Dahl came up beside her, holding one of the sunrods Mira had passed around and staring up at the strange glow. “Cavern botfly nymphs,” he said. “We’d best burn our hose as soon as we’re out of the water.”
Farideh looked back over her shoulder. “Why?”
“They lay their eggs in the water to find purchase with some passing host. They lodge in the knit of hose,” he said blandly, and he passed her by without further explanation, leaving Farideh eyeing the dark, chilly water uneasily.
Soon enough, the tunnel widened into a cavern as broad as Everlund’s training yard and longer than Waterdeep’s market. The path was a broken, sloping thing, inching upward to another cavern beyond. The river pooled into a lake that covered half the floor. More of the botflies glowed along the sunken walls and stalactites, matched here by a strange, bluish luminescence in the water itself. The ceiling shimmered with their reflected light.
“Wait,” Tam ordered. No one needed to be told-even Farideh and Havilar knew that color of light often meant a pocket of the wild magic left behind by the Spellplague. Almost a hundred years had passed, but here and there the remains of unbound power left by the death of the goddess Mystra could still be deadly.
But this … Farideh felt no pull to it, no sense of power. Tam seemed to be considering it with the same uncertainty. Blue might mean spellplague, but it could mean plenty of other things as well. He edged toward the water.
The light brightened as he neared the pool’s edge. But the waters stayed relatively calm, stirring gently toward the beginnings of the stream. If it had been plaguechanged, there would have been a greater strangeness-a twisting of reality, an unfolding of the stone and water, a wrongness that would have been clear in the growing light. Tam’s shoulders relaxed.
“Why is it getting brighter?” Havilar asked.
Tam looked back over his shoulder at Dahl, who shook his head. “It’s likely something living in the water. Some little plant or something. Like a sea sparkle. Might be a signal of some kind.”
The lights flared and shifted, as if the glowing creatures parted, leaving the center dark. Farideh crept a little nearer. “What in the world would a plant be signaling?”
A mass of serpentine heads lashed out of the dark water, all bellows and teeth and glowing eyes. Farideh shouted and leaped backward, away from the water, away from the burst of acid that spewed from the nearest mouth and hissed against the wet rocks.
The hydra’s near head snapped after her, more acid dripping from its jaws. The rod was in her hand with hardly a thought, the surge of the Hells in her blood, and a blast of crackling purple energy shot out and caught the hydra head along its cheek.
She called on her pact once more and slipped through the gap in the planes that opened. It spat her out farther left as the hydra dived toward the spot she’d been in before. Havilar shouted at her from across the way. “Get its head up!”
Farideh stabbed upward with the rod, a plume of flames searing the beast’s softer throat. It bellowed and thrashed itself away from the fire, but the Hellish magic clung to it.
“There!” she shouted as the head’s arc peaked, and it started to crash down.
Havilar sprinted up from behind her to plant the sharp end of her glaive below the falling head like a spike. With a great bloody crunch, it speared through the jaw and split the fragile base of its skull, spearing its brain.
A second head swung low, its jaws wide to snatch Havilar, the glaive, and the dead head in one gulp. Farideh cast another stream of fire into its mouth instead. It veered off. Havilar wrestled the weapon free.
Farideh grinned like a madwoman, exulting in the pulse of power, the strength of the spells she cast. Let Tam think her too weak to manage. Let Dahl treat her like some grasping apprentice. She knew what she was doing.
“Fari! Duck!” Havilar cried.
The second head slammed into her side and threw her into the lake.
The icy water shocked her every nerve and she nearly gasped in surprise. The blue light of the water was all around her, and for a moment she couldn’t tell where the surface was and where the lake bottom lay. A current stirred the water around her and pulled her gently toward some other shore. She turned, trying to find some purchase, some touchstone that would point the way.
And found herself facing a dark, jagged hole in the rock.
She hung there, her lungs screaming as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. A flat surface surrounded the hole, a square that broke the natural shape of the lake’s wall. And if that was the wall …
Farideh made for the surface, took another breath of air, and dived again, swimming closer. She ran her fingers over the freezing stone, the chiseled edges of runes still clear.
No wonder it had been lost to the ages.
The hydra plunged a head into the water beside her. She swam frantically backward, away from the bloom of acid, the snap of its teeth. The rod was still in her hand, but she couldn’t breathe let alone speak the trigger word. Back and back and back-chased by the lunging jaws, until its neck was stretched to the limit. Her muscles ached with the cold. She pulled out her sword and stabbed at the creature, only making it madder. It caught the edge of her cloak in its teeth and yanked. Pulling her near enough to take a bite. Pulling her near enough for Farideh to shove her sword into the soft back of its mouth.
The hydra pulled back, spitting acid. She swam for the surface again, and made for shore. The wounded head reared up over her, the hilt of her sword still protruding from its mouth.
“Dive!” Tam bellowed across the water, and she did, but not before she glimpsed Dahl and Pernika both taking their swords to the creature’s heart. From under the icy water, the crack of the hydra’s neck slamming into the lake’s surface sounded all around her. It drew up again, and its death scream reached even Farideh’s ears.
She broke the surface again. The last head lay sprawled across the stony shore, and Havilar was clambering over it. As Farideh paddled nearer, Havilar kneeled at the edge and held out her glaive end. “Gods, here! Are you all right?”
“I th-think I f-found it,” Farideh gasped. She grabbed hold of the proffered end of Havilar’s glaive and hauled herself up out of the freezing water. Her teeth chattered and her bones ached, but still she grinned. “There’s a hole, a passage in between two rocks. It’s hard to see, but there’s writing on part of it and the broken part’s the right size.”
Mira had been standing over Tam and Dahl, but now all her attention was on Farideh. “Where?”
“Along the cave wall, on the left.” She pushed the wet hair out of her eyes. “It’s fairly far in, though. Someone not so winded should check it.”
Mira was already stripping off her armor and gear. She waded into the water and started toward the cave wall.
Havilar pulled her cloak from her haversack and draped it around Farideh’s shoulders. “Here. Bad as swimming in the tarn too early?”
Farideh pulled the cloak around her. “Easily.”
“Brrr,” Havilar said sympathetically. “Can I borrow your sword a breath?”
“Get it out and you can.”
Tam yelped in pain. “Shar and hrast!” Dahl held Tam’s right hand by the raw and ragged fingers. The hand below it hardly bore any skin and had swollen twice its normal size.
“Broken,” Dahl said. “Can you heal it?”
“Not without my right hand,” Tam snapped. He winced as Dahl smeared an oily substance over the ruined skin. “Hrast. Brin, get over here. Dahl, go start a fire.”
“The salve will help,” Dahl said.
“Not fast enough to make my hand good for the next thing that needs healing.” Brin dropped down beside the silverstar and started praying. Dahl looked away-but seeing Farideh watching, he scowled.