“Take a breath,” Thava said. She demonstrated, inhaling and exhaling easily. “It’s all right. You can breathe down here.”
Unable to hold his breath any longer but still horrified by the thought of drowning, Shang-Li sipped a breath and expected the taste of brine to fill his mouth. A salty tang tainted the air, but there was no water. Strange tentacled creatures the size of small boulders that crawled on the ground, then at schools of multi-colored fish. They were definitely underwater, but they could breathe and move easily.
“I thought you had drowned.” Shang-Li swam to Thava’s side and dropped to the sandy floor.
“So did I.” Thava glanced around uneasily. “I don’t know that we’re any better for not drowning.”
One of the tentacled creatures speared a passing fish. A brief explosion of blood colored the water and the fish fought for its freedom, but the predator stood on its tentacles and hauled its prize into its gaping maw. As it chewed, bits of the fish floated out into the water and other fish darted in for the tidbits. The creature managed to hit two of those before they got away.
“Loathsome things,” Thava said. “They thought they could eat me.”
Only then did Shang-Li spot the crushed carapaces of the tentacled things lying in the sand only a short distance away.
“Have you seen my father?” Shang-Li asked.
Thava shook her helmed head. “You are the first living person I found. And when I found you, I feared you were dead as well.”
Some of the fear inside Shang-Li’s stomach unknotted. If he had survived, then his father could have as well. For the moment he chose to believe that.
“Who were the dead?”
“Four Nine Golden Swords warriors and two of our crew. None of them drowned. All were dead from wounds suffered in battle.” Thava paused. “I hated leaving our comrades unmourned and unburied in this harsh place, but I had to seek out the living.”
Shang-Li nodded. “Did Swallow sink all the way as well?”
“Yes.” Thava pointed with her sword. “In that direction. I didn’t see her touch the sea floor. But this landscape is strewn with dead and our cargo. None of it is neatly together.”
“Ships never simply sink,” Shang-Li said automatically. He ran his hands over his gear and found all of his weapons except his longbow. “When they go down, they can coast through the water for long distances, all the while losing crew and cargo.”
One of the tentacled creatures crept toward Shang-Li. The thing kept a low profile, barely a hand’s breadth above the sand.
“Watch out,” Thava said. “Evidently they’re not convinced that you’re not prey.”
Two tentacles shot toward Shang-Li’s midsection. He stepped to one side to avoid the first, then slapped the second away with the palm of his hand. He freed his sword and slashed at the thing. The creature tried to get away, but the long sword sheared through most of its body, splitting it open and revealing thick white meat inside. Instantly two of its fellows charged toward it and hooked gobbets of flesh from it with the tentacles.
“Evidently they don’t care what they feed on,” Thava growled.
Keeping his long sword in hand, Shang-Li gazed around.
In the distance, two bodies twitched and moved on the sea bottom, but that was from the misshapen things that fed on them. No tracks marked the fine sand that covered the terrain.
“Which way did you come from?” Shang-Li asked. Thava pointed toward the dead men with her sword. “Back that way.”
“You saw no one else?”
“Only the dead.”
“Were they in a straight line?”
She thought about that for a moment. “More or less, yes.” Shang-Li got his bearings and turned in the opposite direction. “And Swallow lies in that direction?” “Yes.”
“Then we’ll go there.” Shang-Li pushed against the sea floor and swam upward.
“I can’t swim in this armor.” Thava beat a mailed fist against her breastplate. The sonorous bong beat against Shang-Li’s ears.
“I’m only going up a short distance,” Shang-Li said. “I can see better from up here.”
“Stay close.”
Shang-Li nodded and swam slowly while Thava plodded across the undersea terrain. Hanging in the water above her, he had a far better view of the strange landscape.
“I’ve been here before,” he said.
“When you spoke with the Blue Lady?”
“Yes.”
“I’m no expert in undersea lands,” Thava said. Her large feet stirred puffs of fine alabaster sand from the sea floor that quickly settled and left no trace of her passage. “But none of these plants, with all the color and height, seem like they belong here.”
“They don’t,” Shang-Li agreed. He’d ventured beneath the waves on several occasions. He knew the underwater world fairly well.
“I know the Spellplague has twisted and changed things on land. I assume it’s possible that the same thing happened beneath the sea.”
“The worlds were rejoined. That didn’t take place just above the sea.” Shang-Li glanced around at the trees and fauna that seemed so misplaced here on the ocean floor. “I don’t think the Spellplague can be blamed for all of this.”
When he reached the cliff’s edge, he peered over the side. The bottom dropped away at least a hundred paces. Swallow lay broken and on her side nearly a four hundred paces away. Seeing beyond that distance was impossible. Whatever lighted the land vanished. Men gathered around the stricken ship, standing on the sea floor amid the forest of strange trees and bushes as well as swimming overhead.
Shang-Li tried to spot his father, but the distance was too great. He wanted to swim ahead but he didn’t dare leave Thava behind because there was safety in numbers.
“Others survived.” Thava stood at the cliffs edge.
“Some at least,” he said, still searching for Kwan Yung.
A body tumbled lifelessly from above and landed somewhere in the foliage. Judging from the lack of reaction, Shang-Li suspected the latest arrival was dead. How long would the sea rain dead men from the surface? It was a grim thought and he didn’t like thinking it.
He turned his attention to Thava and searched for a way down. The cliff was too steep to walk down, and it ran a long distance on either side. On land he knew he would have been able to see much farther.
“I think I can jump,” Thava said. “I may not be able to swim, but the sea should slow me.”
“If it doesn’t, that’s a long way to fall.”
“Trying to walk around this cliff could get us into other danger we don’t yet know about,” Thava said. “There’s safety in numbers, and I’d rather chance a fall than whatever predators might lurk out there.”
Shang-Li swam over to her. “Take my hands.”
Thava chuckled. “I’m too heavy for you to lift.”
“Perhaps on the land, but we’re not there now. At least I should be able to help control your descent.”
Thava took another glance over the cliffside, then hung her axe and shield over her shoulder and reached up for his hands. Shang-Li closed his fists around her mailed gauntlets.
“Together then,” Thava said.
Shang-Li nodded. As she stepped over the edge, he kicked his feet and swam up. Her weight and the weight of her armor took him down at once with dizzying speed. They slammed against the cliffside with bone-jarring force twice, and once Shang-Li took the brunt of it. His lungs emptied of air and felt curiously heavy for a moment, then he drew his next breath.
They landed amid ochre and orange trees in a clumsy tangle of arms and legs. Thava flattened two of the trees and crushed several bushes. Shang-Li’s head collided with the trunk of another tree and he almost passed out from the impact.
“Well,” Thava growled as she got to her feet, “that could have been better, but we are still alive.”
Shang-Li groaned as he tried to get to his feet. His head reeled from the collision, but he could have sworn the ground moved beneath him.
Then it yanked from beneath him as a twenty-foot spread of leathery membrane erupted from the sea floor. He only had time for a brief impression of a bat-shape leaping up in front of him as he tumbled backward. Then the creature flipped over in an amazing display of dexterity and came for him. A razor-lipped mouth filled with serrated teeth opened along the front of the creature.