The plan was to try and sneak Tahlia and me out of Fomoria.
We knew where the wyrms were. The king had an enchanted map of the oceans that covered most of the gulf. A biologically luminescent ooze, taken from one of the many marine plants humans didn't know existed, was spread across the map. The signal from the beacons forced it into pools. These ooze puddles correlated with the energy signatures the beacons detected.
The larger the ooze glob, the stronger the energy.
Electric energies were differentiated from magical ones because the former bubbled in place while magical sources tended to swirl.
At least, that's how Agwe described it. Only Agwe and Titus had access to the king's personal quarters where the map was kept.
"Couldn't we wait until we know the king is distracted elsewhere?" I asked.
Agwe shook his head. "The ooze leaves a trail. It doesn't only show where any energy signatures are detected but based on the trails, the king will know if any moved within the area."
"Could you reset the map?" Tahlia asked. "Since you have access to it."
"That would cast suspicion on me," Agwe said. "The king insists he be the only one to reset the map, and he only does it rarely, when the glowing trails become too numerous to make the map readable. Plus, the ooze is almost impossible to remove. Resetting the map or cleaning it off requires the use of magic."
I shrugged. "How often does that happen? I mean, is the map cluttered enough now that we might be able to leave without it being obvious?"
Agwe grunted. "Unfortunately, he cleared the map shortly after you returned to Fomoria. I imagine he's paying special attention to ensure your compliance with his orders. He probably won't clear it again for months."
"Then you need to find cause to leave yourself, Agwe," Cleo said. "Have a mission approved and smuggle Joni and Tahlia out with you."
"It isn't uncommon to send novice legionnaires on reconnaissance missions," Agwe said, stroking his chin. "But we need the mission to take us closer to the wyrm than would be customary for reconnaissance. I'd also need to bring enough legionnaires that it wouldn't be obvious from the map that fewer returned to Fomoria than those who left from the start."
"What if I release magic into the water. I can siphon extra magic before we leave, release it into the water randomly as we approach the wyrm."
Agwe narrowed his eyes. "Might work. We'd need to channel the magic into vessels so we could drag it behind us to mimic the movement of legionnaires."
"But if you don't take anyone with you," Cleo asked, "won't the king be wise to it?"
Agwe shook his head. "There aren't generally any records kept for informal training or reconnaissance missions. We should be able to get away with it. But there's one other thing we'll need to do."
"What's that?" I asked.
"We need to make it look like the wyrms attacked. Draw it close enough so you and Tahlia can link up with a wyrm while we flee back to Fomoria."
"Is there any way to make sure the wyrm we're going after is the mother I communicated with before?" I asked.
Agwe pressed his lips together. "Perhaps, I'll be visiting the king later so we can evaluate their movements. Provided he hasn't cleared the map since the attack, we can trace the trails of the wyrms that were here. Hopefully, all three of them are still together. Otherwise, it'll be a guessing game."
MY HEART RACED. Don't get me wrong. I've never been an angel. But I've never been a troublemaker either—nothing on this scale. The bottom line was we were disobeying the king. The demigod who stood at his side, feigning his loyalty, was fixing to betray His Highness. There was both a nervousness and a thrill to what we were planning—an anxiety that was hard to shake.
Playing the rebel role, though, was only a part of what had me worked up.
I was getting ready to try and hitch-hike a ride to shore with the most intimidating creature I'd ever seen.
It was my idea... to use a wyrm to mask my magical signature to get back to land...
But I had to admit, while momma wyrm and I had a moment before, she still was what she was. Could I trust she'd trust me enough to help? Or, would she simply weigh risk versus reward and decide the pay-off of a good meal outweighed any help I might offer. I had to appeal to her not as a mermaid, not as a siphon who could draw on her power, not even as someone with a bit of a dragon's essence in her soul.
I had to appeal to her as a mother.
That was my best chance to pull this off.
Tahlia wrapped herself, in eel-form, around one of my arms.
Agwe led the way with Cleo and I swimming behind him.
I siphoned a little magic from the firmament and forced it into three large pieces of choral. According to Agwe, choral could hold enough magic to mimic a merperson's magical signature. On the king's map, it was enough to show what would look like the reconnaissance mission that Agwe had proposed.
Thankfully, the three wyrms the merlegion faced before were still together. Agwe saw them on his map. They were about five miles due north of Fomoria. Since I knew the momma wyrm I'd talked to before was a part of that bunch, I knew we'd find her if we headed that way.
Of course, merely moving in the right direction didn't guarantee we'd find them straight away.
The ocean is deep. They could be deeper or more shallow than we were swimming. Not to mention, by the time we arrived at the spot Agwe identified, there was a chance they would already be gone.
I scanned the waters all around—to my left and my right, up and down. We were getting close to where Agwe said we'd find them.
At least it felt like it. Not that I had any real sense for how long it took to swim for five miles.
Agwe stopped suddenly, raising his right arm—which was apparently a signal we should stop, too.
He peered intently into the deep. It's hard to see in the ocean, outside of Fomoria.
Mermaids don't have much better eyesight than humans. In my limited experience, the only difference is the ocean's saltwater didn't bother my eyes while in mermaid form.
"Did you see something?" I asked.
"Shh," Agwe said, turning while making the universal shushing gesture with his index finger across his pursed lips.
We floated there for at least a minute in silence.
Agwe backed up toward me. "Can you reach out to her like you did before?"
"With the dragon's essence?" I asked.
Agwe nodded. "I believe she's down there. She's hiding in the darkness."
I nodded. I wasn't sure why she was hiding. We weren't really a threat. And the last time I encountered her, not to mention the time she and her two compatriots approached Fomoria, they weren't at all timid. I tried to focus my mind. It wasn't easy to do. I wasn't even sure how I'd done it before. It was sort of like trying to tune an old school radio, one of those with a round tuning knob, to find a station when you were on the fringes of the reach of the radio station's signal. Only in this case, it wasn't like I had a dial I could easily turn. It was all in my mind, which, as is often the case, tends more towards erratic rather than focused thoughts.
To make it more challenging, if she didn't want to be found, it didn't matter how much I tried. She could ignore me.
I took a deep breath. I tried to clear my mind of everything except my memory of the momma wyrm's voice. I imagined the tenor of her voice from before. A soft voice quaking in desperation. She was in a panic. She was looking for her baby. Presumably, she was still.
Are you there? I asked through my mind.
Silence.
It's me... I've come to help... I heard you before.
It felt like a thirty-second pause. It was probably close to ten seconds but, when you're waiting to hear a voice in a void, time seems to slow down.
I'm here, she eventually replied. Her voice was even more somber than before.
I want to help you find your baby, I said. But I'll need your help, too.
Another drawn-out pause. How can you help me? And one of
them with you, he was there... before... outside of the city.
I took a deep breath. He's here to help, too.
I don't believe you, the wyrm snapped, this time without so much as a half-second delay. He was the one who commanded the soldiers, the ones who hurt my mate.
Is that why you're hiding, I asked. Is he hurt?
No response.
"Any luck?" Cleo asked.
I nodded. "Her husband was wounded when the legion fought them off outside of Fomoria. She's reluctant to help."
Cleo clocked her head. "I wasn't aware these creatures married."
I shrugged. "Do any of us know anything about these creatures?"
"Apparently not," Cleo said. "I'm not entirely sure it will work. Since these creatures are very different, they come from another plane entirely. But what if I can help him?"
"Can you do that?" I asked.
"I'm a priestess. It's what I do. If the wyrm has a spirit... it should work."
I nodded. In Fomoria, priests and priestesses weren't religious leaders. They were spiritual healers and ceremonial figureheads. Cleo, in fact, was one of the clerics who helped heal Merlin. It was fascinating, really. The Fomorian approach to magic was about vivifying the body's own natural healing processes. It didn't utilize drugs or surgery but relied on the individual's spirit to help the body heal itself—no matter whether it be the spirit of a mermaid, human, or apparently a wyrm.
I've brought a healer, a priestess. She can help your husband. I didn't know for sure if "husband" was the right word. She'd called him her mate. But using the word "mate" felt too animalistic. I was trying to humanize the wyrm. Not that she wanted to be human. But it was as much for my sake as anything else. If I thought of her as something more akin to a human than a wild animal, it eased my worries that she'd snap and make a meal of me.
He can't make it to you. He's too weak...
Is he lying on the ocean floor? I asked.
Yes... please help.
"Sounds like he's in bad shape. We need to swim down there."
"Are you sure that's wise?" Agwe asked. "If we heal him, will he fight back?"
I shook my head. "I'm as sure as I can possibly be. I know if we want her help, we aren't getting it unless we help her husband. She isn't going to leave him here alone."
"What of the other one?" Agwe asked. "There were three here, before."
I shrugged. "I don't know. She didn't mention the third."
"Ask her," Agwe said. "The coral will help illuminate the waters around us, but it won't be much. We'll still be vulnerable."
I nodded.
There was another one... I said to the wyrm through my mind. A third who was with you before. ..
My mate's sister, the momma wyrm replied. She won't hurt you. She just doesn't trust you.
"They're all family," I said. "The other wyrm is the sister of the one who is wounded. She won't hurt us."
Agwe nodded. "Very well. Joni, have your trident ready just in case."
11
THE GLOWING PIECES of choral illuminated the form of three wyrms as we descended into the deeper waters.
Their bodies of the three, though, were tangled up like pasta in a spaghetti bowl. I wondered how they didn't tie themselves in knots. If it wasn't for the fact that I knew there were three of them, apart from trying to find the heads of each of them, there wouldn't be a way to know how many we were dealing with.
Which one is your husband? I asked.
The one that isn't moving...
Can you move away from him, so our priestess can heal him?
If we move away from him, he bleeds... when he bleeds, the sharks come after him...
"They're using their bodies to compress his wound, so he doesn't bleed," I told Cleo. "She says his blood was drawing the sharks."
"I need to access the open wound so I can direct the wyrm's spirit to heal it," Cleo said. "With all their other bodies, it will be virtually impossible to focus on his spirit."
"I'll handle the sharks," Agwe said. "Make sure Cleo has the space she needs."
I nodded. We will take care of the sharks... but our priestess can't help heal him."
After about ten seconds of silence, the momma wyrm finally replied. If he dies...
He won't die. We can save him. I was pretty sure the wyrm was about to threaten to turn us into her dinner if we failed. If by directing them to leave him be, he bled out into the ocean. I might have spoken out of turn. After all, Cleo did say her ability to heal the wyrm was contingent on whether the wyrms had spirits. Since these creatures came from the void, since they predated creation itself... well, I didn't know how sure of a bet that was. But Cleo did manage to heal Merlin—and he was in dragon form, the shape of another creature that predated the heavens and the earth. Of course, Merlin had a spirit of his own. He had been consummated as a human. He'd only shifted to dragon form in my womb when I was cursed...
But I didn't think through all of that until after I guaranteed the momma wyrm we'd succeed.
It was a gamble, at best.
I was afraid I'd misjudged my betting odds.
I went from complete confidence to life-shattering doubt in less than two seconds. Next time, if there was going to be a next time when I had the chance to risk two of my better friend's lives, I'd have to think before I opened my mouth.
As the two healthy wyrms moved away from the injured one, a cloud of red blood poured into the water. Agwe, gripping his trident, stood guard. That much blood... perhaps not a lot relative to the size of the wyrm was nonetheless enough it wouldn't take long for the sharks to begin to circle.
Cleo swam through the bloodied waters. She had to touch the injured wyrm. She had to find the wound.
"I might need your help," Agwe said as he gestured with his trident to the waters above. Three hammerheads were already circling our position.
"I hate sharks," I said.
Agwe shrugged. "It's not their fault they are what they are. They smell food. Would you act much differently if you were hungry?"
I chuckled. Nothing smelled better than my gran's chicken fried steak... with white gravy... my absolute favorite. When she was cooking that stuff up, I'd circle like a shark, too. I'd devour it just as quickly.
Those thoughts weren't comforting. If these sharks had half the motivation I did when circling my gran in the kitchen...
Can you help us keep the sharks away? I asked momma wyrm.
Yes...
I wasn't exactly sweating it before—but that was only because I was underwater. I wouldn't know it if I was. But having the wyrm commit to defending our position gave me more confidence.
Presuming Cleo was successful...
If not, we'd have sharks on one side, the wyrms on the other... and they'd be fighting for us like the last piece of square pizza in a school cafeteria.
Their numbers were growing. Three hammerheads soon turned to six... then more...
I stopped counting. All I knew was it was more than we could fend off without the wyrm.
"I really hope Cleo can do this," Agwe said.
I nodded, gripping my trident tightly as I scanned the growing swarm of sharks. "Do you have any doubt?"
Agwe turned and looked at me blankly. "We're talking about creatures from the void... when a Loa is killed... that's where we go."
"You go into the void?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "I thought the void was ... nonexistence."
Agwe shook his head. "It's an entirely different kind of existence. If it was nonexistence, there wouldn't be wyrms. Or dragons. From your perspective, it would seem like nothingness. But it is very real. In its own way."
"And based on your experience, you don't think the wyrms have spirits that can heal their bodies?" I asked.
Agwe bit his lip. "If they do, it's not the same kind of spirit you're thinking of. As different as existence is, as you know it, from the nothingness of the void."
I shook my head. "I really don't know how to wrap my mind around t
hat."
"Of course you wouldn't," Agwe said. "You've always existed. You don't have the experience. The languages of the earth don't have words capable of describing such a place."
"Or non-place?" I asked.
"Right..."
I nodded. "You've got this, right?"
Agwe stared at me blankly.
"I mean, these are sharks. You're basically a god."
"My body is most definitely perishable," Agwe said. "From the sharks' perspective, I'm edible."
I slapped Agwe on the back. "Glad to know you've got this one handled."
Then I dove down into the cloud of blood. I don't know how I knew it. But with the dragon's essence inside of me, how I'd used it to speak with the momma wyrm before...
Cleo needed my help.
I didn't know how to direct a spirit to heal the body it inhabits.
But I did know how to connect to a wyrm's spirit. If I could do that... and if Cleo could then direct the wyrm's spiritual energy to heal its wound...
It was just a theory. Sure, I left Agwe outnumbered against the sharks. But if there were a hundred hammerheads to two of us, were the odds that much better? Considering that Agwe knew the ins and outs of sea warfare and was a demigod himself, he wasn't much worse off fending for himself than if one of us stayed with him.
I didn't add much to his chances against the sharks.
But I might make all the difference helping Cleo.
The bloodied waters burned my lungs as I swam to the ocean floor. Most of the blood billowed into a mushroom-shaped cloud above the wyrm's position. It was easier to breathe right next to the wyrm, near its wound, than it was in the waters just above. I looked back. I couldn't see through the blood to Agwe.
I hoped he'd be okay. He was a Loa, a demigod. Surely he could handle a few sharks, right? He didn't seem so sure. We had to act fast.
"How is it going?" I asked as I approached Cleo.
She shook her head. "There is a spirit here, but it's altogether different than any animal spirit I've ever encountered."
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 34
