Richard Byers: Queen of the Depths

But it didn’t happen. The warlocks were still trying. Power glimmered on the dragon turtle’s shell, and leering, lopsided faces formed and dissolved amid the swirls of blood in the water. Yet now, for whatever reason, the spells simply failed to bite.

So it was up to the warriors. Anton cut, dodged, slashed, feinted low and kicked high. When he’d battled Eshcaz, he’d tried to stay on the red’s flank, away from his deadliest natural weapons. But now he couldn’t even do that, because it would be futile to hack at the shell. A combatant had to hover within easy reach of a dragon turtle’s head and flippers, trusting to his reflexes to save him from its attacks, because there was nowhere else to hit it.

Anton lost another comrade every couple of heartbeats. He wondered how many were leftwith his attention fixed on the reptile, it was impossible to countand if anyone else would have the nerve to come forth to engage the creature once it had torn the first squad to drifting crumbs of fish food. Then he spotted Tu’ala’keth swimming up from below the behemoth’s jaws.

He’d lost track of her early on. But he’d known that if she still lived, she was skulking around the periphery of the battle, seeking a chance to slip in close to the dragon turtle’s beak while it was concentrating on other foes, because that was what the plan required her to do.

A couple of other shalarins, also carrying satchels, should have been attempting the same thing, but he still saw no sign of them. Maybe they hadn’t been quick or stealthy enough to escape the reptile’s attention.

If so, then Tu’ala’keth absolutely had to have her chance. He opened himself fully to the greatsword’s malice, kicked forward, and attacked furiously.

The dark blade sliced deep, once just missing an eye. The dragon turtle snarled, and the gaping beak shot forward at the end of the long scaly neck.

Tu’ala’keth hurtled up from below it, a crystalline bulb in her hand. Unused to working with liquids requiring containment, the artisans and spellcasters of Myth Nantar had experienced a certain amount of trouble transferring the cult’s poison into those silvery, translucent orbs, but had finally managed to devise a method.

Tu’ala’keth lobbed the ball into the dragon turtle’s open mouth. Necessitating close proximity, the move was insanely dangerous, but at least it brought the virulent stuff to the target. Had they simply released the poison in a cloud, it might well have diffused to harmlessness without slaying a wyrm, or drifted unpredictably to kill the wrong victim. If they’d dipped an arrowhead or blade in it, the sea would simply have washed it off.

Anton couldn’t tell for certainthe angle was wrongbut assumed the ball shattered as soon as it entered the dragon’s mouth. That was what Pharom, Jorunhast, and their fellow mages had enchanted the orbs to do. Tu’ala’keth instantly whirled, kicked, and stroked in the opposite direction, less afraid now of attracting the wyrm’s notice than of poison reaching her gills or mouth.

Her desperate haste didn’t matter. The dragon turtle still didn’t notice her, but neither did it react to the poison. Flippers stroking, it kept on lunging and snapping at Anton, twisting its neck to compensate when he zigzagged in a futile effort to shake it off his tail.

He kicked high, cut downward, and finally tore an eye in its socket. He’d have that little victory to cherish in Warrior’s Rest, anyway. But he didn’t expect it to stop the leviathan, and sure enough, it didn’t. The creature’s throat swelled, and the water abruptly grew warmer as it prepared to loose another burst of its breath. He had scant hope of evading it when he was right in front of its head.

From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Tu’ala’keth, trident poised, swimming in to fight beside him. He waved her off, but she kept coming, pig-headed to the last.

Then the dragon turtle shuddered. It tried to spit its breath, but now evidently lacked the strength, for no blast engulfed them. Rather, the heat simply boiled the water around its own head and directly above it; the rising bubbles like flame leaping up from a torch.

In the wake of those, a cloud of blood and slime erupted from the reptile’s gullet, as if something had ripped and corrupted its flesh from the inside. Anton shrank from the miasma, not because he feared it would hurt him, but simply repelled by the foulness. Tu’ala’keth did the same.

The dragon turtle drifted toward the bottom. For a moment, the spectacle of such a colossus brought to ruin held everyone awestruck. Then a crossbowman in an upper-story window cheered. An instant later, everyone was doing it.

Tu’ala’keth turned to Anton. “The poison,” she said, “simply takes a moment to do its work.”

“Evidently,” he wheezed. It seemed unfair that he was always the only one gasping and panting. But she had gills instead of lungs; exertion didn’t affect her the same way.

“If we swim above the rooftops,” she said, “we should be able to see how Myth Nantar as a whole is faring.”

“Good idea.”

They peered about before completing the ascent, making sure no wyrm was lurking nearby. Once they determined it was safe, it was easy enough to squirm through the interstices of the net. Its weavers had fashioned it to hold dragons, not creatures as small as themselves.

Gazing down on the city from above, they beheld battle raging on every side. The screeching, roaring clamor stung the ears. Drifting blood clouded everything, the taste and smell of it vaguely sickening. Spires had fallen and spurs of reef shattered where dragons had torn them apart in their frenzy. Everywhere, bodies sank slowly, or already lay on the bottom, and as Anton contemplated them, he felt a swell of elation. For while too many of the corpses were mermen, locathahs, allies of one species or another, several were immense.

“It’s working,” he said. “The poison, the strategy, all of it.”

“Praise be to the Queen of the Depths,” replied Tu’ala’keth.

A yellow shimmer at the edge of his vision snagged Anton’s attention. As he twisted his head, it flickered into two shimmers.

Slender and black, covered with luminous mosaics of purple and golden wyrms winging over a benighted sea, Jorunhast’s tower constituted one wall of a dragon trap. In it, he and his comrades had snared the topaz.

Judging by the gouges on the decorations, the topaz had been trying to claw and batter its way into the human magician’s spire, either to slaughter those assailing it from within or simply to crash on out the other side. Thus far, the structure had withstood the abuse. Now, however, a pair of identical topazes swam before it, wings beating, yellow eyes burning. By dint of enchantment or some innate ability, the dragon had duplicated itself.

Ignoring the crossbow bolts streaking from neighboring structures and the swimmers swirling about them jabbing with their spears, the twin wyrms launched themselves at the tower and, striking together, tore an enormous hole. The folk inside, many Dukars with the coral bonded to their bones now manifest as ridges of external armor or blades sprouting from their hands, quailed from the oncoming wyrms then flailed and thrashed as some unseen power overwhelmed them.

But one figure floated calm and untroubled. Despite the distance, Anton could just tell that it was Jorunhast, strands of his hair and beard tossing in the agitated water. He held out a crystalline bulb in either hand, as if casually proffering them to friends, and they vanished.

The display made the topazes pause for a heartbeat, maddened though they were. Anton assumed they couldn’t understand the purpose of such a petty, pointless conjuring trick.

They found out when pain ripped through them, and they, too, flailed in helpless spasms. The exiled wizard had magically transported the poison into their throats.