The Tree of Water (13 page)

A loud
ooof!
followed by the sound of a body falling heavily rattled the ceiling of the cave.

Ven, Char, and the sea Lirin looked up.

Amariel was rolling down the cave wall, her tail spinning end over end as she fell, until she came to a bumpy stop in front of the Cormorant.

The sea-Lirin commander glared at her and gave her a poke with his spear.

“Did I not tell you to remain on the reef?” he demanded.

“You did,” said the merrow huffily. “But if you're going to drown my friends, you may as well drown me too.”

“That would be a first,” said Coreon. His speaking voice cracked a little in the air.

“No, it wouldn't,” said the Cormorant. “A merrow can be drowned fairly easily.”

“I will tell you what you want to know,” said Ven quickly. “But first, will you please tell me why you want to know about the Gated City?”

The green-tinged eyes of the Cormorant narrowed.

“Your people in that city—”

“Wait, please,” Ven interrupted. “With respect. I swear to you, though we have been inside the Gated City, I
swear to you
we are not its citizens. My name is a Ven, and this is my friend Char. We live at the Crossroads Inn outside the city of Kingston, and I work for the human king, Vandemere. In the course of my travels for the king I have been many places, and one of them is the Gated City. That's why I know what's inside it. But, as you can see, I was able to leave. If I was a resident of that city, that would have been impossible.”

“You are a fool,
Ven
,” the Cormorant said. “Humans who dwell within those walls make their way out of that city
all the time
. As you undoubtedly know, they have built a long tunnel outside the harbor in the King's town, a tunnel that has destroyed a good part of the reef. They crawl like sea slugs beneath the sand, ripping up the reef, killing millions of coral and creatures of the sea. But that is about to end.”

“You are going to seal the tunnel?”

“Yes—after our army has used it to enter the city and destroy every human that lives there.”

 

14

The Airwheel

“You can't mean that,” Ven said. His voice shook.

The Cormorant's kelp-like eyebrows lifted in surprise.

“I do,” he said. “Merfolk are a peaceful people, but we are also a strong one, and we do not tolerate the destruction of our realm, the murder of our people and fellow creatures, and, most important, the devastation of the sea. Every land-liver within the walls of that city is a criminal—
every single one
—so there is no need for mercy. And there will be none.”

“It's not true that everyone within the Gated City is a criminal,” Ven said. “There are good people there as well, and—”

“Lies.” The Cormorant's voice was as harsh as a slap across the face. “The Gated City is a prison colony. Those living behind its walls were sent from other places because they were the
worst of the worst
, so dangerous that the humans in the lands where they came from did not even want them in their realms. They came in a prison ship, the
Athenry,
specially made to hold them securely, locked away behind bars so that they could not escape into the sea. They were offloaded into the city in chains, by armed soldiers. Each time the
Athenry
approached our reef we saw them, linked together with iron loops. Then, finally, the last load of criminal slime was delivered. The gates were sealed, and the ship sailed away, never to return. Do you deny this?”

“No, I don't deny it.” Ven's heart was beating so fast that his words came out sounding like he had the hiccups. “But that was hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago.”

The Cormorant blinked. Then he looked at the other Lirin-mer, who looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Years?”

The merrow cleared her throat.

“Er—storm seasons. There are four storm in a year.” She looked at Ven. “Those that live beneath the sea don't count time in human years, Ven. I only know what you are talking about because merrows can breathe both on land and under water, and we spend time sunning ourselves on rocks in the air. We see more of the human world, so I know what you mean, but they don't.”

“Four storm or four million, it doesn't matter,” said the Cormorant. He signaled to two soldiers whose gills were flapping heavily. The men made their way over to the airwheel. The first one caught hold of a giant shell as it passed by and pulled himself into it. The other soldier waited until a few shells had passed, then caught one and rode it to the surface as the other man had.

They must only be able to stay out of the water and in the air for a short period of time,
Ven thought as he watched them leave the cave.

“With respect, it
does
matter,” he said when the Cormorant was looking at him again. “After hundreds of years, every criminal who came on that ship is long dead.”

His words echoed in the Drowning Cave. Then the only sound was the noise of the airwheel and the thrum of the drift outside the cave entrance. The sea Lirin stared at him.

The Cormorant finally spoke.

“Why? What makes you think that?”

“They, er, well,” Ven stammered, “they, just
are
. It's been hundreds of years.”

The merrow cleared her throat again and addressed the Cormorant.

“Even though they look like Lirin-mer, land-livers are more like, er, herring,” she said. “A few hundred storm, and they, well, wear out. They die of old age.”

“Old age? After a few hundred storm?”

The merrow shrugged. “They're weak and without much value, I guess.”

“Thanks,” Char muttered.

The Cormorant looked as if he did not believe her. “How can a human—or any land-liver with a soul—only last a few hundred storm? Coreon—how many storm have you seen?”

The Lirin-mer boy thought. “Twenty-four hundred and seven.”

The Cormorant nodded. “As I thought. A man would not have even lost his air-voice after a few hundred storm.”

“When Lirin-mer are young, they can still speak and breathe easily in the air,” Amariel explained to Ven and Char, who were looking baffled. “As they age, it becomes harder for them to do either one, unless they are Lirin-mer of great power, like the Cormorant. Lirin-mer almost never go up to the surface.”

“Ah,” said Ven. He watched as several more soldiers caught rides to the surface on the airwheel.
No wonder none of them speak,
he thought
. A little like kittens, who are born blind, or frogs that start life as tadpoles, with a tail and no legs, losing the one and gaining the others
.

I don't know why any of this surprised me.

Since Nain live about four times longer than humans, we tend to think of them as weak and fragile, too. A Nain boy usually starts growing his beard, his most prized feature, when he is about thirty in human years. By the time he is forty-five, his entire Bramble, the short growth that covers his entire chin, is almost always fully grown in. Only the very slow-to-grow, like me, are past fifty when their whiskers start appearing, and that is very embarrassing. And I still only have three of them, one for each adventure I've undertaken since my fiftieth birthday.

Now I understood why the Lirin-mer hated the occupants of the Gated City so much.

But they were hating people who had been dead for centuries.

“The original prisoners from that prison ship have been dead a very long time in human years,” he said again. “The people who live there now are their descendants, their great-great-great-great-grandchildren. Many of them are just as evil as the ones that came before them, but a lot of them aren't. Many of them are just prisoners of circumstance, with the bad luck to have been born in the wrong place. There are quite a few children inside those walls. It's not their fault they were born there. And while you probably see all land-livers as humans, not everyone in the Gated City is human, just as I am not human. There are many races in the Gated City—including Lirin. If you kill everyone, while you will be getting rid of some very bad people, it's true, you will also be taking a lot of innocent lives. Isn't that the same as what the humans in the Gated City are doing to the coral reef?”

The Cormorant stared at Ven in silence. His gills were flapping more quickly now. Finally he signaled to the Lirin-mer soldiers.

“All but Coreon, depart,” he said. The soldiers obeyed. He turned to the sea-Lirin boy. “You will stay and guard them. I will return shortly. If they give you any trouble, stop the airwheel and flood the Drowning Cave.”

Coreon nodded. He walked over to the airwheel and took up a guard position beside it. Then he raised his weapon and pointed it at Ven.

The Cormorant started for the airwheel. As he passed Amariel he paused and looked down at her on the coral cave floor.

“You may find, merrow, that when you try to live in two worlds you are at home in neither of them,” he said curtly. Then he strode to the airwheel and caught hold of a giant shell. He hung from it by one arm as it lifted him to the surface, then disappeared from sight.

“Well, this undersea adventure just keeps gettin' better and better,” said Char, stretching out his arms.

Coreon sighted his crossbow. “Silence,” he ordered. His voice squeaked as he spoke.

“Oh, shut up,” said Amariel.

The sea-Lirin boy's eyes opened wide in surprise.

“You're not exactly in a position to disobey,” he said when he could speak again. “You're out of the sea, merrow, in case you hadn't noticed. I bet your tail is drying out about now.”

“Why don't ya come over here and tell her that again, up close this time?” Char said. “There's a sea lion with a broken nose on a skellig who thought the same way you do yesterday. He's changed his mind.”

Amariel glared at Coreon. “Don't you dare try to bully me,” she said. “You think you're important because you have a barb, but your voice is changing. Pretty soon you'll be just like the rest of them, and the Cormorant won't have any use for you. Leave us alone.”

Ven sat down on the hard coral floor between his friends and the sea-Lirin boy. As he did, something in his pocket pressed up against his leg. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out the small green glass bottle. The cork was still in the opening, the wax seal unbroken. He held the bottle where Amariel could see it.

“Look what I found this morning in the surf on Skellig Elarose,” he said quietly.

Char's expression brightened. “Oh, yeah! I'd forgotten about that,” he said. “I guess you can open it now, since we're out of the sea for a moment.”

The merrow's brows drew together as Ven pulled his jack-rule from his vest pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“The cork is sealed with wax,” Ven explained as he extended the knife from the odd folding tool. “It looks like it has a message written on paper inside it, wrapped around something hard that clinks.” He shook the bottle gently to demonstrate.

“What are you doing over there?” Coreon asked suspiciously.

“In case you're interested, you are about to hear the sound of a human, a Nain, and a merrow ignoring you,” said Amariel. “Be careful with that knife, Ven.”

“I will,” Ven said. He slid the knife carefully around the cork seal. The wax seemed old, or at least hardened by the sea, so it took a good deal of prying before he could reach the cork. The wooden plug cracked and dissolved into pieces as he tried to pry it loose, so he shook it out onto the floor of the Drowning Cave, then gently pulled the little scroll of paper out of the bottle.

Before he could unroll it, something dropped into his lap from inside it.

Ven held it up in the shadowy light of the lantern.

It was a thin piece of metal, straight like a sewing needle but with a curve near the end with what looked like a tiny tooth at the very bottom.

At the top of it was a small carved metal skull, its hollow eyes blank and its toothless mouth grinning blackly.

“By the Blowhole,” Amariel whispered.

“What the heck is that?” Char asked.

“I don't know,” said Ven. “It looks a little bit like the lock picks in the weapons store in the Gated City, the Arms of Coates, remember, Char?”

“You mean those tools that thieves use to open locks without keys?”

“Yes. Or maybe it's a key itself.” Ven held the tiny tool up closer to get a better look.

“A skeleton key?” Char shrank away.

“What's a skeleton key?” Amariel asked.

Char wrapped his arms tighter around his knees.

“I've never seen one, but the sailors tell stories about them sometimes. Pirates are said to have 'em. I think it's supposed to be able to open
any
lock, even a really complicated one.”

“Hmm,” said Ven. He handed the key to Amariel, who took it gingerly, then carefully unrolled the small scroll of paper.

It was an old piece of oilcloth, scratched and dulled with time, that smelled of salt and leather. On it one word was printed in ink that had smeared slightly.

Athenry,
it said.

 

15

An Uneasy Truce

While the boys were examining the scrap of oilcloth, the merrow was examining the key.

“There's some writing on this, too,” she said. “Very small.”

“What does it say?” Char asked.

The merrow glared at him.

“Let me have a quick look,” Ven said. He knew that Amariel could not read human script.

The merrow passed him the key. He held it up in the lanternlight. The letters were tiny, but he could read most of them if he turned it slowly.