Shang-Li gazed at the predatory creatures circling him. The black eyes and severely curved mouths left him no doubt about what they would do to him. They were more agitated now, and he knew the blood scent in the water affected them.
Gracefully, Shang-Li swam back down to face the Blue Lady and landed just beyond her reach. He knew the sense of safety brought about by the distance was false, but he chose to take comfort in it anyway.
“Why did you bring me here?” He met her gaze with effort because she seemed so threatening.
“Why do you come seeking me?”
“I’m not seeking you.”
She smiled mirthlessly at him. “Yet our paths converge.”
“I don’t even know where we are.”
“You are there, on that ship. Headed for here. I know this.”
“How?”
“Don’t try my patience, manling.” Though her voice was sweet, the Blue Lady’s tone dripped with threat.
At her mercy, knowing all she had to do was withhold her spell so he could no longer breathe the sea, Shang-Li nodded. “Lady, I’m looking for books that Bayel Droust had.”
“Why? What makes those books so special?”
“The monastery I serve searches for those books. They are important histories.”
His form of address and his apparent willingness to tell the truth pleased her and her smile held a bit more warmth.
“Do you know Bayel Droust?” Interest flickered in those silver eyes.
“No. He died long before I was born.” Shang-Li didn’t bother to correct her reference to Droust. She hadn’t spoken of him in the past tense. Common obviously wasn’t a tongue she was used to.
“Where are these books you seek?”
“They went down in the ship that Droust sailed on all those years ago, lady.”
“How many years?”
Surprised at the strange question, Shang-Li hesitated.
“Come now,” the Blue Lady rebuked him. “Surely you know how many years it’s been. Manlings have a love of counting years gone by.”
“Over seventy, lady.”
The sharks continued to circle. Shang-Li still bled into the open water. They tasted him, but they couldn’t have him. “A pittance,” the Blue Lady said. “A lot to my people.”
“Half of your people, don’t you mean?” She reached out and delicately stroked Shang-Li’s left ear tip with her fingers. The touch seemed casual but was delicious. Shang-Li felt as though he were about to melt. “You are elven.”
There was no denying that. Nor would he want to. He took pride in both of his heritages. “My mother was an elf.”
“I knew of your elven nature. I could sense that about you.”
Shang-Li remained silent as the sharks continued to swim around them.
“What makes these books so important that you have to come looking for them seventy years gone?” she asked.
“As I said, they’re part of a history of interest to my people.”
“The elves?”
“No, Lady.”
“These are books that manlings are interested in?” “Yes, Lady.”
“Why did Bayel Droust have the books?” “He was studying them.”
The Blue Lady frowned and her sharply arched eyebrows knitted. “He has not mentioned these books to me.”
The constant referral to Droust in the present tense was unsettling to Shang-Li.”Perhaps there was no time.”
“There is time now.” The Blue Lady grabbed her seaweed robe and whirled around. “There is time now. Come.” She started walking away.
Shang-Li thought momentarily of breaking away and trying to swim for the surface. The sharks crowded in, though, and made it obvious that they weren’t going to let him swim away.
This is a dream, Shang-Li told himself. All you have to do is wake up. He tried, but in the end he trailed after the Blue Lady.
Something had changed the ocean floor. Where normally only coral and a few plants would grow, riotous life filled the seascape all around Shang-Li. He had been down to the ocean’s floor enough times to know that what he was looking at now was in no way normal.
Monstrous crags became cliffs and mountains that offered high precipices and sudden death to a climber on land. In the ocean the fall would only require someone to start swimming. Strange plants, most of them luminous to some degree, stood out against the dead hulks of forests. Blackened tree trunks lay spilled haphazardly in all directions.
And amid those dead forests and new growths lay broken ships. Cargoes of gold gleamed on the sea floor, thrown in all directions by whatever had ripped the ships asunder.
Only a short distance farther on, one of the plants near the trail the Blue Lady followed lunged out at Shang-Li. He caught the movement in the periphery of his vision and spun away as his fighting sticks dropped into his hands.
The plant was easily ten feet tall and stood supple. Vines trailed from branches and struck like whips. Seven purple blossoms with leafy fringes whirled toward Shang-Li. Two of them opened to reveal fanged mouths.
Four of the vines wrapped about Shang-Li’s right forearm. Three more caught him by his right leg. Pain filled him when the vines constricted and dragged him toward the gaping mouths. All the blossoms bent toward him.
Shang-Li struck the vines with the fighting sticks and succeeded in tearing them free of his arm. Bloody furrows showed where the vine had taken hold. Before he could set himself to swing again, the vines holding his leg gave a mighty yank and pulled him from his feet. Helpless, he flailed for a moment as the vines reeled him in like a fisherman taking his catch.
He doubled up, folding himself in half, and managed to thrust one of his fighting sticks into the nearest blossom. Greenish pulp exploded from the flower as the weapon plowed through the leafy head. The blossom shivered and let out an ear-piercing shriek.
Shang-Li watched the thing’s death throes as he swung his other fighting stick at the next blossom. Even as that one erupted into another gush of viscous green ooze, the third and fourth blossoms bit into his calf and thigh.
Burning pain shot through his flesh and pounded through his temples. He’d been poisoned.
One of the sharks broke free of the Blue Lady’s spell and streaked at Shang-Li. Thinking the shark was the greater threat than the blossoms biting into him, he blocked the creature’s jaws with one of the fighting sticks and swung the other at his opponent’s nose. The shark turned aside and sped away, then spun in a tight circle and headed back more fiercely than before.
The Blue Lady spoke in that unknown tongue again. A whirling mass of black flames formed in the palm of one of her hands. She threw it at the plant. Shang-Li was close enough to feel the sudden heat that warmed the sea. The water boiled up around the plant, then the vines and blossoms drooped in submission.
Shang-Li broke free of the withered vines and crouched to face the oncoming shark. But before the shark got close enough to threaten him, the Blue Lady slammed her fist into the shark’s nose. Blood spewed and the predator ricocheted off in an oblique angle to Shang-Li. Breathing hard, feeling the pulse of the poison coursing through him, Shang-Li set himself again and brought up the sticks in a defensive position.
A dozen paces away, the shark’s lifeless corpse hung in the water. The black eyes dulled and glazed as Shang-Li watched
She’d killed it with a one blow. He looked at the Blue Lady in surprise. Her slight form didn’t look like it could carry that much power. She glanced at him.
“Did the plant bite you?” Concern tightened her features.
“I’m fine.” Shang-Li was surprised that he nearly thanked her for asking. But if she hadn’t yanked him here to this place, he wouldn’t be in danger now. And he was convinced the danger was not yet past.
The Blue Lady walked toward him and studied his leg. “Remove your garments, manling.”
Shang-Li felt embarrassed at the request. “I’m fine,” he said.