“This can’t be good.” Iados turned to face the approaching group. “They started out after we did.”
Yugi, the young lookout, swam at the forefront. He was excited and out of breath as he coasted up close to them and stopped. “We found Grayling.”
Grayling was nestled in a canyon that was hard to see while swimming. Broken merchanters, warships, and fishing boats littered the ocean floor under the canopy of strange trees. Tentacled creatures hung like obscene fruit from the branches of the trees. When anyone ventured too close, the creatures launched their tentacles and pulled their prey in to them.
Shang-Li and the others battled the creatures and drove them back from the trees nearest the canyon. Even in those depths, the blue light coming from the land chased away the gloom after a fashion.
The first ship lay on her side. Shang-Li took some of the glowing coral Amree had created from her kit and held it to shine around the vessel. Barnacles covered her stern but he found part of a name. He used his dagger to clear away the barnacles and found:
Wavecutter.
“Do you know her?” Iados asked.
“A merchanter,” Shang-Li said. “She was in the documents we researched. She went down a few years after Grayling.” I
“Shang-Li.” Thava called from ahead, waving her glowstone to get his attention.
Shang-Li swam over to her and saw a few fresh corpses lying on the ground near another ship. They’d been savaged by predators and most of the soft parts of the bodies were gone.
“They haven’t been down here long. Not long enough to have come down with Wavecutter.” Shang-Li swam to one of the men and held the glowstone closer. Crabs and other small carrion feeders scuttled away as he turned over the body.
Only shredded gore remained of the man’s features. Even if Shang-Li had once seen the man, he wouldn’t recognize him now.
“Someone’s alive inside!” a sailor called out.
The man lay on the floor of the captain’s quarters. He was human, in his middle years, and scarred from life at sea. He was pale, close to death.
Weakly, he held his hand up to ward off the brightness from the glowstone. His swollen tongue protruded from his cracked lips despite the water that surrounded him.
“Who?” he whispered.
“No one who means you harm.” Thava held out her empty hands but her great size still made her threatening to see.
The man glanced at Iados. “Devils? Come to fetch me to some pit and torture me?”
“No,” Shang-Li answered. “Where’s your captain?”
“Dead. Thirsted to death.” The man grabbed at a dagger near his hand three times before securing a hold. “Like all the rest of the crew. I think I’m the only one left.”
“We have water.”
The man laughed weakly but it quickly turned into a cough that racked his body. “We’ve got water too.” He waved toward the ship. “But we couldn’t drink any of it because of the curse on this place. Blasted spellplague,” the man said. “Keeps us alive down here, but fouls out water before we can drink it. Every mouthful you take is tainted with brine. Makes you sick.”
“We can get you a drink,” Shang-Li said. He reached into his bag of holding and pulled out a large bladder normally used to carry spice powder. It was airtight and contained some of the air Amree had created back at Swallow.
One of the sailors found an empty barrel, lined it with tarp, and tied it to the mainmast. Shang-Li pushed the bladder into the barrel and squeezed the air out. Huge bubbles formed and collected at the top of the barrel, then the space grew bigger.
Thava picked up the sick man and carried him to the barrel. Once he was inside, once he’d discovered the air pocket trapped inside, he gave a glad cry of understanding.
“Gods, let me drink,” he croaked. “All this wet around me, and me parched as a frog in the desert.”
Shang-Li handed over one of the bladders of water they’d brought with them. “Go easy with it or you’ll make yourself sick.”
The man took the water in his shaking hands. “I’ve been without water before. I know to pace myself.” Even so, his past experience didn’t help him now. A moment later, he emerged from the barrel and threw up. The bile formed a cloud in the water that immediately attracted a small school offish to feed on the debris.
“My name is Kulher,” the man said a short time later. Looking better rested and more healthy, he sat cross- legged in front of Shang-Li. “This ship is Lysinda, named for the captain’s oldest daughter. We were a cargo ship until the Blue Lady decided to pull us under.”
“Do you have any idea why she picked you?” Iados asked.
“No.” Kulher shook his shaggy head. “We’ve run these waters for years. We knew to stay away from the domain of the Blue Lady, even though most of us were convinced she was a legend captains with ill luck blamed for losing their ships.”
“You saw the Blue Lady?” Shang-Li asked.
“Only for a moment, before the storm struck us, broke us up, and dragged us under.”
“How long have you been down here?”
Kuhler shrugged but shivered. “Long enough for a lot of men to die from thirst.”
“Probably only a few more days than we have,” Iados said.
“We should have thought of the trick with the water barrel.”
“Unless you could have made air,” Thava said gently, “it wouldn’t have done you any good.”
“The ship’s mage died when the Blue Lady took us. We’d barely entered the water when a shark snatched him and bit his head off.” Kuhler looked forlorn. “I lost me a lot of good friends on this voyage. Men who have stood with me through bad times and hard times.” He paused. “I feel guilty for asking, but do you have a way to get out of here?”
“We’re working on it,” Shang-Li said.
“Why does she bother to bring the ships down if she’s not going to do anything with them?” Iados asked as he swam beside Shang-Li back toward Swallow. He flicked his tail in annoyance.
“The next time I see her, I’ll ask her.”
Iados regarded him. “You would, wouldn’t you? It would probably be the last thing you did before she killed you.”
“She hasn’t killed us yet. I remain hopeful about that.”
“Or foolish without just cause,” Iados growled. “She may be busy with other things, or we’re so insignificant she doesn’t care. Maybe she derives pleasure from watching her captives thirst to death in the ocean.”
Shang-Li showed his friend a lopsided grin. “You’re such an optimist.”
“Well, down here the glass would always be full, wouldn’t it?”
“She said she planned to break away from here. So whatever the Spellplague has wrought also binds her to this place.”
“She has a very big cage,” Iados commented. “Still, once you know where the walls are, size doesn’t matter. You’ll still feel the confinement.”
Shang-Li swam deeper to examine the other shipwrecks. The goods aboard Lysinda would stand them in good stead for days, and the salvage potential seemed enough to finish making repairs on Swallow. He focused on finding Grayling, wondering if the presence of Wavecutter harbored some hope of finding the ship in the tangle of dead ships lying in the canyon.
He found two other ships, Garnatok and a slave ship that had dozens of skeletons in her cargo hold, but not Grayling. As he approached the next ship, Yugi called out to him.
“Shang-Li! Over here.”
Heart pumping a little faster, Shang-Li told himself not to get his hopes up. Even if Yugi had found the ship, chances were good that everything aboard herincluding the precious bookswere ruined.
Upon first sight, Shang-Li’s hopes diminished. The ship lay broken in two, and much of her starboard side was
