A Kingdom Beneath the Waves

by Bowles, David;

  “Got it. I’ll try not to annoy her. Too much, anyway.”

  There wasn’t time for a lot of talk after that because the castellan soon whistled the command for departure, and it was back to the Olympic swimming.

  Six hours into the trek, the monks indicated it was time to slip over the rim of the trench and approach the elemental’s abode.

  Johnny’s eyes widened as he saw it—a complex and massive façade carved into the very rock, unlike anything human hands had ever crafted. There were strange twisting and tapering columns along a jutting and intricately carved semi-circular portico. Beyond this spiraling entrances had been set in a ring around a bas-relief image of a god with goggle eyes and vampire teeth. The structure was overgrown with pale green plants, but Johnny glimpsed through their vine-like leaves many strange runes, most suggesting themes of water, rain, salt and sacrifice.

  “We have guided you hence,” one of the monks announced nervously, “but we will not remain. May the goddess keep and protect you forever.”

  With that, their temporary guides turned and swam away.

  Archmage Tenamic regarded the façade with a sober expression. “An ancient temple of Tlaloc, god of rain and therefore all water, ruler of Tlalocan. He was sovereign of the world during the Third Age, which he destroyed in rage. We fear him, though our worship is directed at his consort, Matlalcueyeh.”

  “So this is like a kid getting kicked out of his house by his dad and then living in one of the family’s previous houses with a big portrait of the old man hanging in the living room. Great. This elemental is pretty nuts.”

  Ana agreed. “We should be cautious and try to draw the ahuah out.”

  “And what if it refuses?” Mihuah asked. “Castellan Nalquiza, we should enter without delay. Why else have you driven us here with such haste?”

  Carol looked like she was about to object, but the castellan unsheathed her long dagger and made a decisive gesture. “Lady Mihuah is right. The abbot assured us this creature would provide the information we require. Hesitation is unnecessary.”

  Not very diplomatic of your friend, there. Be ready for anything, Johnny warned.

  Totally.

  They swam between the dizzying columns into the portico, which curved up on either side into a bowl shape. Closer up, Johnny could make out bits of jade and emerald worked into the volcanic greenstone of the structure.

  Fits with the weedy plants growing all over it, Johnny thought.

  Then, as they reached the largest of the openings, those pale plants whipped out at the company, twining around them tightly. Johnny’s first thought was to shapeshift, but his arms were pinned, so he couldn’t get to his bracelet. He jerked his head up at Carol, who had bent her mouth to her necklace and was touching the tip of her tongue to a scale. With a glittering flash, she became a school of viperfish, slipping free of the trap easily and spreading out to start gnawing on the vines that trapped the rest.

  Come one, Johnny, she cried into his mind. Your Green Magic, dude!

  He closed his eyes and reached into the plants with savage magic. As he did so, he felt another presence leave them, alarmed by his intrusion. Johnny pulled at the vines, snapping them where Carol had weakened the stems.

  A frond had wrapped itself around Ana’s neck and was squeezing tighter. Tugging it away with a quick twist of his hand, he grew suddenly furious. Savage magic surged within him; he gave a snarling groan and tore all the plants away from the temple, sending them drifting off into the darkness below.

  “We should’ve listened to Ana,” he said to the rest, moving between them and the entrance as they checked themselves and their supplied. “We can’t go in there. Who knows what kind of crazy traps are waiting?”

  The viperfish swam toward him together and became Carol’s siren form again. “He’s right.”

  Tenamic drew near to the twins and raised his staff. Its glow intensified, causing strange shadows to dance on the rock. “O Lord of Water,” he called. “Forgive our intrusion. We have come to pay our respects and beg a bit of wisdom. Pray, grant us a moment of your attention.”

  For a moment nothing happened, and Johnny prepared himself to ask in a much ruder way. But then a green iridescence shimmered in the dark interior of the temple, growing brighter and brighter until something at last emerged.

  It was a translucent sphere, two meters in diameter. At its center Johnny could make out the source of the light—an emerald the size of his fist that radiated a steady green energy.

  After bobbing before them for a few seconds, the sphere contracted and reshaped itself, taking on the form of an androgynous triton. Its “skin” grew slightly more opaque and textured, and the emerald’s light shimmered hotly in the creature’s goggle eyes and more transparent chest.

  “Shapeshifting twins,” it said in a voice that seemed to come from every direction, as if the sea itself were speaking. “Wielders of the savage magic that saves and damns. I had not thought to look upon your like again, you children of capricious fate.”

  “The surprise is mutual,” Johnny quipped. “Though I’m kind of pissed you attacked my friends just now, Ms. Pseudopod. Or Mister, whatever.”

  “You may call me Xomalloh.”

  Carol came closer. “I’m Carol. My brother is Johnny. With us are—”

  “None of them matter,” the elemental declared, “except the mage.” With a gesture like a conductor striking up an orchestra, it lifted a shimmering, blurry barrier that the castellan beat her fists against futilely.

  The court sorcerer lowered his staff in deference. “I am Tenamic, Lord Xomalloh.”

  “As well you know, I am no Lord of Water. I am one of the Fatherless, stripped of authority, expelled from paradise.”

  “Still,” Johnny said, “you’re pretty powerful and you know a lot. We need directions, and at least one goddess suggested you could help.”

  The elemental appeared to think this over for a moment. “I see. It is unexpected that I should find favor with one of the Lofty. So be it. Ask me, mages.”

  Carol spoke without hesitation. “We need to get to Atlan, Xomalloh. Can you guide us somehow?”

  It stretched out its arms, clutching fingers at the water, which coalesced into glowing weapons, a sword and spear that Johnny was willing to bet would cause serious damage despite being made out of liquid.

  “What do you seek in that damned and broken domain?”

  “It’s not what we seek that’s the problem, dude. It’s what the army of monsters and psycho mermen are trying to recover. The Shadow Stone. And we’ve got to stop them. You get why, right?”

  “How could I not comprehend?” The elemental’s voice rang hollow with something like anguish. “I was there, human. One of the tlaloqueh tasked with guarding the civilization emerging on that island continent. When Quelel Huetzo strode from the bowels of Mictlan with that dark gem gripped grimly in her hands, we did nothing, convinced that the emperor, noble Epan Napotza, would reason with her, persuade her to turn away from that dire path. If he failed, had we not given unto his hands a mighty nahualcuahuitl, a sorcerer’s staff carved from the very wood of the World Tree? Surely he would vanquish her, we believed, electing to remain impartial, as was the will of Quetzalcoatl concerning human affairs.”

  Carol reached out tentatively. Before Johnny could stop her, she had laid her hand on its glassy skin. Its weapons melted back into the water as she softly spoke. “But he didn’t, did he? She wouldn’t listen, and they were too equally matched.”

  A hint of black wormed around in Xomalloh’s emerald heart for the briefest of seconds. “Even then some of us might have intervened, might have saved many lives. But I held my companions fast, halting their interference. We watched as Atlan sundered and sank in a cataclysm that rivaled the ending of an age. For this inaction were we expelled by our father Tlaloc, the Giver, the Green One. Therefore are we the Fatherless, and I the most reviled of our number here in the Deep.”

  Johnny tried to imagi
ne the loneliness and despair, to be all alone with the weight of so much death and the memory of such rejection for tens of thousands of years.

  “Gah,” he muttered. “That really sucks, Xomalloh. And I know you don’t want a repeat of it. So help us.”

  “Very well, human. Understand that the way is blocked for the Fatherless; not even our thoughts can contemplate the route to those ruins. But there was once a kingdom of tlacamichimeh here when ice clogged the seas, before your kind clambered from the savagery into which it had descended after Atlan’s fall. Those man-fish raided the seven cities time and time again, and they built a series of waystations to guide and ease them on their piratical way. There is one nearby, a half-day’s journey south, on the floor of the trench. Inside, you will find the knowledge you seek.”

  Tenamic gave a respectful salute. “We thank you, Xomalloh. Your aid will save many lives.”

  “May the gods wish it so, Mage. One thing is clear to me—the Shadow Stone has not been wielded. I know the taste of its bleak power. I would sense even here if anyone were to attempt its use.”

  The elemental slashed a limb through the dark water, and the barrier dissolved into nothing.

  “Now, leave me to my fate, short-lived and fortunate fools. I no longer can bear the sight of others.”

  With that, Xomalloh collapsed back into its spherical shape and return to the cavernous darkness of the temple’s interior.

  Tenamic relayed the new information to Castellan Nalquiza, while Captain Xicol, Ana and Mihuah listened intently.

  “And this explains a lot,” Johnny said. “I’d been thinking, hmm, Maxaltic’s got a huge head start on us, like six weeks or so. What if he already has the stone? But then I was also like—well, the massive flood hasn’t started, yet, so maybe he hasn’t found it yet.”

  Mihuah’s eyes gleamed with understanding. “It must have taken him quite some time to gather his army; it seems reasonable that he is only now beginning to search for the stone.”

  “Good.” The castellan rubbed her scar thoughtfully, adjusted the strap of her helm. “We can reach it before him. My scouts have found a suitable place for a camp—an escarpment a few dozen rods south. There we shall sleep for a half-watch before approaching the waystation. If we encounter resistance, we need to be well rested and ready.”

  The others were visibly relieved. Johnny nodded, but he wasn’t sure he’d get much shut-eye. He was too pumped-up, itching for action.

  Here we come, Maxaltic. Closer and closer, dude.

  Chapter Ten

  Carol watched her brother surge ahead, swimming between Enehnel and another guard. She was glad to see him looking up to the older tritons, even if his anxiousness to get into a battle worried her.

  To divert her attention, she glanced at Archmage Tenamic, who swam a little above Mihuah and her, holding out his staff to illuminate the dark waters of the Deep.

  “How does it work?”

  The sorcerer turned his white eyes toward her. “My staff? Ah. To understand, you must first know that all Blessed Creatures—humans, merfolk, Little People, giants, and the rest—possess three souls. The everlasting part of us is our teyolia, our spirit, which lives on beyond our deaths, released into paradise and finally the unknown destiny that lies beyond even that.”

  Carol remembered the trials of Mictlan, and the role of the Underworld. For some humans, it stripped away their earthly connections so that the spirit could move Beyond, free of burdens, through that beautiful well whose music still haunted her dreams.

  “You and your brother are intimately familiar with the second soul, the tonalli. At the moment of our birth, the teotl or divine energy of the universe begins to pour into us, infusing our blood and brains with a life force that resides both within us and without, subject to the whims of the gods who preside over our day signs, that astrological category into which we are born. In certain special individuals—Air Sages and naguales, for instance—this develops into a partly independent twin of our spirit.”

  “Like my tonal.”

  “Precisely. And the tonalli, given enough time—centuries, millennia—can acquire its own personality, as in the case of the gods.”

  “I see. That’s why Xolotl and Quetzacoatl aren’t exactly the same person.”

  “Yes. Even for the majority of people, the tonalli is a capricious and slippery thing, capable of leaving the body and traveling around. Moments of great stress, fear or surprise can send it scuttling like a wary fish. Such sudden absence leaves a person inexplicably ill.”

  Carol nodded. “In our culture, we call it susto. There are prayers and stuff to call the soul back, though I never realized that it was the tonal that was gone. What about the third one?”

  “It is termed ihiyotl, the soul of emotions and passions, formed from sacred substances in the water or air that we breathe. We exhale streams of diluted ihiyotl from our lungs and gills. Most atlacah and human magic consists of manipulating these exhalations or the gases in our flesh. It is ihiyotl I draw upon and channel with my staff to light our way.”

  It was a more detailed explanation than Carol had expected, but it was helpful. “But savage magic doesn’t use air-stuff, I don’t think,” she mused aloud. “I’m pretty sure it’s teotl that we mess with, whether in the blood or in the air.”

  “I have no doubt. It is therefore dangerous and unpredictable.”

  Carol was about to retort when the Archmage slowed, scanning the sea around them and making his staff glow brighter.

  “I sense something. Strange movement. Magical.”

  For a second Carol doubted him, then she felt it, too—a dark swirling, rushing at them from below.

  “Everyone!” she shouted. “Something dangerous is coming!”

  Then it was upon them, a massive whirlpool that glowed green as it seized the company and began to whip them about at neck-breaking speeds.

  Shift, Johnny! We’ve got to save them!

  She found the shriveled bit of calamari on her necklace just as the swirling reached her. Transformed into a monstrous squid, she anchored herself to the edge of the trench, wrapping a few tentacles tight around the deep-rooted rock.

  Mihuah had been lifted high by the spinning currents and was now being hurtled toward the sea floor. Carol shot out a tentacle to seize her and drag her from the whirlpool; the diplomat went limp, blacking out from the extreme stresses on her body.

  The Archmage was struggling to remain at the center of the vortex, streaming blue-white energy into it from his staff, clearly trying to slow the rotation of the current.

  It was in vain. The whirlpool fed on his magic, growing even faster.

  Carol flung her free tentacles out toward her other companyions, yanking as many to safety as she could before they were dashed against the rocks or spun off into the black depths.

  Johnny was shifting madly from one form to another, trying to find a way to help. In the form of a giant manta ray, he burst out of the spinning currents, rushing around it in a sort of orbit to catch guards flung outward.

  The green of the vortex intensified and four massive water elementals coalesced from its violent eddies. With a burst of emerald lightning, one hurled her brother into the darkness.

  Johnny! Carol screamed with all her mind.

  One of the tlaloqueh materialized an enormous glowing club out of the dark water and smashed it violently against her. Reeling with pain, she lost her grip on her friends and slipped into unconsciousness.

  ~~~

  She was back inside the temple at El Chanal. Her father was struggling in the water, which now reached his chest.

  “Carolina, help me!”

  Panic-stricken, she began to weep. “But how? We’re trapped!”

  “You’ll have to destroy the temple, amor. Shift into something big, or use your sacred song magic to pulverize the stone.”

  The thought sickened her, paralyzed her. “No, wait, Dad. There’s got to be another way. Let me—”

  “Ther
e is no other way, you feeble pup.”

  Her father’s eyes had gone glittering green.

  “Tezcatlipoca.” Pronouncing his name shattered the dream. The temple was gone. She was surrounded by a featureless expanse of darkness, tinged green like the underside of mottled leaves in deep shadow, broken only by the familiar shape of Ursa Major, clinging tenuously to the gloom above.

  Before her towered the Lord of Chaos, a smile playing across his pallid face. Behind his head hovered an obsidian mirror from which smoke uncurled in lazy, spiraling wreathes. He was dressed as he had been six months ago—a jaguar-skin cape flung across his shoulders, his divine flesh clothed in a gray tunic covered with dark feathers.

  “Welcome to the Sixth Heaven, Carolina. My enduring abode. Yayauhco—Place of Eternal Dusk.”

  For a moment she couldn’t find her voice. Then she rasped as mockingly as possible, “Heaven? More like another hell.”

  “Ah, indeed. You judge me with young, human eyes. You believe yourself to be good. Free of corruption. Selfless and heroic. But I see you, cur. You are a wolf at heart, and when the time comes, you will rip what you require from your enemies with the bloody teeth of your savage magic.”

  “No.”

  His cruel laugh would have melted the flesh from her bones had she been physically present before him. “Your refusal is irrelevant. Thus will you act, driven by your good intentions. In the end, like Quelel Huetzo, you will desecrate the world in the name of all you love.”

  “Never,” she whispered, her chest crushed with dismay at his words. “You can’t make me do it.”

  “I shall not lift a finger. You will choose destruction freely once my trials have prepared you. Now go. Behold what has been wrought upon your companions.”

  ~~~

  When Carol came to, she found Mihuah floating nearby.

  “She has awakened!” the diplomat called, and both Johnny and Tenamic rushed to her side.

  “Are you okay?” her brother demanded, his face twisted with uncharacteristic anger. “That damn elemental gave you a serious porrazo, Sis.”