Read Incandescence for Free Online

swim, or at least steer his fall, toward it. As it grew closer, he suffered a dizzying shift of scale; what had seemed like a small glowing benthic creature was a patch of sea floor twenty or thirty meters wide, strewn with scores of individual white lights.
    He put out his arms as he struck the bottom, jarring his elbows and shoulders, burying his face in sticky mud. He rolled upright, sitting on his haunches, amazed that he still had any strength left. There was a hammering at his throat imploring him to inhale, but he wasn't going to breathe water and pull down the curtain prematurely.
    As the silt around him settled Rakesh rose to his feet. The white lights scattered across the sea floor were piles of bones. Some were more or less whole human skeletons, others were jumbled assortments of parts. Some bacterial infestation had rendered them all phosphorescent as they decayed.
    He must have begun to vocalize something, because he found salt water suddenly burning his nostrils and palate, as if he'd taken a heedless preparatory breath. He rapidly forgot whatever curse he'd been aiming at Csi, and fought desperately to get the water into his stomach instead of his lungs.
    As he forced down the mouthful of brine, he felt something hard and smooth under his tongue. He clamped his hand to his mouth and managed to expel the thing without admitting any more water. He didn't need to hold it up to the ghost light to know what it was; his fingertips told him. It was the glass key that Lahl had given him.
    And here it opened. what?
    Rakesh crouched down and groped through the mud. What had Csi planted? A treasure chest? That might be worth searching for, so long as it contained an oxygen tank and not a pile of worthless coins.
    He rose to his feet again and looked around at the graveyard of failed divers. If there was any logic to this macabre metaphor, surely some of them had come close to the prize, even if they'd been unable to unlock it.
    Blood was pounding in his ears. Overlaid on a random scatter of remains, there seemed to be a group concentrated on a spot about fifteen meters away.
    Rakesh slogged his way toward the hillock of bones. It would have been nice to have Parantham's help at this point, but she seemed to have landed elsewhere, or been shunted right out of his version of the scenario.
    As he waded in among the ribs and tibias, he felt a pang of desolation. What were these corpses to Csi? Hopes? Friendships? After nearly twice as long in the node as Rakesh, Csi was still stranded.
    Without leaving the scape, Rakesh spawned an insentient messenger who'd visit Csi after a week had passed and hand him a copy of the key. For all the scorn and derision he'd heaped upon the sirens' call, there was a chance that after a few days' reflection Csi might change his mind and decide to follow them.
    His conscience salved, Rakesh put aside his squeamishness and dived into the graveyard of travelers' ambitions. His skull was bursting, but he was determined to find the tin box with the treasure map, or whatever Csi's wry punchline was, before he surrendered consciousness.
    His fingers hit metal. Jubilantly, he moved his hands apart to try to span the edges, but the surface just went on and on. The treasure chest was more like a vault, at least a few meters wide.
    He probed the metal beneath the mound of bones, scanning back and forth with his fingertips. Streaks of light flashed behind his eyes, followed like thunder by a bludgeoning pain. Finally he held out the key itself and scraped it blindly over the vault's unyielding surface.
    Something gave, and his hand moved. Probably the key had just slipped. Rakesh waggled it, disbelieving. It had entered a keyhole, and it fitted snugly.
    He tried to plow some of the mound aside, but he soon gave up. He doubted that he'd have the strength to lift the vault's huge door even if he could clear it first. Still, there was something satisfying about getting this far. Let Csi paint his