A Kingdom Beneath the Waves

by Bowles, David;

  “I’m okay. Had a vision of Tezcatlipoca, though.”

  “What?”

  “The normal threats. Nothing to get worked up about. Is everyone okay?”

  The Archmage regarded her with his zombie eyes. “No, sadly. We lost two guards, and—”

  “Ana’s gone, Carol. The elementals took her.” Johnny’s hands curled into fists. “And everybody’s making excuses for why we’re not going after them.”

  “It is madness, to begin with,” Tenamic snapped. “Those were not the Fatherless, Johnny. They were true Lords of Water, scions of Tlaloc, wielding their full, divine might.”

  Castellan Nalquiza approached. Her glittering, fancy armor was scored and dented. A new gash had turned the scar on her face into an “X.” “Lord Johnny, you must desist. Someone powerful is laying a trap for us. There are wounded. We lost pack sharks. I will not risk those under my command with limited supplies. I have sent my fastest messengers back to meet our reinforcements and relay my orders for utmost haste. We will wait until they arrive before pursuing the tlaloqueh.”

  “What if it’s too late then? What if these freaking things are working with Maxaltic and he uses her to blackmail their parents? Look, me and Carol can deal with them, I know it.”

  “Deal with them?” scoffed the castellan. “As I recall, they dealt with both of you pretty handily just now.”

  “They caught us off guard! This time, we’ll be the ones surprising them.”

  Stop it, Carol muttered telepathically, sending soothing sensations.

  “Knock it off, Carol. You’re not going to Jedi mind-trick me into compliance, dude.”

  “They’re gods, Johnny.”

  “So what? Not even the gods have savage magic.”

  Tenamic shook his head disgustedly. “This arrogance is precisely what I warned the princess about. Damn the Little People for sending you, ill-prepared and easily manipulated by the Dark Lord. I wonder if we may have more to fear from the two of you than from Prince Maxaltic.”

  Carol blanched. “No, don’t say that! Johnny just really cares about her—”

  “Oh, and do we not, Lady Carol?” Nalquiza seemed close to weeping. “You have known her for two days. I saw her consecrated to Matlalcueyeh when she was a newborn. I have watched her grow into a revered young siren. Archmage Tenamic initiated her into the rites of the Air Sage. Lady Mihuah, her dearest cousin, nearly became her sister-in-law.”

  Mihuah sighed. “Please, let us not discuss broken betrothals right now. You need to consider another possibility, Johnny. Perhaps the elementals intend to distract us from our mission. What if Maxaltic is very close to reaching Atlan, and this kidnapping is meant to delay us long enough for him to find the Shadow Stone?”

  Johnny put up his hand. “So, let me get this straight—you guys are super close to Ana and love her and stuff, but you’re just going to sit here, wait for help, and maybe, if the broken-hearted diplomat over here gets her way, abandon the ROYAL HISTORIAN and AIR SAGE to whatever messed-up fate the elementals have in store for her? Wow. What a bunch of winners. Me? If my sister was taken captive? We wouldn’t be talking. I’d be tracking those overgrown water bubbles down and popping them one by one.”

  That’s enough. Really. They get it.

  Pull yourself together, Carol. As soon as you’re feeling better, we’re going after her.

  Wait, what?

  You heard me. I mean, sensed my words or whatever. Look, more troops aren’t going to make any difference, dude. We’d just have to save their butts again, and this time there’d even be more of them.

  It was a point she hadn’t considered. Well…

  Xicol agrees with me, even if he’s too respectful to contradict his boss. He can get some of the guards to come with, if that’s the deal-breaker for you.

  I don’t know, Johnny. Let me think about it.

  He sent a wave of annoyance and desperation, and sulked off to wedge himself under a boulder.

  Enehnel brought her something to eat as the others continued to debate quietly. “Want me to try and talk some sense into the fool?”

  “No. Thanks, but no. He just really hates injustice, hates seeing the innocent hurt. Give him some time to cool down. There is a logical side to him, deep down.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it when he plays patolli. He has strong strategy skills when he focuses.”

  Watching the wounded guards receive treatment, Carol chewed her food mechanically, knowing she needed the strength.

  Tezcatlipoca’s behind this. He’s trying to manipulate us into doing something stupid. We’ve got to be cautious.

  She turned her head to check on her brother.

  He was gone.

  Chapter Eleven

  As much as Johnny loved his sister, she was still recovering from a major beating and a spiritual visit from the Lord of Chaos. Better to leave her behind. Besides, he had no intention of actually facing off against the stupid water elementals if he could help it. His plan was to use stealth and shifting to sneak past them and get Ana free. A huge army at his back would just screw things up.

  The tlaloqueh left a pretty clear trail of energy—all Johnny had to do was give his tonal free rein, and he was off like a shot, deeper into the trench. Of course, without the glow of the Archmage’s staff, he was plunged into utter darkness. Here, nearly one kilometer beneath the ocean’s surface, the light of the sun could never penetrate. Other than the occasional blue flash of luminescence from specially adapted creatures, the black of the Deep was absolute. Johnny’s triton form adjusted magically to the massive pressures and near-freezing temperature, but even his highly sensitive eyes were of no use in the trench.

  His tonal, however, had no trouble navigating, even as a light flurry of what seemed snow began to drift across the elementals’ trail. Johnny experimentally stuck his tongue out and found it to be a gritty, slightly sweet substance. He knew instinctively that he could feed off it in an emergency, but he tried not to think too hard about where it came from or what it was made up of.

  With no one to speak to and nothing to look at, Johnny began to reflect on his hot-headedness. When he and Carol had escaped Mictlan with their mother six months ago, he had dreamed of using his shapeshifting in the real world to balance the injustice he saw day in and day out. Then he had jokingly told his parents about his idea to become the Hispanic Captain America—Capitán de las Américas, he had quipped—and, well, they hadn’t been too receptive.

  “Sorry, m’ijo,” his dad had said. “These powers are just too dangerous and too important for you to use that way. Plus, think about all the media and government scrutiny that would fall on the Valley.”

  His mom had made him store Huitzilopochtli’s robe. “Olvídalo. What if Tezcatlipoca’s servants can sense you using it? Too risky.”

  There had also been a stern lecture from Pingo late one night when he had snuck out to track down a particularly nasty trafficker who had recruited kids from Veterans as drug mules. “Twin naguales,” he had whispered after escorting Johnny back to his house, “are too valuable to the cause of Order to engage in petty human misdeeds. Can’t keep exposing yourself, partner!”

  So for six months, his need to right wrongs had been building and building, the pressure becoming harder and harder to contain. His little prank on Cody Smith, that idiotic bully, had helped some, but his guts still roiled with outrage.

  Now here was this really nice mermaid—intelligent, kind, brave, beautiful—getting caught up in the middle of a crazy clash between chaos and order, kidnapped by aquatic angels probably just to mess with Johnny and Carol, to separate them, to push them a little further toward Tezcatlipoca’s plans. Johnny wasn’t stupid. He knew it was a trap. But sometimes you have to spring a trap. Sometimes waiting for the inevitable just makes things worse. Your only chance is to face the danger head on.

  Like the Martinez kids—those mean neighbors that had terrorized the twins’ childhood. Johnny could still remember when little Raquel Ma
rtínez had invited Carol over to play Barbies—the catch had been that Carol had to bring her own, which were a lot nicer than the cheap pulga knock-offs that Raquel had.

  Johnny had known it was a trick, but Carol was so excited to go on a play date that he had just kept his mouth shut. When she’d come back empty-handed, crying, he had balled his six-year-old hands into fists and asked what was wrong.

  “The dog ate my Barbies!”

  “Did you see the dog do it?” he had asked.

  “No. Raquel did. She spanked the dog, but my Barbies are gone!”

  “No, they’re not.”

  His mother had taught Johnny to stand up for himself, to get the right change back at the store, to exchange the toy from his kid’s meal if he got a duplicate at a fast food joint. He wasn’t going to let Raquel Martínez steal his sister’s dolls.

  So he had marched across the street, opened the door without permission, walked right into Raquel’s room and caught her playing with the stolen Barbies. Without a word, he had snatched them from her hands. Then he had looked over at the cheap imitations discarded in a corner.

  “Those yours?” he had asked.

  The rage on her face had been all the answer he needed. He crossed the room and smashed his foot against the dolls again and again.

  Man, had he gotten in trouble! His parents had put him in time-out, taken away his Nintendo and TV privileges. But it had been worth it. Not just the look on Carol’s face when he gave her back her Barbies.

  The defeat in Raquel’s eyes.

  It was ugly. He knew it was the part of him that Tezcatlipoca was counting on. The bit of chaos amid his love for order and creation.

  But he needed it now. He needed that pure, righteous indignation.

  ~~~

  It wasn’t long until Johnny realized that the flashing green, blue and yellow lights ahead weren’t deep sea creatures, but distant water elementals. Pinching a twisted tooth between his forefinger and thumb, he shifted into a six-meter-long sleeper shark with a gruesome and powerful jaw. He began to coast in a leisurely pattern as if quietly hunting for prey, all the while moving closer to the ethereal glow.

  Eventually he drew near enough to make out a ledge that jutted out from the trench wall forty meters below its lip. There he saw Ana, bound to an outcropping of rock by a mesh of blue-green energy. Her eyes were closed, and her head floated loosely.

  When he got a good look at the tlaloqueh who had taken her, Johnny understood why she had passed out. These elementals were twice the size of Xomalloh, and their bodies flickered with coruscating skeins of electricity, as if lightning danced impatiently inside them. There were three—one the same emerald green as the exile, another with an aquamarine crystal in its chest, and a third who glowed the bright yellow of marigolds. This last elemental was clearly the leader. Larger than the other two, it wielded huge weapons and groaned incomprehensible orders in a voice with the power of a flood.

  Johnny turned away as casually as he could and spiraled up the trench wall till he was out of sight over the lip. Then he transformed into a dozen spider crabs, balancing his consciousness across the group as he walked his multiple long-legged bodies to where the ledge was and began crawling them down the wall and toward the princess.

  Randomly snatching at passing krill the way a cast of normal crustaceans would, he turned his attention to the rock that Ana was bound to. Inside, he could sense microorganisms, hardy colonies of miniature plants that responded eagerly to his Green Magic.

  Grow, he muttered to them, feeding them with xoxal. Multiply. Here’s all the energy you could want. There’s more if you’ll just keep expanding…

  There came the quietest of cracks. His plan was working. Soon the rock would burst, freeing Ana. And then—

  Without warning, a water elemental streamed down at him from above, blasting at his crab colony with a wave of energy. His bodies skittered away in multiple directions.

  “One of the nahuatlin, brothers!” the newcomer cried, and Johnny realized that this was Xomalloh.

  What a freaking jerk! He betrayed us!

  Johnny came together and shifted into an octopus, reaching out to grip the rock and crack it further, but the elementals converged on him, slashing with their magical aquatic blades and blasting bolts of power at him. He became a long cusk eel and slipped his way around the blows, directing more and more savage magic at the rock in hopes of making it shatter.

  The largest of the tlaloqueh seized Johnny in a massive hand and slammed him against the ledge, stunning him. Johnny didn’t quite pass out, though. He was aware of being bound to the rock alongside Ana. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t reach the Little People’s bracelet, tight around his fishy gut.

  I can’t face these freaks like this. I need to be able to talk. I need hands.

  He was desperate. His tonal struggled with him, wanting to free the jaguar, wanting to attack.

  No way! We’d be crushed in a second. It has to be a deep sea creature, okay? Come on, dude. Why do you need the DNA again, huh? It doesn’t even make any sense. You know the shape. You’ve shifted into it before. JUST REMEMBER, for the love of God!

  A surge of power came from deep within himself. Surprise. Eagerness. A sense of surety. A promise that all would be fine.

  Johnny, risking everything, decided to trust his animal soul.

  Letting go, he became a triton once again.

  “Hey, there,” he called to his captors. “I see you’re hanging with the Fatherless now. What a perfect name for the back-stabbing punk, huh?”

  The lead elemental turned to stare at him, its bright anise eyes shimmering with rage. “Silence, human. You are among your betters.”

  “Whoa-ho-ho! My betters? You guys? Yeah, right. Bunch of minor lackeys of a minor god.”

  Ana had awakened and now turned to face him in horror. “Johnny, I do not believe you should antagonize them thus!”

  “Ah, whatever, princess. They’re just bullies. I’ve faced up to enough of them.”

  Xomalloh moved close, dwarfed by his companions but still imposing. “You are addressing Iyauhquemeh, mage, one of Father Tlaloc’s four generals. Show him due respect or suffer the consequences.”

  “Ee…yow…kay…may? Gah, that’s a mouthful, man. Can I just call you ‘Yowzers’? That’s a pretty tight nickname, if you ask me.”

  Iyauhquemeh brought his translucent face just centimeters from Johnny’s. The goggle eyes glinted maliciously as it bared its long, sharp teeth. “My father is no minor god, little beast. He ruled the Earth during the Third Age and then let it shrivel in fiery drought when its inhabitants failed to please him. Rain and sea, thunder and lightning all bend to his command. And my siblings and I work his will upon the world even now, at the waning of the Fifth Sun.”

  “Blah, blah, blah, you’re millions of years old and have seen it all, uh-huh. I know. I heard the same whiny tale from the dudes in Mictlan. Do you guys have like a support group for boring ancient deities or something? Do you share talking points? Because, yeah, I’m falling asleep here, Yowzers.”

  “Call me not by that name, mewling knave!”

  “See, now I know y’all consult with each other. That’s like your favorite insult. But, okay. Let me think of other things to call you and the rest of the Green Lantern Corps…How about Sinestro? Cyborg Superman? Arkillo? What’s wrong, guys, not keeping up with the DC universe?”

  “Silence, Juan Ángel Garza,” the elemental snarled, “or I will reduce you to a stream of blood adrift in the Deep.”

  Ana made a frightened sound, but Johnny smiled as broadly as he could.

  “That’s what I figured. You already know my name. That means Tezcatlipoca is orchestrating this with your pops. And that,” here he gave a little laugh, “means you can’t kill me, no matter how much you want to.”

  Iyauhquemeh floated back a bit, the gold shimmer within it flickering wildly. Then it, too, spread its mouth wide in a horrifying smile.

  “That much is tr
ue, nagual. I cannot kill you. Yet nothing prevents me from ripping the life from the siren that you so desperately wish to free.”

  And as he lifted his blade of water and light, Ana began to scream.

  Chapter Twelve

  “No, no, no…”

  Carol rushed over to the boulder where her brother had just been resting. There was no sign of him anywhere.

  Johnny? Johnny, where are you?

  He didn’t respond. She couldn’t feel him. Her heart began to pound; her stomach ached with apprehension. Shrugging off her exhaustion and pain, she swam back to the others.

  “Johnny’s gone!”

  Enehnel muttered a curse. Mihuah rubbed her temples. Tenamic gripped his staff tighter.

  But the castellan simply shook her head. “Then he is a fool. We still cannot pursue. We are in no condition to face off against Lords of Water, Lady Carol. They would destroy us.”

  Carol was about to insist, angrily, when Tenamic said, “It would be more foolish not to pursue. If the boy reaches them, who knows what he may be compelled to do? We cannot risk the possibility that savage magic will fall into the hands of Chaos. Carol, you and I must attempt to head your brother off, to dissuade him from this course of action.”

  The castellan remained silent, so Carol turned to Captain Xicol. “And you? Isn’t your job protecting the Royal Family? Aren’t you going to do something? At least for the princess?”

  His grey-striped face stolid and serious, Xicol gritted a reply. “Of course. I told Johnny I would accompany him. I do not comprehend why he left alone.”

  Castellan Nalquiza put her hand on the pommel of her sword. “No. I forbid it.”

  “Then make me face a court-martial upon our return. I will not sit idle while the princess is harmed.” Turning to the dozen guards who had not been injured, Xicol lifted his hand. “I need four tritons. Who volunteers?”

  Enehnel and three other young guards came forward.

  “The boy’s a true nuisance,” Enehnel said, “but I’ll not see him rush into danger without support.”