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

Coughing and choking, Tiaret let them tow her back into shallower water, then she waved them away. “Thank you for your assistance. Now, let us complete our task.” She grasped another piece of the tangled wreckage as if nothing important had happened.

Knowing that this abruptness was Tiaret’s way of covering her embarrassment, Vic flashed his cousin an eyebrow shrug, dove again, and started back to work on the snagged object. As soon as he nudged it loose, he realized what it was: the scalloped canopy that had sheltered the two merlon generals riding and goading the battle kraken during its terrible attack against Elantya.

Both merlon commanders had been killed when Sage Polup’s magical cannon blasted the kraken. Vic resurfaced as the two girls strained together to pull the wreckage free. He dragged the shell canopy into shallow water where they could see it better.

“I bet this’ll make a nice monument or addition to a museum,” Vic said.

“The Elantyans will indeed build a memorial to this battle,” Tiaret answered in her gruff voice. “However, this chapter in the Great Epic is unfinished. The war continues.”

When they brought their prizes to the shore, Vic was proud of the sizable pile collected on the beach. “Look at all this wood — just think of the bonfire we could build. We could roast marshmallows and hot dogs. . . .” His stomach growled. “It’s been so long since I had a hot dog.”

“Wood must be dry before it can burn, Viccus,” Tiaret said.

Vic brushed that aside. “We could find a drying spell.”

Gwen gave an exasperated sigh and punched him on the shoulder. “There aren’t enough trees on Elantya for us to waste wood by burning it. It’s way too useful.”

Vic felt sheepish for having forgotten such an important detail. On isolated Elantya, most supplies, including wood, arrived by ship through the crystal doors.

Gwen waded back out into the water and looked down, startled and pleased to see a strange swimming creature. “Look, Vic — an aquit!”

He had always thought of aquits as living mermaid Barbie dolls. Elantyans frequently asked them to carry messages to and from ships across the ocean, just as skrits carried messages and scrolls over land. Stroking with its tiny arms and flapping its fish tail, the creature surfaced and spoke to Gwen and Vic. “Map, please.”

“Of course.” Gwen bent over to scoop up the little swimmer and cradle it in her hands. The sages had dispatched numerous aquits to scout out the harbor floor, including possible merlon booby traps left in the wake of the recent attack. Carrying the aquit, she sloshed back to shore and headed up the sandy slope. Tiaret and Vic followed.

High up on the beach, their copper-haired friend Lyssandra and several other students had spread out a large chart on which they were making a detailed map of the submerged hazards in the harbor. Lyssandra looked up as they approached. When Vic saw her cobalt-blue eyes, his heart did a little flutter. Lyssandra was ethereal, petite, and very smart. She was the first girl they had met in Elantya, and with her telepathic powers she had helped the cousins understand the language spoken here. Lyssandra’s gifts also included frequent prophetic dreams, many of which were alarming or horrific and robbed her of sleep. Recently, she had been haunted again by the strange dream about Vic’s and Gwen’s xyridium medallion — the one where it spun and danced above sparkling water, splashing like a porpoise in the waves until, at the end, something pulled it to the bottom of the ocean. She’d also had a series of nightmares about blood and drowning. No wonder she didn’t want to wade out into the harbor, Vic thought.

Seeing the aquit in Gwen’s hands, Lyssandra said, “Good. We need more accurate information. We are compiling a better picture of the undersea wrecks. It is possible that there is no clear path for a ship to get close to the docks.”

“There aren’t many docks left for them to tie up to,” Vic pointed out.

The sounds of construction — shouting men, creaking ropes, clattering pulleys — came from where the largest work group labored to get the main wharf reconstructed.

The aquit’s form shifted to mimic Gwen, so that she seemed to be carrying a perfect copy of herself. When she set it down, the small creature picked up tiny pebbles from the beach and walked across the spread-out map. The imitative creature looked down at the drawn lines and bit the edge of its lower lip exactly as Gwen did when she was thinking hard. Vic chuckled at the performance.

The aquit set the small rocks down as markers. “Large ship here. And here.” The two pebbles represented vessels Lyssandra had not yet marked on the map.

“Can you tell me what kind of ships they were?” she said.

“War galley. Fishing boat,” said the piping voice.

Lyssandra nodded soberly. “Those are also blocking the deep passage to the docks. The sages plan to concentrate on the mouth of the harbor first. Sage Polup and several members of the Pentumvirate are about to try something unusual.”

“Let us hope it succeeds,” Tiaret said.

“Cool,” Vic said. “Maybe they’ll, uh, use a disintegrator spell. That would take care of everything.”

Gwen gave him one of her oh-grow-up looks.

At the smashed end of one of the docks, Sage Polup stood with all five brightly robed members of Elantya’s ruling council, the Pentumvirate. Polup was easily recognizable, for he was an anemonite, a many-frilled jellyfishlike creature, highly intelligent but without much of a body. His people had been enslaved by the merlons because of their scientific and magical genius. When Polup escaped and requested sanctuary in Elantya, some of the island’s most brilliant sages and engineers had constructed a head-tank and a clanking walker body powered by steam and spells. Vic thought the contraption looked like a clunky robot from an old science fiction movie.

Vic identified the members of the Pentumvirate by their robe colors: red, blue, green, yellow, and white, each color symbolizing one of the “five elements.” This classification annoyed Gwen, who contended that there were well over a hundred elements on the periodic table, but Vic was happy to have that much less to memorize. The Virs each unrolled a spell scroll and began to read aloud. The spells were printed in powerful aja ink, which bound magic to the parchment.

“Look. Out in the water,” Tiaret said. The three friends ran closer to the teetering wharf on which the sages had gathered.

Where the largest sunken ship blocked the mouth of the harbor, a frothing, churning storm appeared beneath the water. The broken masts and splintered hull of the large fishing vessel gradually rose to the surface.

“That ship isn’t exactly floating, is it?” Gwen said. “There’s something . . . swarming around it.”

“Looks like maggots,” Vic said. “Thousands of little things chewing at the wood.”

“Eww.” Gwen, who had always wanted to be a marine biologist, quickly assumed an appropriate scientific interest. “Probably sea worms, burrowing parasites. Normally, they’re considered a threat to wooden ships, since they can tunnel through the hull planks, like termites.”

“They’re certainly tunneling now,” Vic said. “Looks like they’re starving.”

Tiaret put her hands on her hips. Droplets of seawater still glistened on her skin. “Sage Polup knows the creatures of the sea. He and the other sages must have called these worms and invited them to have a feast.”

As the friends watched the sea worms devour the floating ship hulk, Vic was reminded of how goldfish in ornamental ponds would swarm whenever he tossed a handful of food pellets into the water. Within only a few minutes the wrecked vessel dissolved before their eyes. The broken masts and curved hull planks fell apart into toothpicks. All along the shore, Elantyans cheered, seeing one of the primary obstacles now gone from their harbor.

“Maybe those things’ll just eat all of the sunken ships and the floating wreckage and save us a lot of work,” Vic said. The water calmed at the mouth of the harbor. The last remaining bits of the sunken fishing vessel drifted out, spreading toward the open sea.

Gwen shook her head. “Number one, that ship was blocking the harbor, so they had to get rid of it quickly. Two, ships and their contents are too valuable to waste like that. Especially wood. And three, I think those little worms have gorged themselves.”

“Nevertheless, it is one more thing to celebrate,” Tiaret said. “I am already practicing to tell the story.”

“And I’m ready for a big celebration banquet,” Vic said.

“Provided the merlons don’t attack again first,” Gwen added.

2

WEEK AFTER WEEK, THE work continued. It was a long time before the Elantyans felt they could pause for an evening of recognition and celebration. They had survived the battle, though the war was far from over, and diligent watchers continued to guard the coasts, alert for any sign of merlons.

On the evening of the celebration, thousands upon thousands of inhabitants gathered in the main governmental rotunda. The meeting chamber was made entirely of polished white stone marbled with gold veins. Shimmering crystals in the alcoves glowed with warm rainbow light, like prismatic torches.

On a low dais at the center of the rotunda, the five robed members of the Pentumvirate waited for the room to come to order as the noisy citizens found their places. Seating themselves in the ornately carved stone chairs arranged in a semicircle on the dais, the members of the Pentumvirate gripped the rose and turquoise decision crystals on the right and left arms of the chairs.

Nibbling the edge of her lower lip, Gwen stood near the exit of the Pentumvirate Hall with Vic, Lyssandra, Tiaret, and Sharif, waiting to be called forward. “Everybody fought the merlons,” Gwen whispered to her companions. “Why would the Virs make such a big deal out of what we did?”

Vic gave her a mocking smile. “Don’t overanalyze, Doc. It’s cool. Just go with it. Celebrate now, contemplate later.”

In a low voice Tiaret said, “From the Great Epic, I have learned that false heroes risk others’ lives for their own glory and demand to be honored. True heroes, however, risk their own lives for others, because honor demands it.”

Agreeing, Sharif leaned toward them with a satisfied smile and added in a hushed voice, “My people have a saying: A land without heroes is easily conquered.”

The white-robed Etherya, her dark hair caught up in ringlets high at the top of her head, raised her arms and said in a rich, melodious voice, “We stand in unity.”

“In unity is our strength,” responded the apprentices, along with the rest of the crowd.

“We who gather here share a belief in order over chaos, justice over uncontrolled power, and good over evil.” Etherya lowered her arms.

“We sit together in peace,” the crowd replied in unison, and they all took their seats on the tiered benches that ringed the meeting chamber.

Etherya once again raised her voice: “Today we gather to celebrate our freedom, and our victories in several battles over the merlons. On behalf of the Pentumvirate, I thank every citizen who fought to protect Elantya. We also wish to recognize those essential individuals without whom the victories would not have been possible.”

The first ones to be called forward were Sage Rubicas and the anemonite Sage Polup. Ever since the merlon attack, Rubicas had been working on his large protective shield spell, trying day after day to recreate the barrier he had successfully tested — before his treacherous assistant Orpheon stole and destroyed much of his work.

“Before I present the Council’s gifts of thanks to Sage Polup and Master Sage Rubicas,” Etherya continued, “I have asked our anemonite friend to tell us his story, that we may better treasure our freedom and understand the nature of our enemy.” The crowd murmured its approval.

Sage Polup turned toward the crowd in his heavy, clanking body and adjusted something in the twin horn-shaped speakers at his chest. “Many years ago, my people lived at peace in a beautiful reef, sharing the oceans with all creatures and dwelling in harmony with them. We swam free on the currents and rode on spiny kraega steeds, assisting them as they assisted us.

“Then the merlons captured my people. They clipped our swim fronds so that we could not escape, and they forced us to invent weapons for them — something we had no desire to do.

“Because any resistance on our part resulted in torture or death, at last my people gave in. The merlons made many of us work in a place called Lavaja Canyon, where thermal vents spew out molten lava which, as it hardens, releases great magical energies. We anemonites are capable of molding those energies for the merlons’ magic.

“When I could no longer compel myself to do the bidding of the merlon king Barak, I resolved to escape. With hope and desperation, I cast myself into the thermal currents rising from a bubbling lavaja vent. Though the water burned me terribly, the hot currents carried me higher and higher, whisking me away from my captors.

“The merlons did not follow, believing me already dead in the hot jets of water. I lost consciousness until a stream of cool water struck me and jetted me out of the thermal currents. I rode that stream for more than a day, not caring where I went, as long as it was away from the merlons. Near some reefs, where the water became shallow and turbulent, I spotted a kraega steed and persuaded it to carry me to Elantya, where your engineers and magical sages worked together to create this amazing body” — he lifted one thick arm to show off its gliding pulleys and bubbling lubricants — “so that I could live among you on the land. That is how I became an instructor at the Citadel. I long for the day when all of my fellow anemonites can be free, but until then I choose to live among you and work toward that time.” Polup turned back toward the Pentumvirate.