The Seascape Tattoo Read Online Free

workings of it. Perversions of it. We could have lived for eons. It was your spells that used up the world’s mana too rapidly.”
    Neoloth-Pteor considered. “Then why don’t you destroy it. Why sell it to me?”
    M’thrilli’s expression was not pleasant. “The sooner the mana is used up on the land, the sooner men will forget magic. And if you forget magic, you may leave us alone, in the depths. We know you of the old days, Neoloth. There are better men than you. But there are also worse.”
    The slight, sad smile thinned. “Be well in the last days. We have served each other before. Likely, this is the final time.”
    And with that, the Merfolk slipped back into the waves and were gone, leaving Neoloth on the shore, alone with the dancing light of the moon.
    *   *   *
    Neoloth-Pteor slipped back into the coach without looking back at the ocean, holding the oilcloth in both hands. He did not unwrap it again until he was safely behind the coach’s wooden door. The coachman cracked his whip, and their conveyance was on its way.
    â€œMaster?” his elf asked. Neoloth gave Fandy a single look: do not ask . And then leaned back against the back wall and closed his eyes. Everything was working.
    *   *   *
    Two hours later they were still in the thick of the night but drawing near to the castle. Quillia’s grandest dwelling perched on a low hill, surrounded by gardens and hedge mazes, smaller mansions, and an army barracks whose soldiers doubled as emergency bodyguards. The coach bounced up the final cobbles to a small castle—or a large stylized house—just east of the main dwelling. Neoloth’s own personal lodgings.
    A dwelling worthy of Quillia’s chief wizard.
    He felt a deep sense of satisfaction as the coach drew into a tunnel formed by sculpted hedges, into a shadowed arbor. “I will want you in the morning,” he said to Fandy.
    Neoloth carried his package into his study, which was lined with scrolls and books and odd memorabilia, detritus of a life lived more in the shadows than in the light. He swept scrolls cluttering his desktop into a pile and laid down the oilskin. Peeled it away. Then for the second time, he beheld the talisman.
    A little water had leaked out of the cracks in machining. The joining edges were so precise and delicate that they almost eluded the naked eye. Still, water had seeped into the works.
    He wondered if that would damage the workings. If workings there were.
    Neoloth turned the cylinder over and over again, until he saw something that looked like an entry point. He rummaged in his desk until he found a magnifying glass. He inspected the cylinder carefully. Could it be booby-trapped?
    He had not been to Azteca, but in visions had seen the pyramids and sacrificial pyres, the lines of war captives and criminals, the rivers of blood running in the shadows of Quetzalquatl’s titanic wings. Part of him hungered to witness that spectacle, while another part was glad that he never had, or would. There were ways that his soul was too close to a tipping point, and Neoloth knew that just as there were deeds that could not be undone, there were sights that could not be unseen, changes in the composition of the soul that could not be healed or reversed.
    Yes. There was something daunting about the cylinder. The Merfolk had been wise to rid themselves of it.
    Neoloth’s nails were long, tapered and blackened by tarry substances beneath it, either extruded from or growing into the quick. He wiggled his fingers to get the stiffness out and then drew up his sleeves. Neoloth’s arm was covered by tattoos, mostly in dark primary colors, many faded by time. With one fingernail, he drew a cut in his skin, just over a tattoo of a spider.
    Blood welled and then … was absorbed into the spider. The inking swelled and shook itself to wakefulness and crawled off his arm. It seemed confused