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The vase was old, valuable and intended as decoration so it wasn’t nearly as interesting as coral covered people. Adalai’s curiosity pulled him away from the dragon’s trinket shelves towards the girls. To his surprise Cassian also got up, abandoning his post by the water, and went over to them as well. Marta gave him an amused look. “I thought you were watching our backs.”

The Ironhand didn’t answer, just balled up a gauntleted fist and smashed the coral twice, breaking a large chunk of it off. As the delicate branches of calcified sea creatures broke off they revealed a stone face underneath. Adalai snorted. “Just a statue. I suppose a dragon could collect those, as well, although letting coral grow over them probably impacts the value…”

Cassian gave him a confused look. “What are you talking about? These are obviously Clayhearts.”

The term didn’t jog any memories and, not for the first time, Adalai privately bemoaned his limited knowledge of Neronan Gifts. “I don’t follow.”

“A Clayheart can turn part or all of their body to earth or stone.” Verina motioned to the face. “But it could easily be a statue, too. What makes you think they’re Clayhearts?”

It was Marta who answered, a look of realization dawning. “Your brother is a Clayheart. They don’t need to eat or breathe if they’re fully transformed. You’ve been hoping to find him in a place like this, waiting for you to come find him.”

Adalai poked a finger at the stone face, trying to get an impression off of it with his Gift. On the one hand, the statue was oddly silent. Living creatures were totally devoid of impressions as well, so Marta’s Clayheart theory wasn’t impossible, but he had to wonder… “If these are Clayhearts, how do we wake them up?”

“Cazador says he’s aware of people who are within a few feet of him no matter how far into his transformation he goes,” Cassian said. He looked the coral up and down. One of the glowing pearls that gave light to the cavern was growing out of the top, near the top of the statue. “What do you make of that, Adalai?”

He gingerly touched the pearl with one finger and concentrated. Given the man-made nature of the speech pearls the Benthic had given them Adalai had a vague hope he’d get something off of the coral or the pearl. Neither substance gave off any useful impressions. “Either it’s a naturally occurring substance or it was created by the dragon and doesn’t have anything an Arminger can read to it. Your guess which is true is as good as mine.”

Cassian chewed on his lip. “Very odd. Well, before we worry too much about this we should see how many of these people – or statues – there are lying around this place.”

“What about the water?” Marta asked. “There’s still a chance more Benthic will come back here to check on things.”

“The Linnorm will watch it,” Verina said. “I’ll stay on this side of the cavern if you want to go further back to get a head count.”

That was what they wound up doing. Adalai picked through the coral away from the bric a brac shelves, choosing that direction so he wouldn’t be distracted by the tantalizing sparkle of the various treasures. Once he started concentrating on it he realized a few interesting things about the coral.

First of all, it wasn’t even. He wasn’t exactly a marine life expert but he’d been under the impression that coral tended to grow in layers as the old generations of coral died and new ones were born. However this coral grew in narrow towers that reached up to the ceiling or down from above. It didn’t have the gradual growth patterns he might expect.

And that was the second thing. There were colonies of the coral up on the ceiling, placed with no particular pattern and stretching precariously downward towards the ground in random intervals. It didn’t seem like normal coral behavior, although again he couldn’t say for sure. Most of the time there weren’t any pearls nestled in the coral.

Which was the third pattern he noticed. His first thought had been that the pearls were put in place to illuminate the chamber. Of course, the dragon could most likely see in the dark, if the changes that had happened to Cassian after eating it were any indication. However the Benthic Stellaris used anemones for light most of the time. They must need illumination to see and Adalai had no reason to think the Benthic Tidallias were any different. So perhaps the pearls were for the sake of the dragon’s thralls.

However the first pearl Adalai found on his own was also part of a coral formation that grew up around a stone figure. So was the second. Taken together with the one Verina had found and it was beginning to feel like a pattern. Although the pearl was not in contact with the encased statue, much less embedded in its forehead, Adalai still found himself wondering if it was related to the pearls the Benthic thralls featured somehow.

Adalai climbed a couple of feet up the coral formation and pried the pearl out with his dagger. The gem was about the size of his thumb and much lighter than he’d expected it to be. While the additional senses given by his Gift couldn’t draw any impressions from it there was something off about the pearl.

His mind kept going back to the Benthic thralls they’d seen the night they killed the sea dragon. The color of the light these pearls shed was similar to those embedded in the thralls and, furthermore, they’d encountered a few of those thralls not a hundred feet away. There had to be a connection somewhere. He was rolling the pearl between thumb and forefinger when a voice even raspier than his own said, “Who are you?”

It took him by surprise so much so that he almost dropped the pearl. The question came from the statue encased in the coral. Except it wasn’t quite a statue anymore. Its eyes had opened and revealed very human pupils, its face had taken on life-like movement and its sandstone skin was beginning to take on a more human tone.

“My name is Adalai Carpathea.” He slowly and gingerly climbed down off of the coral. “I am a bravo from Citadel Fionni, crossing the Drownway to Renicie. Who are you?”

“Biagio Clayheart,” the overgrown man said. “A condottieri from Lome.”

“How long have you been here, Biagio?”

“I…” His pupils widened and shrank, drifting back and forth in their sockets in a random and very worrying fashion. “I don’t remember.”

“Well, it’s underground,” Adalai mused. “It is hard to keep track of the time. Do you have any idea how many people are here or who they might be?”

“No… where is our lord?” Biagio began to jerk against the coral, the sharp stuff opening small cuts on his body as it scratched against him. The man’s skin reversed the process it had just gone through, reverting to stone.

“I don’t know. Held for ransom if the dragon has acted like the rest of its kind. Perhaps he’s been ransomed back already.” Adalai examined the coral and found it too sturdy to safely pry at with his sword so he cast about for something he could bash or lever with. A chunk of stone caught his eye a few dozen feet away. He held up the glowing pearl so the light would be better and walked over to retrieve it.

Biagio went insane. He began to scream, thrashing his head about in the coral that contained it as he bellowed garbled words and spat flecks of spittle. Adalai froze, staring at the berserk man in wonderment. The man did not have much room to move in but he made the most of it, thunking the side of his head against the coral with disturbing force and chafing one arm back and forth until his doublet tore and exposed the stony skin beneath.

Adalai took one step back towards the trapped man. His convulsions grew less violent. Realization began to dawn and Adalai rolled the pearl until it was clamped firmly in his fingertips and held it as close to the other fellow as he could without moving again. Biagio calmed down until his eyes almost focused again. They fixed on the pearl and stared with a lethal intensity.

With a scratch of sand under boot heels Marta skidded into view, her shield at the ready, a worried question on her face. Adalai waved for her to stay in place with his free hand. Very carefully he put one foot in front of the other and shifted another six inches closer to Biagio. The other man’s mouth fell open into something that resembled a smile and he said, “My lord…”

The trapped man remained quiet as Adalai gingerly crossed the remaining space between them. Eventually Biagio’s eyes lost focus and drifted closed again. Adalai placed the pearl back on top of the coral in a depression within reach then quickly moved away, yanking his hand back as if he expected the coral to try and grab him as well.

In the process he caught a rancid smell. Curious, he held his hand up to his nose and breathed in deeply, catching a stronger wiff of rotting meat or stagnant water.

“What is it?” Marta asked in a subdued tone. The other two had appeared behind her and were also watching him with a skeptical eye.

“I don’t know.” He looked around until he located another one of those pearls and walked quickly over to it, suddenly aware of how much the cavern echoed. If there was a person under all the coral he or she was buried much deeper than Biagio had been. The pearl was also larger and higher than the previous one, nearly two inches in diameter and sitting a good ten feet off the ground.

Adalai tugged his gloves on, both to protect against the rough edges of the coral and because he didn’t want to touch one of the things again, then climbed up to the glowing orb. He was dimly aware that the edges of the coral were sharp enough he could still feel them through the leather covering his hands. Once he was close enough he positioned his head so his nose almost touched the pearl. Then he took a shallow breath.

He dropped to the ground, retching in revulsion, and wound up flat on his back. It was hard to tell if the ceiling overhead was spinning due to his hard landing or the indescribably vile smell lingering in his nasal passages. The smell would not go away and his nausea grew until he had to roll onto one side and vomit. Two pairs of hands pulled him away from the puke and helped him to his feet. A skin of water was pressed into his hands and he rinsed his mouth and face, huffing like an engine, snot running freely with the water as his traumatized nose tried to recover from whatever it had just encountered.

“What was that?” Cassian asked, taking the water skin back.

“I don’t know,” Adalai said, scrubbing his face with the hem of his doublet and breathing deeply of its sweaty musk. Compared to what he just experienced it was downright pleasant. “I’ve never smelled anything like that in my life.”

Verina rubbed his back gently, watching him with obvious concern. “Does it smell like the death of nations?”

He wiped his mouth once more with the back of his gloved hand and snorted clean air back into his nostrils. “Never smelled that but there’s worse ways to describe it. Why?”

“The Linnorm says that’s what the pearls smell like.”

“Do they smell that way to you?”

Cassian shimmied up to the one Adalai had just smelled, took a light breath from several inches away, another with his nose right next to it, then dropped to the ground. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Wonderful.” Adalai turned and spat on the ground, trying to get rid of a strange taste lingering in the back of his throat. No luck. “Well, I suppose I don’t have to wonder what eating a dragon did to me anymore. Hardly seems like an equal trade given not even the Benthic are willing to keep dragon eaters around, even if they lock them in jail.”

“You’ll live,” Cassian said. He fished some kind of dried fruit out of his pack and handed it over. “If nothing else we’re all in that boat, too.”

The fruit had a subtle, sweet flavor that reminded Adalai of dates, although he couldn’t be sure that’s what it was. After repeated trips through the ocean it wasn’t exactly dry anymore, either. It still beat the scummy taste Adalai had at the moment. He chewed it for a few seconds then swallowed, nodding his appreciation. “So as I see it we’ve got two problems. First, I don’t think we can move those pearls without the people they’re growing on hurting them. Second, the pearls themselves are bad for anyone around them. That includes us. I don’t think it’s healthy for us to stay around them.”

“Third problem,” Cassian added. “The pearls are all connected somehow. When you pulled that one out of the coral all the people under it in the cavern started moving.”

Adalai grimaced. “You sure?”

“I passed two thrashing around on my way here.”

“Another one for me,” Marta added.

“It can’t be a coincidence that these things are growing pearls and the sea dragon also used them,” Cassian mused. “I wonder why they look so different.”

“Maybe they have different properties when grown on Benthic as opposed to humans,” Marta said.

Verina glanced over to one side, nodded, and said, “We may be able to figure it out. The Linnorm says he’s found the thing the pearls are coming from.”

“Let’s not stand around yapping, then,” Cassian said. “We should act like any Benthic with the pearls felt it when you moved that one, just like the prisoners here. We need to get things done here before they show up to see what’s going on.”