The Poisoned Crown (32 page)

“Let him go! You can follow by water if you want. The bridge is at the eastern end of the reef, close to the bend of the current…”

“There could be guards,” Nathan said, remembering Semeele’s words.

“Hope they are unwary,” Nokosha said, “for their sake.”

The albatross took off in a trail of spray, and when Nathan looked back the selkie was gone.

The sea wheeled and sped beneath them; the sundazzle blinked in his eyes. “How do you know the way?” he asked Ezroc. “Don’t you ever get lost?”

“Lost?” The bird sounded baffled at the concept. “How could I be lost? I see the reefs beneath the waves, the flow of the currents, the tides of the moon. I feel the winds that circle the globe. There are patterns in the air that do not change: the pull of the Poles, the turn of the world through night and day, the great cycles of cold and heat, of storm and calm. I know where hurricanes are born, where all weathers die. I hear the song of the whales and the heartbeat of the sea. I always know where I am. Don’t you?”

“If I know what world I’m in,” Nathan said, “that’s the best I can do.”

He could make out the reef now, a shadow beneath the sea. The water lightened to turquoise and green as the sand floor neared the surface,
darkened with the outline of submerged rocks. Far to the south there were the ascending vapors of the wall.
If there are guards
, Nathan thought,
they’ll see us.
The albatross was the only thing in the sky.

“Where’s the Dragon’s Bridge?” he asked.

“There.”

Ahead, the rock shadow narrowed to an isthmus joining two sections of the reef; the water on either side was ultramarine with depth.

“We must be quick,” Ezroc said. “The Great South March passes beneath the bridge, and it is the season of their migration. If they scent her, they will climb up the rocks to feast.”

“What’s the Great South March?”

“The march of the lobsters. They live in large numbers along the Midwater Mountains ’round Cape Hook, and every spring they come south to feed in the rich waters near the Reef Wall. They march in a long winding line, two by two; it may go on for miles. No one knows why. They will eat anything in their path.”

“I saw them,” Nathan said, remembering the brief visions in the early stages of his dream. Beyond the image of the marching lobsters, Ezroc’s words—the Midwater Mountains, Cape Hook—opened new vistas in his mind: suddenly he saw that Widewater was more than just a vast flatness of sea. There were valleys and mountain ranges, deserts and forests—a whole world of submarine geography lying just below the waves.
And if I could pull the plug out
, he told himself, thinking of the huge boulder sealing the caverns of air,
then the ocean would sink, if only a few yards, and some of it would become land. Land where seabirds could nest, and seals could bask, and merfolk and selkies could walk together on legs …

Land for people to fight over, because where there is land, there is war.

One problem at a time
, Nathan thought. He had problems enough.

“Everyone knows of the Great South March,” Ezroc was saying. “That’s the trouble. Bigger predators follow them—predators who eat lobster. And anything else they can find.”

“Sharks?” Nathan said.

“No. There are worse things in the sea than sharks.”

The albatross was descending in a wide spiral, scanning the surrounding
waters. Peering past his shoulder, Nathan found he could see far down into the glass-clear depths. There was the rock bridge, a natural arch six yards wide and perhaps fifty long, spanning the chasm that split the reef in two. Halfway along he made out the mermaid—the pale gleam of her body, the smoke of her hair. She seemed to be seated, plainly bound, on the very edge of the reef; her tail twisted from side to side as if she was struggling to be free. Far below he glimpsed a long line of movement on the seabed. The march of the lobsters.

He could not see the guards or any other merfolk in the vicinity.

Ezroc settled on the water, dipping his head to look down. Denearo’s face was upturned, marked with desperation and fear.

“You came!” Nathan heard her cry. “You came for me!”

Ezroc said to him: “I can’t release her. I could dive down there, but I have no hands to loose her bonds. You must do it.”

“But—”

“You
must.”

Nathan slid off the albatross’s back and hesitated, treading water, one hand on the feathered neck. He couldn’t say
I’m afraid
, but the terror that filled him seemed to drain him of both breath and nerve. His stomach churned, his heart thudded. All the clichés of fear, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier. In other dreams, other worlds, he had had to make choices—choices forced upon him by circumstance and danger, hopeless, last-minute choices whose outcome might be uncertain or fatal. To leave the safety of the cave in the Eosian desert, eluding its dreadful guardian—to confront the Urdemon in the marshes of Wilderslee, which picked him up in its toothless jaws and tried to swallow him—to lift the Traitor’s Sword, which would maim or slay anyone who dared lay a hand on it. He had chosen, not in courage or bravado but desperation and despair, opting for the last resort, the forlorn hope. Now he had to choose again. But the desperation and despair were Denaero’s, not his. All he could think of was crushing pressure and blackness engulfing his mind …

For what seemed like a century he paused, gazing down through the water.

Then he filled his lungs, and dived.

The first few strokes were the worst. The water dragged as he fought his way down; fortunately, the bridge was close to the surface. Then he reached Denaero, clutching at a hunk of coral to keep himself from floating back up again, almost cutting his palm on the hardened polyps. He saw there were stone manacles around her wrists—merfolk have no way to work metal—connected with bindings of what looked like thongs that were lashed through holes bored in the rock of the bridge itself. After a minute’s thought, he picked up a piece of broken coral and began to saw at them.

“No!” said Denaero. “You can’t cut through leatherwrack. You have to untie the knots. Hurry—please hurry—”

The knots had been pulled tight. As he strove to unhitch them he noticed for the first time that there was webbing between the mermaid’s fingers. He thought:
My hands are more efficient than a merman’s. I should be able to do this
—but he could not get even a fingertip through the loop. His chest felt squeezed, and he realized belatedly that he needed to breathe. With a vague gesture to Denaero he pushed himself up to the surface for air.

Going down was easier the second time. And the third. Eventually, he managed to thrust a coral chip under the thong, wriggling it to and fro to loosen the knot. He had forgotten about the approaching lobsters until Denaero screamed.

“Behind you! Behind you!”

He turned just in time. Huge pincers snapped within inches of his face. He kicked out, dislodging the creature from the bridge—it pitched backward and floated off into the deep. But there were many more mounting the cliff from below, giant crustaceans three or four feet long, armor-plated, with stalk-eyes and groping antennae, half crawling, half swimming up the rock face. Flailing his legs to keep himself submerged, he looked for a boulder to roll down on top of them, but all the available boulders appeared to be fixed in place. He returned to wrestling with the leatherwrack, winkling a strand free at last, glancing around every other instant until Denaero said: “I’ll keep watch.
Hurry
…”

He had to go up for air again, dive again, anchor himself to the bridge while he tugged and strained at her bonds. And then just as he
released her wrist—one wrist, the other was still in its shackle—he saw the claws advancing from the far side, not just one pair but several, a phalanx of lobsters rising over the rocks, relentless and hungry. He fumbled for a weapon, lobbed a stone at them, but the water slowed its trajectory and it fell short. The pounding in his ears told him he had to breathe, though his fear of the water had vanished in other fears. Denaero clutched at him with a whimper of terror.

And then something swooped in front of him, a gray shape shadow-spotted, part seal, part man. The saw-edged pincers drew blood—he saw the thread of it thinning to a mist in the water—but the foremost lobster was smashed against the bridge, and the corpse became a weapon to turn on the rest, knocking them off the rock.

“You free—the fish-girl!” called Nokosha. “I’ll keep these—at bay!”

Nathan surfaced, breathed, plunged. The second knot was harder, a tangle of thongs snarled together. He lost count of how often he had to go up for air. Nokosha said “Can’t you get a move on?” and came to look, but his fingers were thicker than Nathan’s and less agile, and after a brief attempt he returned to his fight with the marauding lobsters, still wielding his first victim like a club. Now he was having to dart from one end of the bridge to the other as more and more of the creatures swarmed up from the deep. He couldn’t maintain the defense on both flanks: they were too many for him. Nathan was forced to abandon the second knot, lunging out with a chunk of broken coral that cracked instantly between crushing pincers. He drew back, weaponless, tried another kick, and nearly lost a toe. Denaero gripped him with her free arm, gasped: “Don’t leave me!”

Darkness rushed up from below—jaws champed—the attacking lobster was bisected in a single bite. Nathan glimpsed the sweep of a body as long as a barge, a reptilian maw lavishly trimmed with teeth, the flat glare of a fish. Giant flippers propelled it through the water; a whiplash tail flicked against the rock, dislodging more lobsters. Glancing down, he saw it was not alone. Beneath the bridge another similar shape was dive-bombing the march. He might have been relieved, but for the horror in Denaero’s voice.

“Icthauryon!” she cried.

The enormous head came around again—an alligator head, only several sizes larger, with eyes like dinner plates. Nokosha leapt in front of them, flourishing his lobster-club—there was a crunch, and most of the lobster was gone. Nathan realized he had to breathe and kicked up to the surface, hoping nothing took his legs off in transit.

“What’s happening?” Ezroc demanded. “I thought I saw—”

“Don’t ask.”

Back down again. Nathan tried to focus on the snaggle of leather-wrack but it was impossible. The icthauryon dived under the bridge: he saw its hide, crusted with barnacles, ridged and pitted like old armor, discolored with parasitic growths. He thought, fleetingly:
It doesn’t have any arrangement with cleaner fish
—then its tail lashed the cliff, and the rocks shook. It made a U-turn, scooped up a lobster, spitting out shell fragments like bits of pottery, returning to Denaero out of curiosity, or irritation, or greed. Nokosha had drawn his knife and hacked off a branch of coral—most selkies go unarmed, since their whole-body change makes carrying weapons impractical, but he kept the knife in a sheath strapped beneath arm or flipper. As the alligator gape rushed toward him he rammed the branch down its throat.
He may be a pain in the butt, but he’s brave
, Nathan thought appreciatively. The head twisted from side to side—blood seeped from cuts in the tongue and palate. It appeared to be choking—but its bite was too strong, the branch crumbled, it returned to the attack. Nokosha was running out of ideas. Denaero wrenched at the remaining shackle as if trying to tear her own hand off.

Then Nathan saw the shark. A great white, seven yards from nose to tail, speeding out of the blue like a torpedo. He could make out the saddle lashed to its back, the bit clamped in its jaws. Its rider was leaning forward, his tail looped over its flank, his torso covered in jointed plates, his face visored with scorpion shell. He held the reins in one hand, a javelin in the other. As the icthauryon veered toward him he threw; the blood-coral tip plunged deep into its eye. Almost before the shaft left his grip he had plucked another from behind the saddle and was ready to throw again. The shark swung aside even as the alligator
head flinched—the fish’s mouth snapped like a gin trap, taking a piece from the monster’s flipper.

“Raagu!” Denaero said. “Uraki on Raagu!”

Nathan had never thought he’d be happy to see a great white.

Nokosha—he suspected—had never thought he’d be happy to see a merman. He shot upward for air—selkies need to breathe roughly every twenty minutes—while Nathan yanked at the leatherwrack with renewed energy, breaking off only to glance at the conflict beyond the bridge. Maddened by its injuries, the icthauryon arced and writhed, teeth clashing on nothing, just missing the flick of Raagu’s tail, the outstretched arm of the warrior. A second javelin was embedded in its neck, but it seemed to have done little damage. Then its mate surged up from below, abandoning the lobster hunt, coming in for the kill. The sharkrider darted aside at the last moment, almost trapped against the cliff—the two monsters thudded into the rocks again and again, shaking the bridge to its foundations. Nathan finally felt the knot begin to give, but he was nearly out of breath and time. He couldn’t hang on any longer—he would have to go up again—

The selkie was back, a gray seal-streak diving straight down onto the injured icthauryon. Somehow, he latched on behind the head, jerking the javelin free. Then he thrust it deep into the neck at the base of the skull, sawing the shaft from side to side, working it inward—severing the spinal cord, shutting down its nervous system, blanking out its brain … A red cloud billowed upward, obscuring the selkie from view. The thrashing body grew still, drifting into the abyss. The other icthauryon turned aside from its prey to follow; nature allows little loyalty to the dead, and this was an easier meal. The lobsters, Nathan guessed, would take their share. He went up for a mouthful of air, returned to his task.

Nokosha had emerged from the blood-cloud and crouched close to Denaero; the sharkrider hovered beyond the bridge.

“You saved my life,” Uraki said. “When we meet in the battle, I will remember it.”

“Ditto and ditto,” said the selkie.