The Lost City of Ithos: Mage Errant Book 4 by John Bierce

Author:John Bierce [Bierce, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
Published: 2020-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Conspirators

When they arrived at the third site, the Havathi were already there. No less than four privateers were sailing above them. None approached the size of the Rising Cormorant, but given their heavy armament and contingents of battle mages and Sacred Swordsmen, half that many would have been more than sufficient to take down the Radhan merchant ship.

Thankfully, the war ammonite wasn’t one of the ships. The spiral-shelled squid-kin were sometimes captured young and trained to stay on the surface as war ships. Their tentacles hung deep underwater, though, meaning it was the greatest danger of any of the Havathi-funded ships.

They never even realized the Cormorant was there.

It took Sabae and Hugh both channeling the windlode into the ship’s enchantments to let it go deep enough to evade the Havathi water mage affinity senses. The deeper the ship went, the more mana it consumed, at surprisingly disproportionate rates. Not to mention, the third site was a localized low mana zone, so it was much harder to get enough mana into the enchantments than normal.

Alustin was able to finish his readings in just a few minutes, and they were able to move on rapidly.

“Something bizarre is going on here,” Alustin muttered out loud, glaring at his notes, then at the water around him. “It’s like a mana desert, but not exactly.”

Sabae arched an eyebrow at him.

“The aether in mana deserts is simply less permeable to mana,” Alustin said. “This is permeable to surprisingly large amounts of mana, but it just moves incredibly slowly through it. I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s definitely not what we’re looking for, and probably just a curiosity, but it’s probably worth an expert in these sorts of things investigating it in the future. Otherwise, though, the only notable thing about it is the sheer number of curious squid.”

Sabae just grunted and turned back towards the water.

It was much darker at these depths, and the ship’s glow-crystals were dimmed to the absolute minimum needed for the crew to work, so the Havathi above couldn’t spot their lights. Light from the sun still penetrated down this far, but the water below them was a deep, inky blue that her eyes couldn’t penetrate. They were even deeper than she had gone while rescuing Dell from the sea serpents. Sabae thought she could see something shifting down there, but she wasn’t sure.

“Hugh?” she asked. “Can you see down into the water below?”

Hugh looked up from his quiet conversation with Talia, confused.

“What?” he asked.

Sabae rolled her eyes. While she was happy that Talia and Hugh were a thing now, they were in classic new couple mode. Less making out in public than Hugh and Avah, but they were clearly both having trouble paying attention to anything but each other.

“Does your night vision let you see into the darker water below?” Sabae asked.

Hugh blinked, then turned to look.

He stood there for a moment, then turned away, a disturbed look on his face.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes it does, and I regret looking.

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