Extinction

Chapter Ten

Valas peered down at the expanse of dark water below him. Lake Thoroot was even larger than he’d been told—so wide that the far side of it was lost in darkness. It reminded him of the wide, flat expanse of Anauroch, the desert they’d recently visited. The difference, however, was that the lake had steep cliffs hemming it in on every side, a waterfall that thundered into it from the cavern where Valas perched, and a high, domed ceiling overhead. Enormous stalactites hung from that ceiling. Some had points that touched the water; others were broken off like jagged teeth, making the cavern look like an enormous, ranged mouth. Valas shivered, hoping it wasn’t an omen of what was to come.

A hand touched his shoulder. Turning, he saw Pharaun. Danifae was right behind him.

“What’s wrong?” the mage asked.

“Nothing,” Valas answered. “It’s just the spray from the waterfall. I’m chilled.”

Quenthel scrambled up behind Pharaun and Danifae—who backed away, one wary eye on the whip in Quenthel’s belt. Quenthel was crouching to negotiate the low ceiling, her hands and feet spread wide to keep her balance on the slippery rocks. That and the hungry gleam in her eye made her look like a dark spider. Jeggred was one pace behind her, as usual, moving nimbly across the uneven ledge, his second, smaller set of arms held out for balance.

Quenthel peered into the vast cavern beyond the waterfall and asked, “Have we reached Lake Thoroot?”

Her voice was barely audible over the roar of falling water.

“It’s just below,” Valas answered with a nod. “About fifty paces straight down.”

“Do you see any sign of the city—or the ship?”

Valas shook his head and replied, “Both are probably far beneath the surface.”

But which part of the surface? he wondered.

For all Valas knew, Zanhoriloch was on the far side of the lake, though he wasn’t about to admit that to Quenthel. They had entered through the only approach to the lake the scout was familiar with. The last thing he wanted was to exhibit any weakness or uncertainty, even after they found the ship and left the Underdark—and his expertise—behind.

One hand clutching the wet rock beside him, Valas leaned as far out as he dared, studying the wall below. The tunnel they’d been following was a wide one, with a natural ledge of rock on one side of the river. It had provided a welcome shortcut to the lake, an easy trek after their long, weary journey. But from there, things got tricky. The river burst out of the tunnel like a horizontal fountain, its spray soaking the rock for a great distance on either side. Through the mist, Valas could see faintly glowing streaks of green against the stone: patches of water-soaked, slippery fungi.

Valas felt someone looming behind him, and fetid breath told him who it was. Jeggred stared out at the lake, his monstrous body crowding Valas and nearly forcing him over the edge.

Elbowing Jeggred back, Valas shouted back to the others over the draegloth’s head, “I’d like to scout ahead before we go any farther. Pharaun, I’ll need magic to climb down, and that spell of yours that will allow me to breathe underwater.”

“You’re going alone?” the mage asked. “Shouldn’t you take someone with you?” He glanced past Quenthel as if anticipating someone else to materialize behind her, then he sighed. “What about Jeggred?”

“No!” Quenthel barked, the vipers in her whip lashing. “Jeggred stays with me.”

Sensing her anger, Jeggred scrambled over to crouch at her side.

“He can take Danifae,” Quenthel said.

Before Valas could shake his head in protest, Pharaun butted in.

“Danifae will only slow him down—and I don’t want to waste my time and talents preparing the same spells twice.”

Valas glanced between Quenthel and Pharaun. Valas had to tread carefully, so as not to tip the scales—a balancing act that was growing wearisome. It would be a relief to get away on his own for a while.

“I’ll go alone,” he told them.

The Bregan D’aerthe scout took off his piwafwi, then set his haversack, bow, and quiver beside it. He also shed his chain mail—its weight would only drag him to the bottom of the lake—and his boots. He carefully removed from his enchanted vest any of his many talismans that might be harmed by the water, then put the vest back on. Next he lashed his daggers into their sheaths. The thread he used would prevent them from falling out when he was underwater but was thin enough to be broken easily in an emergency.

When he was done, he looked up at Pharaun and said, “Ready.”

The mage nodded and pulled a small sheet of mushroom-skin paper from his pocket. Unfolding it, he handed its contents to Valas: a small blob of a black, tarry substance.

“Eat it,” the wizard instructed.

Without asking what it was, Valas popped it into his mouth. It had a bitter taste, and it stuck to his teeth. With an effort, Valas forced his jaws apart, unsticking his molars.

Pharaun laughed and said, “You don’t have to chew it. Just swallow.”

Valas swallowed the substance, then stood waiting as Pharaun chanted the words to his spell. The mage ended by fluttering his fingers against Valas’s chest, like a mother imitating a spider in a child’s nursery rhyme. When Pharaun was done, the scout’s fingers and toes felt gummy. He lifted one hand from the rock, and sticky strands of web followed it.

Pharaun reached into a pocket of his piwafwi a second time and pulled out a short length of some kind of dried surface plant.

“Ready?” he asked.

Valas nodded.

The mage grinned and said, “Then rake a deep breath.”

Valas did, and Pharaun blow through the stick at him, completing his second spell.

Valas’s chest felt heavy, and water trickled from his nostrils.

“Go!” Pharaun shouted.

Valas didn’t need any urging. The pressure of the water that filled his lungs was incentive enough. Scrambling over the edge, he scurried down the cavern wall like a spider, his sticky hands and feet allowing him to crawl along the sheer cliff face. Head-down, he hurried toward the water, eyes squinted against the spray. Above him, the waterfall arced out and over, obscuring his view of the tunnel he’d just left, it hit the water below in a thundering roar that grew louder as he descended.

The scout was still a pace or two above the surface of the lake when the urge to breathe overcame him. Expelling the water in his lungs like a vomiting man, he tried to draw air—and nearly drowned.

Sputtering, he at last reached the lake. As his head plunged beneath the cold, choppy surface he drew in a great lungful of water and felt relief.

He continued down, following the wall of stone until the churning water washed the stickiness from his hands and feet. Pushing off from the wall, he swam, allowing the current caused by the waterfall to carry him deeper. The water was cold—and dark. He swam through it for some time without seeing anything, relying on his keen sense of direction to keep him oriented toward the middle of the lake. Pharaun’s spell would enable him to keep breathing water for more than a cycle—he could rest on the bottom of the lake, if he needed to—but he hoped it wouldn’t take him that long to find some sign of where the aboleth city was.

After he swam, and rested, and swam a while longer, Valas saw a glow in the darkened water ahead. As he made his way toward it, the glow resolved itself into a pattern of tightly clustered, greenish-yellow globes that brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed.

Are those the lights of Zanhoriloch? Valas thought as he stroked toward them, only to be disappointed as he drew near enough to see the lights more clearly.

The glowing globes turned out not to be the lights of the aboleth city but a school of luminescent jellyfish. There were hundreds of them, each the size of Valas’s palm. They moved together, their tendrils contracting, then pulsing in unison, each pulse pumping up their light from greenish-yellow to yellow.

Valas started to turn away, disappointed, when he spotted a silhouette swimming between him and the jellyfish. The scout froze, not wanting to betray himself with movement. Drifting with the current, he hung in the water, watching.

The silhouette was the same size as a drow and had two arms and two legs, each of which ended in a wide webbed hand or foot. It also had a fluked tail—but no tentacles. Definitely not an aboleth then... but what race was it?

The creature swam beside the jellyfish, herding them with a staff it held in one hand. The head of the staff emitted crackling bursts of light whose frequency matched the pulsing of the jellyfish. Valas could just barely hear the sound that came from it, a low-pitched thum, thum, thum, like the sound of a muted drum.

Intent upon its glowing flock, the creature hadn’t spotted Valas, which left the scout with a decision to make. He could approach and try to communicate, in the hope that the creature would tell him where Zanhoriloch was, or exercise his usual caution and swim away.

He touched his star-shaped talisman, reassuring himself that it was still pinned to his shirt. If necessary, he could always use its magic to escape.

He swam toward the creature.

As he drew nearer he could see that it had skin as dark as a drow’s. Its head was bald, and its body glistened in the light of the jellyfish. A layer of greenish slime covered its skin. When Valas was perhaps ten paces from it, the creature must have sensed his presence. It turned with a sudden, whiplike flick of its tail. Seeing its face, Valas gasped. The high cheekbones and pointed jaw gave the creature a distinctively drow appearance. It even had red eyes, but no ears—or at least, only gnarled ridges around holes in its head that looked like the melted remains of ears. The thing’s hands—one sculling back and forth, keeping the creature in place; the other holding the staff—had a thumb, but only two fingers, with a wide web of skin between them.

Valas opened his mouth, then remembered he was breathing water and was unable to speak. On a whim, he tried drow sign language instead. He chose a carefully neutral message. He still didn’t know if the creature was a friend or foe of either the drow or the aboleths.

This is the lake of the aboleth, is it not? he asked. Is their city nearby?

He didn’t expect an answer. The scout who’d told him about Lake Thoroot had said that only a handful of drow had ever ventured that way.

Valas was shocked, then, when the creature replied in sign—albeit a sign that was made clumsy by his awkward, webbed fingers, You seek the aboleth? Are you insane? Go back, before they—

The drow-thing convulsed as if it had been struck a blow. Releasing its staff it curled into a fetal position, webbed hands clutching its head, mouth open in a silent scream. Valas twisted around, reaching for his daggers as he searched for the threat, but before he could draw them a high-pitched scream pounded in through his skull.

Louder than any noise he had ever experienced, the scream shattered thought and forced his body into spastic jerks. He found himself curled in the same fetal position, eyes squeezed shut in a pained grimace and hands pressed over his ears.

It didn’t help. The scream continued, echoing against the inside of his skull until he was certain the bone would shatter like crystal. Then, mercifully, silence and darkness claimed him.