The Sea King

by C. L. Wilson

  Two men marched forward to grasp Calivan’s arms while Ryll and half a dozen other warriors raced for the other end of the corridor, axes and crowbars in hand. They began hacking at the door and the surrounding wall.

  Dilys didn’t want to release his grip on his uncle. Everything in him demanded that he rip out the throat of the man who had threatened his mate. But it was more important right now to get to Gabriella. With a snarl, he shoved his uncle away and spun away to help Ryll and the others.

  “Hold on, moa kiri,” he shouted. “I’m here. We’re going to get you out of there!”

  A shout and a sudden scuffle made Dilys spin back around. Calivan had Spoken a Word that sent the two warriors holding him to their knees.

  Dilys bellowed a war cry and launched himself at his uncle. Calivan turned, but he wasn’t fast enough to evade the fist that slammed into his temple. The blow dropped Calivan to his knees, and Dilys was on him in an instant. He wrapped one clawed hand around Calivan’s throat, and positioned the other at the vulnerable flesh of Calivan’s belly. All he needed was a single word from his mother, and he would eviscerate his uncle, ripping out both throat and belly in lethal wounds not even Calivan’s considerable seagifts or his skills with foreign magic would be able to staunch.

  Instead of fighting Dilys’s hold, Calivan clutched his leather pouch to his chest and pled with his sister. “Alys, you can’t let them destroy what’s in here. You’ll die, and everything I’ve done will have been for nothing!” His face was pale beneath its deep Calbernan bronze. “Please! Please, Alys! I’ve been trying to make things right for you again since Dillon died!”

  Before Alys could answer, a burning pain erupted in Dilys’s chest. He gasped for air. His lungs filled, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t breathe! The burning expanded. His body convulsed.

  His mother’s shocked, horrified gaze, held his, the terrified knowledge in her eyes confirming what he knew was happening.

  Gabriella.

  She was dying.

  Chapter 30

  Bloody, drained, struggling for breath, Gabriella clung to life with every ounce of determination in her as the traitor Calivan Merimydion’s testing chamber rapidly filled with seawater.

  She wasn’t dead yet. That was the one glimmer of hope she clung to.

  Well, not the only one. Dilys was out there, fighting for her. So long as she was alive and Dilys was alive, there was hope for them both.

  She pressed a palm weakly against the wound in her chest and tilted her back to take a painful gasp of air. When Calivan had knifed her, she’d managed to twist at the last moment, so that the blade meant for her heart had pierced a lung instead. Every breath was an agony and the wound was seeping bloody bubbles of air, but that was still better than the alternative.

  Poor Biross and Tarrant had not been so lucky.

  Their bodies floated nearby, rising alongside her as the water rose. She hated that they’d died for her. Their blood mingled with her own in the churning seawater, painting her with a debt she could never repay.

  Already the water had nearly reached the ceiling of the small room. Another minute or two, and all the air in the room would be gone.

  Just then, Biross gave a weak cough, the water around him splashing as his body jerked.

  “Biross!”

  Pain shot through her as she paddled the short distance towards him. The top of her head knocked the ceiling. Less than a foot of air left. And still seawater poured in through the large pipes in the ceiling.

  “Biross, hang on.” She reached for him, grabbing his limp arm and pulling him close. She might not possess an imlani’s native seagifts—might not know how to manipulate water the way Dilys had done when he’d saved her life—but she was still a Siren. Even drained as she was, her magic was already returning. Not fast enough for any hope of Shouting her way out of this room, but perhaps fast enough to save a life. “Biross, can you hear me?” She clung to his arm. “Take my magic. Use it to save yourself.” She summoned what she could and sent it into him. She couldn’t heal him. Even if she had full access to the full power of the sun, the only person she could have healed with it was herself. But if Biross could use his seagifts to control his bleeding long enough for Dilys to rescue them, he might make it to a healer in time. And maybe—just maybe—if she gave him power enough, he might be able to hold back the flooding of the room as well. The chance was a slim one, to be sure, but even a slim chance was better than no chance at all.

  “Biross, I can’t stop the water coming into the room. You can do it, but not if you die on me! Use what I gave you to save yourself, so you can save us!”

  But Biross’s blood continued to flow, and the seawater continued to pour in.

  Five inches of air was all that remained. Gabriella’s face was pressed against the ceiling now, each wheezing breath a frantic, painful gasp. Her chest was on fire, every breath a struggle, as if a three-hundred-pound rock was sitting on her chest. She could feel panic prying at her with sharp, scrabbling claws.

  Two inches.

  “Biross!”

  One inch.

  She took as deep a breath as she could manage and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the room was entirely submerged in seawater. The roar of the water pouring relentlessly in had gone silent. Tarrant’s body floated weightlessly nearby, bumping gently against Biross.

  She shook Biross, pushing more power into the mortally wounded warrior, but if he was aware of it, she couldn’t tell. His eyes were closed. His body limp. The only sign that he was still alive at all was the gill slits that had opened along his rib cage. They fluttered open and closed in a slow, shallow rhythm. He was still breathing, then. His body had recognized the change in their environment and instinctively adjusted to breathe water instead of air.

  A useful ability her own body, unfortunately, did not possess. And the power that continued to flood into her, amplified by her growing fear and desperation, was all but useless. Without air she couldn’t Shout. Without sunlight, she couldn’t heal herself.

  She was going to die. She was going to die and take Dilys with her. That knowledge kept her holding her breath until her chest was on fire. She couldn’t die. Dilys was just outside the door. She could feel him there—his presence, his love, her love for him fueling a torrent of magic inside her. And she was helpless to go to him. Helpless to save herself, to save them.

  A large hand closed around her shoulder.

  Biross had roused enough to speak, though it was clearly a labor for him. Blood bubbled out of his mouth, a frothing, darkness that billowed like a foreboding cloud around him. Using the strength she’d given him, he willed every last measure of his magic and his lifeforce into her, and with it came the ephemeral whisper of his dying wish. A prayer. Not for himself, but for her.

  Numahao, Mother of All Waters, save her. Save your daughter.

  As the gift of his life flooded into her, every drop of blood in her veins turned to molten lava. Nerve endings shrieked, her entire being immolated in a crucible of pain. Her back arched, and she gave a wrenching scream, the last of the air in her lungs escaping in a flood of bubbles.

  It hurt. Good, sweet gods, it hurt!

  Starved of air, her body instinctively tried to take a breath, only to suck in a massive gulp of water instead. She choked and coughed. Blood streamed from the wound in her chest and bubbles rushed from her mouth in a red-tinged flood. Her body began to jerk and spasm. Another involuntary breath brought a painful, burning, tearing feeling as her throat closed up.

  She stared into Biross’s now sightless eyes as the strength left her limbs, and a strange calm overtook her. She knew she was lost. She blinked once, slowly, as her consciousness slipped away. Her last thought, her one regret, for the strong, beautiful, loving man she’d claimed.

  Dilys.

  Dilys’s shaken concentration was all the opening Calivan needed. He launched himself at his nephew, going for his throat. Dilys threw up an arm to block, then swore a
s his flesh tore beneath his uncle’s claws and teeth. Dilys slammed a fist upwards, knuckles crunching against Calivan’s jaw. His uncle staggered back, snarled, then lowered his head and plowed into Dilys, taking him down hard. The air whooshed out of Dilys’s lungs, leaving him momentarily stunned. Calivan seized the opportunity to hammer steely fists against Dilys’s ribs in a punishing barrage, each blow backed by powerful muscle. Calivan might have been forbidden from earning ulumi in battle, but he was every bit as skilled and strong as any other warrior of the Isles.

  Dilys grunted in pain as his ribs broke with an audible crack.

  “Cal!” Alysaldria cried. “Stop this insanity!” She lunged for her twin and grabbed one arm, wrapping her own arms tight around it and pulling back with all her weight. To the rest of Dilys’s men, she cried, “Calbernari! Aid me!”

  “Ono!” Dilys snarled when his men would have run forward to join the fray. He pulled back his lips, baring the sharp white menace of his battle fangs. “Aid Gabriella! Find a way to break down that damn door!” He maneuvered his arms between his uncle’s body and his own, blocking the rib strikes, then brought the crown of his head ramming up into Calivan’s chin. Calivan grunted and reared back. “Nima, help them. Shout the farking thing apart, if you can. Just get in there and save her!” Dilys sank his fangs into his uncle’s shoulder and shook his head like a shark with captured prey. Blood spattered as flesh rent. Calivan roared and stabbed a clawed hand at Dilys’s chest, aiming for his heart.

  Dilys rolled to one side to avoid the killing blow, then rolled rapidly back to deliver a sharp elbow to the side of his uncle’s head.

  Calivan cried out as his head wrenched sharply to one side. A fist to the temple sent him toppling over. Dilys rolled over, rammed a knee hard into Calivan’s groin. As his uncle howled and instinctively drew his body up to protect his throbbing stones, Dilys straddled his chest, pinning his arms to his sides, and began hammering his fists into Calivan’s face. Calivan’s lips split. His nose shattered. His teeth cracked and broke, and his eyes swelled shut. All the fight went out of him, but Dilys kept hammering. Again, and again, and again he struck, his mind a red haze of rage and bloodlust.

  “Dilys, stop.” Ryll’s voice was cool and firm, backed with power that only fell slightly short of a Command. “He’s down. He can’t hurt anyone else. Gabriella needs you now.”

  It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. Panting, still boiling with unreleased rage, Dilys curtailed his punches. His uncle was unconscious, his face resembled a bloody lump of raw meat. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough to assuage Dilys’s fury. But Gabriella needed him. She needed him to free her, not to keep pounding the man he’d already incapacitated.

  He pushed off Calivan’s body and staggered to his feet. As he did, his foot bumped against the pouch Calivan had strapped across his body. With a resonant, clinking sound, several brightly glowing crystals the size of goose eggs rolled free. Dilys put up a hand to shield his eyes and reached for one of the crystals. The instant he touched it, the powerful magic—Gabriella’s magic—throbbed against his senses. Instinctively he opened for it, and the magic flooded into him in an unchecked rush that made him stagger back in surprise.

  “Blessed Numahao.” The stunned whisper slipped from his lips. Every ulumi on his body had lit up, a bright blue white. Dilys didn’t know how, but his uncle had somehow drained Gabriella’s magic and stored it in these crystals.

  He sliced the strap of the leather pouch with his claws and yanked the bag free, kneeling to collect the crystals that had rolled free and shove them back into the pouch. When he had them all, he spun back towards the locked door of the testing chamber.

  His mother and his men had hacked, clawed, and Shouted at the stone surrounding the door, but for all their efforts, they’d barely scratched the surface.

  “Nima, try using this.” He handed his mother one of the sun-bright stones. “Be careful. It’s potent.”

  She grasped the crystal in her slender hands. A moment later, her body shuddered as if struck by lightning. Her eyes flared with a light almost as bright and blinding as the crystals. “My goddess!” she exclaimed in a whisper as stunned as his had been. “Is this what she holds inside her?”

  “A small fraction of it. Try that Shout again now.”

  His mother turned to the door and Shouted “Open!” in a voice that shook with power.

  The dense volcanic rock surrounding the door cracked, a spreading web of deep fissures.

  “It’s working! Shout again, Nima!”

  “Open!” Alys Shouted again. “Open!” More cracks formed. Chunks of dark stone tumbled out onto the floor. Ryll’s men leapt forward, ripping at the rock with bare claws.

  Dilys put his hand on the stone. He could feel the pulse of the ocean behind the wall. Calivan had sealed Gabriella inside the room and flooded it. He grabbed one of the crystals, drained it with a thought, and took command of the near-limitless power of the ocean just behind those few inches of rock. Using the added power granted him by that crystal filled with Gabriella’s magic, he slammed a ferocious wave of water into the wall around the door, concentrating all of the water’s energy on a single spot weakened by the cracks his mother’s Shouts had opened. He pounded that spot again and again, wearing away at the stone, eroding it until the crack was a leak, and the leak became a hole, and the hole became a fatal weakness in the structure of the wall.

  The wall crumbled. Metal screamed and bent as the door was ripped from its moorings. Seawater poured out of the testing chamber in a wild rush that threatened to sweep them all away.

  “Dilys!” his mother cried.

  He clamped a firm magical hand upon the water and molded it to his will. Gabriella and the bodies of her two guards were still floating in the chamber. He summoned a current to carry them out to him and snatched Gabriella into his arms, clasping her to his chest.

  “Take Biross and Tarrant,” he commanded. “I’ll hold this back until we’re all out.”

  Everyone moved with alacrity, snatching up the bodies of the dead Calbernans and Calivan, and rushing for the door at the end of the tunnel. Dilys brought up the rear, holding back the tide of water until he was out of the tunnel as well. Only when the door was closed and sealed behind them did he release his hold.

  The second the door was sealed, he turned the full force of his attention to Gabriella. Her eyes were open and glassy, her lips parted. She wasn’t breathing. There was a telltale rip in the front of her gown, tinged with dark blood. He laid her on one of Calivan’s laboratory tables and tried breathing into her mouth and compressing her chest to make her heart start beating again, but that only made what blood remained in her body gush from her wound. Her skin took on an alarming, chalky hue. Swearing, he plunged his magic into her, taking command of her blood as he had once before in an attempt to stop the hemorrhage. Oddly, the knife wound itself, though deep, wasn’t the primary cause of her blood loss. The blade had pierced her lung but missed her heart and all major blood vessels. As he worked to force the water from her lungs, using her blood to form temporary seals across the tears of the delicate tissues, what he found left him stunned.

  “Good Goddess.” Dilys gave himself a shake and focused his concentration on the source of the bleeding inside her. Her lungs. Alongside her punctured and water-filled landwalker lungs, a second set of sea lungs had begun to form. Begun, and been stopped in mid-transformation, resulting in a maze of ruptured blood vessels and a torn patchwork of frilled membranes partially attached to her ribs.

  Realizing that he’d have to find a way to help her body complete its transformation or watch her die in his arms, Dilys flew into a renewed frenzy of action. He seized Calivan’s pouch and snatched one of the bright crystals from its depths, siphoning the stored magic from the crystal and shoving every last bit of it into Gabriella. “Stay with me, moa kiri! Stay with me!” He drained another crystal, then another and another, transferring all of the stolen magic back into her, gi
ving her as much of his own as he dared as well. “Come on, moa kiri. You can do this.” She remained glassy-eyed and unresponsive. He cast a frantic gaze at his mother. “Nima! Help us! She needs more magic!”

  But when Alysaldria would have approached, Ryll and his men stepped in her way. “Dilys, my brother, ono. My heart is breaking for you, but if Gabriella is lost to us, we cannot risk losing your mother as well. You know that.” Ryll didn’t state the other obvious truth. There was no way Calberna’s queen would survive the death of her son and the traitor’s death awaiting her twin, so what magic she currently possessed had to be saved to be passed on to the next Myerial.

  Dilys ground his teeth to hold back the roar of frustration rumbling in his chest. Anger would serve no purpose. Ryll was right. They couldn’t risk losing the magic his mother carried.

  He clutched Gabriella to his chest, trying to think past the terror that gripped his heart. What blood remained in her veins, he was keeping contained. Oxygen, however, was a separate issue. The abruptly arrested transformation of her lung tissue was preventing her from breathing either air or water. She was rapidly slipping away from him, the slender body in his arms more akin to a corpse than the vibrant woman who’d claimed him, her slight form so still and cold, her flesh chilled by the sea . . . all the sun-kissed warmth that he loved so much drained out of her.

  Wait.

  His mind seized on two small words.

  Sun. Warmth.

  That was it!

  Gabriella was the daughter of the Summer King, descendent of the Sun God, Helos. When Lily’s father had beaten Summer nearly to death, Dilys’s aid and Tildavera Greenleaf’s great healing skills hadn’t been enough to mend Gabriella. Summer had spent days basking in the sun to complete her recovery. But here, tucked away in a cave a hundred feet below the surface, she was cut off from one of her greatest sources of power.