The Dragon Isles

Chapter Fourteen

Mik smiled at the blue-skinned Dargonesti. “It’s good to see you, Ula,” he said.

“And you, captain,” she replied. Her skin looked slightly burnt, once more-a souvenir of her encounter with Tempest’s steaming breath.

“Me too,” Trip said.

Ula nodded indulgently, then the figure in the doorway caught her attention and her lithe body stiffened.

“Shimanloreth,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Nor I, you, Ula Drakenvaal,” he replied, his voice cold and strangely formal.

“We thought you were dead,” Trip continued, oblivious to the tension between the knight and the elf.

Ula took a long, deep breath. “I thought you were dead as well, minnow,” she said. “Though I held out some hope, when I saw my cellmate.”

“What cellmate?” Mik and Trip asked simultaneously. They looked around the room and spotted a figure standing in the shadows near a round window looking out over the city.

“Karista!” Mik said. “I can’t believe you’re alive!”

The aristocrat turned to face them, anger burning in her steely eyes. “I have a hard time believing it, too,” she hissed, glaring at the kender.

“I hope you’re not angry about the seaweed,” Trip said, “I just borrowed it, and-”

“The seaweed!” Karista shrieked. “The ship is lost and all the crew killed, save the four of us! Everything is a disaster!”

Trip lowered his eyes and dug his toe into the coral floor of the room. “It’s not like it’s all my fault or anything.”

Karista continued, her voice low and deadly. “I hadn’t connected it before, but the trouble began after we picked up that ill-omened sea elf. What happened to the last ship you were on, Ula? Pamak and the other sailors said you were cursed!”

“Hah!” Ula said. “So I caused your ship to sink? It’s that same kind of superstitious nonsense that got me tied to a raft and left to die in the first place. I caused no ships to sink. People-both human and elf-make their own luck.”

“That’s certainly true in your case,” Shimmer added, speaking through clenched teeth.

Ula shot him an angry glance, then turned back to Karista. “Look to yourself, milady Meinor, if you don’t like the way things turned out. What happened had nothing to do with me. I was just an innocent on your ruinous journey. What would I have to gain by wrecking your fine ship?” She ran one slender finger over her newly burnt skin. “A nice scalding from a dragon? A bludgeoning from Lakuda’s scavengers? Being thrown in a cell owned by a woman who’d just as soon see my head on a pike?”

“How do we know you’re not in league with these people?” Karista replied. “You seem to know them well enough.”

“Yes,” Mik said quietly. “You do seem to know them.”

Ula turned back to Shimanloreth. “Let me out of here, Shim,” she said angrily.

“You know I can’t,” the knight replied.

“I know you can do whatever you want to do,” Ula said.

Shimanloreth shook his armored head. “No,” he said. “Whatever we had together ended when you left Reeftown.”

“Not by my choice alone,” she replied. “Let me out. Unless, you’d like to see me dead by Lakuda’s hand. Or,” she added, nodding to her cellmates, “by one of my fellow prisoners.”

“You have made your own fate,” he said defiantly, “not I.” Then he turned and walked out of the room.

“Lakuda will kill me!” Ula called after him. “You know that.” She sat down on a chair made out of carved coral and cursed.

Karista Meinor crossed her arms over her chest and smiled in satisfaction. “You have a talent for making enemies, it seems, my ill-omened friend” she said.

“Don’t flatter yourself that you’re in the same league as Lakuda,” Ula shot back.

“All right, you two,” Mik said. “We’re all in this together, and we need to work together if we’re to have any chance of getting out.”

“Why should I want to get out?” Karista asked. “My ransom will surely be paid. Escaping seems like a foolish risk.”

“Hah! Let’s hope there is no haggling over the price. Otherwise, Lakuda will cut your wrists and leave you for the sharks,” Ula replied. “My likely end as well.”

“Our mutual fate, I fear,” Mik said soberly.

“Certainly not as interesting as being eaten by a dragon,” Trip added forlornly.

“Were there any other survivors?” Mik asked the two women.

Both Ula and Karista shook their heads. “I doubt it,” the aristocrat replied. “I didn’t see any on the surface before… before the ship dragged me under. If Lakuda’s people hadn’t found me, I would have drowned.” She glared at Trip again, who shrugged.

Mik sighed. “Little chance we’ll be rescued or ransomed,” he said. “So we’ll just have to get out of this fix on our own.”

He seated himself on one of the room’s seashell-like chairs and rested his bearded chin on his hands. Trip plopped down beside him, and Ula pulled her chair in closer. Karista paced the room, running her long fingers over several potted plants that looked like stiff seaweed.

“What can you tell me about the guards?” Mik asked Ula.

“They’re as good as Lakuda’s rabble comes,” she replied. “We wouldn’t want to fight them without weapons-not in the water, anyway.”

“And this Shimanloreth?”

“You don’t want to tackle him,” Ula said.

“I’ve never seen a knight underwater before,” Trip said.

“And aren’t likely to see one again,” Ula replied.

Mik nodded grimly. “Maybe you can sway him to our side.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Ula said.

Mik rose and walked to the room’s sole window-round like a porthole and about the size of a ship’s wheel-and peered out into the deep. The sun had long since set, but many small life forms, like undersea fireflies, twinkled in the darkness. In their flickering glow and the light from the town’s windows, sea elves swam about their business.

“I will not participate in any plan to escape,” Karista said stubbornly. “We are lucky to be alive. We’ve had enough trouble already-and this Lakuda woman seems nearly as ruthless as the dragon. Do whatever you like, but I will stay here.”

“Suits me,” said Mik. “Trip, I’m guessing Shimmer didn’t search you well enough.”

“No one ever does,” the kender replied with a shrug, pulling another small piece of magical seaweed from an inside vest pocket. “I’ve got this, plus the wad you gave back to me.”

Ula smiled. “Shimmer isn’t very familiar with kender.”

“Lucky him,” muttered Karista.

“With three of us able to breathe underwater,” Mik said, “perhaps we could take those guards by surprise.”

Shimmer swam impatiently around Lakuda’s audience chamber. Occasionally, he dipped down to the pile of loot waiting to be divided and ran his orange eyes over it. How much was it worth, this pile of treasure? Was it worth Ula Drakenvaal’s life?

Lakuda’s guards paid little attention to the bronze knight They adjusted their grips on their tridents and pointedly looked the other way as Shimmer circled the big booty-filled shell tethered in the middle of the room. The guards knew his relationship to their mistress, and-even had they not-none would have dared to cross him anyway.

Several long minutes later, a circular side door to the chamber eased open, and Townboss Lakuda drifted in. Her green hair had been undone and trailed behind her like a long seaweed cape. In her left hand she held a stoppered flask of azure wine. In her right she carried the large shell of a half-eaten oyster. Her black eyes gleamed when she spotted Shimmer.

“Will you join me in a drink?”

“No,” Shimanloreth replied.

“Rest beside me,” Lakuda said, gliding into her golden throne and holding out one thin-fingered hand.

Shimmer didn’t look at her but kept gazing at the treasure-filled shell. “I was wondering if my share of today’s forage would cover the Drakenvaal’s ransom,” he said.

Lakuda’s black eyes narrowed. “So,” she said. “I knew you’d take an interest in her capture. You really shouldn’t concern yourself, though. She lost all interest in you long ago.”

“I know that.”

“And still your feelings for her persist,” Lakuda said sarcastically. “She’s beneath you, you know.”

“Some would say,” Shimmer replied, his tone careful and measured, “thatyou are as well.”

Lakuda laughed, her raspy voice echoing around the chamber. “A cut well placed! I won’t hold it against you though-so long as you join me in a drink.”

She dropped the empty oyster shell and unstoppered the wine. The shell drifted slowly down, but a servant appeared and scooped it up before it hit the chamber floor. The servant darted back out the door she’d entered through.

A small blue cloud formed above Lakuda’s unstoppered flask. The mistress of Reeftown took a drink and then closed the top with her fingertip. “Well?” she asked.

Shimmer nodded slowly.

“I will drink with you,” he said.

Without warning, the room shook. The water in the chamber quivered and Lakuda had to grab hold of her golden netting to steady herself. The guards looked around apprehensively, and even Shimmer adjusted his balance. Cloudy streamers of sand drifted down from the ceiling. A faint rumbling echoed through the room.

“What was that?” one of the guards asked nervously.

“Seaquake?” suggested another.

“Don’t just float there, fools,” Lakuda snarled. “Go find out”

Karista staggered, but Mik caught her before she fell. Ula jumped out of the way as a big piece of coral plummeted from the ceiling and smashed a driftwood table near one wall of the room. Trickles of sand drifted down from the ceiling.

“What was that?” Trip asked, rising and dusting himself off.

Mik walked to the window and peered out into the darkness. For a moment, he saw nothing. Then, swift shadows began to dart through the dim light surrounding the city. Giant razorfish, he realized, and sharks.

“Mik,” Trip said, “I think we’ve sprung a leak.” He held his small hand out under a trickle of water dripping from the ceiling.

The words barely registered on the sailor’s mind. There, at the edge of the flickering city lights, he saw something that made his blood run cold.

Mik’s mouth dropped open and he whispered, “The dragon!”