by Kai Meyer
What Jolly had feared was quickly confirmed: She’d underestimated the distance to the kobalin hill and thus presumably its height as well.
Soon they’d have to rest, for swimming cost them far more energy than walking along the sea bottom. They hadn’t slept for an eternity either, and their mealtimes had become irregular and without pleasure.
Jolly was just chewing on a tough piece of pickled meat that tasted even saltier with seawater when Aina blurted out a warning cry. They quickly slid down behind a rock wall and cowered beside each other in a fissure. They’d barely found cover as a search current rolled over the wasteland, a tower-high swirl of stirred-up dust, whose force even made the rocks tremble. It was the fifth of these undersea tidal waves they’d experienced—the last had been not long ago, and Jolly worried that the closer they came to their goal, the more frequently they’d have to deal with them. Luckily, Aina had a good feeling for them and usually recognized the danger a little sooner than the others.
The three had just left their hiding place and were again swimming toward the top of the rocks when something unexpected happened. This time Aina was also surprised.
A second search current followed the first.
They’d scarcely risen up over the edge of the rocks when the rumbling of the invisible Maelstrom appeared to increase. But the noise didn’t come from the Maelstrom itself but from a raging, whirling wall of sand and water that followed after the first with hardly a pause. It wasn’t so high, but in width it extended from one edge of their sight to the other.
“Jolly!” Munk yelled. “Down!”
The warning came too late. She’d realized the danger at that very moment, but she had no time to react. She didn’t even see what happened to the two others.
The search current seized her, and then it was as though someone had stuck her into a giant container of sand and shaken the whole thing vigorously.
Dust and little stones pushed into her mouth and eyes. Up and down became meaningless. She felt herself being swept along by powers that were greater and more destructive than anything she’d thought possible. Her consciousness was wiped out by pain and panic and a darkness that obliterated polliwog vision itself.
He’s separating us! was her last clear thought, hissing through her head like a flare.
Then she thought nothing more.
At least for a while.
“Jolly!”
I’m unconscious echoed through her thoughts like a strange voice.
She knew that voice. It wasn’t the voice of Munk.
“Aina?” she managed haltingly. Her eyelids trembled and opened, and her vision was flooded by gray twilight, then by shapes. Sharpness returned. Recognition.
Aina’s face. Over her.
“There you are again,” said the girl with a smile. “About time.”
Jolly stretched out a hand and reached through Aina like a dream image. And that’s what she thought in those first moments, until she remembered. What Aina was. Munk. The undersea tidal wave that had carried her away. Her hand felt numb when it passed through the girl’s body. That was the nearness of the Maelstrom. Aina actually gained in solidity as they advanced toward the heart of the Crustal Breach.
“I…I feel sick,” she whispered.
Aina nodded. “The search current flung you against the rocks. You were lucky.”
“Lucky?” Jolly touched her head with a groan. “My head says different.” Even touching it hurt. Her scalp was sore. It felt as if thousands of hands were pulling on each single hair.
She made an effort to look around her. She was on the bottom of a ravine, at least she thought so. There was a rock wall at her back and one a few steps in front of her too. High over her arched the darkness, not a ceiling, but the limit of polliwog sight.
The current must have seized her and thrown her into a fissure. But it could have been worse. As far as she could tell right now, she hadn’t broken anything. She saw merely a few scrapes, trickling blood that mixed with the seawater. The salt burned in the open places.
“Where’s Munk?”
Aina pointed into the darkness behind her. “He’s looking for you. He was quite desperate when you were suddenly gone. We separated.”
“Then the search current didn’t catch you?”
Aina shook her head. “We just made it behind the rocks.”
Jolly nodded without really listening. Anyway, their mission wasn’t endangered. She felt a pang that she was the one, of them all, whose mishap had delayed them.
“How much time have we lost?”
“Not much.” Aina tilted her head and observed Jolly as if she were expecting a very particular reaction to this reply.
Her look made Jolly uncomfortable. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You don’t need to worry that you’re holding Munk up.” Aina’s voice was gentle and full of understanding. “Yet that is what you’re thinking?”
Was she so easy to see through? Well, even if she was—what business was that of Aina’s? She’d just taken a breath for a fitting reply when the girl shook her head slowly.
“You have no reason to be jealous of me,” Aina said softly.
“I—”
“At least not yet.”
Jolly stared at her. Then she tore her eyes from Aina’s enigmatic smile and looked for Munk. He was nowhere to be seen.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s behind the rocks, looking for you.” Aina didn’t move. She was kneeling in front of Jolly on the ground, her dark eyes gleaming like spheres of polished onyx. “He’s fine, and he’s looking for you over there, a few crevices farther north—far enough not to be able to hear you if you call him.”
Jolly pushed herself upright with her back against the wall. Finally she was standing on both feet, somewhat steady, although her sense of balance was acting crazy.
“Who are you, really?” she asked.
Aina stayed crouching and looking up at her mildly. “A polliwog like you. Only a few thousand years older.”
“You’re lying.”
“No. Everything I told you is the truth.” Her smile flickered like firelight. “I merely left out a few things.”
Jolly was about to push off the floor to swim upward, but Aina shook her head and made a motion of her hand that made Jolly hesitate. “No. You won’t manage to warn him. And he wouldn’t listen to you anyway.” Aina’s hands formed a hollow, which she held to her right ear. “He has something better that gives him advice now.”
“The damned mussel!”
“What I said about it was not a lie. It is more powerful than any you have ever held in your hands. Munk recognized that immediately.”
“You beast!”
Jolly was all set to rush at Aina, but she knew that an attack was senseless. Her hands would go right through the girl. On the other hand, how did Aina intend to keep her from getting out of here?
A blur whizzed over her and took form a moment later. Something settled down over Jolly, and when she thrust up her hands in defense, she felt it between her fingers.
A wide, coarse-meshed net.
From niches and cracks in the rocks came white, eyeless figures.
One of them had flung the net and in one claw still held the rope by which it was fastened. Stones were knotted into the border of the net, which made it much heavier than it looked at first sight.
Jolly had no time to avoid it. The strands of plant fibers settled down on her and Aina. But while the net lay over her head and shoulders and caught her arms in it, it sank right through Aina as if she weren’t really there. The girl rose with a sigh and left the fibers of the net beneath her on the ground. Jolly, on the other hand, was so hopelessly entangled in it that the albino kobalins had enough time to shuffle over to her in their crouching gait and grab her.
“Don’t resist,” said Aina calmly. “They are stronger than you.”
Jolly bellowed Munk’s name, but she already sensed that Aina was right. He couldn’t hear her,
not in the middle of this maze. There was no echo down here, the water prevented that, and the stone swallowed the rest.
Two kobalins grasped her arms through the net and lifted her off the ground. The creatures might be smaller than she was and blind, but they possessed strength with which no human could compete. Under the white skin stretched wiry muscle fibers, and their long claws gripped like gigantic bird talons. Jolly cursed and swore, but she was simply carried away without the least chance of defending herself.
Aina walked lightly beside her. “No one will do you any harm.”
“Right. That’s how it looks,” Jolly said between her teeth. Her enunciation suffered under the strands of the net, which were cutting painfully into her face. Two ran right across her mouth and kept her from being able to open her lips wider than a crack.
“No, believe me,” said Aina earnestly. “You and Munk, you’re the last living polliwogs. You’re much too valuable to destroy. Until there are no other possibilities, anyway.”
“What about the other two polliwogs? Your friends.” Jolly was not sure if her distorted words were understandable, but Aina answered matter-of-factly, as if she had no trouble understanding Jolly.
“One of them is dead. You killed him. And the other…I don’t know if I would still call him a polliwog.”
“We killed—” Jolly fell silent. Deep inside there awakened a bitter suspicion.
But before she could get around to busying herself more exhaustively with the thought, the ravine took a sharp bend. The ground rose. When Jolly looked up the incline, she realized where Aina and the kobalins had brought her.
Over her rose the kobalin hill. From down here it looked like a gigantic tower, which was only imperceptibly wider at the base than in its upper regions. If they climbed it the zigzag way that led upward on the outside, there was a chance that Munk might see them from afar. A thin hope, certainly, but for a moment it gave her new courage.
Until she discovered a second troop of kobalins that were busy with a round boulder several fathoms above her. The creatures placed poles under the stone colossus as levers and rolled it aside. Behind it, an opening in the rock wall became visible. A gateway to the nest of the kobalins, not high, not wide—just big enough to push a human through it.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“You will remain here until I have you fetched.” Aina smiled. “Then everything will be over, and you will have the opportunity to make a decision. For or against life. Until then you have time enough to think about it.”
They reached the hole in the rock, which lay far below the level of the other peaks. If Munk were swimming toward her over the ravines, he wouldn’t be able to see her from up there.
The kobalins transported her through the opening, net and all. Jolly stumbled, further entangling herself in the mesh. She fell down a slope of smooth stone with a curse. Over her she heard the screams of the two kobalins who’d pushed her. As she lay there, stunned for a moment, she saw Aina standing alone in the opening.
“Excuse them,” the girl said angrily. “They are uncouth creatures. I have punished them for their roughness.”
Jolly didn’t see what Aina had done to the kobalins, but since the two of them had disappeared, she could guess. The cold-bloodedness of her opponent terrified her anew.
She pulled the net away from her face so that Aina could see the hatred in her eyes. “How long am I supposed to stay here?”
“Not long. The battle for Aelenium will soon be decided. After that we’ll overrun the settlements on the coast and then…well, we’ll see.”
“How did he do it? I mean, how did the Maelstrom get you on his side?”
Aina tilted her head again, as she often did when she was surprised about something. “You still haven’t grasped it, have you?”
Jolly’s gut twisted. “Then explain it to me.”
“Not now.” Shaking her head, Aina stepped back and gave her creatures a sign. “I will come again. Then we’ll talk.”
A grating noise indicated that the levers were being employed again. The crack grew narrower.
“And Munk?” roared Jolly. Her legs kicked the net away, but it was too late to run up now. “What about Munk?”
Aina made a motion of her hand and the boulder stopped for several seconds. “Munk?” she asked with genuine astonishment. “But I am his friend!”
She didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile, as she stepped back and finally left the opening free. The seriousness in her pale features terrified Jolly more than all the other things that were happening in those seconds.
She called Aina’s name, but it was too late. At the last moment something glowing shot through the crack. Then the rock sealed the last gap with a deep rumble and lay there, a weight of tons.
Silence returned. No sounds from outside penetrated the rock, and nothing moved around Jolly either. She blinked away the tears that had filled her eyes, more from rage than fear. Blurrily she gazed at the handful of lantern fish that swam around her like a glowing swarm of insects.
“You?” she asked weakly, but she couldn’t even rejoice about that. Instead she looked over her shoulder, in the only direction that was still open to her.
This was a long, extended cave, whose end she couldn’t make out.
Her knees trembling, she got to her feet and looked up at the blocked opening one last time. The formation of fish exploded, for a moment they whizzed around in confusion, and then they formed a densely clustered ball of light over Jolly’s head.
Jolly didn’t need their help. Polliwog vision worked inside the hill, too.
First hesitantly, then more and more decidedly, she began walking deeper into the lifeless stillness of the kobalin nest.
Two Giants
The lord of the kobalins was making his circuit around the city. He glided through the churning waters not far beneath the surface, discernible from above only as a shadow.
Griffin guided the ray behind the kobalin lord, about five fathoms above the waves, and followed his course. So close to him, the rain of dead fish was a repellent, often painful business—aside from the fact that they interfered with Griffin’s vision. The scaly bodies glittered and dazzled in the light of the rising sun.
Behind him Ismael had been cursing ceaselessly. Each time he raised one of the rifles, a fish cadaver fell onto the barrel and pushed it down. Getting off an accurate shot was impossible in this stinking chaos.
“I really don’t know if this was such a good idea,” the marksman shouted over the racket.
“It’s the fear of their master that’s driving the kobalins forward.” Griffin twisted his head to avoid the lashing arms of an octopus as it fell from the sky in front of him. With his left hand he pushed the cadaver off the ray’s body. “If we succeed in killing the lord of the kobalins, then—”
“Then is the battle over?” scoffed Ismael. “Do you really believe that?”
“No,” replied Griffin coldly. “But it’s a first step, isn’t it? This whole battle is wheeling in circles. It’s time to do something that none of us expected.”
He heard himself say these words and thought they didn’t sound as if they came from his own mouth. But that also was a consequence of this war. They would all be changed men when this was over, if a spark of life was still left in them. And as Griffin guided the ray over the foaming mountains of waves, he seriously questioned whether he hadn’t already changed long ago, in that moment when he decided to fight on Aelenium’s side. Even earlier—when he made the decision to stick with Jolly.
The dead fish pelted down onto the ray’s wings. The animal had trouble maintaining its altitude. Both riders were being thoroughly shaken, their flight path careening up and down. However, Griffin succeeded in keeping the animal on the track of the mighty shadow as he pursued his course through the sea.
The shape of the creature’s body was almost impossible to make out. His outline appeared to change constantly; it was sometimes extended lengthwise
, then oval, then again polymorphic with numerous outgrowths. He was as big as four or five rowboats and only showed up vaguely against the blue-black of the deep, which led Griffin to suspect that his body must be transparent like dark glass.
Griffin had expected an especially large kobalin or a kind of twin of the Acherus. But now, up close, the lord of the deep tribes did not resemble that creature. He was completely different, and that caused Griffin far greater fear than any giant kobalin or a golem of body parts. So numerous were the terrors he’d met in recent weeks that he feared the unexpected more than any known monstrosity.
“What the devil sort of beast is that?” asked Ismael, who’d given up trying to target it with his weapons. Instead he was now holding on with one hand and fending off the falling fish cadavers with the other.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“They say you and the polliwog, you already met him one time.”
“We were in his vicinity. But we didn’t see him. Maybe we wouldn’t be here if we had.”
“You know how to encourage a fellow.”
Griffin reined in the ray, for the lord of the kobalins had slowed under the water. Had he noticed that his trail was being followed from the air?
They received the answer in the form of half a dozen lances whizzing in their direction. Through the fish rain, Griffin hadn’t been able to see the kobalins swimming in the waves near their master. Ismael cried out as one of the barb points grazed his shoulder, but it wasn’t a serious hit. All the others missed their target, for the kobalins couldn’t aim in the midst of this hail of dead fish either.
“All right?” Griffin called back worriedly. “Or shall I turn around?”
Ismael gave a pained laugh. “Not for anything in the world! As long as my head’s still on my shoulders, we’re staying in the air.”
“Don’t tempt fate.” And with that Griffin pulled on the ray’s reins and made it sink steeply down until its underside touched the waves. It was a dangerous maneuver, especially for the animal, but Griffin’s calculation worked out. Two kobalins were rammed by the ray’s gigantic head, torn from the water by the force of the impact, and flung away. The others instantly dove and scattered in all directions.