The Lost Library of Cormanthy - Mel Odom [105]
"Baylee!" Uziraff yelled. "Do not think you'll get away with anything! Everything we can load into this net is mine! Don't make me kill you for trying to hide any of it!"
The ranger ignored the threat. Gold and silver and gems littered the ocean floor. If Uziraff and his men were limited to the hour the potion gave them, they would feel the pressure of time passing and would be more inclined to pick up everything that was easy.
"Baylee!" Uziraff bellowed. "Where are you going? Come back here and help us load these things up! You'll at least get to see them that way. Baylee!"
The last glimpse the ranger had of the pirate, Uziraff was digging something from the ocean floor and pointing to another object embedded in the silt only a few feet away.
Baylee knew the ocean floor was probably littered with artifacts from the ship for a ways back to the east. Chalice of the Crowns hadn't gone down all at once. Her dive had evidently been steep, judging from the pressure marks on the broken planks, but time had passed before she'd finally settled. There would be a line of non-perishables along the path she'd taken.
Uziraff still bellowed in the background, his voice sounding garbled now coming through all the water separating him from Baylee.
In the center of the ship, Baylee found the true horror. Books and manuscripts, all precious vessels of knowledge, of learning, of history, lay scattered across the ocean floor. There were no bodies of the crew. Those would have been taken care of by the nature of the sea, dissolved back into the dust they'd first come from.
And some of the books had been dealt with as harshly. They held no pages, but the covers-of precious metals and other hard materials- remained behind.
Baylee stood on the side of the overturned vessel and played the beam of his magic lantern over the wreckage. So much was lost, possibly forever. The disappointment hit him like a physical blow.
Fish swam by lazily; watching him.
Then, glancing below, he spotted a stone tablet laying against the deck, partially shielded by the broken main mast. He made his way down carefully, swimming to the tablet.
Slipping his knife out, he pushed the blade against the side of the tablet. When it didn't fragment or crack, he put the knife away and risked picking it up. Some cultures had been written on stone tablets with a heavy sand content. Baylee had watched inexperienced site diggers reduce hundreds of years of records to dirt in seconds.
The stone weighed his arm down. He held the lantern to shine the light over the tablet. The language looked familiar. It wasn't the true elven tongue; it was something older than Myth Drannor, but it was human. Perhaps even something from Netheril, the civilization of human mages that had lived on floating islands in the sky.
He wiped at the built up silt and coral, but couldn't clear the face of the tablet. He knelt and opened his bag of holding, taking out yet another bag. This one he hadn't told Cordyan about when they'd talked about his journals. He shoved the stone tablet inside, then closed it. When he opened it again, the tablet was gone.
He smiled at his good fortune. He hadn't known if the bag would work under water. Looking at the debris left of the books broke his heart. So much was so lost.
Still, he made himself continue the search. Most of the vases made of precious metals-as long as they didn't have inscriptions or sigils-and other items he tossed onto a pile on the ocean floor. Items he found of interest went into the bag only to disappear a moment later. The bag stayed empty.
Scouring the ocean floor, he managed to find seven books that appeared to be fairly complete. Two of them had to do with the divination of ground water for the building of early cities. A quick glance through the slate sheets with runes carved on them let him