Crystal Doors #2: Ocean Realm (No. 2) (8 page)

Lyssandra called out for help, but no one was near the isolated area to hear them.

Tiaret reached the safety of shore, though the other four companions were trapped in the deeper water of the cove. She raced toward her teaching staff.

The predators weren’t in a feeding frenzy; they did not attack. Instead, the sharks seemed to be corralling the friends, preventing them from escaping to shore — as if they were being guided, somehow. That made Vic even more nervous.

With a wild yell, Tiaret bounded back into the water, swinging her staff. She struck one of the sharks with a mighty splash, smashing its snout with the round dragon’s-eye stone. She threw herself in among the circling predators, but fighting in the water was different from fighting on land. She couldn’t move as swiftly and smoothly as she expected; the water made swinging her staff sluggish.

Then something worse than the sharks arrived. Swimming forms approached like shadows, emerging to show hideous fishlike faces with smooth skin, large eyes, and spiny frills around their heads. They raised clawed, webbed hands.

“I should have known the merlons would arrive sooner or later.” Gwen glared at them.

Tiaret continued to thrash with her teaching staff. Using its pointed end like a spear, she injured another one of the sharks; but the angry merlons soon reached her. They overpowered Tiaret, seized the teaching staff, and wrenched it out of her hand.

One of the six merlons blurred his features, shifting until the face and body became recognizable as human: a handsome yet sneering face, dark hair, dusky skin, and cruel eyes. “Look at the little guppies our sharks caught,” said Orpheon, Rubicas’s treacherous former apprentice. He took Tiaret’s teaching staff from one of the merlons.

“It’s too bad you didn’t hit your head on a rock when you jumped off that cliff,” Gwen said in a cold voice. She and Sharif had chased the traitor from Rubicas’s lab to the edge of the island, where he had transformed into merlon form before leaping into the sea.

Sharif glared at him. “You were afraid to face us. You are a spy and a minion and a coward.”

As if responding to an implied threat, three of the sharks curved up to the surface like dolphins, splashing, showing their wide mouths filled with sharp teeth, then dove again. When the merlons hissed, their gill flaps opened like raw wounds on their necks, fluttering in the air. They extended their claws.

Orpheon said, “Take these two.” He pointed to Vic and Gwen, then smiled wickedly as an idea occurred to him. “In fact, take them all. That one with the copper hair, Lyssandra, can understand merlons. The other two” — he looked dismissively at Tiaret and Sharif — “may provide some sport. I don’t think the flying piranhas have fed recently.”

Merlons grabbed the friends with their slimy hands. Vic gagged at the strong reek of decaying fish that clung to them. He fought back, desperate to get away, thinking of how he and his father had just been reunited. They couldn’t be separated again so soon.

Orpheon muttered some sort of incantation in the merlon language. His eyes glowed green. Crackling sparks flashed around him.

Suddenly remembering, Vic cried out, “Sharif! Use the summoning spell. Call your carpet.”

But the boy from Irrakesh did not hear Vic. A merlon had seized the prince by the hair and pushed his head underwater. Tiaret had never stopped fighting, even after her teaching staff was taken away. Vic thrashed, then slapped one of the merlons on the sensitive tympanic membranes that served as the aquatic creature’s ears. As the hissing merlon reared back, another came forward to grab Vic, extending claws, which dug into his arms.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the merlons pull Sharif’s head out of the water and rake their curved claws along the base of his throat, digging deep into the skin. The prince cried out. The aquatic warriors yanked Lyssandra’s head back. Gwen made a gurgling sound as the merlons also grabbed and slashed parallel lines in her throat.

Vic struggled against the pointed talons pressing into both sides at the base of his own throat. Through the searing pain that pierced his skin, he saw blood staining the calm water around them in the cove.

Then the powerful merlon abductors yanked all five of their captives under the water.

8

IT WAS THE FIRST time Gwen had ever truly believed she was going to die — whether it would be from drowning or from having her throat slashed made little difference. The merlon that dragged her under the water swam with powerful strokes. Unable to breathe, she struggled feebly, feeling the raw pain of the salt water on her torn throat, knowing she was bleeding. Trails of bubbles streamed from the gashes on her neck.

Orpheon’s glimmering green magic infused the water surrounding them. Gwen didn’t understand what was happening.

Other merlons pulled Vic, Lyssandra, Tiaret, and Sharif along. The sleek, branded sharks streaked alongside like prowling guard dogs.

They went deeper, stroking toward the rock barrier that blocked off the cove from the rest of the sea. Farther from the surface and breathable air, Gwen became frantic. The merlon held her in a vise grip. Ahead of them through the dim, turquoise water she could discern that a tunnel had been melted through the breakwater wall, forming a secret passage through which the merlons could whisk the five of them out to the open sea. But that hardly mattered. Gwen and her friends would all perish before long.

She remembered Lyssandra’s frightening dreams of merlons and drowning. It was too late now to heed the prophetic warnings.

Strangely, Gwen felt the long claw-mark gashes in her throat fizzing, bubbling . . . improving somehow. Her lungs ached. Right now her greatest need was for air. Gwen tried to endure just a minute longer as the merlons tugged their five captives through the hole in the undersea wall.

She was going to black out in a few seconds, she knew it. She hoped the merlons would surface on the other side, give her a chance to breathe. If Orpheon and the aquatic creatures simply wished to kill the five friends, this was a very complicated way to accomplish it.

But once they were all through the breakwater, instead of taking their captives up for air, the merlons followed the ocean floor as it dropped sharply away to shadowy depths. Gwen’s lungs were about to explode, and the merlons were going deeper and deeper!

The water grew cooler, darker, or maybe her vision was fading. Oddly enough, the pain from the claw wounds in her throat had subsided. Now they itched rather than burned. Her head pounded, but she couldn’t let herself pass out. It wouldn’t just be fainting, it would be dying.

She struggled for a few last moments of life while her merlon captor squeezed harder, digging vicious claws into her arm. But how much more harm could they do to her now? She wished she’d had a chance to say goodbye to Uncle Cap.

Finally, when she could bear it no longer, Gwen drew in a huge breath, knowing that it would be heavy, liquid death and not blessed air. At least she would foil whatever plans Orpheon and the evil merlons had for them.

But as she drew in a gulp, instead of choking she felt the cool water rush through the slash wounds in her throat. It was like breathing! Water flowed in, filled her lungs. It was the strangest sensation, like a dense bubble inside her. The slashes in her throat were . . . gill slits! Orpheon had worked some kind of spell, and she was drawing oxygen from the seawater.

Gwen coughed, jerked, spasmed, and took in another gulp. Her vision began to clear. She blinked in amazement. Water circulated through her windpipe and lungs just like air. Because of the thickness of the seawater, she had to work harder to breathe — but she was breathing! Breathing water.

She turned to see Tiaret thrashing, amber eyes bulging as she desperately tried to hold her breath. Vic had already succumbed and was now sucking deep breaths of water through his gill slits, an expression of comical surprise on his face. He looked at Gwen and pointed to his throat. She nodded. Sharif was also breathing through gills, as was Lyssandra. When Tiaret finally began to draw in water, she fought with a greater determination, struggling until a second merlon seized her other arm.

Their captors continued dragging them downward, far out to the depths of the sea. Once the five friends grew too weary to struggle any more, their merlon captors paused to fit them each with a heavy belt made of seashells to reduce buoyancy, like the weights scuba divers used. Uncle Cap had kept something like that with his gear on the purple speedboat.

Then the merlons took hold of the sharks’ fins, as if the deadly creatures were pet dolphins, and let the predators pull them and their captives swiftly along. The journey seemed interminable.

Gwen’s eyes gradually adjusted to the dimness. Knowing they had no chance of escaping, she grew dismayed. Only an hour ago, their future had looked bright and optimistic. Uncle Cap had just arrived, the repairs to the city’s harbor were almost complete, Rubicas was re-creating his shield spell, and all Elantyans were preparing to stand together against the merlons.

But they had been caught off-guard yet again.

Their undersea captors towed them over anemone-strewn coral reef cliffs and dropped down into a waving forest of golden and green fronds that looked like the doolya stalks they had used for filling Rubicas’s tank. The sharks guided the group through the seaweed forest, knowing their way.

Because of her interest in marine biology, Gwen couldn’t help being intrigued by her environment. Although being held captive by merlons dampened a bit of her natural scientific curiosity, she looked around her, identifying species of fish, mollusks, and undersea plants — some of them, that is. There were plenty of creatures here she had never seen before. She wondered if even the most famous undersea explorers had ever seen such marvels.

On the silty sea bottom, giant purple clams gaped open, showing what looked like large gray tongues inside. The shadows of the passing sharks triggered a reflex in the clams, and the big shells slammed shut like warehouse doors being locked for the night.

As they were all dragged along, Vic showed wary interest, and Lyssandra appeared withdrawn. Sharif looked stunned and outraged while, from the mesh sack dangling on his chest, Piri throbbed through a series of angry reds and oranges. Tiaret’s entire body seemed to project righteous fury, but she had ceased her overt struggles, for now.

Waving to get everyone’s attention, Vic pointed ahead, and Gwen turned to see something she had never expected to encounter again: the Golden Walrus. The broad cargo ship that had served the students on their training voyage now lay tilted to one side on the ocean floor, displaying the gaping holes in its hull. Tatters of the rigging chewed by the flying piranhas now rippled in the water currents as if blown by a ghostly breeze. When they passed over a rocky ridge, the shipwreck disappeared from view.

Finally, up ahead, Gwen saw their destination — an enormous merlon city at the bottom of the ocean. Buoyed by water, the architecture relied on sweeping organic shapes integrated into the tall rocks on the sea floor. The multihued towers, frilly balconies, cupolas, and spires looked as if they were made from coral and mother-of-pearl. Some smaller buildings were obviously created out of immense shells, and Gwen guessed that the merlons must kill giant undersea creatures to use the shells for individual dwellings, like hermit crabs did. The city had no streets, because swimming merlons needed none. Seaweed and anemone gardens floated up in stair-step paths.

At the outskirts of the merlon city, ferocious-looking eels patrolled the gates, like guard dogs. The creatures crackled with a barely contained glow, and Gwen was sure they were a species of electric eel. Pearls larger than Piri’s eggsphere lay scattered on the ground near the buildings. Undersea lawn ornaments?

Gelatinous glowing fish tethered to the ground drove back the undersea dimness; though they strained against their thin chains to escape, the poor luminescent creatures would bob and drift as living streetlights to glow until they died. Then, no doubt, the merlons would cut the creatures loose and tether other glowfish in the same positions.

More merlons, wearing full seashell armor and carrying sea-urchin clubs and long mother-of-pearl scimitars, came out of the strange buildings to intercept them. The new group of merlons held iridescent black shells in their webbed hands; about the length of Gwen’s index finger, each shell was oddly cupped and whorled, like an ear turned inside out.

When Orpheon spoke aloud to Lyssandra, Gwen heard only a bubbling humming through the water; she could understand none of it. Orpheon took the black shells from the merlons, pointed to the apprentices, and explained something. Lyssandra’s cobalt-blue eyes were defiant, and she shook her head but made no sound. The red gill cuts in her neck pumped furiously.

Orpheon insistently put a black shell to Lyssandra’s ear and shouted something. When she continued to resist, Orpheon threatened Sharif with the teaching staff he had stolen from Tiaret. He pressed the sharp tip against the prince’s bare ribs so hard that blood oozed out. Nearby, the restless sharks reacted to the scent of blood with obvious hunger. The implication of the threat was clear.

Finally Lyssandra relented. Pulling free from her merlon captors, she took one of the black shells and swam over to Vic. The petite girl’s ponytail had come undone, and copper hair drifted around her head. She made a reassuring gesture and placed the black seashell to their friend’s ear. The curved shell fit inside as if it belonged there.