The wind howled, gusting from a different quadrant than before, and the boat bucked violently. Anton lurched off balance and flailed, fighting to avoid toppling overboard. In such a condition, he couldn’t complete the attack, and Tu’ala’keth dived over the side.
As always, she felt a thrill of relief as the sea embraced her. She belonged in the water, and no silverweave or goggles, no matter how artfully crafted, could make it seem otherwise. But she didn’t pause to savor the familiar sensations of her natural environment, the caress of the currents and the perpetual background drone. She was too angry.
After all they’d endured together, she’d believed Anton accepted his role in Umberlee’s plan. She’d certainly done everything in her power to teach, inspire, and reassure him. Yet evidently her efforts had gone for naught. The human had betrayed herand, far more important, the goddessas soon as he discovered an opportunity.
He could have known glory as Umberlee’s faithful champion. Now, by his own choosing, he was only a tool for Tu’ala’keth to use, of no more intrinsic worth or significance than Vurgrom or Shandri Clayhill.
He was a tool, moreover, that had evidently outlived its function when they escaped from Dragon Isle. Now the intelligent course of action was to kill him, just to ensure he never found another chance to hinder her schemes.
She sneered to think how easy it would be. She was safe below the waves where he couldn’t reach or even see her, and he was afloat on a vast expanse of water that would answer to her whims. Her battles in Immurk’s Hold had depleted both her magic and her stamina, but she had enough of both remaining to obliterate a single apostate air-breather.
She gripped the drowned man’s hand, reviewed the deadliest spells she had left for the casting, chose one… and hesitated.
She’d leaped to the conclusion that Anton had nothing more to contribute. Such was her disgust that she was eager to believe it. But perhaps she was being too hasty, for after all, Umberlee had taken care to place this particular instrument in her hands. The signs had been unmistakable.
Tu’ala’keth thought for a moment then smiled anew. She understood what role the traitor had yet to play, and in all likelihood, it would involve a more painful demise than a quick death at sea.
Her objective, then, was to subdue rather than slay. It would require more finesse, but still should prove easy enough.
One of the seahorses came flitting inquisitively around her. She shoo’d it away and swam to the surface. Anton crouched in the boat gazing out over the swells. He’d exchanged the greatsword for the crossbow they’d found packed away with the other supplies, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t notice the top of her head sticking up into the air.
Well, if he didn’t see her now, he’d missed his chance. She whispered an incantation, and fog came steaming up from the water, hiding the boat in billowing masses of vapor.
Or at least, the fog hid it from anyone above the waves. She could make out the tapered shape of the hull perfectly well when she dived back under the surface, and thus had no difficulty aiming her next spell.
The water immediately beneath the boat heaved itself up into a towering crest. The vessel hung at the top for a moment then plummeted down into the trough beside it. She allowed a heartbeat or two for the sea to come smashing over the sides then lifted the boat and dropped it again.
Though she kept it up until the spell expended all its power, Anton never did tumble into the sea. He must have been hanging on tight. Still he was surely soaked and battered, half drowned, and blind in the mist as well.
She reached out with her mind, meshed her thoughts with the simpler, nonverbal ones of the seahorses, and visualized what she wanted them to do. Obedient as ever, they swam astern of the sailboat, ascended to the surface, and splashed about, raising a commotion to hold Anton’s attention.
Tu’ala’keth glided to the bow and pulled herself up. Her wounded leg gave her a twinge, but she still managed to clamber quietly aboard.
The fog veiled everything. The mast and sail were blurred and ghostly. Anton appeared as the vaguest shadow at the far end of the boat. But she’d pinpointed his location, and that was enough.
She stooped and picked up her trident, still lying where she’d left it in her haste to escape. She reversed it to use the heavy stone shaft as a cudgel then crept toward the stern. She picked her way around the sail and continued.
She aimed the butt of the trident at his head, and at the last possible moment, he sensed her presence. He jerked around, lifted a fold of his cape to guard himself, and discharged his crossbow, one-handed, in a single flurry of motion.
Her thrust glanced off the enchanted garment as if it were a sturdy turtle-shell shield. Fortunately, haste, or the soaking his weapon had received, spoiled his attack as well. The bolt flew wild.
He raised the crossbow to use it as a bludgeon, but she was quicker. She smashed the blunt end of the trident into his solar plexus, where, at this moment, the cape didn’t cover. That froze him in place, and she bashed him over the head. He collapsed. She kept beating him until he stopped moving.
|_ike the rest of the Pirate Isles, Tan was in its essence a huge rock sticking up out of the sea, with some greenery on the lower slopes but little on the heights. But unlike Dragon Isle, it was volcanic, its flanks sculpted by ancient lava flows.
As Vurgrom had warned, Tu’ala’keth could see no sign of habitation beyond a few abandoned-looking cottages and shanties, and the beached, decaying husks of a couple of fishing boats. Yet the cove where the empty village rotted appeared to be the only safe or convenient place to land. Should she put in there?
No, she decided, definitely not. If the cultists were as jealous of their privacy as their reputation indicated, they might well have set a trap. It would be awkward if she had to fight her way clear, perhaps hurting or killing someone, before she even had a chance to explain her purpose.
She rummaged through her sea bag, found the pellet that would enable Anton to breathe underwater, and crouched down beside him. His face bruised, cut, and bloody from the thrashing she’d given him, he lay bound and gaggedand thus unable to conjurein the bottom of the boat.
She pulled the cloth from his mouth and showed him the spherule. “Eat this,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Tu’ala’keth, don’t do this.”
“Refuse if you wish,” she said, “but you are going beneath the waves either way. I may still have a use for you, but I no longer need you, and it would please me to watch you drown.”
Glaring, he opened his mouth, and she gave him the pellet. After he chewed and swallowed, she replaced the gag.
She had no further use for the sailboat, so didn’t bother lowering the sail, dropping anchor, or otherwise securing it. Let the sea have it for a toy, to toss about and finally sink or shatter. She bound Anton and her other possessions to the seahorses, who disliked it but suffered it at her behest. Then they swam for shore.
As when approaching Dragon Isle, she and her unwilling companion parted company with the mounts in the shallows and waded onward. They had to clamber over a jumble of rocks, with waves crashing to spray all around them and an undertow dragging them backward, to exit the water. She’d loaded Anton with the baggage. Denied the use of his hands, he couldn’t manage by himself. She grabbed his forearm and heaved him up, then waited for him to retch the water from his lungs. With the gag in place, it mostly came out his nose.
“I intend,” she said, “to circle around and approach the village from higher up the slope. You will move quietly, or I will kill you.”
He jerked his chin at one of the sea bags she’d tied to him then gave her a sardonic look. She understood: His bonds and burdens were scarcely conducive to stealth.
“You must do the best you can.” She jerked the length of rope she’d knotted around his neck. “Onward.”
Once they climbed above the settlement, it was easy enough to discern that which had been imperceptible from the water. A cog, entirely seaworthy by the look of it, though the crew had taken down the two masts to facilitate concealment, listed on one side behind a screen of brush. Voices muttered from one of the dilapidated shacks.
Brandishing her skeletal pendant, Tu’ala’keth whispered a prayer to augment her force of personality. Then, gripping her trident in one hand and Anton’s leash in the other, she stepped out into the open. “Men of the Cult of the Dragon,” she called, “come forth!”
But the startled creatures who emerged from the shanties weren’t “men,” but rather, to all appearances,
