Realms of War

dragged him to his doom if he couldn't shed himself of it in time, though the armor was enchanted as well. The armor's enchantment protected the leather from the damaging effects of seawater and also allowed him to free it from his body at a word—which was something he was loath to do because it was a very expensive and hard to replace garment.

He fanned his arms and legs as though swimming. When he'd pointed himself downward, he swam down into the darkness of the sea.

* * * * *

Peilam's Nose lay mired in sand on the ocean bottom on her port side. She was a large cargo ship that had sailed from the Old Empires to the Dragonmere to trade with Cormyr. Her home port had been Skuld, along the Mulhorandi coastline.

According to the texts Rytagir had read—a ship's log, a merchant's journal, and two reports dictated to the Skuld merchantmen's guild because some of the cargo aboard the lost ship had belonged to the king and an accounting had had to be made—Peilam's Nose had been attacked by a sahuagin raiding party.

The ship's mage and a contingent of guardsmen aboard hadn't stood a chance against the sea devils. The sailors were slain to a man, and the ship's mage gutted and flown from a cross timber of the main mast. Most of the crew had been eaten by the sahuagin.

After that, Peilam's Nose had been scuttled and sent to the bottom more than eight hundred miles away. It had taken Rytagir almost a month to plot her probable course once she'd gone under.

One of the old bardic songs that had fallen out of favor in the Inner Sea also contained a germ of truth about the attack. Rytagir's interest had first been caught by that song while in the Tattered Sails Tavern in Milvarune in Thesk almost a year earlier. He had been there researching some of the villages that had been left in ruins by the Tuigan Horde.

From that germ of the tale carried in the bard's sad, liking voice, Rytagir had spent a tenday researching Peilam's Nose. And what her cargo manifest might have included.

When an explorer—which was how Rytagir thought of himself—didn't have a vessel and he needed one to recover lost artifacts from a shipwreck, he learned to find the details that would encourage others to invest in his knowledge and experience. In this case, he'd put together a probable manifest of the ship's cargo to tempt Captain Zahban into becoming his partner and lending his ship to the effort.

* * * * *

Rytagir stopped his descent only a few feet above the shipwreck. Despite the magic woven into the pearl, his vision wasn't able to penetrate much of the gloom at that depth.

He swam slowly and surveyed Peilam's Nose from the broken keel to the distinctive prow that named her. She'd been christened for the man who'd built her, a dwarf woodworker who'd forsaken the forge for a lathe in a lumberyard.

Even half-buried, the prow showed the fierce profile of a dwarf. His blunt nose projected well ahead of the rest of his features. The eye that Rytagir could see looked undaunted. Peilam's beard showed in the scalloped trim that flowed back over the prow until it gradually faded into the hull on both sides.

The ship was unmistakably the one Rytagir had come for. He reached into the waterproof shoulder pack he'd brought with him and extracted the journal he'd dedicated to compiling all information about Peilam's Nose.

Protected by the pearl's magic, Rytagir hung cross-legged in the sea and quickly sketched the ship as it lay on the sea bottom. The salvage was going to be easier than he'd expected.

More times than not, the hull—especially on a scuttled vessel—shattered and emptied her guts across the sea floor. The trail of lost cargo could last for miles.

So immersed was Rytagir in the task of recording the image for the papers or book he would write on the ship that he didn't notice he was no longer alone on the ocean floor. At least, not until he noticed the shadow that slid over his.

3

Almost casually, Rytagir closed the journal and slipped it back into the shoulder bag. His hand closed over the plain hilt of his long sword and yanked the blade free. He spun around to face the observer and raised the sword between them.

With the shadow being human-shaped, his first impression was that he was being spied upon by a sahuagin. But he knew the chances of that were small.

Sahuagin had brought an end to Peilam's Nose, but the murderous sea devils no longer freely traveled the currents of the Inner Sea. The aquatic predators had been sealed within the Alamber Sea behind the massive Sharksbane Wall. The defensive structure was a hundred miles long, sixty feet tall, and a hundred feet thick. Legend had it that sea elves and other creatures manned the wall to prevent the sahuagin from invading the Sea of Fallen Stars.

But his observer wasn't a sahuagin. It was a sea elf. A beautiful sea elf. Her clothing consisted of clam shells that covered her pert breasts, a triangle of silverweave armor that barely concealed her modesty, and silverweave legging armor. Her pale blue skin had white patches that were natural camouflage many sea creatures shared.

As with other denizens of the deep, she was darker on her back—her dorsal side—than her front. The bifurcation of colors was the sea's primary gift to her creatures. Dark on top, they couldn't be seen from above. Light on bottom, they were hard to see against the brightness of the surface.

She was a rare beauty, even among the alu Tel'Quessir, as the sea elves called themselves, because she possessed flashing silver eyes and a long, vibrant mane of red hair that swirled down to her generous hips. Neither of those colors occurred very often among the alu Tel'Quessir.

Her gaze held both displeasure and defiance. One hand wrapped the haft of a trident made of chipped obsidian. A silverweave net rode on her left hip, and she had an obsidian knife strapped to her lower right leg.

She wasn't alone. A dozen other sea elves floated behind her, males and females. All of them were armed, Half a dozen dolphins circled the area. The dolphins were companions to the rangers among the sea elves.

Not exactly a welcoming committee, Rytagir thought as he looked over the sea elves.

'You are human,' the sea elf woman accused.

Rytagir sheathed his long sword. 'I am. My name is Rytagir.'

One of the younger male sea elves spoke to the woman in their native tongue. Rytagir spoke that language as well, but didn't see the need to reveal that as yet.

'I have heard of him, lady,' the young warrior said. His green eyes never left Rytagir. 'He's a seeker among the humans. They say he means no harm to undersea folk.'

Rytagir was aware of his good reputation. He'd worked to have it and to keep it.

'What are you doing here?' the sea elf woman demanded.

'I'm a scholar, lady.' Rytagir pointed at the shipwreck. 'I've come to document the final days of that vessel.'

She arched an eyebrow. 'It was attacked by sahuagin and sunk. Surely your people knew that.'

'We did. But we didn't know where the cargo had gone.'

'If you surface dwellers were more careful with your things,' one of the male elves snarled, 'then you wouldn't be fouling our waters with your unwanted refuse and things you have lost.'

'Not all the things that have been lost have been unwanted,' Rytagir pointed out. But it was true that ships that were no longer serviceable were scuttled. Refuse from cities also poured out into the sea from rivers and from garbage scows. 'I'm here today representing people who want this thing back.'

The elf swam to within inches of Rytagir. 'Once something is down here, human, it belongs to us. Even the