As the boat rotated slowly, Rachel drew her knife. It felt way too small. Aram, standing at the center of the skiff with his enormous sword in hand, hauled Jason to his feet.
“Foul luck,” Galloran spat, squatting beside Aram.
Looking over at the canoe containing Ferrin and Drake, Rachel saw the displacer standing back-to-back with the seedman, swords sweeping relentlessly to repel a writhing onslaught of tentacles. On the other side of the skiff, one of the grullions lurched onto the canoe with Tark and Chandra, heaving up a fountain of dull water. Its bulbous body was roughly the size and shape of a sea lion, with a pair of flippers, two pairs of tentacles, and a spoon-shape tail.
Tark plunged his saw-toothed knife into the body of the beast as the canoe tilted precariously. Crouching low, Chandra used a dagger to deftly fend off thrashing tentacles while keeping her free hand splayed over the center of the canoe. Her lips moved in a chant, and Rachel realized she was using Edomic to prevent the canoe from overturning. Tark slid his knife along the length of the semitransparent body, opening a deep seam. Tentacles wound around the wide canoe, the tail whipped up and down, Chandra lost her balance, and the craft capsized.
Rachel screamed. Chandra surfaced briefly, only to disappear below the water as if tugged downward. Tark didn’t surface at all.
Tentacles seethed from the water at either side of the skiff. Rachel swung her knife wildly, striking nothing. Something slammed the skiff from below, and Aram and Jason fell, their bodies thumping heavily. Nedwin slashed a length of tentacle out of the air. Dorsio intercepted a tentacle reaching for Galloran, slitting it open lengthwise with one knife before severing it crossways with the other.
As Aram arose, a tentacle lashed at him, twining around his muscular sword arm. The heavy blade fell to the bottom of the skiff. Bracing himself, Aram resisted the pull of the elastic tentacle, veins standing out as his bulky muscles clenched and strained. The skiff slid speedily across the water. Blood began to course away from Aram’s arm through the transparent tentacle, red mist that soon thickened into a more liquid flow. He bellowed, peeling at the tentacle with his free hand.
“Sorry,” Nedwin yelled, his long knife tearing through the sanguineous tentacle, releasing a gruesome spray.
Parted from the grullion, the portion of the tentacle fastened about Aram’s arm tensed and vibrated, and the half giant let loose an involuntary roar. He collapsed, his back arched in anguish, his free hand clawing at the crimson parasite.
A pair of tentacles flopped over the side of the skiff near Rachel, and the craft tipped alarmingly. She found herself staring into the face of a grullion, which consisted of a circular mouth wreathed by fluttering flagella. Almost tackling her, Jason brought his sword down in an overhand stroke, cleaving through the head, down to the gaping maw. Sticky juice squirted in their faces. The grullion jerked away and disappeared, and the skiff leveled out.
Rachel heard Galloran chanting. On his knees, head bowed, he was calling heat to the water, specifying one particular area at a time. Borrowing his words, Rachel began summoning heat to the water as well, visualizing roughly a cubic meter of liquid and pouring her will and desperation into the effort. She felt the heat answer her call, then started commanding heat into a different section of water.
Behind her, Aram growled. Recovering his sword, the juicy red tentacle still attached to his arm, the half giant rose to his knees to slice through a squirming forest of rubbery tentacles. He spun and slashed, his long blade lopping off multiple tentacles with each swipe. Nedwin and Jason crouched below him, using their weapons to hastily pitch the severed tentacles out of the skiff. Dorsio stayed close to Galloran, fending off any tentacles that escaped Aram’s blade.
Ferrin and Drake were no longer under attack. Drake was calling heat to the water as well, and Ferrin paddled the canoe closer to the skiff.
The skiff shuddered as a grullion tried to climb aboard, injured tentacles of varying length flailing. From the corner of her eye, Rachel saw Aram split the creature with a violent horizontal slash. Galloran gruffly continued his Edomic chant.
Gasping, Tark emerged from the water, one hand gripping the gunwale of the skiff. As he pulled himself up, something jolted the underside of the craft, and the side of the vessel bashed Tark in the mouth. Jason and Nedwin helped haul the musician over the side. He was still clutching his knife.
There was no sign of Chandra.
Tears in her eyes, Rachel kept calling heat to the water. She scanned the surface in all directions, hoping to see her friend.
The last tentacles receded. Everything became still. A sinister silence enfolded them. Galloran and Rachel continued chanting, and the water around the skiff began to simmer, radiating heat and shedding steam. Drake and Ferrin maneuvered over to reclaim the capsized canoe.
Galloran ceased chanting and started to cough raggedly, perspiration shining on his brow. Drake and Ferrin righted the empty canoe.
“Enough heat?” Rachel asked.
Galloran nodded, still coughing persistently.
“What about Chandra?” Rachel asked, eyes sweeping the surrounding water.
“She’s gone,” Tark said. “She saved me.”
“Gone?”
“They dragged us deep,” Tark said, red wetness dripping from his lips. “One had my leg, but I cut free with my knife. It never latched onto my skin. My trousers protected me. They were all around us. Scores of them. Chandra started pushing the water with Edomic. How she spoke underwater, I have no idea. But she created strong currents and used them to shove the creatures away and to help me avoid them. Even as they wrapped her up and started draining her, she sent water to push me upward. The water was hot near the surface. The leech monsters kept away from the heat.”
Rachel nodded numbly, her insides twisting as she heard the account. How could Chandra be gone? Just like that? No warning, no good-bye. Rachel resisted acceptance as the simmering water around the skiff quieted.
Hands trembling, Aram snatched up the oars. “We have to go.”
In the aftermath of the battle, the entire swamp seemed to be holding its breath. But the silence was shattered when a mighty voice bellowed a deafening blast comparable to a foghorn. Recoiling, they all clapped their hands over their ears.
A powerful jet of water streamed through the trees from off to one side, grazing the skiff and setting it spinning. A direct hit would have flipped them. A second explosive roar followed, after which a second high-pressure stream churned the water nearby, as if sprayed by a giant fire hose. From the direction the water came, through the huge trees, Rachel saw what looked like a hill made of brown, folded blubber. The top of it, presumably the head, was screened by leafy limbs and vines.
“It’s vast,” Aram murmured.
“A winaro,” Nedwin whispered.
“The other canoe is ready,” Ferrin announced. He and Drake had towed it alongside the skiff.
“Tark, Nedwin, get in,” Galloran croaked.
When the deafening bellow repeated, Rachel noticed that she could feel the skiff vibrating. Tark and Nedwin transferred to the righted canoe, accepting the paddles retrieved by Drake and Ferrin. With water spouting behind them, they paddled away from the mountainous brown creature.
While Aram rowed vigorously, the blood-glutted segment of tentacle finally dropped from his beefy arm, hitting the bottom of the craft with a wet slap. A thick spiral of black bruises mottled his skin from wrist to shoulder. Dorsio used his knives to heave the gruesome tentacle overboard.
The trees stopped looking quite so enormous and widely spaced. Some of the natural chatter of the swamp resumed overhead in the canopy. Rachel noticed a fist-size spider scaling a trunk.
Aram grunted, shivering and sweating, and his body shriveled, deflating into a miniature version of himself. The corkscrew bruise shrank as his arm thinned. Sunrise had finally come, muted by the foliage overhead.
Dorsio took one oar, Jason the other. Rachel moved to the tiller. Aram crawled to
the bow. He was still shivering, his face ruddy and damp.
“We were near one of the deep places,” Galloran whispered. “The resident winaro did not take kindly to us heating the water. Grullions tend to dwell near winari, living as parasites. A foul turn of events. Chandra was faithful and capable. A survivor. It’s a grievous loss.”
“I can’t believe she’s …” Rachel couldn’t finish the thought. They were moving on, and Chandra was not with them. Rachel was left to face the irreparable reality that her friend was gone.
“The Sunken Lands are lethal,” Galloran rasped. “Too many exotic predators. We were fortunate. We could have all perished.”
Rachel stared at Galloran, his broad shoulders hunched, his expression unreadable behind his ragged blindfold and the fabric masking his nose and mouth. How many of his friends had been killed over the years? How many close relatives? Agonizing loss was a major presence in his life. Did it even surprise him anymore? “You never mentioned you spoke Edomic.”
“I have a few hidden talents,” he replied. “You already possess a wider variety of practical skills than I do. I could never grasp how to push objects like Chandra. Your help heating the water was invaluable, Rachel. It saved lives.”
“Aram doesn’t look well,” Jason pointed out.
“I’m fine.” Sweating and trembling, the shrunken half giant was clenching his jaw and rubbing the wide bruise coiled around his arm.
“He was heavily poisoned,” Galloran said. “When the tentacle was severed, it injected him with venom. A lesser man would not be conscious.” Galloran raised his hoarse voice. “Nedwin, Aram needs quimbi bark, and anything else that might relieve his fever and help neutralize the venom.”
Nedwin and Tark paddled their canoe over to the skiff. Nedwin hopped aboard, already rummaging through his pouches as he crouched beside Aram.
“Let Dorsio administer the remedies,” Nedwin said. “I want to look around. I’m afraid we’ve been veering off course.”
“Very well,” Galloran agreed.
Nedwin issued some instructions to Dorsio, left him with ingredients, and climbed back into the canoe. He and Tark stroked over to the trunk of an enormous tree. Leaping from the canoe, Nedwin shinnied up the bare trunk like a monkey, avoiding clumps of fungus where possible, tearing them off when they got in his way, indifferent to the vibrant puffs of spores.
Rachel watched from below, astonished at how swiftly and confidently he found handholds where none seemed to exist. Before long, Nedwin reached the height where the first long limbs extended out from the trunk, and he vanished into the leafy canopy. Faintly, Rachel heard foliage rustle.
As Dorsio tended to Aram, the others stared upward. All was silent for a time, then there came a sudden snapping of limbs, and Nedwin fell into view through the leaves and vines, a gauzy sheet of web flapping behind him like a cape. Adjusting his body as he plummeted, he hit the water, straight as a spear, a few yards from the skiff.
Tark paddled toward him. Nedwin’s head emerged from the murky water, and he boosted himself into the canoe, making the vessel rock. He had lost the fabric masking his face. He shook his head briskly, wiping scum from his wet hair. “Spiders,” he spat.
“Spiders?” Tark echoed.
“Up in the branches. Big ones. Hordes of them. Good trap. I was surrounded. I had to jump.”
Grabbing a waterskin, Nedwin dumped fresh water in his mouth, swished it around, and spat over the side. “That swamp water tastes worse than we smell.”
“Impossible,” Jason mumbled.
“I saw the tree,” Nedwin said. “The monarch where Corinne lives. We’re bearing too far to the north. We need to head that way.” He confidently indicated a line diagonal to their current heading. “We were veering toward the Drowned City.”
“Another eventual destination,” Galloran mused.
“We should separate,” Nedwin said. “Let me and Drake take a canoe to Corinne. We’ll get there faster. Then we can reunite at the Drowned City. It will require some time for you to take care of business there.”
Galloran rubbed his blindfold, his lips pressed tight. “Show Dorsio the heading to the Drowned City.”
Nedwin pointed slightly to the left of where the boats currently faced. “That way.”
“Can you get us there?” Galloran asked.
Dorsio snapped.
“If that’s the proper heading, I can help keep us on course,” Ferrin added.
Galloran ground a fist against his palm. “I would prefer to fetch my daughter personally. But the quicker we reach her, the better. We should spend no more time in this swamp than we must. Every minute brings new threats. Find her, Nedwin. Keep her safe. Bring her to me.”
“We’ll get her,” Nedwin vowed.
Tark joined Ferrin in his canoe, and Drake joined Nedwin.
“Bring back lots of those gassy mushrooms,” Rachel recommended. “The ones that block your memories. They’ll help keep the swamp animals away.”
“Will do,” Drake replied. “Safe journey.”
CHAPTER 15
THE DROWNED CITY
I see the top of a tower,” Ferrin called back from the canoe. “Correction, a pair of towers.”
“The watchtowers above the main gate of Darvis Kur,” Galloran said. “Guide us close. We’ll pause to confer in their shadow.”
Projecting maybe twenty feet above the water level, the timeworn structures were constructed from stone blocks the size of refrigerators. Trapezoidal battlements crowned the watchtowers. Faces had been carved into the stone, just below the crenellations, the finer details mostly eroded. Moss, slime, fungi, and creeping vines smothered the stone, patiently merging the ancient fortifications with the rest of the swamp.
Rachel surveyed the vicinity uneasily. Only big trees grew here, gloomy giants dripping with foul vegetation, widely spaced, like back where the grullions had attacked. Recalling the grullions helped her realize that the swamp seemed too silent.
“It’s gone quiet again,” Rachel said.
“Very observant,” Galloran congratulated. “Elsewhere in the swamp I would be alarmed. Here it is expected. Not many living things venture near the Drowned City.”
“Lucky us,” Jason said dryly. “We get to be the exceptions.”
“What keeps the animals away?” Rachel asked.
“The most dangerous predator in the Sunken Lands dwells here,” Galloran explained.
“I was wondering when we’d finally see some action,” Jason muttered. “So far this place has been a petting zoo.”
Galloran rubbed his hands together. “I don’t trespass here eagerly. I had hoped to never again cross the borders of Darvis Kur.”
The skiff and the canoe came to a halt beside one of the towers. Galloran stood, moving the fabric away from his mouth and raising his raspy voice as best he could. “The Drowned City is one of the most hazardous destinations in all of Lyrian. A singular threat lurks here, a powerful being of considerable intelligence. Once, long ago, this being aided me, and I intend to solicit assistance again.”
“What assistance justifies the risk?” Ferrin asked.
“This is where I acquired my supply of orantium globes. As most of you may recall, the mountain where orantium was once mined has been lost for ages, as has the procedure for extracting and storing the volatile mineral. A handful of orantium globes survive as curiosities in the treasuries of the mightiest kingdoms. Maldor probably has some in reserve, but certainly not many. As a lad, I knew that the lorevault at Trensicourt contained three.”
“Most consider orantium so valuable, they would never detonate a globe,” Aram said. His eyes were closed, his face glossy with sweat, but apparently he had been listening along with the others. “The spheres we shattered back at the bridge could have purchased a minor kingdom.”
“I will use any weapon at my disposal to combat the emperor,” Galloran said. “Orantium globes may have become scarce across the rest of Lyrian, but they are no rarity in the
Drowned City. The spheres could certainly help us directly: stopping manglers, disrupting cavalry charges, threatening strongholds. But acquiring a significant stockpile of orantium may benefit us even more politically. Mere possession of the explosives will provide an added reason for potential allies to regard us seriously.”
“How did you find this place?” Ferrin asked. “I trade in information. Naturally I have heard of Darvis Kur, the Drowned City. I know it is perilous. But I have heard no rumor of orantium here, or of the powerful entity you mentioned.”
“My suspicions of an orantium stockpile arose through research,” Galloran said. “Material in the lorevault at Trensicourt gave me clues, and I pursued further knowledge at the Repository of Learning and elsewhere. The shadow of the emperor already loomed very large. I was desperate for any possible advantage.”
“Considerable orantium remains?” Ferrin asked.
“Much more than I took,” Galloran said. “I was given a hundred spheres. Hundreds more survive here, maybe thousands.”
“The creature gave them to you?” Rachel asked.
“He was a man once,” Galloran said softly. “A wizard. After incurring the wrath of his master, he was cursed—imprisoned here, his body altered, set on a course to mutate into something like a winaro.”
“You can’t mean Orruck,” Ferrin said.
Galloran nodded, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I had no idea. I doubt anyone knew that Orruck survived in Darvis Kur. It was a secret Zokar took to his grave. Orruck can no longer speak, but I have long been able to discern the thoughts of those with sufficient mental ability. He meant to slay me on sight, but when I sensed his mind, I called out to him. He hadn’t communicated with anyone for centuries. When he learned that Maldor had risen to power, he aided me with orantium to harm his former rival.”