Chapter 1. The Deep Pools

The small, placid sloughs in the Everskian Valley never grew comfortably warm, shadowed by the Greycloak Hills from the sun. The turquoise mountain lake, nested high on the slope of the Broken Dagger Mountain, was frigid with the melt water of the Crest Glacier. Yet, in his excitement, pushing deeper and deeper toward the bottom with each stroke of his aching legs, Keth'sim felt hot.

It had been a fool's hope to find the dagger that the Weapon Master Relador had casually tossed in four years ago, to further challenge them after a hard run in full gear to the jewel-like lake. He had said that they should run up the mountain every day until the dagger was retrieved or they have graduated. It was their first year…. The students had known that they would never recover it, and yet every boy trained in the Academy came here at least once a week to jump off the cliff, to swim for the taunting slender blade still unsullied by the calcareous growth, still glistening in the sun. That's apart from the daily trek up and down the slope, though most did not run as far as the shining lake. Keth'sim always ran to the very spot where the Master had stood, however the others chose to interpret the words.

He was short of air now, and the dagger had been out of reach, far below. Biting his lips, Keth'sim had turned over, and the glamorous blue of the water above had filled his eyes. Up and up he went, until he could see the darker spot against the glow, and it had been Diriel. Next week, his friend had said, he would bring along Mazayana…. Well, let it be - let Diriel have the Weapon Master's dagger after Mazayana would have lifted it from the depth by her budding magic for a kiss, but Ket'sim would remember that it had been taken by cheating. The straining lungs burned - perhaps he had miscalculated in his pride and taken by his wish to accomplish the impossible. Master Relador's lessons, despite his air of a simple fighting man, always carried more than one meaning. Had there been in this one a warning against fighting destiny or overestimating one's ability as well as the challenge? The water had thinned above Keth'sim, the shine becoming golden, and finally the swimmer's aching face had broken through the last of it.

He gasped for air, once, twice, both pain and life filling his chest, and stared at Diriel's face. It was wrong. It was too old. It was marred.

"Who?" Keth'sim wanted to ask, but choked instead, looking at the ugly scab snaking across Diriel's brow and cheek. His eye should have been gone from the blow, but it was there, half-healed, a tight spider-net of red veins making mockery of the other, hale one. That was pale green, washed out like all of Diriel's coloring: ivory skin, hair like the white gold. Women thought Diriel a softer man, for him lacking the usual elven brightness and sharpness in appearance. A mistake, that. Keth'sim knew now, that the boy, he had just dreamed waiting in the shadows of the Broken Dagger Mountain, grew into a battle-hardened veteran, tried against the wild beast, and orcs, and drow. And humans, though that was best forgotten.

Diriel sighed, and smothered him with a wet rug: "Hold still, Keth. I'm too tired to wrestle with you right now. Hold still, for the sake of Auranamn, the first Elf!" Water ran down and cut into his lip like a knife. He squirmed and rolled his tongue over his mouth. It was a ruin and tasted of old blood and sea-water. Diriel grinned: "They healed us some, to keep us breathing, but did not concern themselves with the finer details. Perhaps, they were afraid that we'd take maidenheads of all the shark-women in the city if they make us pretty again." Keth'sim found his voice, and managed through the broken lips: "As if missing an eye would have stopped you, El." Diriel's palm squeezed his shoulder, but he did not respond to the quip. He turned away, his face in his palm, with a croak of his own. Keth'sim struggled to sit up, but Diriel's hand pushed him back: "Lie down, or I swear, I will kill you myself." Keth'sim forced his torso up grimly and said against dizziness: "If you must." The eyes of the brightest man he knew shone, when he whipped his head back to take another look at Keth'sim: "You may live." And then he darkened, his cool hand delving a swell in Keth'sim's right side: "For a short while. You are bleeding internally, Keth. I am sorry; there was nothing I could -."

"Report," Keth'sim said to his second in command. Diriel, while not a healer, knew more than any other soldier about wounds, and it was his hands that bandaged and mended while they waited on the holy chants; the time was precious. Diriel wasted some of it on a muttered oath.

"Where is the bloody priestess! One of us dead is enough. Enough."

It was a report in itself. Keth'sim followed Diriel's glance and saw one of the sailors - Ilzeluma? - a prone unmoving shape. He had seen his kin dead of violence or privation, not departed to Arvanaith by choice, before. Soldiers, mostly, and in the Forest of Thethir - civilians. He had seen unarmed women and children slain by humans, and each memory was hard. Each attempt to come to terms with the fact that a mutilated, inanimate object was a talking and laughing sprite just a short time ago was even harder.

This was worse.

Only four, with the exception of Diriel and himself were his soldiers; the four others were hapless passengers he'd met moving about the small world of the ship. He knew each by name. From what he had heard of sahuagin, they were not like humans, whose cruelty was assuaged by the strange, fitful onsets of mercy. Those children that found and nursed me back to life snatching what food they could from their parents' tables…And Vesina's mother, left a soldier's widow by that pointless war, who had discovered the mischief and only shook her head sadly, wordlessly at me. Mercy, no, we will not find it here.

Keth'sim looked over the survivors, all of them men, all of them beaten, and the cold clarity had descended upon him: if there was a way to come through this alive, he had to find it. Watching him to survey the smooth, windowless walls of a domed chamber and a rounded door with no knob or any other kind of a handle, Diriel said quietly: "We are under water, Keth'sim. I came to once, while they were carrying us through the tunnels. The whole complex is filled with water, but this chamber as far as I could see. To get out, we need their priests to apply a spell on us, and then a miracle to take us to the surface… or a wizard to open a portal to the closest plot of a dry land. We have more chances on a bare rock in the middle of the ocean than here."

Keth'sim looked at Liadon, the only man who stood from the company, and the mage opened his arms to the sides widely, guiltily. His robes were gone. Too tall and thin, in a long under tunic, the gesture made Liadon look rather like a distressed heron.

"They took my spell book, Keth'sim Dwin'anea, and ink, and parchments… even my socks." His pants too, Keth'sim noted. There was something tragic in the way Liadon wiggled his toes. Eldain lifted his head off Saldavian's lap and rolled his eyes. It occurred to Keth'sim that they had heard the wizard's laments already and was grateful for Saldavian's sword-calloused hands stroking his lover's hair, calming him. Eldain had a cutting tongue, with the Whisperbrook's wizard being his favorite target as of late, and this was not a time for japes. Saldavian closed his eyes and leaned heavier against the wall.

"I would have lent you mine, if that could have taken us back to Evereska," Melvanyar, the Whisperbrook's secretary, said crossly to his companion, "but you can't, and we are all going to die."

Batianel stirred and smiled guilelessly: "The Captain won't let this happen." Had he ever been so young as to be able to regain hope the moment that a dying man had opened his eyes, because that man was titled a Captain?

Keth'sim remained silent for one more moment, hoping that someone else would speak up and let him gauge their mood. The white-haired Gil'armoth did not utter a word, but shook his head almost fondly at Batianel, thinking perhaps the same thoughts as Keth'sim, or something kinder; he had three hundred years on Keth'sim, and was going into the Retreat for the sake of seeing the wonders of Evermeet before departing beyond the reach of the Material Plane. When one lives that long one mellows to the naiveté of youth.

"My Lord?" Keth'sim said addressing himself to Lessavel Whisperbrook, the only surviving member of the family that employed him.

Lessavel lifted the eyes circled by dark, painful shadows, and said in a dull voice: "My household now is added to your men, Captain." He chuckled bitterly and corrected himself: "Melvanyar, Liadon and myself are now your men." He was the father of the girl that cried when the attack had just begun, Keth'sim remembered suddenly.

"So am I," added Iverius, the Poet.

"Then I have nine men," Keth'sim said smoothly looking them over. "If I should die, the command is deferred to Diriel, and it falls to him to name his successor."

"Lessavel," Diriel called back almost immediately. Keth'sim nodded. There was something grave and strong about the man. Lessavel acknowledge the honor without undue fuss.

"Oh, could you do something useful, instead of making up the titles?" Melvanyar exploded.

"This is useful," Keth'sim explained patiently. "When we fight we need to know who leads till the very last man standing."

"Fight!" Melvanyar exclaimed, jumping to his feet, with a hint of hysteria in his voice, "Fight!"

Lessavel's sigh told Keth'sim that the Whisperbrook's secretary had fits of this nature quite often.

"They left us all our weapons!" Batianel retorted, as if it was a self-evident course, the only course even. Perhaps, for him, it indeed was. The hot-headed warriors find it unthinkable that someone would not fight while he has a blade and can move. Despite all odds, Keth'sim emphasized with his man. By the sea and stars, he must have taught that attitude to the youngster himself. Yet, almost half of his men -four- he had yet to win to his way of thinking; and Melvanyar had a weak position. Witnessing this unmanly doomsaying, would make others ashamed of hoarding similar feelings. So, Keth'sim decided to let Melvanyar have it out this once. He will break him out of this habit given time. If they had time.

His despair gathering momentum, Melvanyar span about to face Batianel: "Do you know a way for us to grow gills then? Or do you plan to lure the whole city of sahuagin into this room and challenge their King on a duel, honorable-like on the condition of our secure release? The only thing we can do, my brave, is to pass beyond their reach and hope that our spirits can reach Arvanaith from this Abyss."

"Halt." Was all Keth'sim said then, "Someone's coming."

Eldain moaned, and Saldavian's fingers closed in a gesture one made when telling his heart's prayer to Corellon. He prays for the visitor to be a priest, Keth'sim decided, and noted how Diriel glanced quickly his way and frowned. Evidently, his second in command wished for the same thing. While Keth'sim doubted that Corellon had heard the two elves through the miles of the cold water, when the door opened, six sahuagin in ceremonial robes marched into the room.

But Keth'sim's attention wavered from studying the shark-like heads, the rough skin and cruel features of the healers, when he saw a woman that the guards dragged along after the priests.

She was a sea-elf, judging from her pale-green skin and wavy hair the color of Matzikan emeralds. A fierce thing she kicked and struggled against the hands that held her. The rewards for her efforts were the bleeding scrapes made by the sahuagins' abrasive skin on her slender arms. The guards shoved her forward, cursing roughly, and she went on her haunches, breathing loudly. The tangled hair fell forward, veiling her face and the glowing eyes, but Keth'sim could see the angry set of her bloodied mouth.

One of the priests punched her out of the way, and she rolled to the opposite wall, hissing. Keth'sim came to his feet, reaching for his sword, but the harsh hands of a priest jolted a searing bolt of magical energy through his side. The angry bluish glow of the Moonstone in the pommel faded as he sat back heavily, feeling both hale and exhausted.

Sahuagin's healing was not a kind craft.