How had Shaa talked him into this? Wroclaw wondered. Perhaps it was high time to take a fresh good look at his policy of being the faithful loyal retainer who always knew where the salt shaker had gotten to and could mix any drink without referring to the book, not to mention the host of other grubby tasks that had a talent of coming his way. Perhaps more of a middle ground between scrubbing out pots and clandestine missions of hair-raising peril would be -
“To cast loose prepare you!” Haddo screeched, looking straight down the bird’s neck at the rapidly expanding spiral of ground clutter ahead of them.
“So the bird has gone out of its mind,” Wroclaw remarked conversationally, not caring whether Haddo was listening or not. There was not a seagull in sight, either; they had left the reassembled flock behind at some higher altitude a few gut-wrenching maneuvers ago. At least there were trees below them, it looked like, and some sort of body of water sparkling back at them the night sky, but cartwheeling there off to the side, lit from within by its own torches and from the outside by cunning banks of spotlights - was that the triumphal pavilion used for the Knitting kick-off ball several nights ago? Surely the bird was not making for the pavilion...
No. Of course not. The bird was heading for the lake.
With a powerful shriek and a cloud of released feathers, the vulture pulled out of its dive and leveled off just as its belly splatted into the water. Spray sailed everywhere, a bow wake began at the bird’s breastbone just beneath Wroclaw’s dangling feet, and then just as Wroclaw was collecting himself to wonder how far the creature could hydroplane along, its wings spread wide, without either clipping a wingtip or running out of moat and skidding up on the bank into the trees, it suddenly folded its wings again, pointed its nose down, and slid under the surface.
Water foamed over Wroclaw’s head - how deep was this lake? But one way or the other, this was where he got off. He floundered at the buckle and the seat belt came free, he came out of his saddle - goodbye and good riddance, bird! - and then he was thrashing for the surface. Just as he broke into the air, a fresh cataract cascaded over him; out of the falling sheets of water, the bird could be glimpsed again taking wing, laying a storm front behind it as it cleared the trees and vanished into the night. Wroclaw turned on his back and coughed fluid out of his lungs.
Two red embers perched on a log were paddling toward him. “That thing has a very nasty sense of humor,” Wroclaw told Haddo. “Is there some purpose in all this?”
“So crowded is Peridol,” gurgled Haddo, he of the glowing eyes, “from when place one to other fast get must, air must use.”
“Are you trying to justify what we’ve just gone through?” Shaa had been questioning how far to trust Haddo; a reasonable enough suspicion given the way Haddo had been acting. Of course, after this most recent display Wroclaw was more than willing to see Shaa’s wariness and raise him a few major doubts of his own. “Next time just let me know when you intend to get me killed and we can handle it with much less inconvenience all around - we’ll pick a pleasant restaurant and you can put poison in my wine, how about that?”
“Finished you are? Mission ours is Favored to seek, yes? Also knows Favored bird. Complex is bird. Like big vulture looks, but is part eagle, part owl, part what know I not. Many senses has it.”
“Part duck? Are you trying to tell me that bird is a hunter? A tracker?”
“Think you live it could only carrion on? Fah!”
“Very well,” said Wroclaw. “Fine. So the bird can somehow detect the presence of Favored-of-the-Gods’ current lair, you say. If it has done so, then where is this hideout?”
“Perhaps good enough would you be search help me to,” Haddo muttered.
“Well, I don’t imagine it’s in this pond. Favored did not strike me as the sort to enjoy splashing around in the water.” Unless - “Can his floating module travel submersibly?”
“Not surprised would be I,” said Haddo, after a moment. “Shack of construction used by Favored right here around was.”
Wroclaw let another wave roll past and raised his head. Dark water still surrounded him, the ripples of their traumatic entry still rolling to and fro. The bank still looked to be a good furlong off, but that was unlikely; in the midst of Peridol this was more a stream with ambition than a river fallen into doubt. On the other side from the bank, the curtain wall of the palace complex loomed tall above the waters. Overhead, for the sake of completeness, was the unhelpful starry sky. And below? How deep was this basin, anyway?
But no, that was beside the point. Even if there were some entry on the bottom to a concealed grotto, lost in the midst of the water grass and the silt of river mud and unnoticeable even if it weren’t already the pitch-dark of night, how could they find it? It was unlikely Favored would have left some convenient signpost saying “This Way to the Secret Lair”; after all, he would have already gone to some effort to make the thing impossible to find. “If your friend Favored is indeed down there,” Wroclaw said, treading water again, “is there any particular reason he would want to see you? Any token he may have given you to attract his attention in urgent times?”
“Cheap fictions have been reading you,” grumbled Haddo in return. Was that actually a log he had found, or did he have some sort of flotation bladder concealed beneath his enigmatic cloak? “Ridiculous is this. Adepts of sorcery are we both - skills should we use.”
“‘Ridiculous’ - what a remarkable conclusion,” said Wroclaw, considering whether or not to use his vaunted status as an adept to swamp Haddo beneath a fresh surge of water. Or perhaps he could pierce the flotation bladder, or overturn the log. “Whatever your bird had spotted, it wouldn’t have killed it to wait here and point it out.”
“Skree!” said something above their heads, followed by “squaw!” and a flopper of wings - normal-sized wings, this time - and then the white ghost-blur of bird dropped in for a landing.
“Thought I not are nocturnal seagulls,” said Haddo, his eye-sparks craning upward at the claws scooting for purchase on his hood.
“Thought I not many things,” Wroclaw said. “At the moment, might I propose we merely take this one as a given and proceed from here? This body of water is not warm.”
Haddo made growling sounds under his breath as Wroclaw communed with the seagull. “Over here,” Wroclaw concluded after a moment.
“Told you that could have I,” snapped Haddo; the bird had been gesturing so vigorously in that direction with its beak that its message had clearly leapt species barriers.
“At least someone here had the foresight to get the rest of the directions from your bird,” said Wroclaw, doing a very effective breaststroke with his extra-jointed arms. From the renewed shrieking of the gull he could tell Haddo was following. Then the bird flapped again, sailed overhead, landed on the water just ahead of him, and just in case he hadn’t quite gotten the message, stuck its head under the water for good measure.
Wroclaw gave a last stroke and arrived at the gull’s location, watching the creature eyeing him shrewdly and wishing, no doubt, it had an eyebrow it could raise over the eye in question to give the proper counterpoint to its expression. “Just so,” said Wroclaw. He took a deep breath and dove.
One fathom, two, three - how deep was this thing? - and then finally the first slimy tendrils of bottom grass; whatever the birds had spotted was hopefully right around here, and if this was all some practical joke they would find out just how flappable he could be himself under the right provocation. He clawed his way down through the grass to the bottom and felt through the muck. His eyes had been closed - if it was dark on the surface, there surely wouldn’t be any more illumination down here in the silt, and who knew what sorts of ophthalmic diseases might be added to the unescapable scourge of dysentery from this pleasant evening dip - but just to be on the safe side he opened them anyway for a quick peep. Guess what? Wroclaw thought to himself. Just two feet from his questing hand a coil of pale blue phosphorescence made a bulls-eye around the outlet of a wide pipe rising an arm’s-span free of the bottom sludge.