Moon Shimmers(32)

Chapter 6





MY FIRST THOUGHT was that K’thbar couldn’t have been sleeping all that long if he was here in this ship. My second thought was, what if the orb he was in was displaced in space and the ship had settled around him? Which led to the question of whether we could actually touch him or would our hands just pass through him. He looked almost translucent.

Morio moved closer to the orb. He paused, then motioned for me to join him. As I cautiously swam over to him, I could see what he was pointing to. There, beneath the Primordial Fae, was the spirit seal. Set in a silver knotwork base, the gem was pale, pale yellow—the color of the earliest shimmer of sunrise. I could usually feel the energy emanating from the seals, but this one I couldn’t, even though I knew what it was.

I gave Morio a questioning glance and started to reach toward the orb, but he grabbed my wrist, shaking his head. At that moment, a fish swam by. Without slowing down, it swam directly into the orb. The resulting zap was enough to char the fish and send it belly-up, floating toward the ceiling of the ship.

Hmm, not good. Electricity. And the wattage had been overkill on the fish, loud and crackling. The remains looked like a block of charcoal. What the energy had done to the fish, it could surely do to us, and all the underwater breathing spells in the world wouldn’t save us from being electrocuted. Time to rethink our strategy.

We couldn’t go in after it, but we could perhaps bring K’thbar out to us. Though yet another thought drifted into my head that he might just have more than electricity on board as a weapon. I spotted a small pebble on the floor and picked it up. Motioning for everyone to back away, I tossed the rock toward the orb and waited to see what would happen.

No zap. The rock went through and landed on the table beside K’thbar, who took no notice of it. So living things got fried, and inanimate objects could pass through. But that didn’t answer the question if we could even touch K’thbar. Would the pebble have bounced off of him, or was he corporeal—would it have just landed inside his image? Realizing that the others were waiting for my cue, I looked around and found another rock.

Trillian cocked his head to the side, giving me a shake of the head. I ignored him. If he yelled later, I could always plead that I hadn’t noticed his disapproval. I aimed for K’thbar and threw, just as Vanzir seemed to realize what I was doing. He lunged forward—as best as you can lunge when you’re underwater—and grabbed hold of my arm, but he was too late. The rock already was passing through the orb and this time, my aim was dead on. The rock landed on K’thbar. Or rather, passed through him to land on the table below.

Automatically, I tried to catch my breath, but the charm prevented that and I almost sent myself careening to the side with the effort, I was so startled by not being able to breathe. Vanzir steadied me, but then let go and turned toward our target.

K’thbar apparently didn’t need to be hit in corporeal form. Apparently I was doing a damned good job of interrupting his sleep. He stirred, and it was then that I got a good look at him. K’thbar was far larger than I had originally thought. As he shifted, the orb shifted with him and what had been about a sphere ten feet in diameter abruptly expanded like a balloon, by a good three feet.

We all backed off, watching and waiting for any sign that he was awake. Maybe I had gotten lucky and just penetrated his dreams. Maybe he was just turning over for a more comfortable position. Maybe…maybe…maybe we’d better figure out what the hell our plan of attack was, because the orb grew once again, threatening to fill the room if it continued. If it expanded to fill the ship, we were dead, given the lightning display that the fish had caused. He was cutting off our exit, though. The orb stretched to include the path to the staircase passage, and there was no way to exit the ship now without going through the energy grid around the Fae.

I hurriedly swam toward one of the doors near the ceiling. It was ajar, and I pushed it open, swimming in to frantically look for a porthole, but there was none and it hit me—the quarters were below the water, in the belly of the boat. Of course there wouldn’t be portholes. I noticed that the men had scattered, and the orb was still expanding to fill the main galley.

Unable to see whether K’thbar was actually awake, or whether he still slumbered and was just having one doozy of a dream, I quickly looked around for anything that might help. I still had the shell and it gave me enough light to see by. But there wasn’t anything that remotely looked like a weapon in here. I had my dagger, though, and the horn.

As I hesitated, wondering whether I should pull out the horn now or wait, I noticed that the glowing edges of the orb were starting to penetrate the floor—or what would have been the inner wall if the ship was upright. Crap, it wasn’t done expanding. If that energy filled the chamber, I was toast. There was no way out except through the door, which was blocked by the orb’s energy.