Richard Byers: Queen of the Depths

In fact, in their eagerness to converge on the magician, they threatened to crush him. A shrill edge of fear in his voice, he cried, “Give me some space! I can’t conjure if I can’t move my arms!”

Tu’ala’keth gripped the drowned man’s hand and invoked a surge of Umberlee’s majesty. It granted her a moment of mastery over her fellow sea-dwellers, and when she shouted for them to calm themselves, they heeded her.

“Thank you,” said the wizard, understanding she’d helped him even if he didn’t comprehend precisely how. He swept a scrap of vegetable matter through a mystic pattern and rattled off words of power.

Tu’ala’keth’s muscles twitched and jerked. Other folk cried out as the magic jolted them. After the initial shock, she felt no different. But when she looked at those among her allies who were still awaiting enchantment, or at the dragons, they seemed to move sluggishly. In actuality, she knew, the reverse was true. The spell accelerated the reactions of those it touched.

“That’s done,” Anton said, sliding another quarrel into the groove atop his crossbow. “Now let’s get out of here.”

“Yes,” she said

As if it were the signal for everyone clustered around the warlock, the spherical mass of bodies burst into a ragged, streaming mass. Everyone swam downward and southeast, toward Myth Nantar and the plateau on which it sat, as fast as their magically quickened limbs could speed them along.

The spellcasters still had a responsibility to slow the pursuing drakes. Otherwise, the reptiles might overtake and slaughter everyone, the charm of acceleration notwithstanding.

So Tu’ala’keth turned periodically to release another spell from her parchment, to summon a demon to assault the dragons, or plunge an area into darkness and hinder the reptiles about to pass through it.

Whenever she did, she felt a surge of awe at the spectacle of the onrushing wyrms. They dwarfed the allies as sharks dwarfed minnows, loomed above and extended to either side of the company like a titanic wall of glaring eyes, bared fangs, and curved talons. They were as terrible and beautiful as her vision of the Blood Sea, and she realized that even if this venture cost her her life, it was worth it simply to behold them.

Whenever she wheeled to work magic, Anton turned, shot another bolt from the crossbow, and cursed to see wyrms slaughtering folk who hadn’t fled quickly enough. Another burst of dragon-turtle breathTu’ala’keth wondered fleetingly if this was the same creature Morgan had engaged, if the councilor was now deadboiled locathahs so that lumps and strands of flesh slid loose from their bones. A sea dragon spread its gigantic jaws and swallowed two shalarins at once.

Then Anton shouted, “Watch out!”

Tu’ala’keth cast about and couldn’t find the threat.

“Below us!” Anton cried.

She looked down. Somehow, a shimmering water drake had been able to swim fast enough to overtake the rearguard but hadn’t been content simply to tear into the folk at the very back. Instead, it had dived beneath the fleeing company then ascended in the obvious hope of taking someone entirely by surprise.

It had nearly succeeded. Its jaws spread wide to seize Tu’ala’keth, and she doubted she even had time to evoke more magic from the scroll’s ever-dwindling supply. Instead she extended her trident at the creature’s head and asked Umberlee for a burst of spiritual force sufficient to cow any sea creature, even a drake.

The power flared, but the wyrm simply failed to heed it. Its essence was too strong. It swiped a forefoot and knocked the trident out of line. She tried to twist out of the way of its jaws and, when it arched its body to compensate, realized that wouldn’t help her either.

Anton dived at the drake, the point of Umberlee’s greatsword poised to pierce it like a spear. He’d considered trading it for one of the weapons specially designed for slaying wyrms, but in the end, had opted to stick with the blade that had served him well against Eshcaz. Behind the amber lenses, his eyes burned with the contagious fury of the sword. Or perhaps it was simply his own innate determination.

The dark blade plunged deep into the reptile’s head. Flailing, it couldn’t follow through on its intention to bite, and Tu’ala’keth wrenched herself away from its teeth.

She hoped the drake would die, for surely the greatsword had driven in deep enough to reach the brain. It didn’t, though. It roared and whipped around to threaten Anton. Its wing, slightly torn where someone had managed to hurt it a little, swatted her tumbling away.

She refused to let the bruising impact stun her and oriented on the wyrm once more. The greatsword was still sticking out of its mask. Anton had lost his grip on it when the creature turned. Now unarmed except for the pitiful dagger in his hand and the unloaded crossbow dangling from his wrist, he dodged and retreated as the reptile clawed at him. If not for the spell of quickness, it likely would have torn him to shreds already. As it was, it was plain that, bereft of any weapon that could deter the drake from attacking with every iota of its demented aggression, he couldn’t survive much longer.

She hastily peered at the scroll. Two spells left. She triggered the first.

Water surged, churned, and spun around the drake. Caught by surprise, engulfed in a miniature maelstrom, even a creature of prodigious strength had difficultly swimming in the direction it intended to go, and as it floundered, Anton kicked and shot beyond its reach.

The drake flailed, trying to break free of the bubble of turbulence. Tu’ala’keth unleashed the final spell. A ragged blot of shadow appeared before her then shattered into flat, flapping shapes like mantas. Untroubled by the violent, erratic currents, the apparitions whirled around the dragon. It was impossible to see how they attacked it, if, in fact, they made physical contact at all. But gashes ripped the reptile’s hide, and a hind leg, a foreleg, and half the tail sheared away completely. Head nearly severed, wings shredded, the drake drifted toward the bottom in a billowing cloud of blood.

Anton dived after it, gripped the hilt of the greatsword, planted his feet on the wyrm’s head, and pulled the weapon free. By the time he managed that, most of their comrades had fled past, leaving him and Tu’ala’keth at the rear of the throng.

Tail lashing, a dragon eel streaked at them. A vertical plane of azure force abruptly appeared in its way, and it slammed into the obstruction beak-first. Amid the chaos, Tu’ala’keth couldn’t tell who’d conjured the effect, but it stopped the creature for a critical moment.

She and Anton raced onward with the great frantic horde of their fellows. People slowed abruptly as their charms of quickness exhausted their power. Time would tell which ones had seized enough of a lead to keep ahead of the wyrms.

It would have been easy for anyone to break away. The officers were too busy trying to save their own lives to interfere with anybody who did, and with scores of potential victims to pursue, the wyrms might well not veer away to pick off a single stray.

But as far as Tu’ala’keth could judge, most of the company were keeping to the plan. A plan, she realized, that now required her and Anton to bear left. She turned, and others began to do the same, their courses crisscrossing as each headed where he’d been ordered to go.

The soft luminescence of Myth Nantar flowered before and below her. Muscles burning with strain, she put on a final burst of speed, passed among the first of the coral-girded spires, then dared to turn and look back.

Most members of the advance forceor what was left of ithad already entered the city via one of several avenues, and diving lower than the rooftops, the wyrms were splitting up to chase them down the same thoroughfares. It was as the allies had hoped. In normal circumstances, dragons were cunning, but addled by the Rage, infuriated by the harassment they’d already suffered and the frustration of prey fleeing just beyond their reach, the reptiles either didn’t realize or didn’t care that their foes were luring them into a trap.