Seaborn 02 - Seaborn

by Chris Howard

  "You're inside?” The voice was strange, a man's smooth tone, every syllable correct, perfect, and Kassandra turned to one of the ninety-six yawning black tunnels that entered the room, the one that led to the water mirror door, and to the great abyss where the past Wreath-wearers resided.

  Four years before, she had gone inside during the battle's final moments. She had wakened Ampharete, she had found her mother.

  "Eupheron?"

  "Who else, dear?"

  "It's just, you sound different on the inside, maybe because I can't hear you in my head, just through my ears now."

  "You are louder as well, but your voice is the same. Where are you?"

  "Next to the center pool. My bleeds have given me the strength to enter the Wreath."

  "We must meet, then. I have never heard of a wearer other than you entering the Wreath alive. I remember ... or dreamed ... You said something that wakened me, something about coming inside to get Andromache, and it was enough to jolt me out of sleep."

  Kassandra was halfway down the dark hall when she stopped, turning toward a rhythmic wet scraping sound behind her, following her.

  "I'm not alone.” Stunned, she forgot to whisper the words. She covered her ears because her own voice hurt, Kassandra turned and ran.

  "Who comes inside?"

  "The worm, the thing Aleximor fed to Phaidra in the Nine-cities, the thing that came to me through the thread I stitched to Phaidra before she departed."

  "Inside here?"

  "Yes, it's inside me!” Panic edged her voice, and she slammed into the wall, off balance as she held her ears.

  "What does it seek?” Andromache's voice came down the hall, a cutting commanding tone.

  "Hurry, Kassandra,” Ampharete urged.

  She felt its weight on the stones under her toes, and then she saw its reflection in the mirror door, lifting its head right behind her.

  A massive worm's body in segmented rust-brown armor, with arms, hundreds of arms with human hands at the end, long rotten green fingernails clawing at the stone. The worm moved in fluid ups and downs, its head extending and dipping to the paving, the rest of its body lunging forward. It had no eyes. Its face was a giant disk, wet and drooling with open pores big enough to stick a finger into, a thick ridge of pink flesh wrapping around the outside edge. Three concentric rings of knife-sharp teeth circled a hole that was its mouth.

  A nightmare slid through Kassandra's head, three seconds of the thing devouring her, digesting her, and regurgitating her bones onto the floor—a sloppy wet stack of chalky white and stringy yellow, mucous-dripping pick-up sticks.

  "Don't touch the door!” Eupheron shouted the command, her fingers an inch away, ready to push through the silvery face of water.

  She pulled her hand back as if burned.

  "Why not?"

  "She intends to trap you in here."

  "Who?” She asked the question and turned to face the worm, her legs unsteady. Her vision blurred, the world jumping in pieces, sliding too late into focus.

  A woman stood where the worm had been, her long dark hair undulating and shifting around her shoulders like the ocean's surge, a spray of white at the tips. Her skin was a pale, creamy blue, and her fingers ended in nails like the teeth on the worm.

  Kassandra reached for the wall for support. “Who are you?"

  "Akast?."

  "What are you?"

  "The Sea, Kassandra, I am the Sea."

  Eupheron beat her to it with, “That's preposterous."

  "No, you're not. Lord Poseidon is the Sea."

  Akast? laughed, delicate clear water over a strand, burning cold, smooth violence, a voice velvet soft, as cutting as a garrote. “Please, do not make the mistake of thinking that you—a mortal with the Telkhines curse and a twist of seaweed—can instruct me. I have come for what is mine. Give me the crown."

  Kassandra was trying to look into the woman's eyes, but they moved and flowed in their sockets, no irises, no pupils, swirling gray threads over blue, each an ocean world.

  "Your eyes..."

  "Look into them, Wreath-wearer ... and dream."

  Kassandra felt her hand slip on the wall, leaning toward the woman, trapped inside her ocean eyes. She tried to shake her head, but her muscles wouldn't work. Eupheron screamed obscenities, but he was far away.

  "Now, bring me my crown."

  Kassandra bit down hard, trying to tear away from Akast?'s eyes, managing a few struggling grunting noises. She felt her foot lift and take a step ... and the world split, another young woman—a dream version of her...

  ...turned her back and walked away from her.

  "Don't leave me,” Kassandra pleaded with the woman who looked just like her.

  Kassandra's double tucked her arms in, leaned forward, and ran down the dark tunnel, looking for the crown. She stopped at the ledge around the circling water and the black pit in the center, inching her way around to another tunnel, the one that had called to her when she surfaced inside the Wreath. She took a cautious step at first, looked back to see if anyone was following her before turning and running down the tunnel in search of the crown.

  The room at the end blazed with precious metal and mother of pearl, an emperor's treasury—stacks of gold boxes, masks, musical instruments of all kinds—leaning against thrones, racks of weapons, and branched coral figurines. Armor that looked like the spiky shell of a crab hung on a stand in the corner.

  "Find the crown,” a voice whispered.

  "Bring me the armor,” another voice told her, a voice that sounded exactly like her own. “And a sword."

  "But she wants the crown."

  "Akast? can have any crown you find. Just bring me armor and a sword."

  Inside the room across the water, the woman-who-looked-like-Kassandra picked up a heavy spear with a three-pronged head on it and leaned it against the wall. She didn't see a crown anywhere in the room—and she was afraid.

  "Running out of time."

  She reached for the armor. Her fingers worked the clips up the back, thumbing them open, a hundred of them popping and snapping. She pulled the armor off the rack and slipped her body inside it. The armor flexed and changed shape to fit her body. The fasteners up the back folded over and locked her in, rolling up from her butt to the nape of her neck like a zipper closing. The armor was lighter than she expected and so strange in appearance she wished she could see herself in a mirror.

  Looking up at the stand again, she saw a helmet, lifted it off its peg and jammed it on her head. The cheek-guards came alive to curl over her skin, under her jaw line.

  "The crown. Where's the crown? You must get the crown,” the strange voice whispered.

  "Tell her you don't have one,” said her own voice.

  She nodded and drew a long sword from its scabbard. She stopped to look at the blade because it looked so much like the one she used to have.

  "Nicole has it, protecting you on the outside. Jill and Nicole are still out there with the pale woman. Save them. Forget about yourself. They must not die—or all will be lost."

  "Where is the crown?"

  "Forget the crown. Come back to me."

  The double hesitated, gave the room one more sweep of her gaze, and ran back to herself...

  Kassandra stood in front of Akast?—with her ocean eyes and hair that rolled like the tides—and blinked as if startled from a dream ... startled to discover that it had not been a dream.

  She was wearing the crab-like armor, its knobby plates and pale bony points stuck out past her shoulders. There was a sword in her hand.

  "Where is my crown?” Akast? was angry—and she didn't even seem to notice any change in Kassandra.

  "I don't have one."

  Get out of here. Do not let her trap you in here. Kassandra jumped, grabbed the wall with a sharp intake of breath. It was strange to hear her own thoughts and no one else's.

  "Give me the crown."

  Kassandra felt a surge of defiance as the hold on her drifted aw
ay. “I don't have one."

  Akast?'s eyes changed from ocean-world blue to something normal: ice-blue irises, dilated black pupils. Then, like a spill of mercury, silver spread mirror-smooth over the whites, reflecting Kassandra's fear back at her.

  "Find the crown and bring it to me, Kassandra. Do not make me angry."

  "I—I don't know where to look."

  "Find it and I will allow you to live. Fail and you will be the last Wreath-wearer."

  "You will address me as Lady Kassandra. I don't have your crown.” She threw the words at the woman and managed to summon just enough anger to add, “Find it yourself."

  Akast?'s shiny silver eyes widened.

  Kassandra swallowed the saliva pooling in her mouth. She was so used to hearing the advice, directions from the other Wreath-wearers. The silence hurt, an absence so sharp it cut into her.

  She heard eight overlapping heartbeats, different rhythms flowing over each other—like an eight-way intersection of speeding cars timed so perfectly that each slid between the others without touching—and every minute they merged into one hammering thud inside her body.

  "Family? Lovers? Who are these eight, Kassandra? You care for them or their hearts would not be in your soul."

  "What on earth would make you think I would tell you?” She gripped the sword, trying to ignore the tiny movements of the armor, which seemed to be alive, a living shell that fit her body.

  Akast? stopped, clicking her yellow-knife fingernails together, her mouth turning down sourly. “What an interesting choice of words. What on earth, indeed."

  Kassandra tensed because the armor sensed something. Akast? rolled in on herself, expanding into the worm with rings of teeth and human hands.

  The worm's head extended, crushing Kassandra against the stone wall. The teeth curled in, each one fixed in a socket with muscles it manipulated, hooking her arms, her shoulder, squeezing her into the expanding hole of its mouth.

  It swallowed Kassandra's legs. The sword slipped from her hand, point down, ringing off the thing's teeth.

  Acid burn inched up her legs, digestive fluid, the stomach walls flexing and working its prey as if to massage the flesh from the bones.

  Kassandra reached for the sword but the blade went past her hip, inside the worm, pinned between her armor and the stomach wall. She curled one shoulder over the end of the grip and shoved the blade deeper, down, past her toes, into the oily slick lining, the sword cutting through it, into connective tissue and muscle.

  The worm arched in pain, a spasm that rolled through its belly from the tail. Every ring of muscle contracted in sequence and ejected Kassandra and the sword onto the floor.

  * * * *

  "Kassandra?"

  "Lady Kassandra."

  "Milady, wake up."

  "Kass? Come on."

  She opened her eyes, a shock of adrenalin, a hundred voices calling her name, inside her head, outside, telling her to wake up.

  She staggered to her feet, the skin of her legs burned white and peeling. The crab armor and sword were gone. Her head ached as if someone had drilled a few holes into it.

  She reached out, grabbing the wall of the tunnel. A long charred line marked the floor and she scowled at it a moment until her memory caught up.

  "Kassandra?"

  "Yes! Shut up. I hear you.” Her own voice was deafeningly loud and she fell to her knees, pressing her hands against her ears.

  "Where is Akast??” It was Eupheron's concerned voice.

  She looked down at the floor. “There's nothing left of the worm but a burn mark on the stone."

  "And Corina ... Aleximoros?"

  The name startled her, and without another thought she ran down the tunnel, thinking of Jill and Nicole, and dove off the ledge into the whirlpool.

  Kassandra opened her eyes, choking on the heaviness of the water in her mouth. She kicked off the floor, taking in the room in a moment. Corina was gone. Jill and Nicole stood beside Zypheria and Michael Henderson.

  Kallixene held a spear and pointed through the roof of the room. “I sent my guards and a team of orcas after her."

  "Let her go.” Kassandra stopped ten feet off the floor and spun upside down to drift down to Kallixene's side.

  "What happened to your legs?” Nicole kicked up to her, concerned.

  Kassandra blinked at her and then her eyes went unfocused. “Eupheron, can you do something about this? It burns."

  * * * *

  Kallixene dismissed her guard, ordered the room cleared, then gave the Wreath-wearer a knowing stare.

  Kassandra stopped at the door with Jill and Nicole. “You go on. I need to talk to Lady Kallixene for a bit."

  Jill frowned but had expected to be sent away. Nicole stopped abruptly, one hand open, questioning, her face holding the same expression.

  "Just me. I need to be alone with her for a moment. I'll catch up with you later."

  Jill's frown deepened with sadness, understanding that “you” referred to Nicole only, not “both of you.” Her lip twitched and she turned and swam through the door. Nicole nodded and kicked after her.

  Kassandra closed the door and slid the bolt, her fingers so tight on the knob that her knuckles were white. She drew deeply of the ocean and turned to her grandmother.

  Kallixene, never one to waste time, was halfway across the room, swimming to her.

  "Kassandra."

  "Kallixene.” Kassandra whispered her name, so soft it barely left her lips.

  The Lady of Rexenor held out her hands and Kassandra took them, feeling how papery smooth her skin was. They kicked up into the dome of the room, wondering how informal the other was going to keep it, offering little nods and shadow smiles, and Kassandra couldn't help noticing how much her grandmother had aged in the last four years.

  "My granddaughter, I counted our forces.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “One thousand, eight hundred and eighty, a little more than half of them on orcas. Many of them untrained. Do you know what Tharsaleos sends against us?"

  "I have an idea."

  "Many more than we have."

  "I'm expecting that.” She shrugged consolingly. “He has alienated House Alkimides."

  "You are about to alienate all of the Seaborn."

  Kassandra scowled. “In what way?"

  "Fire, girl. No one in the sea will trust you.” She grabbed Kassandra's arm, but she pulled out of her grip.

  "I wear long-sleeved shirts everywhere. I have burn scars up my arms. They already know.” Kassandra shook her head.

  "Rexenor is somewhat tolerant of ... abnormal behavior—and they keep their mouths shut. The rest of them, however..."

  "What's a little fire magic? I have four bleeds. What happens when they find out about that? And they will. Two would be enough to mark me as abnormal—a monster, some sort of throwback to the tyrant Telkhines. I will never be trusted, Lady Kallixene.” She felt her grandmother stiffen at the formal shift in the conversation. “Who will ever trust me? I have already put that into my calculations. However, I will be feared. They will all fear me before this is over."

  Tears drifted blurry into the currents from Kallixene's eyes, and she bowed her head to hide them, sobbing, “I'm so sorry for doing this to you."

  "Don't be.” Kassandra squeezed her hands. “Knowing what I now know, I would have done the same thing."

  Kallixene sobbed louder, her body shuddering. “That is why I am sorry. I have turned you into someone who will destroy the lives of her children, her friends, her grandchildren."

  "If that is all you are sorry about, then ... I will just say that you have no idea what you have done—or what I have already done to myself and others—or are planning to do."

  Kallixene withdrew her hands from Kassandra's. “Do not tell me. I only want to know if you will be able to defeat Tharsaleos. I have placed all of the hope of House Rexenor in you. I have given you nearly everything that is mine to give, my army, a whole generation of Rexenors, my son and daughter, my ble
ed."

  "Nearly everything.” Kassandra nodded, understanding. “Then I will not fail.” She tightened her lips stoically.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  No Diplomacy

  True Helios is the star at the center of our solar system, the light of the surfacers. The Seaborn refer to the “star” set in a hemispheric path over the Nine-cities as Helios’ Twin. This enables the Seaborn to grow crops—kelps and seaweeds—for food and textiles. It's origin is uncertain, but is likely tied to the abomination of working fire magic. Helios’ Twin was created by someone whose magic, whose own tools, devoured him—as it does all tempted by the fire.

  —Michael Henderson, notes

  * * * *

  Kassandra kicked into the water column over the Rexenor fortress, flipped upside down, and took Nereus’ hand loosely. She rolled, her fingers gearing through his until her feet touched the edge of the battlement. She pushed off with her toes to kiss him, her eyes closed.

  She glanced over her shoulder, noticing the anxiety in Nicole's expression, the way she danced uneasily in the water, fiddled with the grip of her sword.

  "Please give me some time with my sister, my love."

  Nereus bowed his head. “Anything for you, milady.” Turning to Nicole, he bowed again. “And you, milady."

  "Thank you."

  He released Kassandra's hand with a final squeeze. “Call on me, and I will return to your side."

  Kassandra lowered her gaze to his hands. She closed her eyes, squeezed them tight, nodding.

  Nicole stared at the longing in her face, the pull at the corners of her mouth, a small shudder—her sister holding back what would be tears if she could shed them.

  "I will send for you."

  Nereus swam off, and when Kassandra looked up, any tenderness in her expression was gone. The Wreath-wearer, the commander of all the forces of Rexenor, the heir to the throne of all the Seaborn, was back. She motioned Nicole to her and turned to stare south into nothing.

  "There is nothing purer than this."

  Nicole looked over at her, the Wreath glowing fiery seaweed green, casting light like pale squirming ghost snakes over the stones at her feet. She looked around carefully before asking, “You scared?"