Seren gestured so that both palms lay open and empty, a gesture of entreaty. Her wrists were thin and shapely, her hands well formed. Japheth looked up to her face. She asked, "Why do you constantly pull away from me, Japheth? I like you. Are you so wrapped up in your gloomy thoughts that you haven't noticed that?"
"Yes, I have been preoccupied," allowed the warlock. He recalled Anusha's sleeping body in his arms as he'd carried her from his fey castle.
"Well, there's no more excuse to ignore me, now that all our cards are on the table, so to speak." Seren grinned with a certain ferocity.
"I… I am flattered, Seren. But now is not the time. We go into the lair of the beast. Best we do not even begin down that road."
"Are you lonely?" she inquired, her voice soft. "I know I am, by myself in my cabin each and every long night."
An image of Anusha on his bunk eating trail rations briefly obscured Seren's form. She was wearing a shift that left her neck and shoulders bare. His cheeks warmed, though he doubted the wizard could see him blush under the shadow of his hood. If she could, she'd likely misinterpret it. He and Anusha were working toward something, it was clear, something more than friendship. His heart beat faster.
What Seren wanted was something like that, but without the friendship. He kept his face hard.
"Well?" asked the wizard, her own face also beginning to redden, not from embarrassment, but from the anger of incipient rejection.
"Hoy!" Thoster's call cut through the line of tension running between them. "Japheth! Seren! What're you two squabbling about? Step up here! We have little time to devise our strategy!"
The wizard studied him a moment longer. Then, instead of letting her face break into a scowl, she chuckled. She winked and said, "This trip isn't over yet. If we defeat the great kraken, perhaps you'll be in a more celebratory mood."
She joined Thoster and Nogah at the railing, leaving Japheth shaking his head. The white-clad wizard was not used to being denied, that was clear.
He approached the group, putting the kuo-toa between himself and Seren. Nogah was responding to some biting question the wizard had just asked. "It isn't as hopeless as you suppose, human. I can safely guide us through the city and down to where the kraken rests. I can sense the Dreamheart even now. I'm close enough to obscure our approach, and the closer I get, the stronger I'll become!"
Japheth and Thoster exchanged a quick glance. The captain flicked his eyes to the kuo-toa, then back at him, then gave a slight negative shake of his head. Was he saying Nogah shouldn't long be allowed to keep the Dreamheart, if they successfully retrieved it? Perhaps. Or perhaps the warlock was merely projecting what he wanted to read in the captain's signal. Regardless, Japheth would have to take it for Behroun, whatever Nogah thought or Thoster wanted. The warlock decided he wouldn't volunteer his intention just yet. It was possible Thoster no longer considered himself in Behroun's employ, with such a great prize at hand.
"May I see?" Japheth asked Thoster, gesturing for the spy tube.
Thoster passed over the viewing glass. Japheth raised the cylinder to his eye and squinted. The distant mote leaped into focus. He saw an island on which oddly canted structures sprawled between dry land and a sickle-moon-shaped lagoon. A noticeable dimness suffused the air over the island, as if the day's sunlight was reluctant to illuminate the kuo-toa community.
"There is a quality to the light I mistrust," the warlock noted. He wondered if he shouldn't take a grain of traveler's dust, just to make certain nothing slipped past his perception. With that thought, he perceived tiny ants crawling across his palm. He didn't look-he knew the sensation was in his mind.
Nogah interjected, "We should go now. Prepare a small craft for those of you who can't swim."
"Which would be all of us," Seren replied.
Nogah glanced at Thoster but only nodded.
"If you can protect us from being detected, shouldn't we take the whole ship closer?" the wizard pressed.
"I can obscure a small craft but not something as large as the Green Siren."
Thoster bawled out orders for the small launch to be readied. When it was lowered over the side, the captain, Seren, Japheth, six crew members assigned to row, and even the first mate, Nyrotha, climbed down into the rocking craft. Though he couldn't see her, Japheth supposed Anusha accompanied the landing party. Again, more powerfully this time, the urge to withdraw a speck of dust from his hidden tin made his throat feel swollen. The ants now felt like they were crawling up his forearms too. He gripped the gunwale to keep his hands occupied.
Nogah simply dived off the side of the Green Siren. She arrowed into the chop with barely a splash. A moment later, the kuo-toa's scaled head reappeared near the launch, her wide eyes blinking through the bluish gray waves.
Thoster loosed the knots, and the rowers began their back-breaking sculls. Slowly, the launch began to close the distance to the isle. Nogah swam alongside, gurgling a half-audible chant. Japheth at first thought she was praying, then remembered she was outcast from her goddess. She must be drawing power from the Dreamheart in some ritualized fashion. Presumably the chant provided protection against the observers on the island, though he couldn't perceive any obvious effect. The warlock was impressed she could call upon the stone's power from so far. He hoped Gethshemeth didn't notice.
Tiny spots became visible in the gloom above the island. •- He pointed them out to Captain Thoster. The captain trained his glass on them. He swore.
"What is it?" demanded Seren. I Thoster wordlessly passed the glass to the wizard. She looked, and her pale skin turned even whiter. "How can that be?"
Japheth took the spyglass from the woman's nearly limp hands.
The glass revealed five flitting sentinels circling the island's periphery in lazy loops. The sentinels were kuo-toa, their forms predatory like the ones earlier encountered. The strange kuo-toa rode steeds that appeared to be great masses of seaweed. Each mass trailed a writhing nest of suckered arms that undulated in wavelike synchrony as they glided across the sky. Streamers of inky blackness marked each rider's wake, slowly dispersing in the wind, but accounting for the general gloom that cloaked the island. Each kuo-toa clutched a lance-like spear under one arm.
"It is the power of the Dreamheart!" called Nogah's voice from the water.
"How? Why?" demanded Thoster.
"The stone taps some greater font of energy that liberates creatures formerly consigned to life below the waves. To the few selected, the boundary between sky and sea is erased, and movement and breath in both are as if one vast realm! See? Those creatures flitting about are enslaved morkoth! Gethshemeth has repurposed them as flying mounts!"
The ex-whip's words came fast and furious, becoming almost indecipherable as the kuo-toa began to thrash in the water.
"Easy, Nogah," cautioned Thoster. "Are you all right?"
"Let us hope," interrupted Seren, "Gethshemeth does not give itself this ability to glide through the air like a bird."
"Actually," Japheth found himself saying, even as his eyes stayed locked on the spiraling sentinels inking the air, "that would make it far more convenient for us. I don't look forward to swimming down to meet the great beast."
Nogah huffed and wheezed, but began to calm. Finally, she continued, "I foresee Gethshemeth will meet us halfway."
Japheth wondered what that meant, but Nogah silenced his query unasked with a quick shake of her head. She said, "Now, quiet your tongues. I must redouble my efforts. I didn't expect such sentinels."