Wrath of the Blue Lady (13 page)

ŚŠ- ŚŠ• ŚŠŚŚŠŚ ŚŠŚ

Something had changed the ocean floor. Where normally only coral and a few plants would grow, riotous life filled the seascape all around Shang-Li. He had been down to the ocean’s floor enough times to know that what he was looking at now was in no way normal.

Monstrous crags became cliffs and mountains that offered high precipices and sudden death to a climber on

land. In the ocean the fall would only require someone to start swimming. Strange plants, most of them luminous to some degree, stood out against the dead hulks of forests. Blackened tree trunks lay spilled haphazardly in all directions.

And amid those dead forests and new growths lay broken ships. Cargoes of gold gleamed on the sea floor, thrown in all directions by whatever had ripped the ships asunder.

Only a short distance farther on, one of the plants near the trail the Blue Lady followed lunged out at Shang-Li. He caught the movement in the periphery of his vision and spun away as his fighting sticks dropped into his hands.

The plant was easily ten feet tall and stood supple. Vines trailed from branches and struck like whips. Seven purple blossoms with leafy fringes whirled toward Shang-Li. Two of them opened to reveal fanged mouths.

Four of the vines wrapped about Shang-Li’s right forearm. Three more caught him by his right leg. Pain filled him when the vines constricted and dragged him toward the gaping mouths. All the blossoms bent toward him.

Shang-Li struck the vines with the fighting sticks and succeeded in tearing them free of his arm. Bloody furrows showed where the vine had taken hold. Before he could set himself to swing again, the vines holding his leg gave a mighty yank and pulled him from his feet. Helpless, he flailed for a moment as the vines reeled him in like a fisherman taking his catch.

He doubled up, folding himself in half, and managed to thrust one of his fighting sticks into the nearest blossom. Greenish pulp exploded from the flower as the weapon plowed through the leafy head. The blossom shivered and let out an ear-piercing shriek.

Shang-Li watched the thing’s death throes as he swung his other fighting stick at the next blossom. Even as that one erupted into another gush of viscous green ooze, the third and fourth blossoms bit into his calf and thigh.

Burning pain shot through his flesh and pounded through his temples. He’d been poisoned.

One of the sharks broke free of the Blue Lady’s spell and streaked at Shang-Li. Thinking the shark was the greater threat than the blossoms biting into him, he blocked the creature’s jaws with one of the fighting sticks and swung the other at his opponent’s nose. The shark turned aside and sped away, then spun in a tight circle and headed back more fiercely than before.

The Blue Lady spoke in that unknown tongue again. A whirling mass of black flames formed in the palm of one of her hands. She threw it at the plant. Shang-Li was close enough to feel the sudden heat that warmed the sea. The water boiled up around the plant, then the vines and blossoms drooped in submission.

Shang-Li broke free of the withered vines and crouched to face the oncoming shark. But before the shark got close enough to threaten him, the Blue Lady slammed her fist into the shark’s nose. Blood spewed and the predator ricocheted off in an oblique angle to Shang-Li. Breathing hard, feeling the pulse of the poison coursing through him, Shang-Li set himself again and brought up the sticks in a defensive position.

A dozen paces away, the shark’s lifeless corpse hung in the water. The black eyes dulled and glazed as Shang-Li watched

She’d killed it with a one blow. He looked at the Blue Lady in surprise. Her slight form didn’t look like it could carry that much power. She glanced at him.

“Did the plant bite you?” Concern tightened her features.

“I’m fine.” Shang-Li was surprised that he nearly thanked her for asking. But if she hadn’t yanked him here to this place, he wouldn’t be in danger now. And he was convinced the danger was not yet past.

The Blue Lady walked toward him and studied his leg. “Remove your garments, manling.”

Shang-Li felt embarrassed at the request. “I’m fine,” he said.

“You’re a fool,” she told him harshly. “The dekalinag vine carries poison. That poison is even now spreading throughout your body.”

“I can take care of it.” Shang-Li concentrated on one of the magic spells he’d learn from his mother. He touched the corded leather bracelet he wore around his right wrist and brought forth the spell.

A cool wash started at the top of his head, shot down his spine, then split and ran to his toes. In the next moment, the chill flared out to his extremities. When he searched again, the fever that had been building inside him from the poison was gone. A spinning sensation remained within his head and made him feel slightly nauseous.

“It appears you have a few surprises within you, manling,” the Blue Lady stated.

Shang-Li met her gaze. “I can take care of myself.”

“If the dekalinag vine had not gotten you, the sharks would have.” She nodded meaningfully at the circling predators. “And if I chose to remove my spell from you, you would no longer be able to breathe and would drown.”

“If you say so, lady.”

The Blue Lady’s silver eyes flashed. “That’s how it would be.”

“Or I might simply wake up in my hammock aboardship.” Shang-Li gestured at the surrounding sea floor. “This might all be just a bad dream.”

“You’re a fool.”

“If you’d wanted to kill me, lady, you’d have already done it. You’ve seen me in my dreams during life-or-death situations plenty of times before now.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“No. But I won’t stand here and be threatened so casually. Why did you bring me here?”

For just a moment, an almost imperceptible smile

curved the Blue Lady’s lips. “You should be very afraid of me.”

“Lady, I am,” Shang-Li said honestly.

She gathered her seaweed cloak and turned again to walk down the broken crags. “Come. I would show you something.”

Shang-Li forced himself to breathe out. He had fully expected the Blue Lady to strike him down as she had the plant and the shark. Nearby, sea currents tore the burned plant to black ashes that floated away. Overhead, the living sharks ripped gobbets of flesh from the dead one.

When he followed the Blue Lady, it was with a mixture of fear and curiosity. The latter had always been the one that had gotten him into the most trouble.

Shang-Li trailed the Blue Lady by a few steps. He gazed in wonder all around him as he saw the strange plants mixed in with the dead trees.

This land isn’t from the sea bottom, he realized. He thought of the Spellplague and how the two worlds had been torn apart and put back together again.

“Where did this place come from?” he asked.

“From my home,” the Blue Lady answered. She walked alongside a sunken cog buried prow first in the soft sand of the sea bottom. Her boots stirred up puffs of sand that eddied on the current.

“Lady, where is your home?”

“Far.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Very far by human standards. But I want to go back.”

Shang-Li gazed out across the dead wilderness now filled with sea. “Did no one come with you?”

“No one.” Her voice hardened. “Make no mistake, manling, I need no one.”

Despite the delicate nature of his situation, Shang-Li couldn’t help asking another question. “Then why did you take Bayel Droust and the ship he was on?”

The Blue Lady stopped near a huge dead tree that was

at least five or six men thick. Its gnarled roots showed through the sand surrounding it, but it looked unsteady enough to fall over at any moment. She turned and stared at Shang-Li.

“Because Bayel Droust had something I wanted,” the Blue Lady answered. She folded her arms over her breasts and for a moment Shang-Li forgot that she was so dangerous and thought of her only as a beautiful woman. “I have taken other ships over the years. His was not the first, nor was it the last.” She smiled. “And there will be more.”

Shang-Li studied the graveyard of sunken ships and thought of all the lives that had been lost. Thousands of people had perished at her whim, their skeletons littering the strange sea floor.

“This is my new home, your world.” The Blue Lady looked content as she made that announcement. “At least for the time being. I don’t plan on being here any longer than I have to. In order to make better use of it, I need to understand more of it. There are resources here that I can use.”

“For what?” Shang-Li asked the question as soon as it popped into his head.

“My purposes, manling.” The Blue Lady drew herself up to her full height. “I don’t intend to stay here forever.”

“Where will you go?”

“Wherever I wish. This world is as big as my own—a mirror, it seems, in many ways. There are many places I wish to see.”

“But why did you summon me here?”

The Blue Lady regarded him for a moment before answering. “You caught my attention, manling. You are drawn to this place. I wish to know why that is.”

To better protect herself? Shang-Li wondered.

The Blue Lady sharply gestured at him. Shang-Li felt like he’d been smacked by a large bear. He tumbled through the water and sailed a few yards away. Then, senses reeling, he hung suspended in the ocean. The sharks darted closer.

“I can protect myself well enough,” the Blue Lady snapped. “Never think that I can’t.”

Feeling as though his ribs had been crushed, Shang-Li struggled to draw a breath. When the Blue Lady strode across the sea bottom to him, he tried to move but found himself unable to navigate. He was stuck as surely as a fly in a spider’s web.

“I grow weary of you, manling,” she whispered into his ear. “You are not as interesting as I’d believed.” She was close enough that Shang-Li felt the cold chill emanating from her. Her teeth snapped as she spoke. “Go away and do not let me see you again.” She gestured at one of the sharks.

The predator heeled over in the sea and streaked at Shang-Li. The bands of invisible force held him in place. As the shark neared, it grew larger very quickly. By the time it closed on him, it was the size of a small merchant’s ship.

The shark’s jaws sprang wide, revealing the rows of razor-sharp teeth. Terror flooded Shang-Li. At the last moment, he tugged free of the force. Before he could move, though, the shark closed its maw with him inside.

Blackness surrounded Shang-Li and he couldn’t stifle the yell that burst free of his lips.

Caught in the darkness of the shark’s maw and his own fear, Shang-Li reached above and felt the slick hardness of the shark’s palate and knew that what he experienced was not a simple illusion. The lady’s spell still held and he could breathe, but in the jaws of a shark, that hardly seemed to matter.

The shark’s teeth parted. For a moment, the darkness was dispelled and Shang-Li saw the deep blue ocean on the other side of the razor sharp teeth. He darted forward, but the rush of water pouring inward shoved him back toward the predator’s gullet.

He felt certain that if he tumbled into the belly of the beast he would never escape. He flailed and his fingers found the slimy aperture left by the

shark’s gill slits. Then the gruesome, smiling mouth closed again and he was once more in darkness.

It’s magic, Shang-Li told himself.

He took a deep breath and struggled to focus, but that task proved difficult while hanging onto a shark’s gill slit inside the creature’s mouth. The shark shook its head from side to side as it swam. Shang-Li bounced off the walls of its mouth and felt the rough edges of the gill slit saw at his fingers. He pushed the pain from his mind and concentrated, hoping to break whatever spell the Blue Lady had cast over him. She hadn’t killed him outright. Neither had the shark. The experience now was meant as a lesson in terror.

He pictured the cave’s interior and imagined the fire’s warmth. For a moment, the sea’s chill pulled back from him. Then the darkness melted and he saw the flames twisting before him. He reached for the fire.

Go to the cave, he told himself. You don’t have to be here. You can go to the cave. Concentrate. You can free yourself of this.

The fire grew warmer and brighter in his mind. He was almost there.

When he was certain he had built the cave in his mind as best as he could, when he felt the tie to the fire at its strongest, when he was certain he could hold his breath no longer—he released his grip on the gill slit and shoved himself forward.

For a moment, he thought he might be on a one way trip to the shark’s belly. Then he sprawled against a stone floor. Choking and gasping, retching up some of the saltwater he had inadvertently swallowed, he pushed himself to his knees.

His soaked clothing clung to him heavily. He grabbed his shirt and wrung water from the material. The sea gushed in a torrent to spatter the stone.

It hadn’t been a dream or simple illusion. He had been there. The Blue Lady was real.

As his mind tried to deal with that, Shang-Li crept

closer to the fire to soak up its warmth. He rubbed at his arms vigorously to increase the blood flow. He knew his father would tsk in disappointment at his lack of control. At the moment, though, Shang-Li didn’t care. The fire felt good and much more hospitable than the bottom of the Sea of Fallen Stars.

Outside the cave, the rain fell in a drumming rush, almost blunting the other sounds that came from without. If Moonwhisper hadn’t spread his great wings and opened his yellow eyes in consternation, Shang-Li didn’t know if he would’ve heard the fearful shouts of men.

Moving quickly, Shang-Li gathered the book and the papers, and shoved them into his pack. He slung the pack over his shoulder, shot his arms through the straps, and ran.

Moonwhisper glided out into the heavy rain just ahead of him.

-ŠŚ •€>Ś ŚŠŚ

The long hours of constant rain had turned the ground soft. As Shang-Li ran, the earth moved and shifted beneath him. Grassless expanses beneath the oak and pine trees held small ponds that covered treacherous mud slicks. He pounded and skidded through those, never once breaking pace.