several fish, oddly appropriate for the War Room. It was also the only human furnishing in the room that had survived the years underwater.
Chatir ran her hands along the wall. As she expected, she felt a hole slightly larger than her fist. Beyond lay a dome-shaped chamber lit at its periphery by faint silver algae.
“What did you find?” Assan asked.
“A secret room,” Chatir breathed. Hope fluttered its fragile fins in her chest. “We could hide in here,” Chatir murmured. “But say nothing to the others until we are certain. This room might change our fortunes in battle!”
“If there is a way in,” Assan said.
Chatir pushed against the wall. It had a clay-like consistency and gave easily. “Perhaps it was only the statue keeping it in place,” Chatir said. She entered the room; Assan followed.
In this pale plankton light, Chatir looked around. Assan’s face mirrored her wonder.
The windowless chamber was like a well, its periphery encircled by walkways. These now served as shelves for countless boxes bulging with human riches: crowns, scepters, shields, even gilded birdcages. In places, jewels winked, bright flowers on yellow-green coin hills.
“The treasure of Laselan,” Assan whispered. “So it does exist!”
“I think you’d better tell me what’s going on with you and the humans, Assan,” Chatir said. “Am I right in believing that you are not a traitor to Zurolind?”
The merman hung his golden head. “Meyroth seemed so interested in all I had to say about the merrealm. I never thought my stories would result in this… But I am certain it is not her fault. Meyroth often speaks of the oppressive, power-hungry nature of human males. I suspect that--”
“Do you know anything that might help us?” Chatir interrupted.
Assan nodded. “The humans must be after the treasure hidden here. Meyroth has asked about it often, the famed wealth that sank into the sea centuries ago.”
Chatir clenched her fists at Meyroth, no, at her people’s long-lived greed. “Thank you, Assan. Please be careful. I don’t want the mersoldiers to hurt you over this.”
“I understand, Chatir,” Assan murmured.
“Captain Chatir,” a voice ventured at the secret room’s opening. It was Radien, the young mersoldier who had led them to the War Room. “Forgive me for interrupting. The humans have entered the castle! We saw them through the holes in the War Room wall!”
“What a strange thing to do,” Assan said. “They could be blown to bits by their own cannons.”
“They stopped firing shortly after we started securing the War Room,” Radien pointed out.
Chatir cupped her hands around her ears. “I noticed the quiet, but I thought the sounds of the cannons simply did not reach this room.”
“If the humans want the treasure, couldn’t we use Assan’s sunshell to tell them it’s here and give it to them?” Radien suggested. “I apologize for overhearing,” he added quickly.
Chatir sighed. “I don’t think that will work. Their strategy with the cannons is to kill as many of us as possible and protect their own kind. I expect they entered the castle to find the treasure. Even if we bestowed every last coin on them, the humans would not be satisfied. They might suspect we were hiding something for ourselves and tear this castle apart brick by brick.”
Assan, usually so quick to defend the humans, did not deny her assessment of the humans’ avarice.
The young mersoldier looked horrified. Chatir put her arm around him. “Do not fear,” she said, soothingly as though she spoke to one of Lillia’s children who had awakened afraid in the night. “It will be some time before they find us or succeed in destroying the castle. We may yet think of a way to defeat them.” Chatir smiled at Radien reassuringly. “It may even be you who conceives of the idea. Wouldn’t that be a story to tell your family?”
“Yes, Captain! I’ll keep thinking.” Radien drifted back to the War Room.
“Assan, tell Egudar to continue bolstering our defenses,” Chatir directed. “I will return shortly.” With that, Chatir swam closer to the surface. The ceiling was painted with serpents, emerald and sapphire-scaled, so immense that they might swallow the ships beside them in a single gulp. No other ceiling in Castle Zurolind had been adorned like this. Curiosity drew Chatir closer, until the tip of her nose skirted the boundary of water and air.
Chatir sank back through the water, more curious than ever. There was something important about the mural, she was certain. However, she was unable to examine it without emerging from the water, a dangerous, painful feat.
As she drifted down, she sighted a treasure chest bulging with sunshells.
Chatir cupped one in her hand. How smooth it was, and light, considering the great burden it had laid upon Zurolind, and on her. The sunshell had not only allowed Assan and Meyroth to understand one another; it also enabled Assan to assume human form. Polite individuals, of course, refrained from mentioning the union his transformation allowed.
It was that very transformation that Chatir planned to undergo now.
The sunshell’s rarity meant that few merfolk other than the human-obsessed Assan had ever ventured above. Chatir raised a hand so the water barely covered her palm. Then, with a deep breath, she breached the boundary of water and air. A chill assailed her skin, intensifying as she pulled the rest of herself free. As her tail entered the stale air, the sunshell transformed it into legs. Despite the obvious potency of the sunshell’s power, Chatir still waited until her lungs were bursting before she took her first breath above the water.
Shivering, filling her chest with ragged breaths, Chatir inched along the walkway. The coins and bars of gold were cold beneath her feet, and the algae that coated them, slimy. Several times she nearly slipped back into the water.
Among the riches, Chatir noticed several items that resembled rag heaps. At first she disregarded them, but when it became clear that nothing in the coveted wealth would aid the merfolk, she decided to investigate. With a heavily-ornamented sword taken from a chest, Chatir prodded one of the items. It flopped open. Now she recognized it from the human studies course she’d taken to be near Assan.
It was a book, the human equivalent of Merwilor, the means of making words stay. Merwilor took two forms: seaweed pages such as Chatir used for her reports and writing carved into coral structures, which often doubled as buildings; in fact, both fortress towers had contained warrior’s wisdom on their interior walls.
Chatir’s breath came faster when she realized that she recognized the letters, understood the admittedly old-fashioned words and sentences. But of course! It must be that the merfolk began writing after they started to inhabit Castle Zurolind!
Perhaps in this relic from Zurolind’s past, she could find an answer for her people.
Though Chatir pored over the pages for many precious minutes, any saving insights remained elusive.
“What am I doing?” Chatir let the book thud to the rocks. Her head ached. How could surface dwellers think or do anything with this perpetual weight crushing them into the ground?
Chatir’s restless gaze returned to the tome. It had fallen open to a vibrant illustration of the same snakes pictured on the ceiling.
“I should return to the water and plan our next moves,” Chatir murmured. Somehow, she still found herself reading the pages.
Zurolind sorcerors, she learned, had wrought a spell to summon the leviathans from the Rift, an undersea canyon that housed the ocean’s greatest depths and most profound mysteries. The leviathans had fought to save Zurolind from a legion of blue whale wizards. It was a story Chatir had never heard, a piece of that past that history itself had forgotten. In the end, the leviathans had fulfilled their purpose, but at a grave price.
Again Chatir set the book aside.
Might the leviathans of old help the merfolk now?
And if they could, did she dare attempt to call them? She knew so little of magic. Ages ago, Chatir recalled from her history class in
basic training, Zurolind had been a center of arcane study. However, that lore had been lost, as the merfolk’s few enemies were not magic users.
There was also the price of their help to consider...
She had castigated Captain Heilios in front of everyone for cowardice in the face of duty. But perhaps she was not so different than he, facing the same choice.
As she deliberated, Chatir remembered things she had long-forgotten.
Since she was young, something inside had led her to battle. She had never really understood why until Lillian had her children. Her sister always embodied the pinnacle of Zurolind’s feminine ideals: gentle, soft-spoken, nurturing. But her children, Lillian told Chatir, awoke of a new side of her, a protectiveness that could be as fierce and decisive as any man in battle. It was then that Chatir had understood: those she loved, as well as all in the merrealm, were her charges to protect.
Perhaps the shark attacks during her early years had given her this sense of responsibility. Knowing how fragile others were, how could she hold back if they were in danger? Chatir had known the thought before, but hearing it now was a rebirth.
Rememory flooded her: how she had told all who wondered that this belief was the source of her courage: the courage to become a soldier; the courage to hone her every strength and strategize where she was lacking; the courage to face risk; and the courage to have conviction in herself, despite many who doubted.
Chatir’s mind
Captain's Sacrifice Page 5