One last desperate attempt to budge.
The tower room at the bottom of Nalis Aren grew ever colder and blacker.
8
Dhamon Grimwulf was human again, tall and tan, his wheat-blond hair fluttering about him. He was sinking in a lake, one far to the north of the Qualinesti Forest. The water felt cool against his skin but not unpleasantly so. It would have been comforting, were it not weighing down his clothes and boots and tugging him relentlessly and inescapably down.
He’d been fighting a dragon—his once-partner Gale— and in the height of the battle he had plummeted into the lake, the impact against the surface driving the wind from his lungs and knocking him senseless.
The water pulled him deeper, his eyes fluttering open. He couldn’t see much, just dark blue-gray patches and occasional glints of silver-gray—fish swimming past. His hand touched something soft and slimy, and he grabbed for it. It came away in his hands—a plant.
Dhamon heard a loud thrumming in his ears and realized it was his heart beating wildly. He could hear nothing else, and after a moment he could no longer register the cool water. He was drowning. He tried to move his arms and legs…commanded them to propel him to the surface, but he couldn’t even move a finger. He could only sink deeper and watch everything grow dark around him.
He’d always told himself he wasn’t afraid of death. When he was with the Dark Knights he often embraced the notion of meeting death bravely on the battlefield, dying honorably and heroically for whatever cause his unit was embracing at the moment. Death would not be so bad if met head-on, but drowning was ignoble. He felt his chest tighten, then everything went black.
Dhamon woke up from his daze, shaking his head to clear the image from his mind, his barbels lashing the surface of the lake and spattering water.
“That was years ago,” he growled to himself, but the image of his human self drowning in that northern mountain lake was as clear in his mind as if it had happened yesterday. He knew that even now he had panicked, reliving it.
Only Dhamon hadn’t drowned A dragon living in a cave at the bottom of the lake had spotted him. That dragon had saved his life and presented him with an enchanted glaive to help in his fight against the Overlords.
“I should have died then and there,” Dhamon muttered. He thrust a claw into the water and shook his head again. “I really should go look for Feril.”
He stayed in the shallows, however, and stared at his scaly reflection through the cool mist for more than an hour before he finally took a deep breath and with a shudder dived back into the Lake of Death.
“By Elalage’s silver braids, I’ve seen nothing like you before!”
The old elf’s voice carried clearly through the water as he knelt over Feril, smoothing at her face, pasty fingers gingerly brushing her eyelids. He scowled when she didn’t wake up. She was stretched out on the stone floor of the tower room in front of the largest bookcase, bits of parchment floating all around her. Her head was resting on a pillow that he’d retrieved from another room, and her hands were folded on her stomach. She looked like she was sleeping peacefully.
He stood and paced, his thick hair flowing into a mass of bright white curls that hung below his shoulders, his thin lips working, mouthing over and over, “What to do, what to do.” His thumb came up to rub against the crooked bridge of a nose that looked a little too long for his narrow, deeply wrinkled face.
“An elf with gills, an amazing sight. An elf who’s obviously been to visit Deban’s place and stole one of his lighted crystals.” The pear-shaped crystal Feril had tucked under her belt was now perched on the bookcase, clearly illuminating the entire room. “Perhaps you only borrowed the crystal, elf lady, or maybe Deban gave it to you as a gift. Toward the end, just before the dragon came, he became quite charitable. Maybe he knew what was fated for us, and maybe he thought being neighborly might put him in better stead with the gods in the world beyond. You are certainly pretty enough to catch Deban’s eye, though you’ve no hair to speak of. What, by the memory of my dear Elalage, are you doing down here? How do you breathe water?” He made an annoyed sputtering sound and shook his head, the gesture causing his hair to fan away from his pale face.
“Not a sea elf. No, not Dargonesti or Dimernesti. Seen plenty of them before, and you’re obviously neither. Certainly not Qualinesti, and you’re too far from home to be one of those argumentative and pretentious Silvanesti. A Kagonesti, you look to be from your dress and the color of your hair. Seen Kagonesti, too, and you’re the type. Except no tattoos and here you are exploring underwater in a place you’d best not be roaming around in without a map. So a puzzlement is what you are. Gills and flesh and elf ears. Remarkable.” •
He stopped pacing and looked down at Feril, studying her as if she were a rare specimen in a laboratory. After several moments he bent, his face inches from hers. He shook his head again, this time the curls spilling down over his shoulders and brushing Feril’s cheeks. “What to do, what to do,” he mouthed again. “You’re alive, my elf-fish. I see you breathe, but for how much longer? I think you are fast fading.”
He touched his lips to hers. “Like I faded.” A second kiss, then he pulled back. “They’re cold as death, my puzzlement. Cold as this graveyard. Your skin is so white, when I don’t think that is its natural state. The cold has got you in its grip, little elf-fish.” He stroked the bridge of his nose again. “The cold cannot have you. No, no. Not yet. You are a refreshing mystification, and if the cold takes you now, my questions will go unanswered, so you must live, my pretty puzzlement. Somehow I must stop you from fading…”
He stared at her for several minutes more, then the old elf seemed to come to a decision. He closed his eyes, spread his arms, and floated above her, parallel to her form. His lips moved, forming clipped and precise Elvish words, though no actual sounds emerged. His fingers danced rhythmically, as if he were playing an instrument. Motes of saffron and green light appeared in shimmering globes that enveloped his hands. The globes grew larger then receded, seeming to grow and dim, breathe as if in rhythm with Feril’s breathing. The silent words came faster, and the water began to circulate in the tower room.
The bits of parchment started whirling then dissolving, pages from the books on the shelf joining them and dissipating. All of this turned the room a milky opaque color, then the water churned itself clear. The globes glowed with a fierce intensity now and broke free from the old elf’s hands. They hung poised between him and Feril for several moments, the motes of color winking on and off erratically. Then the globes dropped onto Feril and melted into her prone form.
A moment later, her eyes fluttered opened, and the first thing she saw was the old elf standing at her side, extending an insubstantial hand as if to help her up. Feril’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and she skittered away from the apparition, bolting to her feet and looking toward the window she’d come in.
“Nothing to be afraid of, little elf-fish,” the strange old man cooed. “I won’t hurt you. Indeed, it is I who saved you.” He beamed and tipped his chin up, proud of his efforts. “I had to save the pretty puzzlement.”
Saved me, Feril thought.
“Yes, indeed I did,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “You were dying of the cold, and we just couldn’t have that. I cast a spell to keep you warm.”
Feril looked back and forth between the apparition and the window. She wasn’t cold any longer, and she certainly wasn’t dead. Her last thought had been that she was joining the ghosts of Qualinost and would never see Dhamon Grimwulf again.