The Sea King

by C. L. Wilson

  “Gabriella?” Dilys was watching her closely. “What is it?”

  “I think I understand now. Why I am . . . what I am.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I always thought I was killer, a monster, a threat to everyone I love and all the innocent people around me. But I’m not. I can kill, yes, but I’m not a killer. I’m a protector. I was born to defend good people against the real monsters. That’s why the gods gave me the gifts to do it.”

  He pulled her close and kissed her thoroughly. When they pulled apart, they were both breathless, their hearts pounding.

  “Was that my reward for being such a good little force of nature?”

  He laughed. “Just a small taste of your reward, moa haleah. The rest will come later.” His eyes glowed brighter as he reached out with his magic to connect to his network of ocean spies. “Uh-oh. I think you, my secret weapon, aren’t such a secret anymore. Looks like Nemuan was monitoring his fleet. He’s starting to run scared.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s broken off from the rest of his armada and is heading fast for Trinipor. Mur Balat has a fortress there. If Nemuan reaches it, Ari’s as good as dead. The place is impregnable. We have to stop him before he gets there, but he’s got a very substantial lead on us.”

  “Understood.” Her voice was low and throaty, resonating with power. She closed her eyes and lifted her hands. Her hurricane strengthened. She poured more and more power into the storm, sending clouds boiling across the sky until they covered the sky from horizon to horizon. And still Gabriella poured her magic into the storm, forcing an explosion of rapidly increasing intensity. The whirling mass of stormclouds stretched out to cover the entire southern half of the Olemas Ocean and most of northern Ardul. The winds whipped to speeds exceeding one hundred miles an hour, one hundred forty, then faster still. The massive waves churning across the ocean’s surface swelled to ninety- and hundred-foot monstrosities. Black clouds blotted out the sun. Lightning crashed and crackled across the crisply delineated edges of the storm’s monstrous eyewall. And there, in the center of the ferocious, killer storm, Dilys’s fleet sailed on smooth seas beneath sunny blue skies, chasing down Nemuan’s ship faster than he could flee across what even to his princely sea gifts had become dangerous, unfriendly seas.

  Closing the distance took a full day. Gabriella maintained the control and intensity of her monstrous storm the entire way, managing the upper levels winds to keep the tops of her storm’s thunderclouds from shearing off and robbing the hurricane of its power, while steering the entire storm on a resolute, unwavering path towards the fleeing Nemuan. She didn’t sleep except for a few brief five- and ten-minute naps snatched here and there in Dilys’s arms, because unlike her initial storm, this great beast of a hurricane wanted its freedom. It bucked against her control constantly, requiring her complete concentration. But not once did Gabriella fear losing the upper hand, in large part because Dilys remained by her side, anchoring her in a way no else ever had—or could.

  Not a single pirate Nemuan left behind to defend his flank survived the devastation of Gabriella’s hurricane. As the Calbernan fleet closed the gap between themselves and the fleeing Nemuan, Gabriella began to disperse her storm, shrinking the feeder bands, breaking up the enormous clouds forming the center. She spun off a smaller low-pressure center and kept it focused over Nemuan’s ship, harrying him with gusting winds and waterspouts to keep him from escaping. Dilys remained by her side, bleeding off any spikes of excess power and using it to fuel his own efforts against Nemuan, slamming the traitor’s ship with wave after merciless wave. One of Summer’s waterspouts got a little too close, striking the ship a glancing blow that ripped off the top of the foremast and the bowsprit.

  The ship slowed, then limped to a halt.

  As Dilys’s fleet drew closer, Ryll and a small team hitched a ride with a pod of swift dolphins and headed for Nemuan’s ship.

  “Why dolphins?” Gabriella asked. “Can’t Ryll and his team swim faster using their seagifts?”

  “Tey, but Nemuan and his men will be looking for our magic in the water. By using the dolphin’s natural speed to transport them, Ryll and his team are essentially invisible. Once they’re close enough, I’ll start slamming waves into the ship. That’ll keep the crew busy and give our Calbernari a way to get aboard without being detected.”

  “Then I do my thing?”

  “Then you do your thing.”

  “What if it doesn’t work? What if Nemuan is expecting it and took steps to protect against it?”

  “Then Ryll and his men with have to go with plan B.”

  “I hope he’s not expecting it then.”

  Dilys grinned and dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “Me, too. But I wouldn’t worry. You’ve been wiping the floor with these krillos since we started.”

  Twenty minutes later, Ryll and his team washed aboard Nemuan’s ship on a massive wave.

  Gabriella walked to the railing of the Kracken, looking out across the storm-tossed waters to the Shark’s pirate ship, and began to sing.

  It was a song like the one from her dream. A melody without words, but rich with emotion. Each tone carried intense longing coupled with achingly seductive promises of dreams fulfilled.

  Come to me, the melody seemed to say. I am all you’ve ever dreamed of, all you could ever wish for. Come to me and find the peace and paradise you’ve been searching for. I am love and family and prosperity and joy. I am the Halla you have always longed for. Come to me. Come.

  It wasn’t Persuasion but pure Siren’s Song that poured out of her on the wordless notes, soaring across the distance between the two ships. Despite their natural resistance to mind control, Nemuan’s Calbernan crew fell under the spell of her Siren’s Song and abandoned their posts to stumble blindly towards the railing of the ship.

  Aboard the enemy vessel, Ryll and his men crept belowdecks and began searching for Ari. They, too, felt the pull of Gabriella’s Song, but with wax plugs in their ears muffling the sound, they were able to resist the need to follow that song to its source.

  They found Ari, tortured and unconscious, chained in the bowels of the ship. With the help of his men, Ryll loaded his cousin into a makeshift litter and carried him back above decks, where they slipped over the side to the waiting dolphin pod and hitched a ride back towards the Calbernan fleet, sending the all clear to Dilys once they were out of immediate danger.

  “We’ve got him,” Dilys said to the still singing Gabriella. “Ari’s safe. They’re bringing him back now.”

  Gabriella turned to him, her eyes still glowing gold, her voice still rich with the Siren’s irresistible allure. “Then put an end to the Shark once and for all.”

  Dilys bared his battle fangs. “As my Sirena commands,” he said, and he leapt into the sea.

  Filling his sea voice with power, Dilys called out, “It’s over, Nemuan. The shame you have heaped upon your House, the ruin you have made of your mother’s name: it’s all over. You can choose one of two ways to meet your death. My liana can obliterate you and your entire ship with one Shout, or you can meet me in the sea, and you can accept your death at my hands.” He pulsed a location a few miles from where the Ardullan continental shelf dropped off into deeper ocean. “Just you and I, krillo. No weapons but fang and claw. And our ships weigh anchor where they are.”

  Silence. Then, curtly, “I will meet you. It will be my pleasure to rip out your heart and feed your body to the sharks.”

  “And mine to tear the entrails from your body and turn the ocean red with your blood,” Dilys shot back, “but it won’t be sharks I summon to feast upon your flesh. It will be the kracken.”

  A blast of fury shot across the ocean. Dilys smiled coldly and waited for the burst of magic that announced Nemuan’s presence in the water before he began to swim.

  As he swam, Dilys monitored his cousin to make sure he was, in fact, headed for the location Dilys had specified. He also tried to anticipate a
ll the ways Nemuan would try to win the advantage. The shadow-stained—those Calbernans, like Nemuan, who were so beset by grief that they’d recorded their anguish on their bodies to be remembered always—never wholly healed from their loss. The pain stayed with them, like the squid ink tattooed into their flesh. It made them a little mad. A lot unpredictable. Quick to anger, and savage when they attacked.

  Nemuan planned to fight, but there would be nothing fair about it. The battle would be vicious, brutal, and to the death. Like any predator’s attack.

  Dilys had chosen open ocean for their fight, far enough away from either of their respective ships to discourage interference. If any of Nemuan’s men had followed him into the sea, Dilys hadn’t seen signs of them, and he’d kept an eye on every living creature swimming in his same direction.

  The waters were clear, visibility high. The flat ocean floor lay one hundred feet below the surface. They were miles away from the cave-riddled reef system as well as the sharp drop-off of Ardul’s continental shelf.

  They met fifty feet below the surface. Two Calbernan males in their prime. Lords of the sea. Sunlight filtered down through the water overhead. It played across their bodies, illuminating the iridescence of their blue ulumi, making them shimmer. The long ropes of their hair and the drapes of their shumas floated lazily about them as they hung there, suspended in the ocean’s liquid embrace.

  “Merimynos.” Dilys voiced the greeting not with power, but with the tonal phonemes of Coa Anu, Undersea Tongue.

  “Merimydion.” Nemuan’s lip curled back in a sneer, his teeth flashing blue white in the sunlit waters.

  “What happened to you, cousin?” Dilys asked with genuine regret and bafflement. “You were a prince of Calberna, the honorable son of an honorable House. The son of a queen! How could you betray everything? How could you shame your mother’s name this way?”

  Nemuan’s battle fangs descended, white and sharp and deadly. “What would you know of honor and honorable Houses, krillo? You, who would foul Calberna’s line of queens with inferior oulani blood.”

  “Inferior?” Dilys laughed without humor. “My liana is the first Siren returned to us since the Slaughter. You heard her Shout. You know it to be true.”

  Nemuan’s lip curled. “I know there are many kinds of magic in the world. Including magic that can make the impossible seem true. But true Sirens are daughters of Numahao, born to the Isles.”

  “Is that what you told your men? How you got them to continue this madness of yours even after you all heard what she was?”

  “My men live to serve a true queen of the Isles, not some oulani slut.” Nemuan gave a sneering laugh. “Though I have to hand it to you, Merimydion. At first, I thought you’d picked the runt of the litter. I mean, compared to her sisters—especially that Autumn—little blue eyes wouldn’t be my first choice. But then I showed her the joys of Ililium. Again and again and again. And she was begging me for more. You must be a shoto lover, Merimydion.”

  For an instant, Dilys saw red and nearly lunged at Nemuan in a blind rage, but at the last second, he saw the triumphant gleam in his cousin’s eyes and realized that was exactly what Nemuan wanted. His cousin was no green boy. He was every inch a warrior of the Isles, just like Dilys. And if Dilys lost control, that gave Nemuan an advantage.

  “I know what you did to her, magic eater. Even without all your many other crimes, that alone would have earned you a traitor’s death. But enough of this.” Dilys’s eye flared bright gold, and his power boomed out, filling his sea voice with Command. “Confess your crimes, Nemuan Merimynos, and accept your punishment.”

  Nemuan’s body went rigid. The tendons in his neck stood out like ropes pulled tight beneath his skin. His eyes went wide and filled with shock.

  Before her death, Siavaluana’s youngest son would have been able to slough off Dilys’s Compulsion with a sneering laugh. Even a few months ago, he might have been able to resist, despite his mother having been dead so many years. The last three Myerials had been daughters of House Merimynos, so despite the House’s devastating losses, its surviving sons and daughters still wielded great power. But Dilys now carried in him the most powerful of all Calbernan magics: the gift of a Siren.

  Nemuan’s arm shot out and his wrist turned up, baring the small harpoon gun built into his wristband. The small gun fired, shooting a tiny streamlined dart through the water.

  Dilys spun to one side and barely managed to avoid the projectile, which he was sure must be poisoned, given its miniature size. By the time he’d recovered and spun back around, Nemuan was racing away, swimming very fast towards the continental shelf. Clearly, he thought to lose himself in the darkness of the ocean’s depths, where the eyes Dilys could access were few and far between.

  Putting on a burst of seagift powered speed, Dilys followed.

  Even without Gabriella’s gift to aid him, Dilys was—always had been—the faster swimmer. He caught Nemuan a quarter mile from the shelf drop-off and attacked, claws extended and battle fangs bared. They tumbled through the water, limbs flailing, bodies twisting. Teeth and claws flashed as they fought in brutal silence, each struggling for supremacy. Dilys ripped slashes across Nemuan’s chest, tearing hunks of flesh from his arms and legs, but Nemuan, a prince of Calberna, had lacked no training in battle. He managed to get in more than a few strikes of his own.

  Blood spilled. Scarlet eddies wound around them like unraveling ribbon.

  Nemuan swiped a clawed hand at Dilys’s throat. Dilys felt the sting as his skin split but managed to twist away before Nemuan could slice his jugular. Another quick twist brought Dilys back around, and he raked his own claws deep and hard down Nemuan’s side, ripping through his gill slits and shredding the delicate oxygen-filtering filaments beneath the skin.

  Nemuan roared and coughed a mix of blood and water and air. Pressing the advantage, Dilys rammed a fist into the wound and raked the claws of one foot down Nemuan’s thigh, gouging deeply. The sea around them was a mist of red now, and the sharks Nemuan had taken as his namesake began to gather.

  Seizing them with his seagift, Nemuan drove three bull sharks towards Dilys. Though Dilys was the better swimmer, Nemuan had always been better at controlling sharks. Dilys spun away, evading the sharp, biting rows of teeth but losing a layer of skin along his calf to the sharp, dermal denticles of the predators’ skin. A swift call on Gabriella’s gifts gave Dilys the edge he needed to briefly override Nemuan’s control and send the rest of the sharks skimming harmlessly past. But even without Nemuan’s control, the blood in the water would keep them coming back and drive them into a frenzy of hunger.

  Dilys dove for Nemuan again, driving sharp claws into his cousin’s torn side and ripping out the exposed gill membranes. Nemuan screamed and convulsed in pain. The sharks darted in for a second pass. This time, Dilys grabbed his incapacitated cousin and shoved him towards the sharks’ gaping maws. Only Nemuan’s quick, barked Command saved him from losing a limb to the predators’ snapping jaws.

  Dilys locked his cousin in an unyielding grip, one taloned hand poised over Nemuan’s unprotected belly, the other at his throat. “I can do this all day, pulan,” he hissed near Nemuan’s ear. “I’ll feed you to them bite by farking bite if I have to.”

  “Go to Hel, skuurl. And take your whole cursed House with you.”

  “You first, cousin.” Dilys pinched Nemuan’s trachea and gave him a slight shake. “You’ve lost and you know it. You’re going to die. There’s no way around that. But out of respect for your honored mother, I’ll give you a chance to preserve at least some semblance of honor. Return with me willingly to Calberna, testify against everyone who participated in your treason, and I promise the true depths of your depravity will not become public knowledge. You’ll still die a traitor’s death, but your House will be spared the shame of having their once-honored prince publicly branded a magic eater.”

  For a moment, Nemuan looked defeated, but then he bared bloody fangs in a mocking smile. “You want
me to identify traitors? Just look in the mirror, skuurl.” Nemuan laughed, then coughed up another bubble of air, seawater and blood. Eyes glinting with dull hate, Nemuan spat, “This much I will give you: my most fervent prayer to Numahao that you, too, may live to witness the destruction of your House and the loss of everything you hold dear.”

  Dilys’s jaw hardened. He hadn’t really expected Nemuan to cooperate, but some part of him had hoped he would. “And that is your final answer?”

  “The only one you’ll ever get from me.”

  “So be it.” In one swift move, Dilys ripped open Nemuan’s throat and belly. Then he locked an arm around his cousin’s chest and swam towards the sharp drop-off of the continental shelf, calling out a Command as he went. He stopped at the edge of the shelf and let his body sink until his feet touched the sandy soil of the ocean’s floor. “By the grant of Numahao, and as Myerielua of the Calbernan Isles, I declare you, Nemuan Merimynos, to be a traitor to Calberna, and in keeping with the laws of the Isles, I condemn you to meet the kracken.”

  Weak and dying from blood loss and his injuries, Nemuan turned his head to see around Dilys’s body, and his eyes widened in sudden terror as he beheld the monstrous carnivorous leviathan slowly rising from the deep.

  By the time Dilys swam back to the Kracken, Summer had dispersed the last remnants of her storm. He rode a spout of water up to the main deck, went to his cabin to have his wounds tended and change into a fresh, unbloodied shuma, then joined Gabriella in the cabin where Ari was recuperating. “How is he?”

  “Not well,” she admitted. “Unlike with me, there was no Mur Balat to keep the Shark from doing damage to poor Ari. He’s got a broken leg, and hundreds of cuts and burns all over his body. There was a strange circle of runes drawn in red ink at the back of his neck. Whatever it was terrified him. When I asked him about it, he went wild and ripped his own skin off with his claws to get rid of it. He’s sedated now, and I recommend keeping him that way until we get him someplace safe where he can be properly looked after. I tried sharing some of my magic with him, to help him to heal, but I don’t know if it did him any good. If we were closer to Wintercraig, I’d say we should get Tildy to help him.”