by Chris Howard
“I am the Wreath-wearer.” I started, and because I wanted to tell this woman everything—just wanted to open up my mind and let her have it all, the words came out faster than I could explain them. “I grew up in Nebraska. I met Ephoros. He came from a tear—which are doorways. Lady Kallixene and her soldiers are helping me defend St. Clement’s from the Olethren.”
“Kallix—? Olethren!”
“Clement’s is a school—more like a prison. That’s where King Tharsaleos put me. Praxinos wanted me to use magic against them and Andromache taught me how to use a sword so I can fight them. I used both and more. I’m using science. The dead army’s attacking right now, but their bones are full of water. I had this great idea that I got from my science teacher, Mr. Henderson. Water freezes, and if it freezes quickly and in the right way, it can break their bones, hollow but full of water, cracking them open like metal pipes in winter. Four naiads are helping me with the storm, and Ephoros is here and his brother, Ochleros. And father is here at the school, imprisoned still. We can’t find him. Fenhals—he’s an agent of the king—locked him away somewhere.”
“Gregor!” The name burst from Ampharete’s lips, almost a question.
“Yeah, I went to the lithotombs with Ephoros and we talked to Ochleros who was a slave of the king then, and he told us that father had been imprisoned there. I knew he was there because the naiads sent me a dream of him. He remade the Telkhines book and then the king caught him. He’s been a prisoner of the king all these years.”
Ampharete blinked, trying to catch up. “And what of Zypheria?”
I shook my head, my mouth opening, my lungs pulling in more of the sea. “Your maid? I don’t know what happened to her.”
“My soldier. My sister. Zypheria was always stronger. More than a maid. I spent my strength helping a Rexenor mage call the porthmeus, and we raised an island so that Zypheria could deliver you to the surface, away from the king. I ended my life, gave up the Wreath and passed everything on to you. I stayed behind to hold the door against the Olethren with the few minutes of life left to me. Zypheria fled with you through the tunnels beneath the Rexenor fortress. The old paths cut deep into the mountains and climb to the peaks where there are gates hidden and covered with coral meshes and concealing spells. I gave Tharsaleos’ porthmeus instructions to deliver you to...to...I don’t remember. Elizabeth, I think. She’s a surfacer, but she knows who we are.”
Ampharete looked puzzled. “We had always thought the king was unaware that we could use his own agents and slaves, sending them commands. But perhaps he had discovered we could do this? He knew of Zypheria and he almost certainly had her put to death.”
So much death and destruction. My first question shot right to the top. “Then how did I survive?”
I hugged my mother tighter. Ampharete continued, but with care as if navigating a field of traps. “He must not have suspected you had the Wreath or he would have killed you outright. And you were too young for it to reveal itself to anyone. That part of the plan did not fail.”
“Until now,” I whispered, and the sound carried around the ocean, snapping and angling off the cliffs in the abyss.
Ampharete let me go, looking over my shoulder. “Someone approaches.”
I turned, following her gaze. Two glowing human shapes glided from a cave entrance along the opposite wall.
“Kassandra?” It was Andromache.
“What are you doing here?” Praxinos said, panic in his voice. He stared at me, with eyes narrowed against the glare. “You are the wearer. You cannot...” His voice slowed to a halt. “Unless you have...”
I started to shake my head. The thought “I’m not yet dead” started toward my lips. Then something else had plans for me.
My hands slapped to my sides, a tug at my neck, another behind my navel, drawing my head back. My hair coiled and pulled me toward the dark mirror door.
Whatever power being used to keep me here had died or had been withdrawn. I flew helplessly toward the tunnel entrance, leaving the three awakened Wreath-wearers in their own glows and shadows.
“Something’s happening,” I managed to get out, and the three of them bent with their hands over their ears.
“I’m losing my place here, being pulled back.”
I shot through the water backward, went right through the glass doorway into the tunnel, heels catching on the threshold. I tumbled on the stone, landed on my butt, throwing up a few gallons of seawater.
“Kassandra?” My mother’s cry came through the mirror door, something in her voice trying to pull me back.
“Kassandra!”
I coughed and swallowed against the burn in my throat.
Behind me, down the dark tunnel, I heard Kallixene and Phaidra, and then a man’s concerned voice. They were calling me, alarmed voices coming sharply through a roar of battle noise, more shouting, and then the rumbling and rush of seawater.
I couldn’t control the movement of my legs, or I was too weak to stop the robotic steps walking me straight back to the pool in the center of the Wreath.
The voices called again, and then I was running through the tunnel without a look back. The white marble faded into somber stone. I tried to answer them, but could only open my mouth and make gasping noises.
A full sprint by the time I reached the tunnel’s end, and then three long steps and I was diving off the edge into the spiral of water.
I closed my eyes, holding my hands out defensively. The current dragged me to the center and pulled me through.
Chapter 31 - The Maid of Ampharete
I coughed and sat up, blinding light in my eyes, and a heavy weariness in my body. Someone’s hands gripped my shoulders, propping me up, and someone else was wrapping a wet cloth around my knee—bleeding all over the concrete St. Clement’s steps apparently.
“She’s awake.” It was Phaidra.
Covering my eyes, I opened my fingers a bit to see the world again. More figures crowded around me, blocking out the sky.
Lady Kallixene, Phaidra, a bunch of soldiers from House Rexenor. Parresia was there, and Mr. Henderson looking totally ridiculous in a helmet, and saying something about how glad he was that he’d lost his glasses and had not been able to see the Olethren clearly.
“But the battle.” I tried to get up. Phaidra shoved me back. “I can hear it.”
“Rest now, my lady.”
But the battle was still raging, the grinding of bones and dirt and the creak of rusted armor. “What is that noise?”
“Ochleros is cleaning up. He and some of his kin are dragging the remains of the army of King Tharsaleos back to the sea.”
“Anger in him, like only the immortals can express,” one of the Rexenor soldiers said.
“But what happened?” I stared up at them, still blinking stupidly. “What happened to the Olethren?”
“Your storm worked, girl,” said Parresia—not very happy, but with that same edge of admiration that Mrs. Vilnious managed to get into her voice when you had just the right answer.
I saw the similarity clearly now. Mrs. Vilnious was very much like Parresia, only grayer and older, and there were other mannerisms she shared with Limnoria and Helodes. And when you didn’t finish your homework, a little bit of sharp-toothed Olivia showed itself.
“You nearly killed us, though,” said Limnoria from behind me, shaking her head and grinning at the same time.
“That army marched many miles through the rivers, and fresh water has a higher freezing point. Their bones were hollow and full of water,” said Mr. Henderson. “The way you started with a gradual decrease in temperature sealed their fate. The water in them turned slushy, wouldn’t drain, and when you hit them all at once with a blast of cold that must have been forty or fifty degrees below zero. They...” He paused, searching for a word, but ended up shrugging and going with, “Exploded.”
“I saw the cold coming at us like a rolling tide, a rippling in the Thin,” said Phaidra. “Mother saw it too and called the r
etreat. In seconds it was on them, smothering them in cold, shattering their bones. That was their end. The Olethren broke into pieces.”
“They flew into the air, fragments of sharp bone flying,” said one of the Rexenor soldiers, his gaze following some destructive trail that led up the walls of St. Clement’s. “Broke most of the windows in your school. We shielded you six from the rain of bone.”
Six? I frowned. Four naiads, me and...Ephoros.
“Where is Ephoros?”
As if in answer to my question, the grinding of Ochleros’ cleanup died down, and everyone around me moved back.
I got to my feet, grabbing Phaidra for balance, stepping between Mr. Henderson and Parresia to get to the front. There were others like Ochleros, rolling human-shaped walls of water with huge claws, dragging mountains of bones and weapons and armor into the river, and then all the way down to the sea.
Ochleros, like a rocket driven cloud, soared over the wide stretch of barren earth that led to St. Clement’s. He slowed, drifted over the vehicles still barricading the entrance and slid through the air to stand in front of me, his hands pulled into fists the size of compact cars.
“Lady Kassandra,” he rumbled and bowed.
Then his right arm extended and his fingers unfolded. He pulled in his massive claws until short icy spikes stood up from his fingertips. In the center of his open hand was a large, thick book. Letters in black ink floated in clusters over its surface like tide-taken debris from a shipwreck.
I reached for it but stopped when I heard the book humming a song. The dull drone turned into a whisper, and a pattern of tones emerged, a song of weeping and pain. The cover thumped and snapped tighter.
“You will have to make peace with the Telkhines before one of their books will allow itself to be read by you, an Alkimides.”
I reached out and picked it up, taking a quick step forward to keep my balance. The book was heavy, full of water and dense with powers I knew nothing about.
I backed up, put my bare feet together formally, and bowed.
Ochleros hesitated and then opened his left hand to show me a tiny lump of gold with a small plate, my bracelet.
I froze, looking up at Ochleros. “Where’s Ephoros?”
“He is dead, Wreath-wearer. The king’s war-bard Theoxena attacked us in the Nine-cities. It weakened him to the point where he could not recover.”
“But...”
“The ocean is a living thing, every drop of it. You know something of this, so your science teacher tells me. My brother has rejoined the life of the sea. He has paid his debt, and is at peace.”
“But I thought...I thought he couldn’t...” Dizzy, I started down a blind alley of questions, but ended angry. I heard Andromache and Praxinos shouting questions in my head, and then Ampharete joined them. The rage wanted off its leash.
“Deathless?” I shouted at Ochleros.
“Deathless, he can die, princess.” He bowed again. “He returned to you what he failed to give your mother.”
“He owed me nothing. I owed him my life.” The weariness hit me again, and Helodes grabbed me before I fell. I tucked the book under my arm, picked up my bracelet and slipped it on my wrist.
Ochleros rose to his full height and extended his claws. His head bent down to me.
“It is your turn now, Wreath-wearer. Please hold out your hand. Your ancestor, King Polemachos saved me once from the slavery of the Telkhines king. Ephoros was our king and swore his allegiance to Polemachos and all his Wreath-wearing descendents. Time passed, although it is brief for the oceans. Again, I found myself bound to the King of the Seaborn, enthralled and forced into demeaning and cruel labors. Again, an Alkimides helped release me. I am now king. I owe you a debt that is deathless. Only in my dying may I be released from it.”
He swept a broad transparent hand through the air, indicating the cleanup work in the distance. “My brothers and sisters have carried your dead to your village, Lady Kallixene, for proper rites.” He bowed his head to her, and then turned back to me. “The remains of the Eight—Epandros and the other royal guards betrayed by King Tharsaleos will be honored properly. They fought valiantly alongside me against Lord Gregor because we had been deceived into thinking him an enemy. The names of all the others, the many thousands that made up the Olethren, I know not. We will honor them by laying them to rest. My brothers and sisters will take them back to the sea and depart when they are done.”
Ochleros bowed once more and folded in on himself, spiraling into a thin cloud that vanished in a small watery bead in the palm of my hand. I stared at it for a second, feeling the curious eyes of everyone around me. I tilted my head back and let it slide into the corner of my eye. A jolt of pain shot through my head, and the bead snapped into my tear duct.
“My lady?” One of the Rexenor soldiers stumbling from the school, bowed to Kallixene and motioned her to come with him “I—”
“What is it? My son has been found?” she said hopefully.
“No, milady.” The soldier glanced at me. “It is the woman we rescued from the Olethren.” His face had gone white.
After surviving the Olethren, what could possibly do that?
“She split...Forehead into pieces...” He stammered something that none of us understood. “She melted. Underneath is another woman.”
“Matrothy?” I whispered.
The gathering moved inside the school, along the hall to the administration offices. Some drew their swords. Strangely, there were no teachers or anyone else from St. Clement’s in sight. Even the scowling admin ladies behind the counter were gone.
I followed my grandmother, the water-heavy book tucked under my arm.
The Rexenors had carried the director of the girl’s department past the counter and set her down next to a desk along the back wall.
The woman who sat up, wearing Matrothy’s gray skirt and fishing vest was not Matrothy. She clutched at the clothing, several sizes too big for her. The facade of Matrothy had melted away, leaving a sloppy pool of foamy colors, like various flavors of ice cream set out in the sun too long. Lumps of graying blond hair stuck up through it like a dead rat.
“Zypheria?” I gasped. The name burst out of me before I could think. I didn’t know what Zypheria looked like, but I knew this was her. Maybe I felt my mother’s influence, seizing some part of my thoughts as Andromache had with sword practice and Praxinos had with ancient Greek lessons.
The woman stood up, holding one hand out in front of her face, fingers spread, staring at them as if she didn’t recognize them—or remembered them but never expected to see them again. Her sandy brown hair was pulled into loose fuzzy braids that twined together down her back. The hollows of her cheeks and the haunted look in her storm gray eyes made her look like a refugee. Some of the original tone remained in her skinny arms, enough to tell me that they had once been muscular. The webbed fingers of her other hand clutched at the dark skirt and vest, holding them to her body too tightly, as if she had been denied the sense of touch for years.
“Who?” Her voice faded. She sounded nothing like Ms. Matrothy. Her eyes focused on the hall and the gathering of seaborn, then dropped to me. “Who are you?”
I didn’t answer at once because I was listening to the voices in my head. I blinked and focused on the woman. “Ampharete is crying. She thanks you, Zypheria.”
She leaned forward to study me as if she had never been able to see what I looked like, only see me through someone else’s eyes. “Lady Kassandra? You look like your mother when she was a girl.” She hardly paused, put a finger to the side of her head. “Lady Ampharete is awake, inside, I mean?”
I took an awkward step forward, then rushed to the woman and hugged her, pinning her arms to her sides—with the Telkhines book squeezed in between us.
“You saved me, Zypheria.” Couldn’t keep the shudder out of my voice.
“No.” Zypheria leaned her head back as if rejecting something. “I failed, my lady. I failed you, child. They caug
ht us. Me in a deep basin west of the Rexenor fortress and you...” She shook her head. “The porthmeus took you from the unfixed rock your mother and the mage created...Then he failed. The king’s agents caught him.”
I let go and stepped back. The one answer I needed from Ampharete’s maid, soldier, sister, shot to the front of the line. “How did you get here?” I pointed to the oily colors smearing the floor. “I mean Matrothy...”
“It broke because you saved me, my lady,” she whispered, her voice fragile and fearful, looking at her feet covered in the painted remains of some sorcerer’s stew.
“Matrothy?”
Zypheria looked up slowly. “Your mother, the Lady Ampharete, made a pact, a secret covenant with me, that if King Tharsaleos sent his armies and Rexenor was to fall, she would pass on the Wreath to you.”
“But that would mean she would die.”
“She was forced to. Better by her own hand than by the king’s dead army, and the king didn’t know whose daughter you were. If he suspected you were Lady Ampharete’s daughter, you would have been killed. They would have dashed out your brains right then. But he and his agents thought you were mine. The king did not know the Wreath had survived. He thought its power had gone out of the world when he had Lady Pythias murdered.”
“If he didn’t think I had the Wreath why did he have spies at St. Clement’s watching over me?”
“A king always has need of slaves, a porthmeus in every port. He also knew you were an Alkimides, and that some of the slain found at the Rexenor fortress wore Alkimides bracelets. I think he has a deep mistrust of our house, but the Alkimides contains the royal line and he couldn’t start killing us without civil war.” Her gaze went cold. “I know he had no idea you wore the Wreath. He never found out that your mother received it from Pythias.”
One of the Rexenor guards stepped to her side and held out a blanket for Zypheria. I frowned at the gray skirt and vest that enveloped the woman’s scrawny figure. Zypheria looked like a child playing in a giantess’s wardrobe.
And the oozing lumps of spongy material and fluid at the woman’s feet—what the hell is that stuff? Zypheria followed my gaze.
