Dragon's Bluff

15

Lucy stiffened. A taut, frightened expression settled over her face, and she froze in place, her hands poised over the pile of plums she had been admiring. Her skin bleached to a deathly pallor.

Bridget, Pease, and the fruit vendor looked at each other, puzzled by her reaction. “Are you all right, dear?” Bridget asked in her most motherly tone.

Lucy shook her head. Her knees gave way, and she sank down on a nearby barrel. On her head the turban faded to a sickly gray. “I just had the strangest feeling that something is wrong.” She rubbed her aching temples.

The market around her was unchanged. It was still noisy, crowded, and bright with light and color. She had spent the morning collecting fees, calibrating scales, and visiting with people. There was absolutely no reason for this cold, sickening feeling that had sunk its claws into her belly and head.

The older kender paled. She drew back under the awning and scanned the skies for any sign of the red dragon. Pease, who was accustomed to his mother’s reactions, put his arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t hear the horn, Ma. Maybe Lucy meant something else.”

As quickly as it had come, the odd sickly feeling subsided from Lucy’s mind, leaving only an aftertaste of fear. “I don’t know what it was or where it came from. I’ve never felt anything like that before.” She let out a long, cleansing breath to help ease her pounding heart. Some of her color slowly returned, and as it did, the turban brightened to its customary shimmering blue. Lucy cocked her head and looked north where the bay glittered in the midday sun and stretched out to an indistinct horizon. “I hope Ulin is all right,” she murmured.

Bridget’s nervousness retreated when she did not hear the signal horn. Her body trembled once as if to shake free of the fear, and she came to stand by Lucy. Her round face crinkled with concern. “I’m sure he is fine. He is a strong lad, well used to taking care of himself. But you … Lucy … I …” She hesitated, stumbling over something she wanted to say. Her eyes sought the sky again. “You be careful,” she finally managed to say in a whisper Lucy could barely hear.

“Sheriff Lucy!” An irate shopper stomped up to them. “Come check the baker’s scale. I think he’s shorting the bread again!”

“Back to work,” Lucy said, trying to sound cheerful. She bought a handful of plums from the fruit vendor and followed the complainant through the market with Pease and Bridget close at her heels. Only once did she pause and look again to the north. “Hurry back, Ulin,” she prayed.

The Second Thoughts drifted silently out of the cove on the tide. Held by the current it drifted far from land and was soon caught by the warm water currents of the bay. The ghagglers, suspicious of the strange noises and fumes that emanated from it, left it alone and let it drift beyond their caring after they took the men. For hours it remained silent and seemingly empty. A few seagulls perched on the cabin for a while before winging away after a shoal of fish.

At long last, a shining wet head popped out of the water near the still waterwheel. A slim hand touched the paddles and eased noiselessly up the side to the gunwale. A sleek, shapely body slid out of the water and climbed easily onto the deck. Trailing wet footprints, the girl walked to the bow and back along both sides of the cabin. Her delicate nostrils flared at the powerful odors of ghagglers, burned wood, and stressed metal. Finding no one on deck, she opened the cabin door and peered inside. The little room was a mess of spilled tools, scattered charts and maps, tumbled wood, and broken crockery and bottles. The girl tiptoed into the room, her face woebegone.

“Is anyone here?” she asked, not really expecting an answer. The ghagglers never left potential meals behind if they could help it. She pivoted around to leave when a tiny rustle caught her ear, just the faintest sound of something brushing against wood. On silent feet she crept to the wood box near the engine and peeped over the edge.

A white-haired gnome took one look at her, screeched in terror, and tried to burrow deeper into the tumbled stack of fuel.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said.

Notwen peeped through his fingers up at the aquamarine face and the sea-green eyes of the sirine. He was so relieved to see a familiar, unthreatening face—female or not—he hugged a length of wood to his chest and gave her a small smile.

“Come on,” she offered him a hand. “Come out of there and tell me what happened. Where is Ulin?”

Notwen’s smile evaporated. He ignored her proffered hand and pressed back against the wall. “Sea-sligs.” He could barely get the words out. “Ghagglers attacked Dead Pirate’s Cove this morning,” he said full of misery.

She shuddered. “I was there after they left. It was horrible.”

Notwen could barely nod. “They saw us coming out of the marsh and chased us. Ulin told me to stay out of sight. That’s all I know. I haven’t seen him or Kethril since then.” Unshed tears glinted in the corners of his eyes.

The sirine’s hand went to her mouth, and her clear eyes grew huge. “Kethril Torkay? You found him? He was on this boat? Those sea-sligs took him?” In a whirl of silver-green hair, she twisted toward the door and bolted out before Notwen could answer any of her frantic questions.

“Wait!” he cried. “Don’t leave me!” But his words were lost in the sound of a splash as the sirine dived into the water. Dismayed and still badly frightened, Notwen stayed huddled in the box.

If this was death, Ulin decided he did not want any part of it. He never imagined death could be so cold and painful. First was his head. From the pain that thundered behind his eyes, his skull must have been split wide open. Beneath his head, his entire body felt weightless, yet it ached and shook with a strange ague, and his skin felt as if he were being stabbed by hundreds of tiny knives. His mind reeled from the unreality of it. He thought his eyes could be open, but he saw no light, only an intense darkness so thick that there were no shadows or definition of anything.

What happened to the bright light, the blissful release, the cessation of pain he’d always heard was the transition to death? Had it all been a nasty lie?

He vaguely remembered the net falling over his body and the terror he felt when he was dragged under the water. He could not remember coming back to the surface. Therefore, he should be dead. But this death felt like a dismal nightmare.

“Hey, you. What did you say your name was?”

The voice, hoarse and strained, came out of the darkness to his right. It sounded vaguely familiar, and he tried to search his memory for a face to fit the voice. The effort of thinking cleared a little of the fog from his mind and allowed the reality of his current predicament to seep into his awareness. He wished it hadn’t. There was something to be said for semi-consciousness. A name floated into his thoughts. “Kethril,” he whispered.

“Ah, no. I think that’s my name. At least it was when they stuffed us in this pleasant little hole.”

Ulin tried to put his feet on something and discovered he couldn’t. Panic welled up in a choking wash of confusion and fear. He thrashed wildly only to find that his body from the neck down was submerged in salt water. His hands and arms were bound behind his back, holding him nearly immobile, and what felt like a heavy metal collar was clamped about his neck to keep his head in a rigid upright position above the water level. The collar was attached to a heavy chain that must have been fastened to the low ceiling.

“Easy, easy,” said the voice close by. “Be still and let yourself wake up. You took quite a nasty blow to the head on a rock when they were dragging us in here.”

There was something reassuring and sensible about the voice in the darkness. Ulin clung to Kethril’s words and forced his fear back until he could calm his wild struggles and slow his frantic breathing. He spit some salt water out of his mouth. “My name is Ulin,” he said at last.

Kethril chuckled, a hollow sound that echoed in the space around them. “That’s better. Short, useful, and yours.”

“Where are we?” Ulin wanted to know.

“An underground cave not far from the cove. I don’t know how the ghagglers brought us here without drowning us, but I sure wish they had.”

Ulin tried to sort that out through the pounding pain in his head. “Why?”

The man hanging beside him paused for a moment then said, “Because the ghagglers usually kill their victims right away for food. The only ones they bring to their lair are those they plan to torture for fun or use in their games.”

Ulin did not like the sound of that. “Oh.” He could think of nothing more to say, so he hung in the water and concentrated on the pain in his head. He wished he had some of his sister’s mystic abilities. Linsha had been trained by the Mystics of the Heart to use the power of mysticism to heal her own minor aches and wounds. In fact, he wished she was there now with a joke on her lips and a key to this collar around his neck. With her talents, she could’ve eased his headache and gotten them out.

“Back at the gaming boat,” Kethril said out of the echoing blackness. “What did you mean when you said you were my future-son-in-law?”

“Ah, you remember that? Your daughter Lucy and I are betrothed.”

“When are you getting married?”

Considering his position at that moment, Ulin wasn’t sure there was an answer to that question. “We, uh, haven’t set a date,” he said honestly.

“Why not?” the father of the bride demanded. “Didn’t you come all the way from Solace together? Why didn’t you marry her first?”

Ulin had to admit to himself the thought had not occurred to him. He wondered belatedly if it had occurred to Lucy. He did not think he appreciated the tone of this line of questions, so he tried one of his own. “How did you know we came from Solace?”

“News about the new sheriff spread quickly. I didn’t know who it was though.”

“Would it have made a difference if you had?” Ulin asked irritably.

There was a long silence before Kethril replied. “I don’t know.”

“Aren’t you the least bit interested, a little curious about your own daughter? She’s quite a woman, you know.” Thinking about Lucy helped take his mind off his own misery, so he continued to talk to Kethril. He told him about meeting Lucy at the Academy of Sorcery and their years together as friends. There in the cold wet dark with the band of metal digging into his jaw, he described the arrival of the magistrate and the letter and their long trip to Flotsam, and last of all he told Lucy’s father how she became the Sheriff of Flotsam.

After a while his spate of words trickled to an end, and he closed his eyes and let his mind drift. When Kethril did not respond, Ulin decided the man probably had passed out from boredom. He knew he’d talked too much, and sentimentality hardly seemed a trait Kethril Torkay would possess. Lucy’s father couldn’t have been interested after so many years separated from his family.

But he was wrong.

“You should marry her, boy. As soon as possible.”

Although his voice was still hoarse, Ulin thought he heard a touch of wistfulness or perhaps sadness in Kethril’s words. Ulin did not bother to reply. All this talk had exhausted him, and the collar around his neck hurt abominably.

He held still for a while and wished he could go to sleep. Unfortunately, the cold water was not inducive to relaxation. He felt chilled to the bone, and he knew if that condition continued his body temperature would drop and he would become lethargic, delusional, and eventually he would die. Somehow, in spite of the pain and exhaustion, that thought annoyed him. He did not want to die. He wanted to take Kethril to Lucy and say, “Here he is, now let’s go home, get married, have children, and grow old together.” He wanted more than anything in the world to live long enough to tell Lucy how much he loved her—just her. For the first time he accepted that the ghosts of his first wife and their son and daughter were still faithfully in his heart, but they were just those: memories, ghosts, pieces of his past that he would treasure. They were not of the present or the future. That was Lucy.

Ulin felt a new jolt of strength course through his limbs. Both his wrists and ankles were tied with something that felt like rough, dried seaweed, but if he could get his hands free, he might be able to unlock the collar around his neck. Drawing his knees up to his chest, he tried to work his tied hands down and around his legs. It was easier thought than done. His muscles were stiff and numb from the cold, and although most of his clothing had been removed, his bound arms barely fit past his long legs. After much splashing and struggling, he finally squeezed through the circle of his arms and hung for a minute gathering his breath.

“What are you doing?” Kethril asked from the dark.

Ulin coughed out a mouthful of water. Instead of replying, he raised his hands above the water, closed his eyes, and chanted a soft incantation. It was a basic spell, one of the easiest works taught to beginners, and one he had been able to do since he was a little boy. Like most of his spells, he hadn’t been able to perform it properly since the trouble with magic began, but maybe just this once, it would work for him. He drew in the ancient power, forced it to his will, and set the spell into effect. Nothing tickled his neck or buzzed in his ear or drained the power away. The magic coalesced into a small ball and began to glow in the darkness of the cave just a few feet away from his head. He saw its glow through his eyelids and gave thanks. Ulin opened his eyes. The sphere of greenish light stayed in place and shed its soft illumination on the black water. It would stay there as long he willed it to remain.

“That’s a useful talent,” Kethril remarked.

Ulin snorted. “Beats card games.”

Kethril suddenly laughed, and his humor rang in the small chamber. “You’re no player, that was obvious. And that reminds me, how did you pull off that little trick with the sleeping powder?”

“A few things I learned from an old alchemist and my uncle.” Ulin swung around so he could see Kethril. Gods, he thought, if the man looked that bad, how awful do I look? Lucy’s father hung from a similar chain-and-collar restraint that held his head slightly above the water. His eyes were sunken into deep pits of exhaustion, and his skin was deathly pale. His hair lay plastered to his head with water and darker rivulets that Ulin guessed was blood. A dark bruise discolored his right cheek and a laceration marred his perfectly trimmed beard.

When Kethril saw Ulin’s expression, his white teeth flashed in the light in either a smile or a grimace. “Yes, boy. You look as bad as I do.”

“My name is Ulin.”

“As you say. So what is your next move?”

In reply, Ulin grabbed the chain above his head and hoisted his upper body up so he could have a look at the chain and the roof above their heads. The cave was small, with smooth walls and a low, rough ceiling. Ulin hoped the tide would not fill this cave any more than it already had, or he and Kethril would run out of breathing room very quickly. A quick check showed him the chain was fastened very securely to the ceiling by spikes hammered into the stone, and the chain itself was in good condition. There were no rusty links to break or separate. The collar proved equally as solid. The latch behind his head was locked in a way that defeated every attempt he made to unfasten it. Discouraged, he let himself down into the water and gave his arms a moment to rest while.

“How long have we been down here?” he asked Kethril after a time.

“Hours, at least. Maybe half a day. I’m not really sure. They brought a few others with us, but I haven’t seen anyone else since we were put in here.”

“Did you see Notwen?” Ulin asked, afraid of the answer. He hoped the little gnome’s death had been quick and painless.

“No. He would be nothing but shark bait to the ghagglers.”

Ulin let his breath out in a long low groan. “Gods, I wish we were out of here.”

Like an answer to his wish, a hideous face emerged from the water beside him. Great staring eyes glared at him and webbed fingers reached for his neck. The creature was big, nearly as tall as Ulin, with a hinged mouth filled with fangs and scaly skin the color of rotting timbers.

It snarled at him in rough Common, “Kill light, magic-maker. Kill it, or we snap your neck.”

Ulin recoiled in fear and loathing and quickly obeyed. The light blinked out and plunged the cave into absolute darkness. He could not see the ghaggler, but he could certainly feel and hear him. More sea-sligs surfaced. He felt cold, wet fingers grab his arms and legs, and the collar came loose around his neck. He had just a few seconds to take a quick breath before the monster dragged him under the water. The cold and darkness closed over him. He wracked his brains for something to do, but he could not move, could not breathe, could not think.

The ghagglers seemed to have some purpose in mind, for they hauled him through the water without attempting to kill him immediately. Ulin could not see a thing in the dense darkness, yet his captors had no difficulty maneuvering through the black waters. They swam easily and rapidly through what felt to Ulin was a series of underwater passages. His lungs began to ache. His headache returned in full force as his brain starved for air. He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached, and still the swim continued.

The urge to breathe had turned to a craving when Ulin felt the ghaggler charge upward. Ulin’s chest heaved, and suddenly he could not control the urge to breathe. He took a great gasping breath just as his head broke the surface of the water. Gasping and choking, he felt himself pulled to a rock ledge and heaved out of the water. Kethril was dumped beside him like a gasping fish. They lay side by side sucking air into their starved lungs, grateful for the brief reprieve.

Their captors cut the bonds around the men’s arms and dived back into the water, leaving the prisoners on the rocks.

Ulin found himself in a cavern where phosphorescent globes provided the only light. Dim and pale green, the globes cast weak shadows against the heavy darkness. Ulin blinked the water out of his eyes and pushed himself to a sitting position. His stomach did a flip-flop and turned cold as the enormity of their danger became clear. He and Kethril had been brought to a huge underwater cavern and put on a rocky outcropping that protruded into a large lake. All around the lake, swimming in the water, perched on the stony shore, or crouched on nearby rocks were ghagglers large and small. Hissing and snapping their fingers, they watched their prisoners like sharks eye their prey. Their shining black eyes glinted in the phosphorescent light. Their fangs gleamed as they jabbered and hissed to each other in their own foul language. Every sea-slig Ulin could see was armed with spears, tridents, or short wicked knives.

Beside him, Kethril rolled over on his belly and vomited a bellyful of seawater. “Oh, mercy,” he groaned. “I’m too old for this.”

Ulin heard a deep growl behind him and turned his head. “I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that much longer,” he said.

Kethril lifted his eyes and saw the creature crouched on the rocks on the far side of their very tiny island. “Oh—”

His last word was drowned in the roar of a large and very angry sea lion.