by J. M. Lee
skekSa arched a scaly brow, looking the Sifa up and down. “You sound different, little Tae,” she said. “Is that a Vapra accent on your tongue? And I thought I blasted you well and good up on the bluff with my thunder egg.”
Naia swore under her breath. She had forgotten that skekSa knew Tae, as she knew many of the Sifa Gelfling. But even if skekSa could tell something was off about how the Sifa spoke, what had happened between Tae and Tavra was so complicated. Naia hoped it would be impossible for skekSa to guess that Tae had been badly wounded. That Tavra—one of the All-Maudra’s daughters—had lost her Vapra body and was now confined to the form of a crystal-singer spider. And that she was using the spider’s magic to move and speak as Tae, whose mind had gone into a deep slumber after her injury.
There was no way that skekSa could guess all that. The situation even boggled Naia’s mind if she thought about it too hard.
Tavra turned so her real, spider body was hidden from skekSa’s prying eyes.
“You’re not so deadly as you think. Maybe you shouldn’t make enemies you can’t afford . . . You were a patron lord of the Sifa clan once. Why not throw your lot in with us, and reap the benefits when we overthrow the Emperor?”
“Don’t belittle me,” skekSa spat, quickly and hotly.
“Isn’t it worth considering?” Onica suggested. “You’ve seen what we can accomplish. You must have seen the Sifa light the fire aboard the Omerya, and the Vapra down below in Ha’rar, even as the Skeksis watched from the All-Maudra’s citadel. You know, deep in your heart, that we will succeed.”
This time, skekSa did not retort right away—and it was her mistake. Gurjin reached the neck of the chandelier. He drew the dagger from his belt and smashed it against the lamps of the chandelier, showering them with glass and sparks. The atrium went dark, and skekSa erupted with rage.
“NAIA! I will have your head!”
“This way!”
Naia threw the curtains back, though in the dark, Amri was the only one who could see her. He grabbed the others by the wrists, tugging them toward Naia and the door. Through the shadows and smoke, Naia barely made out Gurjin leaping from the chandelier toward the curtains. If he’d had wings, the descent would have been childling’s play, but as it was, he caught the red fabric with a heavy thump. He shinnied down the curtain quick as an apeknot-mouse and a moment later reached them where they stood with their backs to the great valve door.
“It won’t open,” Onica said, pressing her hands against the membrane. “Kylan, try your firca. The chamber doors opened to skekSa’s whistle before!”
skekSa let loose another angry bellow, still thrashing about in the dark. Tavra grabbed a slender iron candlestick that jutted from one of the piles of treasure—it was no sword, but it was better than nothing. Naia braced herself.
A chattering song flew from Kylan’s firca, Skeksis-like and eerie coming from the Gelfling instrument. For a moment Naia worried it wouldn’t work—that the ship wouldn’t respond to Kylan—but then the valve door shuddered and snapped open.
“Naia!” skekSa shouted. A crash followed as she tipped a table, and Naia raised her hand to protect her face from a shower of pearls and jewels. “You stupid girl!”
With a roar, the Mariner rushed at them. Tavra readied herself, but Naia grabbed a poker from Amri and launched it like a spear. It struck the Skeksis in the chest, but Naia didn’t stay to watch. Didn’t stay to fight. They ran through the door and down the winding passageways. Gurjin took the lead, followed by Onica and Kylan, while Naia, Amri, and Tavra kept the rear, hoping they would be able to find their way back to their ship before skekSa caught up to them.
“You all right?” Amri asked as they ran. With a start, Naia realized she was looking up at him. She’d been so used to his Grottan crouching, she hadn’t realized how tall he was.
“Yeah, but I’ll be better once we get to the ship!”
Gurjin’s memory served them well. Before long he led them back to the behemoth’s mouth. Seeing the little Sifa boat again should have raised Naia’s spirits, but it didn’t. She’d been trying to take their escape one step at a time, but the part where they got out of the behemoth’s mouth had come more quickly than she’d expected.
“Now what?” Kylan panted.
“Maybe we should ask politely?” Amri suggested wryly.
Onica shrugged out of the ragged cloak she’d been wearing. “Let’s start by getting to the ship,” she said. “Even if we end up having to leave it behind to get out of here, there are weapons there. Fishing spears and nets.”
Naia imagined how good it would feel to have a spear in her hand.
“Onica’s right,” she said. “The strongest swimmers will guide the others. Onica, take Tae and Tavra. Gurjin, take Kylan. Amri, come with me.”
In pairs, they leaped into the water. Though Onica wasn’t a Drenchen, she was as adept a swimmer as Naia and Gurjin, darting through the water like a crimson hooyim fish. Naia let Amri hold her ankle as she opened her wings, propelling them through the water and quickly taking the lead on their way to the boat. They were almost halfway there before Naia brought them to the surface for Amri to take a breath of air.
“Surfacing so soon?” Amri teased. “I could’ve made it.”
“You just want me to kiss you again,” Naia remarked. The last time they’d been underwater together, she had done the breathing for both of them, though at the time, she hadn’t thought of it as kissing. Now that she said it out loud, though, her ears tingled.
Amri grinned with a lopsided smile, water lapping against his shoulders.
“Maybe.”
It was an odd time to joke around, but Naia felt her shoulders relax. skekSa hadn’t caught up with them, though she surely could have guessed where they’d gone. Maybe she’d been injured when the chandelier had come down, or maybe she was more in pain from her wounded wrist than she’d let on. Either way, for the moment they were safe. Maybe things would be all right. Naia smiled when Amri took her hand, and together they swam the rest of the way to Onica’s ship. Rope and net dangled over the side, tied to the hull, and they grabbed on.
“Do you feel that?” Amri asked.
He let go of the rigging with one hand, resting his sensitive palm and fingertips on the surface of the water. Though the water was mostly still, Naia felt a trembling prickling along her skin.
“It feels like a current,” she said. “Like a draft.”
“Like an exit?” Amri asked, ears perking.
Gurjin and Kylan arrived next, with Onica and Tavra shortly thereafter. Onica vaulted up the netting and onto the deck, then leaned over to help Tavra and Kylan. While the others got on board, Naia waited below with Amri and Gurjin.
“What’s going on?” Gurjin asked.
Amri waved his palm flat across the surface of the trembling water.
“Back in Grot, most of the tunnels that have water flow can be followed out of the caves eventually. I wonder if there are underwater tunnels here, too. Like gills, or something similar.”
Gurjin exchanged glances with Naia. “Even if there are, if they’re underwater, we can’t take the ship. And if we can’t take the ship, I’m not sure we’ll all be able to escape in the water. Naia and I have gills, but the rest of you . . .”
“I’m going to check it out.”
Before Naia could grab him, Amri let go of the rigging and dived. The last thing she saw were his white toes flipping a spray of cloudy water. Kylan leaned over the aft rail above.
“Where’s he going?” he called.
“Kylan, help Tavra and Onica,” Naia replied. “We’ll be back soon with news!”
They could see Amri below, cheeks puffed with his held breath as he ran his fingers along the wall. As she and Gurjin swam down to meet him, Naia idly tongued inside her own mouth, noticing how the wall looked like a larger—much larger—ve
rsion of what she could feel with her tongue just below her gum line.
Amri was inspecting a valve in the wall, identical to the one they’d used to get into skekSa’s atrium, though this one was completely submerged. If such a thing opened and closed, like a gill or a blood vessel, it could lead almost anywhere. Outside into the depths of the ocean. Somewhere else in the monster’s body, just as dangerous.
Amri must have sensed Naia and Gurjin close by, for he turned with a smile on his ballooned cheeks, pointing energetically at the valve. Naia made her way toward him, reaching out to touch him so they could dreamfast, but she paused when the water shivered—
POPPP
The valve sprang open. Water rushed toward it, sucked in at an alarming speed and volume. A bubble of shock burst from Amri’s open mouth, and then he was gone.
AMRI!
Naia pumped with her wings, shooting toward the valve in time for it to snap shut. She threw herself against it, pounding on it with her fists and kicking with her feet, but it didn’t open.
Open up! Open up, you stupid thing! Give him back!
Gurjin grabbed her shoulder. Naia, stop!
Stop? We’ve got to get this thing open! We have to go after him!
Real fear seeped into her brother’s paling face. Terror that went beyond a simple, rational fear of the unknown. But you don’t know where that . . . tube . . . goes!
She stared at him through the murky water, surprised she had to say it at all.
It doesn’t matter where it goes!
Her brother’s grip trembled on her arm, but she pulled free. He drifted away from her, glancing back to Kylan and the others on the boat as if he were thinking about leaving her. Her and Amri, who had no gills. She imagined her Shadowling friend caught in the current of endless water, lungs filling with sea. Drowning. Alone.
She didn’t care what Gurjin did. She had to help Amri.
Open up! She kicked at the valve, struck it with her fists. Whatever it took to get it to open again. Give him back!
She struck it once more and was rewarded with a trembling shiver in the water. Naia folded her wings tightly along her back and braced herself. When the valve snapped open, she leaped in, feetfirst.
The water rushed at an incredible speed in the smooth, curved channel. Naia held her arms around her head to protect herself as the water whipped her through turns and twists.
She gasped when she reached the end, dumped out into a new chamber. From the sticky, pulsating walls around her, Naia could tell she was still inside the behemoth ship’s body. It was dim and pungent with the smell of fish and decaying seaweed, but at least there was air. She scrambled to her feet, up to her knees in the brackish water. Lying in a coughing puddle nearby was Amri, thumping his own chest in an attempt to get the last drops of water out.
“I think I’m gonna throw up,” he wheezed between coughs.
“Really? No smooth lines like ‘I’m better now that you’re here’?” Naia asked, helping him to his feet. She tried not to show how relieved she was, though her instinct was to hold him tightly and never let him go ever again.
“I’m saving all my smooth lines for next time. You know, the second time I get sucked down a water tube inside a giant marine creature’s living body.”
The walls of the chamber were slick, like everything else in the behemoth, glistening with faint bioluminescence. Now that Naia knew what to look for, she could make out half a dozen more valves in the wall.
“Look. I think that’s a door.”
The chamber narrowed on one side, ending in a flattish membrane that looked like the others they’d passed through. She pressed her hand against it, feeling it tighten under her fingertips. She wondered if the ship could truly hear her. Had the valve opened because she’d told it to, or because she’d struck it? Maybe it had only been a coincidence. But if it hadn’t, and the ship was really listening, Naia realized maybe she should be kinder. It was a living creature, after all.
“I’m sorry I was rude earlier,” she said softly, and the membrane shivered. “I was worried about my friend. We’re just trying to get out of here.”
Naia stepped back, gasping as the door twitched, about to open.
“Naia, wait!” Amri cried, but he was too late.
A monster loomed on the other side of the doorway. Not skekSa, but a second Skeksis, tall and cloaked in red and gold, a single horn jutting from the top of his head. He held a scepter in one claw, studded with a ruby, a string of pearls and diamonds draped over his shoulders.
skekZok the Ritual Master looked down on them with a scowl so deep, it could have been their graves.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
CHAPTER 3
“We were just leaving,” Amri said. “You wouldn’t happen to know the way out, would you?”
“Silence,” skekZok growled. He entered the chamber, and Naia slowly backed away, watching the valve door shut behind his curtain of thick red robes and the Skeksis’s chilling, humorless gaze.
“These games are over,” he said. “This rebellion nonsense is over. It’s all over.”
Through their touch, Naia could feel Amri trying not to flinch away from the Skeksis Ritual Master. She stepped forward, so swiftly that skekZok reared a fraction in surprise.
“Back off,” she warned him.
“Naia, don’t,” Amri said, but she wasn’t going to let skekZok bully them any longer. He was the only thing standing between them and the door.
“My rebel friends and I got in and out of the castle and away from skekMal the Hunter. Our nonsense defeated skekLi the Satirist and a horde of Arathim silk-spitters in the Grottan Sanctuary. You are outnumbered. And you’ll be defeated. So back off. I’m not afraid of you.”
“You should be,” skekZok said. He spat. “The Skeksis will ruin the Gelfling so utterly, your descendants won’t know the names of the seven clans!”
Naia sprang at the Ritual Master, landing full on his chest. Grabbing handfuls of the ornate chains and necklaces that strung his neck, she leaped over his shoulder, pulling the baubles tight. The Skeksis choked, dropping his scepter to grasp at the tangle of chain. Naia turned, bracing herself with her feet on the back of his shoulders, and jerked on the necklaces like reins on a Landstrider.
skekZok let out a strangled grunt, his claws caught in the chains as he tried to prevent her from strangling him.
“How—how dare you—” he gasped, spittle beading around his beak, eyes bulging in his head. “Gelfling!”
The word hissed out of his beak like a curse.
Amri took two fistfuls of the Skeksis’s skirts and yanked. Knocked off balance with Naia perched on his back, the Ritual Master toppled as easily as a rotten log in the swamp. Naia kicked off his shoulder, swinging around his neck a last time and binding his claws into the lengths of chain. He crashed into a howling, thrashing knot of robes and jewelry.
“The door?” Amri cried as they retreated. Naia stared at the closed valve door, then the smaller membranes that dimpled the wall. She didn’t know where any of them went. She couldn’t even remember which one had brought them there.
They both jumped as skekZok let out a roar that shook every wall of the chamber. Pearl beads and chain links sprayed like sparks as he ripped free, snarling and climbing to his feet.
All three of them caught sight of his scepter at the same time. It lay where skekZok had dropped it, barely out of his long Skeksis reach.
“GELFLING!” he roared.
Amri was the first to make it, faster than either Naia or the Ritual Master. He grabbed the scepter in both hands, trying to drag it away—but it was too heavy. Within moments, skekZok towered over him and tore it from his grasp.
“skekTek may need the Drenchen, but he certainly doesn’t need you alive!”
skekZok swung the scepter just as Naia reached Amri. The clubbe
d end came down, sure to smash into Amri with the force of all the Ritual Master’s wrath. Naia held her breath and leaped.
“NAIA!”
Amri shouted her name. It wasn’t just Amri; there was someone else. The sound fell away from Naia’s ears as she tried to focus on the voices. For a heartbeat, she had been upright, in motion, throwing herself against Amri and knocking him out of the way. The next, the wet membrane of the chamber floor collided with her cheek.
Pain came next. Blunt at first, drumming through her ears and body. Then sharp as her nerves awoke, catching fire.
She was lying in Amri’s arms. Although her sight was blurry, she could see his cheek splattered with red stains. Naia lifted her hand to touch her head. More blood smeared on her hands. He’d torn cloth from his cloak and pressed it against her forehead, but she wasn’t sure it would be enough to staunch the river of unending crimson.
At least he was there. At least she wasn’t alone.
But what about the second voice? Was that real? It took everything she had to focus. The world swam and her head pounded, but eventually a silhouette formed above her, between them and a defiant skekZok.
“Hold on, Naia,” Gurjin said. “Just hold on.”
She wanted to ask how he’d gotten there, but she couldn’t. Her vision blurred, her senses rolling. She felt tired. Though in the back of her fading mind, she knew it wasn’t sleep that nibbled at her fingers and toes.
The door at the far end of the chamber opened. skekSa took in the scene with a sharp inhale, then struck skekZok across the face.
“What have you done, you idiot?” she cried. “skekTek wanted the twins alive!”
skekZok barely reacted to the blow. He exhaled a deep plume of steam, scowling at his bloodied scepter, which shone in the dim lamplight.
“We’ll have to kill them all,” skekZok grumbled lowly. “We’ll tell skekTek they died in transportation, and he’ll have to find other twin Gelfling to experiment on.”
Amri tightened his arm around Naia, doing everything he could to hold in the life force that was streaming from her wound. skekZok stepped forth, raising his terrible bludgeoning scepter. Gurjin held his ground, protecting Naia from the advancing Skeksis. He knew it wouldn’t take much for the Ritual Master to do the same to him as he’d already done to his sister.