The Mermaid's Madness

by Hines, Jim C.

  “You said she would be safe,” said Armand. “Safe from what?”

  Though the king didn’t look up from his prayers, Danielle saw his shoulders tense. He was listening as closely as his son.

  “Her body is vulnerable,” Isaac said. “There are forces in this world that might seek to use such an unprotected host.”

  Danielle hugged Jakob tighter. Jakob squirmed in protest. He twisted about to stare at Beatrice, his small mouth pursed in concentration. Slowly, his face stretched into a yawn.

  “Magic is a gift from God, like anything else,” Isaac said. “The blade that struck your mother is a perversion of that gift. I can care for her mortal body, but even here, protected by God’s power, the body can survive for only so long without the soul.”

  Armand nodded. “How long?”

  “A week. Perhaps two. The queen is strong, but she is not a young woman.”

  For a moment, Danielle felt like a child again. She wanted to flee to her mother’s hazel tree and hide within the branches where she would be safe. But her mother’s tree was gone, and hiding wouldn’t help the queen. She moved closer to Armand, drawing on his strength instead. He did the same, stepping toward her until their shoulders touched.

  “What can we do?” asked Armand. “I mean no offense to your knowledge, but there are other mages in Lorindar. We can summon help from Fairytown as well. They will—”

  “And what will you offer the rulers of Fairytown for their aid?” asked King Theodore. Here in the chapel, he didn’t bother to conceal his bitterness. “What price will you pay for the life of a queen?”

  “Without knowing how her spirit was taken, they could do no more than I,” Isaac said. “For now, Armand, you should comfort your father. Take strength in your shared love for her and for one another.”

  “We’ve little time,” Armand said. “Lorindar may soon be at war with the undine, and love will not find the mermaid who did this.”

  “No. But it will help you through the days to come.” Isaac turned to Danielle. “As for you, perhaps you should take your son to the nursery?”

  Danielle looked down at Jakob, who had fallen asleep and was now drooling on her shoulder.

  Isaac bent down to kiss Jakob’s forehead. “God be with you all.”

  Lirea floated in the shade beneath the dock, listening to the creak of wood as the humans finished unloading their ship. One hand clutched her knife in its sheath. The sea had washed the human queen’s blood from the blade, but it didn’t matter. The attack had roused the voices, like blood to sharks.

  Quiet, she sang, but the knife wouldn’t listen. She crossed her hands over her chest, trying to muffle the knife’s cries. It was like an infant, wailing an incoherent song of fear and grief. So loud . . . she had huddled in the cold depths throughout the night, trying to block out the sound and the memories.

  A school of minnows swam past, laughing at her. She tensed and waved them to silence, but they ignored her. Fortunately, the humans didn’t hear. Minnows had tiny voices, and she knew from experience how weak human ears were.

  You’ll never find her.

  Stupid minnows. She snatched at them, but they darted between her fingers.

  You’ve killed the human queen. They’re all against you now. If they don’t destroy you, then Lannadae will find you and kill you, just as you killed your father.

  Shut up! She grabbed again, this time catching one unfortunate minnow in her fist. She stuffed him into her mouth, then glared at the rest, daring them to speak.

  They swam away in silence. The one she had caught squeaked Murderer! from within her jaws. A little vicious chewing took care of him.

  Lirea waited until the humans left, then swam out from beneath the dock. She followed a white sandbar toward the ships anchored farther upshore.

  The water tasted faintly of blood. She could hear scavenger birds crying and fighting near the shore, swooping down as they tried to swipe a meal from the humans’ nets.

  Lirea swam along the seabed, stirring clouds of sand as she approached a small, single-masted vessel near the end of the harbor. The ship was in poor repair, judging from the peeling paint and the taste of rot in the water. Lirea swam around to the far side, where the ship would conceal her from the others.

  The water was deeper here. The humans must have dredged the bay to allow their vessels to load and unload. The morning sun rippled along the surface.Anyone looking down should have a hard time seeing past that reflection.

  Lirea fought tears as she shifted her body to human form. Scales cut her legs, piercing skin and muscle as they were absorbed into her body. Blood trickled from her legs as the flesh sealed over countless cuts. She swam to the surface, spitting seawater from her lungs and sinuses.

  Slowly, she paddled toward the anchor chain that trailed from the ship. She stripped off her harness, tying it to the chain beneath the surface. It was easy to feign weakness as she called out.

  A tousled head peeked down from the ship. Lirea heard shouts, and then a strange contraption of wood and cork splashed into the water beside her. She guessed it to be a buoy of some sort. Cork ringed a wooden disk. The rope was secured to an iron loop in the center. After studying the device, she grabbed the rope and pulled her legs onto the disk like a human stool. She used her other hand to keep from bouncing against the hull as they hauled her on board.

  Two men stared at her. At first Lirea thought some of her scales might still be showing, but then she remembered the human taboo against nudity.

  “What happened to you?” one asked.

  Lirea hugged herself, trying to cover her body the way a human might. She hobbled past them, putting the cabin between herself and the other ships. “I don’t want to talk about it.” A true enough statement.

  “Geoffrey, fetch a blanket for the lass,” said the one with the tousled hair. He appeared to be the older of the two. He was coiling the rope from the flotation device.

  Geoffrey’s eyes lingered on Lirea a moment longer, then he turned away. Lirea waited until he ducked into the cabin, then moved toward the other man. “Let me help you.”

  “No need. You’ve been through enough.”

  Lirea took the rope anyway. He started to protest, but Lirea looped the rope around his neck and pulled.

  The crack of bone brought Geoffrey from the cabin. He stared at Lirea and the crumpled body of his friend.

  Lirea broke the flotation ring over his head. He fell, still clutching a rumpled blanket in his hands.

  The ship swayed in the wind. Somewhere beyond the harbor, a small band of undine waited beneath the waves for Lirea’s return. Lirea would have sent them with the rest to begin their war against the humans, but Nilliar had insisted they escort their queen.

  They couldn’t help Lirea now. Traitor Lannadae might be, but she was also of royal blood. No single-tailed undine would dare kill her. It was up to Lirea to find and punish her sister.

  She should have attacked the human queen’s ship, sinking them all, but the shock of the knife’s rage had been too much. By the time Lirea recovered, the humans had already fled.

  Perhaps it was for the best. The human queen had been Lirea’s only hope of finding Lannadae, and now she was dead. Let the survivors carry her warning back to their king. When their vessels began to disappear, they would remember Lirea’s price for safe passage.

  Raindrops sprinkled Lirea’s skin as she lowered the flotation ring back into the water and climbed down to retrieve her knife. Once she was back on the ship, she knelt to remove Geoffrey’s clothing. Both men were larger than her, but it would do. She slipped the loose shirt over her head, then used a skinning knife from the older man to shorten the sleeves. She performed similar alterations on the trousers, then sat down and massaged her legs, trying to rid her muscles of the worst of the pain.

  She searched the rest of the ship, but she found no other occupants. With the cabin blocking her from the other ships, nobody else appeared to have noticed her presence.

>   She dragged Geoffrey’s groaning body below. If anyone had heard rumors of a mermaid living along the shores of Lorindar, it would be a sailor. If not this one, there were plenty of others to talk to.

  Lannadae had evaded Lirea once. She wouldn’t escape again.

  CHAPTER 3

  IN THE YEARS SINCE SNOW HAD FLED her country, she had never been able to completely accept Lorindar as home. The endless rain, the fog that rolled in each morning, chilling the air, the cry of the gulls . . . and had she known how often she would be forced to eat seafood, she might have stayed in Allesandria, even if it meant facing a death sentence for the murder of her mother the queen.

  Though she never spoke of it, there were days when she longed to look out and see not endless ocean but the jagged mountains topped with snow.

  The place where she felt most at home was far beneath the palace, in the room she had claimed as both library and laboratory. Books lined the walls on shelves of oiled wood. The walls were bare stone, as her room in Allesandria had been. The blue and gold carpet in the tight-stitched styles of home must have cost a fortune. Beatrice had imported it two years ago for Snow as a birthday gift.

  Stains and burns marred the carpet now, the result of two years of magical experimentation.

  The most valuable artifact in the room, one of the few items Snow had been able to smuggle out of Allesandria, was the magical mirror that hung from the wall. Flowering vines cast in platinum framed the oval mirror, which was taller than Snow herself. Every once in a great while, Snow would sneak down here and ask the mirror to show her the mountains of home.

  Today she was ready to smash a chair through the glass. She sat on a barrel, her bare heels thudding against the wood as she glared at the mirror. The mirror reflected her glare right back.

  “Mirror, mirror, of silvered glass. Find Lirea or I’ll break your—”

  “How exactly would one break a mirror’s ass?” asked Talia, stepping through the archway into the room.

  “It’s metaphorical.” Snow rubbed her eyes, then grimaced. Her joints were stiff, and her eyes felt as though Danielle had scoured them on one of her cleaning binges. “How long have I—”

  “About an hour.” Talia sat on the floor, folding her legs beneath her. “I take it you haven’t been able to find Lirea?”

  “I caught a glimpse once. She was somewhere in the water.”

  “Well, that certainly narrows it down.”

  Snow reached out to touch the platinum frame of the mirror. She had tried one spell after another, searching for both Beatrice and Lirea. Her first efforts to find Beatrice had come up against a magical ward. Recognizing Father Isaac’s spells, she had tried again, this time concentrating on Bea’s spirit. The mirror had revealed only darkness. “My mother would have been able to find her.”

  She peered more closely at her reflection, studying the strands of white scattered through her hair. Her mother’s hair had been the opposite, white with wisps of black.

  “As I recall, you defeated your mother,” said Talia. “Twice. Anything she could accomplish—”

  “I cheated.”

  Talia shook her head. “When you’re fighting for your life, there’s no such thing as cheating.”

  Snow smiled absently. “She tried to teach me when I was younger. With every spell we cast, I could feel her power creeping into my body. Looking back, I suspect she was hoping to prepare my body so she could claim it for herself when she grew too old. I didn’t understand at the time, though. All I knew was that I didn’t like the feel of her hands on mine as we practiced or the nightmares I had afterward. So I pretended to fail until she gave up on me.”

  Finding new and inventive ways to fail had been the best part of those lessons. From a levitation spell that blasted the ashes from the hearth to that sleeping draft that loosened the bowels, it hadn’t been long before Snow’s mother proclaimed her magically worthless. Though it was what Snow had wanted, a part of her had mourned the end of their lessons. They were the only times her mother had paid her any attention.

  “I would sneak in to read her books when she was away, but I was never as skilled as she was. I could never create a mirror this powerful.” She touched the gap in the front of her choker. “Without her mirror, I doubt I’d even be able to create these.”

  “Would you like me to tell Danielle to look for a more powerful witch?”

  “Sorceress.” Snow glared at Talia, who matched the expression. Snow broke first, smiling despite her weariness. “Keep it up, and I’ll show you what powerful really means.”

  “So what’s stopping you from finding Lirea?”

  Snow turned back to the mirror. “Each time I get close, something pushes me away. I don’t know if it’s the magic of the knife, Lirea herself, or something else.”

  Talia turned away at the sound of footsteps in the armory. Through the doorway, Snow saw Danielle standing in the armory, studying the ceiling.

  Snow hopped down from the barrel, grimacing at the cramps in her legs as she joined Danielle. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve never realized how big the ocean really is,” said Danielle.

  An intricate tile mosaic formed a map of Lorindar on the armory ceiling.Amethysts marked the borders of Fairytown near the center. A crystal palace sat on the northeast tip of the island. Slate tiles crept through lapis lazuli seas, each one a different ship from the Lorindar navy.

  Weapons of every shape and size hung from wooden pegs on the walls, from the sharpened steel snowflakes Talia had made for Snow to the weighted training sticks Talia used for her workouts.

  Danielle’s enchanted sword hung point-down by one of the lanterns, the glass blade reflecting the flicker of the lantern flame. The hilt was cast in the shape of a hazel tree, with wood inlaid in the glass for a better grip. Though it appeared fragile, Talia knew from experience that weapon was as deadly as anything in this room. The blade was smooth and perfect, clear as rainwater save for a handspan of glass above the cross guard. There the glass was thicker, frosted white where Snow’s magic had repaired it a year before.

  Danielle bent down, retrieving a small tile that had fallen to the floor. Snow reached out to take it from her.

  “The Branwyn.” Snow pressed the tile to the ceiling. Magic should have held it in place, showing them the ship’s location. Instead, the tile dropped to the ground.

  “How?” Danielle asked, staring at the ship. “I thought the Branwyn was a warship.”

  Talia watched the other tiles creep across the ceiling. “Merfolk tear a ship apart from beneath. By the time you realize they’re beneath you, your ship is already taking on water. We’re fortunate they didn’t sink the Glass Slipper.”

  “You think Lirea did this?” Danielle asked.

  “Maybe.” Snow slipped the tile into her pocket. “Even if she attacked the Branwyn, she’d be long gone by the time we reached the wreckage.”

  “I don’t suppose you could craft a tile to find Lirea?” Talia asked.

  Snow shook her head. “I spent months enchanting that map and sneaking down to the docks to plant a matching tile on every ship in the fleet.”

  “Beatrice doesn’t have months,” said Danielle. “According to Father Isaac, her body won’t survive more than a week or two.”

  “We can’t search an entire ocean in two weeks,” Talia protested.

  “No.” Snow stepped to one side, making sure Danielle was between Talia and herself. “If we can’t find Lirea, maybe we should look for someone else who might be able to help us.”

  “Her sister Lannadae.” Danielle studied the map again. “If Beatrice really was hiding her, she’d be close by. We could start by searching near the harbor, and then—”

  Snow braced herself. “Or I could take you to her.”

  “You know where Lannadae is?” Talia asked.

  “Kind of.”

  Danielle folded her arms. “What does ‘kind of’ mean?”

  Snow stepped back, trying to guide the con
versation back into the library and away from all of the weapons. “It means yes. Beatrice swore me to secrecy.”

  Talia followed her. She was unarmed, but Snow had once seen Talia kill a troll with nothing more than tableware, so that wasn’t as comforting as it might have been. “How long have you known?”

  “Since the fall. Beatrice needed me to set up a mirror so that we could check on Lannadae while she hibernated through the winter.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Danielle asked. She sounded angry too, but she was better at keeping that anger under control. Unlike Talia, who tended to wield her anger like a sledge hammer.

  “Because I promised.” Snow retreated farther into the library, hurrying to one of the trunks against the wall. She opened the lid and pulled out a dark cloak. “According to Posannes, Lirea was sick. She slept for days at a time, refusing to move. When she woke, she spoke to herself, ignoring those around her. I guess she started to believe her sisters were conspiring against her. She attacked and killed her older sister.”

  Talia followed, throwing words like knives. “And you didn’t think to warn us about a murderous mermaid?”

  “Lirea wasn’t a killer.” Snow’s shoulders slumped. “I mean, she was, but not like that. She loved her father. She wept over her sister and begged for the king’s help. She tried to kill herself.”

  “If she’d succeeded, Beatrice might not be dying in the chapel,” Talia said.

  “Posannes sent Lannadae to the queen to keep her safe while he sought help for Lirea.” It had been Snow who recommended the healers of Najarin. Najarin was far enough south to be accessible during the tribe’s migration, and their healing skills were second to none. Several of Snow’s own tomes were hand-copied from Najarin.

  Talia snorted. “A daughter who had already killed once.”

  “Posannes was no fool,” said Snow. “He kept Lirea under guard. She was unarmed, escorted by other undine at all times. He should have been safe.” She stared at the cloak in her hands. “Posannes sent messengers throughout the winter, telling us Lirea was getting better.”