“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 wyrms retaliated in kind.
Aquatic dragons commonly lacked the sorcerous talents of their kindred on land. As a rule, it was only the species that thrived in either environment who cast spells beneath the waves. Some suchblacks and at least one topazhad joined the dragon flight, but Tu’ala’keth had hoped that by now, their madness might have rendered them incapable of using arcane talents.
Alas, that was not the case. Water became acid, searing the flesh of the thrashing sea-elves caught amid the transformation, diffusing outward to blister the skin and sting the eyes of other warriors. Black tentacles writhed from a central point to batter and clutch at a dozen mermen. The morkoth who’d snagged
Tu’ala’keth’s attention a moment before wailed, froze into position, and turned into a thing of translucent glass sinking downward toward the mountaintop. Its koalinth thralls exchanged wild-eyed looks as if silently asking one another what to do now.
“Hold!” called Morgan’s disembodied voice. “Hold fast. Bowmen, the enemy’s in range. Start shooting!”
“About time,” Anton muttered. Feet kicking lazily, he’d been floating with his crossbow already shouldered. Now he pulled the trigger, and though he hadn’t had much time to practice shooting under water either, the dart streaked forth to pierce the silvery scales of a dragon eel just above its black, deep-set eye. He instantly worked the lever to cock the weapon again.
Countless quarrels hurtled at the oncoming dragons. For their part, the wizards and priests switched to a new set of spells. Tu’ala’keth read another trigger, and a colossal squid coalesced into being in front of the wyrms. Her comrades materialized enormous creatures akin to whales, sharks, octopuses, eels, and jellyfish, counterparts to mundane animals drawn from spirit realms or elementals like those she and Yzil had battled. The conjured servants surged forward to engage the reptiles. Meanwhile, other mages evoked sudden booms among the dragons to stun them and pain their sensitive ears, or sweeping their hands to and fro, wove hanging patterns of multicolored light to arrest a wyrm’s gaze and hold the creature stupefied.
The allies hoped this magic, even if it ultimately did little damage, would slow the dragons’ advance, giving the crossbowmen time to shoot them repeatedly. It did, for a few heartbeats, and one by one, the reptiles started breaking through whatever barriers, living or inanimate, tangible, phantasmal, or psychic, the spellcasters had placed in their way. A sleek, glimmering, silver-blue water drake caught Tu’ala’keth’s squid in its fangs and snapped and raked it to shreds.
A black with a withered, cadaverous countenance snarled a counterspell to thrust an elemental back to its native level of existence. Glittering like the jewel for which it was named, its eyes blank yellow flame as bright as Eshcaz’s, the topaz simply stared at a priest of Deep Sashelas who’d attempted to shackle its will. The sea-elf screamed, convulsed, and clutched at his head. Blood billowed from his nostrils.
Abruptly, or so it seemed, on the far left flank of the company, a dragon turtle was much too close. It opened its beak and spewed its breath weapon. Water boiled to steam, and the mermen caught in the effect boiled with it. Furious with bloodlust, not hunger, the huge creature didn’t pause to gobble its victims. Rather, flippers lashing, it rushed forward to attack new ones.