Quickly, the bubbles faded and the water calmed to uncanny stillness.
Beyond the coral pillar, in front of the cave, stood the Sea Sage. She was twelve feet tall and made entirely out of seaweed. Her green eyes blazed brightly in the indigo darkness. She spoke with a voice like ancient ship timbers breaking.
“Who dares disturb my rest?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The water was chillier than Trip had expected, and he almost gasped out his air as he sank under the dark brine. In a moment, though, he regained his composure. Just before he was about to take a breath he remembered-and he was proud of this considering the fix he was in-that he didn’t have any magical seaweed.
Green and indigo shadows surrounded the kender. He reached out with his hand to make sure they were as insubstantial as they seemed, and felt slightly disappointed when they were. Then he remembered the real threat-the men who were coming to catch him.
He gazed up at the surface, but saw only a vague, gray oval. No searchers yet-but he knew they couldn’t be far behind. Turning, he dived down deeper. The strange green luminescence didn’t make it much easier to see, and the kender had to grope his way through the semi-darkness.
The hole wasn’t as deep as he’d thought. He found the rocky bottom only three fathoms down. For a moment, he feared he was trapped. Then he noticed that the passage split in three directions. Neither the green light nor the current gave any indication which would be the best way to go.
For a moment, he thought about turning back. But a quick glance upward showed that his pursuers had found his escape hole. Trip couldn’t be sure if they saw him in the gloom, but he didn’t intend to make things any easier for them.
Though he was an expert diver (part of his swimming talent), he doubted that he could hold his breath longer than they’d care to hang around the hole. He could think of only one thing to do.
Trip pulled the thong of his lucky treasure finder from around his neck. He knew it was a long chance, but the amulet had worked for him in the past He held the rock out before him in the dim light, and moved it around in front of the three diverging tunnels.
Astoundingly, the small pointed rock began to spin in front of the right hand passage. He took a moment-but only a moment as he was fast running out of air-to check his findings. Then he kicked hard into the right hand tunnel.
He swam holding the treasure finder in front of him. The gloom seemed to go on forever as Trip swam. He was already tired from being chased to the caves. Soon his lungs burned and once more spots danced before his eyes.
Just as he feared he’d drown in the darkness, the green light grew stronger. The passage opened up before him and the ceiling fell away. Dizzy, the kender groped his way to the surface. He thrust his head out of the water and gasped for air.
He leaned against the lip of the opening for a few moments, panting to catch his breath. Then a vague rattling sound caught his ear. Trip looked up and nearly fell back into the water.
The green light suffusing the cave came from glowing lichens on the wet rock walls. A hissing breeze blew from some unseen source, making a sound like a snake ready to strike. The room was filled with human bones. Some lay scattered across the floor. Others dangled-like hideous marionettes-in mildewed netting. The breeze tugged on the bones, making the eerie rattling that Trip had first heard. The gruesome sight, though, wasn’t what nearly caused the kender to lose his grip.
Trip broke into a huge grin. A vast store of pirate loot lined the tiny cavern: rusting weapons, tattered clothing, rotting draperies, some furniture, and several upturned chests of coins. The chests’ contents lay spilled across the cave’s stone floor.
“No wonder the treasure finder spotted this place,” Trip said, his small voice filled with awe.
He pulled himself up out of the hole and took a good look around. While, to a kender, the cave seemed a veritable archive of interesting things, Trip’s long years as a treasure diver made him realize that few of the items held any real value.
The steel coins-which must have formed the majority of treasure in the chests-were now little more than piles of rust. Some gold and silver pieces lay scattered among the detritus, though. Trip scooped up a few scant handfuls of these and stuffed them into the pockets of his lizard skin vest.
The bones, he assumed, came from pirates or their victims. All seemed to have met grisly ends; some still had rusting weapons protruding from their skulls and ribcages. Trip figured that everyone who knew about this place must have died in the massacre, or surely someone would have come for the treasure long ago-rather than leaving it here to rot.
The furniture and clothing had fared little better than the steel pieces. It saddened Trip’s heart to see what must have once been wonderful things treated so badly. “Sea worms would have been kinder,” he muttered.
He turned up a few small pearls amid the rubbish, but only costume gems and jewelry. A nice piece of gold embellished with cut rhinestones he stuck in a pocket. “For Ula,” he told himself.
Then something in the corner of the room gave him a start. At first, he thought it was a person. Then he realized that it was actually an old, hooded cloak, propped on top of a chest and leaning against the cavern wall. The cloak looked bulky and solid-like a tarpaulin-and it shimmered in the dim light.
Moving closer, Trip saw that it was covered with tiny greenish scales. The cloak’s surface rustled in the faint breeze, and the scales glistened.
Trip’s mouth dropped open in appreciation and awe. “I wonder what kind of lizard it came from?” he asked himself. His face brightened as he gazed at the seaweed-like fringe around the cloak’s edges. “Maybe it’s from a sea serpent!” It didn’t resemble the skin of the monster that had attacked him a few days ago, but it did remind him of a sea serpent he’d seen once on a previous voyage with Mik. His heart beat faster at the prospect.
Throwing caution to the wind, the kender skipped forward and grabbed the cloak by the hem. As he did, a creaking sound came from within the fabric. The kender looked up, and saw a skeletal face bearing down on him as the cloak lumbered forward.
Trip yelped and drew the daggers from his boots. He slashed with the small blades as the thing in the cloak lurched toward him. He stepped back, swinging again and again, trying to remember how far it was to the passage opening, hoping he could make it that far.
Then it fell on him. The kender went down, his legs and arms flailing. He felt his knives cut into something hard. Cold fingernails slashed his face. The cloak’s darkness enveloped him. The thing’s smothering presence bore him to the ground. Its foul odor clogged his nostrils.
He stabbed at it, again and again and again as its dead weight pressed down on him. Something clattered and the kender felt teeth scrape against his cheek. He tried to roll away, but the cloak wouldn’t let him out. He was trapped-pinned in a heavy, dank robe of darkness, trapped with an undead creature that wanted his life.
Unable to think of anything else to do, he kicked hard, aiming at the creature’s groin. His soft boot met only the yielding serpent cloak. The cloak flapped up in the back and the sickly green light of the cave beamed in.
Trip found himself staring eye to eye with a skeletal face. He smashed his forehead against the bridge of the things nose, then reeled back as sparks flew inside his head. “By all the gods, let go of me!” he shouted.
He tried to roll to the other side, away from the undead face. This time, the cloak gave way and he tumbled out into the light of the pirates’ lair. He scrambled to his feet and backed against the wall, holding his pearl-handled daggers before him.