was cunning, and perhaps that made her worth gambling on.
“If the shalarin fails,” he said, “you and I will set forth for Xedras in the morning. I swear it in Ilxendren’s name.”
Shex leered. “Then I’ll see you when the waters brighten.”
‹s› SSSSSSSSS SSS
The vault was another spacious chamber hacked from the living coral. As was the case in most sections of Exzethlix, the curves, angles, and vague implications of big sculpted glyphs had an indefinable wrongness to them. Tu’ala’keth’s head started to ache and her belly, to squirm if she let her gaze linger on certain details for very long.
Like the rest of the ‘chitls’ works, the place had no doors. Though their prehensile tails afforded them a limited capacity to manipulate objects, the rays would have found such contrivances inconvenient, and didn’t even use them to safeguard their most precious possessions. But the symbols incised around the arched entry way should have done the job just as well. When someone spoke the trigger word, they’d generate a barrier of magical force.
But that had proved useless. So, floating at the threshold, Tu’ala’keth scrutinized the inscription, looking for some deficiency that would enable an intruder to breach the ward. Everything appeared to be all right.
Yzil flipped the winglike edges of his body in a gesture denoting impatience, derision, or both. “Every priest in the temple has already inspected that.”
“But I had not.” Gripping the new trident the devitan had given her, an enchanted green claw-coral weapon keener, lighter, and sturdier than the one she’d lost, she swam on into the vault. The devitan followed. The sentries curled themselves smaller and bobbed lower in the water, saluting him.
Small, pale, and soft-looking, in some cases gummed together with slime, the eggs lay heaped in glistening mounds as high as Tu’ala’keth was tall. “I did not realize,” she said, “your race was so prolific.”
“When they hatch,” he said, “the newborns strive to eat one another. The majority die to feed the fiercest and most deserving of life.”
She nodded, pleased to see Umberlee’s spirit manifest in the process, even if the foolish rays didn’t recognize it. “As far as I can tell, you have made no effort to differentiate one egg from another. I take it the parents have no desire to reclaim and rear their particular offspring.”
Yzil scowled. “I don’t even know what it is you’re babbling about. Do you know how to protect the eggs or not?”
“Umberlee will guide me.”
“Then let’s get on with it.”
“As you wish. Send the guards away.”
Yzil hesitated. “Is that wise?”
“They have accomplished nothing so far and could prove a hindrance tonight. You and I will eliminate the threat.”
“Go,” the devitan said. Bodies rippling, the ‘chitls glided from the vault. “Shall I activate the ward?”
“Why? It has proved to be of no use, either.”
“All right, then what are we going to do?”
“I am going to meditate. You will remain quiet, so as not to disturb me, and keep watch.”
“What’s the point of meditating now? I’ve already done that, too, in this very spot, without gaining any insight.”
Tu’ala’keth smiled. “Now you are the one wasting time with needless questions.”
“I’m the ruler here, and I’ve staked everything I possess on your assertions. I demand to know what you think you’re doing.”
“Very well. Consider this: Whatever unseen agent is destroying the eggs, it has to move through the water which surrounds them, and my goddess is empress of the sea. It lies within my power to attune myself to the water in this chamber, to feel through it as if it were an extension of my own skin. If I succeed, I should sense the intruder, no matter what its nature or how stealthily it skulks about.”
“Have you ever attempted this trick before?”
“No. It will require a deeper trance than I have ever entered.”
“Then… never mind. It’s still a good idea. I should have thought of it.”
“You could not do it. Your Ilxendren rules over sea-dwellers, but he is not a deity of the sea, and therein lies the difference. Now be still and let me concentrate.”
When it was clear he meant to hold his tongue, she began. She studied the water around her, trying to perceive the salty fluid itself, not the objects it contained. She tried to hear it murmur over surfaces, and feel its warmth and sliding pressure against her skin.
Once she’d fixed her mind on her impressions, she brought the membranes slipping across her eyes, blinding her to all but the brightest lights and most prominent shapes. Simply by focusing her attention inward, she dulled her remaining senses. Yet at the same time, she kept her preexisting sensations as vivid as before. Now, however, they rose primarily from memory and imagination. They were a concept of water, a mental construct to manipulate as she saw fit.
With a clear sky high overhead, and tamed by the countless barriers comprising Exzethlix, the waters therein were placid and so, too, was the simulacrum Tu’ala’keth had conjured for herself. That was the first element she had to change. She imagined insistent currents shoving her, increasing their strength by degrees until she would have had to swim vigorously to hold herself in the same position. She understood she wasn’t truly moving. The sensation was an illusion, a trick she was playing on herself. Yet in a mystical sense, it was altogether real.
Next, she purged everything except the raw, elemental sea from her imaginings. The reef, carved into grotesqueries pleasing to the ixitxachitls’ alien aesthetic, flowed into a form entirely natural but no less threatening, with coral spikes and edges to sting and tear, and countless crannies with moray eels lurking in their murky depths. Beyond, in a limitless ocean, krakens, sharks, squids, and demons pursued their prey, seizing and rending eternally, insatiable no matter how many victims they devoured.
She made the sky above scab over with inky storm clouds. Lightning flared, thunder roared, and rain hammered down. The wind screamed.
A corresponding violence erupted within the sea. The currents, strong and treacherous before, surged and became irresistible. They tumbled Tu’ala’keth from one impact to the next, slamming and scraping her against the coral.
A spell might have quelled the water, but it would also have defeated her purpose. She had to submit to the turmoil. She went limp and allowed the ocean to abuse her however it wished. The coral slashed and ground away her skin. Bones snapped in her foot and arm. Her right profile plunged toward a stony, branching growth, and even then, clenching herself, she managed not to flinch. The coral stabbed out her eye.
It was agony, but gradually, it became something greater as well, a transcendent state in which she was both the victim and the malevolent ocean smashing the life from its toy. The sea’s vast joy so eclipsed her pain that the latter became insignificant, and as her blood streamed away, and her heart stuttered out its final beats, she became aware of something greater still, a splendid dance of slaughter that was everything… and silence and peace at the core of the frenzy.
The fierce current bashed her once more then whirled her lifeless, flopping body beyond the reef. Small fish came to feed on her then fled when a colossal shadow engulfed them all.
Though dead, Tu’ala’keth could still see the prodigious octopuses and weresharks when they writhed and glided across her field of vision. What she couldn’t do was turn her head to behold the far huger entity whose familiars they were. She both yearned to see and was glad she couldn’t. Her instincts warned that the sight would be too much to bear, that ecstasy or terror might extinguish her utterly.
But she could pray, if only silently, and it seemed appropriate that she do so: I am trying to do my duty, great queen, as best as I understand it. It has taken me to strange places. Places where I am clumsy and ignorant. Places where I lose my way. Still I persist.
The answer came back as a wordless surge of passion as nuanced and intelligible as speech. At its core was malevolence. Umberlee hungered to destroy any creature who engaged her attention, her own priestesses included. But cruelty wasn’t the dominant note in the complex harmony that was her thought, but rather, subordinate to exhortation and a sort of cold, conditional approval.
