Mary Kirchoff - The Medusa Plague

Lyim believed they had spoken honestly, that Par- Salian, LaDonna, and Justarius had tried. What he could neither understand nor forgive was that the three most powerfu/ mages on Ansafon were unabfe to find a solution to his problem. It confirmed what he had always suspected: You had only yourself. For the umpteenth time in his life, Lyim had set off alone to alter the cards the cruel fates had dealt him. That day had been the first of the five-and-a-half-year search that led Lyim to a city sunk by the Cataclysm.

A whispered conversation in a dark Nerakan inn had brought him here. There had he met Ardn Amur- chin, an evil mage who resided in the corrupt city dominated by volcanoes. Amurchin was a sinister and hideously wizened old dark elf who told Lyim at their first meeting that he knew of one who had an answer to every question. At a second meeting, Amurchin divulged the secret of an oracle who was trapped in the submerged city of Itzan Klertal. Of course, he revealed this only after Lyim handed over three of his best magical scrolls. Eager for any lead that might cure him, Lyim had readily paid the mage.

He was eager, but not hasty. Lyim had first traveled back to Palanthas, to the Great Library. He found pre- Cataclysm encyclopedic entries written by the city leaders to be unrevealing whitewash, though he did learn that before the gods' wrath had reshaped the world, the city he sought had been known only as Klertal. The prefix Itzan, meaning 'submerged' in old Kharolian, was added to the name of the ruins after the Cataclysm, as well as to all nearby cities that suffered a similar fate.

Lyim's most fruitful research came from recovered journals written by traveling clerics and merchants. By all those accounts, Klertal had been an old, highly developed inland city, a cynical place of cutthroats and

thieves. It had been the primary city along a busy trade route between Xak Tsaroth and Tarsis. One account referred to Klertal as a "blasphemous place, without morals or redemption." Obscene wealth abutted rank poverty. As a rule, everyone, including city officials, cheated and lied.

Including the potentates. Unlike kings, who were born to their stations, the leaders of Klertal apparently bought, bartered, or beheaded their way into the position. Each remained ruler as long as he staved off his enemies. The last potentate, Sullento the Profane, was evidently exceptionally good at squashing rebellions; he held the position for nearly ten years.

Lyim found one entry, written by a merchant who had dealt directly with Sullento, particularly interesting. Although there was no mention of an official oracle in Klertal, the merchant recalled having had the rare honor of meeting one of Sullento's concubines. Reported to be the potentate's favorite, she claimed to be something of a seeress. The merchant recalled the meeting clearly, primarily because the woman had accurately predicted that a world-shaking cataclysm was imminent. Of course, no one had believed the dire predictions of a concubine. Luckily, the merchant had traveled on, thus living to tell his tale.

Lyim stroked the chilling water with his strong, elongated arm, kicking with his webbed feet. He looked for the city ahead in the dim, murky light of the sea. Bubbles from his own many-toothed mouth swirled about his head, obscuring his view. He turned his head to release breaths, and at last got a view of the citv of Klertal.

Even if the citizens of Klertal had believed the concubine's prediction, it wouldn't have prevented their city from becoming the rolling expanse of kelp-covered rubble Lyim was now seeing. Former streets were distinguishable only as the clear spaces where debris had fallen three centuries before. Seaweed waved and bowed in patchy forests scattered across the tumbled city. Schools of fish, undaunted by the area's sinister reputation, darted above the sunken city like madly dashing clouds. Aside from them, the ruins were unnaturally quiet and dark, save for a soft glow that radiated from a spongy green moss that crawled across the surface of every crumbled stone. There was no sign of the source of the churning water on the surface of New Sea.

Lyim realized now that he had seen a miniature version of the sunken city in the wizened mage's home in Neraka. Amurchin had built a glass-sided water tank in his laboratory, filled it with exotic fish (for spell components, he said), and constructed shipwrecks and buildings for them to swim through. Lyim had thought it an odd hobby at the time, but for reasons of his own, the old mage had apparently recreated the sunken city in his home. It was a minor thing, but it spoke volumes about the significance Amurchin placed on the underwater ruins.

Lyim paused in his descent to orient himself above the ruins. There were very few two-story structures; most buildings of any size had long ago crumbled under their own weight and the debilitating effect of the sea. What remained of the city was obviously very old. The architecture was an ancient, classical style, not unlike that used in Palanthas. Given the journal entry that cited tumbledown shacks surrounding great opulence, Lyim realized he must be seeing the ruins of the wealthier homes and official city buildings; the shacks would have long ago been swept away by the sea.

Off in the distance, Lyim spotted the broken remains of an open-ended oval-shaped colonnade. It led to a lone structure that rose above the others, reminding him of the pre-Cataclysm woodcut print of the potentate's palace he'd found at the Great Library. Though greatly reduced by both the earthquakes and the years underwater, the palace retained a suggestion of its former opulence. A double-sided central staircase led to a small balcony, where potentates had undoubtedly once addressed the citizens of Klertal. Behind the balcony, seven narrow archways still rose three stories above the courtyard encircled by the colonnade. Lyim was too far away to discern more, but he was determined to make his way through the endless debris to reach the palace.

Where the streets were not littered with rubble, Lyim spotted many skeletons of humans, elves, and dwarves. The mage assumed them to be the original inhabitants who ran in panic into the streets as the city submerged. But there had been no escape from the city's doom. Even large ships would have been dragged below in the massive wake, as evidenced by the many rotting hulks scattered incongruously across the empty streets and rooftops.

Movement caught Lyim's eye as he surveyed the scene. Several blocks from where he floated, a large body of creatures was swimming slowly, following the path of an old street. He swam toward the group until he could see that these, too, were original inhabitants of the city. But these had not been not lucky enough to die in the Cataclysm. Somehow they had gained a state of unlife, and now lurched down the avenue as zombies. The bloated and discolored beings ranged in age from the very young to the very old, but all had empty eye sockets, and most had twisted or missing limbs, injuries suffered during the Cataclysm that caused their deaths.

Around and above them swam a dozen or more sahuagin, herding the zombies toward an unknown destination. Lyim had never seen these legendary fish- men before, but had heard tales of their rapacious attacks on coastal towns and their utter brutality. He also knew they had a paralyzing fear of magic, and so he drifted in for a closer look.

Their backs were blackish green, shading to white on their bellies. A dorsal-like fin, black at the base and shading outward to red at the spiny tips, marked each of their spines. Webbed fingers and toes made them fast swimmers; mouths filled with sharp fangs made them dangerous. That, and the assortment of crossbows, daggers, and spears they carried. Though in the body of a scrag, Lyim drew back instinctively behind some kelp-covered rubble.