Previous Chapter

There was a huge shell near the back of the cavern, embedded in the coral and filled to overflowing with sea water. Cassian studied the slow trickles spilling over the sides of the shell, wondering how it was the thing didn’t run out of water. There wasn’t any coming in from above. There wasn’t any large opening at the bottom of the shell where it could come in from below.

Well, it was hard to say that with certainty. The bottom of the shell was covered with small, ugly gray pearls numbering in the hundreds if not the thousands. They covered the bottom of the ten foot wide shell from side to side. It was difficult to determine the depth of the shell with how full it was but Cassian made a rough guess of eighteen inches to two feet. Near the center the pearls were stacked up in a heap that nearly filled it.

“Do you think the dragon planned to transform all of these?” Marta asked, staring at the shell in horror.

“Depends. Do they get more valuable if they’re transformed?”

Cassian meant it as an offhand remark but from his sudden look of concentration it seemed Adalai took it quite seriously. “That’s a good question.”

He pulled a glove off and poked a single finger into the water, his lips pursed to one side of his face. Nothing happened for a few seconds so Cassian asked, “Are you about to throw up again?”

“Let’s hope not.” The Arminger slowly reached down into the water, removed a single pearl from the top of the pile and pulled it out. “You know a lot about dragons, right, Cassian?”

“I’ve heard a lot of stories about dragons,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

“Sure.” He rolled the gray orb between his fingers then gingerly lifted it to his nose and smelled it. Cassian tensed up, ready to react if it caused him another fit, but nothing happened. “Smells like saltwater.”

“Wonderful.” Cassian took it from him and threw it back in the water. “So what? Is it really a good idea to tinker with those things when we have no idea what they do?”

“Probably not,” Adalai admitted, drying his hand off on his doublet and getting to his feet. “I think I got the answer, though.”

“So do they get more valuable or less?” Verina asked.

“Less. Assuming my sense of smell did change when we ate the sea dragon it makes sense that the dragon would think the transformation made the pearls smell terrible same as I did. So why was it turning these pearls into something it found disgusting?”

“Especially when it could already use them to enthrall the Benthic.” Verina added. “The people in the coral don’t seem like they’d be very useful to a sea dragon. Even if they can survive without air to breathe they have to turn themselves into solid stone to do it and, while they’re like that, Clayhearts are essentially asleep. Was it trying to build a body of troops it could use on land?”

“Maybe they were just guards for the dragon’s treasure?” Cassian suggested.

“Then why are they buried in coral? That’s contrary to ideal guardian performance,” Adalai said. “No, the dragon wanted the pearls changed for some reason. I just can’t guess what.”

Cassian sighed. “Well, it’s something to try and figure out. Maybe we can tempt Captain Trill in here once she’s convinced the dragon’s dead. Hopefully she can tell us what these things are supposed to do. Keep looking around.”

“Do you want me to go back on guard? Verina asked.

“Yeah. I need to figure out if Cazador is under all this zalted coral and you don’t know what he looks like. Adalai, stay away from the pearls. The last thing we need is for you to get sick at the moment a dozen angry Benthic flop out of the water looking to kill us.”

They broke apart and went their different directions. After half an hour of searching Cassian concluded there were at least two dozen people buried in the coral in the front half of the chamber, none of which were his brother. On the other hand, all of them had big, glowing white pearls in the coral nearby. Which did create a new and troubling issue to work out, namely the fact that the ceiling had, by his count, eight pearls in coral formations dangling from above. The closest was not even remotely in reach from the ground. He was going to have to search those if he couldn’t find Cazador in any of the more accessible locations.

“Cassian? Adalai?” Marta’s voice drifted from the very back of the cavern. “There’s another mystery over here. You two can probably figure out more about this than I can.”

The cavern was larger than he had expected at first thanks to a steep slope that led down and away from the water. Cassian idly wondered how it was that this part of the cavern wasn’t flooded. Perhaps the dragon kept it drained for some reason. The coral was sparse compared to the front of the chamber, only heaped up in a handful of places, all marked with telltale pearls. Cassian counted ten of them.

Marta waited, standing beside the only patch of ground in the area that had no coral on it at all. Which was odd, since he counted a whopping seven pearls sitting there, laid out in a crescent moon, all larger and brighter than any he’d yet seen. The light from the pearls was bright enough that Cassian didn’t notice at first. It was only when he got within a few steps of Marta and she motioned for him to stop that he realized the half crescent wasn’t around the ground. It was around a hole full of water.

Kneeling down, Cassian realized it was a very shallow bowl carved into the stone of the cavern filled with liquid so still and calm it reflected the ceiling perfectly. He pulled off a gauntlet and dipped his hand into the water, surprised to discover it was ice cold. In all there were spots for thirteen pearls around the edge of the bowl. “Well, it’s not complete, whatever it is.”

“Do you think it’s a mirror?” Marta asked.

“I don’t know.” Cassian measured it by eye, estimating it was at least six feet across, maybe seven. “It’s a bit oversized for the Benthic. On the other hand, if the dragon made it for itself it’s on the small side of things. Regardless, I don’t think reflection is the purpose of the thing, both the dragon and the Benthic could shape water into a mirror whenever they needed one if that was what they wanted.”

She knelt down and poked at one of the pearls. “Could this be a shrine to one of the Benthic gods? What do they worship, the tide, the deep and the waves?”

“Don’t ask me. We Ironhands prefer the dry land. Until my brother went missing I was willing to go to great lengths to ensure I never wound up in the water, ever.” He walked a careful circle around the hole, checking to see if it led anywhere. However it appeared to be nothing more than a foot deep depression in the rock, unremarkable except for how precise it was.

“Cassian.” He looked up to find Adalai standing a few paces away, a glass and silver box held in one hand. “I’ll trade you.”

He got to his feet and crossed to the Arminger, studying the box with a curious eye. “What is that?”

“It’s a jewelry box, which makes sense for a dragon’s collection.” Adalai held it out for him. “What I want to know is what you see in it.”

Cassian took the box and turned it over in his hands, studying the swirls of decorative silver vines that wrapped the corners and edges of the box. It was well made and the silver was of a high quality. The glass wasn’t quite as good, with a few pits and a generally foggy cast to it, but that was to be expected from something like a jewelry box. All the higher quality glass had probably wound up in windows. He offered it back to Adalai. “It looks empty to me.”

The other man ignored it and knelt down by the depression in the ground, sniffing at it from a good distance away. “Strange.”

“What?”

“No smell. Either I got desensitized to it already or these pearls are different from the ones growing in the coral.”

“Or whatever made the smell is used up by the time they get to this stage,” Marta suggested.

“Strange no matter how you cut it.” Cassian set the glass box on the ground beside the bowl and knelt beside Adalai. “You seemed to know about the things the Benthic worship. Is this a part of their cults?”

“No.” He gingerly ran his fingers around the rim of the depression. “At least not for the Lord of Folded Waters, they make this weird knot in the water as an altar to him. I don’t know anything about the other two Benthic religions.”

“Do I want to know why you know anything about them at all?”

“It’s not as interesting as you think. I just read books on occasion.”
“Expensive hobby.”

“Believe me, I know.” Adalai carefully reached out and touched the middle of the seven pearls. As he did the water in the basin rippled as if something heavy had slammed into the ground on that side of the pool. “Interesting.”

Cassian watched him reach for the next pearl to his left, a sense of trepidation building behind his eyes. “Don’t do that again.”

“I won’t be able to work out what it does by looking at it.”

“I just decided it’s not that important.”

“Well I’m not so sure about that, Cassian. I’ve only seen something so deeply infused with purpose as this thing once before, when I visited Lome.” He pressed the tips of his fingers to his lips, hands together as if praying. “What if I try something else?”

Cassian took a large step back from the pool. “By all means.”

The Arminger reached out and plucked the pearl he’d just touched out of the floor. There didn’t seem to be anything holding it in place and Adalai didn’t seem to be in any discomfort from holding it yet just watching him disturbed Cassian to his core. Holding the jewel between two fingers, Adalai held it up to one eye. “Very strange.”

“What?” Marta asked.

“There’s some kind of impression on this pearl, although there’s no sign the engraving itself was made by human hands. I’m not sure why that would be.”

“Can you-”

“Cassian!” Verina’s voice drifted from the front of the cavern. “There’s Benthic coming through the water.”

“Zalt,” he muttered. “Come on, Marta. Adalai, work out what’s going on with that thing, if you can’t then leave it and join us. I’ll be back once we’ve dealt with whatever this crisis is.”

The crisis, at least for the moment, was Trill. “The Tidallais have found us,” she reported. “They’re coming up from the northern Spawning Nests in force and they’ve brought a Matriarch.”

“Is that good or bad?” Cassian asked. “When we bring Matriarchs with us it’s usually for peaceful, diplomatic purposes.”

“That’s not the Tidallais way.” She waved one finned hand in the vague direction of the coral. “Matriarchs have power over their children that will most likely prevent them from being enthralled by the dragon. I suspect this one has come to retrieve her daughters and dispose of their new master.”

“Wonderful. Verina, grab Adalai. It’s time for us to get scarce.”

Trill peered at him, her fronds lying flat against her skull. “You don’t believe the dragon will arrive to battle the Tidallais, do you?”

“Of course not. It’s dead.” Cassian walked to the edge of the water and looked down into the deepest area of the cavern’s submerged portion. “Can you tell if this is connected to the open ocean?”

“It is,” Trill said. “The currents are very easy to discern.”

“Would it be safer to leave this way or through the top?”

“That depends on what you mean by safe. It would be very dangerous to try and climb out the chute we came down; however if we attempt to leave by the underwater passage we will most likely run into the Matriarch, if not her daughters.”

Cassian thought for a moment. “The chute it is, then. Marta can encase us in her shield and the four of you can pull water up behind us. We’ll float out like a bubble.”

“I could do that,” the Hexton agreed.

“Moving that much water would be difficult but-”

“Cassian!” Verina’s shout carried a panicked tone. “Adalai’s figured out what the scrying pool does!”

He spun on one heel to look back into the cavern, an acidic reply on his lips. He was getting tired of getting yanked backwards and forwards every two minutes. It died away when he realized seven shafts of light were shooting up from the floor of the cavern.

“Unbelievable,” he muttered.

As he took off towards the back of the cavern again Trill called out, “We don’t have much time, Ironhand!”

“Get to the chute,” he replied. “We’ll join you in a moment.”

Assuming Adalai didn’t get them all killed first.