Anusha examined the vial, her mind turning over the warlock's gift. Because it was from him, she ultimately decided to keep it. She didn't want to hurt his feelings. And after all, the soporific fluid could prove indispensable in the right situation. It couldn't hurt to keep the elixir.
The morning dawned wet and windswept. Iron gray waves stretched away in all directions save for the mist-shrouded line to the south. The line was the boundary between the sea and an island.
Foam-spotted wakes stretched away from the shoreline in both directions. Flashes of green fins, black gills, and long, muscular tails were visible even from the Green Siren's deck. Countless fish swam just below the surface. The swarm grazed some invisible nutrient, moving now in unison, now in erratic frenzy.
As the Green Siren drew closer, the shore resolved into a beach of acrid water, weeds, and brine pools. The polluted-looking sand was vacant but for gray rocks in heaps, oddly scoured rock formations, and a lone tower slick with dark fungus.
Captain Thoster had warned Japheth to expect the old tower, and indeed the small isle on which the tower was situated. He named isle and tower Hegruth. Both had been drowned beneath the surface of the Sea of Fallen Stars for millennia. The receding sea now revealed the forgotten ruin of unknown provenance. Its obscurity and appearance on no terrestrial map made it the perfect place for a clandestine meeting with… someone.
Thoster had been less forthcoming about the identity of she who was supposedly going to offer them the deal of the decade, a deal so fruitful it would make Marhana's fortune. Japheth knew their contact was a female by the pronoun Thoster used to describe her, but nothing more.
The warlock turned his gaze away from the tower to scan back along the Green Siren's deck. The crew not taking in sail or shipping oars openly stared at the approaching tower, apparently as unfamiliar with the beslimed spire as himself. Captain Thoster stood on the elevated poop deck at the pirate ship's stern. On the captain's left was the doughty helmsman, whose scarred hands gripped the wheel with casual skill. To Thoster's right stood Seren, the war wizard. The woman caught his eye and winked.
Japheth stared back without acknowledging the gesture. Seren was like him in some ways-she had learned, sooner than most others, to master anew the raw arcane energies that permeated the world after all spells went awry. Unlike him, she hadn't cheated by finding an easier route to reclaim arcane magic with drugs and pacts. By Seren's accoutrement, it seemed she had found her way back through study of magic with a vicious, unyielding determination.
He completed his scan of the deck. Nowhere did he detect a wavering, shadowy silhouette with the outline of an impetuous girl. That didn't mean Anusha wasn't present in her "dream form." With her sharing his cabin, he hadn't taken any traveler's dust in two days. Without the heightened sensitivity of the drug, he was blind to her direct presence.
His palms broke out with moist itch, even as his mouth dried. He recognized the signs; he'd gone too long since last he'd stepped foot on the road. He should take a pinch now. Just a single grain, that would be-
He squeezed his eyes shut, slightly disgusted at the sudden veering of his desire. He had resisted the urge to stride the road longer than normal, and now he was out of sorts. The itch on his palms grew more pronounced. Why did he resist the urge?
Anusha was the reason, he admitted.
Why was he suddenly so concerned with how she viewed him? It wasn't like him. Then his cloak fluttered of its own accord, as if something beneath its dark folds sought escape. Had he imagined it, or was his control over the portal stitched into the cloak's hem fraying with his lack of concentration? He couldn't restrain a worried groan.
A voice in his ear interrupted his internal dread. "Are you well, Japheth?"
The warlock blanched and spun around, recognizing the whisper a moment too late to quell his reaction. Anusha had apparently been standing next to him all along.
From the poop deck, Japheth saw Captain Thoster's large hat swivel toward him for a moment, then back to the approaching tower.
Barely moving his lips, Japheth said to thin air, "Do not startle me so. The captain notices my strange antics of late.
I think he's worried about the ghost in the gorgon heart."
He thought he heard a suppressed giggle, nothing else. The girl's physical remove from reality made her rash, he thought.
Then again… wasn't he being equally rash avoiding that which was required, if not now, then later? It wouldn't matter what she thought of him if his mind spun free of reason for failing to set spiritual feet on the crimson road.
His shaking hands produced a small, dull tin. From it, he produced a grain of traveler's dust.
"Japheth," came her instant whisper. He ignored the entreaty. He tilted his head toward the sky and dropped the miniscule crystal into his left eye.
The itch faded. His breathing steadied, and his hands ceased their shake. By the time the tin was re-stowed in the folds of his cloak, he saw the outline of Anusha's dream form fold itself into the scene. He smiled her way, and then looked out again past the wooden railing.
The air was like crystal, the sky an open glass, and the water a translucent skin that his enhanced vision easily, joyfully pierced. The many wakes in the water were indeed, as earlier surmised, fish, though swimming among the crowd were several scaled humanoid forms, half hidden among the schools, keeping their heads just below the water's surface. Japheth wondered if those creatures were associated with the entity they were to meet. He mentally shrugged-it didn't matter that much to him at the moment, as the drug's euphoric effect blew through his mind like a gust of cool air.
Something emerged from the tower balcony. Some sort of humanoid, kin to those swimming beneath the surface in front of the tower. He'd made an astute guess.
Though still relatively far, Japheth's dust-enhanced vision saw the figure had a round face surmounted by wide, bulbous eyes that stared back at him, rarely blinking. Its lipless mouth was a long slit bisecting the lower face, closed, though he suspected rows of needle teeth within. The creature wore a gold crown on its head like an artificial crest. Its garments were singularly gold-hued, as was its pincer-headed staff. This must be the… female they had come so far to meet.
Captain Thoster's voice rang out across the waves, apparently magically augmented by Seren, "Hail, Nogah of Olleth! We have come, as you asked. Let us parley and see how we may serve each other, and in so doing, serve ourselves!"
The creature replied, her words also supernaturally loud, though blurred and lisped, as if being formed by a vocal apparatus never meant to choke out Common. She said, "Well met, Captain Thoster. Welcome to my abode, again."
The captain barked orders. The anchor was let out. The ship's launch was prepared for a landing party, and then carefully lowered over the side. Those going ashore would include the captain, Seren, Japheth, and several nervous crew members.
Japheth just stared, absorbing all the frenzied activity but apart from it. Whorls and swirls of dazzling color intruded upon his vision, and just as reality seemed to waver in favor of a winding road of ruby, Thoster called him over to the side of the ship where they'd lowered the launch. Japheth forced his mind back from the imaginary trip it yearned to take. Instead, he climbed down a knotted rope ladder into the rocking launch.
Anusha's roiling, uncertain outline wavered at the prow. She gazed at the tower, though all aboard the ship but he failed to see her. The crew pulled on the launch's oars, not bothering with putting sail to the single, short mast. Quickly enough, the craft crossed the distance between the anchored Green Siren and the squalid shore.