Mel Odom
Wrath of the Blue Lady
CHAPTER ONE
North of Cedarspoke, Turmish Sea of Fallen Stars Year of the Fallen Friends (1399 DR)
The woman’s voice haunted Bayel Droust’s dreams as it had for weeks. Images of nightmarish creatures scurrying across the ocean floor moved to the sound of her words. Dangerous, merciless monstrosities twice as big as the ship he sailed on. The dead the sea had taken walked through a graveyard of sunken ships and prowled watches they’d walked above the surface on her orders. Other things, small and furtive, darted through trees and brush the likes of which Droust had never before seen.
The woman’s voice resonated in his mind. He still didn’t know what tongue she spoke, and Droust was conversational in five Inner Sea dialects, three human, one Dwarvish, and one Elvish. He could make his way through a dozen more, but not hers.
Over the last few tendays, she had learned his language at an unbelievable speed
But her own inability to learn more than one at a time frustrated her. During those times, while kneeling before her and praying that she didn’t take his life, he had grown afraid of her anger. When the dream ended and he woke once more each day, he felt as though a death sentence had lifted.
That night, though, the woman’s words were sharper and more intense, like an awl digging into his brain. Something bad was about to happen.
Droust moaned as he listened to the woman. He was almost awake. He knelt there in that strange, undersea forest, the skeletons of dead sailors scattered on the ocean floor in front of him, and felt himself slipping away from her.
Wake, he told himself. Just wake up. She isn’t real. But Droust was all too afraid that she was.
When she noticed him slipping from her, she turned to him, her face frozen in fury. You can’t escape me, Bayel Droust.
Droust held his hands out in supplication even as he prayed for wakefulness. “Why do you desire me, lady? I am nothing. A poor sage who’s been assigned a tiresome task.”
You have skills I need, human. Knowledge that I require. Be glad that I let you live and don’t merely pluck it from your corpse.
Rough hands closed upon Droust and wrenched him from his restless slumber full-awake into the dark cabin. At first he thought one of the woman’s guards had seized him. He fought against his captors but it was no use. Strong, callused hands managed him as if he were a child. His knees cracked painfully as they forced him to the floor of the ship’s cabin.
“Bind his hands behind him.” The voice was rough, but it was human. Droust considered that a blessing under the circumstances, but he was still confused. Had pirates taken the ship?
“He’s not a mage. He’s just a scribe.”
“He’s called up all this ill luck that’s followed us. Do you want to take the chance that he doesn’t have a spell or two up his sleeve?”
Droust whipped his head around in disbelief. He was being taken captive by the ship’s crew, the same sailors that had sworn to protect him.
Someone yanked Droust’s arms behind his back. Coarse rope bit into his wrists. He howled in pain but they ignored him.
“Why are you doing this?” Droust struggled against them but it was no use. “Gag him.”
An odorous rag slammed against Droust’s lips hard enough to burst them. He tasted the salt of his blood but the pain felt distant and removed.
The woman’s cries echoed within Droust’s skull. He didn’t recognize the words, but he knew the tone. They were commands, but he didn’t know if they were to him or to something else. The pain in his head almost blinded him. He blinked at the massive figure that stepped through the crewmen.
“Belay that.” Captain Porgad’s rough voice rang above the rough crew manning the ship. He was a huge man with a fierce beard. He wore leather armor and protective fish-shaped charms around his neck. “He’s no mage. Cursed is what he is. Don’t gag him. We’ll want to hear what he has to say.”
Droust struggled and tried to break free. A handful of years past fifty, he still possessed his strength. But it was panic, not bravery, that drove him. He hadn’t spent all his years as a scribe chained to a desk working on manuscripts and letters for the council to end up like this. He wasn’t supposed to be at sea. He’d had no choice about his assignment, though.
Despite his best efforts, his captors held him. Someone struck him in the back of the head and told him to stop struggling. For a brief moment, the woman’s voice went away, but it resumed only a few heartbeats later. Cutting agony followed her incomprehensible words. But she sounded stronger, closer.
Do not let them kill you, Bayel Droust, she said. Do not dare let them kill you before I get there.
Someone lit a lantern. Soft golden light filled the small cabin and gleamed against the lacquered wooden walls. Captain Porgad ran a tight ship. That was why the Grand Council at Impiltur had hired the captain and his vessel when they’d assigned Droust to his present mission.
What would those lords and ladies think of this ship and her captain now? Fear coiled more deeply within Droust when he realized that the Grand Council would doubtless never learn of his harsh treatment. These days, the Sea of Fallen Stars was an unstable and dangerous place. All of Faerun was.
Droust found his voice, though he didn’t recognize it when he spoke. “Why are you doing this?”
Captain Porgad grabbed the lantern and held it close to Droust’s face. “What is it the Grand Council has you doing out here, scholar?”
The bright light forced Droust to slit his eyes. The captain and his crew stood as dim shadows in the lantern’s glare. They swayed gently as Grayling rolled on treacherous waves.
Tm researching the waters.” Droust hated the desperation he heard in his voice, but he couldn’t hide it. “Since the Spellplague, the Sea of Fallen Stars hasn’t been properly charted. The Grand Council told you; they want to know what dangers lurk in the waters.” He said the council’s name as a cleric might call on a deity. Surely they would know they couldn’t hope to go against the council’s wishes.
“Lies.” Captain Porgad backhanded Droust to the floor.
“No.” Sickness swirled in Droust’s stomach as the pain in his face warred with the pain in his head. From the moment he’d stepped aboard Grayling he’d known he was among rough, superstitious men. They feared the stories of the lady, and the foul storm they’d blamed on him had blown them directly into her waters.
“We’ve seen the signs and portents, scribe. Did you think we’d stay blind to the danger we’re in?”
“What?” Droust’s heart nearly exploded in his chest. “Who?”
“The monsters and beasties the sea sends up.” One of the sailors waved a sharp knife under Droust’s chin. “The bad weather that follows us wherever we go of late.” The speaker spat to ward off bad luck, but Droust knew that was a futile gesture. The lady was coming, and she was coming for him.
Droust had seen the monsters, sketched them in his journal, and written about them and the storms. He had checked the books he’d copied while readying himself for the voyage. Similar storms and creatures had been mentioned in those pages. Similar, but not identical.
Those pages had spoken of the horrendous monsters that Droust had seen in his dreams, with their illustrations of tentacled things and huge fish with more teeth than sharks. Through it all, though, the lady had remained beauteous. None of them had drawn her as Droust had seen her, though, which led him to believe that none of the authors of those books had actually dreamed of her. So why had he? What had he done that was so bad?
Reading by lantern light after the dreams of the lady had first started, Droust had become frightened. But he hadn’t been so frightened that he told the ship’s captain and crew of his fears. At best they would have turned around and abandoned the mission. At worst, they would have killed him and abandoned the mission.