Crystal Doors #1 (21 page)

As two more creatures approached, Vic held the two flat pans in opposite hands and brought them together like crashing cymbals. The metal clanged like a gong, sending vibrations all the way up to Vic’s shoulders.

The echoing noise was deafening, and the merlons staggered backward as if Vic had hit them with a fire hose. He banged the frying pans together again, and the merlons reeled from the hideous din. Cringing and hissing, they finally dove overboard.

“Thank you, Viccus,” Lyssandra said. “They did not seem interested in talking.”

He stood beside her, sweating. “Sure thing. Unfortunately, you might have a chance to return the favor in just a few seconds.” He held his pans in aching hands, ready to swing again in any direction. He was glad now for all of his
zy’oah
training. He wondered if his mother had ever been here in this world, and if she had even fought merlons herself… .

Six more hissing aquatic warriors climbed onto the deck. Tiaret spun like a whirlwind. The blows from her teaching staff sounded like a hammer striking wet meat. Yelling in anger, Captain Dimas and his crew also fought right and left, but the merlons kept coming.

After conferring, Kaisa and Snigmythya worked together. Snigmythya grabbed small pieces of splintered wood and
hurled the kindling in the face of the nearest merlon, while Lyssandra’s mother read a brief household spell from a tattered scroll. Though the pieces of broken wood were too small to cause direct harm, Kaisa’s fire-lighting spell took hold with a vengeance. The timing was perfect. All the splinters burst into flames, and the flash of fire caused the merlon warrior to flail wildly. The long strands of seaweed hair smoldered and curled. Grinning at the surprisingly simple victory, the two women tried their trick again. Snigmythya threw more kindling at two oncoming merlons, and the ensuing flash drove the pair back.

Captain Dimas used his physical strength, throwing himself at one attacker. Ducking under a scalloped scimitar, he grabbed the enemy’s arm. They wrestled, and Dimas tried to strangle the warrior, which proved ineffective on a creature with gills. With his free hand, the merlon raked claws down the captain’s chest, ripping his shirt and his skin. Dimas gasped, lost his grip on the slimy scales, and reeled off-balance.

Too late, Vic shouted a warning, as a second merlon seized the captain’s tunic, drove him to the rail, and threw Dimas overboard into the dangerous waters, where merlons quickly fell on him. Though the captain fought to the last, the enemy creatures dragged him under the water.

Horrified, Vic let his attention waver, and before he could react, a merlon wrenched one of his frying pans out of his grip. Vic yelped, twisted with a sudden fluid movement, and swung his other pan, landing a glancing blow on the merlon’s
head crest. The creature tossed the first frying pan over the side rail. Vic backed closer to Lyssandra, holding up the last pan like a club.

Seeing their captain fall, the rest of the
Walrus’s
crew snarled for vengeance. They already understood this was a fight to the death. The sailors did not give up, even though merlons continued to emerge from the water. The muscular men threw themselves into the fray, using clubs, lengths of metal chain, broken pieces of deck rail, the tip of a boat hook.

Kaisa and Snigmythya used their brief fire spell again, but they were running out of fuel and the flashes in the air were too small, designed primarily for lighting candles and torches, without enough heat to burn the merlons.

Vic saw a snapped yardarm rolling on the deck. Since he could no longer clang his pans together, he stopped the heavy pole with a foot, then shouted to Lyssandra. “Pick up the other end! The two of us can carry it!”

After looking at him in confusion, the petite girl touched his arm and understood what he intended. Holding the long beam between them, Vic and Lyssandra rushed at two aquatic warriors. The horizontal pole bowled over the attackers, knocking them back into the ocean.

“Another two down,” Vic ranted. “About a million more to go. Right now, I sure would be happy to see the Elantyan cavalry.”

“Elantya has no cavalry. We are a small island, without any horses —”

He gave her a wry smile. “You’re supposed to be telepathic. How come you can’t figure out what I mean?”

“Your head is full of strange cultural references. Right now I am too busy to sift through them all.”

“I’ll explain it later — once we survive,” Vic said.

Sage Abakas rushed forward with a long, thin scroll. “The only remaining option is the bubble-of-death! But we cannot use it, since the merlons do not breathe air. It will suffocate us instead.”

“Wait! That spell steals all the oxygen, right?”

“It takes away the breathable air, yes. It will have no effect on —”

Vic let out a heavy sigh. “Doesn’t Elantya’s great Citadel have a basic biology class! Fish live underwater, but they still need oxygen. Their gills filter it out of the water, just like our lungs filter it out of the air. I bet if you cast that bubble-of death
into the watery
the merlons won’t be able to breathe either!”

“Air? In water?” The sage did not seem to understand.

Tiaret swung the heavy end of her staff to crack a merlon’s skull, then followed through to drive the sharp point into the ribs of another attacker. “Whatever you do, Sages, I suggest you do it soon. I… I would trust Viccus.”

Abakas saw even more merlons swimming around the hull, and clearly realized that they would overrun the
Golden Walrus
soon. “I have always taught that one learns best by experimentation.…” He read the incantation in its incomprehensible magical language. As he finished the last phrasing, Abakas pointed at the sea around the ship and yelled “S’ibah!”

Suddenly the blue-green color changed, becoming black and still. A pool of swift death spread outward like a stain, sucking all the breathable oxygen from the sea. As the dark boundary swept past the swimming merlons, they struggled and choked. Rows of gill flaps on the sides of their heads opened and closed like gasping red mouths.

In a panic, merlon warriors tried to swim beyond the zone of death, but the black suffocation continued to spread. Unable to get out of range in time, one of the scaled warriors floated belly-up, then slowly sank again, dragged down by the weight of his shell armor and weapons. A pair of motionless sharks drifted up to take its place.

With no new attackers climbing up from the water, the battered and bleeding crew redoubled their efforts against the enemies on the stained deck. They killed two of the scaled warriors, and drove three more overboard into the deadly water.

Stillness descended like a sudden rain shower. In a moment of quiet, the survivors stood panting, ready for another attack that did not come. The merlons had been driven off for now, and the wrecked vessel was protected by the black zone of suffocating water.

Groups of silvery fish also floated to the surface, dead — innocent bystanders in this conflict. Vic felt sorry for the fish, since they had done nothing to warrant being slaughtered, other than swimming in the wrong place at the wrong time. But then, he thought grimly, Captain Dimas had also perished, murdered by the merlons — and
he
had done nothing to provoke this attack. None of the people on the
Golden Walrus
had done anything to earn this. Apparently the merlons
wanted to kill all land-dwellers for no particular reason. The undersea people intended to destroy ships and keep the Elantyans away from the oceans.

“Uh, how long does that bubble of death last?” Vic asked Sage Abakas.

The mathematician looked befuddled, as if surprised that his spell had worked at all. “I am not certain. According to all the records I have read, such a spell is used only as a last resort. In the old wars, such sages always died. Only a few distant onlookers have ever lived to report on the spell’s effectiveness.”

“A dangerous spell to bring aboard a training ship,” Lyssandra said.

Tiaret nodded. “We must use dangerous weapons now that we are at war.”

“Actually, you see, I included the spell scroll by accident,” Snigmythya admitted. “I thought it said Bubble of Flowers. I packed in a bit of a rush.” She looked embarrassed. “A bit of a rush.”

The sages stood together on the splintered and splattered deck, counting their injuries and their dead. In addition to Captain Dimas, two sailors had been killed. With Kaisa directing them, Vic, Lyssandra, and Tiaret tended the wounded as best they could.

“Now that it is over with, I must say that all of you did quite well,” said Snigmythya as if grading a homework lesson. “Quite well. Students, teachers, and sailors. You proved your mettle. Very good, very good.”

“A satisfactory trial run.” Tiaret thumped her teaching staff on a patch of intact deck.

“Trial
run?” Vic asked, surprised.

The dark-skinned girl stared at him. “Think of it as practice, Viccus. The merlons will be back. They know we are here and helpless.”

Night was about to fall. “So… how soon do you suppose Sharif and Gwen can get to Elantya?” Vic asked.

“Not soon enough,” Lyssandra said quietly.

WITH THE MERLONS DRIVEN away, the rest of that day and the long night were nerve-racking but uneventful. Tiaret prowled the deck, never allowing her concentration to waver. The students, sages, and sailors did not go more than a few minutes without looking over the side of the ship at the water, wondering when the attackers would return.

By morning, there was still no word from Sharif and Gwen. Vic’s stomach twisted itself into knots of worry for his cousin. Logically, stranded out here with the merlons planning new ways to sink the damaged ship, he was in a lot more danger than Gwen. But he had already lost his mother, Uncle Rip, and Aunt Fyera. He wasn’t sure when — or if—he would ever see his father again, not to mention Earth. He was in a strange world in the middle of a bizarre, unpredictable war. Gwen was all he had left, and she had been gone so long….

By the next afternoon, a lookout on the tall mast pointed toward a storm brewing on the horizon. The wind picked up, blowing directly toward them. Vic smelled a metallic odor in the breeze. The storm did not seem natural.

Without Captain Dimas, the crew seemed disorganized, but Kaisa, who had been on more voyages than even the first mate, proved ready to make decisions. Her first decision was to put Tiaret in charge of security. Though the girl from Afirik was no older than most of the students, she had more experience in battle than anyone else onboard. Putting to use what she had learned in the Grassland Wars, Tiaret began planning immediately and collecting weapons. Kaisa assigned half of the crew to Tiaret and set the other half to work preparing the ship for bad weather.

Vic and Lyssandra worked together to lash down any remaining loose equipment and supplies. Tiaret came up behind them, moving as silently as a savannah cat. “We cannot avoid the storm, but we can prepare to fight. I have already posted guards belowdecks, in case the merlons try to break through the hull.” She strode off to continue her work.

When they finished their preparations, the telepathic girl pointed out at the sea. Under the lowering gray skies, enormous writhing creatures rose and sank, their massive coils slithering over and around one another. Vic was fascinated in spite of himself. “Tell me those aren’t —”

“Sea serpents? Yes. The merlons herd them and train them.” She indicated the waters directly below them. “I am more concerned with what is swimming beneath the ship.”

The bubble of death spell had dissipated, and the sea had
returned to its normal green-blue — which meant the
Golden Walrus
was once again vulnerable. Vic saw human-shaped shadows gliding deep, as if afraid to approach too closely. They made no threatening moves. Yet.

Uneasy, Vic said, “You’ve been on a lot of voyages. I guess you’re used to stuff like this.”

The telepathic girl shivered. “Not at all. This is hardly a… typical training voyage. I have never experienced such danger, except in dreams.”

Vic let out a long breath. “Well, you look as cool as a snow cone to me.”

She put a hand on his arm, read the meaning of his thought, then gave her head a rueful shake. “I am not cool right now. I know that you, and the others, consider me to be a… distant person. I have friends, but I keep myself apart.”

“But why? You don’t need to keep yourself apart from me.”

She shook her head. “It is because of my telepathy. I see things in my dreams and in visions when I am awake, things I do not wish to see. It is easier not to become attached, to put up barriers, keep everyone at a distance. I am afraid, but I do not bother to show it anymore.”

She crossed her legs on the deck, put her elbows on her knees, and held her head in her hands. Her dark copper curls fell forward, hiding her face from Vic. “Sometimes I cannot escape the images that come into my mind. But for now my thoughts are filled with what my eyes have recently seen — flying piranhas, sailors dying, storms, sea serpents, and attacking merlons.”

Vic cast about for something comforting to say; in the end,
he settled for patting her awkwardly on the back. “Maybe you need to replace those images with something nicer.” He kicked himself mentally. How stupid was
that?.
They were in the middle of a crisis, didn’t even know if they were going to live until the next day, and he was telling her to think pretty thoughts? Great way to make her feel better!