Transformation

by Kara Dalkey

  “You’re still young, aren’t you?” Corwin said fondly. “We do have more important things to think about right now.”

  It will be a while, Gobaith sent, before Ma’el can unleash his next obstacle. It must have taken amazing power to summon the kraken and cause the whirlpool, at such a distance from Atlantis. Ma’el will need time to recover his energy.

  “But if it takes us time to reach the gate or whatever to get to Atlantis, Ma’el might have enough time to stop us again,” Corwin complained. “He can rebuild the kraken as often as he wants.”

  The Farworlder scuttled up the whale’s back. Don’t despair. The answer has found us.

  “What does that mean?” Corwin asked.

  Our friend here, Gobaith tapped the whale, knows the location of the transfer point. She can get us there much faster than we can swim.

  Corwin remembered the speed at which the whale could move. “Ummm . . . will that be safe?”

  Safer than waiting for Ma’el to attack us again.

  “Good point.”

  Gobaith slithered up to the whale’s head, in front of its blowhole. He settled down, extending his tentacles out like the spokes of a cartwheel. Corwin could sense that Gobaith was somehow communicating with the whale the same way the Farworlder did with him and Nia, though it was requiring more effort.

  Nia crawled up beside him. “We’d better hold on tight,” she said. “When this old girl moves, she moves!”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.” Corwin copied the way Nia was grabbing onto the folds in the blue whale’s skin.

  “Now lie down this way,” Nia instructed, stretching herself out parallel to the whale’s body. “That way you won’t get knocked off by the water.”

  “Whatever you say.” Corwin stretched himself out lengthwise.

  Suddenly the whale lurched forward and dove back into the water. Corwin cried out as the whale went almost vertical, head down, sinking beneath the waves. He held on with fingers and toes with all his might as the cold water of the North Atlantic again washed over him. Deeper and deeper the whale dove, at great speed, until Corwin had to shut his eyes and bury his face in the skin folds on the whale’s back. The water moved past him at great speed, but instead of finding it hard to breathe, as he had in the whirlpool, Corwin found that the water shoving against his shoulders forced oxygenated water into his gills. He hardly had to work to breathe at all. It was exhilarating.

  After the whale made what seemed like a wide curve to the left, Corwin could feel her powerful muscles undulate beneath him as she picked up even more speed. Nothing Corwin had ever known could move this fast: not even a horse. He dared to turn his head to look at Nia. She was smiling again, happy to at last be going home. Corwin looked ahead at Gobaith. The Farworlder had flattened himself against the whale’s head, but with ten tentacles to hold on with, he was doing quite well. And Corwin got the distinct impression that Gobaith was thinking something like wheeeeeeeeee!

  The blue whale finally slowed enough so that Nia could raise herself up on her elbows and look around. They were circling a structure that could only have been made by an ancient advanced civilization, like Atlantis. It consisted of several circles of standing stones topped with lintels, one ring within another. Each of the stones was covered with carvings, writing and petroglyphs. A huge purple crystal glowed at the center. A transparent, low dome of crystal formed a roof over it all.

  The structure stood at the edge of the continental shelf—not far from its outermost ring, the sea floor fell away in an enormous cliff. Nia couldn’t see the bottom of it in the darkness below.

  “I’ve heard of a place like this in my country,” Corwin said. “It’s called Stonehenge, and the druids worship there.”

  “Maybe long ago some of your people learned about the transfer points and tried to build one themselves,” Nia suggested.

  “Maybe. All I know is it’s said to be older than anyone knows. This place is older than the Romans too, right?”

  Nia laughed. “When Atlantis was above the surface, Rome was just a collection of villages and tribes with a central market. That’s what they told me in Academy, anyway.”

  “Well, Rome’s gotten a lot bigger since then.”

  “So I heard.”

  “You know,” Corwin said, “it’s strange how kingdoms rise in power, becoming so grand, and then just fall. I wonder what makes them strong and then weak. I wish I knew more about history.”

  Nia saw a hunger in Corwin’s eyes that she hadn’t seen before—a hunger for knowledge.

  “If we succeed,” she said, “I’ll show you the Atlantean archives where all the records of the world’s history are kept. At least, all the world that Atlantis knows.”

  “I would like that,” he said.

  The blue whale came to a stop and settled on the shelf floor beside the outermost stone ring of the structure.

  She says we must get off now, Gobaith sent. She has to return to the surface to breathe.

  “Tell her thanks, Gobaith,” Nia said as she jumped off the whale’s back and swam aside. “She’s very generous.”

  She asks only that we do all we can to defeat Ma’el. Gobaith launched himself off of the whale’s head and came zooming through the water over to Nia.

  “Well, that’s the plan,” Corwin said. He patted the whale’s flank, saying, “Thanks, old girl,” and also swam over to Nia.

  The whale uttered a mountainous bellow of good-bye and good luck. She rose up majestically from the sea floor and with a massive wave of her tail, headed for the surface. The backwash from the wave sent Nia, Corwin and Gobaith gently colliding into the outermost ring of stones.

  “Nia! Look at this!” Corwin exclaimed. “These carvings are just like those at the buried temple we found on our way to Castle Carmarthen. What do they mean?”

  “I don’t know, and we don’t have time to study them right now. I think some of the writing is ancient land-dweller languages, too, but I can’t be sure.”

  That will teach you not to daydream at Academy lectures, Gobaith sent.

  “I promise, once we defeat Ma’el, I’ll be the best student the Academy’s ever seen,” Nia said.

  Assuming there are any lecturers left alive.

  Nia felt her stomach grow cold. Gobaith’s right. Who knows what we’ll see when we finally get to Atlantis. I’d better prepare myself for that. Her buoyant mood hardened into a grim resolve. “Let’s go.”

  Nia and Corwin followed Gobaith through a main archway in the outermost circle of stones. Gobaith turned to the left and went along the curving corridor between the two stone rings until they came to another main archway leading inward. This archway had doors of bronze, but they were greenish, rusted. Luckily they were open.

  “It looks like no one’s been here for a long time,” Nia said.

  “Let’s hope everything still works,” Corwin said.

  We must trust that it does, Gobaith sent, or else our journey ends here.

  Beyond was another doorway, set into an archway of blue stone. This double door was made of gold, and closed. A carving of the sun with ten rays was embossed across both panels. The sun had huge eyes, like a Farworlder. There were no handles on the door.

  Corwin went up to it and shoved on one of the door panels. It didn’t budge. “Is there a lock I don’t see? Or will we have to find some other way in?”

  This place was built by my kind, for Farworlders to use, Gobaith sent. I will have to unlock it. Gobaith flattened himself against the door, placing each of his tentacles into the grooves that were the sun’s rays. He had to stretch to fit, since he wasn’t a fully grown Farworlder yet. There came a sudden, flickering glow around Gobaith’s body. And the door clicked.

  Push it open, please, Gobaith sent.

  Nia and Corwin pushed on the right panel of the golden door, and slowly it opened inward. Gobaith stayed stuck against the door until it was half open. Then he swam quickly into the enclosure, over Nia’s and Corwin’s heads. As soon as
they let go of the door panel, it snapped shut again with a boom. Gobaith could have lost a limb if he hadn’t been fast enough.

  Ahead of them stood the glowing purple crystal, taller than Corwin. At the foot of the towering gem was a platform covered with strange symbols. Gobaith beckoned to them with the tip of a tentacle. Come. Hurry.

  Nia and Corwin swam up beside Gobaith and stood on the platform. Gobaith went between them, wrapping half of his tentacles around Nia’s waist, the other half around Corwin’s. Forgive me—I will need some of your energy.

  Nia felt herself being drained and saw Corwin slumping to her right. But there was little time to worry. The crystal began to glow brighter and brighter until she couldn’t look directly at it. Then the world turned inside out.

  Chapter Four

  Corwin felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Energy was drained from his very core and he fell against Gobaith and Nia. He hoped his falling wouldn’t ruin the spell, but he couldn’t do anything about it—his limbs were weak and semiparalyzed. He couldn’t move. He was beginning to hate that sensation. It was happening way too often.

  It’s for your own protection, Gobaith told him. You must not move as we travel through the unis.

  Corwin dared open his eyes, hoping that didn’t count as “moving.” Then he wished he hadn’t. Nothing he saw made sense. The ringed structure, the crystal, the sea, none of it was there anymore. Lines radiated out from a central point ahead of them, as if they were going down an impossibly long tunnel. Images flickered around them: people in strange clothing, carrying strange objects. He saw snow-covered craggy peaks and impossibly bleak deserts, vast expanses of ice and seas of sand. He saw buildings of such regular shape and amazing height that they couldn’t have been built by humankind, and vehicles traveling faster than any chariot or carriage. Corwin didn’t know if he was floating in air or water. It seemed to be neither. He wondered how he could breathe. Then he realized he wasn’t breathing.

  His stomach lurched as Gobaith turned and flew through the wall of the tunnel, entering a narrow tunnel that spiraled around them like the inside of a whelk shell. Corwin’s direction sense was completely gone. He didn’t know up from down or left from right, let alone north from south. He concentrated on not throwing up on Gobaith. Sneaking a glance at Nia, he saw that she was curled up against Gobaith, her eyes tightly shut. Corwin decided that was a good idea and shut his eyes firmly, too.

  He couldn’t tell how much time was passing. The very question seemed foolish.

  Suddenly, he was cold. Extremely cold. As if his body had turned to ice all at once. He opened his mouth to scream, but he couldn’t. He had no breath. This must be death, he thought. Ma’el somehow found us and delivered a final blow.

  Corwin was being pressed in upon from all sides, as if he were being crushed in the fist of a giant. Is this the kraken, squeezing the life out of me? I wish I could open my eyes—no, I’m glad I can’t. I don’t want to see. Good-bye, Nia . . . .

  “Oh, Corwin!” He heard her voice by his ear. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t prepare you for this.”

  Prepare? How does one prepare for death?

  Warm hands touched his shoulders. They became even warmer, until they were hot, almost burning. But the warmth spread across his back, down into his legs, up into his head and around into his chest and arms. The pressure began to ease and his gills flapped open, sucking in water and air from the water surrounding him. He was still in the sea, but the water was very cold and strangely thick. It was difficult for his gills to draw oxygen out of it.

  At last Corwin could move again, and he opened his eyes. But it was absolute darkness. He couldn’t see anything, except for a vague greenish glow in the distance.

  “Am I blind now?” he managed to burble in the thick water.

  “No, no. Your eyes will have to adjust, too.”

  “Where are we? Did something go wrong?”

  “We’re in the Great Deep, Corwin. I should have warned you. It’s not like the sea in the shallows near your land. Down here, there’s so much water overhead pressing down that the sea is compressed, and it takes great strength to withstand it. And there’s no sunlight down here, so it’s very dark and very cold. Hold still while I help your eyes adjust.”

  Corwin felt her very warm palms cover his eyelids. “Is this going to—”

  “Yes.”

  “Ow!” For a moment it felt as though red-hot pennies had been placed on his eyes—but only for a moment. The pain faded as Nia took away her hands.

  Corwin blinked his eyes open. And gasped. There before him was the grandest sight he’d ever beheld. A crystal dome, higher than any mountain he’d seen or heard of, rose high into the sea. Blue-green lights blazed from within it, shining like the brightest stars. Delicate towers rose beneath the crystal dome, glimmering and shimmering in the light as if they’d been carved from pearls and opals. It was more wondrous than the fairyland of legends. And he could tell, from what he knew of the towers’ height from Nia’s memories, that the dome was still a couple of miles away.

  “That’s Atlantis?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s . . . it’s so . . . big!”

  “Yes.” Nia sighed.

  Surprised to hear sorrow in her voice, Corwin turned. Her slack, blank face was a picture of devastation. “Nia, what’s wrong? You’re home. We made it! We’re here, at the most wonderful city in the world!”

  “You don’t see it,” Nia said softly. “You can’t. You haven’t been here before. But it’s not what it was.”

  Corwin frowned, baffled. He couldn’t imagine how Atlantis could have been more beautiful. He gently put his arms around Nia. “It may not be what it was, but that’s why you’ve come back, isn’t it? So that we can make it all right again? Your people need you to be strong, Nia, so that we can finish this. So that you can be truly home.”

  “You’re right,” Nia said, but her body was stiff and her hands were clenched. She was clearly fighting hard to keep from crying. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I am. Even Gobaith will agree. Um . . . where is Gobaith? Gobaith!”

  It took Corwin’s newly adjusted sight a moment to spot Gobaith floating, drifting motionless in the water nearby. “Gobaith!” Corwin swam over to the Farworlder and gently grasped and shook him. “Gobaith!”

  Please, let me rest. I am spent from the journey.

  “But . . . but . . . what are we going to do? We need you!”

  Nia came over and took Gobaith in her arms. “The transfer point spell took a lot of his energy. He’s going to have to rest.”

  “But what if Ma’el attacks again?”

  “Then we’ll have to take care of it ourselves.” A cold resolve gleamed in Nia’s light eyes, and Corwin knew there was no point in arguing.

  “Gobaith? How long do you need to rest?”

  Don’t know. Ask me again later.

  “We’d better hurry up and get to Atlantis before Ma’el knows we’re here,” Nia said. “If he doesn’t already.” Nia carried Gobaith at her hip and swam ahead.

  Corwin swam after her, trying to adjust to her darker mood, and also trying to get used to swimming in the denser water. It really was a different world down here, different even from the sea above. There’s so much I don’t know, he thought again. The people . . . the mermyds who built those towers ahead have the knowledge of all the wise, ancient kingdoms that have ever been. Maybe even Hamurabia, if it ever existed and wasn’t just a joke of Fenwyck’s.

  A fish with huge jaws and long, needlelike teeth swam by, blue-green lights shining along its side like a string of glowing pearls. It was followed by another fish that had a little light like a lantern hanging from a stick that jutted out from its upper jaw. A jellyfish went pulsing by with lights on its stingers and a mantle that glimmered like sunlight on silk. “Nia, are these fish magical?” he asked in awe.

  “I don’t think it’s magic. It’s just the way they are. The same stuff that makes their l
ights also creates the light for the city. It’s harvested and put into globes to hang on street posts and buildings.”

  As they got closer, Corwin could see that there was a pattern in the way the towers were arranged in the city ahead of them. The city itself had a shape like a circular pyramid, layer upon layer, rising up in the middle. At the very center was a pale tower, topped by a golden spire. “You were so right, Nia. It’s beautiful.”

  Nia sighed. “There should be more light.”

  Corwin swam to her side and took her hand. Even joined to her thoughts as he so often had been, he couldn’t imagine the depth of what she’d lost.

  Maybe it’s better that the city’s so dim and dark, Nia told herself. Now I won’t have to see all the damage Ma’el’s done. In fact, she kept her gaze fixed on the ocean floor as much as she could. She knew she would have to see it eventually—to face up to the horror she’d caused in her beloved city. But not just yet. She shifted Gobaith on her hip to make the Farworlder more comfortable and gripped Corwin’s hand tightly, more grateful than ever that he was here. She didn’t think she could bear what she was going to have to see without him.

  “Is there a main portal?” Corwin asked, still staring in awe. “If so, is it locked or guarded?”

  Nia shook her head. “There’s no doorway in and out. Very few mermyds ever leave Atlantis, and we don’t exactly welcome visitors.”

  “But you left, so you have to know some way to get in and out of the dome.”

  Nia’s guilt grew stronger. The closer she moved to Atlantis, the more intense it became—and it seemed as though the reminders of her mistake would be increasing too. “There are always secret ways,” she said quietly. “Remember the viaduct we used to get into Castle Carmarthen?”

  “It won’t be that easy this time, will it?” Corwin asked. “I’m guessing they don’t really need an underground water supply here.”

  “No, but the water within the dome does have to be replenished. The old, dirty water is flushed out and fresh is brought in from the ocean. That’s what the filtration tubes do.”