Cora was underwater, ears ringing and head spinning, with no sense of how to right herself. She could not determine where her companions were, whether they lived, nor even which way was up. She felt her body moving against her will.
The only thing she knew for certain, the truth to which she clung, was that she must not attempt to breathe while underwater. Her panic and her thrashing depleted her, however, and soon even that became untenable. The last thing she heard before her body resigned itself to death was a voice in her head:
You have failed me.
She opened her throat, flooding her lungs with the murky cave water. She prepared to choke, imagined searing pain in her chest.
Instead, miraculously, she drew life from the water that filled her, and felt a comforting presence far kinder than the one that had chastised her. There was the reassuring touch of Caell's soul, but someone else besides, a woman she had met only once before, when she and the Quinichiat had briefly journeyed together to the domain of restless spirits. "
Breathe," that woman implored her, and Cora did.
Then she felt another touch, and it took her a moment to appreciate it was the physical touch of another's body on hers, for she had surrendered to the idea of never feeling such a thing again. The touch was rough, but only because it was desperate. It cared for as well, in its own way, strong fingers wrapping around her arm and yanking her to the surface where, sputtering, she took in the concerned faces of her friends.
Opalia loomed over her, dangling her limp arm like a lioness with her cub. Caell treaded water nearby, as did the other Quinichiat, Sikuaq and Valaku, surrounded by the wreckage of the barge. All were dazed and bleeding. Arvid was still looking around, straining to see something in the smoke-filled cavern.
Arvid Signeson:
Where's Fergus!"
The dwarf did not answer, and no one else had a good answer, either. Logic would suggest he had either sunk to the bottom or been borne downstream by the current. The absence of bubbles or desperate splashing invited the mind to ponder worse scenarios, however, some unseen horror of the deep (memories of the monstrous bearipede leapt to mind) dragging him off to its watery abode.
Sikuaq could not determine much, including, critically, what had become of Fergus, or what had been the source of the explosion. Through the smoke she could just barely make out the palace wall as a pale ghost in the distance. The air downstream was clear, however, and she saw a recess in the cavern wall a few hundred yards back, one of the many abandoned mines they'd passed. More such opportunities might lie ahead, but if they wanted to get to dry ground, that was the surest way.
