The ferryboat was a marvelous construction; it was a bireme, rare on the surface as most large river boats relied on the winds to move them from place to place. Rarer still, it required no crew to operate, its sixteen oars moved in unison with the aid of mechanical cogs and wheels and only needed the captain to wind up the mechanism to start the journey.
Cavallas stood in the back and operated the wheel that steered the oars. He was a Yuan-Ti and he wore a heavy hood over his face to hide the truth, in fact he covered himself up from head to toe, only his serpentine eyes and sibilant speech gave away his heritage.
Valen, Tristin and Deekin sat in the middle of the boat on the bench provided by the ferryman. Deekin seemed to have warmed up to Valen once again and was back to asking all sorts of embarrassing questions and recording every huff and every curt answer he was given.
Valen did his best impression of a surly tiefling though his scowl did little to encourage the kobold to leave him alone. Finally fed up with having to humor him and having exhausted his patience to keep telling Deekin to go bother someone else, he turned to Tris, "Tell your kobold to stop calling me goatman."
"Good luck with that, took me a while to teach him to stop calling me Boss." She got up to approach the bow of the boat. "Besides, he's not my kobold, he's got a name, show some respect and use it, and maybe he'll return the gesture one day."
She was glad for the opportunity to leave their company behind for a while. Deekin's chatter and Valen's disposition toward the kobold made her head swim and she had no desire to be caught up in the middle of a childish argument that she would most likely end up breaking up.
She leaned over the railing, and studied the glassy surface of the dark waters that stretched out before her, the lake was deceptively calm and she wondered what kind of creatures lived beneath the surface of the murky waters, and so she closed her eyes and let her mind wander and submerge itself under the lake's surface.
She felt a million tiny heartbeats, clamoring in unison and it reminded her of the cricket chatter she liked to listen to on warm summer nights in the valleys of the Nether Mountains. She smiled at the thought that even when the caverns of the Underdark were seemingly deserted, its lakes and rivers were still teeming with life. And then beneath the din of a million heartbeats she felt a slow-marching pulse, a steady cadence that the rest of the underwater life seemed to follow. She concentrated her mind on this new life form and was surprised at how easily it let her connect to its thoughts. She felt a consciousness that was intelligent and ancient. What are you, she found herself wandering, and as if to answer, her mind's eye saw a goliath, fleshy and shaped like an arrowhead with eight sinewy appendages constantly moving to help the creature stay afloat. And then she saw an image of the belly of the ferryboat, slowly moving closer, and she saw herself staring at the waters beneath and she realized that the creature was looking directly at her.
Startled, she staggered back away from the railing and the water's edge. Valen was by her side in no time, stopping her fall with a firm grip on her elbow.
"What do you think you're doing?" she heard him say in his usual displeased way.
If he's showing concern,he has a strange way of showing it, she thought to herself. "Nothing." She said as she righted herself, "I'm fine, thanks for asking."
She heard Cavallas laughing, it was a snakelike hiss, entirely unpleasant.
"Ahs-hs-hs-hs-hs! I see the human has the gift of empathy, how peculiar!" His sibilant voice carried across the boat and oddly, his snakelike eyes were full of mirth at the discovery. "Ternoc has never met a human before, he finds you...interesting, Tristin Falke. He sends his greetings."
"Is that what the kraken calls itself?"
The ferryman nodded. "You know your magical beasts."
"I had a good teacher." She said.
Still unnerved at the unexpected communion with the kraken, Tristin wished to take her mind off the knowledge that a creature, immensely powerful, was now no doubt following them, and so with a final glance at the waters beneath the boat she turned away from the railing and moved to Cavallas's side. She needed to talk to someone to distract herself from the disturbing path her thoughts seemed to take, Deekin was busy annoying Valen and the tiefling seemed in no mood to answer anyone's questions so that left the ferryman.
"Ternoc - is he your companion?" She asked, wishing to know if her relationship with Ajax was in any way similar to what the ferryman seemed to share with the kraken.
"Ahs-hs-hs-hs-hs!" There was that snakelike chuckle again. "Ternoc and I share the same waters, I bring him news of what happens above water and in return he shares secrets of the deep with me but I cannot command him like I would a familiar, we are more like neighbors, he keeps me company on long trips."
Cavallas must have seen the apprehension on Tristin's face. "Do not worry yourself, he will not attack us. He follows us but he is merely curious."
He studied her out of the corner of his eye, all the while keeping a steady hand on the wheel. Humans were rare in the Underdark, and most were just slaves. A free and armed human in these caves was truly someone special, the revelation that this one could commune with animals had confirmed Cavallas's suspicions when he first laid his eyes on her. And something told him that the longsword strapped to her back wasn't just for show.
He noticed a large feather looped through one of the button holes on the armor and how she seemed to absent mindedly stroke it along its length. He could tell that the feather meant something to the girl. "Tell me about the feather." He broke his silence.
She looked down to where the feather was and her fingers stopped at the tip, she must have realized that she was unconsciously playing with it. She looked at it with her brow creased and then pulled it out of its loop and twirled it between her fingers as she studied it again.
"It belongs to Ajax - my animal companion on the surface. We had to part ways, birds don't belong in caves." She said as she looked up and around at the stalactites hanging from the cavern roof. "It was he who helped me discover and hone my talent for empathy."
She turned to look at Cavallas. "I hear all Yuan-Ti have that as their innate ability."
Cavallas nodded at her. "Snake charmers we are called, a popular market trick in Calimshan to impress the visitors and help relieve them of their heavy coin purses." The corners of his eyes creased in what could only be a hint to a mischievous smile.
"Is that where you are from?"
"I visited once, though my kind prefers the darkness of the Underdark, safer for the malison and abominations."
"Tell me then, where does a Yuan-Ti stand in this war?"
She noticed Valen shift in his seat as if to get a better grasp on her conversation with Cavallas.
"If you are looking for allies, you're looking in the wrong place human. My people prefer to stay out of drow squabbles."
"I didn't ask the opinion of your people, I asked where you stand, you are obviously helping the rebels by supplying them with information on any movements about and around this lake, what's to stop you from supplying the same to the Valsharess?"
The ferryman stood by the wheel in silence for a time, choosing his words. "Drow are formidable warriors." He finally broke his silence. "Drow united under the Valsharess' banner are a scourge on Toril. She threatens not only the Seer's way of life, she threatens the whole of Underdark and once she conquers these caverns she will not stop until she has the whole of Toril under her thumb. It is unfortunate that my brethren fail to see that."
Tristin sat by Cavallas's side digesting everything he had divulged to her and they traveled in silence for a while. Deekin seemed to have exhausted his line of questions to the tiefling and was busy scribbling away in his journal. Valen sat motionless on front of her, if she didn't know any better he might have been a statue. Only the rhythmic splash of the oars seemed to make any sound on the lake.
"Land Ho." Cavallas finally spoke. Tristin and Valen looked up and they saw an outline of a dark and large mound looming on the horizon. A bright dot of a campfire was visible somewhere up the middle of the island.
Tristin pointed towards the dot. "You see that?"
Valen noded. "Must be the deurgar scavengers Cavallas mentioned."
"Tell me about the island again." She asked.
"The Maker's Island, holds the tomb of some ancient wizard. Our own scouts have never been able to find the entrance, the fact that there is a campfire, someone must have found something."