“But Baba Vrăja, I don’t have time to learn,” Serafina said. “What’s happening in the waters—right now—is life or death. My people, my friends…they deserve the best leader they can get. Not me.”
Vrăja threw her hands up. “If you wish to be the best leader, I cannot help you, for there is no such thing. We all make our mistakes and we all must live with them. If you wish to be a good leader, perhaps I can. Listen to me, child, Astrid swam away because she does not believe.”
“In Abbadon? How can she not? She saw him. Fought him. We all did.”
“No, in herself. Help the others believe, Serafina. Help Ling believe she can break through the silences. Help Neela believe her greatest power comes from within, not without. Help Becca believe the warmest fire is the one that’s shared. Help Ava believe the gods did know what they were doing. That’s what a leader does—she inspires others to believe in themselves.”
“But how, Baba Vrăja?” Serafina said helplessly. “Teach me how.”
“Serafina, can’t you see?” Vrăja said. She reached across her desk and took her hand. “By first believing in yourself.”
THE RIVER WITCH Magdalena looked at the spidery crack Neela had just put into the cave’s wall and shook her head.
“You’re dead. You missed him by a mile,” she said. “And then it was his turn. And he didn’t miss.”
Neela wiped a drop of blood from her nose.
“Try again.”
“She’s bleeding,” Serafina said. “She needs a rest.”
Serafina was sitting on the floor of an empty cave the Iele used for spell practice, recovering. Neela, Ava, and Becca were with her. Ling was with Abbadon, where she’d spent most of the last four days.
Before Neela’s turn, Magdalena had made Serafina cast an apă piatră, an old Romanian protection songspell in which she had to raise a wall of water ten feet high, then make it as hard as stone in order to shield herself from an attack. She’d held it up for a full two minutes, but the effort had left her with a blinding headache.
“Here,” Magdalena said now, handing Neela a cloth for her nose.
“You’re pushing her too hard,” Serafina protested, worried about her friend.
“Abbadon will push her even harder,” said Magdalena.
“It’s okay, Sera, I’m good. Let’s do it,” Neela said, stuffing the bloody cloth in her pocket.
Magdalena swam a few feet to the right of the crack. She picked up a rock and scratched a hulking figure with horns and a big ugly face on the wall, then drew an X in the middle of its forehead. “Right there,” she said, tapping the X. “Focus.”
Neela, looking at the cave floor, nodded.
“Bring it, baby merl!” Ava called out.
“Right between the eyes, Neela,” Becca said.
“Focus, dragă,” Magdalena said.
Neela picked her head up. She fixed her gaze on the X, and started to sing.
I summon to me
rays of light
And make of them
a weapon bright….
As she did, light leapt toward her from the room’s lava globes. She caught it and whirled it into a ball, just as she always did when casting a fragor lux. But this time, she made the ball smaller, tighter, and harder. Just as Magdalena had taught her.
Magic, help me
Fight the dark,
Guide this missile
To its mark.
With a loud cry, she launched the frag as hard and fast as she could. It hit the wall with an explosive impact. Everyone ducked as shattered rock flew through the water. When the silt settled, there was nothing but a deep hole where Abbadon’s head had been.
“Excellent!” Magdalena shouted. “Well done!”
“That was amazing!” Becca said.
Neela smiled. A bright gush of blood burst from her nose.
“Neela!” Serafina cried. She swam to her friend, pulled the cloth from her pocket, and pressed it to her nose. “That’s it. You’re done,” she said. “The magic is supposed to explode Abbadon’s head, not your own. Come and sit down.”
As she watched Neela pinch her nose, Sera thought how right Vrăja had been—they were stronger when they were together. But their new powers took a toll. Headaches and nosebleeds were only part of it. The hard training they did together also gave them bruises and cramps. Ava had been sick to her stomach several times. Ling’s broken wrist started paining her fiercely. They were all exhausted. Magdalena, who would become the next obârşie, was helping them develop the powers passed down by their mage ancestors, and teaching them some old Romanian spells of the Iele. There was much they had to learn if they were going to fight Abbadon and too little time in which to learn it. Magdalena didn’t give them many breaks.
“Becca, you’re up next,” she said now. “Sing a good strong flăcări spell. Call up some wrasse-kicking waterfire.”
Becca rose and swam to the other end of the cave. She positioned herself so that she was floating just inches off the cave floor, then began to songcast.
Whirl around me
Like a gyre,
This I ask you,
Ancient fire.
Faint, flickering fingers of waterfire snaked up out of the ground in a circle around her, summoned from the earth’s molten core.
Magdalena snorted. “You call that waterfire? Those flames couldn’t heat a teapot. You’re. Not. Focusing. You have to be able to call the fire every time you need it. What happens if Abbadon’s advancing on you and you can’t make the fire come? You die. Do it again,” she said.
Becca took a deep breath and started over. Her voice was louder now, and more forceful.
Whirl around me
Like a gyre,
This I ask you,
Ancient fire.
Hot blue flames,
Throw your heat,
Cause my enemy
To retreat.
As the last note left her lips, there was a loud whoosh. The waterfire shot up in a roiling orange column all the way to the top of the cave. Becca was lost inside it.
Magdalena cupped her hands around her mouth. “Becca? Becca, can you hear me? DIAL IT BACK!” she shouted.
All at once, the fire collapsed, its flames sinking back into the earth. Becca was still floating slightly off the ground. She looked dazed. Her curls were singed. Her dress was scorched. She’d burst a small blood vessel near one eye.
“Your powers grow by the hour,” Magdalena said. “Unfortunately, your mastery of them does not.”
“She needs more time. We all do,” Serafina said.
“You don’t have it. And I can’t give it to you. What I can give you is help channeling your magic, if you want it,” Magdalena said crisply. “Ava, you’re next! I want you to cast an ochi just like you did yesterday. I want you to hold it and then go right into a convoca, so you can show it to the others. Do you think you can do it?”
Ava nodded.
Serafina knew the ochi was a hard spell to cast. It was what the Iele used to watch Abbadon. It required that a gândac, or bug, be planted near the person or thing the songcaster wished to observe in order to catch the spell and hold it there. Shells, with their ability to capture sound, worked best. They’d all tried casting ochis. Serafina had only been able to see around a corner. Ling had been able to see into Vrăja’s study. The obârşie had looked up from her desk, amused, and waved. Neela and Becca had seen the Malacostraca.
Ava had been able to see Abbadon by using the same gândac the Iele used—a shell cast of gold that Sycorax had once worn on a chain around her neck. Generations ago, Abbadon had slashed at Sycorax through the bars of the gate, mortally wounding her. His claws had caught her necklace and ripped it off. As it sank through the water, its chain got tangled in one of the crossbars at the bottom of the gate. It hung there still, glazed with ice, unnoticed by the monster.
Today Ava had only been able to hold her vision of Abbadon for about thirty seconds, but Magdalena was amazed she’d don
e it at all.
As hard as an ochi was, a convoca, or summoning spell, was even more difficult. It was what Vrăja herself had cast to call them here. Magdalena wanted them all to be able to learn it, because it could be used not only for summoning people, but also for communicating with them.
Ava concentrated. Her eyes could no longer see, but her mind still could. Sera wondered what she was going to try to show them. Not Abbadon, she hoped.
“Do you have it?” Magdalena asked.
Ava nodded. “I’m going to try to show you Macapá, my home. I’ll use one of the shells on my windowsill as the gândac,” she explained.
“Ambitious. I like it,” Magdalena said approvingly.
Ava began her songspell.
Gods of darkness,
Hear my plight,
Give to me
the gift of sight.
Gods of light
From up above,
Help me see
The place I love.
Ava was smiling now.
A river wide,
A river fast,
I ask you now
To help me cast
A vision clear
To show my friends
My home,
The place the river ends.
Serafina closed her eyes, waiting for Ava to shift from ochi to convoca, expecting to see in her mind’s eye the Amazon River, where her friend had grown up. Instead, she saw herself. A split second later, she heard a voice inside her head. “Sera? Is that you?”
“Ava!”
“Wow! I’m in your head, gatinha!”
“This is weird, Ava.”
“Ava? Sera?”
“Neela?”
“Yes!”
“Hey there!”
“Becca!”
“Yeah, it’s me! I can hear you, Ava! I can hear all of you!”
Another voice chimed in—Magdalena’s. “Well, the convoca obviously worked, since Ava is talking to us without talking to us, but the ochi is a total fail. You’re supposed to be showing us something far away—the Amazon, right?—but all I’m seeing is Sera and she’s right next to me!”
“Wait a minute,” Serafina said as the image came more sharply into focus. “That’s not the practice cave. And what on earth am I wearing?”
The Serafina in the image was clad in armor and riding a huge black hippokamp. She was bellowing at soldiers, moving them into position.
The mermaids soon saw why. On the other end of the field, a fearsome army was amassing.
Ava let out a low whistle. “Meu deus! Those are some mad ugly goblins,” she said.
“Feuerkumpel,” Becca said grimly.
“Sera, watch out!” Neela shouted.
A goblin had crept up behind Serafina. His black hair stood high in a topknot. He had a sallow face pocked by lava burns, nostrils but no nose, and a mouthful of sharp teeth, blackened by rot. His small, brutal eyes were as transparent as jellyfish. Serafina could see the network of veins running through them, pulsing with brown blood, and behind them, the dull yellow of his brain. Hard, bony black plates, like the chitin of a crab, covered his body. He was carrying a double-headed ax, its blades curved like crescent moons. As the mermaids watched, he raised it high over his head—then swung it.
“No!” Ava screamed. She scrabbled backward on the floor, as if trying to get away from the vision. As quickly as it had come, it disappeared. “Que diabo!” she said out loud. “What was that?”
“Your gift growing stronger,” Magdalena said.
“No way! It’s not my gift. My gift is sight. It always has been. I can see the truth. I can see what really is.”
“No, Ava. Not anymore. Your ancestor Nyx not only saw what is, he saw what will be. He had the power of prophecy. You do too. You just never felt it until now. It’s being near the others that’s bringing it out.”
“So I saw something from the future?” Ava asked.
“I think so,” Magdalena replied.
“Great,” Serafina said. “Looks like we have a battle with ax-wielding goblins to look forward to. I’m so happy about that. Because, you know, Abbadon just isn’t enough of a challenge for me.”
“Magdalena!” a voice called from the doorway. It was Tatiana, another one of the Iele.
“Baba Vrăja wants to see you. Right away.” There was panic in her voice.
“What’s wrong?” Magdalena asked.
“Captain Traho just entered the mouth of the Olt. The cadavru saw him.”
“So? He’s done it before. It’s only a search party,” Magdalena said.
“He has five hundred death riders with him. Five hundred!” Tatiana said, her voice edging toward hysteria.
“Calm down, Tatiana. He doesn’t know where we are,” Magdalena said. “No one knows where we are.”
“He does now.”
It was Ling. She was leaning on the doorjamb, panting. Her face was flushed from swimming fast.
“But how is that possible? Who told him?” Magdalena asked.
“Abbadon.”
“I WAS SO WRONG,” Ling said.
She swam into the room. “All this time, I thought Abbadon was talking to itself,” she said. “Monster speaks, like, two hundred languages. And a lot of them are very old forms. That’s why it took me so long to see the pattern. I mean, ever try to make sense of ancient Abahatta?”
“What pattern, Ling? What are you saying?” Serafina asked, alarmed.
“I’m saying that Abbadon talks. But not to itself. It talks about us. Constantly. I didn’t understand at first. It kept changing languages so I couldn’t follow what it was saying, but now I can. Here, look…I wrote down a lot of its words.” She showed them a piece of parchment. It was covered with lines.
“Six children the witch sends to defeat Abbadon…Scared little children…stupid and weak…They will not find the talismans…They will die…Their realms will fall…and Abbadon will rise again….” she read aloud. Then she looked at the others. “It hears everything spoken in these caves. It says our names. Where we’re from. Who our mage ancestors were. What our powers are. It talks about everything we’ve talked about for the past few days. About landmarks—the ones Vrăja gave us to lead us here. It talks about the Malacostraca. Because we talked about them and it heard us,” she said.
“Oh, no,” Becca whispered.
“Look, do you see this word here? Kýrios. And these? Zhŭ…stăpân…dominus. They all mean the same thing: master. It’s talking to Traho, or Kolfinn, or whoever wants to free it. It’s telling him everything,” Ling said.
“Which means he knows where we are,” Serafina said, fear squeezing her stomach.
“And how to get here,” Becca said.
“If the death riders find the entrance to these caves…” Neela said.
“You mean when they find it. If Abbadon told Traho about the landmarks—the Maiden’s Leap, the bones, the waters of the Malacostraca—then it’s only a matter of time.”
“You have to get out of here,” Magdelena said. “There’s a tunnel beneath our caves. It will take you several leagues south of here. Well away from Traho and his soldiers. Get your things and meet me in Vrăja’s study.” She left then, swimming rapidly after Tatiana.
Fury rose from deep in Serafina’s heart, like waterfire from the depths of the earth. It pushed out the fear. Traho was forcing them to flee again. He’d torn her away from her home, from the safety of the duca’s palazzo, and from Blu. Now he was tearing her apart from the other mermaids when they’d only just come together.
“She’s right,” Ling said. “We better not be here when Traho knocks on the door.”
“No. Forget it. I’m not leaving. Not like this,” Serafina said defiantly.
“But we can’t stay,” Becca said.
“We’ll go, but not yet. First, let’s really give Abbadon something to talk about.”
“Such as?”
“A bloodbind.”
“Whoa,” Ling said. “Really?”
“Really.”
“It’s darksong, Sera,” Ava said. “It’s canta malus.”
“These are dark times,” Serafina replied.
Canta malus was said to have been a poisonous gift to the mer from Morsa, in mockery of Neria’s gifts. The invocation of some malus spells could get the caster imprisoned: the clepio spells, used for stealing; a habeo, which took control of another’s mind or body; the nocérus, used to cause harm; and the nex songspell, which was used to kill.
“Outlaws use bloodbinds,” Becca said. “So they can never turn against each other.”
“Traho has made outlaws of us,” Sera countered.
“A bloodbind is forever. You break it, you die,” Ava said.
“I know that,” Sera said. “I want to show Traho that we mean it. That we’re all in. Abbadon called us a lot of things. It’s right about one—we’re scared. But we’re not stupid, we’re not weak, we’re not children, and we won’t quit. I still don’t know how we’re going to do this. I don’t know how to use all my powers. I don’t even know how to stop Neela’s nosebleed. But I do know this: I will fight to the death with you, and for you. It’s time Abbadon and Traho and every single lowtide death rider knew that too.”
“I’m so in,” Ling said.
“Me too,” Becca and Neela said.
“And me,” Ava said. “When do we do it?”
“Now,” Serafina said.
“Where?” Becca asked.
“In the Incantarium. By the waterfire. To make sure Abbadon hears us. Loud and clear.”
“HEY, can I borrow that? Thanks!”
Ling got the halberd away from the guard with a magnitis spell before he even knew what had happened. As he was blinking at his empty hands, she swam into the Incantarium, ducked under the arms of a circling incanta, and stuck the weapon’s axlike blade through the waterfire. Serafina and the others followed her into the room. Baby swam behind them.
“Hey! Hey, blabbermouth! Wake up!” Ling yelled, poking the rippling image of the Carceron.
Waterfire Saga, Book One: Deep Blue (A Waterfire Saga Novel) Page 23