Seaborn 01 - Saltwater Witch

by Chris Howard

  Blinking stupidly, Henderson snapped out of the paralysis the stranger had thrown on him. He turned around and struggled with the door handle. The man in the backseat looked calm and continued his litany, something about “bestowing the curse on the stranger,” which shook Mr. Henderson with fear.

  That couldn’t be a good thing.

  He released the door, slammed his back against the seat and kicked the panel. It inched open, with a gush of cold water. He pulled his body around, his legs hanging up on the steering wheel, and threw his shoulder against the door. The gap spread, letting in more water, and he drove his head through it, nearly scraping off his ears. He pushed his shoulders through. He got an arm out and he kicked against the dashboard. He was free.

  The car sank below him and vanished in the gloom.

  Henderson pulled his body through the icy water, facing what he thought was down. He looked for the car, but it had disappeared. His head swung in several directions. He released half of the air in his lungs, a roar of bubbles.

  He was an experienced diver, but he’d never had to do anything like escape from a sinking car, in a river, in the middle of the night. In the confusion he’d lost his bearings. He released a little more air to see which way the bubbles went, but they vanished so quickly it was hard to tell. He jerked his head to the side, picked the way he thought opposite the direction the car had gone, and threw out his hands to pull himself through the water.

  Someone grabbed him.

  Fingers tightened around his ankle and tugged him back, not the man from the car, but a woman wearing what looked like armor, a sort of tunic of overlapping scales. The old man from the backseat swam into view calmly a second later, still whispering something. There were two women and another man with him, all dressed strangely in suits of shimmering scales. One had a sword out and held its point at him threateningly.

  Henderson just stared at her. Her lips started to move, to say something, halting as if she was uncertain about the language or what kinds of threats would be appropriate. With another jab of her sword, she came out with it.

  “Do not struggle, science teacher, Henderson. You are a prisoner of House Rexenor.”

  The old man from the car paused for a breath, gliding in closer. He spoke a string of words in Hellene, his mouth widening. He revealed more of his teeth as the words passed his lips, sour on his tongue. It was as if all the preceding language loaded some weapon and these last pulled the trigger.

  Henderson’s mind, clutched by fear, stepped and struggled through the words as the man spoke them, not understanding much in them beyond, “the hunger of the living...breathless breathing...”

  A loud splintery crack sounded in his ears as if someone had snapped a broom handle next to his head.

  Henderson thought desperately, I’m drown—

  Then his thoughts scattered like ashes, disintegrating as they left his focus. The force of the spell slammed into his body, throwing him back in the water. His legs flew out in front of him. He struggled to hold his eyelids up, but the storm surrounding his body consumed his spirit and he drifted into sleep.

  Chapter 20 - Wake the Olethren

  Ephoros brought both arms up defensively, rumbling words out of the side of his mouth, “Hold onto my shoulder.”

  I slid the sword into its scabbard and took my seat, looking back at Ochleros as I dug my fingers in.

  Ephoros spread his arms like wings and flew along the vertical canyon wall, the two of us speeding away from the abyss floor into the pure black space above. We left the prisons behind and neither of us looked back again.

  “What did Ochleros tell you?”

  Ephoros was silent for a few seconds. “He did not believe me when I told him that you will not be defeated by King Tharsaleos.”

  “Did he say anything more about where my father might be?”

  “He only knows what he told us. The king took him somewhere. Possibly to the surface.”

  “Will the king...kill me?” I asked softly.

  “Not while I can fight. But we must prepare, and we must not let him gain an advantage over us.”

  That sounded sensible. “What else did he say?”

  “Much. He told me that King Tharsaleos has reached higher levels of treachery.”

  I had started to notice that everything up, higher or that required reaching, was evil to the people who lived at the bottom of the ocean.

  “The eight guards your father struck down, the oktoloi, did not die on the mountainside by the hidden cave. They would have recovered with rest and care, and been able to battle your father another day. Misguided though they were, they were loyal to King Tharsaleos, and their hatred for Rexenor was great. But the king did not want anyone to know about the book of Telkhines power. Telling his loyal eight guards that they were to be cared for by his own physicians, Tharsaleos hid them and...and then he poisoned them. The king murdered his own trusting guards.” Ephoros’ voice dropped to a low whisper as if he found this incomprehensible—as if speaking it aloud frightened him. “Then he turned them into monsters, things that are dead, mostly dead, with their souls and life bound to his in slavery. His spells worked. With only a handful of pages open to him, Tharsaleos found a power beyond anything he had ever imagined. And he hungered for more.”

  “What happened to them—the eight trusted guards?” I whispered. “You can’t just kill people. What did he tell their families?”

  Ephoros went silent. “The king told all the seaborn, the Great House Council as well as the court that the eight died valiantly against the exile prince of Rexenor. That your father murdered them. He mourned with the whole city, and he wept, but inside the king is a monster. I will show you—in a short while—what happened to the Eight, but there is more to my brother’s tale.”

  I leaned back, going light-headed as Ephoros swung horizontal, bending over the lip of the canyon. We flew through the water, parallel with the deep plain, toward the glow on the horizon.

  “The book—with your father’s abilities revealed—was a turning point. King Tharsaleos knew then how House Rexenor had always escaped destruction. They had some of the old magic. And now he had some to use against them. He has spent years—your life’s span so far—studying a small piece of the book, and he knows some of its secrets. He has killed or enslaved anyone who knows of the book. He has grown dangerous with this power. He has warred on other noble houses that did not show him loyalty.”

  “Why couldn’t Ochleros tell me this?” I asked with some indignation. So far there was nothing that sounded offensive to my ears, nothing secret, although maybe it was the knowledge of the book.

  “Your father...” He started as if he hadn’t gotten to the difficult part yet, but the story had now come to that point on its own. “The king both hates and fears him. He wants to grind his bones into gravel, but at the same time, he somehow wants to make him an heir, to turn him into an ally. My brother said Gregor has not always been locked in the lithotomb. The king first tried to be friendly, but your father’s hatred for Tharsaleos runs to the core of his bones. The king threatened him and tortured him, used every deceit and method of pain against him. Broken and enslaved, your father did not give in.”

  I shook my head—or maybe it was Praxinos wanting me to. “Tharsaleos got the Telkhines book. False friendship doesn’t make sense. What does the king want from him?”

  “He wants the secrets your father holds and will never give up. More secrets from the pages. I have never seen it, but your mother knew Gregor had restored the ancient book, and that after Gregor’s disappearance, Tharsaleos was using something ancient and powerful. In the final days before the downfall of Rexenor, the king grew bolder and more controlling.

  “Ochleros said he had one glimpse of the book before he fell and was taken by the king. The letters are tiny and move over the pages as if they are alive—making the pages unreadable. The king can only read a small portion of the book, four or five pages at most, the ones Gregor had opened and sti
lled at the time he was captured. Just that small piece contained so much, but the king desires every page.

  “He tortured your father close to death, but Gregor gave him nothing. Tharsaleos is a cruel king and he devised all manner of punishments for the man who withheld from him the key to more power. He enslaved the Rexenor prince, and displayed him as a chained puppet at the seaborn court. Then the king had Gregor mutilated. They cut the skin from between his fingers and toes and sent him to the surface as a slave, a porthmeus—”

  “Porthmeus?” My head shot up at the word. I had never really thought of it as a name. I knew from Praxinos’ teaching that porthmeus meant someone who carried something from one place to another, but I also knew there was a deeper importance in the word.

  “What does it mean?”

  “A porthmeus is someone who is forced to work at the gulf between two worlds, a ferryman who carries things over a river or ford. The ancient boatman who ferries men from the shores of the living to the dead, Charon, is a porthmeus.”

  “What do they do for the seaborn, I mean?”

  “They are slaves. They do what they are told to do, and cannot do otherwise. King Tharsaleos has always given his slaves this name when he means to use them for this purpose. I believe this is a custom that began with his father, the old lord of House Dosianax.”

  The anger was humming in my bones. “I was meant to be a slave, Ephoros. The name in my school records is Porthmeus.”

  He rumbled agreement. “Tharsaleos is possessed with secrecy and isolation, and he is a master of spells for controlling others. In the past there were sufficient numbers of seaborn willing to go ashore—and return with information. But King Tharsaleos has changed this, and uses magic to enslave them, and make them do his bidding. He has many ferrymen, slaves who gather information from the surface world. He has one in every large port city in America, England and Hellas, and at least one in most other coastal nations of the world.”

  I was about to ask why America, England and Hellas, and come to think of it, why do the seaborn speak English at all? Why, when they—we—have our own language.

  Then Ephoros pointed off to his left. We were soaring over the edges of a deep-sea mountain range, and beyond that, the natural shapes blended with straight lines and angles not found in nature.

  “Nine-cities,” he said. “Of the Thalassogenêis. Many of the noble houses live within its walls.”

  In seconds, I was flying over outlying dwellings of the city, massive battlements with towers, palaces floating in the water over the city—cities in themselves, huge column-fronted buildings, houses with a hundred rooms and yards covered in branching hydroid growths, gardens of some sort of deep sea flowering worm. There were whole sections of the city that floated like blue spires of ice, hundreds of feet above the walls and towers fixed to the ocean floor. We crossed stretches of level ground that could have been farmland.

  I noticed that Ephoros avoided the walls of the Nine-cities, and I turned my focus on the center, just able to make out the silhouettes of bigger and taller buildings.

  The king’s palace.

  Ephoros remarked, “The waters around the city are empty. The outlying settlements are dark. They know.”

  “Know what?”

  Ephoros slowed down, thought better of it, and sped on. He seemed distracted by something. “The gates have been closed. Travelers can enter, but once they are inside, they will not be allowed to leave until the danger passes.”

  I stared over my shoulder. Scowling, I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “What danger?”

  Ephoros pointed at the mountains south of the city, and then soared away from the pale glow of the Nine-cities. We passed serrated ranges of rock, climbing out of the seafloor thousands of feet, and then falling away into round hills. Ephoros dove deeper, gliding a hundred feet above the rocks.

  Far off in the gloom, high sinister looking walls stretched to the edge of my sight. At first, I thought it was a vertically cut portion of a mountainside, but there was no mountain to carve there, and when the walls came clearly into view, I gasped.

  Another city? Huge blocks of evenly cut stone were stacked up by the millions, a hundred feet high and miles long. Nothing grew on the dark faces of the stones, and the surrounding terrain was barren. It looked dreary and ancient, but there wasn’t a stone block out of place. Towers rose twice as high as the walls at each corner.

  “It’s a fortress?” I dug my fingers in harder. Is that where King Tharsaleos lives?

  Then the taste of rot and death hit me, an ocean full of it.

  I choked back the sting of vomit. It burned up my throat, and I swallowed to force it down.

  “Where are you taking me?” I cried the words to wrench my focus away from another wave of sickness. My fingers were cold. I pulled in a deep lungful of the ocean, trying to fight the cycle of clenching muscles around my stomach.

  Ephoros didn’t answer, but shot vertical, following the wall so closely that I could lean forward, eyes squinting as I retched, and let my fingers brush the rough gray rock. When we reached the top, I found the walls were much thicker than I would have thought. You could drive a car along the top. Easily.

  Ephoros flew over the edge and slowed down. Half way across, he shuddered to a stop, gliding lower to let me jump from his shoulder to the stones. I drew my sword without a second thought.

  Don’t know if it was the stink or something else that drove me to my knees. This new attack hit me with an overpowering nausea. I glanced back at him, holding my breath, and then stepped closer to the inside edge, crouched down and peered into the center of battlements.

  I kicked away, skidded on my butt, rolled over, and vomited. A pale chunky cloud erupted mid-water from my mouth. I clawed and kicked backward over the stones, away from the edge, spitting chunks of semi-digested dinner. The sword’s blade rang against the cut rock surface, and the steady current swept away the heaved contents of my stomach.

  When I was sure I couldn’t fall in, I twisted around to look up at Ephoros.

  “Is—is that them?”

  “The Olethren,” he rumbled and nodded.

  I threw him a really nasty you-could-have-warned-me scowl, and then crawled carefully to the edge again, trying to hold the water still in my mouth.

  There was no central tower, castle keep. No buildings of any kind. And what was even stranger, there was no door. The walls rose from the ocean floor around what had to be several square miles of plain that stretched out from the foot of a jagged black mountain range.

  I staggered, gliding onto my back before catching my balance. Then lowered my sword because it seemed useless against what I saw and tasted in the water. The sword slipped from my hand and drifted away along with my armor and my courage.

  There were rows of soldiers, hundreds of thousands of them, standing still, all facing west. Some had armor, corroded and ancient bronze, dull iron sewn into overlapping bands. Some wore modern clothing, but worm eaten or burned.

  All of them were dead, some much longer than others. Shreds of skin hung off their shoulders and ribs like cobwebs. There was nothing but the shadow of the abyss in their empty eye sockets, but they stood straight, upright and still like soldiers at attention, bones wired together by some power beyond anything I understood.

  I blinked and tried to focus on them, following the rows of dead soldiers that stretched to the gloomy edge of what I could see clearly. Every one of them carried a weapon of some sort, their rotting skeletal hands around sword grips and mossy spear shafts. Some had hammers and rusty iron pipes.

  “The army is divided into eight groups,” I whispered to Ephoros. “See the aisles between their ranks?”

  What army? Praxinos’ shaking voice seemed to come from far away.

  Where has Ephoros taken you? Andromache demanded.

  “He has brought me to see the Olethren.”

  Dead silence in my head.

  “I never imagined there would be so
many. Each block has a hundred soldiers across and ten...one, two, three, four...twenty...” I went on counting. “...and what looks like three hundred down.”

  That is thir—

  “Thirty-thousand,” I whispered over Praxinos’ response. “And there are eight blocks. Three times eight is twenty-four...Two hundred and forty thousand!”

  It has grown considerably since my time, said Andromache slowly with an edge of sadness.

  And my grandfather, Polemachos defeated the Telkhines with a mere three thousand.

  I swam closer, trying to see along the aisles between the blocks of soldiers to the dim corners of the fortress. At the right corner of each block stood a taller more fearsome looking warrior with a new sword and an ornate metal-colored horn.

  As if he’d followed my gaze to those points, Ephoros said “You see what happened to the eight?”

  “Those are the royal guards? The oktoloi? The one’s Tharsaleos sent to capture my father?”

  “That is what is left of them...after the king was through. That is what I wanted you to see. After he did that to them, he reorganized the Olethren. They act as generals for this army.”

  I let my focus drop to the nearest of the king’s guards, tall, one bundle of his long dark hair remained, sticking out from under his helmet over the bones of his shoulder. Empty, soulless holes stared out above two tight rows of teeth that circled half his face.

  Ephoros pointed to the nearest. “That is—used to be—Lord Epandros, who was married to the king’s war-bard, Theoxena. I can only assume she does not know what became of him—and believed the king when he said her husband was killed by the Rexenor prince, your father.”

  Sheets of Epandros’ skin remained in places, fingers of muscle pulled across the joint of his jawbone, a lattice of gray tissue at his throat.

  I felt sadness, something winged and dark unfolding in my stomach. This is his reward for loyalty to my grandfather, the king, not a peaceful end to a life of bravery, but never ending slavery.