darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,80
one perfect moment alone with the Eye before the others followed me in.
Once everyone else was settled, I sat down beside Siri. “Thank you. I needed that.”
She smiled at me. “I thought you might.”
“Faran and I will have to go steal some baskets soon, but I want to sit here for a few minutes first. You mentioned that there were other rooms down here. . . .”
Siri nodded. “There are, but the only way for a normal person to get to them now is to swim.” She pointed at the reflecting pool. “It’s not far, but I wouldn’t advise trying it if we don’t have to. That connects to the lake, and those who haunt the deeps come here as well. There was once another way down, which leads more directly to other areas, but it’s buried under the ruins of the outer temple. It would take a good-sized crew a couple of days to excavate it.”
“Have you explored the underwater ways?” I asked.
“Not thoroughly, no. I see where you’re going, but I still think that the island is a much more likely place to find the swords. It . . .” She paused for a long time, before shrugging and saying, “It just feels right.”
* * *
I had made the swim out to Namara’s island and back three times previously. Once, when I asked her to make me a Blade before my time and send me after Ashvik. Once, when I returned my swords to her. And again, when I reclaimed them. It’s nearly a mile of deep water, and you can feel the great scaly horrors that live in the lake sliding by beneath you, but I have never feared them. The first time, I knew that my goddess would protect me, and the two times since, I had been indifferent to my fate.
Tonight was different. I had things that I needed to do. I still might not have a huge emotional investment in living, but dying would be damned inconvenient. So, this time, when I felt a fast moving current of cold drag across my legs as though something big were swimming past not far beneath, I couldn’t help but stick my face underwater and look to see if I might spot what had caused it.
It was dark, but the moon was high and full, and that gave me barely enough light to see something long and narrow and scaly. I only saw the back end of the thing, but that was enough for me to be sure that it was neither dragon nor crocodile. If it was a fish, it was a damned skinny thing for its size. It reminded me most of an enormous eel or marine snake, and it had to be at least thirty feet long. Then it was gone, and it didn’t return before I had to resurface and take a breath.
Siri was closest to me then. “You saw?” she asked as I began to swim again—stroking as quietly as I could manage.
“Not well enough to identify it. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything quite like that before.”
“No surprise there,” she said. “To the best of my knowledge they live nowhere in the eleven kingdoms but here and in Lake Leivas.”
“You seem to know quite a bit about them. What are they? And where did you learn it?”
“Master Illiana made a study of them. She was the Master who brought me to the island for my investiture, and she was feeling chatty that night. They’re creatures of magic from the wastes in the west. Freshwater eels once, or possibly snakes. They were bent and twisted by the runaway magic that created the wasteland.”
“Then why have I never heard of their like in the River Dan?” I asked. “It’s supposed to meet the Leivas out west somewhere, beyond the edge of Varya.”
“The Dan doesn’t touch on a body of water big enough to support them—not within the eleven kingdoms anyway. I imagine that they know that. Illiana said that they’re at least as smart as we are in their own way. She said that both Namara and the Lady of Leivas had made treaties with them.”
“I didn’t know that.” The Lady was . . . a special case in every way, a mage that was only just this side of being a goddess, if the legends were to be believed. Though her power supposedly ended at the edge of that greatest of all freshwater lakes.