Erin Evans - The God Catcher

"We don't have much of a choice," Veron said. "Unless you want to go back and try a different pipe."

Tennora studied the rest of the room. There were four pipes like the one they had come through, sloping down toward the settling pools and the blindfin. On the far wall, the pipes weren't even passable-blocked by some sort of valve. The pipe at the opposite side of the pools was the only way deeper into the sewers.

"We'll never be able to balance on this," she said. She scraped the slime with the side of her boot. It was at least as thick as her little finger. "We need something to hold on to."

"I have a little rope left."

"You'll never be able to tie it off."

"Watch."

Veron studied the shadows and whipped his crossbow over his shoulder. He pulled a length of rope from his pack and tied it to the bolt. Taking careful aim, he fired the quarrel into the far wall. It sank into the ancient mortar and lodged, the rope whipping out behind it. Veron knotted the other end and hooked it between two cracked bricks.

Tennora grasped the rope, and it held tight. "Very nice."

"Go slow," Veron said.

Together they inched their way along the slick edge of the pool, clinging to the rope. The blindfin slid past their feet, dropping from one pool to the next and leaving a trail of slime behind as they went. Tennora didn't dare look down at them.

Which was how she managed to plant her foot squarely on one's back. Her foot shot out from beneath her, and though she tried to keep hold of the rope, her fall pulled her hand loose. She tumbled over the edge into the water.

Her feet hit the bottom. The blindfin squirmed all around her, their tiny teeth seizing the leather, as she broke the surface. She scrambled for her dagger.

"Tennora!" Veron shouted. He reached for her, but tumbled in too, letting the torch fall.

It hissed as it hit the water and went out.

Tennora slashed at the roiling waters. If she could figure out how to kill them all, she would. She heard Veron reemerge beside her. By the way he cried out, the blindfin were just as interested in him, and the water was blooming with a mixture of blood. Tennora reached back and grabbed hold of her staff, starting to cast a spell of electricity; it would hurt, but it would kill the damned blindfin Metal screeched against metal, echoing through the chamber, as piercing as an animal in pain. The valves were opening.

"The edge!" she shouted. "Swim to the edge!" But where the Hells was it?

Stormwater rushed out into the settling pools. The first wave swelled over Tennora's head, pushing her back down among the blindfin. As the valves creaked farther open, the waves became violent. Tennora swam toward the surface again, toward where she'd heard Veron last.

But suddenly the water had a current, a current that was dragging her toward the pipe that led down into the sewers.

Her lungs were screaming. She swam hard for the surface, but the current was stronger, and she was sucked away into the bowels of Waterdeep.

Tennora slammed into a rusting metal grate. The plunge of water hammered on her back as she lay there, stunned and aching. She gulped air as if she had never tasted anything so fine.

She hauled herself out of the waterfall and felt along the grating for a wall to lean on. Her staff was still strapped tightly to her back, and she worked it free of the harness.

A quick spell, and a globe of light appeared in the space before her. A tunnel-part of the original sewers by the look of the bricks-stretched off into the darkness ahead. Within the grate, a trapdoor led to a ladder that followed the fall of water down into the newer, deeper sewers transecting it.

She beckoned the light down and examined her legs and arms. In at least a dozen places, the blindfin had bitten through the leather and into her skin-a few score more had managed to gouge new patterns into the tooled leather. Behind her knee there was a rather deep bite. She touched her cheek and found a series of bites there too.

All in all, much worse than she'd have liked, much better than her childhood nightmares had suggested.

But now she was alone.

"Veron!" she shouted. "Veron!"

Nothing.

She waited to see if Veron would come down the same pipe, until the light went out and there was nothing but the rush of water and the occasional slap of a blindfin hitting the grating before sliding through it.

Tennora conjured another globe of light, though this one flickered and seemed ready to go out. She came to her feet, unsteady as her light, and looked around. The trapdoor had a lock on it with a rusty keyhole. If Dareun was coming and going from the sewers, he wasn't going that way. She looked over her shoulder.

The tunnel waited like a hungry maw.

Tennora took her staff out and stepped into the water. She kept her right hand on the mold-slick wall to keep her oriented and leaned on the staff to spare her bitten leg until it stopped stinging. The light followed, bobbing alongside her and illuminating the crumbling brickwork.

Here and there, Tennora noticed scrapes in the layer of slime that covered everything-just the right height to be made by a person with a scabbard passing too close. The guard? Or one of Dareun's minions?

She walked a little more slowly, listening for sounds of someone up ahead. She had to be close, if not to Dareun's lair, then at least to an exit where she could get her bearings.

The globe went out with a soft pop just as she got far enough from the waterfall to stop hearing it, and Tennora was very glad she had a hand on the wall. She muttered the words to conjure more light, but the spell slipped away. Trying not to think about what might be swimming around her ankles, Tennora continued down the tunnel until the wall ended. Another passage continued to the right. With a sweep of her staff, she found the other edges of a leftward turn. She stood, listening to the sound of dripping and her breath.

Then, far down the left-hand passage, voices.

"Eyes sharp, Arvinik!" a man's voice said. "Take your leave."

Tennora pressed herself up against the wall as the flicker of lanterns came down another corridor.

"Any trouble with this one?" the first man said.

"Not as yet," a second man said. "But the master's said to keep a close eye. Trouble, she is."

"The two of you quiet down," a third voice called back. "You'll stir up Master Clamps."

Tennora frowned. Master Clamps?

"You shut yourself!" the second man, Arvinik, shouted back. "You're loud enough to wake a whole nest of crockers."

Tennora slipped back around the comer as the two relieved guards made their way farther down the corridor. Dareun's lair, and Nestrix was-no doubt-the one they'd been warned to watch closely. With only two guards, she might actually stand a chance, presuming of course she The water beside her erupted as something long and heavy launched itself from beneath the surface. Too shocked to cry out, Tennora twisted, throwing her staff between her and the threat. The creature caught the staff in its jaws and bit down, twisting the weapon from her grip and knocking her onto her backside.

She conjured another globe of light-this one flared into being with urgency, illuminating a crocodile more than three times as long as she was tall, biting down on her staff with jaws big enough to snap her in half. It turned its head to one side to drop the staff, displaying one yellow, blind eye toward the light.

Before she could react, it lunged at her. The jaws snapped shut on her knee. Though the stiff leather kept the teeth from slicing through her, the bite crushed against her bone.

Then it rolled.

Tennora yelped as her leg pulled hard against its socket, but threw her body into the spin. The beast's motion yanked her through the fetid water, swirling her around and dizzying her. She reached out to slow herself, not thinking, and caught hold of her staff instead.