Previous Chapter

“I’m very glad to see you here, Signore Teodoro,” Grigori said, his smile warm and broad. “The trip across the Drownway must have been very trying for you but I hope my men made it as easy as possible.”

“I regret that they didn’t, Signore Borgia.” Teodoro sat on the chair in Grigori’s chambers with enough force that it seemed it would break. The bulky man paid it no mind. “I regret that I have not had the pleasure of hearing from you since our last correspondence a month ago. I am sure a man of your means has already learned the outcome of that.”

“Indeed?” It wasn’t surprising to him but disappointing none the less. Grigori studied the gray layers of Teodoro’s clothing, noting that he did seem unusually moist and bedraggled, even for someone who had gone through Nerona’s dampest passage. “Perhaps the unnatural waves that lashed the islands three days ago were the cause. By all reports they were quite violent.”

“That much I can confirm myself,” the other man replied, leaning back in the chair and staring into the distance. “I never felt as close to death as I did when I saw the water coming. It seemed like the whole Adriatic Ocean had come for my life, as if there were some score it had to settle with me.”

“Yet here you are.” Grigori settled into his own chair in a more restrained fashion. “Shall I send for something to refresh you? Or would you prefer rest?”

“I haven’t the time for either, I’m afraid, not if I wish to remain a free man.” He gestured weakly towards the outside world, presumably referring to whatever forces still sought to imprison him. “The successor to the Prince of Torrence may still be an open question right now but such matters rarely go unresolved for long. Whoever rules from the citadel next will eventually have to turn their attention to affairs of state. The murder of a Conde by one of his brothers will not be low on the list and I intend to be far from here by then.”

Grigori winced to hear such an important matter put so tastelessly. “Wise of you, Signore. I will not detain you then. Find Evincio in the stables, tell him you require the chestnut stallion and he will see you well mounted.” He motioned to Gunter and the Eisenkinder brought him a bag, small in size but heavy in the hand, which Grigori passed on to Teodoro. “This will see you well on your way.”

He weighed the bag for a moment, clearly debating whether he should examine the contents, then nodded and secured the bag in his belt. “Thank you, Signore. You have always been very kind to me. I hope we will meet again.”

“As do I, Teodoro. As do I.”

Gunter kept himself from scornful noise until after the door closed and their guest was gone. “What a nearsighted fool.”

Grigori sighed and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and massaging at a sore spot in his stomach where a shallow cut was still healing. “Teodoro was a loyal man. Perfect for his role in every respect, save for his lack of imagination, and a very valuable weapon in the courts of Torrence. If he could have inherited his brother’s title it would have benefited us greatly. Pity he never made it across the Drownway.”

“If you say it then it must be so, Papa Borgia. Will Evincio need my help in the stables today, do you think?”

“No, no, Gunter, you always sell him short. Leave him alone and he will surprise you.” Gunter chuckled but knew better than to comment on his master’s joke. “Besides, I need you to go into the square today and start making inquiries among the bravos again. Our quiver is out of arrows and at the worst possible time, when Torrence is in chaos and ripe for the picking!”

“What about the Blacklegs? They are still here, aren’t they?”

Grigori cracked one eye open to glare annoyance at the Isenkinder. “I don’t need a whole company of condottieri to shield my investments, Gunter, I need a few arrows I can loose into the squealing runts of the herd. Besides, I have heard a dragon was spotted along the Drownway recently. The Prince will likely buy up all the large bodies of troops to mount an expedition against it and I have no desire to bid against him. What about those Hextons you know?”

Gunter scratched at his pale beard. “The Herakleans took a contract headed north a few days ago. I believe they were headed to Lome and from there to Fionni as caravan escorts. At wagon speeds it will be a month before we can expect to hear from them even if they were a good fit for the job you have in mind.”

“I haven’t told you what I want them for yet.”

“I’ve arranged hundreds of tasks for you over the years, Papa, and I can only think of three or four I would trust them with. They’re Hextons. Their conscience dictates far more of their behavior than is wise.”

“I see.” Grigori closed his eye again and considered his options. Three of his men lost waiting to ambush Teodoro on the Drownway, many of his others tied up dealing with business in Lome. He had not had as much need for bravos since he brought Gunter into the family and his connections among them were not as strong as they had once been. He ran down that list of names, quietly eliminating them one at a time, until he arrived at an unenviable conclusion. Grigori sat up and opened his eyes to the grayness of the world to find Gunter quietly watching him. “You know what that leaves us with, don’t you?”

“We wait a month to see what new options appear before us?”

“Fortune favors the bold, not the passive. Someone will succeed to the throne of Torrence and I will have a blade at his belly or my name is not Grigori Borgia! Now, bring me the Blind Man.”

Gunter let out a breath that might have been a sigh. “Very well.” He crossed to the chamber’s exit, opened the door and summoned a page, telling him, “There is a Blind Man enjoying the master’s hospitality in the kitchen. Fetch him here.”

There was a bottle of wine sitting on the sideboard and Grigori helped himself to a generous serving. “He was here already?”

“I was on my way to report it to you when you summoned me on account of Signore Teodoro. It didn’t seem wise to mention it while he wasn’t here.”

“Your discretion is praiseworthy. It can be difficult to know how to deal with things when I am not entertaining guests. Your own position became available because your predecessor couldn’t parse such delicate matters.” Grigori drained his cup and waited for the bracing warmth of the wine to hit him. He was going to need it.

The servants in his household were nothing if not swift and less than three minutes after Gunter sent him the page returned, knocking on the door and announcing, “The Blind Man requests an audience with Signore Borgia.”

Grigori fixed his eyes on the door and said, “Enter.”

The page stepped into the room, holding the door open for a man dressed in a simple gray tunic and hose with a gray cloth wrapped around his eyes. He held a rough wooden staff that came up to his leather belt. The man’s hair was dark, bordering on black, but streaked with silver. In a few years Grigori suspected the situation would be much the opposite, with gray the dominant color and the black fading into obscurity. In spite of his incredible plainness the newcomer had an unsettling air to him.

Grigori marshalled his full faculties, doing his best to attend to every small change he observed, but he still found no indication of when the Blind Man began seeing through his eyes. Perhaps he was using Gunter’s or the page’s instead. Grigori raised his wine cup in salute.

“Papa Borgia,” the Blind Man said, bowing deeply from the waist. “I hope I find you well on this blessed morning?”

“Well enough.” Grigori motioned the page into the room. “Pour my guest something to drink, boy.”

“I am content, Signore,” the Blind Man said, a thin smile on his lips. “If you enjoy your wine that is more than enough for me.”

Grigori ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth, wondering if his guest was picking up on that sensation as well. Then he waved the page out of the room and made eye contact with Gunter. The Isenkinder nodded. “I should see if Evincio ran into any surprises. Excuse me, Papa.”

Once they were alone Grigori turned his attention fully to his guest. “Well, Fabian. Here we are again.”

“You don’t seem very happy about it, Papa Borgia,” the Blind Man said. “Have I done something to displease you?”

“I can’t help but recall that every time you come to me it seems like I get swindled out of something.”

“I? Swindle the Prince of Plunder?” His expression turned to one of mock horror. “How could I? Who can cross you and live to make the mistake a second time?”

“Perhaps I should give you your eyes back after all.”

The Blind Man’s expression lost all hint of mirth as he said, “You would value them more if you could see as clearly as they did.”

“The color of a thing has little to do with its value. My eyes work well enough, as you can tell for yourself. If you don’t enjoy seeing the world as I do then you shouldn’t have paid your debts as you did. Or you could just visit less.”

“Have you heard the latest news from the Drownway, Papa Borgia? And I don’t mean Teodoro. Clearly you have already learned about that or Evincio wouldn’t be on Gunter’s mind.”

Grigori pursed his lips, annoyed at the way the Blind Man seemed to learn everything there was to know in Renicie the moment it happened. Even if he could listen with every ear in the city he couldn’t use them all at once. Could he?

“It seems you haven’t.” The Blind Man folded his hands around his staff and sat back in his chair, looking as satisfied as a pick pocket with his first purse. “Signore Marelli’s caravan has arrived at last.”

Grigori sat up straight as an arrow. “Have they? They’re more than three weeks overdue!”

“Well, not the entire caravan, no. The word on the docks is that they were attacked by the Benthic and the wagons were lost. But not the crown jewel of the collection.”

For the first time since Gunter mentioned his presence Grigori started to feel like he might get something useful from the Blind Man this time around. “Are you saying…?”

“There were three survivors from the caravan.” He held up said number of fingers and wiggled them as they were named. “A bravo hired as a guard. One of the junior merchants who was driving a wagon. And a young woman with eyes like sapphires. They arrived just after low tide this morning in the company of their rescuers.”

Just like that Grigori saw all his plans for Torrence coming back together in a new shape, possibly one that would bring him even greater returns. There was only one little detail that gave him some hesitation. “Their… rescuers?”

“It seems the surviving bravo had a brother who heard he hadn’t arrived and set out to rescue him. Touching, really. The people on the docks seem as excited about the Ironhand and his party as they are about the survivors that were rescued.” The Blind Man offered a helpless shrug. “So fickle. Just last week they were bemoaning the loss of all that good Fionni cheese Marelli was dealing in.”

“They must be an impressive bunch if they managed to rescue prisoners from the Benthic, survived a falling star with the waves it raised and made it all the way here afterwords.” Grigori rubbed at his bottom lip, considering the facts. Given his current position and the fact that these bravos had somehow retrieved a key weapon he’d thought was lost he couldn’t afford to ignore this development. What he wasn’t sure of was why the Blind Man had brought the matter to him. News this significant would have fallen in his lap sooner or later. “Do you know where these bravos are?”

“Of course Papa Borgia.” The Blind Man got to his feet, his covered eyes still pointed towards Grigori’s own. “Would you like me to bring them to you?”

“Yes. As it happens I was in the process of searching for just such skillful individuals.”

“Then search no longer.” He sketched out another bow. “I shall return with them in a day or two, if not before.”

“I look forward to good news, Fabian. Until then.”

The Blind Man let himself out, the thin smile back on his lips, passing by Gunter as the Isenkinder returned with his usual impeccable timing. He made sure the door was firmly closed behind the Blind Man then approached Grigori’s desk. “That one may be reaching the end of his usefulness, Papa.”

“Reaching the end, Gunter. But not there yet.” He took a sip of his wine, wondering what his next move ought to be. “Evincio?”

“It’s a shocking thing, Papa. It seems he found a horse thief who broke into the stables! Thankfully they have kicked the villain to death but, alas, his skull was cracked like a chestnut in the process. His face is unrecognizeable. I fear we’ll never know who he was.”

“Tragic. The horses?”

“In good health. Unfortunately it seems Evincio was hit by one of the mares. His arm is broken.”

That was one problem settled and another in its place. Grigori got up and headed for the door. “Start putting together a sling, Gunter, and we’ll go and look in on poor Evincio. I leave for Lome in ten days and I need those horses in their best shape. I will take the break so he can return to work.”

“Of course, Papa. Of course.”

If only every problem House Borgia faced could be handled so easily. Still, there were new bravos at hand. If they proved sharp enough they might be a worthy weapon for the next duel. Time would tell.

Previous Chapter

Cassian washed up on shore on a wave of exhaustion and bruises. The moon was setting overhead and, if he closed his eyes and ignored the four Benthic scattered along the sand, he could almost imagine their entire trip beneath the ocean hadn’t happened. Almost.

He flopped onto his back and put one arm over his head, hiding from the stars overhead. If he was going to slip into total fantasy he might as well try to pretend that Cazador hadn’t gone missing in the first place and all he had to do to find him again was head home to the farm. Problem was, that fantasy wasn’t going to help anyone. Not himself. Certainly not Cazador. So Cassian rolled onto his front and slowly pushed himself up onto his feet.

“Are we all here?” He asked. “All alive?”

“Can’t be alive,” Adalai croaked. “Hurts too much.”

“The dead don’t feel pain,” Marta replied. She had a lot less trouble getting to her feet than the rest of them. Cassian wondered if she knew that she’d grown a thin layer of scales holding her shield against the rush of water that came in when the cavern under the ocean collapsed. He wondered if they were permanent.

“I beg to differ.” Adalai refused to move anything other than his lips. “If this is life it’s too miserable for anyone to survive it.”

“I don’t think anyone does,” Verina said, looking down on him from a perch on top of the Linnorm’s head.

He finally lifted his head up off the sand but only to glare up at her. “Pedantry.”

“Stop wallowing,” Cassian said, reaching down to grab him by the collar of his doublet. “Just because you died once and Returned doesn’t mean you can become a whiney misery for the rest of us.”

Adalai finally started moving for himself, brushing Cassian’s hand away and pulling himself upright. “What makes you say that?”

“The whining, mostly.”

“No, what makes you think I Returned from Eternity?”

Cassian blinked once, wondering if the other thought he was some kind of idiot. “I watched it happen. Adalai, your body vanished from the cavern for at least five minutes then the mists parted and you popped out of them like a spring saying the King of Stars was coming. I’m not a deeply religious man but even I can figure that out.”

“When you put it that way it does sound awfully compelling,” Adalai murmured. “I wasn’t exactly dead, though. That place was nothing like the outskirts of Eternity.”

“How is this place still here?” Verina said, her voice echoing over the sodden beach as the Linnorm lifted her higher and higher so she could survey their surroundings with her own eyes. “How are we? That star fell and the waves were like mountains! They should have ground us on the rocks like a millstone and shattered these islands as well.”

Cassian glanced at Trill, who still hadn’t moved, and said, “I wonder if they have anything to do with it. The Stellaris have some kind of pact with the King, perhaps he arranged to spare them.”

“Well either way we should probably get them back into the sea,” Marta said. “I don’t know how long it’s been since we washed up here but they have to be running low on water to breathe by now. After all they did for us I’d hate for them to die in such a pitiful way.”

“Of course. Stupid of me not to think of that. Are you in any shape to help, Adalai?”

“Give me a minute.”

In point of fact Marta and Cassian managed to get all four Benthic back in the water before Adalai rallied enough to move about. It was hard to hold it against him. Regardless of what the others might think, Cassian was fairly certain Adalai had died and Returned in that cavern. That kind of ordeal would leave anyone exhausted.

Trill and her guards came around after a couple of minutes in the ocean which was a bit of a relief to Cassian. “We’re all alive,” he said, sitting on the seabed so he would stay submerged with them. “So are you. I hope that’s enough to convince you we bear you no ill will because I have no intention of going back to the Ursus Nest with you.”

Trill made a dismissive gesture. “At this point I don’t believe there is much to be gained by bringing you back with us. If you were a threat to the Stellaris you’d have shown it by now. In addition the dragon you killed was a threat to us, so I suppose we also owe you a favor. Return to your arid lands. All I ask is that you take the time to ask for permission before entering our waters again.”

“Wait.” The Benthic paused on the brink of departure. Marta struggled for a moment as she tried to frame her question. Finally she just blurted out, “What about Braxton? He has been your prisoner far longer than is just and his own people need him back.”

She needed him back, although Cassian wondered if there was a future for her with the man she was so obviously smitten by now that fate had conspired to make her devour part of a dragon. However, whether or not that would matter was largely up to the Benthic. Trill did little to set the issue to rest. “I will do what I can,” the Benthic captain said. ”But I can’t make you many promises.”

Cassian cleared his throat, which didn’t sound quite as impressive under water, and said, “Forgive me for being a pessimist but are you even sure Ursus Nest still exists? After that star fell I have to wonder. The islands in the Drownway absorbed far more of the impact than I expected them to but the waves still must have dealt terrible destruction to anything in or along the Gulf.”

Trill swished her tail to cut off the Hexton woman’s protests. “Worry not, Marta Shieldbearer. Ursus Nest is quite safe, as is anything along your shores. Matriarchs are far more powerful tide turners than the normal Benthic. The reason these islands remain here instead of being swept into the Gulf is most likely because the Matriarch we saw put the whole force of her power into calming the waves caused by the star’s fall.”

“Your people have that kind of power?” Cassian asked, disturbed by the notion.

“We couldn’t survive without it,” Trill replied. “Stars fall in the ocean far more than upon the arid lands. Even without a Matriarch the Stellaris have found the power to turn back larger waves than these. We will be well. In time, when the needs of the treaty are upheld, we will return your Baron to you.”

Cassian returned the speaking pearls to Trill and they parted ways. As he waded through the surf back towards shore he glanced at Marta and frowned. “You’re still showing scales.”

She rolled up one sleeve and showed him the reptilian patterns there were fading. “I think it will go away with enough time. I’m not sure why they chose just now to finally make an appearance.”

“I have an idea or two but it’s pointless to guess blindly. In the forge we would have to hammer things out and I suspect this will be much the same.” Somehow, in the midst of all the insane underwater antics, he’d managed to keep ahold of his bag. Once he opened it up and looked he found his map was still in its oilcloth. Not a huge stroke of luck but he would take it.

As he waded the last few feet to shore he unfolded the map and tried to match the contours of the shoreline to the outlines on the page. He took the position of the stars. He looked east, then west, then east again. Finally he came to a stop, still ankle deep in water, staring blankly at the paper.

Adalai came out to meet him there. “Are you okay, Cassian?”

He kept staring at the map, unseeing. “Where… where do I go, Adalai?”

The other man took him by the elbow and gently dragged him back towards shore. “How about we go to Renicie?”

“But… the caravan… we haven’t found the caravan yet, I can’t even pay any of you and…” The map swam in front of his eyes.

“It’s all right, Cassian,” Marta said. “We all take some losses here and there, this is just one of them.”

“But…”

“You can’t stay out here searching for him forever,” Adalai said. “Come on, it’s time to head back to dry land.”

The map slipped from his fingers and crinkled softly as someone folded it again. Cassian staggered forward as the full weight of the day settled in on him. They had found dozens of Clayhearts like Cazador in the dragon’s lair wrapped in coral and, while they hadn’t looked at every one of them, it was a foolish fantasy to think his brother wasn’t among them. A caravan was a natural target for a dragon. And if Clayhearts were a part of whatever sorcery or ritual the creature was undertaking that made Cazador’s group even more of a prize. They had gone missing in the same general area the dragon hunted.

Now the dragon’s lair was destroyed by star fall.

A flash of rage cleared his vision and Cassian spun around, ripping his breastplate plate off with his Gift. “What a stupid…”

The breastplate skipped more than a dozen times of the waves. “Waste…”

He ripped off a gauntlet but before he could throw it Adalai grabbed him in a bear hug, dragging him back from the water line. “Let me go.”

“Calm down, Cassian.”

“I have to -”

“There’s nothing left to do. It’s time to move on.”

He finally let himself stop, staring out at the waves as they rolled in endlessly, rippling with the reflection of the heavens. Perhaps the King of Stars had come to Return Adalai, perhaps to destroy the Benthic’s gods. Perhaps it was just his duty to guide Cazador and the others into Eternity.

“Let go of me, Adalai.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. You’re right, it’s time to head back to land.”

The other man relaxed his grip and stepped away, leaving Cassian unsteady but upright. The rush of anger that energized him a moment ago had vanished, somehow leaving him even more tired and sore than before it arrived. He sighed and squinted at the ocean, absently wondering if he could catch the gleaming of his metal armor. All he could see was waves. Then he caught a brighter point of light that he focused on it. But it didn’t have the glimmer of metal he’d come to associate with the dragon sight he’d inherited from the sea dragon.

It was more of a cluster of lights. Seven of them. They were rushing inland and quickly separated into a seven pointed crown that raised itself up out of the ocean, seeming to reach all the way to heaven. Beneath them was the outline of a man. Terror washed over Cassian as a living representation of forever stepped up and out of the ocean, steam rising off a body filled with the power of the constellations, and bent down to the shoreline. He shrank back from the entity as one closed hand came to rest on the ground.

The fingers flexed, full of blazing comets and shimmering starlight, then opened to deposit three unconscious human forms on the sand. Then the King of Stars straightened up, paused for a moment to look at the four people who watched him in frozen awe. Then his body vanished and his crown stretched upwards until it merged with the stars above.

Cassian wasn’t sure how long he stared up after the King before he came back to himself. At the very least it was still night when he did. He wasn’t sure why they’d been chosen to see the vision, nor did he care. There was only one thing that really mattered to him.

Reenergized, he dashed forward to the bodies on the beach. It was clear at once they were all breathing. One was too small to be an adult and the second had long, graying hair so Cassian ignored them. The last was the right size. Before any doubt could build in his mind he grabbed the man and rolled him over so he could see his face.

That was how Cassian Ironhand found his brother at last.

Previous Chapter

The Mists whistled and howled like a thousand tea kettles, the deafening cacophony battering Adalai worse than any physical thing he’d seen along the Drownway. He wished he was back in the vacuum of Marta’s shield. It took several seconds before he realized the Mists were actually speaking to him. The discordant shrieks did a good job of obscuring the more sibilant sounds and the words had a breathy quality that made picking out individual syllables more difficult than it should have been. But there were definitely words in there.

Adalai Carpathea, the Mists howled. Have you at last come to return what was taken?

“I don’t have anything of yours,” he yelled, spinning around and trying his best to locate exactly where the voice was coming from. The mist deadened the sound and made his hearing unreliable.

Not so, not so, the voice hissed. Once you have evaded us and twice you have stolen yet you come to us now and plead ignorance. No more! Return what is ours and we may yet forgive the rest.

The tone and cadence of the voice changed from one statement to the next and Adalai briefly wondered if the ‘we’ the Mists spoke of was a royal we or something more concrete. It wasn’t that important, though. So instead he turned about, trying to locate the rest of his group. Whether by chance or by deliberate design it turned out that there was no sign of Cassian or Marta, or even the Benthic. He did catch a brief glimpse of a winding, serpentine form that might have been the Linnorm, although whether that meant Verina was nearby or the spirit was just visible through the obscuring vapors the Mists had conjured was an open question.

There was also a possibility the Mists were, in fact, a dragon themselves. That was something he didn’t want to think about.

Do not think you can deceive us, Adalai Carpathea. The voice had shrunken to a whisper. We can smell on you the touch of the Mist. You pollute it and us with your filthy, mortal flesh and we will have it from you. From all of you. It never should have been given to the likes of man.

The image of the glass box came to his mind like a thunderclap. At the same time he remembered the moment, just before he was sent to Nerona, when he had met with the King of Stars. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

Adalai slowly reached into his bag, digging for the box, as his mind cast about for a way to stall. “Why do the great Mists in the Deep show so little charity? Certainly it is a small thing to spare for the low and mortal-”

It is your very mortality that offends! The voice returned to full shriek. Why should the life of Mist Eternal be shortened to that of vanishing mortals, creatures that pass into Eternity with nothing to their name, not even their very flesh? We were made for so much more than this!

“Well if it’s Eternity you’re concerned about you could just ask the Kings directly,” Adalai said as his fingers closed around cool glass. It was the wrong thing to say.

A wave of sound crashed over Adalai, knocking him down. It was impossible for him to describe what he heard, the sheer volume of noise battering his ears into uselessness. He felt, rather than heard, the cacophony. On the other hand he still heard everything the Mists had to say, as strange as that might be.

The Kings, you say? Nothing more than mortals who have strayed from the very things that made them special. They should have known their place. What have they done instead? Meddled with the order of things, taken and returned on their own whim and doomed those such as you to suffer the trials of life far longer than is just or proper.

Adalai flailed his free hand about, trying to find purchase to get to his feet again. To his consternation he discovered there weren’t any solid surfaces anywhere around him, not even in the direction he had thought of as ‘below.’ Was he lost in a vision again? It would explain why he hadn’t seen or heard from the others since breaking the stone knot.

Not that he was hearing very much at the moment.

“I’m not that upset about the trials of life at the moment,” Adalai said, trying to feel the words as they rolled off his tongue. Hopefully the Mists could understand him regardless of how his words sounded. He pulled out the box and held it aloft. “If taking and returning is what really bothers you I don’t know why you want this back so bad.”

The pounding pulse of the Mist’s rage faded away, replaced with a chilling sense of malicious attention. What have you done to it?

“Nothing. It was like this when I found it. What makes you think I did anything to it?”

Adalai could practically feel a watching eye boring into him from somewhere in the Mists, moving around from in front to behind him like a stalking tiger. It is constrained. Unnatural. You have perverted our nature. Set it free.

“It was like this when I found it. I have no idea how it got in here or how to get it out.”

It is your crime that has imprisoned it. The voice grew softer and softer, setting Adalai’s hair on end. You must set it free.

The box didn’t have a lock but it did have a latch, a small silver flange that swung down over a little post. Opening it wasn’t exactly difficult. On the other hand, whatever was speaking on behalf of the Mists didn’t seem to understand the lives of so-called “mortals” very well. Perhaps that was enough to thwart it.

On the other hand, perhaps it needed permission to take what it wanted.

“If it was really yours, why do you need me to set it free?”

It was stolen. The voice spoke as a parent to a particularly stupid child. It must be returned.

Adalai studied the box, wondering if his new intuition was correct. Cassian hadn’t been able to see the mist within, which suggested it wasn’t a normal mist. Shortly after handling it he’d seen the King of Stars in a vision. The King claimed that vision was an omen yet it wasn’t a sign of things to come, which was the generally accepted nature of omens, but rather a vision of things that had been. The explanation didn’t seem to explain.

On the other hand, the scrying pool that showed Adalai the vision was tied to the Mists in the Deep and the King spoke as if the Mists were at least somewhat aware of his presence. Had that forced the King of Stars to speak in riddles? What had he really been trying to say?

Most of all, why did the mist in the box seem familiar? Was it because he’d looked into the scrying pool and his Gift of Arms had allowed him to pick up some sliver of intention from the Mists in the Deep?

Or was it because he had seen this mist before? Not just anywhere, but in the hands of the King of Stars when he was offered a second chance at life?

Adalai looked up from the box and swept his gaze across the fog surrounding him. “Are you certain you want this?”

Certain? If he’d been hoping the Mists would show some sign of hesitation he was disappointed. Why would I question my desire for what is mine?

“Because it’s not yours. It’s not even a mist.” He flipped the latch open, lifted the lid and reached to take the Gift within. “It’s a cloud.”

When the King of Dreams gave Adalai the Gift of Arms he hadn’t really noticed much change at first. It had taken months of practice before he was able to make much sense of it. The Gift of Clouds was the opposite. As soon as the cloud merged with his hand Adalai became aware of the mists surrounding him, feeling them drift and turn almost as if they were a large, lightweight head of hair.

Except he could feel them. It was like every drop of mist was a raw nerve and a thrumming muscle, waiting for him to direct them. It was overwhelming. For a brief moment he hesitated and, in that moment, the Deep struck.

There was something malevolent among the mists, something seething with fury, burning hot and demanding control. It was the Deep, truly, but had nothing to do with the mists. They did fear the Deep, however, and as it moved they fled before it. Perhaps the Deep had hoped that Gift would give it the control it desired, perhaps it just resented others having control over what it delighted in terrifying.

The mists whipped around Adalai, panic and dread spreading through them and reaching their fearful tendrils towards him as well.

“Enough hiding.” Adalai spread his hands apart and called the clouds to himself. The mists rolled together into tighter and tighter clumps until they were nothing more than a pile of woolly mounds around his feet. All around him was a dark and empty void. The only other thing present was a single eye.

It was as huge as a house and yellow, with an odd, rectangular red pupil that stared with fiery intensity. It gazed at him from the same plane at first. Then it lifted itself higher and higher, rising up to reveal a strange, insectoid face over a mouth with flat, grinding stone teeth. The Deep was far greater than anything Adalai had ever seen.

His heart hammered at his ribs wildly, as if it could burst free of his chest and flee from that stare. His grip on the mists slipped and the clouds began to billow up again. His legs felt weak and tried to back away from the soul shaking figure before him but there was nothing to stand on. No place to find purchase.

You should not have looked. The Deep continued to rise higher, sending him tumbling further and further down. Now you will die and another will return what was stolen from me.

“Clouds don’t hide the depths,” Adalai stammered. “They hide the sky.”

The Deep’s single eye blinked slowly, as if it failed to understand. At the same moment, far above it, seven points of light glimmered into the void.

Adalai had a hard time following what happened next, not only because it happened so quickly but because the scale was so vast. One second the Deep’s head was slowly turning upwards. The next a spinning galaxy in the shape of a man, a crown of seven supernovas on its head, crashed into the Deep. The King of Stars beat the Deep with meteoric fists. The Deep struck back, wrapping his starry body in serpentine limbs burning with deep, red fury and dragging the two of them down.

The clash unleashed a horrifying shockwave that blinded Adalai. His ears, still ringing from the Deep’s previous screaming, were battered once more. Crushed under the weight of unfathomable battle raging around him he felt his consciousness slipping away. By all rights, that should have been the end of him.

So he was quite surprised to open his eyes and find himself surrounded by jagged shards of stone, lying on a still warm chunk of the ocean floor, his eyes and ears once again working normally. Instead of clashing cosmic forces he heard Cassian shouting orders as Trill’s Benthic gathered up water from the sea floor.

The Mists in the Deep may be dealt with but that was only the beginning of their troubles. Adalai grasped around until his hand fell on the hilt of a sword and he dragged himself to his feet.

Previous Chapter

For a brief moment Adalai let himself fantasize about the Mists in the Deep having a totally scientific, material basis that Benthic mythology had distorted into a legend over time. It was the kind of thinking most people back home had indulged often. Over the years since he’d left home he’d spent many a wistful night wondering what his life might have been like if it was true and there were no personal avatars of the inexorable forces of nature. Definitively shorter, for one thing.

However his life had not been short because death, at the very least, had spokesmen. He wondered what the Mists in the Deep actually spoke for. Nothing good, if what Trill said about the Benthic life cycle was accurate.

He wasn’t a huge fan of the way the Stellaris dragged them everywhere underwater but he did appreciate how quickly his Benthic minder got him down to the stone structure they’d discovered. He’d barely started examining it when Trill said, “It looks like the Sign of Folded Water.”

“That’s the primary Benthic god, right?” Cassian asked. “Is that good or bad?”

“The Stellaris don’t venerate any of the creatures the other Benthic worship,” Trill said. “But it was the Lord of Folded Waters who supposedly raised us up from eels and gave us minds and the power to control the tides.”

“I don’t suppose you know anything about the Mists in the Deep?” Adalai asked.

“No. Nothing of their songs or prayers were brought into the Stellaris when we were founded.” She stared blankly at the stone knot for a long moment then shook her head. “I doubt either of them will look on us with favor now.”

“If the Lord of Folded Waters thought it was a good idea for Benthic women to eat all their sisters I’m not sure his favor is something you want,” Verina said. She let herself drift down until she was on the bottom next to the stone formation.

Adalai settled next to her. “Do you see something?”

“No…” But her voice suggested just the opposite.

“Does the Linnorm see something?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not answering my questions right now, which happens every once in a while. This is the first time it’s happened when I’ve been in some kind of immediate danger, though.” She stuck a knuckle between her teeth and chewed on it.

“Have you been in danger a lot in your life?”

“The Slavs are lost, Adalai. I fear we’ll all be in danger until we find our home again.”

There was more truth in that than he wanted to admit so he ignored it. “So I guess we’ll have to figure this thing out on our own.”

“Why are we figuring it out?” Marta asked. “We could still try to bottleneck the Benthic up at the entrance.”

Adalai shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s going to work now. What was it you said back in Fionni, Verina? This whole job has the touch of inevitability to it, right? I think this is why.”

“I did ask you to come on this job because you have a Gift that gives more insight than the norm,” Cassian said. “However, in this case I’m going to need more than ‘a touch of inevitability’ to go along with whatever you’re suggesting.”

Adalai chewed on his lower lip, trying to organize his thoughts. “It’s not as simple or straightforward as you might like, Cassian, but I’ll try my best. The Kings at the Corners are revered in Nerona but they’re not from Nerona, if you see what I mean. Where I’m from we had a name for them but we didn’t have anything like the orders of Heralds, for example.”

“The Slavs are much the same,” Verina said. “But what does that have to do with this?”

“It’s the same concept, I think. The Mists in the Deep are revered by the Benthic but it doesn’t mean said Mists have no influence at all on the rest of us. Or that we have no value to them. Trill says they’re associated with volcanic vents which are created by liquid stone. Clayhearts can turn to stone and the sea dragon had a whole mess of them captured in its lair. A place that also had a scrying pool in it which I am certain was connected to this thing somehow.”

Cassian shook his head. “That doesn’t feel very concrete at all, Adalai.”

“I know, I know. There might be more I could get if I used my Gift on it but I’m fairly certain that if I did I wouldn’t live long enough to share any of it with you.” He rubbed his gloved palm with the tips of his fingers, wondering if he was about to say something foolish. “The worst part is I’m fairly certain those Clayhearts are dead, or close enough to it. I’m afraid that if your brother is up there we’re not getting him back.”

The other man had gone dangerously still. “Why do you think that?”

“Because when I looked into that scrying mirror I saw the King of Stars and I don’t think he was just there because a scrying shows you omens of things to come. Those pearls…” Adalai tasted bile in the back of his throat as he thought of them. “I think those pearls extract the Clayheart’s souls for some purpose. I’ve no doubt that at some point the King will have to take those souls into Eternity and that was the real reason he was there.”

“You can recognize the King of Stars just like that?”

“We’ve met.”

“Yes…” Trill said softly. “You said the only one you hadn’t met was the King of Dawn.”

Cassian ignored her. “You don’t know that-”

“No, I don’t.” Adalai let himself drift up from the seafloor and grabbed the other man by his shoulders. “Your brother may be alive. He may not even be one of the dragon’s prisoners, we didn’t have time to look at all of them. That thing over there might have nothing to do with the Mists in the Deep. But we’re out of options here. We can try and fight that Matriarch and her Benthic, however many there might be, or we can tamper with that thing, whatever it might be. But those are our choices. Only one of them seems like it might get us out of this alive.”

“So let’s get up to the entrance and barricade it before the Benthic get down here,” Marta said.

“He means this,” Trill said, pointing to the stone knot. “Matriarchs can have hundreds or thousands of daughters. There’s no way we can kill them all, even with the strange and unpredictable way human Gifts work.”

“That’s insane,” Marta snapped. She thrust the head of her mace at the knot. “We don’t know what that is and we don’t know how to manipulate it. If we fight the Matriarch at least we know what we’re fighting and when we’ve won, we touch that thing and we might not even realize when it’s killed us.”

“Marta.” It took a second for Adalai to realize who was talking. There was a chill in Cassian’s voice that made him sound like an entirely different person. “Look around. You’re not tired but that makes you the only one. Summoning the Linnorm in water took a lot out of Verina and I doubt she’s going to be able to pull it off again more than once. Adalai has used his gift a lot in the past few hours on top of the puking. Trill and her troops have been dragging us all over the ocean floor for half a day in addition to fighting with the Benthic earlier. Me? I suppose I just don’t have your stamina.”

The last one was the only one that didn’t have a basis in reality. Adalai watched Marta’s face as she looked around her and slowly realized it was true. “Fine. Fine. How are we getting into the middle of this thing, then? I can’t swing a mace fast enough underwater to smash it.”

Cassian peered at the stone, running one gloved finger along it, his sudden grim mood receding for the moment. “It’s not metal, so I can’t help.”

Marta glanced at Trill. “Can you four breathe air at all? I know the ones the dragon enthralled stayed on land for a good while.”

“We can hold water in our chest and breathe from it for nearly one hour if we don’t move much,” the Benthic replied.

“Better suck all that in, then. The rest of you, hold your breath.” Marta unslung her shield and raised it over her head. The metal scale pulsed with light. Unlike with most of the shields she created with her Gift this one did not simply appear at the size she desired. Instead it bubbled out slowly, pushing the water out from a central point and expanding around any solid object that got in the way.

Adalai wasn’t sure why she said to hold their breaths until his ears slipped inside the shield dome and suddenly heard nothing. There wasn’t any water inside the dome she’d created. There also wasn’t any air. It was a vacuum. They were going to have to try and smash the stone knot as fast as they could because he couldn’t breathe water from his chest for nearly as long as a Benthic.

Based on the strain visible on Marta’s face one of the rest of them was going to have to swing her mace for her. He doubted she had the energy to spare. So he reached down and grabbed it, only to drop it again when the Linnorm’s heads peeked into their world. They appeared as soon as there was space, their eyes gleaming with some emotion he couldn’t describe.

The spirit latched both its jaws onto the stone coils and chewed, spectral muscles on its necks standing out in ropes. He shot a look at Verina but she seemed just as surprised to see it as he was. The Benthic fell back from the Linnorm, shielding their faces against the heat they doubtless expected from it. Of course, in a vacuum they were in no danger but he didn’t think people in Nerona encountered those very often.

Adalai tried to find an angle where he could look under the dragon’s jaws. If it needed help prying the stone apart the mace was still near at hand and he wasn’t above contributing his own arm strength to the endeavor. Thanks to that he got a front row seat to the stone structure breaking apart.

It did not look like he’d expected.

Instead of a violent shattering or a sudden crumbling the loops of stone gracefully unfurled, at least at first. It reminded him of a flower blooming. Except halfway through the Linnorm got a solid grip on two of the petals and ripped them right out of the flower with a silent snap. The remaining three loops continued to unfurl until they pointed out and up towards the ceiling like curled fingers.

In the center of the newly created flower was a dull red thing that looked like clay yet glowed with its own light. It released a torrent of white, roiling mist into the vacuum. With no pressure to contend with the mist immediately boiled out to fill the dome, washing over Adalai and obscuring everything around him.

As soon as he was surrounded by mist Adalai noticed three things. First, he could hear again, which meant he was standing in the air or the water once more. Second, the mists were warm but not as hot as one might expect if they were coming out of a lava fed steam vent. Third, he was being watched again.

It had the same feeling as the thing that had watched him when he looked into the scrying mirror. Just much closer. To drive that point home the watcher chose that moment to speak to him.

Previous Chapter

“You think we have a problem?” Cassian stopped himself from giving vent to six or seven possible come backs to that ludicrous statement. “What problem are you expecting, if I may ask?”

Instead of answering right away Adalai grabbed the box he’d been asking about earlier and shoved it into his shoulder bag. Then he brushed the seven pearls out of their niches and into the shallow pool in their center. “This is a scrying mirror,” he said as the gemstones plunked into the water and rolled along the bottom, their glow becoming oddly dispersed. “I think the dragon was using it to communicate with something.”

“Something? Not someone?” Adalai jerked back from the water, horrified, and Cassian instantly drew his sword, expecting yet another problem to deal with. Turned out it was just the pearls dissolving in the bottom of the pool. “Were you expecting them to melt?”

“They’re not melting.” Adalai leapt up, dashed over to the dragon’s shelves of treasure and came back with a huge rug and an armful of candlesticks. With a single smooth motion he unrolled the rug over the pool saying, “I think that is an altar to the Mists in the Deep.”

“Sounds like a Benthic god,” Cassian murmured.

“Exactly. I couldn’t say for sure but I’m willing to bet it’s the source for all these pearls. Maybe it was bribing the dragon with them.” The candlesticks went around the edge of the rug to hold it in place.

“Bribing a dragon doesn’t make any sense,” Cassian said. “You can’t offer dragon’s treasure to get them to behave as you wish, they’ll just take the money and do whatever they wanted in the first place.”

“Maybe that’s what it would do with a human bribe. Dragons can easily overpower people, no doubt, but would they have such an easy time with something that qualifies as a god?” Adalai finished anchoring the rug in place and dusted his hands off. “It’s even possible the dragon was in thrall to the god the same way the Benthic were in thrall to the dragon. Either way, it’s time we got out of here. The Mists know we’re here now. They may have known we were here all along, although I doubt we’ll ever figure that out.”

“Lovely.” Cassian grabbed Adalai and pushed him towards the water. “Trill is here already and she says the ocean Benthic are already on their way in force. Says they brought something called a Matriarch. Head back the way we came, we’ve already put together a plan to get out of here we were just waiting for you to cool your head.”

The other man didn’t waste time apologizing, just put his head down and ran. Compared to their trip into the lair they got through the water and back to the entrance tunnel in fairly short order. That’s where their good luck gave out.

The tunnel down was already full of hostile Benthic, piling out of the entrance two or three at a time. Four of them were dead, impaled on the spears of Trill’s warriors. Another half a dozen were pushing Trill and her troops back with spears of their own. The water around them shook and trembled under the invisible influence of the Benthic’s wave shaping powers, adding an invisible layer of danger on top of the obvious conflict underway.

“Trill!” Cassian called, stretching his pearl out in front of him to amplify his voice. “Trill, back off! We need to dive!”

“What about these stale eggs?” Trill snarled.

“We can deal with them.” He caught Verina’s eye. “Boil it.”

For a moment she was confused then realization dawned and she nodded.

The quartet of friendly Benthic shot away from the tunnel mouth, grabbing Verina and Marta as they dove deep as quickly as they could. Adalai and Cassian were left to swim after them as fast as they could. Cassian spared a moment to see how the deep water Benthic responded and, as he hoped, they waited as more of their own number massed at the tunnel entrance.

That was their undoing.

Watching the Linnorm manifest under the water was a surreal experience. One moment there were eight Benthic swarming around the mouth of the entrance tunnel. Then there was a flash of green light. The water bent and rippled, distorting the Benthic until they looked like dolls made of string, then it exploded into a wall of white hot steam. Trill’s soldiers grabbed him and pulled him deeper into the chasm.

The screams of cooking Benthic receded into the distance as they made their way into the chasm’s darkest reaches. They paused for just a moment so Trill and Burp could fish small glowing anemones affixed to some kind of seaweed strap out of a belt pouch. These were tied around their necks.

It didn’t create a lot of light but it was apparently enough for Trill to navigate by so they continued down at a more sedate pace. Cassian quickly took stock of their situation. Marta was looking around, fine by all appearances, while Adalai let the Benthic drag him along, his brows furrowed in thought. Verina was pale and a little shaky but she hadn’t passed out like she had when the Linnorm got doused by the sea dragon.

All in all they weren’t in bad shape given the circumstances. “Trill,” he said, “how sure are you there’s an opening down here?”

“Not certain.” She pointed to the glossy black stone walls. “These were probably created by liquid stone bubbling out of the ocean floor in times long past. It may have poured out in other places creating other exits. Or the chambers the stone once ran through below the ocean floor may have currents of their own that we can sense from here.”

“How likely is it these chambers have liquid stone in them now?”

His answer came from Sputter rather than Trill. “No one has seen signs of liquid stone in this part of the ocean for hundreds of spawning cycles, since long before Lum the First created the Stellaris. If we find chambers below there’s no danger we will find liquid stone there. It’s far more likely they simply never connect to the open ocean anywhere else and we will be trapped in them until we starve.”

Cassian winced. “Wonderful.”

Her comments got Adalai’s attention, pulling him out of whatever thoughts had consumed him since using the scrying mirror. “Do you know exactly how long it’s been since-”

The walls of the chasm shook and an impossibly loud impact rippled through the water, hitting Cassian with more force than he would have thought possible. “Speed up!”

“We can’t go any faster,” Trill snapped. “We can only see so far. The flow of stone isn’t even, any of these walls could have sharp spurs on them that can maim or kill.”

“Don’t worry about that, the walls are smooth for hundreds of feet.” Cassian squinted slightly, his vision blurring and focusing as he strained to work out how to see in the dark while surrounded by light. After a few seconds of concentration the tunnel snapped into focus. “I’ll warn you if I see any change.”

Trill gave him a skeptical look. “And how will you do this? Humans cannot see in darkness any better than the Benthic.”

“I told you. We ate a dragon. I don’t know what that does to a Benthic but it changes humans quite a lot.”

A second impact shook the chasm and that was apparently enough to convince Trill to take his word as she sped up until they were moving almost as fast as they had in the open ocean. “If there’s no liquid stone in the chambers,” Marta asked as they rushed along, “then what is that sound?”

“The Matriarch,” Trill said. “She is trying to smash a way in to reach us.”

“What is this Matriarch?” Cassian asked. “I assumed since there were so many female Benthic your leader would be female as well but that sounds like something a lot bigger than you.”

“You assumed correctly,” Trill said, a dark note in her voice, her frills and fronds lying flat. “A Matriarch grows huge by devouring her sisters. In time she will be the only one left from her brood and she will spawn thousands of eggs to hatch the next generation so that the violence may be repeated. When Lum fled the deep oceans to found the Stellaris it was this cycle he sought to break.”

A third impact shook the chasm and a sickening crack echoed overhead. Cassian spared a look upwards. A thin beam of light split the darkness there. “It does sound bad. At the moment it definitely gives them the advantage.”

“What do they want?” Marta asked, also directing her attention upwards. “If they wanted the dragon’s treasures they already have them. We haven’t done anything to them, other than pass through their waters, so why is the Matriarch of the Tidallais here pounding on our walls?”

“They’re after the Mists in the Deep,” Adalai said.

“The altar is also up there,” Cassain said. “Or are you just saying they haven’t found it yet?”

“They aren’t looking for the altar, they’re looking for the magma tubes.” Cassian didn’t recognize the word ‘magma’ but he didn’t want to interrupt. “In places where it bubbles out of the ocean floor it creates steam. Mists in the Deep.”

Burp, the Benthic that was pulling Adalai, twitched violently, her fronds waving wildly in the water. “Are you saying we’re swimming into the grasp of the Cursed Mists?”

“No. I’m not sure of anything here. But it would go a long way to explain everything we’ve seen so far.”

“Enough!” Trill cut off the conversation with a violent slash of her tail. “Perhaps we journey into the Sky Below, perhaps the dry borne speaks of things he knows nothing about. Either of these may be true. Neither may be.”

“Both may be,” Cassian added.

“As you say,” Trill admitted grudgingly. “Regardless of what else is true, the only way out of this for us is down. We will just have to deal with whatever is beneath us.”

About a minute later they discovered that what was beneath them was a huge, egg shaped cavern with smooth walls. Cassian guessed the chamber was a good three hundred feet from one end to the other but only a third that height. The chasm emerged near the center of the chamber’s roof. Even with his dragon enhanced eyes Cassian couldn’t see any signs of weeds or anemones growing along the chamber walls. They were perfectly smooth.

Except for the very bottom, near one end of the chamber. A strange series of stone loops passed over and around a weird, reddish brown object that shed a dim light.

Marta pulled her shield around to a ready position. “Is that liquid stone?”

“Not possible,” Verina said. “The water is far too cool for that. The Great Linnorm once lived on a mountain of liquid stone, it knows the signs well.”

“You can see this whole chamber, Ironhand?” Trill asked.

“Everything except what’s under that thing. And before you ask, no, there’s no other exits.” He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to weigh which was the greatest danger they faced. “Think the Matriarch will leave if we kill all her troops?”

Trill made an indifferent motion. “Perhaps.”

“We could try and bottleneck them back at the entrance. Verina, how many times could you manifest the Linnorm?”

“No.” Adalai shook free of Burp and started swimming towards the strange object. “They want that thing, whatever it is. We get rid of it, they leave us alone.”

Unfortunately for him Burp was much faster in the water than he was and grabbed him again right away. Cassian frowned. It wasn’t like Adalai to act so impulsively. Trill caught his confusion and asked him, “What are you thinking?”

He sighed. “I hired him to come on this job because he’s good at reading things and he’s the one who looked at the altar in the dragon’s lair. If he thinks we should get rid of it we should at least try.”

“Then we will try.” But she didn’t look happy about it.

Previous Chapter

When Cassian left to go deal with the Benthic Adalai blocked him out of his mind. Gaining impressions from an object wasn’t normally difficult but nothing he’d seen in the dragon’s lair qualified as normal. He started with the obvious. Water was terrible at retaining impressions from people, it flowed past too quickly for anything to be left behind. Even when bottled and held by a single person for a long time the liquid itself was generally sterile, although the bottles that held it might pick up a ghost of intent. The water in the small depression was no different.

The ring of stone around it also lacked any traces of human purpose. The six empty spots for pearls were mundane, as far as he could tell, as were the seven spots occupied by the precious stones. It was only the pearls themselves that had the glimmer of human intent to them. What purpose the gems had he couldn’t determine, which wasn’t exactly surprising. Most jewelry didn’t have a purpose beyond decoration. He’d handled several rings, a few bracelets and a necklace and all had a vague sense of purpose but they weren’t like swords, which would freely tell him what kind of drills the previous owner favored or whether they fought with fear or bloodthirst in their hearts.

However there was one vague impression he got from handling the pearls. They didn’t want to be near one another. So, as he put them back down after examining them in turn, he changed the spacing so that there was an empty space between each rather than putting them back in the crescent moon shape. As he put the last pearl in its new space they suddenly lit up and the water briefly flickered. Then it turned reflective, showing Adalai his own face with a clarity he hadn’t seen in a mirror since he’d come to Nerona.

He wasn’t a fan of the way he’d changed since his first death. He’d never been one for a beard but the quality of razors in the southern marches was poor enough he’d given up shaving for his own health. But more than the facial hair it was the deep lines around his eyes and mouth that bothered him. The Kings at the Corners had sent him here three years ago but he looked like he’d aged a dozen instead. Annoyed at himself for focusing on such trivial matters, Adalai reached out and swiped his hand through the water to break the reflection.

When the tip of his finger connected with the tip of his reflection’s finger the world shifted.

With a stomach turning lurch Adalai felt as if he was suddenly falling upward, then sideways, then finally down into the water. Except the reflective pool was suddenly three times as wide as before. His head broke the surface and he caught a glimpse of a bottomless expanse full of drifting shadows and distant points of light. He thought he spotted seven of them, arranged like a crown, somewhere in the infinite distance.

Gravity continued to shift and he felt his feet catch on something. He fell sideways onto the ground, his feet hooked on the edge of a shallow puddle sloshing in a field of porous rocks. Confused, he scrambled to his feet. The landscape around him now had a dreamlike quality to it. He was definitely above ground as the sky overhead was full of twinkling stars but the rocks around him seemed to fade into mists just a dozen feet away.

Yet the mists were not so close as to obscure the three living beings seated or reclining around a massive slab of coral that grew in a low depression to his left. The pungent smell of seawater stung Adalai’s nostrils. He sneezed, the sound oddly rough and sharp in the cottony, slow moving atmosphere of the vision.

As if thinking it tore the veil away Adalai realized that was exactly what this was. The water in the lair was a scrying pool and he’d activated it. The question was why the pool had shown him this vision. More pressing, who were the three creatures by the coral? Whatever they were, it seemed like they were aware of him because two of them were getting to their feet, looking in his direction.

“Not quite a vision, is it?” Adalai muttered to himself, backing up a step and nearly tripping over the uneven rocky terrain. By the time he got his feet under him again he noticed something odd.

One of the three creatures watching him was a Benthic, which did not surprise him at that point. What was surprising was the other two, which were both human. One was wearing the brown robes of an Omenspeaker, the self proclaimed clergy that served the Kings at the Corners. The blue trim on his sleeves and collar marked him as serving the King of Stars. The other man was dressed in a rich tunic and hose, marking him as a wealthy and important man, if one who was very behind the times in terms of fashion.

Cassian would not have approved.

“Who are you?” The unfashionable man demanded, his hand coming to rest on the hilt of a broad bladed sword.

“Adalai Carpathea. Who are you?”

“Porphyrio del Torrence.”

Adalai’s stomach did a little flipflop when he heard the name. Ever since the Emperor of Lome had died fighting Old Lum the nation of Nerona had been without a unified government. The Torrence and Reniece lines both had claims to the throne but neither one had earned legitimacy from the Omenspeakers or the other nobles. A stray thought crossed his mind and he turned to the Benthic. “Does that make you Lum the First?”

“Lum is my name,” the Benthic replied, holding up one of the familiar speaking pearls, though it was smaller and dimmer than those he’d seen before.

“Not the First yet?” Adalai looked at the Omenspeaker. “What about you?”

The robed figure tilted his head up enough that he could see under its hood revealing not a face but a deep, almost endless expanse of stars.

Adalai sucked in a breath. “Don’t tell me I’ve died again.”

“Not at all,” the King of Stars replied, his voice surprisingly human compared to the last time they’d met. It was a mellow baritone that seemed to come from somewhere inside the hood. “You’ve wandered into a vision. Like all omens, visions fall under our jurisdiction so I am here. Although I have to admit this was not what I thought they would choose to show you given the opportunity.”

Adalai had heard the Kings ruled over prophecies as well as death although he wasn’t sure why that was the case. “So this wasn’t your idea?”

“No.”

“Then who’s was it?” He looked at Porphyrio and Lum. “Theirs?”

The human and Benthic leaders stared blankly at him, his question having no apparent effect on them. “You’ll have to forgive them,” the King said. “They are just shadows of what was, they cannot hear your words or even recognize your presence.”

“They just walked up and talked to me.”

“You arrived in the same way I did on this day. The questions they ask are those they asked of me when I came to solemnize their negotiations.”

Adalai glanced behind him and saw there was a huge number of stars reflected in the pool he’d just appeared out of. “Is that why you’re here?”

“If you are asking whether I can be here in your vision because I was here when the vision took place then yes, it certainly helped.”

He knelt down by the pool but didn’t see the circle or pearls from the dragon’s lair. “So did you make the scrying glass I came through? Or is this just the same place the dragon made its lair later on?”

“I can’t answer that.” The King of Stars knelt down by the water as well, rolled up his sleeves and plunged both hands into the starry pool. A tunnel downward appeared and Adalai caught a glimpse of himself under a ceiling of coral on the other end. Other branches of the tunnel curved away in other directions. “I can send you back to where you began. Or you could delve deeper into the visions, although I cannot say whether you will be able to return to the Nerona you know safely if you do. This is not a world made for mortals. When we cross it we do so at our own peril.”

“You can’t answer those questions.” Adalai tapped a finger against his chin, mulling that over. The King of Stars had answered him when he asked about the vision itself but gave ambiguous answers when asked about the people or mechanics behind the vision. Clearly there were certain things he could and could not say. “Why were you here in the first place? Aren’t the Kings at the Corners the overseers of mortality? You call our souls up into eternity, you don’t negotiate truces or care whether we keep our word to each other.”

“Both false,” Stars replied, turning his starry visage towards Adalai with what he took for an amused tone. “Beyond the borders of Eternity lies peace. If you are to pass into that blessed place then you must be prepared for peace. Many are the tasks that prepare you for such perfect peace and the keeping of an oath is not the least among them.”

“Cryptic as usual.” Adalai sighed and looked at Lum and Porphyrio as they returned to their starting place. The Omenspeaker and the King of Stars split apart, the man going with his companions as the King remained with his attention on the Arminger. It was disconcerting to watch. “Shouldn’t you go with them?”

“This isn’t the past, just a reflection of it. I have no particular need to play a part to satisfy them.” The King once again manifested as a man shaped silhouette filled with stars, his seven pointed crown gleaming. “Shouldn’t you return to yourself? They know you are here.”

Frustrated Adalai threw his hands wide, encompassing the veiling mists around them. “Who? There’s nothing here to see!”

“It would have been easier -” Stars paused, its crown bobbing in an unsettling pattern as the entity shook its head. “Nevermind.”

Adalai’s life had gotten much more eventful since his first untimely death but, even counting the sea dragon, he’d never seen anything that held a candle to the kind of power and presence the Kings at the Corners had when he passed through their Courts. Now here was one of those same beings clearly unable to do what it wished. His first thought was that it had something to do with the nature of the being itself. It was a creature of visions and omens so that was what it spoke about. Now Adalai wondered if it was being restrained by an outside force. How was that remotely possible?

“Do you -”

“If you’re not interested in the visions you should return to yourself, Adalai Carpathea.” Yet the King of Stars continued to ignore the three specters just beyond.

Almost as if it couldn’t bring itself to look at them. Was that the King’s choice or something else forced on it? With a sneaking suspicion Adalai moved past the King to the coral where the three others were seated. “You will grant us refuge in the Gulf,” Lum was saying. “No ship or army of Nerona will menace us and humans who trespass in our waters will be removed.”

“You would have to find a way to hold them for us,” del Torrence replied. “There is little call for us to regularly patrol the Gulf. It’s dangerous for ships and it would put us in the waters you seek to claim. Not to mention there’s very little in this compromise that favors us.”

“We will repel interlopers sent by the Matriarchs of the Deep,” Lum replied. “They are our enemies as much as yours. Few of your Gifts and fewer of your ships are suited to fighting them yet your people will feed the Matriarchs as well as ours. Give us a home here and we will keep them and the Mists in the Deep far from your shores.”

Startled, Adalai spun to look at the King of Stars, only to find that the entity had vanished. The fog had enveloped the place the King once stood. Adalai slowly turned a full circle, finding that the vapors had grown close at every point and from them came an inexplicable feeling of menace. The specters continued to discuss their treaty but Adalai ignored them. He had the feeling he’d worn out his welcome.

Which way had the scrying pool been in?

A thrumming sound echoed out of the mists, deadened by the fog but still clearly audible. Panic seized him and Adalai did a simple about face and sprinted straight forward. In the roiling vapor it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead and the pool took him by surprise. He stumbled in, smashing one shin on the edge of the pool, then found himself tumbling in freefall through the dimly lit, starry abyss once more.

This time there was no constellation of stars in the distance. Instead a much closer, larger shape loomed towards him, its silhouette like the one he’d seen in the deeps while travelling with Captain Trill that morning. It moved far faster than it should have for something of its size. Worse, it clearly sensed Adalai’s presence and headed directly towards him.

For an immeasurable moment Adalai thought it might catch up to him.

Then Cassian’s hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled his face up and out of the scrying pool. The Ironhand gave him a hard shake and he said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

Startled by the abrupt transition, Adalai went limp with relief. Then his eye fell on the box he’d asked Cassian to look at earlier. The glass box Cassian insisted was empty but that Adali saw was full of roiling mists. “Cassian,” he said. “I think we have a problem.”

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.

Previous Chapter

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.”