The cloaked thing lay between Trip and the underwater passage-his only means of escape. It crouched in a heap on the damp cavern floor, waiting for him to try and pass. Panting, Trip held his ground.
The thing didn’t move.
Trip held his breath. The thing still didn’t move. A small breeze wafted through the cave, and the scales of the serpent-skin cloak glistened in the wan light.
“Well? Come on!” Trip called to the undead creature.
Still the thing in the cloak did not move.
Slowly, a realization came to the kender. Mustering his curiosity, he strode over to the cloak and gave it a hard kick.
“Maybe your family should have called you ‘Timberhead’ rather than Shellcracker,” Trip said to himself. “Because sometimes you’re as dense as a pylon.”
He grabbed one edge of the serpent-skin cloak and gave it a good yank, like the kender magician he’d once seen pull a tablecloth out from under a dinner service. The cloak flew into his hands while the thing inside it clattered to the floor-which, come to think of it, was pretty much the same result the magician had obtained.
Bones. Nothing but old bones with a curved knife sticking out of the ribs. The man must have died sitting in the comer of the cave with his cloak on. He’d been moldering there quietly until Trip yanked on the cloak-at which point the corpse tumbled on top of the startled kender.
“Timberhead,” Trip said to himself. “Fighting a pile of old bones.” He laughed, but the laughter echoed eerily in the small cave, so he stopped.
He held up the cloak and gave it a good looking over. “You’re lucky you didn’t cut it to ribbons, fighting imaginary spooks,” he said aloud. Then he smiled.
The sea serpent cloak was quite beautiful, in a shabby sort of way-and in amazingly good condition for something that had been sitting in a dank cave for who-knew-how-long.
Trip threw it around his shoulders and immediately felt both warmer and not so wet. “You must be sea serpent skin,” he said, “because regular lizard isn’t so warm.” Pleased with his find, he returned to poking around the pirates’ lair.
Sadly, Trip had turned up all there was to see before his desperate fight with the dead pirate. After topping off a few pockets with the remaining coins, he looked for another way out. “They can’t have brought all this loot through the hole in the floor,” he reasoned.
He found a passageway hidden behind a rotting tapestry and decided to give it a go. The tunnel wound steadily upward, and Trip soon smelled the fresh scent of sea air once more. The glowing lichens quickly died away, but light from the outside leaked down the passage, enabling him to see.
He soon came to a cleverly concealed opening in the cliff face, about forty feet above the surging tide. The entryway was cut into the rock such that, from either direction, it appeared to be only a small crack in the surrounding stone. While enough to fool a human’s-or perhaps even a dragon’s-eye, the trick clearly had little effect on the bats whose droppings littered the cave entrance.
Trip crinkled up his nose and tried not to get his boots too messy as he peered out into the daylight beyond. Even with the cloak’s hood pulled down nearly over his eyes, the light seemed unbearably bright.
“If you wait until nightfall,” he thought, “you may have an easier time avoiding Kell and his men. On the other hand, if you do that, you’ll have no idea of where you’re going. Best to climb down now, have a look around, and then try to catch a boat to Darthalla.”
He pulled the cloak’s hood back from his head to have a better look at the cliff face; the light immediately seemed less blinding and the air felt less oppressive.
Being extra cautious, Trip slowly climbed down the cliff face to the waterline. By the time he got there, the tide had receded somewhat, leaving a thin, rocky beach along the bottom of the bluff. Taking his bearings from the afternoon sun, he quickly figured out in which direction the town lay.
He felt concerned about running into Kell again, but as the cliffs only grew steeper to the west, he had little choice. “It’s either back to town or twice the climb you just made,” he though.
His mind made up, he hiked down the rocky shore back the way he’d originally come. He hadn’t gone far, though, when the sound of voices drifted to his ears.
“Must be around here somewhere,” said a man.
“Check up the shore again,” said a voice Trip recognized as belonging to Lord Kell.
“A lot of work for one kender,” said the first voice.
“I’m inclined to agree, milord,” said a voice belonging to Karista Meinor. “Why chase the kender when your sister is ailing?”
“Aye,” Kell replied. “I did vow to take him to Alarl, though.”
Trip smiled. They hadn’t realized that he’d reclaimed the black diamond artifact yet. Good! If they left, it would be easier for him to get off Jaentarth.
Just as he decided to slink away and hide somewhere until they’d gone, though, the first voice shouted, “There he is!”
Trip cursed himself. He’d been so lost in thought-a very un-kender thing to do-that his enemies had sneaked up on him. He turned, but saw no easy escape down the western beach.
Kell and the others ran toward him, brandishing weapons. Trip’s only alternative was a rocky, fingerlike quay stretching out into the ocean. He dashed down the quay with no clear plan in his mind. Kell and the others ran close behind.
“Perhaps I can find another underwater cave,” Trip hoped. “Maybe one of those passageways I didn’t take leads out here.” Glancing back the way he’d come, it seemed a reasonable prospect.
An arrow whizzed by his head and shattered on the rocks in front of him. Another arrow clattered nearby. That made up his mind.
Not waiting to reach the end of the quay, he dived into the crashing waves.
Lord Kell and Lady Meinor watched in frustration as the kender disappeared beneath the pounding surf. They raced to where they’d last seen Trip, and stood there watching for long minutes.
“How long can he stay under?” Kell asked.
Karista shrugged. “They said he’s a practiced diver. I wouldn’t rule out five minutes or more.”
“We’ll wait,” Kell said, and turning to his men added, “Keep watch up and down the beach. I don’t know how he eluded us last time, but we don’t want him slipping ashore unnoticed.”
They waited. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
“Could he have drowned?” Kell finally asked when they’d seen no sign of Trip for a half hour.
“I don’t know,” Karista said with a shrug. “Probably he didn’t intend to drown himself, but got caught in some undertow.”
Kell nodded. “Aye, perhaps. We’ve wasted enough time, in any case. Our healer must have what my sister requires by now. We sail for Berann.”
“And then the treasure?” Karista asked hopefully.
“If it exists, we’ll find it,” Kell replied, “… For the glory of the Order. Then you’ll have your trade concession.”
Karista Meinor smiled and her steel-blue eyes flashed at him. “Aye, milord.”
Trip had spent many years diving, and once he had even beaten a pearl diver to the bottom of a six fathom bay.
Never before had he dived as he did when he leaped off the quay. The water surged around him; rocks, reefs, and seaweed flew past as though they had been shot out of a catapult. The water changed from clear, to hazy blue, to indigo in what seemed an instant.
Disoriented and nearly out of breath, he shot back up to the surface. He breached like a dolphin, shooting high into the afternoon air before crashing back down into the waves.
He sputtered and flailed for a moment before coming to rest, gently bobbing on the surface. Looking behind him, Trip saw Jaentarth and Lord Kell’s ship-nearly a half league away.
Trip laughed and shook his fist in their direction, knowing they couldn’t see him, but half-wishing they could.