Sharks swam around her in lazy circles, weaving a protective net.
Shang-Li had never killed anyone from behind, never ambushed anyone with lethal results, but as he stood there, he was sorely tempted. If he could have struck without alerting the sharks and getting intercepted, he felt certain he would have.
Shang-Li looked back at Droust, wanting to make certain the main remained stable. Evidently the Blue Lady wasn’t too concerned over their escape. Why would she be? She planned on killing everyone.
The Blue Lady stopped speaking and an azure tear formed in the water and glowed. Unconsciously, the Blue Lady raised her hands in defense. For just a moment, fear eroded the confidence on her face.
A male eladrin’s face, handsome and eerie and cruel, formed in the azure tear as it grew larger. He spoke in a harsh voice that filled the large room with thunder. Shang-Li recognized the name Droust had referred to her by: Caelynna.
The Blue Lady interrupted the man’s guttural venting with her own. She laughed at him and mocked some of the words he used.
Angrily, the eladrin thrust his head and one arm through the azure tear as it grew large enough to allow him. Lightning suddenly filled the room. One of the bolts smacked into the wall near Shang-Li’s head and he was blown backward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Blind and deafened for a moment, Shang-Li held onto his fighting sticks and rolled to his feet. He’d been trained to fight blind, and he already knew where he was in the room and how large the room was. He even remembered where most of the debris was. Crossing his arms over himself, he waited for the first of his foes to arrive.
When someone grabbed his forearm, Shang-Li almost lashed out. Then he recognized the weak grip as Droust’s, not a Nine Golden Swords warrior seizing him or the razor-slash mouth of a shark. He blinked his eyes and made out shapes through the shadows of the room.
“Are you all right?” Droust leaned his head close to Shang-Li’s as he whispered.
Shang-Li nodded and tried to slow his beating heart. He stared at the door, expecting discovery at any moment. When it didn’t come, he returned to the doorway and peered out.
The sharks floated in the water, their flesh torn and bloody, all of them dead weight now. The Blue Lady stood in the midst of swirling currents that lashed her hair around. She held out a hand to the azure tear and squeezed it down to nothing. Then she whirled on her heel and marched from the room.
Cautiously, certain that at any moment he and Droust would be discovered, Shang-Li hid. Then he thought of his father and the others and knew that he couldn’t balk. Hiding in that room wasn’t an option.
He stepped out into the circular room and chose the door opposite the one the Blue Lady had departed through. He shoved one of the floating shark corpses from his path. Then blue incandescence dawned again over the fireplace.
Turning with his fighting sticks in his hand, Shang-Li watched as the azure tear formed again. He grabbed Droust and got the scribe moving toward the other door, following at his heels.
“Hold,” a voice ordered in Common. “If you would save your lives, listen to me.” In the azure tear, looking smaller and pained, the eladrin male stared at Shang-Li. “We have a common enemy.”
Shang-Li halted. After seeing what the eladrin had done to the sharks, it was doubtful he would reach the doorway without suffering the same fate. “What do you want?”
“I am Fergraff, a prince of the Shining Valley,” the eladrin said. Only his face showed in the azure tear now. “I have a boon to ask, but I think it’s one that you would willingly take up.”
Hesitating, Shang-Li knew that every moment he wasted put him that much later to reaching his father.
“You can’t escape Caelynna’s wrath, Shang-Li.” Fergraff spoke with conviction. “She’s grown powerful there in that place, and it’s our fault. When we banished her from the Feywild, we didn’t know she would master the elements of that sea as she has. We expected her to be imprisoned, not becoming an even stronger menace to us.”
But you didn’t care if she became a threat in our world, did you? Shang-Li thought. Not until she became a threat to yours again. The question was on the tip of his tongue but he held it there.
“Caelynna calls to us, taunting with her plans.” Fergraff s image shimmered a little, as if the connection to the Feywild wasn’t secure. “We know what she’s pursuing.”
Shang-Li kept himself from reaching for Liou Chang’s books in his bag.
“Even if she isn’t able to glean the secrets from the books she has in her possession,” Fergraff said, “Caelynna will keep searching for a way to come back here.”
“I don’t have time for this.” Shang-Li shifted. “My friends, my father, are in danger. I have to go.”
A look of irritation flitted across the eladrin’s cruel face. They didn’t like the other races to begin with, and getting talked to with such casual irreverence had to go down hard.
“You must stop Caelynna before she can perform the ritual. But you’re not strong enough to do it on your own.”
“Then help us,” Shan-Li said.
“We can’t. If we step through the gate into your world, the spells we have holding Caelynna in the sea will be broken. She’ll be able to come back here with all her increased power intact. We won’t be able to stand against her.”
Shang-Li grew angrier as he realized the eladrin didn’t intend to take an active part in confronting the Blue Lady. He didn’t know if they were afraid of her or afraid of the realm she’d created.
“If you’re not going to help, we’re done here.” Shang-Li turned to go.
“Wait! We can help. We just can’t join you there. We must preserve the our powers as much as we can in the event we are forced to face her here.”
“Moral support isn’t going to do much good.” Shang-Li put venom into his words as he thought of his father and the others.
“We can give you a weapon to fight her. One that will be powerful enough to damage her. And we can get you back to your ship.” The eladrin’s face hardened. “Whether you live or die after that is up to you.”
“What weapon?”
“A very special one, and one that you will feel at home with.” Fergraff shoved a hand through the azure tear. In his hand, he held two fighting sticks.
“I already have those.”
“Not like these.” Fergraff shook the fighting sticks and blades flicked open to stand at ninety-degree angles to the sticks. “And together, they are more.” He flicked the blades closed again and shoved the two ends of the fighting sticks together. When he removed his hands, they’d joined and lengthened, becoming a staff a few inches longer than Shang-Li was tall. Then the eladrin shook the staff again and the blades shot out the ends of the staff. “You can use this?”
Amazed and impressed at the sheer beauty and chilling threat of the weapon, Shang-Li accepted the staff. The wood tingled and felt alive in his hands. “I can use this. But how” Even as he wondered how he could separate the staff into two parts, it separated and became two fighting sticks the right size. He flicked the blades out, then in, then joined the staff and made the blades flick at the ends again.
“It is our gift to you,” Fergraff said. “Use it in good health, and we hope that you are successful.”
Shang-Li separated the weapon into two fighting sticks again and slid them up his sleeves in place of his original fighting sticks, which he shoved in the back of his belt.
“Thank you for the gift.” Shang-Li bowed slightly, but he never took his eyes from the eladrin’s cruelly beautiful face. The dead sharks floating through the room provided a grim reminder of the Feywild’s power. “Now about my return to the ship.”