Crystal Doors #1 (24 page)

The girl from Afirik growled, “A merlon invasion force is probably even now ready to slip into our city. They mean to overwhelm us.”

Gwen drew a deep breath. “Then it’s up to us to warn the city. Let’s get some guards down here, and construction workers to seal up that pool.” She jumped back from the edge,
startled. “Wait, I saw something down there! Shadows shaped like —”

“Merlons!” Vic finished for her.

In a gush of bubbles from below, aquatic warriors streaked upward like scaly otters. A pair of amphibious men burst out of the pool passage with a heavy splash, surging up like monstrous jack-in-the-boxes.

Gwen was closest to the sacks of powdered crystal dust. In a defensive reflex, she yanked a bulky bag from the moist floor and threw the heavy weight at the nearest merlon, which bowled the creature into its companion. The sack burst, spraying the glittering powder over both scaled warriors.

Two more merlons came up behind them, pushing the first pair out of the way. From the pool many more amphibious attackers slithered up.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Vic shouted. “Call for help!”

“We must stop them from getting into the city.” Tiaret stepped forward and began to make a good accounting of herself with the teaching staff.

Beside her, Lyssandra kicked open one of the wooden crates, splintering the sides. Crowded inside were sealed jars of food, which she began to throw at the merlons. One hard container smacked a creature on its sensitive tympanic membranes. Other jars bounced off greenish scales and shell-plate armor. Gwen joined her, and both of them began pummeling the invaders. Jars shattered, and syrupy preserves splattered the hissing merlons.

“Hey, Doc — I’ve got an idea!” Vic shouted. He turned and
bolted as fast as he could up the passageway from which they had come, shining his LED flashlight ahead of him. Just like that, he was gone.

“Taz! Where do you think you’re going?” Her cousin raced out of sight up the slippery, narrow passage toward the surface. “If we don’t stay and hold them off, who will?”

Sharif tucked Piri’s glowing ball into the mesh pouch to free his hands. The merlons cringed from the bright light. The boy from Irrakesh picked up another sack of crystal dust and used all his strength to swing it forward at another dripping creature that emerged from the watery passage. The merlon slashed with a scalloped sword, and the sack split open, spraying dust across its scales and into its face. The hard crust clung to the merlon, covering its eyes with grit. The blinded creature dropped into the pool to wash itself off.

But more merlons emerged, far more than the small group of defenders could hope to stop.

After dragging Tiaret from the fray, Gwen, Lyssandra, and Sharif pulled the crates together to form a barricade in front of them, blocking the narrow passage up which Vic had just fled. Gwen looked over her shoulder, irritated with her cousin, but soon the merlons’ clawing against the crude barrier demanded all of her attention. Sea-urchin clubs and shell-tipped spears jabbed at them through the stacked crates. They would tear through the blockade before long.

A merlon warrior slashed with a narwhal-horn dagger, and Gwen deflected it with a crate lid she had torn free to use as a shield. “I wish we’d brought some spell scrolls with us — even a crystal-lighting spell.”

Switching languages, Lyssandra echoed the bubbly sounds of the merlons. The creatures paused as if taken aback, glared at her, and then advanced with renewed vigor.

“What did you say to them?” Tiaret asked.

Lyssandra gave a faint smile. “I told them that if they did not leave, we would make them into a fish stew.”

“I don’t think they found your threat convincing,” Gwen said. A merlon knocked a crate aside and dove toward her, but she ducked with her
zy’oah
training made her duck and hit it in the forehead with the crate lid. She desperately wanted to know where Vic had gone. Had he just run away? She didn’t think her cousin was a coward. She had seen him battle flying piranhas, and he’d put up a good fight on the
Golden Walrus.
What other explanation could there be?

Removing the eggsphere, Sharif faced the encroaching merlons. “Piri, I need you to do something for me.” He glanced down at the nymph djinni. “It is difficult and dangerous, but I know you can do it.”

Flickering orange, the tiny female nodded, understanding what he wanted her to do. With pride, Sharif held the sphere toward the hissing merlons, who worked to shove aside the crate barricade.

Then, inside the crystal ball, the djinni’s tiny feminine form crossed her arms and legs, and her hair rippled, crackling with red electricity. Sharif shouted, hoping their aquatic attackers couldn’t understand Elantyan. “Everyone, close your eyes!”

Gwen instinctively did as her friend told her. Lyssandra and Tiaret both put a forearm over their faces.

A powerful burst of white light shot through the chamber, so intense it burned even through Gwen’s tightly closed eyelids. Startled, the merlons hissed and roared. When Gwen opened her eyes again, she saw bright spots as if she had looked directly into a camera flash. The blinded merlons were reeling. Their scaled, moist bodies smoked from the intensity of the flash.

Exhausted and drawn, Sharif folded his shaking legs and sat on the rocky floor. Inside her eggsphere, emitting a barely visible yellow glow, Piri appeared to be unconscious, as if she had used all of her power in the single blast of light.

The chamber was now dim, but Gwen and her companions were not dazzled as the merlons had been. “Come on, we’ve got to use the advantage!” She climbed over the barricade, snatched one of the sea-urchin clubs from a stunned merlon, and swung it like a baseball bat. The impact against the attacker’s armor knocked them both in opposite directions.

The blinded creatures were beginning to grope their way back to their feet. Lyssandra played tug-of-war with one of the creatures, trying to yank its spear free. Tiaret jabbed with the pointed end of her staff. Sharif, still too weak to fight, stayed behind the barricade.

Gwen knocked one of the off-balance warriors into the pool, from which even more merlons were emerging. Scrambling back over the barricade with Tiaret and Lyssandra, Gwen knew they couldn’t last long against such an army. They should have called for help from the first moment they saw the merlons. Maybe that was what Vic had done! He could be returning any second now with the full Elantyan guard.

From behind, she heard skittering, sliding footsteps as someone ran down the passage. “Here I come!” Vic slipped, caught his balance against the wall, and then continued to run headlong, shining his LED flashlight in front of him. Her cousin barely slowed as he bounded into the chamber. Gwen caught his arm and spun him to a halt.

Ahead of them, the hissing merlons angrily tore at the weak barricade.

“Lyssandra! I need you.” Vic clutched a rolled piece of parchment in his hand. The telepathic girl staggered away from a merlon’s thrusting scimitar, and Vic caught her before she could fall. “Here, you’ve got to use this! You’re the only one who can!”

Lyssandra took the scrap of paper. “What is this?”

Vic held up his miniature flashlight, so she could see the scroll. “It’s the shield spell Sage Rubicas was working on. He left it on his lab table when he and Orpheon went to see the Pentumvirate, so I grabbed it.” He panted. “I just didn’t think it was so far away!”

Gwen looked at her cousin, surprised and pleased. “You stole that spell from Rubicas? It was just a rough draft.”

“Sure, but we saw that it works, right? Oh, and I think help is on the way. I sounded an alarm, sort of.”

“How could you sound an alarm?”

“Well, I snatched the spell and ran. Somebody yelled after me, but I couldn’t stop. I yelled, ‘Sound the alarm and follow me.’ Guards were chasing after me when I came down here.” He grinned. “They should be here any minute.”

Gwen shook her head. “I suppose that’s one way of doing it.”

Lyssandra held up the draft scroll and said in dismay, “I cannot read this! Only some of it is in Elantyan. Parts of it are in the ancient language. I am not sure if—” Then, steeling herself, she began to read the words aloud, stumbling with her pronunciation.

Gwen helped Sharif move behind the copper-haired girl. Tiaret waited, ready to fight if the spell didn’t work. Several merlons extended their clawed, webbed hands and tore at the weakening barricade. Other aquatic warriors smashed it with their shell-edged swords and sea-urchin clubs.

As soon as the girl’s strengthening voice finished the incantation with a firm “S’ibah!”, a shimmering wall like solidified water stretched in front of the tunnel opening, forming a translucent skin just as the warriors broke through the barricade.

The magical shield blocked the surprised merlons. The enemy warriors threw themselves against the invisible wall, jabbing with their undersea weapons. But the spell barrier held.

“You did it, Lyssandra! I knew you could!” Vic looked at Gwen and gave her a cocky grin. “Pretty good idea, huh? Figured that out myself.”

Gwen punched him in the shoulder. “I didn’t think you would just run away.”

“Viccus has proved his bravery before,” Tiaret said.

“Sheesh, I couldn’t stand around and explain. Somebody would have argued, and then we would have had a whole long discussion, and then you would have listed at least five reasons why you should go instead of me. That’s just for starters.” He gave a huff. “I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast!”

In a surprising surge of emotion she hugged Vic. “One way or another, Taz, we’re going to help the Elantyans win this war. Then they’ll have tons of time to help us bring your dad here.”

Vic grinned. “And find my mother.”

Helpless behind the barrier, the merlon intruders snarled. Gwen looked to Lyssandra for a translation, but with a wry smile, the telepathic young woman shook her head. “You would not want to know what they are saying.”

“Of course I would,” Gwen said. “I want to know
everything.”

“They said that our entrails will become necklaces for their children, and —”

At last a loud clamor came from the tunnels behind them, and a breathless Rubicas, Vir Helassa, and numerous Elantyan guards appeared carrying suntips and weapons.

“I was hoping you’d all get here soon,” Vic said.

At the sight of the merlons, Vir Helassa looked simultaneously shocked and filled with righteous fury. “They now dare to attack us from within our own city?” She scowled. “What is holding them at bay?”

“A force shield,” Gwen said. Sharif, mostly recovered now, held up Piri’s brightening eggsphere to illuminate the frustrated creatures behind the barrier.

“Ah! Not bad for a work in progress.” Rubicas saw the scroll in Lyssandra’s hand. “May I have my spell back, young lady?”

She gladly gave him the parchment. “I think the shield is fading already.”

“I will reinforce it. Precise pronunciation is critical.” Rubicas read the spell again, thereby doubling the barrier. With the
shield holding, he walked slowly forward, extending the parchment, which pushed the impenetrable barrier in front of him like a slow battering ram, forcing the merlons back.

Helassa crossed her arms over her chest and watched with a look of resolve on her face. She put a guard on either side of the master sage and sent others to fetch engineers and materials to seal the off the breach in Elantya’s defenses.

While Helassa continued snapping orders, Rubicas and the two guards took several more steps into the chamber, and the shield drove the invaders backward. Merlon snarls and frustrated shouts grew louder, until finally they were all crowded back to the watery trapdoor. Seeing no alternative, the thwarted invaders plunged into the sinister passage and swam away one by one.

The last merlon stood with his clawed feet planted on the rocky floor. He bowed backward, fighting the spell barrier, resisting to the last moment. Finally, still brandishing his shell scimitar, he dropped with barely a ripple into the watery passage.

WITH THE MERLON INCURSION foiled, the Elantyans pulled together. The once-passive undersea dwellers had become a very real threat — to all Elantyans, not just the sailors and fishermen. The entire city was now on high alert, and everyone made emergency preparations.

The Pentumvirate held two more war councils to determine how the island republic could best fight against the undersea enemy. All sages were told to prepare spells, while Vir Helassa commanded the home guard to distribute conventional weaponry that anyone could use.

All night, patrols marched along the shore and up and down the steep streets, watching for merlon spies slithering through the shadows. All citizens were ready to raise an alarm if they saw any sign of sea serpents, brewing storms, or
flying piranhas. The Elantyans would not underestimate the danger again.

Surrounded by stinking fumes and hot furnaces, the anemonite Sage Polup clanked about in his chemistry labs, working to re-create an explosive chemical mixture that he and his people had discovered near the bases of submerged volcanoes.

In the well-lit Cogitary, historians studied ancient scrolls to glean all that was known of merlons from previous encounters. For millennia, Elantyans had assumed that the uneasy peace would hold between the two races. Obviously, though, something had driven them to increased violence, and the merlons had been making plans for quite a while.