Part 22 (1/2)
At the sixth landing Galvin looked out a thin window. It was dark outside, and the rain had stopped. The moon, high in the sky, was poking through the clouds. Gathering his energy, he climbed to the seventh landing and faced an opened door.
”Isabelle?” the druid called softly. ”Isabelle?”
No answer.
Another search then, the druid decided. The weasel chit-tered animatedly, wrinkled its nose, then squeaked and began running about the jumble.
”Yes, you can help us look for her,” Galvin sighed.
To the druid this room looked like the rest of Drollo's tower, packed with an a.s.sortment of oddities and lined with crates containing more unused things. It was as filthy as the other rooms, but Galvin could see patches where the dirt had been wiped free by small feet. He strode forward, Drollo shuffling behind him.
The dust on many of the small crates was dotted with tiny fingerprints. Packing material lay strewn about some of the crates, and the contents-a veritable treasure trove of useless objects-covered the floor. The druid noted that the crates were all labeled in flowing Elvish script. Intrigued, he began searching the room more carefully, paying attention this time to the words on each crate.
Behind him, Galvin heard Drollo rummaging around. Elias was searching, too. The weasel's plaintive squeaks nearly drowned out the old man's rustling.
At last Galvin's eyes settled on a particularly large crate set against a wall, one that had been pried open. There was little stuffing near it, so whatever had occupied the crate had likely taken up most of the s.p.a.ce. He ran his fingers along the rough wood and read the Elvish label.
”Oh, no,” the druid whispered.
”Isabelle!” Drollo continued to call.
”Drollo,” the druid began. ”Do you do any trading with the sea elves in the Dragon Reach?”
”No,” came a m.u.f.fled reply. The old man had his head stuck into a crate. ”Well, at least not anymore.”
”You did at one time?”
”Yes. Quite a few years ago. I don't go down to the sh.o.r.e much nowadays. The sea air makes my bones ache.”
The druid scowled and reread the label. ”Drollo, stop looking,” he said quietly. ”She's not here.”
”We'll go on to the next room, then.”
”No. She's not in the tower.”
The old man's face turned ashen, and Galvin quickly added, ”But I know where she went. Don't worry. I'll go get her.”
”I'm-I'm coming with you,” the old man stammered.
”Not where I'm going.”
With that, Galvin bounded down the stairs. Elias was fast on his heels. When the druid reached the bottom of the stairs, he glanced back and saw Drollo just starting to descend.
”Stay here,” he cautioned. ”I'll be back with Isabelle.”
Galvin hoped he sounded confident enough, because he wasn't sure he could locate the girl. Still, he didn't want the old man to follow him. Then he would have two people to worry about.
Throwing open the tower door, he ran out into the damp night.
”Your boots,” he heard Drollo call.
But the druid continued to run. Boots were the last things he'd need where he was going.
Galvin angled his path away from the tower and toward the south. In the distance he heard waves was.h.i.+ng up on the beach. Overhead, the clouds were thinning, pushed away by a freshening breeze. By the time the druid reached the beach the moon was fully visible, shedding light on the night-black waters of the Dragon Reach.
With shrinking confidence, Galvin ventured into the surf. The cool water swirled about his ankles, then his knees. A wave came in, splas.h.i.+ng him thoroughly and plastering his leggings to him like a second skin. He waded out farther and began to concentrate.
The druid willed his face to become more angular. His nose and mouth extended outward, and his skin became blue-gray. He hurled himself headfirst into the water as the transformation continued. His arms shortened, became thinner, then took on the appearance of flippers. His shoulders flattened, joined with the fins, and pressed close to his changing torso. His legs grew together into a muscular tail; waving rhythmically, strongly, the tail propelled the dolphin that was Galvin farther into the Dragon Reach.
The dolphin covered miles, darting in and out of sea caves that stretched across the Reach. The seascape was rocky, with spires of stone twisting upward, cloaked by patches of reedlike plants. Beyond the caves the seabed flattened, the evenness disrupted here and there by large rocks and giant clams. Colorful seaweed extended toward the surface and moved with the current. Farther into the Reach the seabed dropped off sharply-”the Cliff,” the sea elves called it. The cliff's wall was a large coral reef of brilliant hues that teemed with life.
Galvin swam back and forth across the reef, quizzing jellyfish, yellowtail damselfish, and patches of seaweed. He rose to the surface only for air. A queen angelfish, disturbed from its sleep, finally provided a few clues and sent Galvin past the Reach, into the deeper, cooler water of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
Here the terrain resembled a plain, with ripples in the sand marking s.h.i.+fts in the current. The plants were fewer and taller and not as colorful as the ones along the reef. Galvin swam deep, hugging the sandy bottom. He noted that the fish here were schooling, perhaps out of habit or because a large predator was nearby. He scanned the sand, looking for some unusual disturbance. However, all he saw were the fading reed-fine prints of lobsters and other sh.e.l.lfish; the current kept tracks from staying for more than a few minutes in the sand.
The druid continued his search, swimming miles out to sea. Finally he found a set of tracks that resembled cleft hoofprints; they were not made by any sea creatures familiar to the druid. Galvin followed the quickly dissipating tracks across the ocean floor. The druid knew he was scouting over the Death Knell, a shallow point in the Sea of Fallen Stars that was dangerous to deep-hulled s.h.i.+ps.
Spa.r.s.e patches of seaweed, some of it nearly torn free from the sea floor, provided still more information.
A monster that frightens all fish, said one clump.
A thing that tears us from the ground and leaves us to die, cried another.
The druid pieced together clues and continued on, many minutes later pa.s.sing over a large, rectangular bed of kelp. He thrust with his tail and dove toward the bed. The kelp was planted in rows, and there were signs each plant was being carefully tended.
It was a garden, he decided, but whose? Sea elves, perhaps, though the elvish communities resided closer to the Reach. Besides, elves needed much larger gardens to sustain their tribes.
Galvin swam slowly, keeping about a foot above the bed. There was less chance the current would wipe away the tracks here, as the kelp helped to hold the pulse of the water at bay. At the far edge of the bed he found evidence of his quarry's pa.s.sing; a section of kelp uprooted and strewn about. It looked as if a big dog had been digging in a row of carrots. Several pairs of deep hoofprints showed in the sand.
A half-hour more, and the object of the druid's search came into view. The thing, which seemed hard at work destroying a flowering sea-frond bed, resembled a cross between a bat and a wolf spider. Its bulbous body was nearly three feet across at the middle, and its round head was about a foot in diameter. Silvery pincers protruded from its bottom jaw and cut through the fronds with ease. Attached to what pa.s.sed for shoulders were wings, scalloped like a bat's. The contraption sat atop two stubby goat-like legs that ended in hooves; the legs were alternately balancing the bulky body and uprooting plants.
The back of the contraption-for like Drollo's gnomish vermin catcher, this thing had never truly lived-was decorated with scrawls of red and blue. Various sized circles of green and yellow were cl.u.s.tered beneath its wings. The hooves were painted a bright red and edged with a light green trim. It was garish. And inside, visible through its rounded gla.s.s eyes, Galvin saw the grinning face of a little girl.
Like a manta ray, the device glided over the sea fronds, then stopped to uproot a row at the end. The bulbous spider's head turned from right to left, then stopped, spotting the dolphin.
Galvin swam behind a clump of seaweed as questions danced in his head. Is Isabelle controlling the thing, or is it running away with her? How am I going to bring it to land? How do I...
He paused and let the sea current wash the tumultuous thoughts away. I meet it head on, he decided. Determination showing in his black dolphin eyes, the druid shot out from behind the seaweed-then stopped short.
Galvin wasn't the only one to notice the garden-wrecker. Swimming rapidly toward the sea fronds and the spider-bat was a quartet of sahuagin, gill-men of the deep. Roughly humanoid and exceedingly muscular, they had scaly green bodies, long pointed ears, and webbed hands and feet. Each hefted a trident in one hand and a weighted net in the other.
The contraption and its pa.s.senger seemed oblivious to the threat and concentrated on dislodging more plants. Its bulbous spider head only turned toward the sahuagin when a hurled trident landed in the sand next to a cloven metal hoof.
Panicked, the druid propelled himself forward and willed another transformation to take place. His skin took on a darker shade of gray and expanded outward to accommodate his growing body. The dolphin fin atop his back enlarged and became more angular. His head grew thicker and flatter, his lungs swelled with water, and his once bottle-shaped mouth stretched and filled with a double row of sharp teeth.
The shark sped toward the sahuagin, who had already reached the spider-bat. The gill-men were circling the thing, three of them jabbing at it with their tridents while the fourth retrieved his weapon from the sand. Through the water Galvin heard their odd battle chant, a singsong drone. The chant rose in volume and culminated in a whoop when one of the sahuagin was victorious in thrusting his weapon through the spider-bat's wing, pinning the construct to the sea floor. The contraption began to circle madly, like a buzzing, wounded fly.
Galvin saw the frightened face of Isabelle through the spider-bat's bulbous gla.s.s eyes. He reached the nearest sahuagin just as it slammed the b.u.t.t end of its trident against the contraption's head. Wincing inwardly, the druid watched a gla.s.s eye crack. This instant of delay gave the gill-man an opening.
The sahuagin whirled on the shark, leveling the barbed trident in Galvin's face. The druid found himself oddly transfixed by the sahuagin facing him, and the creature began moving its trident from side to side while mouthing something that was audible, yet foreign to Galvin's ears. It was a variation of a battle chant, perhaps. Whatever it was, the sound comforted Galvin's jangled nerves, and the druid felt himself growing sleepy. The sahuagin continued to drone, lulling his foe into a dreamlike state while the current nudged him away from Isabelle and the contraption.