Pirate Wars (11 page)

Panic arrived suddenly, not just fear, but real terror that stopped her breath. Now she was no longer ashamed of that. She’d been through too much in the past hours to act the proud, fearless pirate princess now. It was time to face her fear. And with this thought, she gave in to her curiosity and took one step forward, to the edge of the railingless stairs.

The water had quieted. But that did not mean that it was empty.

The creature had stopped throwing itself back and forth in the confines of the coral tube. Instead it was standing upright like a living tower in the middle of the shaft, its reptile body raised high, completely motionless, with almost hypnotic stillness. Water beaded its black scales and dropped into the deep. It was standing so still that Soledad had to take a second look to realize what it actually was: a sea serpent, black as night, as wide as the trunk of a primeval tree, with a triangular head, almost as big as Soledad herself.

Instantly the serpent rose another fathom higher. Before Soledad knew it, the eyes of the creature were on a level with her own.

And what eyes those were!

Slit serpent eyes, larger than a human head and the color of pure amber, as clear as golden glass and deep enough to become lost in within seconds.

Soledad lacked the power to move. She stood there motionless, not even moving back to the wall. The serpent’s mouth would reach her in any twist of this shaft. There was no point in running away.

But still the creature made no move to devour her. Soledad’s chest rose and fell, her breathing echoed against the damp walls. Silent and unmoving, they looked each other in the eyes, princess and serpent—and somehow in these moments, which extended themselves endlessly, Soledad understood. She read it in that amber gaze, in the clarity of those eyes, in the depths of that powerful intelligence.

The serpent had saved her. But it hadn’t done it disinterestedly. The undercity was its kingdom, its territory, and if the kobalins were victorious and Aelenium went down, its living space would be destroyed along with her. It hadn’t pulled Soledad out of the water out of charity, of course not; a term like that had no place in this ancient mind. It had done it to strengthen the city and injure the kobalins. For that reason alone.

Soledad stood there a few seconds longer. Then she slowly bent her head and bowed. “I thank you,” she said, uncertain whether the serpent would understand the words. And then she quickly added something else before she could think about whether it would possibly be improper, even profane. “If you really want to help us, then protect the anchor chain.”

With a calm she maintained with difficulty, she turned and continued on her ascent. Silently the body of the snake stretched up alongside her, completely soundless, remaining on a level with her for two more turnings of the staircase. Then suddenly it disappeared, so fast and quietly that Soledad only realized it two steps later. A thundering splash
sounded from the bottom, then only the sloshing of the roiled-up waters against the walls.

The serpent was gone.

Soledad dragged herself on, without stopping. She felt a strange new strength inside her, as if the sight of those eyes had purified her and awakened all the reserves she had. And deep in her heart she knew that what she had just met was not an animal, not a monstrosity of the endless sea, but something entirely different.

She closed her eyes for a moment as she climbed. A tiny smile played around the corners of her mouth. Something had touched her, far more than just the teeth of that creature.

How presumptuous it had been to assume that all the gods who’d survived the ages in Aelenium were human.

The exit was in the middle of a tangle of coral streets and plazas, only a stone’s throw below the second defense wall.

Soledad had stumbled up the last steps and come to a wooden door. She’d hammered on it and called for a long time until finally someone on the other side shoved a bolt and carefully opened it.

Two men in uniform stared at her with suspicion, rifles and lances pointing. Only when one of them recognized her and made clear to the other that the young woman in the diving suit couldn’t be a kobalin did they let her through.

Over the shoulders of the men she saw that she’d landed in a narrow space, which was only meagerly illuminated by a single torch. A few nets were stretched on the walls to dry.
The cellar of an ordinary house, Soledad guessed, which was intended to camouflage the entrance to the undercity.

One man made a move to grab her under the arms as Soledad threatened to fall, but she pushed him away indignantly, straightened herself, and walked proudly past the sentries. She also refused the offer to bind her wounds with a silent shake of her head. Behind her the door to the undercity was closed again, the bolt squealing into its guides.

Those gigantic amber eyes—golden, bottomless pools—were still burning in Soledad’s memory. And more than everything she had seen at the anchor chain, this gaze caused her fear and breathless amazement equally. Such perfection, such cold calculation. And at the same time, such superiority.

Dazedly she let them show her the exit and climbed the stairs—still more steps—until finally she was standing outside.

In the first moment she felt as if she’d just walked into the eyes of the serpent. The night sky was dyed golden, flooded with the glow of countless fires. The deadly glow of the flames was refracted by the veils of cloud and streamers of fog. She knew what this sight meant. However, she couldn’t combat the fascination of the firelight. Many deaths, much destruction, and in spite of that, this light was of measureless beauty. She doubted that anyone except her saw it that way.

Soledad shook her head and rubbed her eyes as though waking from a dream. The amber eyes faded, melted into the hellish brightness of the sky and the burning city. Only now, with each further step, did she become herself again.

Before her the street opened onto a small, deserted square, which ended in a broad balustrade. From there she could look out over the deep drop-offs, over the sea of roofs, between which the shadows seethed like boiling oil. Streams of fugitives were pouring through the streets up the mountain.

The lower wall had fallen, that much she could tell right away. The fighters were pulling back, were already on the way to the second defense ring above the Poets’ Quarter. Not much longer and the first ones would reach it.

Soledad raised her eyes to the sky over the water. In front of the fog wall, which almost looked like a wall of fire itself, isolated ray riders were circling, even if the majority of them now floated over the shore, keeping the flood of kobalins under fire.

On the other side of the fog wall the night was burning. Soledad couldn’t tell if that was already the distant red of dawn, a reflection of the burning city, or if the inferno of the sea battle between the Antilles captains and the cannibal king Tyrone was still raging out there.

A thought came to her, and once it took hold of her, it wouldn’t let her go. She detached herself from the balustrade, hurried back across the square, and turned into one of the adjoining streets.

Soon she was standing in front of the narrow house in which the Hexhermetic Shipworm slumbered. There were no longer any guards in front of the door; the entrance was closed but not locked. Soledad quickly walked inside and ran up the stairs to the attic of the house.

The cocoon had grown larger since she’d last been here. It appeared to be forming new silken layers still, and the threads that kept the bizarre tissue afloat were much more numerous. Almost two-thirds of the sharp-gabled storage space was now filled with them. Fine fibers extended from beam to beam, from floor to ceiling, and as floating curtains inside the network.

“Worm?” She made the suggestion of a bow, without really believing that he could see it. If he was still alive, his spirit was probably somewhere else, caught in a dream that was, she hoped, more agreeable than the gruesome reality of the battle.

“I’d give a lot to know what you’re seeing right now,” she said absently. The cocoon still seemed to be pulsing and sending vague oscillations through the net. Again and again tenuous fibers detached themselves, joined with others, and formed new layers within the net. There was a barely audible rustling and swishing in the air.

Carefully she stretched out a hand to touch the nearest layers, but she pulled back a finger’s breadth before the net. She was afraid to awaken something that perhaps mightn’t be ready to return yet.

“I don’t really know why I came here,” she said to the worm. “But I saw something down below, in the undercity…something that was not of this world. Jolly said that some of the people living here in Aelenium are in truth ancient gods—or what’s left of them after they’ve lost their power. But that thing down there…well, I can’t
imagine that it was ever
more
powerful. I can feel it, you know? Something in those eyes has touched me, and there was something…something
truly
godlike. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” She looked for words but found none that could express what was going through her head. “I mean, it really didn’t do anything…anyway, not really.” She cast a pain-filled look at her lower arm and went on, “It looks as though it saved my life. And I think I know why. It doesn’t want Aelenium to fall into the Maelstrom’s hands. It’s just as stuck on this place as Forefather and the Ghost Trader. I think they all need Aelenium, perhaps because here is the only place they can still exist undisturbed.”

Shaking her head, she broke off, thought for a while, and then said, “Anyway, I’m wondering what
you
really are, Worm. It wasn’t a coincidence that we brought you here, was it? The wisdom of the worm you’ve talked about, that’s nothing but a pile of sea lion crap. In reality, you’re no more a worm than that snake down there is a snake.” She took a resolute step up to the net, not knowing what she intended to express by it. “Right?” she asked softly.

The worm—or that which was in the cocoon—gave no answer. Not that she’d seriously expected one.

She snorted softly, then shook her head again. She was terribly tired, and the idea of now having to fight on frightened her deeply.

“Lovely that we’ve discussed it,” she murmured mockingly, walking to the only window of the attic room. When she looked out, she could see up to the upper defense wall, now
swarming with people. She took a deep breath and ran back down the stairs, leaving the net and the cocoon and whatever was in it behind.

She wondered what would happen if the kobalins entered this house. If something made them climb up to the attic.

What would
they
see in it?

And would they dare to wake it?

In the street outside it was raining dead fish. A troop of guardsmen came toward her on the way to the upper defense wall. She attached herself to them, reached the wall at a place where it crossed a former marketplace, and looked for someone she knew.

A hand touched her shoulder. As she whirled around, she was already taken into his arms.

“Walker,” she whispered against his shoulder, and then she began to cry.

The hill on
the bottom of the deep sea looked like a termite hill, although a thousand times larger and strangely uniform in its proportions. Almost like an upright index finger that warned the wanderers on the sea floor against going any farther: Beyond me is nothing but death.

“What is that?” Jolly asked.

Aina lowered her voice as if she feared that someone might hear her from the hill. “That’s the nest. The kobalins’ nest, as they call it. They’re born here.”

Jolly and Munk exchanged a look. “
All
kobalins?”

The girl from the sea bottom shook her head. “Only the oldest. The fathers of the deep tribes, long before they splintered and began fighting each other.” She stepped from one foot to the other. “At any rate, they did that until the Maelstrom united them again.”

“We’ve heard that the ancestors of the kobalins came out of the Mare Tenebrosum,” said Jolly, remembering what Count Aristotle had told the council. “And that the humans mixed with them. They say that the very first kobalins came into existence in the old days.”

Aina shrugged her naked shoulders. “I don’t know anything about that. Anyhow, that there”—she pointed to the finger-shaped rock tower—” is the place where the first of them were…hatched. Or born.”

Jolly took a step to the edge of the narrow rock plateau. They had only just walked out of the protection of an assemblage of round stones as tall as houses onto this natural platform. From above they must look like ants creeping out between a pile of pebbles.

In front of them spread the panorama of a deep rock kettle, with jagged cracks running across it, chasms, and sharp-edged crests that must cut a sinking ship to pieces like a knife blade when it landed. The kobalin hill rose in the middle of this inhospitable landscape as sentry over the Crustal Breach, a ghostly silhouette at the edge of her perception.

Since their meeting with the albino kobalins they were no longer walking downward. It appeared that Aina had been right—they’d crossed the outer margins of the Crustal Breach and were now approaching its center.

Perhaps the kobalin hill was in fact something like a last sentry post before the heart of the breach, before that place from which the Maelstrom sprang. The roaring and raging in the darkness had become noticeably louder, but
they still couldn’t see anything. Polliwog vision didn’t reach far enough.

“I swam over the rocks when I fled,” said Aina. “We could walk, but that would take a long time and—”

“We’ll swim,” Munk interrupted her.

Jolly regarded him with a dark side glance. “Oh, is that so?”

He sighed, as if he were sorry to have to fight with her over each and every thing. But she only wanted him to at least ask her what she thought. “We have no time, Jolly. You know that as well as I do.”

“And the search currents?” she retorted angrily. “What good will it do us to save a few hours if one of those currents catches us and either kills us or throws us a zillion miles back?”

“We can work forward bit by bit,” Aina put in. “From one rock ridge to the next. And we can rest at the kobalin hill.”

“Oh, good idea,” Jolly answered. “We’ll just ask them if they still have a warm place by the fire for us.”

Aina smiled. “They told us about the hill—in the old time, before we started out. We have no danger to fear from there. The kobalins have never lived in the nest—except for one.”

Aina walked to the edge of the plateau. Her right hand felt for a long strand of hair, and she rolled it thoughtfully between her fingers. “It’s said she was the mother of the kobalins. Even her own children fear her. But she’s been sitting there so long in her pit of slime and bones that the rocks have grown up over her and closed her in. After that she couldn’t get out anymore because she was too big and fat for the cracks and tunnels.”

“Too big?” Jolly repeated with terrible misgivings.

“Probably she’s long dead.” Aina was silent for a moment and appeared to be thinking. “We could make a detour around the hill. But that will take time.”

Jolly looked up at the peak again. It was hard to estimate its height in the weak half light, but she estimated that from the place where it became visible over the rock labyrinth to its knobby top it measured around a hundred yards. But the mighty stone tower might be somewhat taller still.

“We should hurry,” said Munk.

Jolly gave in and nodded. The three of them pushed off from the edge of the plateau and floated over the rocky peak with powerful swimming strokes.

The landscape beneath them resembled the one in which they’d been saved by the lantern fish at the beginning of their journey; only everything seemed to be more furrowed and sharper edged, as if in the gray prehistoric times a giant had struck the rocks with a huge hammer. Here, too, the bottom of the abyss lay too far below them, and polliwog vision did not reach to the ground. From above it looked as if wavering shadow streams flowed through the cracks. Pure black frothed around the cliffs and stone needles.

What Jolly had feared was quickly confirmed: She’d underestimated the distance to the kobalin hill and thus presumably its height as well.

Soon they’d have to rest, for swimming cost them far more energy than walking along the sea bottom. They hadn’t slept for an eternity either, and their mealtimes had become irregular and without pleasure.

Jolly was just chewing on a tough piece of pickled meat that tasted even saltier with seawater when Aina blurted out a warning cry. They quickly slid down behind a rock wall and cowered beside each other in a fissure. They’d barely found cover as a search current rolled over the wasteland, a tower-high swirl of stirred-up dust, whose force even made the rocks tremble. It was the fifth of these undersea tidal waves they’d experienced—the last had been not long ago, and Jolly worried that the closer they came to their goal, the more frequently they’d have to deal with them. Luckily, Aina had a good feeling for them and usually recognized the danger a little sooner than the others.

The three had just left their hiding place and were again swimming toward the top of the rocks when something unexpected happened. This time Aina was also surprised.

A second search current followed the first.

They’d scarcely risen up over the edge of the rocks when the rumbling of the invisible Maelstrom appeared to increase. But the noise didn’t come from the Maelstrom itself but from a raging, whirling wall of sand and water that followed after the first with hardly a pause. It wasn’t so high, but in width it extended from one edge of their sight to the other.

“Jolly!” Munk yelled. “Down!”

The warning came too late. She’d realized the danger at that very moment, but she had no time to react. She didn’t even see what happened to the two others.

The search current seized her, and then it was as though
someone had stuck her into a giant container of sand and shaken the whole thing vigorously.

Dust and little stones pushed into her mouth and eyes. Up and down became meaningless. She felt herself being swept along by powers that were greater and more destructive than anything she’d thought possible. Her consciousness was wiped out by pain and panic and a darkness that obliterated polliwog vision itself.

He’s separating us!
was her last clear thought, hissing through her head like a flare.

Then she thought nothing more.

At least for a while.

“Jolly!”

I’m unconscious
echoed through her thoughts like a strange voice.

She knew that voice. It wasn’t the voice of Munk.

“Aina?” she managed haltingly. Her eyelids trembled and opened, and her vision was flooded by gray twilight, then by shapes. Sharpness returned. Recognition.

Aina’s face. Over her.

“There you are again,” said the girl with a smile. “About time.”

Jolly stretched out a hand and reached through Aina like a dream image. And that’s what she thought in those first moments, until she remembered. What Aina was. Munk. The undersea tidal wave that had carried her away. Her hand felt numb when it passed through the girl’s body. That was the
nearness of the Maelstrom. Aina actually gained in solidity as they advanced toward the heart of the Crustal Breach.

“I…I feel sick,” she whispered.

Aina nodded. “The search current flung you against the rocks. You were lucky.”

“Lucky?” Jolly touched her head with a groan. “My head says different.” Even touching it hurt. Her scalp was sore. It felt as if thousands of hands were pulling on each single hair.

She made an effort to look around her. She was on the bottom of a ravine, at least she thought so. There was a rock wall at her back and one a few steps in front of her too. High over her arched the darkness, not a ceiling, but the limit of polliwog sight.

The current must have seized her and thrown her into a fissure. But it could have been worse. As far as she could tell right now, she hadn’t broken anything. She saw merely a few scrapes, trickling blood that mixed with the seawater. The salt burned in the open places.

“Where’s Munk?”

Aina pointed into the darkness behind her. “He’s looking for you. He was quite desperate when you were suddenly gone. We separated.”

“Then the search current didn’t catch you?”

Aina shook her head. “We just made it behind the rocks.”

Jolly nodded without really listening. Anyway, their mission wasn’t endangered. She felt a pang that she was the one, of them all, whose mishap had delayed them.

“How much time have we lost?”

“Not much.” Aina tilted her head and observed Jolly as if she were expecting a very particular reaction to this reply.

Her look made Jolly uncomfortable. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You don’t need to worry that you’re holding Munk up.” Aina’s voice was gentle and full of understanding. “Yet that
is
what you’re thinking?”

Was she so easy to see through? Well, even if she was—what business was that of Aina’s? She’d just taken a breath for a fitting reply when the girl shook her head slowly.

“You have no reason to be jealous of me,” Aina said softly.

“I—”

“At least not yet.”

Jolly stared at her. Then she tore her eyes from Aina’s enigmatic smile and looked for Munk. He was nowhere to be seen.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s behind the rocks, looking for you.” Aina didn’t move. She was kneeling in front of Jolly on the ground, her dark eyes gleaming like spheres of polished onyx. “He’s fine, and he’s looking for you over there, a few crevices farther north—far enough not to be able to hear you if you call him.”

Jolly pushed herself upright with her back against the wall. Finally she was standing on both feet, somewhat steady, although her sense of balance was acting crazy.

“Who are you, really?” she asked.

Aina stayed crouching and looking up at her mildly. “A polliwog like you. Only a few thousand years older.”

“You’re lying.”

“No. Everything I told you is the truth.” Her smile flickered like firelight. “I merely left out a few things.”

Jolly was about to push off the floor to swim upward, but Aina shook her head and made a motion of her hand that made Jolly hesitate. “No. You won’t manage to warn him. And he wouldn’t listen to you anyway.” Aina’s hands formed a hollow, which she held to her right ear. “He has something better that gives him advice now.”

“The damned mussel!”

“What I said about it was not a lie. It is more powerful than any you have ever held in your hands. Munk recognized that immediately.”

“You beast!”

Jolly was all set to rush at Aina, but she knew that an attack was senseless. Her hands would go right through the girl. On the other hand, how did Aina intend to keep her from getting out of here?

A blur whizzed over her and took form a moment later. Something settled down over Jolly, and when she thrust up her hands in defense, she felt it between her fingers.

A wide, coarse-meshed net.

From niches and cracks in the rocks came white, eyeless figures.

One of them had flung the net and in one claw still held the rope by which it was fastened. Stones were knotted into the border of the net, which made it much heavier than it looked at first sight.

Jolly had no time to avoid it. The strands of plant fibers
settled down on her and Aina. But while the net lay over her head and shoulders and caught her arms in it, it sank right through Aina as if she weren’t really there. The girl rose with a sigh and left the fibers of the net beneath her on the ground. Jolly, on the other hand, was so hopelessly entangled in it that the albino kobalins had enough time to shuffle over to her in their crouching gait and grab her.

“Don’t resist,” said Aina calmly. “They are stronger than you.”

Jolly bellowed Munk’s name, but she already sensed that Aina was right. He couldn’t hear her, not in the middle of this maze. There was no echo down here, the water prevented that, and the stone swallowed the rest.

Two kobalins grasped her arms through the net and lifted her off the ground. The creatures might be smaller than she was and blind, but they possessed strength with which no human could compete. Under the white skin stretched wiry muscle fibers, and their long claws gripped like gigantic bird talons. Jolly cursed and swore, but she was simply carried away without the least chance of defending herself.

Aina walked lightly beside her. “No one will do you any harm.”

“Right. That’s how it looks,” Jolly said between her teeth. Her enunciation suffered under the strands of the net, which were cutting painfully into her face. Two ran right across her mouth and kept her from being able to open her lips wider than a crack.

“No, believe me,” said Aina earnestly. “You and Munk,
you’re the last living polliwogs. You’re much too valuable to destroy. Until there are no other possibilities, anyway.”

“What about the other two polliwogs? Your friends.” Jolly was not sure if her distorted words were understandable, but Aina answered matter-of-factly, as if she had no trouble understanding Jolly.