Mel Odom - The Lost Library of Cormanthyr

Then let him continue thinking that. Baylee stepped to the ship's railing. "But don't expect me to load it for you."

"I don't." Uziraff took a vial one of his men handed him. He drank it down deeply, then accepted the backpack another gave him. "I'm coming with you. Didn't you think I wouldn't have had you followed to the apothecary's to find out what you'd purchased from him?"

Instead of answering, Baylee threw himself over the side of the cog. The potion filled him with its magic. He drew in a deep breath, taking oxygen from the water around him as easily as his regular breathing. Also, he found his movements not impeded by the water in any way. The potion counter-acted those effects also.

The potion worked just as Vlayn said it would. Moving rapidly, Baylee swam straight down. As well as the potion worked, it would only last an hour, but with the other part of the magic allowing him normal movement even beneath the water, traveling two hundred feet below the ocean's surface was a matter of minutes.

Three other splashes sounded in his ears. Normally much of his hearing would have been distorted by the water and the pressure. With the potion active in his system, the sounds were almost normal.

He glanced up, spotting Uziraff and two of his men swimming after him. Evidently they'd drank vials of the polion as well. At two thousand gold pieces a potion, the pirate had evidently invested heavily in the expedition.

The depth took the light away, turning the water darker. Baylee reached into his bag of holding and took out the other article he'd purchased before leaving Caer Callidyrr. The lantern was small, almost on every corner of the city, but at three hundred gold pieces each, not everyone was going to have them.

He opened it, knowing it would be protected by the same magic from the potion as the rest of his gear. The lantern contained magic that filled it with light. He opened the shutter, unleashing a cone of light that shot down through the darkness. He followed it.

A few moments later, so far from the ship above that everything looked black overhead except for the three pirates following him, Baylee spotted the first coral-covered planks of the shipwreck sticking up from the silt of the ocean floor.

Fish moved away from him, curious at first, then afraid. Luckily, none of them were big enough to consider themselves predators.

Baylee turned and landed in the silt on his feet. He held the lantern up high, trying to get his bearings. The bulk of the fishing net thrown Windchaser's side was behind him.

Uziraff and his companions touched down not far from the ranger's position. Together, they had enough light to penetrate the gloom and illuminate the first few feet of the large ship that protruded from the ocean floor.

"Gods," Uziraff said, "I've never seen the like. That's an elven ship, isn't it, Baylee?"

The thrill of the discovery dulled the fear and wariness in the ranger. He felt the siren call of the ship. "Yes," he replied. "Yes it is." He walked across the uneven plain of the ocean floor.

"What was her name?" Uziraff asked.

"She was called Chalice of the Crowns."

"What happened to her?"

The ranger shook his head. "I don't know."

"By the gods, she's old. Look at the coral covering her."

"I know." Baylee kept going forward, less than fifty paces from the shipwreck now.

She had broken into two main pieces. Planks and spars, masses of rigging, and sailcloth lay strewn across the ocean floor. The chill at this depth, negated by the potion Baylee had drank, had preserved what was left of her. Parts of the ship had drifted away with the currents, torn free as the ocean had claimed her.

"Was she from Myth Drannor?" Uziraff asked.

"I believe her to be." Baylee answered to the excitement that he heard in the pirate captain's voice. He couldn't believe he had only Uziraff to celebrate the moment with. Golsway should have been here at his side. Thoughts of the books that would have been in the shipment from the library swirled in his head.

"Gold!" one of the other pirates yelled. He crouched down, letting go of his lantern as he reached for the gold vase that thrust up from the silt.

No longer in contact with his body, and out of the reach of the potion's magic, the lantern extinguished immediately, then collapsed in on itself as the pressure crushed it.

The display was a grim reminder to them all.

"You fool!" Uziraff snarled at the man holding the urn. "Now we've got one less light down here to work with." He continued berating the man, using up even more time. Finally he ordered them to bring the net and start filling it.

Baylee walked onto the broken hull of the ship, making his way across the clusters of coral. He went carefully, knowing that one small tear across his skin could release enough blood into the water to draw predatory sharks-or worse-from miles away.

"Baylee!" Uziraff yelled. "Do not think you'll get away with anything! Everything we can load into this net is mine! Don't make me kill you for trying to hide any of it!"

The ranger ignored the threat. Gold and silver and gems littered the ocean floor. If Uziraff and his men were limited to the hour the potion gave them, they would feel the pressure of time passing and would be more inclined to pick up everything that was easy.

"Baylee!" Uziraff bellowed. "Where are you going? Come back here and help us load these things up! You'll at least get to see them that way. Baylee!"

The last glimpse the ranger had of the pirate, Uziraff was digging something from the ocean floor and pointing to another object embedded in the silt only a few feet away.

Baylee knew the ocean floor was probably littered with artifacts from the ship for a ways back to the east. Chalice of the Crowns hadn't gone down all at once. Her dive had evidently been steep, judging from the pressure marks on the broken planks, but time had passed before she'd finally settled. There would be a line of non-perishables along the path she'd taken.

Uziraff still bellowed in the background, his voice sounding garbled now coming through all the water separating him from Baylee.

In the center of the ship, Baylee found the true horror. Books and manuscripts, all precious vessels of knowledge, of learning, of history, lay scattered across the ocean floor. There were no bodies of the crew. Those would have been taken care of by the nature of the sea, dissolved back into the dust they'd first come from.

And some of the books had been dealt with as harshly. They held no pages, but the covers-of precious metals and other hard materials-remained behind.

Baylee stood on the side of the overturned vessel and played the beam of his magic lantern over the wreckage. So much was lost, possibly forever. The disappointment hit him like a physical blow.

Fish swam by lazily, watching him.

Then, glancing below, he spotted a stone tablet laying against the deck, partially shielded by the broken main mast. He made his way down carefully, swimming to the tablet.

Slipping his knife out, he pushed the blade against the side of the tablet. When it didn't fragment or crack, he put the knife away and risked picking it up. Some cultures had been written on stone tablets with a heavy sand content. Baylee had watched inexperienced site diggers reduce hundreds of years of records to dirt in seconds.

The stone weighed his arm down. He held the lantern to shine the light over the tablet. The language looked familiar. It wasn't the true elven tongue; it was something older than Myth Drannor, but it was human. Perhaps even something from Netheril, the civilization of human mages that had lived on floating islands in the sky.

He wiped at the built up silt and coral, but couldn't clear the face of the tablet. He knelt and opened his bag of holding, taking out yet another bag. This one he hadn't told Cordyan about when they'd talked about his journals. He shoved the stone tablet inside, then closed it. When he opened it again, the tablet was gone.