Seaborn 03 - Sea Throne

by Chris Howard

  The first soldier signaled and two swords replaced his spear at Gregor's throat, and then he entered the cave and returned with the book, closed, under one arm.

  "I am Epandros of Dosianax, one of the King's Oktoloi. You are a Rexenor thief."

  Gregor smiled sadly, but kept his head and throat still against the sword blades. "Better than a Dosianax butcher."

  He snapped the fingers on his right hand in a popping rhythm and pointed with three fingers toward Epandros, sweeping his hand around to include the other seven.

  A blast of heat and light, the instant appearance of a volcano's core, hit them all, throwing them like seaweed in the surge, legs snapping, arms whipping in the current like ribbons. One of the sword blades at Gregor's throat, not under the control of the soldier who held it, snapped up, cutting into his jaw and ear. The blast caught Gregor in the chest and tossed him against the mountainside. He slid down past the cave entrance and landed headfirst, then hard on his back. Blood oozed from the wound along his jaw, ribboning past his face. He struggled to keep his eyes open.

  The Oktoloi crawled into formation, approaching the Rexenor cautiously, most of them badly wounded, legs broken, arms dislocated. Only two of them managed to retrieve a weapon, one spear and one sword.

  Breathing hard, Epandros, held up a hand. "I must know your name. Your knowledge of song and the fire astounds me. If I am to be defeated, you must tell me your name, and if you care, the means by which you will ruin us."

  A chuckle broke from Gregor's lips, blood oozed between his teeth, and he spat. "That, my Dosianax friend, was the slightest of tricks." It suddenly struck him that the page's title, oikouria, referred to toys—things to play with in the house.

  Gregor's voice halted, and then came in hoarse gasps. His eyes closed, but he smiled. "A Telkhinos sorcerer..." He coughed, his throat burning. "Of eleven years would have known how to throw it safely. A child!" He laughed weakly. "They truly were the lords of the sea, those damn Telkhines." Gregor's voice drifted off and he sagged against the stone lip of the cave entrance.

  Epandros waited for another attack, counting the seconds, and then dragged his body, one leg broken, through the water to a high ledge where the blast had tossed the book.

  At a command from Epandros, the rest of the Eight, the king's most loyal guard, crawled or were dragged to a safer position on the ridge before the cave. They helped each other splint broken arms and bandage open wounds. Two of them had slipped into unconsciousness after Gregor.

  Minutes later, King Tharsaleos swung over the saddle of a killer whale and kicked up to his guards, a sword in one hand. The demon, Ochleros, soared up after Tharsaleos and stalked the ledge looking for fresh attackers.

  Tharsaleos pulled the book from Epandros' hands, kicked upright, and flipped through the blank pages, stopping on the two that he could read. His eyes widened and a slow smile appeared on his face.

  "It is unfortunate that you witnessed this, Epandros, and all of my loyal guards," he said and ordered Ochleros to bring them into the City secretly, directly to his guest chambers.

  In two days, the Eight were dead, poisoned by King Tharsaleos, and Ochleros, trusting the seaborn ruler, followed him into a tunnel where Tharsaleos used the last of the remaining Telkhines slavery bindings for the Diamones Thalassoi, clamping it around the demon's muscular arm, and forcing him to the king's will.

  Chapter 17 - Gifts from the Sea

  A cold white moon over coastal New Hampshire, over the house at the edge of Little Boars Head. Light like a thin coating of silvery ash, except in the shadows of tall pines across the yard—fingers and splatters of dark staining the grass, soft wet black against the old stone foundation, a paler night-wash up the clapboard walls.

  The curtains in the house were all drawn, dim light coming from two of the upstairs rooms; all of the windows along the ground floor were cool and moon pale, catching the glow off the Atlantic.

  A brush of ocean wind against the clapboards, a loose pane click in an attic window, and a feather sweep of air and deep sleep breathing down dark halls of plaster and hardwood, long silent minutes broken by creaking timber, the bones of the house restless behind the walls.

  "Kassandra!" Jill shrieked from her bedroom, repeating her name, panic building in her voice, and then a long choppy scream.

  Jill's door came off its hinges, splinters of wood flying, twisting squeal of metal, popping woodscrews, and Kassandra stood in the doorway, breathing hard, the air blurring wet around her, a sword in her hand. She took in the room, bed unmade, blankets on the floor, windows shut tight, too much pale pink for any room—or any sensible person—the walls, the curtains, the furniture, all shades of pink. And Jill floating seven feet in the air, screaming, her hands flat against the ceiling, her toes curled, kicking the plaster.

  Kassandra dropped the sword, jumped, caught the edge of the bed with one foot and kicked to the ceiling to grab Jill. "Shhh. I am here. There's nothing to fear." Standing on empty air—air moist with the Atlantic that came in with her, Kassandra took Jill's hands, gripping them tight, and led her down to the floor. "You okay?"

  Jill nodded, wiping tears on her arm, shuddering as she looked down at her feet planted on the rug. "I don't know what happened."

  Kassandra moved Jill's hair off her face, guiding it over her shoulder, a few loose strands of blond behind her ear. "You have my bleeds. You need a teacher is what happened."

  Gregor stepped into the room behind them, his voice accusing, and at the same time sad. "What have you done?"

  Kassandra spun, her expression souring. She sighed. "Not you, too?"

  He looked at her silently for a moment. "Who else is asking?"

  She folded her arms, glanced over at Nicole, Zypheria and Michael now standing in the doorway, and then let her gaze settle on her father, caught his eyes, and wouldn't let him go. She felt the tug of his will, sharpened one corner of her mouth to show him that it was futile.

  She nodded to Nicole. "We're fine. Just a little misunderstanding. Go back to bed."

  Then turning back to her father, Everyone in my head—they believe I've made a terrible mistake in sharing my bleeds with my sisters. Not a mistake in the reproduction of who I am among Jill and Nicole, but that the price was too high.

  Was? What price?

  Was. It is done. You don't want to know the price. There is no going back, done the day my sisters took the sea inside them. You were there, father, and now you know what I did. They will need it. They deserve it.

  Gregor stared at her, thoughtful, tension in the muscles around his mouth. You couldn't have just left them out of this? Out of our struggles?

  They are my sisters.

  I am their father.

  A twitch in Kassandra's face at the surprise of being left out. And mine.

  They need one more than you do.

  She shook her head, lost, whispered, No more than I do. She clenched her teeth. She was shaking and hated herself for it. And they can handle it. It is you I worry about. Your life that I cannot allow to be broken...any more than it already is.

  There were tears suddenly running down his cheeks, rolling along his jaw line, off the end of his chin. Not the king's prison, madness of the lithotombs, not the torture, not the slavery. I broke the day your mother died. I just didn't know.

  Ampharete... Kassandra shook her head. She will tell you that story herself. I promise. She reached out and caught a tear falling off his chin. It floated through the air, captured in the space between her open hands. The air hardened, flickered with mirror light, and Kassandra closed her fingers around a solid block of crystal, the tear frozen in its core.

  She looked deeper into his broken soul, and it was as if she could get through the front door, into the lobby, but no further. There were walls around nearly everything in him, and where there were doors, there were vault doors—something King Tharsaleos had done so many years ago when the seaborn ruler had a young Rexenor lord in his prisons. She tried the locks, t
ried her fists on the walls. Nothing got through, not even a dull booming that would tell her there was something—even empty space—on the other side. It sounded as if he—or the king—had cemented in the rooms of his soul.

  Kassandra backed up, and caught his attention.

  Maybe it's time you knew something of my plans, father. My army of the dead—three thousand strong—is at this moment digging, tunneling through the sand across the plain before the Nine-Cities. They will emerge when I call them. I will break the King's Protection and take the city when I have the opportunity, I will form the full assembly. The seaborn need a new ruler. You are part of my plans. You are Lord of Rexenor. I guard this house—my servants, my ocean, my sea air and spray, my storm in the trees. I protect you from the king's lies, long lies. Tharsaleos has spread them ocean-wide, telling our world—and in particular—the Kirkêlatides that it was you who killed the King's eight so long ago, that you killed the war-bard Theoxena's husband, Epandros. The descendants of the great Kirkê seek you, to break you all the way, take your life, take away everything you hold dear.

  Resignation dropped into his eyes. And she—Theoxena—wants me dead.

  They. The mother and her daughter, Nikasia, are between bleeds.

  I am already lost Kassandra. Better to spend your energy trying to rescue mysister.

  Her shoulders dropped. I have tried to bring Phaidra home. And twice failed. Even I am afraid of some things in the sea. Tharsaleos has summoned something, set it to guard Phaidra's lithotomb. She gave him a curt nod. I will find a way, father.

  More promises? All plans cannot succeed, daughter, even for you.

  Her breath caught behind her teeth—teeth that felt sharp in her mouth, a warm metal taste on her tongue. Rage hurling through her insides, lancing down her legs, up her arms, a pit of chaos and destruction that wanted to swallow her whole.

  She kept her expression blank, dropped the crystal with his tear, and it shattered on the floor. It took her a moment to get it under control, and then she nodded. Even for me, dad, you're right. Plans change. She glanced over her shoulder at Jill, sitting on the edge of her bed, staring up at her, and then back to Gregor. This new turn with my sisters coming into my—their bleeds has forced me to move sooner than I'd planned. She leaned into him with her will, stopped the breath in his lungs. His feet came off the floor, rising in the air, his arms stiff at his sides. I am the Sea, father—Gregor Lord Rexenor. I do not accept the promises of men without security, without something in return. But you are my father, my blood, soul-sharer. I love you, and I count on you. You will promise your loyalty to me, your vote against Tharsaleos, your steady rule of House Rexenor, and in turn I will grant you a wish sooner than I had planned—the one thing you desire more than your own life. Do you understand me? Choose well. My gifts are bitter as they are sweet, but you will have your wish.

  She released him, dropped him to his feet, and he gasped, "Yes. I understand." Rubbing his throat. "I promise."

  Very good.

  Morning light shot through the blinds above the stairs, and a woman's voice came down the hall from Kassandra's dark bedroom. It even sounded like Kassandra.

  "Jillian? Nicole?"

  "What's up?" Nicole climbed the stairs from the kitchen with a glass of orange juice. Jill came straight from her room.

  "Come in," said the voice. "And lock the door behind you."

  Jill shrugged, looking at Nicole who paused to scowl, suspicion creeping into her expression. She whispered, "I'll go first." She put a finger to her lips, set the glass down, and mouthed the words, "Watch this."

  Nicole's eyelids fluttered closed. She held out her fist, loose, curling around a thick column of air. A moment later, she held her sword, summoned from her room. With a nod to Jill, Nicole turned the knob and shoved the door in, jumping into the dim space, sword ready.

  A blur of people in motion, Nicole threw her left fist out, felt her wrist connect, bend painfully, blocked by someone. Then her feet whipped out from under her, the sword flying from her hand, the tip punching into the ceiling, driving six inches, thrumming in the stiff plaster. Nicole was on her back, a bony forearm against her throat, and looming over her, a woman with three long gray braids and ice-blue eyes glaring back.

  "Get off her, Andromache," said a woman who sounded—and even looked a little like Kassandra.

  Queen Andromache gave Nicole a competitor's grin, leaned back on her heels and stood, holding out one hand to help her to her feet. Nicole took it, staring at the great warrior queen who had passed the Wreath of Poseidon on to her son hundreds of years before, passed into it, and then her body had died.

  And she stood, alive, real, in the middle of Kassandra's bedroom along with King Praxinos and a shadowy young man in the corner.

  Jill moved against Nicole, back to back, uneasy in the presence of the seaborn rulers—especially ones who had died a long time ago. She stared at the woman who had called them to Kassandra's dark bedroom. "Lady Ampharete?"

  The woman bowed slightly and waved a hand around the room. "Ladies, let me introduce you to Queen Andromache, King Praxinos, King Eupheron..." Her voice broke before she finished saying his name.

  Praxinos reached out a finger and poked Eupheron in the shoulder as if testing the possibility that he was an illusion. Eupheron stood in the shadows, a young dark-haired man, death-pale, eyes a vivid metallic greenish gold, rows of armor-like fish scales up one of his arms.

  Praxinos shook his head. "Why are you so young? You look no older than twenty."

  "Isn't it obvious?" Eupheron shrugged, raised an eyebrow, an amused smile as he stared down at his own body. "I'm her favorite, old man. Always have been."

  "And I was the first to wake."

  Andromache curled one hand into a fist. "And I can kill both of you with my bare hands, even at my death-age, seventy-eight years."

  There was a moment of silent thought over that, the others studying Andromache, and then they nodded, no dispute there—and at the fact that it wouldn't make a bit of difference in any of their ages.

  "She has her reasons," said Ampharete.

  The past Wreath-wearers turned to look at the other side of the room. Jill and Nicole followed their gazes.

  Tremors running through her body, skin cloud white, Kassandra sat on the floor in her bedroom, legs crossed, back against the wall to prop her up. Her eyes were closed, arms heavy, limp in her lap. She took in long shuddery breaths—almost sobbing, her neck twitching with some inner strain; the back of head thumped against the wall.

  Three thin gold circlets lay on the floor between her knees.

  Nicole pointed at Ampharete and commanded, "What is Kassandra doing?"

  "My daughter has brought four of us out of the Wreath, back into the real world for a short time." Ampharete paused with a hard swallow. "We are gifts from the Sea."

  "What kind of gifts?" Jill and Nicole both scowled.

  Ampharete picked up the gold circlets, three of them, looping two through her arm, and placed the first on Nicole's head. Jill's circlet was a little more ornate than Nicole's simple ring, more like a crown of sunny gold points every few inches. The third, Ampharete held up, kissed gently as she unlocked the door, and walked out of the room.

  When Nicole and Jill turned, they were alone with Kassandra on the floor, cross-legged, deep in her state of concentration, sobbing. Both of them flinched, eyes going wide.

  "Oh, shit," said Nicole, turning to Jill. "I have Queen Andromache and King Praxinos in my head." She reached through her hair. The ring of gold had vanished, leaving its weight, a sense that it was still there, but without being seen.

  Jill squeezed her eyes closed, rubbed them as if they stung, and opened them. Then she laughed suddenly. "I have dear rude, funny, shameless Eupheron inside mine."

  They followed Ampharete a minute later, leaving Kassandra behind. Michael was helping Gregor to his feet in the kitchen, a shattered glass and water across the floor. "Don't worry about it, Greg. I'll clean
up. You have more important things to do."

  Ampharete pulled from a hug with Zypheria, and turned to see Nicole and Jill coming downstairs. She stepped carefully to face them, bowed her head, pressed her hands palm to palm, and then spread them. "To the future of House Alkimides."

  "Kill the old kings," said Jill with a strange smile on her face, part amused, part cold power and hate. That was Eupheron's influence, laughing the last line of the Alkimides war cry, which referred to killing the Telkhines—the old kings, and the fact that Eupheron was half Telkhines made it all so funny to him.

  Nicole glanced at Jill, but merely nodded her head gravely at Ampharete and the others.

  Gregor couldn't find his voice, staring at his wife, the woman he had lost over twenty years before, looking no older than the day he had swept out of the Rexenor fortress on the dragon, Barenis. She smiled, nodded nobly, and held out her hand.

  "Walk with me Gregor. I want to see the sun set and rise. The Sea has given me a final night and morning with you in a world I have never seen with my own eyes." She looked through the big glass backdoor and took his hand, pulling him. "The surface."

  Chapter 18 - Mirrors

  The pale woman climbed out of the pool in the grotto under Kassandra's house, coughing up water. She bent to her knees, all the way forward, her three long white braids falling in loops across the floor. She let the last of the ocean spill over her lips, and sat up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, a smear of silver running from her wrist along her thumb. Then she straightened, looked over her shoulder, and waved for a boy about twelve years old to follow her.

  The boy pulled off his helmet, pearlescent blue with a smooth center ridge—like a roll of the sea. His hair was abyss black, forty small tight braids looped and woven together so that they all met and fell down the center of his back. His hand went to his throat, pulled on the first three clips of his armor, a short hauberk of scaly blue plates. He stood up, water running off him, and unfastened a sword held by rings in the armor along his back. He stepped and hopped across stone floor, and leaned his sword against the wall, stood on tiptoes, and dropped heavily on his heels, then squatted, trying to get used to moving in the Thin.