by Kara Dalkey
Henwyneb pulled down a gnarled walking stick from a hook on the wall. He went to the door and held it open as Nia and Corwin stepped out into the morning.
A mist was rising from the ground, getting thicker in the air.
“This isn’t normal weather for this time of year,” Corwin muttered.
“No, but it won’t matter,” Henwyneb said. “As a formerly blind man, a little mist isn’t a problem for me. Come along.”
Nia and Corwin hurried after Henwyneb. The old man ducked in and out of the trees of the woods as if he knew where every bush and tree root was hidden. Nia stumbled now and then, especially since she had to get used to walking on dry land all over again. Air just couldn’t hold a person up as well as water. But Eikis Calli Werr swung in her hand and planted its point just where it would brace her from falling. Corwin stumbled too sometimes, but he tried to alter his gait to hide it, saying, “I meant to do that.”
It was a strange journey, with no sense of time or location. Nia felt as disoriented as she had during the passage through the folded unis. All around them, the forest was silent, except for their footsteps crashing through the underbrush. That and one other noise.
Somewhere along the way, they’d been joined by Nag, Corwin’s bedeviling bird, who was making quiet, querulous “awk? awk?” sounds. The raven seemed nearly as smart as Ki-ki, but not nearly as good-natured. Still, Nia sensed that the bird was concerned for their welfare, as it glided from branch to branch, following them.
Nia smelled water on the air and stopped.
“What is it?” Corwin asked.
“The pond. The one I swam in. It’s nearby, isn’t it?”
“Probably,” Corwin said. He frowned. “Why?”
“Nothing, I just . . . sense it.” The pond had been strangely soothing last time she was there, and part of her wished she could stop and linger again for a while. But saving the world was a bit more important than a few moments of comfort.
“Let’s push on,” Corwin said. “You don’t have time for a swim.” Corwin sounded unusually gruff, and Nia remembered that he’d been afraid of the pond. She still didn’t know why. I’ll ask Corwin about the pond again when all this is over.
Suddenly Nia ran right into Henwyneb’s back, not noticing that he had stopped.
“Ohhhh!” Henwyneb’s arms pinwheeled and he fell forward, sliding down the hole that Nia and Corwin had found weeks before. Unable to find her own balance, Nia fell also. Eikis Calli Werr kept her from falling on her face, but she turned and slid on her bottom down a ramp of gravel to a marble floor below.
Behind them, Corwin, for once the image of gracefulness, stayed on his two feet as he skittered down the chute.
“Ow, that hole wasn’t so large the last time I was here,” Henwyneb said, putting a hand to his back.
Nia got up and helped him stand, sending a little healing energy into his back.
“It’s bigger than it was when we came by here, too,” Corwin observed. “And better lit.”
Nia let her eyes adjust to the darkness and saw that it wasn’t actually that dark. A dim glow that grew brighter to the east ahead of them illuminated the circular entry chamber.
Carvings covered the walls, showing scenes of life from Atlantis and mermyds greeting and interacting with land-dwellers. One panel showed the Farworlders coming in their sky-ship from the stars and entering the ocean to found their city and create the race of mermyds.
“This was built in a more peaceful time,” Nia murmured. “The Farworlders clearly expected their friendship with land-dwellers to last.”
“We have to keep going,” Corwin said, his hand on her shoulder.
Nia could feel his hand shaking slightly, and she rested her hand on his. “We’ll get through this. We have to.”
A low growl and roar echoed out to them from somewhere deep within the shrine ahead.
“Right. Let’s go in before the little bit of courage I have disappears,” Corwin said. “May I carry the sword?”
Nia smiled and handed him Eikis Calli Werr, hilt first. Corwin let his hand linger over Nia’s for a moment before he took the sword from her.
“Rawk-rawk-rawk!” Nag cried from behind them.
“Shhhhhhh!” all three turned to shush the bird.
“Henwyneb, could you shoo the bird out?” Corwin asked. “He’s going to give us away.”
“Gladly. Go on, you nasty beast.” Henwyneb fluttered his hands at Nag, to no effect.
“Shoo.”
“Rawk.”
“Shoo!”
“Rawk!”
“SHOO!”
“RAWK!”
Finally, Henwyneb scooped Nag up in his arms and—holding tightly onto the scratching, biting bird—he walked back toward the entry. “Hurry on, you two. I’ll take care of Master Loudmouth here.”
“Thank you, Henwyneb,” Nia said.
“Though it’s probably too late,” Corwin said.
They both headed to the doorway across the broad, circular room. There was a stairway leading down. The eerie light was brighter toward the bottom. A low moaning, as if someone was in tortuous pain, drifted up to them. Nia’s skin crawled at the sound.
“You’d better let me go first,” Corwin said.
“Why?”
“Because I have the sword. And that means that someone coming our way would meet the pointy end of the sword first.”
“That makes sense,” Nia agreed with a small smile.
Corwin placed his back against the wall of the stairwell and sidled down it sideways, sword held at the ready. Nia had always felt a little strange about Corwin’s past as a thief, but she could see now that it had given him some useful skills.
Corwin stopped at the bottom of the stairs and peered out from the lower archway. Apparently he didn’t see anything, because he began to step out . . . and pulled his foot immediately back, as the flagstone just beyond the bottom step dropped away.
Corwin motioned for Nia to stay utterly still, and he did too for several long heartbeats. Heavy silence filled the shrine. Then a deep gong sounded somewhere in the distance.
“That does it,” Corwin said. “We’ve announced ourselves as surely as a bell on a door.”
“We might as well keep going, then,” Nia suggested.
Corwin nodded once, then studied the floor of the chamber ahead. It was made up entirely of square-cut flagstones, just like the one that had dropped away under Corwin’s foot.
“Let me guess,” Corwin said. “There’s some pattern, significant to your people, that’s safe to walk, but anyone else will fall through the floor into a pit where horrible, devouring creatures are waiting. So, Nia, what pattern should we walk?”
Nia concentrated hard. She thought, as she gazed at the flagstones, that she could make out a sort of map of Atlantis. It was again a circular chamber, and the largest stone, white marble with some gold inlay, was at the center. Any greedy land-dweller would of course have headed for the gold. But someone from Atlantis would know . . . .
“The fastest way around Atlantis is in the rim current. We used to swim it as children, even though our parents told us we couldn’t.”
“What does that have to do with here?” Corwin asked.
“You taught me about maps, Corwin, remember? This floor is a rough map of Atlantis.” Nia gazed along the walls. A circle of blue-tinted stones encircled the room at the edge.
“So let’s try to run the rim current here.” Nia positioned herself at the rightmost edge of the bottom-most step. Swinging her right leg out over the hole left where the flagstone had dropped, Nia placed her right foot on the first blue flagstone of the outer circle. Slowly, she put her weight on it. It held. “I’m right, Corwin!”
Corwin quickly came over to her side of the stairway and slid over onto the same stone. It slowly began to move down.
With a cry of alarm, Nia hopped onto the next stone in the circle. It, too, began to slowly descend. Nia went to the next, which fell away a litt
le faster. She began to run around the circle, Corwin following hard on her heels. By the time she got to the opposite side of the room, she was running as fast as she could, as the stones fell away faster and faster.
At last, Nia flung herself through the far doorway and lay on the cool stone floor. Corwin was right behind her and slid beside her seconds later. They could hear stone grinding against stone as the entire outer circle fell away, down into darkness.
“Well, you were right about one thing,” Corwin said. “That was the fastest way through.”
“I’m sorry it wasn’t the easiest,” Nia said. “But at least we got here.”
She began to get up, but Corwin grabbed her tunic and pulled her back down. “Nia, watch out!” he cried, as she fell to the floor again.
Nia was about to turn and yell at him when a heavy stone block swung out from the wall to their right and slammed into the wall to their left. Then it swung back, silently, into the wall.
Nia looked up at where the stone had struck the wall—at about head height.
“It would have crushed you,” Corwin said.
“Thank you,” Nia said, her heart pounding loudly in her chest.
“Maybe we should go the rest of the way on our hands and knees?” Corwin suggested.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
Together they crawled forward to the next archway. The chamber beyond had a high, domed ceiling and a floor of plain, polished black stone. There was nothing else in the chamber, no carvings on the circular wall.
Nia sensed something was wrong, but she couldn’t quite piece together what it was.
“Hmmm, no holes in the walls or ceiling, none in the floor,” Corwin observed. “Maybe the builders assumed that if you got this far, you might as well have the rest easy.” He got up, poised to sprint across the room.
Nia wasn’t used to having the sense of smell again. That was why it took her so long to understand what worried her. She was smelling water again. But it wasn’t like the pond water. She grabbed Corwin’s trouser leg. “Corwin, wait, that isn’t . . .”
A flurry of black feathers passed by overhead, one wing striking Corwin on the head as it passed. “Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! Rawk!”
“Nag!” Corwin roared angrily, rubbing his temple.
As the raven flew out into the chamber, the floor rippled and roiled, swelled and undulated, turning a dark red. The head of the kraken rose up out of the floor, which Nia now realized with horror hadn’t been black stone at all but absolutely still seawater. The serpent opened its gaping maw and swallowed Nag whole. As the kraken closed its jaws, Nia and Corwin could still hear Nag shrieking for a while longer as he slid down the kraken’s throat. And then the sound stopped.
“Nag? Naaag!” Corwin cried out in anger and sadness.
The kraken opened its mouth again and came toward Corwin and Nia.
Corwin held up Eikis Calli Werr. As the serpent struck, he swung the sword, which neatly severed the kraken’s head. The body fell back into the water, dissolving into the tiny creatures that screamed as they sank into the blackness. The only sign of Nag was a few black feathers floating on the surface.
“Stupid bird!” Corwin cried. His sorrow echoed through the high domed chamber.
Nia could see the tears forming in his eyes, and she threw her arms around Corwin. “Your raven died saving our lives, Corwin. If we’d fallen into the water unprepared, the kraken would have swallowed us before we knew what was happening.”
Corwin’s fist was clenched and he was shaking. “I . . . am . . . so . . . damned . . . tired of that kraken!”
Low, dark laughter echoed from the archway at the far side of the chamber.
“And I’m tired of you too, you monster!”
“Corwin, please,” Nia counseled. “You’ll only make Ma’el happier, knowing that he’s hurt you.” She gently pulled Corwin back from the edge of the pool, but not so far as to again trigger the swinging stone.
“So we’re at stalemate again,” Corwin growled. “Ma’el’s probably re-forming the kraken even now. If we can’t get past it, we can’t get to him. And if he holds us off long enough, he’ll have all the power he needs.”
Nia gazed into the pool. What spell could destroy an enemy that just re-formed out of the creatures of the water? She wished Gobaith were with them, for guidance. She could still feel the Farworlder’s presence in the back of her mind, but only his encouragement and hope. The one specific thought that came across the distance was: What you can’t defeat, learn from. Nia remembered how Gobaith had learned much from the kraken, just by absorbing the energy from the multitude of creatures that made up the beast—and then she had it. Softly, she said, “Corwin, I know how we can destroy the kraken, once and for all.”
“You do?”
Nia nodded. “We’ve been thinking about this wrong. Instead of simply attacking it, we should take energy from it. Drain all the magical and life energy from each little creature in it. This way, Ma’el’s spell will be giving us power. As soon as Ma’el realizes he’s only making us stronger, he’ll dissolve the kraken at once, for good.”
Corwin sucked in his breath, then nodded. “Good idea. Um, how do we do that?”
“Let me think.” Nia’s magical experience had mostly involved giving energy. The taking of life energy from an unwilling creature would ordinarily be repugnant to her. But this was an unnatural, monstrous creature, Nia reminded herself, and needed to be destroyed. But it was so huge, and the power contained within it, and the life energy of all the creatures that made it up, would be enormous. Nia tried to imagine containing and controlling such power, but she just couldn’t.
The head of the kraken rose up again and rushed at them. Corwin sliced the serpent’s head down the middle and the kraken melted again, spraying them with cold, scarlet water.
“Thought long enough?” Corwin asked. “Because the kraken can probably keep this up all day, and I don’t think I can.”
Nia gazed at Corwin. “It would take enormous power to drain all of the kraken, and great power to contain that energy without it destroying the one who drains it.”
“All right. And?”
“And neither one of us has that much power.”
Corwin looked at her. “Do you mean to tell me that we’ve come all this way for nothing? You said the sword would give us the power to destroy Ma’el!”
“I’m not finished, Corwin. This is like the spells we’ve done where one of us must give the other our power to do it. It can be done. But one of us must sacrifice power to the other.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say so, then? So which one of us should it be?”
Nia shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said softly. “The other person must give all of their power, all of their life energy.”
Corwin became very still. “You mean, give up their . . . life? Die?”
“I—I don’t know. Maybe not die . . . entirely. Maybe just sleep for a while, until the energy is given back.”
“Forget it,” Corwin snapped. “We’re going through this together. I didn’t go to Atlantis and back just to bow out now and I couldn’t bear it if you gave up your life for me.”
“Corwin, it’s the only way.”
“Well think of another one.”
The kraken came at them again, stronger this time, nearly tearing the sword from Corwin’s hands before he managed to cut its neck and sever its head.
They both stood dripping with slimy red water, and Nia shivered. “It’s our only chance, Corwin,” she pleaded. “The kraken’s getting stronger as Ma’el learns to use the center of power. Maybe . . . maybe the knowledge in Eikis Calli Werr can keep whoever gives their power from dying.”
Corwin gazed at her with eyes full of fear and love. “We can’t do this.”
“We have to.”
“But who—who will be the giver, then?”
“Why don’t we let the sword decide?”
They gazed at each other for long moments b
efore Corwin swallowed hard and said, “All right.”
They placed their hands over the hilt of Eikis Calli Werr. Nia closed her eyes and opened her mind to receive the wisdom of the ancient Farworlders. Which of us must give our power so that the other can defeat our enemy?
The answer didn’t come in words or visions. She just knew which path in the unis led to victory. A lump formed in her throat as she remembered the fear she’d had that she would never see Atlantis again. Maybe this was why.
“No!” Corwin wailed, having also sensed the sword’s decision.
Nia felt tears forming in her eyes, but she stayed brave. “Corwin, our lives are unimportant compared to the many Ma’el will destroy. And . . . and the sword will preserve me. I don’t know how, but it will. I’ll put my trust in the Farworlder ancestors. Listen, put me in water as soon as you can, after you’ve finished with Ma’el. We mermyds revive well in water.” Even as she said it, she knew she was only trying to convince Corwin. She couldn’t hide from the truth herself.
“Nia . . . I . . . I don’t want to lose you!”
“If Ma’el succeeds, you’ll lose me anyway. We would both die. And so would many others in the world, both land-dweller and mermyd.”
Corwin sighed. “Yes. Yes, I know that.”
“But if we do this, there’s a chance we’ll both be okay. And Corwin—the whole world will be saved.”
Tears were leaking out of Corwin’s eyes.
“Come on,” Nia urged. “Let’s get it done.”
“One last thing.” Corwin choked out. He pulled her close and kissed her. Nia could feel his love and sorrow flowing over her like a wave that was both warm and chill, soft and sharp. Again, she wished she could stay in this moment forever, and it took all of her determination to, at last, pull away.
“Let my energy flow to you through the sword,” she told him. “It will protect me by not letting you take it all. But when you fight the kraken, you can’t let anything hold you back. You have to take every bit of its life force in order to kill it.”
Corwin put both his hands over hers. “I . . . I understand. Oh, Nia, I don’t want to do this.”