Realms of the Deep a-7

  Realms of the Deep

  ( Anthologies - 7 )

  Lynn Abbey

  Elaine Cunningham

  Peter Archer

  Ed Greenwood

  Richard Lee Byers

  Clayton Emery

  Mel Odom

  Troy Denning

  Larry Hobbs

  Thomas M. Reid

  Steven E. Sckend

  Keith Francis Strohm

  Lynn Abbey,Elaine Cunningham,Peter Archer,Ed Greenwood,Richard Lee Byers, Clayton Emery,Mel Odom, Troy Denning,Larry Hobbs,Thomas M. Reid,Steven E. Sckend,Keith Francis Strohm

  Realms of the Deep

  HARD CHOICES

  Lynn Abbey

  19 Ches, the Year of the Gauntlet

  "What happened here?" the gray-bearded merman asked.

  "Sahuagin," Shemsen replied.

  Yesterday there had been twenty-two sentry posts out where the Waterdeep outflow channels cut through the sea shelf. Today there were twenty-one.

  The merman frowned, all shifty shadows in the soft, greenish light of the living lanterns he and his companions strung from the reins of their seahorse mounts. Forty fathoms up, through wisps of plankton, the moon danced on a becalmed sea. It had been different at dawn.

  "They came riding a squall," Shemsen explained. A sea elf refugee from warmer water, he'd been swimming Waterdeep for a decade, long enough to master the local underwater dialect. "We looked up, and there they were."

  Sahuagin weren't the only sea-folk who hid in the heavy water that fell from the sky. Any hunter with wits swam with the rain: merfolk, sea elves, selkie, dolphins. Though the sahuagin were, perhaps, the best at hiding their stench in freshwater torrents.

  "We were outnumbered from the start."

  The merman's frown consumed his face. "You survived."

  It wasn't something a man liked to admit, but one-on-one, sahuagin over matched both mermen and sea elves. If Shemsen's patrol had been ambushed and outnumbered, there should have been no survivors.

  Gashes in Shemsen's silvery green flesh winked blood as he shrugged. "What happened, happened." Fatalism was bred in salt water. "They were in a hurry, bent on destroying the beacon. They didn't stay to feed."

  The gray-beard's second levered his trident against a mauled sea elf corpse. Shemsen closed his eyes, remembering how Peshhet, trailing his own blood and gore, had come between him and death. Shemsen turned away before reopening his eyes and found himself facing the charred remains of the outpost beacon.

  "We heard it shatter," the merman said, guessing Shemsen's thoughts. "It will be a tenday before the Waterdeep mage-guild enchants a new one-more than a tenday with Fleetswake on the tide. There'll be a blind spot now, till it's replaced. Not a big one, but a gap in Waterdeep's defenses all the same. And sahuagin! What are they doing so far north?"

  Shemsen turned; they faced each other. A vagrant current-an underwater breeze thick with plankton- passed between them. Krill swam with the plankton, a school of young menhaden swam after the krill. Conversation stopped as Shemsen and the mermen each snatched a menhaden meal.

  Umberlee's will: Only a fool ignored what She provided.

  "Can anyone of us claim to understand the sahua-gin mind?" Shemsen asked afterward.

  "Well said, sea elf," the merman second said. "Eadro watches!" He touched the blood-coral amulet of his private god. "We thought Waterdeep was beyond their reach."

  Shemsen didn't know the four mermen. If they'd all been in their native water-their balmy, crystal clear southern seas-they'd have swum around each other's wakes. Instead sea elves and mermen alike had been driven north by shadowy enemies that were not sahuagin, or not exclusively sahuagin.

  "Who's to say they weren't fleeing something larger and darker themselves?"

  The second clutched his coral amulet in his fist, but the gray-beard was carved from stouter stuff. "Let them try Waterdeep Harbor. One eye blind, and they'll still meet their match. Outnumbered, you say, but they took a loss and you survived. Let them tell that to the sharks, if they dare."

  The gray-beard swept out an arm to clap Shemsen on the shoulder. Through his wounds, Shemsen braced for the blow. His heart rate doubled and his muscles relaxed, even so he flinched as it fell.

  "I have salve," the gray-beard said as one of the two juniors swam over with a wax-sealed shell.

  Shemsen shrugged off the merman's hand and offer. Til tend myself when I get to the harbor."

  "You can swim, then, and not fall behind?"

  "I'll keep up or fall behind. I've swum alone before. I waited here only until you or someone else came to investigate and relieve me. This was my post for Waterdeep. I'd not have it said that I abandoned it."

  The gray-beard shook his head. Mermen kept their own customs. They were brave enough, when riled, and dutiful, but no two pairs of eyes saw honor the same way in air or water.

  "Call for a mount, if you need one," the gray-beard said from his seahorse, "or hitch onto the dorsal."

  All four mermen rose from the silt.

  "You're leaving no one behind?"

  "The beacon's gone, sea elf. A dark spot, true, but a small one. If the sahuagin are clever enough to return without catching another beacon's eye, then let them try the inner defenses. Until after Fleetswake, any one posted here is as isolated as he'd be in Umberlee's Cache. I'll not leave men where they can do no good."

  Cold water surged over Shemsen's gills as he sighed. Only a fool refused what Umberlee provided.

  There were no reefs in Waterdeep harbor, no kelp forests or gardens, and despite the concerted efforts of all those living above and below the waterline, an unpleasant taste or texture wasn't uncommon. Shemsen never forgot he was a refugee. Even his home-quarters reminded him. When sea elves first sought sanctuary here, the mage-guild had carved straight-lined niches into the cliffs that gave the harbor its name. A woven net was fastened over the niche, lest the scouring tides steal what little he'd accumulated during his ten-year exile.

  Shemsen shared the niche with another sea elf. Eshono had been shark-mauled during their long retreat to Waterdeep. Their surviving healer had done her best, but what Eshono had needed most, a month's rest and regular meals, were beyond provision. Eshono's leg had withered. He got around well enough in the harbor, but he couldn't handle the long patrols that the refugees claimed as both right and obligation. Instead, he'd trained himself as an advocate who labored on the lubber's dry ground, mediating the disputes and confusions that plagued the sea elf refugees in their safe, but utterly strange, sanctuary.

  They were an odd pair, Shemsen and Eshono, with little in common but a destroyed village and a harrowing journey to cold water. These days, though, that was enough.

  To Peshhet," Eshono said, saluting the dead sea elf with a paste-filled shell. "While we live, we remember him."

  He swallowed the paste. Shemsen mirrored the other sea elf's movements.

  "I tell you, my friend, you must take a wife before there's no one left to remember us," Shemsen joked bleakly.

  Him, Shemsen the Drifter, telling jokes! His gill slits fluttered in disbelief. Against all odds, he'd come to think of crippled Eshono as a friend.

  "When you do," Eshono replied, scooping another portion of paste from the bowl floating between them. "And not a day sooner."

  Too old."

  "How old? Four hundred? Five?"

  "I feel older," Shemsen replied honestly.

  "All the more reason.
Take a wife. Make a family before it's too late."

  Shemsen lowered his head, a gesture most refugees understood. All carried scars and secrets and guilt for surviving what so many others had not. Shemsen had more than most. His friendship, such as it was, with Eshono survived because the other man had a keen understanding of where the uncrossable boundary lay.

  "I have salve," Eshono said, changing the subject. He retrieved a pot from beneath his hammock. "I got it from one of the lubber temples. It's not as good as Auld Dessinha made, but it seals you up. This one's almost empty. Take what's left, if you wish."

  Eshono had lost so much meat to the shark that his wound would never quite heal. His over-taut skin seeped and cracked whenever he exerted himself. He went through pots of salve and had become a connoisseur of priests, healers, and potions.

  Shemsen, who'd been slashed to the bone in several places, accepted the fist-sized pot. "I'm going out."

  "So soon? Your body needs rest-"

  "My mind needs it more. I'll be back when I'm back." Shemsen took up his trident and kicked toward the open corner of the netting. He was halfway through before turning back to say, "Thanks for the salve. You're a good man, Eshono. Don't follow me."

  "I wouldn't ever," Eshono assured him, a look of boyish anxiety across his face. "Be careful, Shemsen. We're so few now. Everyone's precious."

  Shemsen kicked free of the niche. His thoughts were heavy, and he sank down and down, until he passed the deepest of the niches. Here, a man needed a lantern to see past his own feet, unless his eyes weren't his only navigation senses. Of course, such a man who didn't rely on his eyes, even though he might look exactly like a sea elf, couldn't possibly be a sea elf.

  Shemsen daubed a bit of Eshono's paste on the least of his gouges. A man who wasn't a sea elf couldn't tolerate Auld Dessinha's salves. But a lubber's salve-a pitchy salve that stung but didn't burn-wouldn't harm him if it didn't harm Eshono. Shemsen slathered his wounds and let the emptied jar sink to the harbor bottom. When the sting was gone, he swam away.

  Ships cast shadows through the water. Shemsen hid in darkness until he reached the main channel. Stealth, even deception, was habit with his kind. No one, including Eshono, suspected him. Entering Waterdeep for the first time, he'd been touched by one of Faerun's mighty mages-all the refugees were before they were granted sanctuary. He'd raised his heartbeat, relaxed his skin, and expected to die, but the mage had passed him through.

  And why not? In the water and above, most folk didn't believe his kind could exist. A sahuagin shaped like a sea elf? That was a cautionary tale for disobedient children. Among sahuagin, the elf-shaped malenti were tolerated, rarely, because sahuagin needed spies. Even among sahuagin the elf shape was accounted a curse rather than a blessing. Hatchlings were swum through the gardens where malenti quartered and trained.

  Give glory to Sekolah that He provides all that His worshipers need to serve Him. Give thanks to Sekolah that He did not shape me malenti.

  The word itself meant "grotesque" and Sekolah in His wisdom, if not His mercy, understood that malenti torment should not endure for long. The elf-shape was lethal. By the measure of sun and tide, Shemsen was younger than Eshono, yet Eshono was counted a youth and Shemsen for a man nearing the end of his prime. In his bones, Shemsen felt older still.

  Merfolk appeared overhead. Pilots, it was their job to guide the ships through the channel to open water. Shemsen dived to avoid the eddies as the rudder beat against the estuary current. Safe below the roiled water, he swam toward Deepwater Isle, and the underwater lighthouse that marked the rift called Umberlee's Cache.

  With Fleetswake scarcely a tenday away, folk of all types were making preparations for the moment when Waterdeep made its annual gift to Umberlee, Goddess of the Sea. Twenty barges, maybe more, had been lashed and anchored into a ring above the lighthouse. Already they rode low in the water, laden with offerings from landlubbers and sailors, guilds and shops, wizards and priests.

  It was no different below. Most of the sea folk passed their tokens up to the barges or tied them to the great funnel net being strung even now below the hulls. On Pleetswake Eve, when the offerings were cast into the water, every sea-dweller would swim to the net and make sure nothing drifted free. There was no worse omen than a gift meant for Umberlee not falling into Her Cache.

  Lubbers arranged their pantheon in alliances and tried-for the sake of their fears-to bind Umberlee in a controllable place. Those who dwelt in the sea knew better. No sea-dweller worshiped the Queen of the

  Oceans. She was the oceans personified, and She always triumphed.

  Net weavers hailed Shemsen as he approached. Did he know where he was? Was he lost? Inebriated? Bent on self-destruction? He told them, in words gleaned from the rough edges of the harbor, to tend their own affairs. A few responded in kind. A sea elf-a woman he didn't know-hauled the funnel net aside, allowing him to swim through an as-yet-unsewn seam.

  "Peace to you," she called from above. "Peace for your pain."

  The words were not a traditional sea elf greeting. Shemsen was impervious to those. By the time he'd left the sahuagin garden to steal a place in a sea elf village, he'd known all their traditions and despised them without exception. For almost a century he'd lived among them, his malaise and nausea relieved only when he slipped away to drop a cunningly knotted string where another sahuagin might find it. He wore his orders around his neck and the sea elves- the thrice-damned fools-admired his treachery so much they'd ask him to fashion similar ornaments for them.

  Then, on a moonless night when the sea had been too quiet, miasma, like ink from all the cuttlefish that had ever swum, had descended on the village. It clung to gills and nostrils alike. Suffocation wasn't the worst part. The miasma had talons, or teeth, or knives- Shemsen never knew which. He never saw what slashed at him. He'd assumed it was some new boon the sahuagin priestesses had sought from Sekolah. Certainly, he'd survived because he was sahuagin, tougher than any sea elf and blessed with true senses beneath his malenti skin.

  Shemsen had expected to find sahuagin beyond the miasma, but there were only sharks so wrought with blood frenzy that no malenti could hope to dominate them. It had taken Shemsen's remaining strength to resist their call as they tore through the sea elf survivors. He couldn't say, then or now, why he'd resisted, except that however much Shemsen had despised his neighbors, he hadn't wanted to be anyone's last living vision.

  Exhausted from his private battle, he'd fallen to the sea floor in a stupor. When he'd opened his eyes again the miasma was gone and he was neither alone nor among sahuagin. A handful of villagers had survived. They were numb and aimless with grief. Shemsen had easily made himself their leader and led them west with the prevailing current, toward the sahuagin village he hadn't seen in decades. He anticipated the honor that would fall around his shoulders when he, a malenti, finished what the miasma and sharks had left undone.

  Ten days later, they swam above deserted, ruined coral gardens. A year, at least, had passed since Shemsen's kin had swum through their ancient home and he, suddenly more alone than he'd imagined possible, did not tell his look-alike companions what had happened. True, there had been no entwined instructions waiting for him the previous spring, but that hadn't been unusual. In Shemsen's centuries of spying on the sea elves, he'd often gone four years, even five or six without contact. He'd never considered that something might be wrong.

  He'd never know what happened to his kin. If there'd been survivors, none had thought to leave him a message. Shemsen didn't think there had been sur vivors. Knowing what had been there, he saw the scars of violence and destruction. Sahuagin did war against each other, for the glory of Sekolah, who decreed that only the best, the strongest and boldest, were meant to survive, but in none of the many tales Shemsen knew by heart did sahuagin abandon what they'd won or lay it to waste.

  It had seemed possible that both villages, sahuagin and sea elf, had fallen to an unknown enemy, a shared enemy. A mortal mind did
not want to imagine an enemy that was shared by sahuagin and sea elves.

  Shemsen hadn't embraced the sea elves that day above the ruined sahuagin village. Neither compassion nor mourning were part of the sahuagin nature, which was Shemsen's nature, if not his shape. Still, a sahuagin alone was nothing and faced with a choice between nothing and sea elves, Shemsen chose the elves. He made them his own, his sacred cause, and led them north, to fabled Waterdeep. By the time they arrived, his loathing had been transformed into something that approached friendship.

  So he rolled over in the water and called, "And peace with you, for your pain," to the woman before making himself heavy in the water.

  Shemsen had heard that as recently as sixteen years ago, the Cache was a maelstrom that spewed or sucked, depending on the tide, and chewed up any ship unfortunate enough to blunder across it. Then the merfolk had arrived in Waterdeep. In the name of safety, their shamans had gotten rid of the maelstrom and poked a ship-sized hole in a goddess's bedchamber.

  That was the merfolk. Half human, half fish, half mad. Except they, too, were refugees with tales of black water and annihilation weighing their memories. Perhaps they'd known exactly what they were doing.

  Shemsen sank until the water changed. Heavy, cold, yet tangy with salt, it was the richest water he'd ever drawn across his gills. He knew that had there been light, he would have been able to see to the bottom. If there had been light…

  The darkness within Umberlee's Cache went beyond an absence of light. There was silence, too, in Shemsen's ears and in those sensitive places along his flanks. He couldn't tell if he was drifting up, down, or sideways.

  Malenti!

  A woman's voice, beautiful and deadly, surrounded Shemsen, and checked his movement through the water.

  Malenti, why are you here? Why do you disturb me? Does the Shark not hear your feeble prayers?