She drank some of it then swam back up above the trees, where other ‘chitls were wheeling and swooping about. “I killed one of them,” she called.
“We got the other,” replied a warrior. He was one of the stupid ones: He sounded gleeful, as if the raid were a game.
Wraxzala wondered just how playful he’d feel when the wyrms emerged from the apex of the volcano. It would happen by and by. She and her comrades had merely delayed the inevitable.
Tu’ala’keth cautiously raised her head halfway out of the water, ducked back down, and turned to Yzil, who was hovering beside her. “The way is clear,” she said.
“Good.” He and the other ‘chitls in the vanguard swam up into the air to see for themselves.
She rather wished she were able to do likewise, but the ‘chitls hadn’t offered her this particular magic. They claimed they barely had enough for themselves. She suspected they were simply unwilling to share the precious resource with someone they regarded as a “slave creature,” but she hadn’t made an issue of it. During her time with the pirates, she’d had plenty of practice walking and assumed she’d manage well enough.
Trident in hand, her new satchel dangling at her hip, she waded up onto a shelf of granite and took another look around the sea cave. The air was damp and salty, alive with the echoing boom and murmur of the surf. Shells, starfishes, and clumps of weed littered the floor where it sloped down to meet the water. An oil lamp, unlit at the moment, reposed in a niche in the wall, and bits of broken stone lay about the entrance to a passage slanting upward. Someone had smashed away rock to make the path more accessible.
“You were right,” said Yzil. “There is a way up.”
Tu’ala’keth shrugged. “It was not difficult to deduce. The wearer of purple mentioned that in time, he and his fellow lunatics might provide undeath to the dragons of the sea. How could humans accomplish that without workrooms where land and water come together?”
“Well, don’t feel too smug. It’s a narrow way up. I was hoping we could sneak up on them quickly.”
“If we make haste, we still can.”
“Let’s hope so.” Yzil turned toward the other hovering, flitting ixitxachitls, and the locathahs and koalinths still sloshing up out of the depths, and started barking orders.
It took him a few minutes to get everyone organized, and he and Tu’ala’keth led the ascent. The ‘chitl’s broad, flat body all but filled the passage, the rippling edges nearly swiping the walls.
He hesitated at a point where the smoothly sloping floor gave way to a succession of chiseled edges and right angles. “What’s this?”
She smiled for an instant. “Stairs. No inconvenience to you, but I suffered stumbles and stubbed toes before I learned the trick of them. I suspect your slaves will, too.”
Yzil showed his fangs. “If that’s the worst they suffer tonight, they can count themselves blessed.”
Anton had pilfered a few small knives without his captors noticing, but now that he’d figured out where to hide it, he wanted a sword. It didn’t need magical virtues like Tu’ala’keth’s cutlass or Shandri’s huge and thirsty blade. Any hilt weapon that extended his reach by more than a finger-length would do.
Surely somewhere in the caverns lay a dull, notched, rusty, poorly balanced sword nobody wanted or would miss. But he’d crept about for a long while without finding it and wandered dangerously far from his cage in the process. He supposed it was time to give up, for tonight anyway, and to steal some more food and make his way back to his fellow prisoners.
He turned, and a quavering roar shook the tunnel.
It sounded as if it might actually have words in it, but since he didn’t speak the language of dragons, he couldn’t be sure.
Whether it did or not, it roused the entire complex. Echoing voices babbled on every side. Footsteps scurried. Trumpets bleated, repeating the alarm the wyrm had sounded. A sickly blue shimmer and whiff of rot washed through the air as, somewhere, one of the necromancers cast an initial spell.
Intent on covering at least some of the distance back to the prison before the tunnels filled up with cultists dashing in all directions, trying to balance the conflicting imperatives of haste and stealth, Anton trotted as quickly as he dared until red light shined from an irregular opening just ahead.
The spy felt a pang of fear and self-disgust. He’d known a fire drake had claimed that particular side gallery for its lair, but the cursed thing had been asleep ever since he’d first discovered it, and so he’d come to consider this particular passageway as safe as any.
But it wasn’t anymore. The commotion had roused the reptile and drawn it forth. Anton cast about for a hiding place. There was nowhere within reach.
The fire drake crawled out into the corridor. A runt compared to Eshcaz or any of the magnificent horrors proclaiming themselves “true dragons,” it was nonetheless bigger than a horse and wagon, and its crimson scales radiated heat and light like metal fresh from the forge. Its blazing yellow eyes fixed on Anton.
He bowed to it deeply but quickly, like a lackey in a frantic hurry. “Someone is attacking the enclave!” he cried. “The other wyrms need you, milord!”
The drake showed its fangs. “I’m a female, fool!” Wings flattened against her back so as not to scrape on the ceiling, she lunged.
For one ghastly instant, Anton thought she was charging him; then he perceived that her true intent was simply to traverse the passage as fast as possible. He flattened himself against the wall.
The dragon’s scaly flank nearly brushed him, and he flinched from the searing heat. Then the excited wyrm hurtled on by and around a bend, without ever registering that the human groveling before her had worn the rags and sported the shaggy whiskers, grime, and lash marks of a slave.
Anton hurried onward, hiding and backtracking repeatedly as the tunnels filled up. At least it gave him a chance to eavesdrop on snatches of conversation:
“attacking up the mountain”
Anton smiled; he’d guessed right about that much, anyway.
“crazy to challenge the Sacred Ones.” “They’re crazy just to challenge us! I know a spell” “some kind of bats, or demons that look and fly like them.”
“No, it’s gill-men. They crawled up out of the sea.”
He frowned, puzzled. Was it possible Tu’ala’keth had returned at the head of an undersea army? He couldn’t imagine how. She had no influence over her fellow shalarins. That was the galling realization that had launched her on her demented mission. He was still mulling it over when he finally managed to skulk back to the cage.
His fellow captives were all pressed up against the grille and raised a clamor when he appeared. On another night, he would have berated them for it, but it didn’t matter anymore.
“What’s happening?” demanded Jamark. “We heard all the noise and asked a cultist when he ran by, but he didn’t stop.”
Anton explained what little he knew. “So it’s time,” he concluded and, heedless of the squeal and bang, threw open the door. “Dig out the knives.”
They didn’t move; they just regarded him uncertainly. Eventually Stedd, a scrawny, homely, balding fellow who’d owned a dozen tanneries until pirates captured him and his beautiful young wife refused to pay his ransom, said, “Maybe that’s not the wisest thing to do.”
“Of course it is,” Anton said.
“Why?” Stedd retorted. “We’ve only got knives, and most of us aren’t trained warriors. Where’s the sense in taking on well-armed dragonkin, magicians, and wyrms? If somebody else has come to wipe out the cult and rescue us, wonderful. Let’s stay here where it’s safe and pray they succeed. We can thank them when the fighting’s over.”
“That might not be a bad plan,” Anton said, “except for a reason you already mentioned yourself: The cultists are powerful and have the advantage of a highly defensible stronghold. We can’t count on the newcomers, whoever they are, to win without our help. But if we sneak through the caves, stabbing maniacs in the back while they’re intent on the threat outside, maybe we can make a difference.”