Frostfell_ The Wizards - Mark Sehestedt [66]
The belkagen leaned close, averting his eyes, and placed the deer over her shoulders. It was not unbearably heavy so much as awkward in its utter dead weight. The coarse fur made her skin itch.
She turned to the water. "The other side? An opening, you said?"
"Yes," said the belkagen. "Your gods and ancestors go with you."
Amira closed her eyes. A strange feeling washed over her. Dread, yes, but not one that was entirely unpleasant. Fear, yes, but also an odd exhilaration and eagerness. It was not unlike the first time she had been with a man, the one who'd changed her from maiden to woman, the one she'd loved and later watched die. She prayed-Azuth, Mystra, Kelemvor… keep me alive long enough to save my son. If not, grant the enemies of my enemies bloody vengeance.
She stepped into the pool.
* * * * *
The water was warmer than the air, and it sparked a sharp awareness in her skin. Amira felt every grain of wet sand between her toes, every tiny pebble beneath her feet, and against her bare shins she could even feel the slight ripples caused by the water dripping off the stalactites.
She walked on, dragging her feet through the soft sand, enjoying the sensation. Ten steps and the water was already above her knees. Another four and her hips and waist disappeared beneath the water. The green light cast by the belkagen's staff on the shore behind her grew fainter, and by her thirtieth step she walked in dim, wet shadow with the water caressing the swell of her breasts.
As the darkness swallowed Amira, her other senses sharpened. She could distinguish every drip striking her scalp, feel the tiny waves caused by their impact and her own movement, and she could almost sense a rhythm in dozens of tiny hammer-strikes of water droplets hitting the pool's surface. Almost like sharp heartbeats. Her own pulse slowed and steadied but beat with such strength that Amira could feel blood coursing through her limbs.
When the water reached her shoulders, Amira knelt, allowing the water to lift some of the burden of the deer. It became lighter, but the pull and tug of the water made it even more awkward, and her pace slowed. The belkagen's light was gone now. She knew that if she turned, she could have seen it like an emerald beacon behind her, but before her all was impenetrable blackness.
The water licked at her chin, and her next step fell into nothingness. The ground dropped out beneath her and Amira went down. She felt the water soak through her hair as she entered the thick, pulsing near-silence beneath the pool. She sank less than half a pace before her foot hit solid rock and she pushed. She rose again, but the weight of the deer hindered her, and she had to shrug it off and arch her neck to get her mouth above the water long enough to draw breath.
The deer carcass drifted off her and she held onto its foreleg with one hand as she sank again, farther this time to get more strength for her push. She knelt there in the calm silence of the pool, for just an instant listening to the distant plip-plitip-plip of the water droplets striking the surface. Then she pushed off. She broke the surface, took a deep breath-
–and felt the deer yanked away from her. Her breath rose to a scream, then she was below the surface again. Her grip had not been tight-why should it?-but still she'd felt the immutable strength of something take the deer from her. The young buck's antler had scraped the back of her forearm as the head passed, then it was gone.
There, alone in the darkness beneath the water, her heart hammering in her chest, Amira listened. She felt the wake of the deer's passage,