Crystal Doors #2: Ocean Realm (No. 2) (17 page)

King Barak was attended by colorful fish and a pair of guardian sharks, as if they were royal retainers. His large reptilian eyes were wide and curious, and he looked thirsty for blood — Tiaret’s blood, Gwen was sure. Because of Azric’s claims about the cousins’ powerful potential, she doubted Orpheon or the king would allow either of them to be slain. But they might let her get hurt, and Gwen was uncomfortably aware that the evil wizard considered her lean, dark-skinned friend to be expendable.

Tiaret studied the selection of weapons and chose a heavy spear tipped with a sharp narwhal tusk. A barbed hook attached to the side of the spear appeared to have been cut and sharpened from the fallen anchor of a ship. Tiaret experimentally jabbed and swung the spear in the water, then nodded with satisfaction. “This is similar to my teaching staff.”

Gwen chose the longest sword she could find and a broad golden shield made from the discarded scale of a sea serpent. Flow holes perforated the wide sword blade so that it swept sideways more easily through the water. She swished the sword several times, trying to accustom herself to its movement. Each time, she seemed to be battling in slow motion, unless she turned the sword precisely edge-on to the direction of her movement, or when she thrust forward. Either way, she decided she could cause some damage.

The female merlon general snarled, “Those are fighting weapons, not playthings!”

From where he observed, Orpheon chuckled. “Some might consider fighting to be play, Goldskin.”

The merlon king shouted, “I grow tired of this! Begin your exercises immediately. But try not to spill too much blood in the water. It may be difficult to control the sharks.”

Gwen and Tiaret floated side by side, prepared to face their opponent. Holding up her shield, Gwen raised her sword to defend herself. Tiaret drifted, kicking her feet, on guard.

Goldskin sprang at them. As if they had rehearsed and coordinated their attack, she and her two eels struck from different directions.

“Careful, Gwenya!” Tiaret lunged forward with her horn-tipped spear. The crimson and black eels easily darted aside. Goldskin seemed to ignore Gwen, seeing Tiaret as the primary threat. She pulled out her weighted grappling hook, swung it in the water, and hurled it toward the girl from Afirik.

Tiaret spun out of the way, and the hook sailed past her. Goldskin yanked the cord to an abrupt stop and pulled it back, like a fly fisherman reeling in her cast. Tiaret whirled and held up her spear in defense. The grappling hook caught on the spear. Goldskin tugged, but Tiaret’s grip was strong. They wrestled. Tiaret would not let go.

Switching tactics, Goldskin drew her razor-sharp seashell knife and slashed the cord, severing the connection to the grappling hook. At the unexpected release, Tiaret tumbled backward in the water. The female general snatched her chance and swung furiously with her ornate seashell dagger.

Meanwhile, both eels came at Gwen, flashing jagged teeth and preventing her from helping her friend. Instinctively, she raised the golden scale shield, and the black eel chomped on its edge. Its jaws were strong enough to dent even the sea serpent armor. Like an alligator with its prey, the eel tried to shake the shield free, but Gwen ripped the scale away, then turned it and smashed its edge down on the black eel’s head.

She didn’t have time to think. The crimson eel came at her from below. Gwen realized another primary difference between fighting on land and battling here under the sea: During their exercises in Elantya, she only practiced fighting opponents coming at her from various directions at ground-level. Here, though, she had to worry about up and down as well, fighting in three dimensions instead of two.

Gwen yanked her feet up, did a half-somersault in the water, and began churning back down straight toward the oncoming eel. Surprised by her aggressive move, the red serpentine thing darted sideways to rejoin its black counterpart, which had recovered from the stunning blow from her shield. Gwen turned to face the two eels, shield in one hand and perforated sword in the other, waiting for their attack.

Nearby, Goldskin drove in, dodging the jabs and thrusts of Tiaret’s spear. The black shell in Gwen’s ear amplified the vibrations of the weapons clashing in the water. The merlon king cheered and applauded, while Orpheon seemed to be waiting for someone to get hurt.

The female general swam close enough to grab Tiaret’s spear by the shaft and pull herself forward to grapple with the girl. Her dagger slashed, and Tiaret squirmed away, but the blade’s edge sliced her arm, releasing a splash of red into the water. Tiaret didn’t even wince as she grabbed the merlon general’s wrist to prevent Goldskin from stabbing with the tip of her dagger. They wrestled, whirling in the water.

While Gwen was distracted for just an instant, both the red and black eels streaked toward her like fanged javelins. Her body was attuned now, her reactions set on a hair trigger — just as her mother had taught. The deadly eels considered Gwen’s hesitation to fight a mark of weakness. They came in low, mouths wide, clearly intending to bite off a foot or rip a great mouthful of meat from her thigh.

As the creatures flashed in, Gwen tucked her feet close to her body and twirled the sword, turning the blade exactly edge-on as she slashed through the water. She sliced down just as the black eel lunged up. Feeling barely any impact at all, she chopped cleanly through it.

The two halves of the black eel twitched and wriggled, as if trying to reassemble themselves.

The crimson eel recoiled in shock upon seeing its partner sliced in half. Gwen swung her sword sideways, water flowing easily through the holes in the blade. Then, with a flick of her wrist she stabbed upward, gutting the second eel. Its innards spilled out. Still writhing, the two dead creatures drifted away.

Seeing both of her eels dispatched, Goldskin let out a strange cry. She yanked away from Tiaret and plunged murderously toward Gwen, who stared in momentary surprise at her own success.

Tiaret, though, would not let her friend be attacked from behind. She spun her narwhal spear and used its barbed hook to snag the back of Goldskin’s armor. The hook jerked the female general backward, thrashing and snarling, so that she accidentally dropped her shell dagger. Goldskin tore off her armorplate and extended her curved claws, ready to tear both Tiaret and Gwen to shreds.

“Enough!” King Barak shouted.

Tiaret yanked back on her spear, releasing Goldskin’s heavy armorplate, which sank slowly toward the sea floor.

“You need more practice, Goldskin,” the king said in an annoyed tone. “Your two opponents seemed to be competent fighters, but one of my own generals overestimates her skills.”

“Maybe these two girls should lead your armies, King Barak,” Orpheon taunted the merlon leader. As he laughed at his own joke, Tiaret acted on impulse. She hurled her narwhal-tusk spear with all of her strength. Even before knowing what the man had done to Piri, she hadn’t needed more reason than his betrayal of Ven Rubicas to kill Orpheon. Her long pointed shaft flashed like a bullet through the water on a precise course.

Orpheon only had time to look up in surprise. He raised his hands and recoiled, but not quickly enough. The sharp spear plunged into the center of his chest, through his heart, and emerged bloody-tipped from his back.

Shocked to see the spear protruding from their enemy’s chest, Gwen stayed on guard next to her friend, holding her shield. She swallowed. They waited for the attack to come, certain the merlons would respond violently.

All of the apprentices despised Orpheon, Gwen as much as anyone. Like the merlons, Azric’s henchman wanted to destroy all of Elantya and every person who lived on it. He had committed enough atrocities to warrant a death sentence ten times over. Even so, she felt nauseated to see him skewered by the harpoon.

Orpheon did not cry out in pain, however. Nor did he die as Gwen had expected.

With a mystified and annoyed expression on his face, he looked down at the shaft protruding from his chest, and reached behind him, clumsily trying to grasp the sharp end that stuck out from his spine. Looking aggrieved, he grasped the spear and pulled it out one inch at a time.

When he finally succeeded and let the loose spear drift away from him, the gaping wound in his chest quickly sealed itself. Hardly any blood had wafted into the water. “That hurts,” Orpheon said angrily. “Surely you knew that Azric and I are both immortals. A simple spear or sword can’t harm either of us.”

Tiaret recovered from her shock and disappointment. She glared at her nemesis. “Nevertheless, I am glad to have tried.”

After what she had just witnessed, Gwen shuddered at the implications. Until now, she hadn’t quite believed the stories about the dark sages’ immortality. If Azric did force her and Vic to break open the sealed crystal doors, entire armies of such immortal warriors would be unleashed. Even if Elantya could collect all the bright sages from all the worlds, how could they stand against such a powerful threat?

With a glare of disappointment at her two dead eels, Goldskin swam away in angry defeat. Merlon guards came forward to take away Gwen’s shield and sword. Then the sharks, always hungry, were allowed to gobble the remains of the eels.

19

FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL days, working at the edge of the lavaja cracks was like hell underwater — a constant reminder to Sharif of how Piri had been destroyed. Although the young man from Irrakesh hardly noticed the miserable conditions, he could not forget how he had watched Orpheon hurl the djinni sphere into the fissure of molten crystal. He also felt acute disappointment that the summoning rune had not worked on his flying carpet. He simply existed from second to second.

Droplets of lavaja continued to erupt sporadically from the cracks, splattering and burning Sharif’s skin. The instability of the oozing hot crystal and the landscape made him wonder if Piri’s death had caused an underground storm. Poor Piri. . . .

After her training duel against the female merlon general, Tiaret had been assigned to labor beside him and the broken merlon slaves at Lavaja Canyon, while Vic and Gwen guided the plodding sea turtles off to where Lyssandra worked with the anemonite scientists. Sharif saw his other friends only in the evenings, when they were all thrown together again in the tower room. There, they could commiserate, compare notes, and secretly refine their developing plan for escape.

Sharif, though, felt empty inside. The challenges seemed insurmountable. Even if he had still possessed Piri and his flying carpet, how could the five friends have hoped to defeat the entire merlon kingdom, overthrow two immortal wizards, and save Elantya? It did not seem possible.

Searingly bright molten crystal bubbled up at the edge of the ever-expanding cracks in the sea floor, and the downtrodden slaves were forced to use heavy crucibles, insulated scoops, and reinforced barrels to harvest the lavaja. Tiaret, with her easy strength, lifted scoops to fill thick-walled barrels that the sea turtles plodded away with, taking the precious magical substance to the anemonites, who worked on their experiments under the hostile and watchful gaze of Blackfrill.

Working beside Sharif now, her ankle tied to a seaweed tether just like his, Tiaret seemed to focus all of her thoughts on anger, striving to find a way to fight back or to escape.

“Interesting, is it not,” she commented, “that any merlon can aspire to leadership and attain it merely by proving fierceness in battle and an ability to survive?” By now, the five companions had observed merlons enough to understand that theirs was a laddered society based on personal merit and physical skill, demonstrated in combat and leadership.

As a born prince himself, Sharif had found it unusual. Servants could become slave drivers, slave drivers became guards, guards became warriors, warriors became generals, and generals could become kings or queens. Beneath the servants were only the useful animals and the slaves. He labored with his scoop in silent contemplation.

Since first arriving in the merlon city, Sharif had frequently found himself wondering what he was — a thought that had rarely occurred to him in Elantya, where Virs and fisherfolk, sages and apprentices, and individuals from every craft and trade shared nearly identical privileges. As with any group, there were leaders and followers, of course, though Elantyans took care not to lord it over one another, even when they were endowed with greater authority, technical skill, or magical powers.

Around the ragged, blazing ocean bed, merlon guards kept close watch on their workers, moving the excavation teams, sending off the transport animals. The lavaja was capricious. Cracks opened, spewed hot crystal, then sealed up again like healed wounds.

Parts of the canyon floor resembled marshes of bubbling lavaja. In these wide expanses, unfortunately, the most potent molten crystal surged up. But as the work leaders dispatched slaves to retrieve it, the danger became painfully apparent. In the past two days of working here, Sharif had watched five of the merlon slaves die in mishaps, venturing too far forward on the hot, unstable ground and into the boiling water above it. What a waste of life.

Naturally, Sharif himself had always known that he was better than most others, simply by birthright. As the son of a powerful Sultan, he automatically inherited great wealth, as well as the right to receive the best education and to demand the respect and loyalty of the people he was destined one day to rule.

After his brother’s death, though, Sharif had changed. He turned his back on the Air Spirits of Irrakesh, refusing to acknowledge their authority in any way, since they had failed his brother. He rebelled against his father’s expectations and the strictures of court life. He flouted traditions. That had made it all the easier for Sharif not to mention who he was when his father had sent him to study in Elantya.