Wrath of the Blue Lady

CHAPTER FIVE

What Blue Lady?”

Shang-Li looked up from the pages of the journal to his father. “I don’t know. A Blue Lady wasn’t mentioned in any of the materials you gave me to study.”

His father frowned and crossed his arms over his thin chest. “I’ve read of no Blue Lady. Are you sure you are reading from the section dealing with the loss of Grayling?”

Shang-Li held up the journal for his father’s inspection. The binding showed a craftsman’s hand and the stitching remained tight. “We know when the ship went down. I’ve read through the other entries. The one before this dealt with a trade with sea elves and a brief battle with kuo-toa. And this section details the sinking of the ship. If you’d let me read further.”.

“Feh.” His father waved Shang-Li’s complaint away.

“Was there any mention of the Blue Lady in anything you read?”

“No. I’ve never heard any mention of a Blue Lady. Perhaps, it is an epithet of Umberlee.”

“You’re certain Umberlee didn’t sink Grayling?”

“No one knows what sank that ship.” His father sipped his tea and squinted his eyes in irritation. “More reading. Less questions.”

“I seem to recall someone telling me that reading was not to give information, but to lead the reader to ask more informed questions.” Shang-Li gave his father an innocent look. “Or has the monastery stopped teaching that?”

“If my eyes could read that hen scratching, or if I had all my tools, I wouldn’t have to sit here while you baited me.”

Shang-Li grinned. “But they are and you don’t.” He turned back to the pages. “This Blue Lady seems to have made quite an impression on Farsiak.”

“Can we verify the journal’s veracity?”

Carefully, Shang-Li flipped the journal’s weathered pages. They showed a lot of harsh wear. Judging by the wrinkled and smudged condition of the pages, the sailor-Farsiak-hadn’t always taken the best care of it.

Only a few pages on, Farsiak listed the sailors that had gone down on Grayling and been lost in the brine.

Shang-Li reached into his bag and took out his own journal. He flipped through the pages until he found the list of crewman they’d confirmed had been aboard the ship. Most of the names matched. There were a few he didn’t have, and there were a few he had that weren’t on Farsiak’s list.

Farsiak had also listed the ship’s cargo manifest as well as he knew it. Grayling had carried several trade goods and supplies.

“Most of these names are the same.” Shang-Li showed his father the list but knew his old eyes couldn’t make out the writing.

His father sipped tea. “Continue.”

Shang-Li read through the description of the Blue Lady’s attack on Grayling. With the sound of the ocean all around them and the creak of the sails grabbing the wind above them, he couldn’t help but feel a little trepidation. For all the exploration that had been done, the sea-even the Sea of Fallen Stars-was huge and held many secrets. While he read, his father remained silent and attentive.

When he finished, Shang-Li marked his place with a forefinger. “If such a being exists-”

“We don’t know that she does. Men who sail the seas are oftentimes bored. They tend to make up stories and stretch the truth. Much of what you’ll hear from them will be idle gossip. This could merely be another fabrication.”

Shang-Li raised his eyebrows. “Farsiak seemed fearful of her.”

“It could be a tale he told many times in taverns. Or even one that he heard.”

“Perhaps.” But Shang-Li didn’t think so. The description and the awe the sailor had had of the woman rang true. He continued reading.

“I may have found the reason for hiding the journal.” Shang-Li looked over the page again and made certain of his translation

“What?” His father peered over his shoulder.

It hurts me to think what went down aboard Grayling. That vessel carried a lot of my friends to their deaths, but I know there must have been some gold on her as well. And I never found none of it during my frantic scurry to save my life.

Cap’n Porgad was ever a man to set store by gold and gems. I never seen him go on a voyage that he didn’t turn a tidy profit. And he was tight-fisted with what he got, Cap’n Porgad was. I was never one to begrudge him his good fortune like some was. The cap’n was always good to me.

But we all wondered how much gold that scribe carried on him. The Grand Council put him aboardship and give him enough gold to keep us sailing, and he spent it like it was water. We knew he hadn’t reached the bottom of that particular purse. Me and Tholan were looking for that gold in his berth while the captain set to keelhaul the scholar when the Blue Lady struck.

More than that. We were searching for the scribe’s secrets. There was books he had, books he put a lot of store by and protected from everbody. Now and again, me and Tholan would take Droust his supper and we’d catch him studying them books. He always looked angry at them, like they were miserly things and he wasn’t getting what he wanted from them.

Me and Tholan took a peek at his journal one night while he was sleeping. He was certain that if he could find the secret of them books, some kind of key to a lock, he would be a rich man. Said wizards would pay him a lot for them secrets.

But then the Blue Lady come. By then it was too late. For all of us. Grayling was sent to the bottom with them books and everbody else, and I was clinging to a timber. If it hadn’t been for them pirates that picked me up the next day, I’d have died. The sharks was already circling for their next meal.

“Fools,” Kwan Yung snapped bitterly. “Whatever gold was aboard that ship, including the captain’s profits, couldn’t have been much.”

“I thought you just warned me to remember the nature of the covetous eye,” Shang-Li said. “If Farsiak believed the gold was there, it didn’t matter if it really wasn’t.”

“Even so.” His father trailed thoughtful fingers through his wispy beard.

“Evidently Farsiak intended to go back down there.” Shang-Li flipped to the end of the journal. There were a lot of blank pages. “Obviously he didn’t live much longer himself.”

“Or he lost the book.”

Shang-Li nodded, agreeing with the possibility. “This also leads us to believe Bayel Droust knew something about what was contained in the books.”

His father grimaced. “Just one more reason we need to find those books and get them back in a safe place. The gate spells General Han used to move his troops have almost been forgotten. That knowledge must not fall into the wrong hands.”

“I know.”

“Is the location of the wreck marked?”

“Not yet.”

“You should find that part.”

“Do you want a translation as I go or for me to read it and tell you what I find?”

His father scowled in displeasure. He could be the most patient man in the world, then abruptly change into the demanding sort. “The translation. I want to read his words for myself.”

In case I miss something, Shang-Li thought and bent back to the task.

Hours later, Shang-Li heard his father’s soft snores coming from the corner of the galley. His small body lay curled on the bench as the oil lantern burned the dregs of the reservoir. His personal journal lay open on the table and the pages rode restlessly as the ship rolled across the unsteady sea. His ink-stained fingers still held a quill.

Shang-Li stood and felt his stiff muscles protest the movement. His flight from the wizard’s tower had banged him up considerably, and the continued crouch over a text was never physically relaxing.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a thick blanket. Despite the number of things the bag held, the magic within it always made sure whatever Shang-Li reached for was immediately to hand.

Gently, Shang-Li repositioned his father and wrapped him within the comfort of the blanket. The fact that his father didn’t wake as Shang-Li moved him spoke volumes about Kwan Yung’s fatigue and sense of security aboard Swallow. These days his father didn’t often leave the monastery. Not out of any sense of vulnerability, but because he felt his time was better spent there among the books.

One of the sailors walked down the steps, then eased his stride when he saw the old man huddled under the blanket in the corner.

“Sleepin’, is he?” The sailor was in his graying years, thick with muscle and scarred by conflicts. His shaggy beard hung to his chest. His complexion was almost the color of burnt butter.

“Yes.”

“He’s a right insufferable man when he chooses to be.”

Shang-Li looked down at his father and smiled. “He is that.”

“My da was mean as a snake. Took the hide offa me whenever I did something he didn’t like. Which was too often by my lights.” The sailor shrugged. “This one, he’s a mite too demanding and onerous, but he’s smart.”

“He is. He’s a good man.”

“If you ask me, he’s lucky to have you.”

“We’re lucky to have each other.” Shang-Li didn’t like thinking about the hole his mother’s death had left in their lives. But it was there every day.

“Well, at least one of you feels lucky. I hope you can feel lucky enough for the both of you.”

“Yes,” Shang-Li said quietly. “I do.”

The sailor poured himself a cup of tea, then offered one to Shang-Li, who politely turned it down. A moment later and the man was gone back up the steps.

At the table where his father had been working, Shang-Li looked at his father’s journal. The page his father had been studying showed much of the same information on Grayling as Shang-Li had copied into his own journal. But there were also new passages that contained Shang-Li’s name.

For a moment, Shang-Li was tempted to read the passages. When he’d been a child, he’d sometimes gotten the opportunity to read his father’s journals. Kwan Yung was a close-mouthed man regarding his adventures and travels, and he’d never glorified any of the explorations he’d taken part of.

But in those pages Shang-Li had come to know his father as another man. In his younger years, Kwan Yung had traveled much of Faerun, seen beautiful things and passed through horrific events. He had loved and battled and sought knowledge of ancient days and places. He had won and he had lost, as the books he’d written and the scars he carried attested to.

Often, Shang-Li had wanted to ask his father about his travels, but he hadn’t been able to. Talking about the knowledge he’d gotten from the journals would have revealed the fact that he’d sometimes borrowed and read his father’s work. As a private man, Kwan Yung would have taken more care about where he left journals lying around, then Shang-Li wouldn’t have gotten to know the views his father held or the experiences he’d had.

All in all, Kwan Yung hadn’t been one to loiter around the monastery either.

Gently, Shang-Li closed the book and bound it with the strap again before one of the sailors felt compelled to leaf through it. He placed the journal on the bench beside his father and returned to his work. Only a few pages further in, he found more mention of the Blue Lady.

Shang-Li worked while his father slept. Swallow sailed on gracefully, and the ship’s crew came and went without interrupting his work. He was surprised at how soundly his father slept, and for how long. When he was a child, his father seemed to stay up for days or existed only on catnaps.

As his hand idly grazed the back cover of the book, Shang-Li felt an almost imperceptible ridge. He selected a small knife from within his bag and carefully lifted the covering from the backboard.

Inside was a sheaf of paper. It was folded once, in halves, and covered with fine penmanship that showed long acquaintance with writing tools. Carefully, Shang-Li slipped the paper free of the hiding place and took it out. He laid it gently on the table.

Glancing at his father, he knew he should wake Kwan Yung. His father would want to know of any discoveries he might make. Shang-Li started to rise and shake him, then relented. Whatever the paper dealt with, and it might have nothing to do with Grayling or Liou Chang’s missing books, it could wait until after his father caught up on his rest.

Shang-Li, though, knew he wouldn’t rest until he knew what the paper held. He moved the candle lantern closer to shed more light.

Dark blue ink formed carefully articulated symbols on the page. Despite the neatness, however, none of the writing made any sense to Shang-Li. He couldn’t read any of it. As he watched, the ink took on an unnatural luster, like it was still wet and about to run on the page.

Hypnotized by the effect, Shang-Li slid his finger onto one of the symbols to make certain it was dry. Consciously he knew that there was no way the ink could be wet. More than seventy years had passed since it had been written.

Unless it was a trick Kouldar set up. That thought didn’t set well with Shang-Li. He didn’t want to have to explain that to his father.

As soon as his finger touched the symbol, a spark flared to life and popped loud enough to echo in the galley. Pain shot through Shang-Li’s finger and he yanked it back. The spark was strong enough that he fully expected the paper to catch fire the way a tree did after lightning struck it. For that matter, he expected his finger to be wreathed in flames as well.

His finger turned blue, and went numb. Then, as he watched, the blueness crept up his finger and slid onto his palm, and the numbness moved with it.

Panic welled within Shang-Li and he started to call for his father. There was strange and powerful magic at work here. Then, as he watched, the mark settled onto his palm. It lay there like an animal, burrowed under his skin.

Shang-Li flexed his hand and couldn’t feel anything. There was no pain, no pressure, nothing. His hand moved freely. But his heart thudded inside his chest like a wild thing gone mad.

Mielikki, watch over me, Shang-Li prayed. I may have done something incredibly stupid.

“Do you see him?”

With his eyes closed and the Blue Lady’s hand upon his brow, Droust did see the young monk. Her spell tied him to the paper he’d written all those years ago. If he hadn’t been witness to her power, he would not have believed it.

“Yes, lady. I see him.”

“When I first arrived here, the sea was new to me, manling. But I was strong enough to make it mine. I am bound to this wretched piece of my homeland for the time being, but that will not always be so. I won’t allow it. I will not be subjugated as I have been in the past. They thought the depths would kill me, but I found power in this sea, and a way in my dying moments to make it mine. Then I grew strong enough to make the sea nourish the land as well.”

Droust had heard the story before. He guessed that Caelynna had arrived during the Spellplague, when the riven worlds found their way back together. Wild magic had been loosed upon Toril and so many changes had been wrought. So many things had been destroyed while others changed forever.

“People are made mostly of water, manling.” The Blue Lady changed her grip on Droust’s head, somehow finding a way to make it even more painful. But he felt the link to the young monk grow stronger as well. “I rule the water. And I will rule the sea stirred inside men by their hearts.”

Droust struggled to cling to his senses only because he knew the Blue Lady would punish him for passing out. He didn’t know how he endured the pain. But at last she withdrew her hand from him.

“Good. You did well, manling.” The Blue Lady smiled in satisfaction. “Now this monk is mine. We’ll find out how good he is, and I’ll bring him here.” She paused. “You had better hope that he isn’t any smarter about Liou’s books than you have been.”

“Lady, even if you get him here, even if he can break Liou’s code, you don’t know that you can trust him.”

“Do I know that I can trust you?”

Droust hesitated, wondering if it was a trick question. “Yes, lady. I still want to live.”

She regarded him pitilessly. “We are both prisoners, you and I. But I live to be free and would risk my life in the doing of that. But you-you want only to live. Even if it is in a miserable existence.”

In his fear, Droust didn’t have room to be ashamed of his cowardice. That fear was a part of his life. He was certain that the only way he could be free of it was to be dead. He wasn’t ready to die.

“We can track the monk now. Soon I will be inside his mind, as I was in yours, and I will draw him to us. In the meantime, order the Nine Golden Swords to find him.”

“Yes, lady.” Droust watched her go, then turned back to his desk and took out the crystal she had enspelled to allow him contact with the Nine Golden Swords. His fear throbbed inside him. But he did as he was bade.

“Who was the Blue Lady?”

Shang-Li tore a bite-sized portion from the deep-fried bread he held and dipped it into the fish-flavored congee. The rice gruel stuck to the fry bread and he popped it into his mouth.

His father gestured for him to speak. “You were up all night studying the journal. You have a better idea of her from the entries, surely.”

Shang-Li did, but he knew his father wouldn’t like it. “Farsiak believed she was a goddess.”

“Nonsense.” Across the breakfast table in the galley, Kwan Yuan dipped his fry bread into sweetened milk and let it soak for a moment. “We know all of the gods and goddesses.”

“We did until the Spellplague. Things have changed.” Shang-Li’s eyes burned. He’d only dozed a short time before his father had wakened him to breakfast, and none of that had been restful. His mind had churned constantly. Stiffness from his exertions and bruising the day before filled his body. He needed to stretch them out and promised himself that he would.

“Why would a goddess make herself known to Bayel Droust?” his father asked. “Why would she destroy Grayling?”

“Farsiak felt Droust had been chosen by the Blue Lady.”

“Chosen for what?”

“Droust was the only one that the Blue Lady didn’t kill that day.”

“Except for this sailor.”

“He felt he escaped only because she didn’t care if he lived or died.”

His father nodded. “However, Farsiak could also have chosen to view his continued existence to her generosity.”

“He chose not to see it that way. As evidenced by his journal. And the fact that he never put to sea again.” Shang-Li reached for another piece of fried bread.

“Feh. Wouldn’t Droust have known he was the chosen of a goddess before that night?”

Shang-Li sipped his green tea. “Does one always know when the gods have favored them?”

“Of course.”

“We don’t all worship the same gods.”

His father looked at him.

“Perhaps,” Shang-Li said, “some gods choose to follow different paths and enjoy surprises as well as the next person.”

Kwan Yung licked sweetened milk from his fingertips. “Some clerics would argue that point.”

“I found something else of interest in the book.”

“What?”

Shang-Li reached for the sailor’s journal and laid it before him. “While I was working with it last night, I discovered a hiding place.” He pulled at the cloth and separated it from the binding. Revealed within, the single folded ivory sheet stood out against the dark binding.

Kwan Yung reached for the paper, but Shang-Li closed the book before his father could reach it.

“Not yet.” Shang-Li knew he was enjoying the moment too much. Anger flared in his father’s hazel eyes and he took that as a warning. Still, he couldn’t simply tell his father what he had discovered.

“You try my patience. This mission that we’re on is very important.”

“I know. That’s why I think we both need this instruction.” Shang-Li tapped the book in his hands. “We were so intent on what was contained within the book that we didn’t question the book itself.”

His father looked at book with new eyes. “This is a well made book.”

Shang-Li smiled, confident that his father had caught on to their mistake. “The book has been hard used. It was easy to miss the quality of its construction.”

Irritation tightened his father’s frown. “Feh. The stitching alone gives away the nature of the book. I should not have overlooked that.”

“We should not have overlooked that.”

“Why would a sailor keep a journal in a book so fine?” His father pulled thoughtfully at his chin whiskers. “A captain who wants to make a favorable impression on merchants trusting their cargoes with him might keep such a book. He would be able to afford and justify the expense of such a book. A light-fingered sailor might pilfer such a book from his captain.”

“A captain would consider such a book an investment,” Shang-Li pointed out.

His father nodded. “The captain of Grayling was an honorable man, and a stickler for details. That’s why the Council chose him and his ship. If someone had stolen this book from him, he would have turned the ship inside out to find it.”

Shang-Li tapped the journal again. “We’re in agreement then. There was only one person aboard that ship who had extra books and might not notice if one went missing.”

“Droust.” His father smiled. “Perhaps your lessons at the monastery were not squandered after all.”

“Mother taught me how to read sign in the wild. She taught me to notice variances in everything I looked at. Especially things I thought I already knew. If anything, I’ve neglected what she taught me this time.”

Kwan Yung pursed his lips and shook his head slightly, but he didn’t argue the point. “Did the sailor know this paper was here?”

“There’s no indication of the binding having been disturbed before I lifted it. If I hadn’t felt the discrepancy beneath my fingertips, I wouldn’t have noticed it either. The paper was very well hidden.”

“You’ve looked at it?”

“I have. And it only offers yet another conundrum.” Shang-Li fished out the paper, unfolded it, and left it there for his father to peruse.

After a brief inspection, his father leaned more closely to the paper and gave it a more thorough examination. He traced the lines with his forefinger, then quickly drew back in surprise.

“Did you feel that?” his father asked.

“The shock?” Shang-Li inquired.

His father nodded and rubbed his forefinger against the ball of his thumb.

“When I touched paper, there was a spark. It bit into my hand.” Shang-Li showed his father the indigo spot that had been left on his palm.

Concern darkened his father’s eyes. “Are you sure you are well? Books have sometimes been treated with all manner of traps.”

“I know. I had the ship’s mage examine my hand.” Shang-Li made a fist and still felt some of the dull tingling he’d experienced since touching the paper. “He said magic had lingered within the paper, but it was nothing that would harm me.”

“We’re going to put into port soon. Perhaps we should have someone check your hand there.”

“If there are any problems, we can do that, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.”

“I’ve touched the paper several times since the first shock,” Shang-Li said. “It didn’t affect me again. I think whatever residual force remained within the paper has been expended. I think it was just the remnants of a defensive spell, nothing more. I was surprised it affected you.”

“Not in the same manner that it has affected you.” His father offered his hand for inspection. His forefinger was unblemished.

An uneasy feeling twisted through Shang-Li’s stomach as he cast a surreptitious glance at his marked palm. It’s nothing, he told himself again. Still, he made a fist and tried to will the faint numbness away.

“I can’t read this page.” His father frowned in displeasure. Kwan Yung ran his fingers through his wispy beard. “This looks more like a code than a language.”

That was the consensus Shang-Li had reached. “Which leads us to a bigger problem: Droust knew many languages.”

“Deciding whether he chose to construct a code in his native tongue or in some other … Have you matched this handwriting against a sample of Droust’s handwriting?”

“You’re better at confirming that than I am.”

His father nodded. “I’m also better acquainted with Droust’s works.” He sighed. “Let me work on knowing Droust better while you remain focused on transcribing the journal. Maybe I can find something that will help us with this code.”

Shang-Li tried not to let his disappointment show. He knew his father would divide the labor as he had, but he wished he could pursue the mystery of the note.

“Ship’s hit a reef! We’re going down! Man the lifeboats!”

In the dream, Shang-Li woke in the hold, where he’d retreated after a storm the night before had liberally drenched Jakkar’s Fox, soaking her decks. He grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder, and grabbed the sword he’d carried then.

Although he knew he was asleep and dreaming, the old fear of sinking returned to him. He felt the cold mist and the light breath of the fog as it surrounded him when he reached the deck. Jakkar’s Fox was quickly sinking. The merchant ship took on water in her busted prow like a sieve. She waddled and rolled like an ungainly duck.

All around Shang-Li, merchants and their wives screamed in fear. The pleasant trip they’d expected had ended suddenly. A few of them had died that day, and Shang-Li was surprised at how well he remembered their faces in the dream. There had been the silk merchant from Chessenta, a guildsman from Impiltur who was relocating to Westgate in hopes of better business, the twin sons of an investor in the Dragon’s Reach that had fancied themselves as ladies’ men.

As he had done on that deadly day, Shang-Li helped the passengers into the lifeboats.

Only this time, every person Shang-Li tried to help turned to a corpse as soon as he touched them. They turned to him, hollow-eyed, and breathed their last rancid breath on him, then crumbled into butcher’s slops at his feet.

Blessed Mielikki, what was happening? Shang-Li froze as a young girl watched him drop her dead mother to the deck. The little girl ran screaming through the panicked crew and passengers already swamping through water that rushed across the floundering ship’s deck. The captain and his crew drew their weapons.

“What are ye a doing there?” Blikaga, the ship’s first mate, drew his sword and strode toward Shang-Li.

Shang-Li tried to protest and tell all them that it wasn’t his fault, he was only trying to help. But his voice wouldn’t work. No matter how hard he tried, no sound would emerge. He backed away, unwilling to fight the men he’d accepted as casual friends. Only a few days before they’d risked their lives together to repel a pirate attack.

“Stop!” The woman’s imperious voice rang out.

Everyone aboard Jakkar’s Fox froze in place.

A moment later, she strode through the billowing fog. Her blue skin marked her immediately, Her beauty was breath-taking and she knew it. Despite the fact that the ship was sinking fast, every person aboard Jakkar’s Fox watched her, spellbound.

Then she faded from view and a row of monstrous tentacles at least forty feet long burst from the fogbank. Some flailed into men and knocked them overboard while others grabbed men and crushed them to death.

Shang-Li tried to run but there was nowhere to go. With the tentacled monster weighing the ship down, it sank even more quickly. Before he knew it, Shang-Li was in the water. Something grabbed his foot and dragged him down. He fought but couldn’t escape.

The Blue Lady’s face somehow formed in the water. It wasn’t flesh. It looked more like the gelatinous, translucent mass of a jellyfish.

“Come to me, manling. If you’re brave enough.” She mocked him with her laughter.

Shang-Li woke in a cold sweat and stared around the cabin he shared with his father. He had escaped Jakkar Fox’s sinking, but it had been a near thing. He’d been tangled in the rigging when he’d gone down. But there had been no tentacled monster, and no Blue Lady.

He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs. He knew it had been a dream, but he couldn’t help feeling it had been more than that as well. He worked on his breathing, leveling off all the anxiety and panic the dream had brought with it.

Knowing he wasn’t going to be able to sleep belowdecks, he grabbed his gear and went out onto the deck. It was the darkest hours before the dawn, the time when the world seemed its quietest. After hanging a hammock, Shang-Li sat there for a long time, then the familiar rocking of a ship under sail finally lulled him back to sleep.