“Very good.” Esten set the chest down, then reached into the folds of her garments.
“In exchange, here are the maps I’ve drawn, the stockpiles I’ve noted, and my analysis of the Bolglands’ infrastructure, as well as their obvious treasury, manpower, armed capabilities, and the like,” she said, handing the papers to Dranth. “Disseminate them. For the right price, of course.”
“Yes, Guildmistress.”
“They are still keeping a tight rein on me, but I have managed to charm one of them, an idiot artisan from Canderre, into bringing me what I need or describing some of the areas that I have not been cleared to go into yet. Though he has yet to tell me where the Bolg king sleeps.”
The guild scion’s face twisted with a hint of concern, ironic as it was.
“Do you want us to infiltrate the mountain, mistress? So that you are not alone?”
Esten smiled wickedly.
“Do not fret about me, Dranth. When the Bolg king finally returns, I will be the only one left alive in all of the godforsaken mountain.”
She waited until his shadow had been swallowed by the night before climbing the misty hilltop, being buffeted by an insistent wind as she pulled herself over the ridges, and making her laden way across the dark mountain fields of rock and scrub to the warmth and light of the Cauldron once more.
39
The tide was rising again, Rhapsody knew.
The first time it had happened she had panicked, had believed for more than a few moments that she would drown as the tidal cave filled to the top with caustic brine, churning relentlessly in circular torrents, spinning violently out with the current as it flooded.
She had been asleep that first time, drowsing in exhausted half-slumber on the one solid spot in the cave, the ledge onto which she had crawled. Her hands were free; it had taken but a moment and the true name of corn silk—tesela—to soften the rope that had been wrapped cruelly tight around her wrists to the point where she could break it.
The crossbow bolt that the archer had fired had lodged in the leather sword belt at her waist; by sheer luck it had hit the joint between the belt and the scabbard, missing her kidney, but nonetheless leaving a wicked bruise and a deep scratch in its passing, both of which stung to the point of agony in the swirling salt water. She had taken the belt off and was working the bolt loose; without her sword, the tip was the only sharp metal implement that was on her when she fell.
Despite her chanting, she had hit the water harder than she realized at the time. The only mercy in her plummet was that she missed the rocks; between the fall, the impact, the seawater, and the lack of balance she had already been experiencing, she had been all but unconscious when swept into the tidal cave by the incoming tide.
After the first time the tide fell with the ebbing current, leaving the cave half full of water breaking against the back wall, she had taken the opportunity to feel around, still virtually blind in the half-light. There were cracks in the back wall of the cave through which gusts of air could be felt while the tide was low, but little else. In addition, she could see the ocean current that swirled in the cave, that had caught her and pulled her inside, sparing her from being battered against the rocks; it was a spiral current with a cross-undertow. She knew that it would be almost impossible to bear up against it if she tried to swim out, being compromised in both strength and mass. I have to find fresh wetter, she thought, her mind fuzzy from exhaustion, and food. If I grow any weaker, I will die in here.
But first I must sleep, and in sleeping, heal.
The slumber into which she had fallen was so deep, so dreamless, that when the first wave broke over her she didn’t feel it.
It was not until a rolling breaker doused her, drenched her again, that she woke with a start, fear permeating her to the depths of her being.
The tide turned quickly, rushing into the cave with a force that frightened her even more. Rhapsody was submerged almost instantly, again being battered about the cave but never swept out of it, held in place by a relentless current. She braced her now-free hands against the rocky ceiling as the waves bobbed her up to it, tilting her head back to keep her eyes and nose out of the brine.
As she hovered in the water, feeling the slimy rush of seaweed pass her, she slapped it aside, trying to remember her father’s words, spoken to her as he taught her to swim as child in a deep pond a lifetime before.
She called on the memory now, trying to make use of the lore to calm her racing heart.
Too deep, she thought. It’s too deep.
Stop flailing.
Her father’s voice rang in her memory, as clear and authoritative as it had all those years before.
She stopped flailing, remaining motionless, letting the current lift her.
The water of the pond had been cold, as the sea was cold; green scum floated on the surface as the seaweed floated past her now. She could not see the bottom of the pond, just as she could not fathom the depth of the cave.
Father? she whispered, her lips tasting of salt.
I’m here, child. Move your arms slowly. That’s better.
It’s so cold, Father. I can’t stay above it. It’s too deep. Help me.
Be at ease, her father had said. I’ll hold you up.
Rhapsody took a quick breath, and felt the tightness in her lungs slacken a little. The memory of her father’s smiling face, his beard and eyebrows dripping, rivulets of water rolling down his cheeks, rose up before her mind’s eye as it had from the surface of the pond so long ago. It was an image she had concentrated on before, in the belly of the Earth, making her way along the Root of Sagia, the World Tree, in a place as foreign to her soul as this one.
The water won’t hurt you, it’s the panic that will. Stay calm.
It’s so deep, Father.
A spray of water as he spat it out. Depth doesn’t matter, as long as your head is above it. Can you breathe? Ye-e-ss.
Then never mind how deep it is. Concentrate on breathing; you’ll be fine. And don’t panic. Panic will kill you, even when nothing else wants to.
Rhapsody closed her eyes as another wave crested over her face.
Panic will kill you, even when nothing else wants to.
No, she thought, I will not panic. I didn’t throw myself off a cliff only to be vanquished by something that means me no harm.
She tried to float on her back, and managed it for a while, bracing herself against the cave walls with one hand, holding her other elbow close against her side to minimize the exposure of the grazed skin to the salt. She cleared her mind, listening to the rhythm of the flooding current, the rising tide, and heard a music in the water, a cadence and tone she could concentrate on to maintain her calm.
After time uncounted, the current ebbed, and the tide fell again.
As the ledge became visible Rhapsody contemplated her options. She thought to call to Elynsynos, the dragon whose lair had not been far off when she was taken by Michael’s men; but discarded the notion, knowing that the beast could not sense her through water. Her eyes stung with salt, knowing that Merithyn, Elynsynos’s lover, had perished for that reason.
She had also considered shouting the Kinsman call for aid as once she had done, summoning Anborn to her side in her hour of need. But Michael was master of the element of air; if the wind betrayed her, he would find her.
There was nothing to be done but to use her own wits, her own survival skills.