So long as the firmament holds... but eventually, under the voidbringer's pressure, it will fail...
I shook my head. "Then this plan isn't acceptable, Nammu. I'm not sacrificing Fomoria."
Even if it's necessary to save the world?
I bit my lip. There had to be another way. Sure, if the whole world was consumed, Fomoria would be gone, too. It made logical sense to give up Fomoria for the sake of the rest of the earth. But I'd be damned before I resorted to that as an option. I wasn't ready to give up on Fomoria. Those merpeople... they had lives, dreams, expectations. They deserved to live. Sacrificing them was an impossible choice I couldn't bring myself to make.
"Joni," Agwe said.
"What is it, Agwe?" I snapped back. I was more snippy than I should have been. But I was trying to think of a viable solution that didn't involve destroying Fomoria.
Agwe pointed in the distance. Several figures, a mass of merfolk approached. It didn't take long before my suspicions were confirmed.
You know how some people, full of themselves, have a particular gait that exudes an air of self-importance?
King Conand had a way of swimming through the waters that did the same thing.
Call it a strut, if you must... I'm not sure what word to use when there aren't any legs involved. But it was unmistakable, even before I could confirm by his face who it was.
The whole merlegion followed, like birds in a v-shaped flock, behind King Conand and Titus. Apparently, giving us time to chat about what had happened wasn't the only reason that Merlin had brought us to this part of the Caribbean. Merlin knew we'd find the king and the legion here. Somehow, he knew.
"I knew you'd make it back, Joni. Or, should I say, La Sirene?"
I tilted my head. "Of course you did. Because none of this would have happened at all if not for you."
The king smiled wide. "Have you forgotten you were the one who brought your son to us, seeking our help? If you are interested in assigning blame for what has happened, very well. But you should at least accept your share in it."
I bit my lip and looked at Agwe. He looked back at me and nodded subtly. "Perhaps that's true, your Highness. And I can agree that debating who owns the lion's share of the blame at this juncture probably isn't helpful. We need to shake the voidbringer loose from the kingdom."
"And how do you propose we do that, La Sirene?" King Conand asked with an unmistakable hint of arrogance in his tone of voice.
As reluctant as he was to own his share of the blame for everything that happened, he sure was willing to take all the credit for establishing the Wyrmriders.
Of course, he didn't know how much I knew. And I suspected he didn't have all his cards on the table, either. Agwe had said we had to be on our guard with him. The bokors might still have something on him.
Even if they didn't. Sure, Conand was something of a monarch, but he was also a kind of politician. I didn't trust him any further than I could throw him—even if my ability to throw a man larger than me was a bit better in the water than on land. Especially if I used magic.
"When we save the city," I said. "The Wyrmriders will all be granted citizenship."
The king cocked his head. "Do you think this is a negotiation? If you do not save the city, then the voidbringer will consume it and after that everything else."
I shook my head. "We'll save the kingdom one way or another, but if you want the Wyrmriders to remain on your side, you'll agree to the proposal."
I smirked. Because the king was apparently willing to risk his whole kingdom for the sake of the Wyrmriders' ascent, I figured he wouldn't be too keen to have us as adversaries once this was all over.
I glanced at Tahlia, who looked back at me with an appreciative nod. This was a move for her sake. She deserved a place she could call home—a place where she could establish a life without fear of deportation.
King Conand sighed. "Very well."
"In that case," I said. "The wyrm must bind the voidbringer while it's still distracted. It doesn't know we're coming. As far as the voidbringer knows, we're still inside. Or in Old Fomoria trying to stop his spawn."
"And did you?" King Conand asked, raising one eyebrow. "Defeat the spawn, I mean."
I nodded. "We did. Old Fomoria is saved."
King Conand grinned as he looked from me to Titus, who smiled back at him. "In that case, we'd best take advantage of the element of surprise. Once the voidbringer realizes you've succeeded, that the wyrms are here, there's no telling how the thing will respond."
"Maybe the merlegion could provide a distraction," I said.
"I'm not sure we can do much. The voidbringer doesn't have eyes. It's not like we can turn his attention in one direction. He'll be wise to it."
I nodded. "Even if it delays him a split second, it will help. We'll appear, and the wyrm will bind him. But we can't do it while he still has the city in his grip. As much as the city is tethered to Old Fomoria through a permanent gateway, he's connected to the city. Even if the wyrms create a breach and get rid of him, there might be a chance that it won't pull him in, not so long as he's stuck attempting to devour the city."
"So you want us to try and distract him both from your arrival and also from Fomoria," Conand said.
I nodded. "That's what Nammu and I were thinking."
"She talks to you directly?" King Conand asked.
I smiled. "She does." In fact, she'd been making suggestions the whole time the king and I'd been talking. This plan was as much hers as it was mine. We didn't know squat about the voidbringer. But she was convinced that he could be distracted, at least briefly. And she was also confident that was all it would take provided she and the other wyrm timed their emergence from the wyrmholes around him perfectly. They had enough magic. And with Fomoria free, with the voidbringer releasing it for even a moment, I could draw on its magic and give it to her. We'd have plenty of power to pull it off.
Once the merlegion attacked, the voidbringer would go after them, seek to envelop them, before returning his attention to Fomoria. But he'd move fast. The trick was to bind him after he released Fomoria, but before he managed to overwhelm the merlegion.
The last time the voidbringer attempted to consume Fomoria, it was a slow, deliberate effort. It moved sluggishly. But Nammu insisted that we should not underestimate the voidbringer's speed. It wasn't that he was moving slowly before so much as he was moving deliberately, albeit futilely, to find his spawn inside the city. Presuming the firmament held, however, Nammu was confident he wouldn't have any sense of what was happening inside.
So long as the firmament held...
Eventually, the voidbringer would overwhelm Fomoria's magic. Even with the tether between worlds, once the firmament failed, he'd learn his child was gone. In a rage, he'd devour the kingdom and everyone inside.
36
KING CONAND, TITUS, and the merlegion went forward. I stayed back with the rest of the Wyrmriders. We had to leave enough distance between where we were and Fomoria and the voidbringer to make sure we could create wyrmholes.
For the most part, we followed the merlegion's lead. They had to travel back to Fomoria the old fashioned way. Why they were so far off in the Caribbean was hard to say. I mean, I understood that they were scared. But this was a long way to flee, no matter how great a threat the voidbringer might be.
I suppose, at some level, it made sense. If the merlegion was the only hope Fomoria had to survive, and the voidbringer was a breach unto himself, sucking in like a vacuum anything around it, the more distance you could put between it and yourself, the better.
I wasn't exactly sure how far away we were. It wasn't like Nammu came with a built-in GPS or anything. But where we were, we had to stay deep.
These were well-traveled waters. Cruise ships. Other frigates and military vessels. And we didn't have the advantage of detecting them in advance, to know where they were, like Conand might have if he were back in his map room in Fomoria.
"These waters ma
ke me uneasy," Agwe said.
"Why?" I asked. "It's actually a bit warmer. A whole hell of a lot nicer than the waters in ancient Fomoria."
"I'm not speaking about the climate," Agwe said. "I know these waters well. The Vodouisants in Haiti have evoked me to bless their seafaring for centuries, now."
"So we're close to Haiti? I had no idea." I didn't know my Caribbean geography that well. I'd never needed to learn it before, and it wasn't like I'd had much time to study it since I returned to Fomoria. But I did know Haiti wasn't really in the Gulf of Mexico at all. It was on the opposite side of Cuba. We had a long way to go to get back to Fomoria, which was nearer the coastline in the gulf.
Agwe looked at me from the back of his wyrm and nodded. "Most of the Voodoo in New Orleans has its origins here. And the voodoo here, from the mother continent."
I cocked my head. "Wouldn't that be a good thing? I mean, you're a Voodoo demigod. Why don't you like it here?"
"It's not that I don't like it. But there are powers here... spirits here... a potency to it all."
I took a deep breath. There wasn't any magic close enough that I could siphon it. But there are mystical creatures, spiritual entities, beyond what I can siphon—the Loa, themselves, for instance. I couldn't siphon Agwe's power. Legba gave me his aspect—but it wasn't something I could just take like Fomorian magic or the Awen of the Druids.
And there was a strange magic in these waters... something I didn't know well. But something that reminded me, no less, of the caplata I'd encountered as a child. Dark Voodoo shit. It was all over, hard for me to tell where it was coming from. Like Agwe had said, the brand of Voodoo from Haiti was different. And it was pervasive. Trying to sense it, or draw from any of it, was like trying to dial in an old-school radio to a particular channel when multiple stations are broadcasting the same frequency. The sort of thing that happens when trying to find a radio station in the car when you're driving through the middle of nowhere.
"Well, it's a good thing we're heading back to more familiar waters," I said.
"Agreed," Agwe said as he and his wyrm continued swimming beside Nammu and me.
If we were on the surface, riding horses or even flying like I could as a dragon, the wind would make it nearly impossible to carry on a conversation with someone next to you. But under the water, it was different. We were moving relatively fast, but no quicker than the merlegion could move—only a fraction of the speed possible with the wyrms.
But even if we moved fast, it would be totally different than flying through the air. Something about merperson's constitution, I imagined the same factors that made it possible to withstand insane amounts of water pressure in the ocean depths, made soaring through the water on a wyrm relatively painless. If I were human, being pulled through the water at even the slowest pace would be overwhelming. I still remember learning to water ski as a girl. I fell out of the skis and tried to hang on to the rope. For a split second, I was dragged through the water. We weren't going all that fast, but I felt like I was going to drown. As a mermaid, moving through the water was a completely different experience.
This was especially true when it came to holding conversations. When we were moving, it barely felt like it. I didn't feel much pressure on my face. I only felt a slight pull on my hair. Beyond that, it was as painless as moving fast and having a conversation with someone inside a car. In some ways, it was even easier. We didn't have road or engine noise to deal with.
"This is taking too long," I said.
We can forge a gate... take us a little closer but not so close that we can't make another one to Fomoria.
I nodded. "Let's do it. We'll need to tell the king."
Nammu took off, easily tripling her speed, and zoomed us up next to King Conand, swimming beside Titus.
King Conand looked at me. "Can I help you with something?"
"Yes," I said. "This is taking too long. How in the world did y'all swim so far?"
The king shrugged. "A little at a time. We figured the further we could get from the voidbringer, the better. You were gone a long time."
"Nammu can cast us a gate. She'll get us closer. As close as possible, that will still give us enough flexibility to carry out the plan."
King Conand nodded. "Why didn't you suggest this before?"
I smiled. "I didn't know how far away we were. But Agwe said we were close to Haiti... there's no way we're swimming this distance. And since we don't know for sure how long Fomoria's firmament will hold."
"We should do it," Titus said. "My tail is getting tired."
King Conand raised his hand to silence his second-in-command. Apparently, he was mildly annoyed that the usually obedient Titus was willing to articulate his opinion rather than follow orders. "Very well," the king said. "I cannot think of a reason to object. And if it preserves the strength of the legion, it will help when we attempt to engage the voidbringer."
I nodded. "In that case, your Highness. Nammu will cast a wyrmhole. You follow us through it."
"A wyrmhole?" Conand asked. "That's cute."
"Thanks!" I said, grinning widely. By the tone in his voice, I was pretty sure he was being sarcastic. Nonetheless, it might be the closest the king ever came to saying something complimentary to me. I chose to take it that way.
Nammu inhaled deeply. I could feel her body expand beneath me as my mer-tail curled around her right side. I almost lost my grip on her. Eventually, we'd have to come up with side-saddles or something to help. Then she expelled a barrage of golden magic from her mouth. It looked almost like it might if she were a dragon spitting fire. And, as she'd explained it, she might have been one had she emerged from the void in air, over the earth, rather than in the sea.
The magic of her wyrmhole swirled as we dove into it. I didn't see them behind me, but the merlegion and king, and the rest of the Wyrmriders, couldn't be far behind.
37
THE WATERS WERE a touch cooler on the other side of the wyrmhole. Nothing near what they were in Old Fomoria. But the difference was nonetheless noticeable.
We're maybe fifty kilometers away from Fomoria...
"Kilometers?" I asked. "I didn't realize you used such units of measurement."
Did you expect I'd use miles? I'm not a silly American.
I chuckled. "It's not that. I know most of the world uses the metric system. I just figured, you know, coming from the void, you wouldn't use any standard units for distance. Or maybe, you know, since you existed in Biblical times, you'd use cubits instead."
Would you prefer I tell you the distance in wyrm lengths?
I shook my head. Then I realized she couldn't see my head on account of being on her back and felt silly for it. "No, I wondered how you ever learned what a kilometer was, to begin with."
We are connected, La Sirene... when we speak, I do not speak your language. But our thoughts are aligned. I used a unit of measurement I gleaned from your knowledge base. And the metric system made more sense to me.
"The metric system is silly to me," I said. "When someone tells me how far something is in kilometers, it's usually a lot closer than I think."
Because one kilometer equals zero point six two miles...
I laughed out loud. "How the hell did you know that?"
I didn't know it. You did.
"I did?"
You learned it at some point. I gleaned the information from your mind... through our connection... I know all your memories, even those you've buried.
I laughed again—but this time, nervously. "I don't really know how I feel about that."
No need to worry, Joni La Sirene. It's how I know I can trust you. It's how I've known from the start. It's why I gladly offer you my service. I know your mind. I know your heart. You are good.
I snorted. "Well, maybe not as good as you think. I've had my screw-ups in life. I mean, as a mother... I know what Merlin said... but how can I be a good mother if I'm absent?"
You're not so absent as you think...
"Can all the wyrm do that?" I asked. "I mean, with respect to their riders? Or, is this just a symptom of having a dragon's essence inside of me."
The depth of our connection is, admittedly, enhanced. And it is by your guidance that the others follow the whims of their riders. But they cannot read their rider's minds... they do not share the same connection.
I nodded. We'd been on enough missions in Old Fomoria that I knew we weren't riding the wyrms like one might a horse with bit and bridle. The relationship between Wyrmrider and wyrm was more a partnership, a communion of spirits. They sensed our intentions, and they complied not because they had to but because they wished to.
I cocked my head. "Well, I'm glad for whatever reason, we're of one mind."
I feel the same, La Sirene.
The merlegion burst through the wyrmhole. King Conand looked shell-shocked by the trip. Clearly, he wasn't accustomed to that manner of travel. Titus, on the other hand, was actually giggling. It's quite the sight when a hulking merman, like Titus, giggles...
I giggled back in solidarity.
He stopped. Apparently, he thought I was mocking him.
Shortly after the merlegion came through, the other Wyrmriders followed. Agwe, Cleo, and Tahlia riding their wyrms as the wyrmhole closed once their long tails cleared the portal.
"King Conand," I said. "Are you ready?"
"We are," the king said. "Only we'll need a way to let you know when the time is right."
This might help," Agwe said, swimming up beside us and pulling a long tube out of his britches.
I looked at him curiously. "You had that thing in your pants all this time?"
"Not all this time," Agwe said. "Most of the time, I was just happy to see you."
I snorted, doing my best to suppress a grin. Agwe opened the tube and retrieved what looked like a map.
"You stole my map!" King Conand shouted, furious.
"Shut up," Agwe said. "I'm a demigod, and I'm done taking your orders."
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 48