skeletons littering the strange sea floor.
“This is my new home, your world.” The Blue Lady looked content as she made that announcement. “At least for the time being. I don’t plan on being here any longer than I have to. In order to make better use of it, I need to understand more of it. There are resources here that I can use.”
“For what?” Shang-Li asked the question as soon as it popped into his head.
“My purposes, manling.” The Blue Lady drew herself up to her full height. “I don’t intend to stay here forever.”
“Where will you go?”
“Wherever I wish. This world is as big as my owna mirror, it seems, in many ways. There are many places I wish to see.”
“But why did you summon me here?”
The Blue Lady regarded him for a moment before answering. “You caught my attention, manling. You are drawn to this place. I wish to know why that is.”
To better protect herself? Shang-Li wondered.
The Blue Lady sharply gestured at him. Shang-Li felt like he’d been smacked by a large bear. He tumbled through the water and sailed a few yards away. Then, senses reeling, he hung suspended in the ocean. The sharks darted closer.
“I can protect myself well enough,” the Blue Lady snapped. “Never think that I can’t.”
Feeling as though his ribs had been crushed, Shang-Li struggled to draw a breath. When the Blue Lady strode across the sea bottom to him, he tried to move but found himself unable to navigate. He was stuck as surely as a fly in a spider’s web.
“I grow weary of you, manling,” she whispered into his ear. “You are not as interesting as I’d believed.” She was close enough that Shang-Li felt the cold chill emanating from her. Her teeth snapped as she spoke. “Go away and do not let me see you again.” She gestured at one of the sharks.
The predator heeled over in the sea and streaked at Shang-Li. The bands of invisible force held him in place. As the shark neared, it grew larger very quickly. By the time it closed on him, it was the size of a small merchant’s ship.
The shark’s jaws sprang wide, revealing the rows of razor-sharp teeth. Terror flooded Shang-Li. At the last moment, he tugged free of the force. Before he could move, though, the shark closed its maw with him inside.
Blackness surrounded Shang-Li and he couldn’t stifle the yell that burst free of his lips.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Caught in the darkness of the shark’s maw and his own fear, Shang-Li reached above and felt the slick hardness of the shark’s palate and knew that what he experienced was not a simple illusion. The lady’s spell still held and he could breathe, but in the jaws of a shark, that hardly seemed to matter.
The shark’s teeth parted. For a moment, the darkness was dispelled and Shang-Li saw the deep blue ocean on the other side of the razor sharp teeth. He darted forward, but the rush of water pouring inward shoved him back toward the predator’s gullet.
He felt certain that if he tumbled into the belly of the beast he would never escape. He flailed and his fingers found the slimy aperture left by the shark’s gill slits. Then the gruesome, smiling mouth closed again and he was once more in darkness.
It’s magic, Shang-Li told himself.
He took a deep breath and struggled to focus, but that task proved difficult while hanging onto a shark’s gill slit inside the creature’s mouth. The shark shook its head from side to side as it swam. Shang-Li bounced off the walls of its mouth and felt the rough edges of the gill slit saw at his fingers. He pushed the pain from his mind and concentrated, hoping to break whatever spell the Blue Lady had cast over him. She hadn’t killed him outright. Neither had the shark. The experience now was meant as a lesson in terror.
He pictured the cave’s interior and imagined the fire’s warmth. For a moment, the sea’s chill pulled back from him. Then the darkness melted and he saw the flames twisting before him. He reached for the fire.
Go to the cave, he told himself. You don’t have to be here. You can go to the cave. Concentrate. You can free yourself of this.
The fire grew warmer and brighter in his mind. He was almost there.
When he was certain he had built the cave in his mind as best as he could, when he felt the tie to the fire at its strongest, when he was certain he could hold his breath no longerhe released his grip on the gill slit and shoved himself forward.
For a moment, he thought he might be on a one way trip to the shark’s belly. Then he sprawled against a stone floor. Choking and gasping, retching up some of the saltwater he had inadvertently swallowed, he pushed himself to his knees.
His soaked clothing clung to him heavily. He grabbed his shirt and wrung water from the material. The sea gushed in a torrent to spatter the stone.
It hadn’t been a dream or simple illusion. He had been there. The Blue Lady was real.
As his mind tried to deal with that, Shang-Li crept closer to the fire to soak up its warmth. He rubbed at his arms vigorously to increase the blood flow. He knew his father would tsk in disappointment at his lack of control. At the moment, though, Shang-Li didn’t care. The fire felt good and much more hospitable than the bottom of the Sea
