simply on his honor, though several offered their oaths with an ill grace. Morgan was the last and surliest of all.
“All right,” he said, “enough mummery. Enough stalling. Tell us your secret, and by all the powers we just invoked, it had better be worth the wait.”
“Very well.” Tu’ala’keth provided a terse account of the weapons they’d seized and what they proposed to do with them. Anton, who rather prided himself on making clear, concise reports to his superiors, appreciated the brevity.
When she finished, the other councilors looked to Morgan. “What do you think, cousin?” Pharom asked.
The warrior scowled and hesitated. Anton could all but see the feelings clashing inside him, resentment of Tu’ala’keth on one side, hope and the need to keep faith with his own martial pride by giving an honest appraisal on the other. “It’s… interesting,” he said at length.
Tu’ala’keth responded as if this equivocation settled everything. “I noticed you have started preparations to defend the city. That is good, for even if the army readied itself in time to engage the dragons elsewhere, this is the best place to make our stand. The damage will be significant, but we can turn the architecture and reefs to our advantage. I suggest evacuating all those unfit to fight.”
“We haven’t yet agreed to your plans,” Morgan said.
“That’s true,” Pharom said. “So should we? You’re as able and canny a soldier as anyone here, so speak plainly. Are you in favor, or against?”
“Yes,” sighed the other sea-elf. “This plan gives us more hope than anything we’ve thought of hitherto.” The truculence came back into his manner. “But only if her liquids and baubles perform as she claims.”
“If they do not,” said Tu’ala’keth, “I will be among the first to suffer for my stupidity. As it is my scheme, it is only proper that I play a central role in attempting it.”
Anton said. “I’ll be in the vanguard, too.” Nose to snout with more dragons, may the Red Knight stand beside me.
Tu’ala’keth watched Anton swim experimentally back and forth and up and down. She understood the reason for it. Though they’d passed beyond the field of helpful magic enveloping Myth Nantar, the Arcane
Caste had, at her behest, supplied him with enchantments that should enable him to function just as well in the open sea. A bone half-mask allowed him both to breathe and to see in what he would otherwise regard as impenetrable gloom. A fire-coral ring warmed him, and eel-skin slippers and gloves enabled him to swim with the speed and agility of a shalarin.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t had much time to practice with the latter items before Morgan Ildacer led the company forth. He still felt uncertain of their capabilities. It was natural, but though she maintained her composure, as a waveservant should, his fidgeting was making her restless, too. “You will be fine,” she said.
Beneath the mask with its amber lens, carved scales, and gill slits, his mouth quirked into a smile. “Can I take that as a guarantee from Umberlee?”
“Umberlee does not deal in guarantees. It is simply that I have found you to be a quick study.”
He gazed right, left, up, straight ahead, then down at the dark, silt-covered slopes of Mount Halaath falling away beneath them. Many of their comrades were similarly peering about and making a point to check in every direction. In open water, an enemy could strike from anywhere.
“I don’t see the brutes,” Anton said. “It would be funny if they just decided to veer off and go somewhere else entirely. They could, you know. A dragon flight can do any crazy thing.”
“Not this one,” she said.
“Because Umberlee sent it?”
“I have spoken of pattern precipitating from the randomness of life. As it begins to articulate itself, it either breaks against some form of resistance or increases in implicit strength and complexity, until, if it thrives beyond a certain point, it inevitably fulfills itself. You and I have followed such a pattern. Or we created it. One perspective is as valid as the other.”
“So now the dragons have to come.”
She smiled. “I think that no matter how many times I explain, you will never truly permit yourself to understand. They do not have to. They can do as they like. But they will.”
He stiffened then said, in a softer voice, “Yes, I guess so.'
She turned and looked upward as he was. At first, she couldn’t see forms, just a great burgeoning agitation in the water. That, however, was enough to send a pang of fear stabbing through her, because she comprehended just how many dragons it took to create that seething, onrushing cloudiness.
Many of her comrades were plainly frightened also, staring wide-eyed, shivering, and unconsciously cringing backward. She gripped the drowned man’s hand and murmured a prayer. A pulse of clarity and resolution throbbed within her, cleansing much of the anxiety from her mind, and streaming outward to enhance the courage and vigor of every ally within range.
“Steady,” she said, “steady. The Queen of the Depths is with us. All our gods are with us.” Well, give or take the feeble frauds from the Sea of Corynactis.
Throughout the company, other folk in authority did what they could to maintain morale and order. Priests of every race prayed for good fortune. Magicianssea-elves, shalarins, and morkoths mostlyprepared to cast spells in as showy a manner as possible, brandishing staves of bone and coral and wands of polished semiprecious stone, leaving fleeting, glimmering trails in the water, tacitly assuring their comrades of their arcane might. Officers talked confidently to common warriors. A squad of tritons lifted their tapalscrystalline weapons with both a point extending beyond the fist and a long blade lying flat against the forearmand shouted, “Myth
Nantar! Myth Nantar! Myth Nantar!” Other soldiers took up the chant.
Still nothing could take away all the fear. A merman started swimming upward, and his sergeant bellowed at him to get back into position.
“They’re above us,” the soldier pleaded. “We’ll be caught between them and the mountain below.”
“They’re where we want them!” the sergeant snarled. “Get a grip, and remember the plan!”
A locathah dropped its crossbow, whirled, and started swimming away. Its captain put a quarrel in its spine then rounded on its gaping comrades. “Anybody else want to turn tail?” the leader demanded. If so, the others kept it to themselves.
Now Tu’ala’keth could make out shapes… or at least the suggestion of them. Prodigious wings beat, hauling wyrms through the water almost as fast as they could fly through the sky. The flippers of the dragon turtles stroked, and the tails of the colossal eels lashed, accomplishing the same purpose. On Tu’ala’keth’s right, a shalarin started making a low, moaning sound, probably without realizing he was doing it.
“This is it,” came Morgan’s cool, clipped voice, magically augmented so everyone in the company could hear. “Start the attacks.”
He meant the order for those spellcasters who, either by dint of exceptional innate power or formidable magical weapons, had some hope of smiting the wyrms even at long range. Thanks to a scroll from Eshcaz’s hoard, now sealed in a yellowish transparent membrane to keep the sea from ruining it, Tu’ala’keth fell into the latter category.
She read a trigger phrase and felt the magic pounce from the page, supposedly to rip at a cluster of the onrushing wyrms, though at such a distance, she couldn’t tell if it was cutting them up to any significant degree. It certainly didn’t kill any of them or even slow them down.
Other spells began to strike in the dragons’ midst, swirls of darkness and blasts of jagged ice. Those didn’t balk them either.
A jittery koalinth discharged its crossbow, and the dart lost momentum and sank only halfway to its targets. Tentacles writhing in agitation, the creature’s morkoth master screamed for it and its fellow slave warriors to “Wait, curse you, wait!”
More magical attacks exploded into being among the dragons, close enough now that most of the spellcasters could assail them in one fashion or another. The barrage still didn’t slow the reptiles down. Indeed no matter how intently she peered, Tu’ala’keth could see only superficial cuts, punctures, and abrasions marring their scaly hides. It was almost as if the allied priests and mages were merely treating them to a harmless display of flickering light and dancing shadow.
But perhaps they’d done a bit more harm, or at least caused a little more annoyance, than that. For now the
