Waterfire Saga, Book Four: Sea Spell: Deep Blue Novel, A (25 page)

“Principessa Serafina? Can it
be
?”

Sera’s breath caught. She thought she recognized the voice, but she was afraid to hope. “Fossegrim?” she called out.

“Yes, it is I!” he shouted back.

Her old friend, the liber magus! “Where are you?” Sera shouted.

“Below you,” Fossegrim replied.

Serafina twisted and strained, trying to see him. She spotted him to her left. “Are you in a cocoon, too?” she asked him.

“Indeed I am.”

“How did you get here?”

“I and my fellow Black Fins were found in the Ostrokon on the same day Vallerio returned to Cerulea. Death riders have been interrogating me ever since, for months and months, but I’ve given them nothing. They must’ve finally realized it was hopeless, for they threw me into the spider’s lair six days ago.”

Sera knew all too well how Traho interrogated his prisoners. She could only imagine what the brave old merman had gone through.

“Fossegrim, are you…are you…”

“Still in once piece?” he asked. There was a short silence, then, “Let’s just say I shall find it difficult to shelve conchs again.”

“Your fingers…” Sera said in a choked voice.

“Indeed, child. What he didn’t cut off, he broke.”

“He’ll pay for this,” Sera said vehemently, furious that Traho had hurt this wise, gentle merman. “I swear to the gods, he’ll pay.”

She tried once more to break free of the cocoon, to no avail. Not only was she weak, she was hungry, too.

“Fossegrim, do you know how long I’ve been here?”

“Five days. Alítheia dragged you in the day after she dragged me here,” Fossegrim replied. “She said you’d been left in a tunnel. You’ve been unconscious all that time.”

Which means I’ve been in Cerulea for, what?
Sera wondered.
Eight or nine days? Ten?

“I feared you were dead, but Alítheia said you were full of scorpion’s venom. She was angry. She wanted to eat you right away, but she said your flesh would be bitter until the venom wore off. I’m afraid she ate something—some
one
—else in the meantime,” he added.

“Has she threatened to eat you?”

He shook his head. “She says I’m old and tough and she’s only keeping me around as a last resort.” He chuckled. “Makes me feel like a sweet that nobody wants, one with a sea urchin center.”

“We need to escape before she eats either of us, and I haven’t a clue how to make that happen,” Sera said. “If only I had my sword or dagger, I could cut my way out.”

Fossegrim cleared his throat. “I find that success—in extricating oneself from captivity, or in
any
endeavor, really—comes down, essentially, to belief.”

Sera had forgotten the liber magus’s exasperating tendency to pontificate. There was a time and place for his wordy ramblings, but this definitely wasn’t it.

“So, all we have to do is
believe
we’ll get out of here, and we will?” she asked skeptically.

“Precisely,” Fossegrim replied. “Belief leads to action, and action leads to success. If you do not believe you can get out of here, you’ll give up, do nothing, and merely dangle uselessly, waiting for the end to come. However, if you
do
believe escape is possible, you’ll snap into action and use all the weapons at your disposal to attain your liberty.”

Sera rolled her eyes. “Fossegrim, maybe you haven’t realized this, but I don’t
have
any weapons. I can’t even move my hands. I’m in a
cocoon
!”

Fossegrim sighed deeply, as he often had in his ostrokon when confronted by a particularly dense student.

“Is it not strange that this creature that inspires such great fear in so many, is—at this moment—so full of fear herself?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the grille.

The goblins had left, but Alítheia was still huddled in the hollow where she’d taken cover, cringing and hissing.

“For four thousand years, the anarachna has been carrying out the task with which Merrow charged her: to ascertain who is fit for the throne,” he continued, his eyes still on the spider. “Yet she’s reviled. Taunted. Banished to a dark cave under the seafloor. What poor recompense for such long and faithful service.” He shifted his gaze back to Sera. “You
do
have a weapon, child. Can you not see it?”

Serafina was about to argue with him when she heard Vrăja’s voice in her head again, as she did so often in times of trouble.
Nothing is more powerful than love.

Love.
It was easy to feel it for Mahdi, her friends, her merfolk. It was a lot harder to feel it for a giant bronze spider that wanted to eat her.

Sera saw what Fossegrim was trying to say, though—that the anarachna, like any creature, deserved to be treated kindly. With respect. Even love.

Sera would try to do that now. She had no choice.

Love was the only weapon she had left.

A
LONG BRONZE LEG, articulated at the joints and tipped by a dagger-sharp claw, poked out of the hollow. It was followed by another, and several more, and then the anarachna emerged fully.

Sera watched her, knowing she had only minutes to put her plan in motion. The bloodbind had given her some of her five friends’ talents. She summoned Ava’s gift of sight now, focusing it on the spider.

For a few tense seconds, she sensed nothing. Then an image of high, impenetrable walls came into her mind. She felt various emotions as she concentrated on the image: anger, fear, but most of all, sadness.

Sera knew that she would have to tap into those emotions if she had any chance of engaging Alítheia, but she’d have to proceed slowly. The spider had built walls around her feelings for a reason, and drawing them out would be a delicate task. Sera had seen Alítheia in a rage during her Dokimí, when the spider learned she wouldn’t be able to eat Sera, and Sera knew how quickly Alítheia could become violent. If Sera wasn’t careful, she’d set the creature off and get herself killed.

“Alítheia, are you okay? Did you get hurt?” she asked gently.

“A sssmall burn only. But Alítheia found no moon jelliesss. Ssshe mussst hunt them elsssewhere. You mussst eat them, ssso ssshe can eat you,” the spider said, crawling past Sera.

“Alítheia,
wait
!” Sera called out, desperate to keep the spider talking. “Why do the goblins throw lava at you?”

“Becaussse they are cruel. Like the commander. Like hisss daughter. Thisss isss how thingsss are now.”

Vallerio and Lucia,
Sera thought grimly.
They’re setting a fine example, as always.

“The goblins shouted at you. What did they say?”

The spider stopped. She turned around. Hope leapt in Sera.

“They sssaid, ‘We made you, Alítheia. And we can kill you, too.’ Why sssay sssuch thingsss? They
did
make Alítheia, but ssshe desspisssesss them! Neria iss the one who breathed life into Alítheia, not the ssstinking goblinsss. Merrow isss the one who gave her purpossse.”

The spider shook her head sorrowfully as she spoke.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sera.

“The goblinsss taunt Alítheia becaussse they are afraid of her,” said the spider. “Her purpossse is to ssscare all thossse who would take the throne of Miromara, but ssshe ssscaresss
everyone
, not just impossstersss.”

“Maybe we could change that,” Sera ventured, hoping to soften the creature.

“No,” Alítheia said brusquely. “Merrow made Alítheia thisss way, and none can change her. Ssshe wanted Alítheia to frighten enemiesss of the throne, becaussse ssshe hersssself was frightened.”

Sera’s hope trickled away as the spider continued down the tunnel.

“What was Merrow afraid of, Alítheia?” Sera shouted. It was the first thing that popped into head. She knew full well what Merrow was afraid of, but she was desperate.

Once again, the spider stopped. “Orfeo,” she replied, a note of exasperation in her voice.

“Why? She thought Orfeo was dead,” Sera said. “She believed that she and the other mages had killed him.”

Alítheia turned back to Sera again. She shook her fearsome head. “When Abbadon attacked, there wasss no time. Only fear. Only death. After, there wasss time. To think. To remember. Time to go back to Atlantisss. Time to find out. To know.”

“Know what?” Sera asked.

“What he
did
!” the spider said angrily, stamping her front legs. “How he made hisss monssster!”

Sera caught her breath. “Great Neria, she
knows
,” she whispered. “Alítheia
knows
what Abbadon’s made of.”

“Atlantis? Orfeo? Serafina, what are you talking about?” Fossegrim asked.

“I’ll explain everything as soon as we get out of here, I promise,” Sera said. She addressed the spider again. “Alítheia, please don’t go down the tunnel,” she begged. “Stay here. Talk to me. Tell me what you know.”

Sera wasn’t babbling anymore. Her conversation with Alítheia had taken a turn she hadn’t expected. She’d forgotten she was a prisoner in the spider’s den, forgotten the danger she was in. All she could think about was how close she was to the answer that had eluded her for so long. It had been right here, in Cerulea, all this time, with the Merrovingians’ long-serving, faithful guardian.

Merrow, Nyx, Sycorax, Navi, Pyrrha—five of the greatest mages the world had ever known had not been able to kill Abbadon, because they’d had no idea what dark materials Orfeo had used to fashion the monster. But Merrow had found out. And she’d spoken about her discovery in front of Alítheia. Sera needed that information if she and her friends were to destroy the monster.

Sera knew that both the sea goddess Neria and Merrow had been present when Alítheia was made. There were mosaics in the ruins of Merrow’s reggia that depicted the event. Goblins had mined the ore. Bellogrim, the god of fire, had forged her. Merrow had dripped her own blood in the vat of molten bronze. Neria herself had breathed life into the spider.

Sera had often imagined the conversation between Neria, Bellogrim, and Merrow, but that conversation had never included Alítheia, because Sera had never thought of the spider as a reasoning, feeling creature, one worth talking to.

But that had just changed.

“Alítheia, where did Merrow go when she went to Atlantis? Did she go to the death goddess Morsa’s temple? Did she talk about it in front of you?” Sera asked, trying to contain her excitement.

“Yesss. Ssshe sssaid ssshe heard the sssouls. In the bloodsssong. And ssshe knew then what hisss monssster wasss.
Sssouls
. Ssso many. Angry. Ssscared. Trapped. And ssshe underssstood why ssshe and the other magesss could not kill it. Becaussse no one can kill—”

“An immortal soul,” Sera finished, astonished. “Abbadon is made of human souls. Morsa taught Orfeo how to catch souls, and keep them, and he used the souls of the people he sacrificed to her to make a monster that was indestructible.”

Alítheia nodded. “Many, many sssouls.”

“So Merrow discovered that Orfeo could catch souls,” Sera reasoned. “I bet she suspected that he’d learned how to catch his own. That’s why she made her weird decrees. By stating that only a daughter of a daughter could rule Miromara, she made sure Orfeo could never rule if he somehow came back as himself. And if he figured out a way to take a female form and pretend to be the heiress to the throne, you would
still
find him out, Alítheia. You’d taste his blood at the Dokimí and declare him an imposter.”

The spider nodded.

Sera was silent for a bit, digesting the enormity of her discovery. She was elated by it, and defeated by it. She’d learned what Abbadon was made of, but at the same time, she’d learned that she had no hope of killing it. How could anyone kill that which is immortal?

Unless the gods themselves had revealed how.

Clinging on to a last shred of hope, she said, “Alítheia, did Bellogrim say anything to Merrow about Abbadon? Did Neria? Did they tell her how to get rid of the monster?”

Alítheia shook her head. “They did not know how. The magic wasss Morssssa’s sssecret. And Orfeo’sss. But even if they had, it wasss too late. Merrow wasss too old, too weak.”

Sera was bitterly disappointed. Her hope of finding out how to kill Abbadon had just been dashed. The spider was still gazing down the tunnel again, but abruptly turned away from it. “Alítheia will not go down the tunnel. Ssshe will not hunt moon jelliesss there.”

“You won’t?” Sera asked, breaking into a smile. At least her plan to save herself and Fossegrim had worked. She’d won the spider over. Alítheia wouldn’t harm them now.

“No,” Alítheia said, turning her black eyes to Sera. A drop of venom fell from one fang. “All thisss talking hasss made Alítheia hungry. Ssshe will eat now. Ssshe will eat
you
, mermaid, plump or not.”