Desire Wears Diamonds (41 page)

He does not stumble as he approaches the
dais and the throne. The massive throne glows and pulses faintly
with the same green fire contained inside the sculpted sea glass
that fans out in the shape of giant seashell but the woman perched
atop it is not overshadowed by its beauty.

Venus would be vain enough to gnash her
teeth at the woman there in a gown of gold with hair like mahogany
wood. Her eyes flash like emeralds and she is too lovely for
further description. Each time he looks at her, he is dazzled. But
for now, curiosity and fear override appreciation.

‘What is this place?’ he asks without
ceremony.

The courtiers gasp at his cheekiness but the
woman only smiles. “This is Atlantis and I am its Queen. I am Queen
Arête.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Atlantis Holds Court

His brow furrowed and he almost laughed at
the ridiculous proclamation. Almost. For had he not been taken by
the sea? Even so it is the nature of men to doubt. ‘Atlantis is a
myth. A child’s tale of nonsense that only drunks repeat when the
voyage is too long or they have a convenient map to sell.’

‘Myth?’ She waved a scepter toward the
dome’s peak above them and Captain Martin nearly fell to the marble
floor as solid gold became as transparent as glass to reveal not
sky but ocean. Ocean as he had never seen it because it was above
him, with life teeming across the view, and the outline of a moon
once familiar wavered distorted by the depths of the sea.

Martin turned to leave unwilling to accept
what his eyes could not deny but the guards cut off his retreat.
Their blades gleamed and reflected in the light, no mercy in their
eyes. ‘Poseidon will have your bones to atone for this trespass
against the Queen! How dare you turn your back on Her Glorious
Presence, human scum!’

They drag him back before the throne, this
time to press him down against his will onto his knees on the steps
of the dais.

‘Hold! What is your name, man?’

‘Captain Hiram Martin.’

She smiles. ‘I shall make you my guest,
Captain. It is a good omen. I always select one slave to act as my
personal attendant for the Festival and while many find the
position challenging, I like the look of you. I expect to enjoy our
time together, Captain.’

‘I am no slave.’

‘Are you not?’ Queen Arête waves her hand
and at the far end of the room a rag-tag group of men, the crew
they plucked from the sea, are brought in wearing chains around
their necks and shackles on their feet. ‘Behold! Your crew,
yes?’

‘Yes.’ For there is George and his officers,
several of the sailors and the crew he is bound to by honor and
experience. These are brothers in arms and it is clear that their
lives hang in the balance.

‘What say you now?’

‘If you spare my men—‘

‘We are not in a negotiation, Captain. These
men will serve Atlantis in different ways and it is for us to
determine their fate and their treatment. Not you. But of course,
if you resist, we are less inclined to be kind.’ She stood and Hack
sees that resistance gains nothing where extending his life may
allow him to extend the lives of others. If not directly—then by
stealth. He nods to give himself time to think and plot a way
out.

‘I am your slave.’ The words taste like bile
in his mouth for he is proud but he holds to hope. And what are
words? What are their weight or measure when a man kneels before
the Queen of a mythical kingdom while sharks swim overhead?

Queen Arête smiles and gestures toward the
floor next to her throne where he is to sit. Hack has never known
surrender in battle or in life but he surrenders now. He sits like
a dog next to her and his education begins.

As his crew is brought forward and examined
by the courtiers who begin to divide them into seven groups, the
Queen begins to explain the rituals ahead. The Festival of the
Tides will last for seven nights, beginning tonight.

‘We will blend the strengths of your crew to
make each team as viable as possible but the first team,
traditionally, is the strongest for we hope for the blessing of a
successful hunt.’

‘Hunt?’

She shrugs her shoulders, bored with
teaching already.

‘Prepare for the first excursion!’ She
stands and points to George who is glaring at all of them
defiantly. ‘That one! Put him in the lead!’

She turns back to Hack. ‘Come. I want you to
wear something better suited for the occasion.’

He is forced to follow her but looks to
George and the others before they are hauled out, blades at their
backs. He waves what he hopes is encouragement to his friend and
then retreats with his new mistress.

‘What is the Festival of Tides? Was mine the
only ship you took? And what excursion is it that they prepare
for?’

She ignores him and he is led to a room with
a giant bath at its center. To his humiliation, she takes a seat as
other servants, human like him but with hollow eyes come into the
room. She claps her hands together and points at Hack. ‘Bathe
him.’

It is a wicked thing but he is stripped of
his clothes before her. Too proud to cover himself he stands as if
it doesn’t grind at him to be treated thusly. The attendants push
and pull him into the water and then bathe him while Queen Arête’s
gaze never wavers.

‘I am pleased with your height and your
form, Captain,’ she teases. ‘And now I am also pleased with the way
you smell.’

Capt. Hiram is spared only because the Queen
of Atlantis is taken with him. She feeds him and clothes him, like
a pampered pet and as the night unfolds he is not adverse to her
touch before a gong sounds and she leads him back to the public
rooms of the palace.

‘You will have your answers, Captain. Soon
now.’

CHAPTER FIVE

A Deadly Harvest

The first Ritual is that night and Hack is
given a new view of the city of Atlantis as they move out toward a
temple where the Queen tells him that the Atlantians hold sacred.
Sorcery holds the city to the ocean floor and every house and
palace is interconnected with the ocean just outside its windows.
The view out every window reminds him that there is no escape.

Finally they reach a long hall that has the
look of a temple to him (though without any sign of which god they
might be pleading to). Carved sea serpents wrap around every marble
column and surface and Captain Martin eyes them without admiration.
Their beauty is too terrifying. The courtiers in their best finery
line along the temple’s walls and their expressions convey delight,
anticipation, and anxiety at the Queen’s arrival though they ignore
the human consort at her heels. Green fire danced atop an altar at
the far end of the room with a huge portal behind it circled by a
single sea serpent frozen in stone in the act of consuming his own
tail.

A few members of the crew were already
there, still chained together but their clothes had been changed.
Hack winces to think that they too endured a bath like animals for
the amusement of nearby courtiers. But unlike his clothes of silk
and luxury, his men are swathed in leather pants and wide belts
with the look of gladiators.

George’s look is solemn. They cannot talk.
Not without risking the wrath of their hosts but there is something
in his eyes. They have told him something of the ordeal ahead and
his expression reflects a dark fear and knowledge that cannot be
forgotten.

It is time.

‘For as long as we can remember, the Elixir
is life! Immortality is ours and the gift of Poseidon ours for the
taking!’ Queen Arête addressed the room. ‘Let the Harvest
begin!’

His men are pushed toward the door and the
carved stone portals slide back to reveal ocean, held in place as
if by glass they cannot be seen.

Beyond is a dim natural rock tunnel that
leads . . . Hack knows not where.

As the chains from their feet are removed,
the crewmen are armed with strange weapons, long tubes of glass
tipped with a twisted dagger…like a giant syringe or siphon but the
black wrapped handles and echoes of a pikes make his skin
crawl.

‘Tell me.’ Hack hisses in the Queen’s
ear.

‘They will face the Kraken.’

‘To kill it?’

‘NO!’ She stares at him in
horror. ‘It is the last of its kind! But we need the Elixir for the
kingdom. The blood of the Kraken has power that you cannot imagine.
We
must
have it
and the Festival is the only time it can be harvested.’

‘Why not send your own men to this
task?’

She laughs cruelly. ‘Why risk the worthy and
lovely life of our own when your crew are at hand?’

Armed guards stand by the portal should any
man lose his courage and refuse the task.

Drums pound and the men are shoved forward
with their unwieldy weapons, and a black cloth is wrapped over
their mouths and noses. As a gong sounds and the Atlantian priests
begin to mumble and chant, the crew is pushed through the portal
and into the water.

It is shock at first as they fight
instinctively against the water and the terror of drowning and then
more surprise as each man realizes that the cloth transforms water
to air. They swim now, their feet lifted from the rocks and turn
down the passage that is their only choice.

Each disappears from sight.

Hack waits and then a sound unlike any is
heard. A roar that makes the temple walls rattle and the sea
serpents on the columns vibrate. A trick of the light makes their
stone eyes gleam and some of the courtiers burst into applause.
Some murmur to each other in anxious hope of the Elixir but the cry
at the end of the passage changes and deepens and the seawater they
can see through the portal changes color.

Tendrils of red snake out from the dark
until the water is red with blood and unrecognizable. It is too
much blood for Hack to hope. None of the crew return.

The Atlantians are disappointed. The Queen
shrugs. ‘There are six nights left. It is rare to have success on
the first night but there is time yet. Come, human. Let us be back
to my bedroom and see if we cannot alleviate my mood.’

Captain Martin is trapped in a nightmare
that repeats nightly. More, more, and more of his crew are brought
into the temple each night, more familiar faces, trembling and
crying some of them, as they are armed and then fed to the Kraken.
Then the Queen leads him back to her rooms where he is held in
lustful thrall. She hypnotizes him with her every sigh and Captain
Hack Martin begins to despair of his soul.

Until the worst—the fifth night. George’s
young son, a boy barely twelve is in their number and Hack has had
all he can of restraint and threats. The petted and pampered
captive rebels.

‘No!’

He races forward to put himself in front of
the others. ‘I will go! I will get the Elixir for you, Queen Arête!
Stand aside. You cannot send children in and expect them to
accomplish a manly feat.’

Shouts of protest and a struggle with the
guards heralds failure but the Queen holds up her hand and the din
of a melee is instantly silenced. ‘Time is short.’ She nods
consent. ‘Get me my Elixir and earn My Mercy.’

CHAPTER SIX

Facing the Kraken

He takes a weapon from George’s son and
places the belt around his waist. He ignores the rumbles behind him
and shifts the long spear’s handle from one side to the other to
try to learn the weight and working of it. It is heavier than it
looks but he’s glad. The density in his palms makes it real and
settles his nerves.

He will do this thing and face this monster.
He will save the lives of the men he can and the son of his friend.
He shakes off the guilt that the Queen’s sorcery has held him in
check until now. That pain is for another day.

He does not wait for the gong or allow them
their barbaric rituals. The priests aren’t even in place as he
grabs a black cloth from the altar and ties it around his own mouth
and nose. They don’t push him through the portal.

Captain Hiram Jack Martin strides in on his
own volition.

He knows he will not drown. He has seen the
others and simply begins swimming down the dark passage away from
the temple. He does not look back. He kicks with his legs and holds
the glass spear out in front of him.

Once the tunnel turns and the lights of the
temple no longer illuminate his path, he slows. He knows that if
George had greater numbers and still did not triumph that he cannot
blunder in.

He ignores his normal senses that urge him
to stay to the floor and instead begins to swim along the ceiling
of the tunnel, his internal compass broken. Like a human spider he
makes his way underwater toward Death.

The Kraken sleeps. He cannot see its mass or
fathom its true form. It is too horrible and he is not there to
study it for scholars. The dark changes and there is a faint
illumination from strange creatures that gather in pockets of the
rock. Barnacles glow yellow and there is enough light to ensure
that his nightmares will be complete. There is no other opening or
entrance. How the beast was captured to live in the confines of its
own filth, it’s hard to say. ‘It is a prisoner and a slave to them,
like me.’

One great eye is closed and he swims above
it to decide his strategy.

Dropped weapons litter the floor of the lair
and a few stick out from its tentacles like bristles on a sea
urchin. The other men had tried to draw the Kraken’s blood from an
outstretched arm perhaps to avoid teeth the size of elephant tusk
that seeped tendrils of milky poison into the seawater it slept in.
Its body reveals several wounds, none fatal, but Captain Martin
decides to take his chances.

He floats down behind its head, the skin a
putrid surface of mottled browns near a small tear edged in glowing
crystal shards from the ceiling above where the monster must have
thrashed during a previous battle. He reads it as a sign that when
angered, the monster thinks nothing in its rage.