A patch of warmer water ahead told Mirraleen that she was coming up on Fountain Grotto. A little farther on lay an underwater tunnel through the reef. Through it, she and her companions could return to the shallows, striking with next to no warning.
From mind to mind, Mirraleen sent her war cry. From mind to mind, it echoed back to her, as a hundred sleek forms surged through the dark water.
Torvik was an experienced sailor and a survivor of fights far more serious than tavern brawls. He was also the son of a father and mother who had not endured and prospered by losing their wits in the face of surprise.
After the first moment of rage and shame, his thoughts arrayed themselves for battle. He let himself be carried downward into the darkness without further struggles. His captor might eat only live prey, think him carrion, and release him.
Failing that, it might send some of its tentacles questing in search of further prey. Lightly held, he might break free. If he broke free while this deep, he might find himself underneath his attacker. There were few living things, whether creations of the True Gods or of twisted magic, whose bellies were not a vulnerable spot.
He had no sword (a loss that now only heated his rage), but he had two arms and two daggers. Anything that believed him helpless would regret that belief.
One tentacle loosened its grip and darted away, toward the surface as far as Torvik could judge. The other two still gripped him, however, and now he was deeper than he had reckoned on. He felt the pressure of water as well as the clutching tentacles.
How deep did this monster lair?
The pressure grew still further, and Torvik sensed invisible bands of something stronger than even magic-driven flesh tightening on his chest. He had breathed deeply before he went under and could hold his breath longer than most, but before long even his endurance would reach its end. Then so would his life, going out in a brief spate of silver bubbles that would never even reach the surface from this depth.
Something struck his leg. Then the tentacle holding his right arm jerked free. Able to use steel with both hands, Torvik wasted no time in drawing his handiest dagger. He thrust it hard into the tough flesh of the tentacle holding his left arm.
The second tentacle recoiled so violently that Torvik's deep-slashing dagger nearly went with it. As he clutched it, he felt the burning in his chest that meant the end of his breath. He had no time left to hunt his attacker or rescue any of his men. Not with his life measured by the remaining air in his lungs, which might not even be enough to take him to the surface.
This time it was more of a gentle bump than a hard blow. Torvik felt himself being lifted by two furry… somethings, one under each arm. A third, then a fourth, positioned itself between his legs, adding to the lift.
He was rising now, faster than he could have done by his unaided swimming. He was still holding the dagger, and his air-starved brain turned over wild thoughts of stabbing out at the beings lifting him.
Dolphins? Even wild dolphins with no elven selves or ties to the Dargonesti had been known to rescue swimmers in distress, or attack sharks and octopi. But dolphins had smooth, sleek hides. He had felt fur under his arms, and now felt it below as well.
Seals. No, sea otters.
It took all the wits he had left to make that distinction. It was beyond Torvik to carry his thoughts one last step farther, to realize how the sea otters must have come to his rescue, or to hope that the sleek swimmers would rescue his crew as well.
The bubbles of his last outward breath sparkled on the water. Before he could draw the inward breath that would have filled his lungs with water, his head broke the surface.
He did not know it. He did not feel the sea otters under each arm or holding him up. Nor did he sense the one who swam up and took position under his chin, lifting his head out of the water.
His lungs drew in air, however, not water, with a noise like a sick whale. He would have heard similar noises from the water around him, had his senses been awake. Torvik heard none of the signs that others among the boat's crew yet lived. He also had no awareness of his swimming bearers guiding him away from the rest of his men, toward a beach at the end of a tiny, almost landlocked cove.
He was as one dead through the brief journey to the beach, dead to the pushing of whiskered muzzles and the heaving of agile flippers. He remained dead to the pricks and stabs of sharp rocks, and to the splashes as his rescuers slipped back into the water, their night's work only just begun.
He did not even sense a sea otter muzzle push above the water and suddenly change shape; nose, mouth, and eyes alike. Fur shrank away from the face, to instead flow from above as long auburn tresses.
But the owner of those tresses sensed that Torvik's life was safe, that he had passed from senselessness to sleep, and that she could now safely leave him. She left to the gods the question of her returning, although she knew what she wanted, in both heart and mind.
It had been arranged for small vessels with signal lamps to form a chain from within sight of Red Elf to the rest of the fleet. The disappearance of Torvik's boat was known aboard Wavebiter and the other principal ships of the fleet within an hour.
Gildas Aurhinius brought the news himself.
"This will kill my lady," the Istaran said, his first words after the bare facts that the lamps had already carried.
Haimya sat up in her bunk, snatching a sheet to cover herself. "You insult your wife and our old friend by those words," she said. "Take them back."
Pirvan looked from his wife to Aurhinius. Haimya seemed in deadly earnest, and Aurhinius more than a trifle taken aback by that earnestness.
"I know now why they call this the Bad News Watch," Pirvan said. "Even if the news is no worse than what comes in daylight, one has less strength to bear it."
Aurhinius sat down on Pirvan's sea chest and put his head in his hands. "I will beg my lady's pardon when I see her again," he said, "and I beg Lady Haimya's now. I-I have lost one who was no son by blood but might have been a son in spirit. How well would you have borne losing Sir Darin in the first year after he became a knight?"
Pirvan and Haimya exchanged glances. "Eskaia will hear nothing of your first words from me," she said, and her husband nodded. "As Pirvan said, bad news weighs heavier in the depths of the night."
Whether or not she had intended those words as a dismissal, Aurhinius took them as such. He bowed himself out, and Pirvan blew the lamp higher and took the Istaran's place on the chest. He did not, however, put his head in his hands.
"Are you thinking of Gerik?" Haimya asked.
"How not?" he answered. "We have it better than Eskaia. The land does not commonly swallow the dead of its wars, as the sea swallows those who do battle on the waves."
"That comes from The Lay of Vinos Solamnus," Haimya said. Her smile sagged at one corner of her mouth, but it was undeniably a smile. "You need more inspiration than such news, to be so eloquent at this hour of the night."
"Then inspire me."
"Perhaps I can."
She let the sheet fall. It pooled around her waist. Pirvan was admiring the play of the lamplight on his wife, when someone knocked.
The sheet rose to its former position. Pirvan opened the door on Aurhinius, who said, "More ill news. The minotaurs have sent a flyboat to our scouting line. They wish a parley. I agreed to be one of those going, suggested you, Haimya, Sirbones, and Darin for others, and wish your answer. Or rather, the council wishes your answer."