Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35

by Galvin, Aaron

  Again, Solomon called from above. “You in yet, girl?”

  “Y-Yes,” Sydney answered, her voice scattered and quiet as it echoed up through the shaft of air.

  “Right,” Solomon went on. “Heave-ho, then, lads. Get her up here.”

  Sydney nearly lost her hold upon the rope, the fibers burning the inside of her hand as it yanked suddenly taut. She held strong, however, riding the bucket like a swift and open-air elevator, headed for the sole way in or out of the oubliette prison.

  Sydney tried to meet her captors’ stares as she ascended through the hole. The light from their torches and the pain it caused to her eyes prevented her attempt at bravery. She had barely crossed into the above before the Orcs took hold of her, pulling her free of the bucket and the hole.

  The Orcs dragged her across the stones to stand before the one giving them their orders.

  The Violovar rogue, Solomon, was waiting for her when Sydney dared to look up again. Unlike when she first encountered him in the sewers, however, Solomon had now traded his tattered rags of the Violovar allegiance for the polished, black armor of the royal Painted Guard.

  A deeper voice that Sydney needed no reminder of to recognize called out from behind the wall of Orcs. “Stand aside, Solomon,” Malik Blackfin ordered as he led into the dungeon. “The king would speak with this traitor.”

  Solomon gave a curt nod as he stepped away, offering a wide berth to his leader.

  To Sydney’s mind, Malik Blackfin seemed twice as large as his subordinates. Monstrous in size, even by Orc standards, his armor set him apart from all those swearing allegiance to him. Where the others wore plate black, the Blackfin had adorned his with a swirl of white to offset the darkness he otherwise embodied.

  Sydney cringed at the mocking in his eyes. The Blackfin looked on her briefly before he too stepped aside, revealing the king. Where Sydney remembered laughter and smiles from the one she had formerly named father, King Darius came to her now with unhidden malice.

  Stepping within six feet of her, the king’s nose wrinkled as he considered Sydney. “Ugh.” He raised a bit of his robe to his nose to cover it. “If one didn’t take you for a savage before, girl, they certainly would know you for one now.”

  Girl? Sydney thought, clenching the makeshift handle of her bone wand. So, I have no name now, to your mind? She continued her stare of him, grateful to give the king any displeasure she might offer.

  The king snorted as he dropped the bit of robe from his nostrils. “Your mother is to stand trial soon,” he said. “I would have you there to watch and hear tales of her treason.”

  “Why?” Sydney flung back at him. “Why are you doing this to us? To her?”

  “Let you ask your mother such questions, child. Not me,” said the king. “For you know perfectly well why this is happening.” He nodded toward the hole leading down into the oubliette. “Or perhaps you need more time to swim below and look on your savage tail for the answer?”

  You can’t see anything down there. Sydney thought, shivering at the idea of being plunged below again. “No,” she said quietly. “Don’t put me back down there. Please . . .”

  “No,” said Darius. “I have no intentions of casting you back into the pit, Sydney.”

  Sydney now? She thought to herself. Not savage. Not child, or girl. He used my name . . . Her gaze flickered to the Blackfin beside the king. But why now? What is this game you’re playing?

  The king noticed her attention diverted. “In truth, I would prefer to have you back in your old chambers at the castle and well attended to.”

  Lies. Sydney thought immediately. Those chambers were a cage too. Just like Mom tried to warn me when we first arrived.

  Yvla’s words too came to her then, whispering from the recesses of her mind. Be brave, Sydney . . .

  Sydney bowed her head in submissive answer to the king. “Thank you,” she said. “I would like to go back to the castle.”

  Darius nodded. “Perhaps you shall. First, I would have some answers from you. Truth, rather.”

  And there it is, Sydney thought. He wants something from me. Needs something. She reflected on her mother and Yvla’s teachings. But what?

  The Blackfin stirred. “Can you not speak, girl? Or did you lose your sweet voice in the oubliette? Perhaps we ought to send you back down there to find it once more.” His gaze worked down her body. “And what’s that you’re trying to hide beneath your arm?” He asked, motioning one of the guards to lift Sydney’s arms.

  Sydney resisted, but failed to fend them off.

  Malik Blackfin laughed when the bone and its attached rag clattered to the ground. “What’s this?” he asked, picking up the makeshift training weapon, inspecting the rag that still bore the royal symbol that Sydney had once worn before casting it into the sewers. Malik grinned. “You liked the keepsake I returned to you so much that you imagined I might want it back?”

  Sydney did not rise to taunting, but she flinched when he cast the bone at her feet.

  “I have no use for savage trinkets, girl,” he said.

  “Peace, Blackfin,” said the king. “The child is clearly frightened and distrusts us.” He stepped closer to Sydney, then took a knee that he might look her in the eye at her level. “And why not? We have taken everything of value from you thus far, haven’t we, Sydney?”

  She endured the king’s touch as he reached out to brush a strand of wet hair from her forehead. Inside, she was screaming.

  “Aye, everything of value,” said Darius, standing once more to lord over her. “Or so you might believe.”

  Sydney trembled at the invisible touch of icy fingers wrapping around her heart and gently squeezing. “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly as I said,” said Darius. “I find the majority of poor fools left in your position often believe their circumstance is both far harsher than any others punished, and, strangely, that they could not be worse off.”

  You talk with a lot of fools, do you? Sydney wondered but did not say.

  The king continued. “And yet . . . those same fools fail to recognize that things can always be worse, for the truest of hells is a bottomless pit.”

  Sydney’s throat ran dry at the continued mirth in his voice.

  “I could tell you more of hellish torments, of course,” said Darius. “But, then again, I’ve learned that telling such poor souls never quite has the same effect as showing them.”

  Sydney trembled in her captors’ grips, believing the king meant to harm her as he did for her mother the last time she had seen him. Worse, that he might send the Blackfin to do his dirty work for him.

  The king neither moved, nor gave such an order. “Why did you come back to the Salt, Sydney?” he asked her quietly. “Why did you and your mother return, but leave your brother behind?”

  Jun. Sydney understood then. This is all about Jun. Her spirits rose at the notion. Which means they still don’t know where he is . . .

  The king tapped his foot. “Well?” he asked. “Is it such a difficult thing I ask of you that you require more time to think on your answers?”

  “No,” said Sydney quickly. “I just . . . I don’t know what to tell you that I haven’t already.”

  The king scoffed. “Lies, you mean.”

  “They’re not,” said Sydney. “Please, listen to me. The only reason I ran to the Salt was because I wanted to find my friend, Garrett.” She looked to the Blackfin with the hope that he might lend credence to her argument, he knowing that Garrett Weaver was both his nephew and the son of the former Orcinian leader, Makeda.

  Malik Blackfin smiled in response, as if he well understood what Sydney would have of him, denying her for the sport of it.

  Sydney warmed at the slight. She turned back to the king. “You have to believe me,” she said. “My friends and I came to the Salt looking for Garrett. That’s it! It’s why Mom came back too. She just wanted to find us all and take us back home where it was safe.”

  “Home?” Darius
asked. “And do you mean that shack upon the shore, or the home you once wished to have here with me in my castle? Before you fled my protection, that is . . .”

  “On the shore,” said Sydney, after some thought and more biting her tongue to keep from saying what she really wanted. “Now that I know what this world is like, I understand why Mom didn’t want me to ever come here.”

  Darius’s lip curled. “And yet even now you lie in admitting that you were once of two minds about which home held your allegiance – the Salt, or the shore.”

  “How did I lie?” Sydney asked.

  Darius raised a bit of his robe to cover his nose once more, drinking deep of its scent as if to rid the odor of Sydney from his nostrils before speaking again. “Do you know what the old ones say about such duplicitous people as you are, Sydney? The old ones rightly claim that no one may serve two masters. Either they will hate one and love the other, or else they will hold to one and despise the other.” The king’s nose wrinkled once more. “And it seems to me that both you and your cursed mother made your decision long ago by choosing to live upon the shore, rather than here where you belong.”

  “Then give us the same choice now,” said Sydney. “Let us go back to the shore. Please! I swear that I’ll never come back to the Salt as long as I live.”

  The king frowned. “Your mother and so many others swore such an oath to me too, once. All of them liars, right along with the pair of you, it seems to me now. Or did your mother not tell you of the oath she and others made?”

  Sydney’s voice caught in her throat, her silence an answer in itself.

  Darius scowled at her. “There be the first truth I’ve seen from you.” He scoffed. “And your lying, savage tongue cannot bring yourself even to speak it. For that is the power of real truth, Sydney. It silences even the most skillful of liars. I wonder though . . . do you truly comprehend the equal power and far reach of falsehoods?”

  “I-I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Perhaps, in time, you will,” said Darius. He glanced over his shoulder then, nodding at Solomon and the other Orcs.

  Without a word between them, Solomon signaled a few more of the guards to follow him out of the dungeon.

  Where is he going? Sydney wondered, her pulse racing. Why are they leaving?

  The king reached into his pocket, fishing for something hidden there. “Did you like the theatrical show I had presented the night your mother was taken, Sydney? You slipped away so suddenly after, I’m afraid that I never got around to asking your thoughts on the performances.” Darius removed his hand from his pocket, his fist clenched. “So? What did you think?”

  Sydney thought of Yvla then, the star actress of the show. How she had shot out of the water and soared through the air, taking on even the darkest of shadows as she played the role of the Tide-Turner known as the Lady Roselani. “I loved it,” she answered the king, her lip quivering as her memories turned to all that occurred thereafter. “Until the end and all that happened after.”

  “No doubt your mother shares your sentiment,” said the king. “She was always more attuned to the theatrics and romance of such stories too. As for me . . .” He reached toward her, his fingers unfurling to reveal a single silver coin in his hand. “I preferred the wizardry of magicians.”

  Sydney looked upon its face, expecting to see a male figurehead emblazoned on it like the coins she knew from home. Instead, she saw a blindfolded, Merrow female bearing a sword in one hand and the scales of justice in the other.

  Repositioning the coin, Darius gave a flick of his thumb to send the coin flipping through the air before catching it in his palm more. “Magicians are the truest of showmen,” he said, flipping the coin over and again. “Or so I once believed their powers to be.” He snorted. “My father had revealed to me early on that despite all the roles played, or the masks and makeup worn, all that actors did were lies. Mere puppets, they are. Beautiful puppets, I grant you, but puppets all the same. All moving where they were told. Parroting words written by wiser minds. And all so that they might venture on stage each and every night to sell the combined wares of all to an audience that craved the lies they sold.”

  But they’re not lies. Sydney reflected on all the stories Yvla told her while they hid in her brother’s house. The actors and the stories are representing truth. Warnings, even.

  Darius smiled when he looked upon the coin in his palm. Presenting it to Sydney once more, he revealed the tail side of the coin – a triangular shark fin, rising from beneath the surface. “Ah, but magicians,” the king continued. “Now, there was true power.” He flipped the coin again, watching it dance through the air, its glimmer caught in the torchlight as it descended into his palm once more. “Actors begged you to believe their lies. Lured you to identify with them, inserting yourself as part of their story, even as you watched from the safety of your chair.” He frowned in flipping the coin once more. “But once you saw them close? Once you ventured backstage and witnessed the players unmasked? Then, you saw all the lies for what they truly were. The beautiful maiden, not a maid at all, but a shapely crone with wigs and makeup. And the brave knight you saw on stage could not swing a sword if his life depended upon it. No,” said the king. “Much as I too once loved them for it, I came to learn they were all liars up there on their glorified stage.” The king curled his fingers around the coin in his palm, staring at all the while. “Magicians though . . . they would present themselves and their wares right in front of you, Sydney. Give you the coin to inspect, even, that you might know there were no tricks or lies. And then, before your very eyes.” The king opened his hand once more, revealing the coin had vanished. “All you thought that you knew was gone in an instant . . . and yet you knew nothing of where it went, nor how the magic occurred.”

  Sydney looked into the king’s eyes and found him staring back with icy sternness. “But it’s not gone,” she said. “They always bring it back because it was never really gone. That’s the magician’s lie. They hide the coin somewhere, or . . . I don’t know how they do it, but I know it’s all tricks.”

  “Aye, tricks.” The king nodded, making a fist once more. When he opened it again, Sydney saw the coin in his palm once more with the shark fin showing. “And that is when I came to learn that all the world and players in it are all part of a greater trick, Sydney.” He pocketed the coin. “In the end, either you are the liar and take power with such tricks and fabled stories, or else you are the fool who craves the lies and are forever swindled by them. Which are you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sydney, her breath catching in her throat upon hearing marching footsteps approaching once more outside of the dungeon. “Neither.”

  The king offered a sad smile. “There is no third option. No in-between. In the courts of this world, aye, or even Beyond, I shouldn’t wonder, there is only one choice or the other. The lesser of two evils, so to speak. In truth, I do not know yet which of the two you are, only that I was the latter, once. Aye, swallowing each and every lie you and your mother sold to me.” His shoulders sagged. “But no more, Sydney.”

  The king stepped away as Solomon reentered the room with his Orcs and four hostages, each with sopping wet, burlap sacks placed over their heads to conceal their identities. The first pairing matched the armored Orcs in height, but one stood bulkier than the other. The other pairing was far smaller in height and stature. Where the taller and broader pairing held their ground, despite the rough treatment, the smaller two were shaking and barely able to stand.

  Malik Blackfin’s hand drifted to the pommel of his sword as Solomon and the other Orcs lined the hostage up alongside one another. He nodded at the expert show and handling of his minions. “Remove their hoods.”

  The Orcs obeyed, yanking off the hostage hoods, revealing each of the four prisoners had also been muffled with a Salt-soaked rag binding.

  Sydney gasped in recognition of each and every one of the hostages. Owens? Her eyes welled with tears at the sight of her hi
gh school friend bound and gagged not twenty feet from her. His left eye was swelled shut and bruised, but the other was filled with furious rage until he noticed Sydney. Then, all of the fight in him was stolen away in an instant.

  Owens mumbled something through the rag that muffled him. He turned silent once more when one of the Orcs gave him a warning knock upside the head with their armored glove.

  Tears spilt upon Sydney’s cheeks at the sight of her mother’s former protector too, a famed former general of the Orcinians and her high school’s humble custodian too. Mr. Owens stood bound and gagged beside his son.

  Sydney fell to her knees, sobbing, when the Orcs removed the hoods of the smaller pairing too.

  The last she had seen of Amelia Mayfield and her father, Jack, had been when Sydney and Owens waved goodbye to them on her mother’s ship before venturing off to Crayfish Cavern in continued search of Garrett Weaver and the Selkies who had taken him. Both Amelia and her father were former residents of the Indianapolis Zoo, and Sydney’s mind flooded with curious wonder as to how and when all of her friends were taken hostage.

  All such questions disappeared when Malik Blackfin marched in front of the hostages, his eyebrows raised in consideration of which he might choose to pull from the lot.

  Remembering how Yvla had fared against him, Sydney found her voice. “Please,” she begged through her tears. “Please, leave them alone! Don’t hurt them.”

  “Hurt is the name of this game, child,” said the Blackfin, ignoring Amelia and her father when both would not meet his gaze. Instead, he looked between Owens and his father, both of whom refused to glance away. Smiling, he grabbed hold of Owens and yanked him from the line. “How much can you withstand, boy?”