Then, with a rush of shifting pressure, they burst forth into the shallows at the edge of a broad lagoon. Carol assumed her normal human form and looked around.
Trees ringed the glassy expanse: tall pines, twisted red cedar and heavy live oak. Beyond them, still exhaling wisps of smoke, stood the Volcán de Colima like an eager sentinel keeping a vigil over the many lakes hidden in its foothills.
“You look very different, Carol,” Rikar Tzaaq said.
She glanced down at her light brown hands and arms.
“Yeah, I guess I do, huh? Feels strange to be in my own skin.”
A noise to their left caused them to pivot.
Carol gasped.
Twenty meters away, her father stood in water up to his chest. He brandished a dark wooden staff as if preparing for attack. A group of pink dolphins swam in protective circles around him.
Oscar Garza and the Encante were surrounded by a hundred armed tritons and tlacamichimeh, weapons at the ready.
“Dad!” Carol shouted, splashing her way toward the stand-off.
Several of the warriors spun to face her and her companion.
“Carol?” Her father raised a hand to block the afternoon glare. “Careful! Where’s Johnny?”
“Getting Mom. They’ll be here soon.”
She came to a stop, sizing up her options. Johnny had explained how to get her tonal to dredge up past forms without any DNA, and she thought back to the creatures she had become during the last six months.
“You need to watch out, m’ija! They’re just waiting on Maxaltic. He and don Cecilio—who’s a merman, if you can believe it—went down through a channel into a chamber that lies under the lagoon. That’s where the Shadow Stone really is, apparently. But the Encante—that’s these sentient dolphins here—tell me it’s well protected by the glamor of some goddess.”
“Matlalcueyeh. Yes, she’s the one who helped me get back to you this fast, Dad. I know about Cecilio—he’s really Celic, a crazy atacatl who can shapeshift into human form. Have they hurt you at all?”
Oscar Garza shook his head. “Nope. See, I found the scepter of Epan Napotza. It’s a really powerful artifact, it seems. These guys are pretty scared of it.”
“It’s a nahualcuahuitl, Dad—a sorcerer’s staff. That one was carved from a piece of the World Tree by elementals thousands of years ago.”
“That’s what the Encante said. They taught me an incantation for using it. Another reason for this little stand-off.”
One of the guards nearest to Carol made a cutting gesture with his hand. “That’s enough of this babbling,” he barked in Nahuatl. “We can’t have the enemy making plans in some barbaric tongue right in front of us!”
Carol had been thinking about diving deep to go after Maxaltic, but that would have left her father exposed. Now this atlacatl’s linguistic confusion gave her another idea. Catching the attention of a close-by tlacamichin, she called to him in his language.
“So, do you enjoy having these scale-less mermen give you orders? What weak-webbed shoal did you come from to enter into such a disgusting alliance?”
Rikar Tzaaq caught on right away.
“Indeed. What self-respecting son of the deep would treat these slick-skinned abominations as clutch-mates? I suspect you will learn to regret this embarrassing alliance when their prince returns with his prize and burns you to a crisp.”
The tlacamichimeh began to twitch in agitation, and the atlacah leveled weapons at them, cautious looks on their faces.
The guard who had spoken a moment before now made a short leap in Carol’s direction. “What’re you saying to each other, meddlesome girl?”
“Why? Are you worried they’ll betray you?” She shifted into a siren, diving into the water near him and twittering in the merfolk tongue. “Maxaltic and Celic haven’t returned yet because the gilled fiends were waiting for them down below. You’re all fools for allying with your oldest enemy.”
Chaos erupted. Long centuries of hatred had been barely repressed for this dark mission, so those animosities quickly spiraled into violence. Atlacah and tlacamichimeh grappled in the pristine water, exchanging blows with fists and weapons.
“Keep away, Rikar,” she commanded before turning her thoughts inward, calling to her tonal.
Remember this shape? The second you ever assumed? I need you to fly. You know you want to feel the wind beneath us. Come on!
Carol leaped into the air and became a kamasotz, a snatch-bat from the bowels of Mictlan. Beating black wings fiercely, she rose higher and higher, rotating her vulpine head to scan the in-fighting aquatic beings with keen red eyes. Then she dropped, the wind ruffling the gold fur at her neck as she aimed the cruel black talons of her feet at an unsuspecting merman, seizing him and lifting him thirty meters before releasing him. Smashing against the surface of the lagoon, he rolled unconscious into its depths.
Pleased at the enraged response from those below, Carol grabbed several more tritons and man-fish and flung them back down one by one, easily avoiding the missiles launched her way by the startled warriors.
But the water at the center of the lagoon began to roil. Carol wheeled about in a spiral, waiting, ready to defend her father at all costs.
Leaping from the water with a triumphant shout, came Prince Maxaltic.
Held high in his right hand was an uneven ball of ambergris, its mottled grays and browns flashing like the wet hide of a diseased frog.
Even from this distance, Carol could feel the thick and silent blackness curling in its center, eager to be released after eight hundred centuries of waiting.
In Cehuallocozcatl. The Shadow Stone.
“Behold!” Maxaltic cried, and the struggling warriors stopped to look. “At a great cost, the life of my blood-kin Celic, I have retrieved the direst weapon this age has ever known. Today we purge the world of humanity, brothers and friends. Today I bring a deluge the cosmos will not soon forget.”
Before she could dive toward the prince, her father lifted the ancient staff.
“No, you will not!” he shouted. Closing his eyes, he muttered in an arcane language. The runes on the scepter of Epan Napotza glowed blood red, and a gout of ruddy fire burst from its tip, scorching the air before slamming into the Shadow Stone.
Incredibly, Maxaltic managed to keep his grip on the device, pushing forward with kicks of his tail, allowing the energy to be absorbed.
The stone began to react. Tendrils of inky smoke curled around Maxaltic’s hand and arm. The air was soon a-thrum with terrible power that rattled the trees and sent waves splashing against the pines.
Oscar Garza’s eyes were closed. He kept muttering the incantation, pouring greater and greater force into the Shadow Stone.
Carol suddenly understood.
This is what sank Atlan. Quelel came at Epan, and he tried to counter her attack. But the stone sucked up the energy and detonated, destroying everything they loved. And now Tezcatlipoca has engineered all this so that the staff and stone will clash again. Dad’s going to cause a cataclysm. He’s going to get himself and a lot of others killed.
Without further thought, Carol dipped toward her father, grabbing his shirt and spinning him off balance. His hands slipped from the staff, and she grabbed it, climbing an updraft and winging over toward Rikar Tzaaq.
“Keep this from them!” she managed to screech.
The Shadow Stone was still humming, though. Maxaltic gripped it in both hands, exulting at the ribbons of sable force that twisted outward from its bleak center.
I’ve got to destroy it.
Plunging toward the water, Carol shifted into her gigantic squid form, shooting out tentacles to fling warriors away from her dazed father and to rip the Shadow Stone from Maxaltic’s fingers.
Ignoring the silence that began to ooze into her mind, she squeezed with all her might. Though she poured savage magic into her sinews, it wasn’t quite enough. Frantic, her tonal sought to help her, bringing forward human characteristics until the
tentacle became a massive fist, crushing the ancient ball of verdigris by slow degrees.
But like spiritual venom, the shadow magic penetrated her defenses, worming its way into her soul, flooding her with darkness and cold and cruel quiet.
Then, like the fingers of a puppeteer, the black tendrils began to move her body, dragging it through the lagoon toward her father.
Carol could not stop herself. She was no longer in control.
And then Tezcatlipoca spoke within her mind.
“Do you see how utterly you are my creature, girl? Once again you have walked the path that I designed for you, eagerly entering the trap, damned by your own laudable purpose. Now you hold the key to apocalypse in your hand, and together you and I shall rip open the cosmos to bring an end to all you love.”
Why…
“Ah, you are too overcome to even form the words, but I can see your question. Why have I never availed myself of the Shadow Stone before? Why formulate such an elaborate ruse to put it in your mighty fist? Come, girl. Setting aside the fact that my idiot brother has managed to seal the earth from my direct presence, do you really think I would leave such a tool to lie dormant for millennia if I could use it myself to end the world? Shadow magic I possess aplenty, but it does not suffice. The Shadow Stone, however, can amplify savage magic, and only one of your ilk can wield it on the scale that I require.”
The Lord of Chaos made her stop. She loomed above her father.
Never…
“Oh, you shall indeed channel your xoxal into this device, Carolina Garza. Your despair at killing your father will leave you no other recourse.”
Slowly, pulling against Carol’s every effort to stop him, laughing at the inner howling of her tonal, Tezcatlipoca lifted her tentacle high into the air, preparing to beat Oscar Garza to death with fist and stone and magic.
Cowering in the shallows, her father lifted his hands as if to ward off her blows. A few of the Encante shifted into humanoid form, surrounding him, pink arms outstretched.
“No, Sweetie! You have to fight it!”
But Carol was being shoved down, deeper and deeper inside herself. His voice a faint echo, a fading memory.
Then a growl filled her awareness. Images began to flash.
Xolotl, bearing the twins across the river Chignahuapan at the edge of Mictlan.
A tall, slender god with bright green and blue feathers instead of hair, his skin highlighted in places by delicate golden scales.
Quetzalcoatl, Carol whispered.
The she saw the two of them, side by side, gathering bones in the darkness of the Underworld, ready to remake humanity by any means possible.
The growl came again, louder. Then the memory of conversations.
Tenamic’s voice: “In certain special individuals—Air Sages and naguales, for instance—this develops into a partly independent twin of our spirit.”
“Like my tonal,” Carol had said.
“Precisely. And the tonalli, given enough time—centuries, millennia—can acquire its own personality, as in the case of the gods.”
Ana’s voice: “Though you should both be jaguars, Carol has been gifted with a wolf tonal for a reason we cannot perceive. As for me, I trust in the wisdom of the gods.”
Carol could feel Tezcatlipoca pull her tentacle as high as it would go. She could hear his horrible burbling laughter pouring from the mouth of the giant squid.
The growl in her inner darkness became a snarl.
We’re bound together in this form.
…yes…
The voice was rough and bestial.
But we don’t have to be.
…no…
I can let you free. His hold will be broken. Dad will be safe. The world won’t be destroyed.
There was no more answer, just expectant panting and a strange clawing at her heart. An eager whine, like a dog makes when it wants to burst from its master’s home.
And deep within the darkness, Carol smiled, reaching for the door.
Chapter Twenty-One
Because of the odd weight of the staff, Johnny and Ana tumbled awkwardly for a while in the dizzying rush of the apiyaztli, but they eventually stabilized. Tlalocan spread beneath them, luxurious and dark, like an uncharted jungle full of deadly beauty.
“His jade palace sits atop the mountain,” Ana whispered. “See the bolts of lightning that flash through the clouds? Those are some of his sons. The rest, the stories tell us, abide in the streams, rivers and lakes of this realm, attending the souls who dwell here and awaiting his bidding.”
“Or keeping his wife prisoner.”
Ana gave an exasperated smile. “That as well.”
The sacred tunnel made an unexpected, twisty turn, diving into a swamp and once more through the barrier between worlds. Then, with a rushing splash of sea water bursting into air, the two were spewed sprawling onto the deck of the Estela de Mar.
Shifting back to his human form, Johnny leapt to his feet, brandishing Tenamic’s staff. The yacht was rocking back and forth violently, and a large jaguar skidded by him, thrown off balance by a concussion of power against the stern.
“Mom?”
She snarled at him, jerking her feline head at the ocean. Three blue-gemmed Lords of Water were aiming strange canon of water and energy at the ship, preparing for another volley. Pink dolphins, part of the Encante, leapt at the elementals, slapping their tails against the beings’ fluid limbs and frustrating their attack.
Still, one of the elementals managed to send a ball of crackling electricity caroming along the hull of the yacht. Sparks danced over the railing, falling on Verónica Quintero de Garza and making her yelp in pain.
Johnny lifted the sorcerer’s staff and thrust it angrily toward the sea. “Leave my mother alone, freaks!”
He was more aware of himself this time, pouring xoxal into the runes on the staff, feeling that savage magic being channeled along the length of ancient ivory to explode in an unfocused, erratic beam from the thicker knob at its end.
Though he couldn’t control his attack or narrow it in any way, Johnny waved the staff back and forth, pummeling first one and then another of the tlaloqueh. The Encante quickly dove to avoid his wild volley of power.
Sensing a weakening in the elementals, Johnny pointed his spitting ray of energy at just one of them, stripping away its watery flesh and cracking the gem within before turning to its brothers to do the same. The staff grew hotter and hotter, but he ignored the searing of his own skin, his grim expression twisting into a shout of rage and pain as he pounded the last Lord of Water with magic that grew exponential, making the air itself crackle and hum with violence.
As the last elemental gem shattered, so did the staff, slicing Johnny’s arms with shards of petrified bone.
In the sudden absence of his attack, the sea was unnaturally quiet and calm.
“¡Ay, dios mío, Juan Ángel!”
It was his mother. She had shifted back to human form and was wearing a simple sundress. Beside her, worry clouding her now human face, stood Ana. Behind them, emerging from below decks, came Captain Sandoval and his sons.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m not hurt that bad.”
He shifted briefly to a jaguar and back to speed his healing. She speedily crossed the deck to enfold him in her arms, burying her face in his chest.
“That’s not what scares me, m’ijo. What did you just do? How? That was terrifying!”
Ana touched her reassuringly. “Do not be concerned, madam,” she said in Spanish. “This is the staff of a sorcerer. Johnny and Carol used it before to defeat a group of elementals. It seems that they use it better together than singly.”
“Who are you? And where is my Carolina, Johnny? Tell me she’s okay.”
“Carol’s okay, Mom, though maybe not for long. And this is Princess Anamacani of Tapachco. Ana, this is my mother, Verónica Quintero de Garza.”
“I am honored, Lady Verónica.”
Johnny’s mother smiled slightly at
the title.
“Likewise, Your Highness.”
Captain Sandoval, realizing who was standing on his deck, dropped to his knees and gestured for his sons to do the same.
“Long live the House of Napotza!” he declared in a shaky voice.
Ana gave the salute of her people, both palms first pressed to the forehead, then a wide and sweeping gesture with the arms.
“Tapochca thanks you for your service, sir.”
Verónica raised an eyebrow at Johnny and smirked. “She’s a little old for you, no?” she asked pointedly in English.
“Oh, my God, Mom, don’t you start, too!” he whispered.
“Okay, okay. Just looking out for my son, you know. Not a crime, is it?”
Johnny sighed dramatically.
“No time for this right now. We’ve got to go. Dad’s in danger, and Carol is trying to deal with it by herself.”
Before his mother could respond, a pink-skinned creature leapt from the sea onto the deck beside them. Captain Sandoval stood, unholstering his pistol, but Johnny gestured for him to hold.
The newcomer rather startlingly resembled a human woman, and Verónica quickly handed her a towel to wrap around her.
“I am Botaben,” she lilted in strange Spanish, “node leader for this bit of the Encante. That was very well done, human. Tell me, what more can we do to fulfill the command of the goddess that we defend your node?”
“Well, Botaben, my mother and I have to leave, now. But you could guide this ship back to port, if it’s not too much to ask. The Sandovals have been through a lot, I figure, and I don’t want any accidents to happen on their return trip.”
“It will be done.”
Johnny turned to Ana, whose brown skin glowed beautifully in the afternoon sunlight. “Can you stay for a while? Talk to the captain and explain what you can? His family deserves a second chance, Ana. And Tapachco needs a connection to the human world.”
“Of course. I only wish I could accompany you and your mother.”
A Kingdom Beneath the Waves Page 17
