The result was immediate, a pulse of light from the mark itself, then the slow smolder of amber light behind the device’s “eyes.” The shutters around them twitched. The free arm shifted. Its pincer dropped down and embedded in the loose debris.
Eddy backed away as best he could, huddling in the far corner of the rapidly diminishing shelter, and pulled his pick to hand. Sounds clicked and sprung from within the heavy metallic body. Things whirred and resonated. He heard it ticking and clacking in a rhythmic, oddly musical way. One by one the eyes flared and dimmed until only the two relatively intact ones retained their glow. The glow resolved to a roughly defined point in the center of each eye and dimmed toward the edges. The shutters above each functional eye flipped up, then dropped down, shielding them.
It drew one arm effortlessly from the debris. The sudden motion caused the slab of stone propped atop it to shudder and rumble.
“No! Stop!” Eddy called.
To his surprise… it did. The mechanism came to a complete, statue-like stop. The shutters above each eye raised and the points of light shifted about in their orbs, sweeping the chamber until they locked in his direction.
“You actually listen?” he said, squinting through the raining dust.
The machine did not reply beyond the syncopated rhythm of its operation. Its eyes, however, began to scan around the void. The points of light stopped again and sharpened. A grinding sound roared from within the mechanism. Limbs stiffened and curled from where they were trapped.
“Stop, stop, stop!” Eddy cried.
This time it refused to heed his orders. One of its segmented limbs speared toward him. He raised his pick to deflect, but the pincer easily wrenched it aside, bending it like a pin and sending a second pincer inches above his head. He huddled down and closed his eyes, with nowhere to run and no way to defend himself against the device.
He trembled, ready for the blow that would end him, but as the heartbeats stretched into seconds, the killing blow didn’t come. The rumbling grind subsided to a gentle tick tock again. Eddy opened one glowing eye.
The mechanism’s illuminated pupils were staring at him. Its arms had woven themselves into a complex arrangement, each supporting a slab of stone or a section of the ceiling. Notably, one of them was directly above Eddy’s head. Had it not acted, the stone would have delivered the very killing blow he’d feared the machine would.
“Good work, Borgle…” Eddy said shakily.
A bright chiming sound rang from within the mechanism and the shutters raised slightly. When a fresh stream of dislodged stone began to cascade, it looked to the source, then lowered its shutters and sharpened its gaze. A swelling pulse of light sparked from the base of the nearest arm, traveling along the arm in accelerating waves. When they reached the pincer, short, astoundingly potent bursts of heat were the result. A handful of pulses brought a hissing boil and briefly rendered the black stone to a molten glob. It cooled quickly—more quickly than Eddy imagined was possible—into a glassy shell that sealed the weak point in the shelter. A sequence of other pulses secured the bits of stone the arms were holding in place. When it was through, the repeated rapid heating had raised the temperature to an uncomfortable but not dangerous level. More importantly, the little void was quite solid and stable, no longer in risk of collapse.
“… Good work, Borgle!” he repeated.
He reached out and patted the mechanism on the ‘nose’. The shutters rose, and again there was a bright chime. Eddy picked up the bent pick.
“Can you help with this?”
Borgle released an inquisitive whir.
“You bent it. See? Bent. It needs to be straight.”
Another whir. Evidently its capacity for understanding was limited. Eddy beckoned with an exaggerated gesture. The machine leaned lower. It shifted one of the broken eyes toward him. A moment later it raised one of its pincers to the fractured orb of that eye. After a plink of disappointment and a slump of its form, it rotated to bring the functional eyes to bear.
“The pick here. See? It’s bent like this.”
He crooked a finger.
“It should be straight like this.”
He straightened the finger.
“Can you fix it? Since you broke it.”
Borgle shifted backward and swung two pincers around. A bit of tension and a groan of metal returned the tool to his hands, straighter than it had been in years.
“Good work, Borgle!”
Eddy patted Borgle’s nose again and was rewarded with two quick chimes.
“Now I imagine you are very good at digging, Borgle. I need to—”
At the sound of the word “digging,” the machine set its eyes on the floor of the chamber. All six arms jabbed effortlessly into the floor in sequence, and Borgle began rattling its beak against the stone, turning it to powder.
“No, no! Not down! Not down, Borgle!” Eddy called.
It did no good. The machine either didn’t hear him or no longer wished to obey him. The rhythm slowly increased, and gradually the pincers gathered up and cleared away the pulverized stone into whatever space was available around it. The fish-like tail slid bit by bit from where it had been buried, and Borgle plunged down into the hole it was creating. Here and there, sparking bits of heat melted and smoothed the walls.
Eddy watched helplessly as his helper bored in entirely the wrong direction. He held his ground, careful not to get too close as the machine flash-melted stone. It was cooling with the same supernatural speed as the first few repairs, but there was a considerable difference between stone that was no-longer molten and stone cool enough to risk touching.
Borgle’s cacophonous boring reduced to a muffled rumble before Eddy was willing to venture into the fresh tunnel. Down was certainly not the direction he’d wanted to go. At this point, though, any motion was good motion. With any luck, the tunnel would join with one of the others and he would be able to find his way out. If not? Borgle must have been heading somewhere.
#
Rustle’s stomach was rumbling and his body was aching. Twice he’d made a pit several feet deep, and twice secondary tremors caused it to collapse, the second time nearly trapping him. Now a combination of fatigue, frustration, and anxiety had brought his progress to a crawl. Nevertheless, he refused to stop. Not for a moment had it entered his mind that Eddy might be dead. He’d never met a creature made of sturdier stuff than the merman. He doubted there was anything in the whole of the sea that could knock him down and keep him down. And if he was alive, Rustle would find him. He needed him, and even if he didn’t, Eddy was his friend and he needed help.
The fairy huffed and puffed. He’d been having difficulty catching his breath for the last few minutes, and it was only getting worse. He’d tried to shrug it aside and keep working, but when his hands started shaking and his head began to spin, he realized this was not simple fatigue. He wasn’t just out of breath. He couldn’t breathe.
Rustle buzzed his wings and kicked his legs, rocketing toward the surface. He burst out of the water like an arrow from a longbow, coughing out his latest lungful of water and gasping at the dank air of the cavern.
“The water-for-air spell,” he coughed. “It wore off…”
This wasn’t a complete disaster. He was still a fairy, and a water fairy at that. If he poured a bit of his burgeoning mystic skill into it, he could hold his breath for well over an hour. Even working hard at digging, he’d probably only have to return to the surface for a breath every half-hour or so. But the water-for-air spell wasn’t the only one Eddy had cast. There were also spells to cope with the depth and perhaps others he’d not even mentioned. If any of those failed, there was no telling what would happen. There were so many tunnels, too. What if he dug far enough down that he couldn’t return to the surface in time?
The spell book was still in the bag, but he couldn’t read it. He needed someone who knew merfolk magic. And he needed them quickly. To his dismay, he realized there were only two people wh
o might be able to help him. The dead wizard they had left behind, and the one they were searching for.
It felt terrible to even consider it, but if he was going to be able to help Eddy at all, he was going to have to leave him for now. Worse, he had been frightened to face these wizards even when the strong and brave merman was by his side. Now he would have to face them alone. It was something no fairy was ever supposed to do. Fairies did not act alone. But fairies didn’t abandon their friends either…
“There is no other way,” he said.
With resolve he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt, Rustle took a deep breath and plunged into the water. He dove toward the floor of the cavern and pulled at Eddy’s bag. One of the fronds of seaweed Eddy had been harvesting had survived. He sliced a bit of it with the digging claw and fashioned it into a sling. He packed away two of the sweets. As he pushed the plug back into the jar containing the last one, he noticed something with an odd sheen near the bottom of the bag. It was the strange-shaped pearl Eddy had gifted to Rustle. Though it wasn’t clear even to him why he felt compelled to do so, he fashioned a pouch from another bit of frond and hung the pearl around his neck.
A few minutes later, he burst from the surface of the water again. The sling with his supplies hung on one shoulder. The digging claw was strapped to the other arm. He shut his eyes and listened to the wind as it whispered its foreign message. He let the instincts of his race fall into place. The motion of the wind wove into the back of his mind. When he opened his eyes again, he knew that so long as any air remained in the cave, he could follow it back to this place, to the place where his friend was waiting for him.
He buzzed his wings a little harder to sling the last of the water from them then shut his eyes again, this time feeling for the other sensations. Like the wind, these were things he’d never imagined other creatures didn’t feel. It was subtle, not so easily defined as the motion of the wind and the stories it told. It was the warmth and glow of anything with a mind. Perhaps others felt it as that strange sensation, that instinctive knowledge of being watched. He had to quiet his mind greatly in order to detect it with any degree of reliability. At a time like this, when desperation, fear, and anxiety drenched his mind, it should have been impossible. But at this moment there was something else. Duty.
He’d always felt an obligation to his pond, and to the fairies who lived there. But it had never been so sharp, so focused. Many hands making light work was a fundamental tenet of fairies. No task had ever been wholly upon his shoulders. No fairy, not even the eldest and most powerful, was ever expected to take on a task alone. The very thought of it had always terrified him. But now that it had happened, the raw terror had begun to give way to something different. It felt like he’d been sharpened to a point. Forged into something harder, stronger.
His mind cut through the doubt and dismay and settled onto a dim collection of points of focus. One was Stuartia, far behind. Another was the weak sensation of Eddy himself. The merman was not much of a mystical force, his spirit was almost too weak to feel, but it was undeniable. He was alive down there, somewhere.
The last point was different. Unfamiliar. Like the chamber that held Stuartia, it felt like focus in the absence of will. It had to be the second chamber. The prison of the wizard Merantia. If Stuartia was to be believed, Merantia was evil. But then, Stuartia herself was imprisoned. Could she be believed? Should they be helping her at all?
He opened his eyes and set them on the inky void, windward. Right now, what mattered most was that Merantia’s prison was closer. He darted forward, ready to face him, her, or it in exchange for the spells necessary to save his friend.
Chapter 10
Myra swam through the cool darkness of the sea, heading out for the open water. Merfolk were as varied in their culture and behavior as any of the surface creatures, a fact that was not only unavoidable, it was essential. The sea was a vast place, but the places a merfolk village like Barnacle could be founded were comparatively rare. A proper village was one resting on a stable stretch of the sea floor. It should be deep enough in the sea for the mermen to be comfortable, but not so deep that the mermaids wouldn’t be comfortable there. That described a wide range of depths, but only a tiny slice of the sea floor. Few places, mostly clustered along shorelines, actually remained within that range of throughout the day and throughout the year. What of the rest of the sea? And how did cities trade with one another over distances far larger and with far fewer stops than trade routes across land?
With any luck, Mira was within earshot of the answer.
Mira raised her conch shell to her lips and blew through it. She had never quite gotten the knack of producing the proper note. The sound was a ragged squeal rather than the sonorous wail of a well-executed call. She hoped it would still do the job.
Nearly a minute later, she heard exactly the sort of sound she’d been trying to produce. Two long, low blasts on a similar shell. She immediately darted in the direction of the source. In no time at all, forms began to emerge from the murky water. There were dozens of smaller shapes and one enormous one. Little points of light, various illuminated shells and jellies, traced out interesting patterns. The water out here was much cloudier than back home, so she was practically on top of them before any real details emerged.
The group of nomads were thirty members strong. By far the most notable aspect of their group was the creature at its center. A whale, larger than the cluster of homes where Mira lived, swam smoothly along between them. Large bundles had been affixed along its sleek, rubbery body. They were skillfully attached with wide straps of woven fronds. Faintly glowing streaks of fluid traced out shapes in smoldering orange and cool green. They were artful and specific markings, the symbols of this particular band of nomads.
“Hak, hak,” called one of the merfolk, lightly tapping the whale just above its eye.
It obediently allowed itself to drift to a stop. Mira looked over the nomads, more than a bit uncertain of how to proceed.
At birth, nomads were physically identical to Mira and the others who had more permanent homes, but one would never know that by looking. A life of endless travel had forged them into something very different. Most wore much more clothing, essentially carrying their every possession on their person. Males and females alike wore snug, sleeved tunics littered with shallow pouches that could seal tight against the body to keep them streamlined. They also wore long garments wrapped tight against their tails, something between a skirt and an apron. Everything had a handmade look, a good deal closer to the original sea creatures that had given their hides to make them than the sort of outfits the people of Barnacle wore. Patches were so common one would be hard-pressed to know what the color of any garment was when it started. The one exception to the obvious care in keeping their bodies streamlined for travel was jewelry.
The mermaids wore rings on every finger. Their hair was braided, long strings of beads woven into it. Earrings abounded. The mermen wore everything the mermaids did, but added piercings to both their fin-like ears and the ends of the tail fins.
They were a formidable bunch, hardened by their endless travels into lean, muscular physiques that were evident even hidden beneath their garments. An older mermaid, the matriarch of the group if the sheer quantity and quality of her jewelry was any indication, swam up to Mira and gave her a measuring look. She had much darker skin than Mira and carried a short spear strapped to her back with a length of rope coiled at its end. A shorter, blunt-ended scepter hung at her side, also tethered to a cord.
The matriarch sniffed. “You want to do business? Not much business to be done with just one shore-lover.”
Her accent was as patchwork as her clothes. The rest of the nomads rumbled with something between laugher and agreement. Mira crossed her arms. This much she’d anticipated.
“Seems to me like a bunch of flotsam like you should be happy to get what you can get,” she said.
They murmured and chattered more loudly. Rather than mali
ce, they seemed pleased. Mira breathed a sigh of relief. Doing business with nomads was always a gamble. One band of them could be as different from another as one nation was from another. But they all seemed to enjoy testing each other with a bit of verbal sparring before getting down to business.
“You hear this? Stuff like this is why we skip Barnacle,” the matriarch jabbed. “You are from Barnacle, right. I can hear it in your accent.”
“I am.”
The matriarch nodded, then furrowed her brow. “Felt like quite a tremor not so long ago. You folk get hit bad?”
“We did, but no one was hurt. Not in the city proper, at least.”
“That why you’re so far out here? Someone outside the city get hurt?”
“I don’t know, and I want to find out. I wonder if I could hire some of your men. I need to check my brother’s farm, down in a rift, and I’ve misplaced my spell book.”
“Bah. Spell book. You spit in the eye of Mer when you use that stuff. She gave us the boys for heading to the floor and the ladies for heading to the surface. Floor work is men’s work. Leave it to them. … If we like what you’ve got.”
Mira pulled out her satchel.
“I’d like two… no, three men. I’ll take you near to the farm. Just go down and tell me if there is any damage.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Unless there is damage.”
“What then?”
“Then I’ll need you to help find and rescue my brother.”
The matriarch nodded. “That’ll cost you more. Not much more. Hard to charge for saving someone trapped, but we’ll expect gratitude.”
“Of course.”
“We prefer to take our gratitude in the form of precious stones.”
“You’ll have all I can spare.”
“How far from here is this place?”
“A few hours.”
The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 11