Mistshore

'Maybe he is everythin' you thought he was,' Sull said.

Ruen broke the surface a few feet away and waved a hand. Icelin experienced a renewed shock of weakness as she slogged through the water. 'We're here,' Ruen said.

'Where?' Icelin asked.

'If you can hold on for a little longer, I'm taking us someplace safe,' Ruen said. 'Nine feet straight down there's a figurehead: the Blind Mermaid, they call her. She sticks up from the sand, so you can't see her fish half. She's buried along with the rest of the The Darter.'

'The Darter?' Sull said. 'You mean she was part of a ship?'

'She sdll is,' Ruen said. 'But she has a more important job now. She's the guardian of a door, a secret door we're going to need. So we'll be paying her a visit.' He raised a hand to forestall more questions. 'When I go down, you'll follow a few feet behind. Don't be afraid of what you see, or how deep we go. Just keep following me.'

Icelin nodded, but her hesitance must have shown. Ruen scowled and shook his head impatiently.

'This is important,' he said, speaking to both of them. 'You can't turn around. Once we go down, it's all the way. Or you'll drown. That's how they keep out the ones who aren't supposed to be there.'

Isn't that us? Icelin thought, but she didn't give it voice.

'We'll follow you,' she said. She'd decided to trust Ruen Morleth once, and now Sull seemed convinced of the man. He'd saved her from the fire, risking his own life to do so.

They dived. The water seemed darker here, a creature stretching out inky black arms to envelop them. When they got to the bottom, Icelin and Sull stayed back. Icelin pushed her drifting hair out of her eyes and strained to see what Ruen was doing ahead of them. Craning around his body, she saw the figurehead.

The wooden mermaid was covered in a shawl of seaweed, the thin, green streamers trailing behind her like a living cloak. Buried to the waist in sand, the mermaid stared up to the surface through her sightless eyes.

Ruen put his thumbs to both her eye sockets and pushed. The wooden orbs disappeared inside her skull, and Ruen back-stroked furiously, propelling himself away from the figurehead.

Light burst from the mermaid's eyes, beams of illumination that spilled over her wooden sockets and down her rigid face like tears. The rotting wood glowed golden, suffusing, impossibly, with life.

The mermaid's skin turned white, and her hair moved in the water, shifting colors from brown to blue-green. She uncrossed her arms from in front of her bare breasts, brandishing a trident in one hand, and a glowing green orb in the other. She turned her head at an odd angle to regard them. Though her body now throbbed with life, her eyes remained vacant.

She doesn't really live, Icelin thought. She's a construct of some sort. A guardian, Ruen had said.

'Welcome to the Cradle,' the mermaid spoke. The words reached Icelin's ears clearly, magically propelled through the water. 'Those who seek entrance, come forward. But do no harm in Arowall's house, or face a slow death in Umberlee's embrace.'

With those cryptic words, the mermaid lifted her arms, crossing the trident in front of her. The orb flashed green, and the trident glowed in answer. She brought it down in one swift stroke, driving the weapon into the sand covering her lower half.

A deep rumbling echoed beneath them. Awestruck, Icelin watched the sand roil, parting on either side of the mermaid's body. Contained by magic, the tempest of sand and water swirled around the mermaid and revealed her glossy silver tail. Beneath the webbed fin, a dark space yawned.

Lit by spheres of magical radiance, the narrow passage led into the hull of what looked like an ancient sailing ship. The wood around the animated figurehead was rotting and caked with barnacles, but somehow it remained intact.

Ruen swam for the passage; Icelin and Sull followed quickly. Icelin's chest ached to draw breath, and as she swam down the dark tunnel, she realized what Ruen meant about not turning back.

The sand was already swirling behind them, sealing off the entrance. The mermaid resumed her frozen pose, her sighdess eyes betraying nothing of what lay beneath her fin. There was no way out behind them. It was death or forward.

CHAPTER 10

Cerest paced in front of the burned-out shell of the dockside warehouse. He stopped long enough to kick a smoking timber against the tin wall. A rattling crash brought down a rain of ash and smoke.

Ristlara and Shenan stood a little way off, looking anxious and unamused by his outburst.

'Come away, fool,' Ristlara said. 'The Watch is sure to bring a patrol. We won't be seen here with you.'

'Tell your men to regroup. I want to know how many we lost.' Cerest already knew Greyas was gone. Greyas, Melias, and Riatvin. Now he was entirely dependent upon the Locks and their hunters. The idea galled him, but what choice did he have?

'She walks with two companions now,' Ristlara said. 'The big one is an oaf, but he's strong; and I'll lay odds the thin one is a monk, and quite powerful. Think, Cerest,' she said, putting a hand on his arm. 'How can you be certain she possesses the powers Elgreth did? Shenan says she is an untried child.'

'Can Shenan deny the evidence of her eyes?' Cerest waved an arm to encompass the devastated warehouse. 'My untried child did this. The men may have slain Greyas and the rest, but she brought the building down. You heard her, Shenan; it wasn't her first display of such power. She is more than Elgreth ever was. While she is alive, I will have her.'

Ristlara and Shenan exchanged doubtful glances. It infuriated Cerest. How dare they show such disrespect?

'Where do we search now?' Shenan spoke up. 'The trail is cold.'

'They can't go far,' Cerest said. 'If she is as unstable as I believe, she'll turn up again. Until then, we wait.'

Cerest rubbed his face. He needed to rest. If his own body sought reverie, Icelin would be near exhaustion.

We'll both rest, Cerest thought, and tonight-yes, it would be tonight-we'll talk again. He would help her work through the trauma of the past. She had been scarred too-not physically, but the pain was there, a raw wound that only another, equally scarred being would understand. Those scars would be the link that bound them together. They would make each other whole.

'Cough it out, there's a good girl.'

Sull smacked her on the back, forcing up more of the loathsome harbor water than Icelin thought possible for anyone to swallow.

She crouched on the floor of the lowest deck of The Darter; Sull and Ruen stood on either side of her. Behind them, a wall of water stretched weirdly from floor to ceiling, kept from rushing into the cabin by an invisible magical field that faltered and sprayed jets of water at random intervals.

In front of them, a trio of large, armored guards stood with drawn swords, the unfriendly ends pointed at each of their throats. The one pointed at Icelin bobbed uncertainly as she threw up around it. Icelin tried to appear as contrite as she could, under the circumstances.

'Where are we?' she asked when she could speak again.

'I told you: this is the back door,' Ruen explained. 'They'll check our weapons here.' As he said it, the guards stepped forward, divesting Sull of his sash of butcher's tools. They took nothing from Ruen but the ring on his finger. Icelin saw his jaw tighten, but he said nothing.

Icelin allowed them to take the pack off her back without resistance. She saw one guards eye linger on the gold box buried at the bottom.

'What's in it?' he asked.

'An heirloom,' Icelin said, 'bequeathed to me by the last of my family.'

'Open it,' the guard said.

Icelin looked at Sull uncertainly. He knew what she was thinking. She'd not yet opened the mysterious box, found buried beneath the floorboards of Brant's shop. Who knew what it might contain?

'Arowall s rules state that no one may lose their possessions while under the protection of his hospitality,'