by Kai Meyer
D’Artois remained dour; he didn’t like this subject. “By something for which there is no name. Larger than the largest ship. And more dangerous than the giant kraken.”
Munk looked back at her. “Captain d’Artois and his men beat it back. And the kobalins, too, of course. But there were many dead, and you see what happened to the city.”
Jolly nodded somberly.
“Since that attack, rays patrol under the city and protect the anchor chain,” d’Artois said. “The deep levels were unin-habited up till now, but now we’re not so sure of that. Divers search the halls and grottoes, but it’s all much too big and interconnected for us to be certain. If something has settled in down there, it may only be waiting for an opportunity to strike.”
“What’s that, the deep levels?”
“The city under the city.” Munk beat the captain to it. “On the underside of the sea star there’s a coral structure similar to the one on the upper side. It’s as if Aelenium had a mirror image.”
“Innumerable coral caverns and caves,” said d’Artois. “In earlier days they were certain there were a few sharks and morays under there, at most. But in times like these? Who knows.” He sighed. “Nevertheless—we do our best to secure the undercity.”
“How many soldiers are there in Aelenium, actually?” Jolly asked.
“Not enough. A few hundred.”
Jolly remembered the host of kobalins they’d seen from the Carfax two weeks before. A mighty force of thousands upon thousands, swimming out into the Atlantic. There the Maelstrom was gathering his forces.
Aelenium didn’t have the trace of a chance if it came to a battle of men against kobalins.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said d’Artois, as they flew a second orbit around the city, gradually descending as they flew. “But we will fight, if it comes to that. We have no choice.”
“Jolly, look!” Munk’s sudden cheeriness sounded a little too put-on to be real. He wanted to distract her. “That’s the traders’ quarter down there. See the bazaar?”
“Yes.”
“And over there, a little bit higher, is the library. We have to go there early tomorrow.” He pointed with outstretched arm to a group of high coral domes, which nestled against the slope of the mountain cone. Several watercourses running down from above ended in basins and canals between the library buildings, creating bubbling waterfalls and pools with exotic plants.
“And there,” said Munk a little later, “are the houses of the Council of Aelenium. Right next to them are the Guards’ Barracks. And just under is the Poets’ Quarter. Well, painters and musicians live there too.” He laughed softly. “You should have seen them when the Hexhermetic Shipworm turned up. They sent a delegation to the council to get his own house for him in the Poets’ Quarter. And his own ration of wood. He’s quite popular here.”
“Merlin of Marvelous Meters.” She giggled as she repeated the worm’s words.
“He is a great poet, your worm,” said d’Artois very seriously. “You shouldn’t make fun of him just because he’s smaller than you.”
Munk laughed. “You see? They’re like that here. So terribly full of understanding and good will … ‘just because he’s smaller than you,’” he mimicked the captain jokingly. “Probably that’s why the Ghost Trader values Aelenium so much, because they’re all so terribly nice.”
“But mean enough to throw you down from up here if you don’t keep your tongue bridled, young friend.”
Munk looked at Jolly over his shoulder and made a silent grimace.
“Now we’re going down at a steep angle,” said the captain. “Hold on tight!”
Jolly slipped forward a little as the ray went into a sort of nosedive. For a moment she felt so sick that she thought she was going to throw up. Only when d’Artois leveled out about three yards over the surface of the water did her stomach recover. The hand grips to which she clung had become damp and slippery.
D’Artois slowed the ray’s flight until the animal was gliding forward leisurely over the waves. Down here the darkness was almost complete; only the flickering lights of Aelenium, which were now being lit one by one, broke over the dark surface.
The memory of the Mare Tenebrosum stabbed through Jolly. A deep, black, lightless ocean. Almost like … no, not like this one. This was the Caribbean Sea. Waves over which she could walk forward the way others did on firm ground.
Munk pulled his feet out of the foot straps and began to climb up onto the saddle a little shakily.
“Have you gone crazy?” she snapped at him.
“Just watch.”
“You don’t have to impress me,” she retorted snippily. “If you fall onto the water from this height, you break all your bones.” Another person would probably not have come to any harm, but Jolly and Munk were polliwogs. And it amazed Jolly that the captain permitted Munk’s antics at all—after all, the fate of Aelenium hung on him, much more than it did on her.
“You tell him!” she entreated d’Artois. “This silly fool is going to fall.”
“Wait,” said the captain. He gave a whistle, and the ray stopped flying, holding its wings completely stiff.
Munk stood up, legs spread, with both feet on the saddle. “Watch!” he said to Jolly. “I want to show you what I’ve learned in the last few days.”
“How to break your neck?”
Munk turned to one side and walked out onto one of the outstretched wings of the ray. It held his weight without the animal’s tilting.
“Munk, damn it!” She stretched out a hand to grab him, but he was already out of her reach and was now walking to the farthest edge of the wing as if it were a platform of wood, not the wing of a living creature.
“It’s important to dive in with your hands and head first,” he said.
Dive in? What was he talking about? Polliwogs couldn’t dive. Water was like stone for them. He’d crack his skull if he tried it. “Stop this nonsense right now!”
Munk sent her a smile that was a trace too superior for her taste. Then he turned, flexed his knees a little, bent forward—and pushed off from the ray’s wing headfirst.
Jolly let out a scream as he plunged into the depths. Then the ray flew over the spot and Jolly almost dislocated her neck, trying to keep Munk in sight. But the water was too dark to see where he’d landed.
“Fly back!” she urged. “Turn around! Quick!”
“Don’t worry,” replied d’Artois. “Nothing happened to him.”
“Oh no?” She stared as hard as she could at the dark waves, expecting any minute to see Munk’s twisted body on the surface. “We’re polliwogs! We can die from stunts like that!”
“You can—but you don’t have to,” d’Artois said, and he turned the ray in a wide loop back in the direction from which they’d come.
“Do you mean to say…”
“There’s a teacher here in Aelenium who knows all about what you can do and what you can’t. He isn’t a polliwog himself, but he knows about the old records.”
“Records?” Her voice sounded scornful. “The first polliwogs were born after the great earthquake at Port Royal. That’s just fourteen years ago. So your records can’t be so terribly old.” She stopped talking, but she could hardly think of anything else except Munk, who was, with the utmost probability, floating dead somewhere down there in the dark.
“False,” contradicted the captain. “I certainly don’t know everything about polliwogs, but all the same, I know one thing for sure: They did exist earlier, many thousands of years ago—at the time when Aelenium became the guard of the Maelstrom.”
“Fine guards you are,” she said bitterly. It didn’t give her half as much pleasure to wound him as she’d hoped. But at the moment it felt right somehow. Even if she only wanted to distract herself from Munk and what d’Artois had just said.
“As guards we have failed, that is correct,” the captain confirmed, but his voice had lost some of its objectivity. “Nevertheless, it appears to me
that our wise men know you polliwogs better than you do yourselves.”
She couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t listen—not as long as she didn’t know what had become of Munk. “Fly lower.”
To her surprise, he did as she requested.
“Jolly!” a voice called up to her out of the darkness. “Here I am!”
She slipped into Munk’s place in the saddle, the better to be able to see past the captain. “I can’t see you!” Her voice sounded raw and husky.
“Don’t be afraid for him,” said the captain. “He’s doing fine.”
Her eyes darted nervously over the glinting surface of the sea. And there—yes, there he was.
Munk was swimming in the water. Only his head and his arms showed above the waves.
Jolly’s heart skipped a beat. “But that can’t be—” She broke off, because she couldn’t believe her eyes.
Munk could swim. He was down there—in the water!
But that was impossible. He was a polliwog, just like her. Polliwogs didn’t swim in saltwater. Polliwogs walked on top of it. Anything different was like a normal person suddenly sinking between two paving blocks.
The ray swept away over Munk, and again d’Artois made it return in a wide loop.
“You can do it too,” said the captain. “Only, its important that you do it exactly the way he did. With head and hands first.”
“That … that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“It has to do with the speed. Have you ever tried to draw your finger through a candle flame?”
“Every child tries that.”
“And? Did you burn yourself?”
“Of course not.”
“And why not?”
“Because my finger went through the flame too quickly to …”—she hesitated—“to burn.”
“Exactly right.” D’Artois nodded, but he didn’t look at her. “It’s just the same with polliwogs and the water. If you whisk through the surface so quickly that it doesn’t notice you, nothing happens to you. And once you’re in the water, it’s just like with any other person. You can swim if you want. Because the surface offers no resistance on the underside, only on top. And, as I said, not even then, if you’re quick enough. That’s why the header.” After a brief pause, he added, “Munk didn’t want to believe it any more than you at first. But he learned to accept it.”
Jolly tried to sort out her thoughts. “You want me to try it too?”
“Can you swim?”
“Certainly. I’ve swum in lakes. Polliwogs only walk on saltwater.”
“Good. Then try it.”
“I’m not sick of life.”
“You can do it, believe me. And wait—it gets even better.”
“What do you mean?”
“First things first. First the dive. Munk will explain all the rest.”
“I don’t know.”
“Jolly!” Munk called from the water. “It isn’t hard. Really, it isn’t!”
“Have you ever done a header?” asked d’Artois. “I mean, in a lake?”
“Of course.”
“Then you can do it here, too.”
She still hesitated, but then she gathered all her courage. With pounding heart she climbed onto the saddle. The ray stretched its wings again so that she could walk out on them. But did she really want to?
“I can’t go any lower, or the leap will be too short and so the speed will be less,” the captain explained.
“Very reassuring. Many thanks.”
He looked back and grinned. Teetering, she balanced her way over the wing of the gliding ray. The animal was again in a straight flight pattern, exactly over the place where Munk was paddling.
“Ready?” d’Artois asked.
“May I please decide that for myself?”
“But of course.”
She bounced irresolutely on her knees, at the same time fearing that the headwind would simply blow her off the wing before she had a chance to jump on her own.
One, she counted in her head.
Her neck was stiff. Her back hurt.
Two.
Not to mention her backside.
Three.
Jolly leaped. Not in perfect form, not especially gracefully. But it was a header, all the same.
The surface rushed up to her, met her fingertips—and engulfed her. She dove down. Her breath stopped. A cry escaped her mouth, spraying air bubbles around her face and shooting away to the surface.
Around her was blackness. Emptiness. Cold.
She was drowning.
She could swim, certainly. But not now. Not here. Not in saltwater. That was simply impossible. After all, she was a polliwog!
“Jolly.”
Munk’s voice. Beside her. In the water.
How could she hear him? Why did she see him so clearly?
Heavens, she must be dreaming all this.
“Everything all right?” he asked her, taking her hand. She was still kicking wildly, but gradually she got hold of herself and nodded.
They were not on the surface but underwater. However, they were moving as if there were no resistance. The two of them sank down, very gradually, as though borne by an invisible hand. But when Jolly moved her arms and legs, she might as well be on land somewhere.
No resistance.
What the devil was going on here?
“I was just as frightened as you the first time,” Munk said. He floated downward beside her, ever farther into the depths of the ocean. Jolly followed him and realized in astonishment that she could see Munk more and more clearly. But they must already be too far from the surface for any light to be able to penetrate here. All was blackness around them. It was as if she could suddenly see in complete darkness. Like a cat.
“You get used to it,” he said. “No, that’s not right. You don’t really get used to it. But you cope with it. It’s even fun.”
“How come I can hear in the water?”
“Because we’re both polliwogs.”
“And how come we can move as if it were air around us, not water?”
“Because we’re polliwogs.”
“And why don’t we drown?”
He opened his mouth, but she beat him to it.
“Because we’re polliwogs,” she said. “Obviously.”
Munk smiled, strangely pale in the darkness, which for some reason no longer was. In any case, for polliwog eyes.
“Is that the only explanation in those marvelous ’old records’ d’Artois spoke of?” She’d intended to sound sarcastic, but it didn’t work. There was no point in denying something that she herself was experiencing at this very moment.
Their descent into the depths wasn’t diving. And the water wasn’t like ordinary air, either, for then they’d have been falling now. But they floated, slowly and calmly, and when Jolly made a little swimming stroke in the direction of the surface, she moved upward a little. Munk stayed beside her, but he held her back before she could rise any higher.
“I was down underneath,” he said.
“On the bottom?”
He nodded. “Not underneath Aelenium, it’s too deep here. At least for a start, anyway. But d’Artois took me by sea horse to an area where the waters shallower. Two or three hundred feet.”
“You were two hundred feet under the surface?” Her eyes widened, and she noticed only then that the saltwater wasn’t making them burn.
“Yes. And it was … fantastic. Somehow. But also creepy.”
“Because of the kobalins?”
“No, not that. I didn’t see any at all. D’Artois had probably searched out an area that’s relatively safe. And there were divers there. Wait till you see the equipment they dive with…. But anyway, I think … well, the landscape under there was creepy. The plants only grow quite far up, but farther down it gets so dark that nothing grows there anymore. Everything is gray and bare and somehow … sad. There are fish, of course, but otherwise nothing.”
“And you could breathe perfectly
normally?”
“There was no difference. None at all. We polliwogs can walk on the bottom of the ocean as if we’re going for a walk on land. And we can see underwater in the dark. For a few hundred feet; I tried it out. Its as if it were evening and is gradually getting very dark, only the light never changes. For us there’s a kind of everlasting twilight down here.”
She wasn’t sure if she found it so intriguing. On the contrary, it began to make her afraid. She was slowly getting an intimation of what might await her farther down the road—if she decided to take it.
Once again she told herself that she would never, never let herself be ordered by anyone to take up the battle against the Maelstrom. All this—Aelenium, the polliwog magic—this was not her world. It wasn’t what she wanted.
Avenge Bannon, be a pirate, become a captain: Those were her goals.
But walking over the dark ocean floor to seal up the source of the Maelstrom … it gave her a headache just to think about it. Not to mention that her stomach was already going wild again.
Munk read her expression. “It’s scary, isn’t it?”
“Yes … yes, I’m already scared.”
“Me too.”
“We don’t have to do it. Have you ever thought of that?”
“A hundred times a day,” he said, nodding, as they floated deeper. “It’s not about what the others say either … but Jolly, this place is my new home.”
“I thought you wanted to become a pirate with me.”
He smiled sadly. “You don’t have to become one, Jolly, you already are one. You grew up among pirates. But me? I always dreamed of it, sure. But all those days at sea in the last few weeks … it was entirely different from what I imagined. That’s not for me. Completely the opposite of Aelenium. The libraries, the people … I want to stay here, Jolly. No matter what happens, I belong to them now.”
For a moment she wondered if someone had influenced him, whether he was just parroting what had been said to him earlier. But then she saw his expression, the same hardness she’d already seen in him once—when the Acherus had murdered his parents. Munk had made his decision.
“Whether you come with me or not,” he said, “I’m going to the Crustal Breach. Even alone, if necessary.”