Mermaidia: A Limited Edition Anthology

by Pauline Creeden

  Her mother's wetsuit fit her perfectly, and though she could take very little with her—bags and tools and weapons from the dry land would have been wrenched from her hands and swallowed by the depths—the clothing had pockets and ties in discreet places that allowed her to lash a knife and a small flint and steel and some twine and a few other items.

  Quarie had no idea where she was headed. All she knew was that there were voices—human or water or otherwise—that begged for her help and called her out to sea. She swam past schools of fish and jellies and other sea creatures who moved about in unnatural directions. All could feel that some unknown danger lay before them. They swam away. She swam ahead.

  She felt the change in water temperature before she saw the island looming ahead. It wasn't a gradual increase at all. Suddenly the water was no longer its cool self, but felt as though it were being boiled over a cookfire. The extra heat sapped the strength from her muscles and made it harder to swim. Night was beginning to fall, and the water became murky and thick with sand and muck. She surfaced just enough to look for the land that must be near.

  The tips of an island rose out of the water ahead, rimmed by a glittering black sand beach. A ship lay at anchor nearby, and she could see torches on the shore. Flickering firelight glistened across the water, and the desperate voices were overwhelmingly loud in her head, though there was little actual sound beyond the slapping of the waves.

  Fear curled in the pit of her belly. Not because of the strangers, or because of the cries for help, but for the smoke that rose from the top of the island. This was no regular landmass, but the peak of a volcano threatening to erupt.

  She swam to the far side of the island, as far from that ship as she could and slithered ashore among the rocks and sand. She stayed to the shadows of the deepening night and called to the rain to draw it closer to help disguise her approach. She scrambled up and around, as stealthily as she could, following the voices, until she found a vantage point where she could see the gathering of people at the side walls of the volcano.

  Jolts of emotion and energy washed over her as she looked on in terror. The sound of the waves crashed louder, but unnaturally. She recognized that sound.

  Dozens of Isyre people—her people, who had scattered to the far seas long ago, and of whom she had only heard stories passed down by her parents—stood trapped by men with knives and swords. But the weapons didn't terrify her as much as the shell necklaces worn by the leaders. The Isyre were entranced, just as Quarie had been.

  They weren't merely standing unconscious, lost in a dream world as she had been. The leaders with the necklaces were directing them, moving them like puppets, channeling their magic through those terrible artifacts.

  And standing with the leaders was Zuke.

  Chapter 16

  “Again,” directed Silvari.

  Zuke shuddered as Silvari, the captain, and the mage from the cargo hold engaged their shell artifacts and threw the energy of their captives against the side of the volcano. A large, ornate glyph appeared, briefly, in the stone and then faded again.

  Silvari swore.

  The rain had increased from a light drizzle to a steady pour, which threatened to douse the torches despite Zuke's frequent attempts to relight them. The air smelled of sulfur and smoke, and tremors rumbled underfoot. The volcano was about to erupt, and Silvari's efforts to unlock some magical gateway were failing, badly.

  “Take care of that volcano,” she growled at him.

  Zuke sighed. She had an optimistic sense of what his abilities could do. Light torches, yes. Start a wildfire, easy. Explode a glowing ball of poison like a firestar, why not. But control a stewing bowl of lava was a stretch.

  He could feel the volcano's fire, and was drawing from its bottomless energy. By bottomless, he meant that he literally could not find the bottom. He had tried to explain to Silvari just what it might mean to control more fire than he could measure, but she had only threatened him with a knife. And set one of her pirates to stand at his back with a cutlass pointed at his ribs.

  It was incredibly difficult to solve the problem of how to save as many of the captives as possible, ideally while actually surviving the night himself, with a sword at his back.

  To buy himself a little time, he channeled a bit of his magic toward a lava flow that was closest to the top. He knew that Silvari watched, and she would be able to sense his energy, so at least she would know that he was trying to comply.

  The lava felt his fire and stole it. It laughed at him, actually, as it used the bonus infusion of magic to push its way through to the top toward a crack in the volcano wall.

  Rocks exploded with a thunderous crack and a hiss of steam. And then the red lava appeared, glowing like a fiery snake as it began to slither down the side. Luckily, it wasn't that close to where they all stood. Yet.

  Silvari glared.

  Zuke shrugged. “Perhaps I should work on something other than adding fuel to the eruption.”

  “No matter.” She fingered her necklace. “Your water witch is nearly here. I can sense her.”

  Zuke clamped his jaw tight and lied, “Good.”

  He tried to warm Silvari's clothes, but they resisted. She smirked at him. The captain and her mage were also impervious to his fire. He raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I was just trying to dry you off. I guess I'll go work on the torches instead.”

  He flickered the flames of the torches while he sent gentle warmth to the captives. They were utterly under Silvari's spell with as little control as Quarie had before. While they weren't exactly complaining that they were cold and wet, he knew that they were suffering.

  All of his rescue options seemed to involve getting everyone back on the ship and sailing for home. He had no idea how to sail a ship, so he would also have to sweet talk Silvari's pirate crew into helping them.

  Easy peasy. If only the entire crew weren’t ready to slit his throat for fear of his flames.

  The ground shook again, and Silvari threw him another glare.

  “It wasn't me.”

  Things looked bleak.

  He spotted Quarie long before Silvari or her crew did. It wasn't so much that he saw her, but that he saw a tiny gap in the rain. It hovered at a pile of boulders up and above the beach, as though a tiny invisible parasol shielded someone from above.

  He smiled inside and set about creating a distraction.

  She was the storm. Quarie summoned rain and wind and waves to batter the gathering below. When their torches didn't fizzle, she summoned an extra downpour to gush onto Zuke's head. When, despite the storm, she felt the leaders begin again to channel the water energy through her Isyre people, she became enraged and wanted to summon a tidal wave to sweep them away.

  But first, she had to rescue her people.

  As she was gathering another deluge to pound the woman who seemed to be in charge—Silvari, Zuke's old friend, she guessed—another rock exploded from the side of the volcano, sending a plume of smoke and debris hurtling out to sea. A molten fireball landed on the ship like a flaming cannonball.

  There were shouts on the beach and from across the water as the deck of the ship caught fire. Sailors raced to the rowboats to go save their ship. They dropped their torches in the sand and many fizzled out, leaving the beach area in a deeper, more eerie darkness than before, shrouded by rain and illuminated by the hazy glow of the lava flow.

  She used the distraction to climb down to the beach and hide behind a large boulder.

  She scanned the chaos and found Zuke, still standing beside Silvari and two others. They were facing a stone wall and their captives. Zuke was facing her hiding place. She must have imagined the slight nod he gave in her direction before looking away.

  The closest of the Isyre men and women stood not twenty feet from her. They looked to be asleep on their feet. Now that she was close, she realized with horror that the pleas for help that she had been following were not from these captives. They were centered on Silvari
.

  She called on the storm again to blow its winds against the perpetrators and to buffet them with a drenching downpour. In the maelstrom, she ran forward and grasped the arms of the captive closest to her.

  With a prayer, she pushed something, some energy, some water sense into the woman, who opened her eyes with a start. She looked dazed and lost, but followed Quarie’s insistent tug. They hurried back to her hiding place.

  Quarie sat to catch her breath. One. One captive. The effort, along with today’s travel, had drained her. She loosened her grip on the rain storm, and the downpour turned back to a drizzle.

  The Isyre woman had a sun-wrinkled face and long gray hair that spoke of a life on the open water. She grasped Quarie by the hands, and then touched her hair, her cheek, her expression tender. “Marizia,” she whispered.

  Quarie shook her head, surprised to hear that name. She looked again at the woman. There was something familiar in her eyes, and in the shape of her nose. Her response was nearly a whisper. “Marizia was my mother. I am Quarie.”

  The woman's hand flew to her mouth, and tears threatened at the corners of her eyes. “I'm Anura. Marizia's mother. Your grandmother.”

  A lump formed in Quarie's throat, and the storm overhead seemed to shudder at the force of the feelings that washed over her in that instant. She wasn't alone. She and Illista had a grandmother.

  Anura recovered first “We have to free the others. The witch, Silvari, must be stopped. She will never succeed at opening the gateway, but she will kill us all trying.”

  “What is the gateway?”

  Anura shot her a look. “According to legend, it leads to the greatest source of power on the Earth.”

  Quarie shuddered, thinking of what someone like Zabewah would do with such a thing. The ground shuddered, too, and Quarie realized that it was the volcano again.

  Quarie could feel the storm threatening to recede. It was running low on energy. Soon she would no longer be able to hide behind its rain. “Silvari is controlling them all with a necklace—with three actually.”

  “Then we must destroy them.”

  Anura made to stand, but her legs wobbled and she sat back down hard on the sand.

  Quarie squeezed her hand. “Stay safe and stay hidden. Waking up from the spell of that enchantment will have sapped all your strength. I should know.”

  She used the last of the storm as cover as she made her way as close as she dared to Silvari and Zuke, in between them and open water. The captive Isyre all stood on the far side, closer to the volcano that rumbled and steamed above them all. The ship burned behind her despite the rain, and the pirates swarmed over it battling the flames.

  Zuke was still close enough to his friends to be affected by whatever she did to them. She gritted her teeth.

  She dismissed the storm abruptly and summoned the waves.

  Silvari turned and smiled.

  Quarie could see the woman that had been Zuke's friend for the first time. She was attractive in a striking way, but her smile was feral.

  “I've been waiting for you, water witch.”

  “Release the Isyre, Silvari, or you will suffer the same fate as your brother Raksha.”

  Silvari laughed. “Are you going to wash me away with a little wave? I dare you to try it.”

  Quarie threw the ocean at Silvari. The force would have crushed a cliff, but Silvari, her two helpers with their shell necklaces, and Zuke were untouched as the water whirled around them.

  “You might have bested Raksha and Mulavi, water witch. They were stupid and unprepared. And this time, you are all alone with no mommy or daddy to help you.”

  The call of the three necklaces were overwhelming. Far worse than the one that Mulavi had wielded against her. The sound and the energy stole Quarie's ability to think and to fight and to stand. She crumpled to the beach.

  Zuke bit his tongue to keep from crying out as Quarie fainted in front of Silvari. He tried desperately to summon flames from any surface—from the driftwood, from the volcanic ash. While she was using that blasted necklace, he couldn't touch her with fire.

  He rubbed a hand over the pouch he wore at his side. Inside was Mulavi's shell necklace. Vituri had given it to him. He couldn't use the thing—it channeled a water magic that was completely at odds with his fire. But Quarie could.

  He just had to get it to her.

  “Zuke,” shouted Silvari. “Bind her and take her to the others.”

  He barely restrained himself from laughing out loud.

  With a quick summoning of the flames, he strode to where Quarie had fallen.

  Silvari obviously felt him draw on his magic. “I said carry her, not burn her. I need the witch to live for at least a little while longer.”

  He shot Silvari a look. “I'm a cripple, remember. If you don't want me to use magic to move the girl, you should have asked one of your henchmen.”

  For fun, he poked the fire on the ship and the flames crackled higher. Men jumped overboard from the sides. “Shouldn't you help them out? Our ride home is on fire.”

  Silvari rolled her eyes. “If all goes well, we won't need the ship.”

  He lifted Quarie in his arms and headed around Silvari and her two men toward the rest of the captives. He carried her into the center of the group of captives and set her on her feet. She was like a large doll and he had little trouble balancing her upright.

  “Hurry up, you stupid man. We are nearly out of time.” Silvari snarled at him. “We must open the gateway tonight or we lose it to the ocean for another thousand years.”

  With a sleight of hand, he pulled Mulavi's necklace from his pouch and tucked it into the front of Quarie’s clothing, against her skin.

  “You are stronger than they know,” he whispered to her. “And Silvari was wrong. You are not alone.”

  Chapter 17

  Quarie was only vaguely aware of what was happening. The call of the necklaces was hypnotic. Part of her registered Zuke's arms as he picked her up, and his warmth and gentleness as he carried her across the sand. Most of her was lost in the song of the sea and the crashing of the waves. They were fake, a figment of the magic of Silvari's necklace, though they felt all too real.

  You are not alone.

  Zuke's words drifted over her and something prickled at the skin of her chest.

  Silvari and her two spellcasters began their work again. Currents of energy, of magic, of life flowed out of Quarie like tentacles into Silvari's waiting grasp. The woman redirected that energy toward the volcano, toward the gateway. Silvari was using the Isyre to force that doorway open.

  She became aware slowly of the other Isyre around her. Their energy was also being drawn out, into Isyre and her two helpers.

  You are not alone.

  The prickling at her chest was a necklace, just like Silvari's. It was Mulavi's, she realized with a start. Zuke must have brought it all the way here. The thing that had once enslaved her might be her way out.

  She fought for control from Silvari, and felt the other woman's impatience as she clamped down harder on Quarie. A thread of energy broke free, and Quarie was able to keep it, to use it, with the help of Mulavi's necklace. And then another thread. And another

  You are not alone.

  Silvari gave a roar of frustration and Quarie broke completely free of her grasp.

  She opened her eyes. A glyph burned in the side of the cliff, faint but slowly growing brighter. The design seemed vaguely familiar, though she didn't immediately recognize it.

  She slipped the necklace over her head and whirled to face Silvari.

  The woman wrestled with the magic of the Isyre, trying to direct a storm that she couldn’t quite hold.

  Quarie began to sever the magic ties between Silvari and the nearest of the Isyre.

  “Stop her.”

  First one of the two henchmen that had been assisting passed his necklace and its magic threads to Silvari, and charged down toward the beach wielding a curved blade.

  Z
uke stepped forward and chanted something. The man screamed and dropped the blade, holding his hand as though in pain. The two men circled one another, Zuke with his staff and the other man drawing a long leather whip from his belt. He cracked it and Zuke ducked as the many metal-tipped edges of the captain’s cat-o-nine-tails nearly caught him in the face.

  Zuke pounded his staff into the sand, and the captain's clothing erupted in flames. With high-pitched scream, he ran for the waves, dropping every few feet to roll on the wet sand, but his clothes continued to burn. At the water's edge he struggled to remove what remained of his clothes. His hair was on fire and his flesh burning as he dove into the salty sea.

  Quarie gulped and severed more ties between Silvari and the Isyre. She freed one man, and then another. As each was freed, they felt to their knees, gasping, blinking, confused and hurting.

  The earth shook again, and another geyser of steam erupted from the volcano.

  You are not alone.

  The glyph on the stone waivered.

  Silvari took the necklace from her other henchman, and with it all of the power from the remaining captive Isyre. Then the mage turned on Zuke.

  Zuke tried to trip him with his staff and tried to set the man's clothing on fire, but neither worked. Zuke looked tired, and stumbled as he attempted to capture the man. The mage kicked Zuke in the chest and sent him falling backwards.

  From behind the boulder, Anura stepped out and raised her arms. The evil mage was steps from a group of Isyre when a wave rose and swirled around him like a tornado. It enveloped him head to foot and drew him out to the sea.

  Quarie redoubled her efforts to sever the ties to Silvari, but her efforts were going too slow. She freed only a few more of the dozens. The shape of a portal began to emerge around the glyph, creating a depression in the stone that began to deepen.