Richard Byers: Queen of the Depths

All but certain he lacked the time, Anton nonetheless tried to materialize a second blade of force. In his haste, though, he stumbled over the mystical words, botching the spell, and the gathering power dissipated in useless stink and sizzle. Then tentacles came writhing and swirling to grab him.

He struggled to avoid them, but his scrap of timber was too small; he had no space to maneuver or retreat. He managed to drag his entire body up out of the water, to kneel atop the float, for an instant rocking and bobbing precariously. Then a loop of tentacle found his ankle, yanked tight as a garrote, and wrenched him under the surface.

Whether it realized or not, the octopus only needed to hold him under until he ran out of air, and with more of its tentacles whirling to wrap around him, it had an excellent chance of doing so. Floundering, his leg already snared, he had no hope of avoiding them all. He had to concentrate on keeping his dagger arm free.

He twisted and whipped it about to keep it from being entangled. Ringed suckers cut him as they gripped the rest of his body, and he jerked at the pain. The tentacles constricted like pythons, threatening to squeeze the precious, dwindling air from his lungs.

Round, dark little eyes staring, the octopus pulled him toward its jagged, gaping beak. He hacked and sliced at its arms. The dagger’s maker had enchanted the edge to a supernatural keenness, and it bit deep, maiming the creature’s limbs and severing one entirely.

Still it seemed unlikely to prove sufficient. But as the octopus hauled him within reach of its mouth, its whole body spasmed, and the flailing tentacles loosened. Anton tried to squirm upward out of the coils.

The tentacle wrapped around his ankle still had a grip on him and anchored him in place. He bent over, sawed at it until the tough, dense flesh parted, then swam upward.

Suddenly the need to breathe overpowered him. He expelled the stale contents of his lungs in an explosion of bubbles and helplessly inhaled. At the same instant, though, his head broke the surface.

More luck: the float was still within reach. Wheezing and praying he’d hurt the octopus badly enough to discourage it, he struggled toward the wood. He set the dagger atop the small platform then started to drag himself up.

A tentacle wrapped around his leg and jerked downward. The sudden motion rocked the float. The knife tumbled off the edge and vanished into the sea.

Panic rose, threatening to swamp his reason, and he strained to push it down and think. He didn’t have the strength to keep the octopus from dragging him back under water, and he didn’t have a weapon anymore, either. How, then, could he save himself?

There was one way, maybe. But it required him to free up a hand.

It was hard enough to hold on with both of them. As soon as he let go with the right, the strain on the left, and the arm attached to it, became all but unbearable, and he cried out at the sudden jerk.

But the pull didn’t break his grip, at least not instantly. He must have done the octopus some harm, after all, enough to weaken it a little. Perhaps, then, he had the seconds he needed.

He groaned another incantation and twisted his right hand through an arcane pass. The extremity took on a pale silvery hue, and the fingertips lengthened into talons. A keen ridge, a blade to slash and hack, pushed out from the underside, from the base of the little finger to the wrist.

When the transformation was complete, he drew a deep breath, released the float, and allowed his tormentor to drag him back under the water.

He cut and tore at the octopus, severing two more of its limbs. It hauled him to its beak, and he slashed that, too, and the soft, pulsing flesh around it. He ripped and sliced, straining for one of the dark little eyes

The world exploded into blackness. For a moment he didn’t understand; then he realized the cephalopod had discharged its ink. Its tentacles released him, and he felt a spurt of pressure. The creature was jetting away. It had had enough.

He struggled back to the surface and, as his hand melted back into its normal shape, back onto the float. The shalarin regarded him for a moment, then turned and swam away.

“That’s right,” he wheezed, “you see, I am dangerous. You’d better not hang around, or…”

Oh, to Baator with it. Even if the shalarin had been able to hear and understand, he was too spent and in too much pain to finish the threat or do much of anything else. He knew he should examine his new wounds and check to see if the old one had started bleeding again, but it simply wasn’t in him. He could only lie still, trying not to cry or whimper too much, with his hands and feet dangling in the water.

Though he somehow avoided sliding or rolling off the float again, he kept drifting in and out of consciousness. Since oblivion washed away misery, he welcomed it. It might well mean the end was near, and during his lucid moments, he supposed that would be merciful. He was too stubborn to put an end to his suffering. He’d proved it twice today already. But the sun and sea might soon do it for him.

He closed his sore eyes. Just for a moment, he thought, but when he opened them, the stars were out and the water was black. He wondered if, without the sunlight baking him, he might last a few more hours and couldn’t make up his dazed, wretched mind whether to hope for it or not. Then he noticed a crested, oval-shaped object sticking up, beyond the float but almost within arm’s reach.

It was the shalarin’s head. The creature had returned and ventured close. Perhaps it reckoned he was finally weak enough to attack without any risk to itself.

The thought stirred the dregs of the resolve he generally felt in the face of danger. He tried to rear up so he could use his hands for self-defense but found he lacked the strength. All he could was flop around a little, like a dying fish in the bottom of a boat.

The shalarin surged up onto the float. The wooden surface rocked, but its new occupant centered its weight before it could overturn.

The creature gripped Anton. He struggled to shake it off but couldn’t manage that, either.

The shalarin rolled him onto his back. They were now closer than they’d ever been before, with no distorting layers of water between them, and despite the dark, he picked out details he hadn’t discerned hitherto. Slim as it was, it had a certain subtle fullness in the area that would be a woman’s bosom, as well as a breadth to its hips, that told him it was a she. Gill slits opened along her collarbone and above her ribs. A round markthe paucity of light prevented him from making out the coloradorned the center of her brow just below the beginning of the fin. The pendant was a skeletal handhuman, by the looks of itand she also wore a belt around her narrow waist. Attached were several pouches.

She unlaced one of the bags; extracted something small and roughly cubical in shape; and pressed it to his dry, cracked lips. He found the action mildly reassuring. She probably wouldn’t try to poison a man who was already dying, for what would be the point? The action suggested that, inexplicable as it seemed, she’d finally decided to help him.

Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to understand that his most pressing need was water, not food. He wondered if his swollen throat could even swallow anything solid without choking. But he’d try. Maybe the pellet, whatever it was, would help him a little, anyway.

When he sank his teeth into it, it burst into fragments and a copious quantity of oil. The liquid tasted so bitter that in other circumstances, he might have spit it out. But when he swallowed some, it assuaged his thirst like water.

He greedily consumed it and the solid mattersome sort of preserved fish? too. “Thank you,” he gasped.