by Kai Meyer
Jolly nodded numbly. She’d already heard all that at least a hundred times in the last few days. But to hear it now, explained by someone like d’Artois, who didn’t accept magic as a given, made the terror ahead even more palpable and threatening.
Soledad had said hardly anything during the last few minutes, and she kept still now, too. Jolly knew the princess felt guilty at the thought of the burden being placed on the polliwogs. That she herself could do nothing and knew of no better solution made her wild with helplessness.
The rays were now flying in a southerly direction again, where the sea wasn’t so rough. During the flight they’d seen kobalin hosts in the deep, seething dark swarms like ants that were moving under the surface in the direction of Aelenium. Kobalins as far as the eye could see. Once they’d flown through a zone where it was raining fish cadavers out of a clear sky, and all knew that somewhere beneath them there was a creature of the Maelstrom, a monstrosity like the Acherus, who had killed Munk’s parents. Possibly they’d even passed over the lord of the kobalins himself, a creature that none of them had seen as yet but whom Jolly had already twice been close enough to touch. Once on the open sea during their trip to Tortuga, a second time with Griffin on the island of the shape changer. Both times it had rained dead fish in his vicinity.
Gradually the waves under them settled into smoothness, and finally d’Artois gave another wave to the second ray. The animals slowed their flight and began to circle. Jolly looked over her shoulder. The dark stripe on the horizon was still visible, but the arms of the Maelstrom did not reach this far. And the kobalin hordes had long since passed this spot, so there was at least a chance for them to push their way to the sea bottom unhindered.
“D’Artois!” Soledad cried suddenly. “Up ahead there!”
“I see it,” growled the captain.
Jolly looked to the south and discovered what the two of them meant. A dark spot was approaching them on the water, so fast that it was flying over the surface.
“Is that a sea horse?” she asked.
“His rider must be riding it almost to death to go so fast,” replied d’Artois, frowning.
“A servant of the Maelstrom?” Soledad said what they were all thinking.
D’Artois whistled in the direction of the second ray, but its riders had already caught sight of the spot in the distance. The captain pulled a small crossbow from its halter on the saddle and stretched it with one practiced hand. An old-fashioned weapon like this was easier to handle from the back of a ray than a pistol, which first had to be rammed and loaded.
Soon the new arrival had come so near that its outlines allowed no more doubt. It was a sea horse. But its rider wore thrown-together clothing in the fashion of a pirate, not the leather uniform of the guards of Aelenium.
“Who the devil is that?” asked Soledad. Judging by her tone, she would probably have liked to be holding a weapon in her hands herself.
“I know the animal,” said d’Artois a moment later. “That’s Matador.”
A tremor ran through Jolly. Her breath stopped, her heartbeat altered. “Griffin’s sea horse?”
The captain nodded.
And then the rider raised an arm and waved excitedly to them, and although his voice could not be heard over the rushing of the rays’ wings and the distant roaring of the Maelstrom, and although his face was still just as small as the head of a knitting needle, Jolly knew who he was.
“That is Griffin!” Her voice broke, she sounded shrill with excitement. “Go down, d’Artois! Please—go lower!”
Circling, the ray lost altitude. When it was still four or five fathoms over the water, Jolly recognized Griffin’s blond braids, then his smile. He was now waving so exaggeratedly that for a moment she believed it might be a hallucination, something conjured up by her longing.
“Griffin!” she cried, waving back. Softly she whispered into the wind, “Oh, Griffin, thank God….”
She paid no attention to the others anymore, not to Munk, who was looking over at her stony-faced, not to the lines of concern on the Ghost Trader’s forehead, not to d’Artois’s warning, or to Soledad’s good-natured murmuring. In a flash she opened her safety belt, stood up on the saddle, ran two steps across the broad wing of the ray—and slid into the water in a head dive.
The excited cries of her companions faded as she broke through the surface, in a confusion of dancing bubbles and foam. For moments she heard only bubbling and roaring, then she turned beneath the water and poked her head above the waves. Griffin steered Matador in her direction, reined in the seahorse two or three paces away, frantically opened the fastenings of his saddle girt, and jumped down into the water. With one powerful stroke he was beside her, and then they hugged and kissed and felt as though the Maelstrom and the kobalins and the whole world around them had vanished into air.
“I followed the ship,” he got out breathlessly, while the water kept splashing into his face. “When you left Aelenium…with the Carfax…” He gulped for air. “And now I almost came too late again…you were just about to start off.”
She kissed him again, more vehemently this time, and they both threatened to go under, because in their joy they forgot to swim. Jolly had almost forgotten that Griffin, in contrast to her, couldn’t breathe underwater.
D’Artois’s ray was now circling low over the surface. The crests of waves lapped at the animal’s belly. Jolly saw that Soledad was smiling in satisfaction, and for some reason that appeared to her hugely generous and understanding in light of the situation. She became aware for the first time of how very much the princess meant to her.
Something splashed into the water not far away from her, and then Munk popped up beside them.
“Hello, Griffin,” he said and spat out salt water. He smiled, perhaps a little grimly.
“Munk.” Griffin nodded to him, then turned once more to Jolly and gave her a—much too short—kiss. Then he let her go. She knew why he did that: He didn’t want the wedge that, against his will, he’d driven between her and Munk to get any larger. Not considering what lay before them.
Now the Ghost Trader’s ray was also hovering over the water. The animals circled around the two boys and the girl, while Matador swam in the waves several yards away. The draft of the ray’s wings blew cool in Jolly’s face. Perhaps that was the reason she was shivering. Or was it the certainty of leaving?
Well, it was there, the moment she’d been fearing for weeks. In a few minutes she’d be alone with Munk, down in the deep. Only the two of them, entirely on their own.
Griffin gave her an encouraging smile, but she saw through the facade: He didn’t care about the Maelstrom, about Aelenium, or about the fate of the world at all—he only wanted her to return home to him safely. At that moment, in those few intense seconds, she made the irrevocable decision to fulfill that wish: Come what might, she would not give up. She would do what must be done. And then she would return—to him.
“Jolly, Munk—look out!”
Knapsacks of oiled leather fell from the rays into the water. They both grabbed them and fastened them tightly to their backs. Griffin helped them with it, Munk too, who let him only after a short hesitation. The bundles contained waterproof boxes with pickled meat, fruit, and raw vegetables, as well as coconut pieces—food that could be unpacked below the surface without immediately spoiling or becoming soaked with salt water. When they spoke or ate no water passed the lips of the polliwogs, but that also made drinking water more difficult: The knapsacks held bottles with narrow, corked openings through which they could suck up the contents, as if with a straw. They’d practiced all that, as they had so much else, so that their mission wouldn’t founder on something as ordinary as eating and drinking.
“Keep in mind,” the Ghost Trader called to them when they were ready to start out, “always stay close to the ground. Don’t be tempted to swim over impassable terrain. The Maelstrom will send out currents in all directions, and he’ll discover you if they encounter any unex
pected resistance.”
“How does the Ghost Trader know all that?” murmured Griffin.
Jolly grasped his hand underwater. “I think he’s experienced all this before, that time when the first polliwogs conquered the Maelstrom in the Crustal Breach and shut him into his mussel shell.”
“But that was thousands of years ago!”
Jolly nodded. She had no more time to inform him of all she’d learned, so she only said, “Talk with Soledad. She knows about everything.”
He looked at her uncertainly, then he also nodded.
The voice of the Ghost Trader pushed between them like a separating hand. “It’s time to start!” he called down from his ray.
“Yes,” said Munk, with a sideways glance at the two of them.
Jolly tried to read his eyes, but he turned away quickly. She looked at Griffin, kissed him one last time, then let go of his hand.
“Farewell,” she said, thinking it was terrible that nothing better occurred to her, something that expressed everything she felt and felt for him.
“Good luck,” said Griffin. “Come back soon, the two of you.” He glided over to Munk in one stroke and shook his hand below the water. “Take care of yourselves.”
Munk nodded to him abruptly.
A moment later, when the sun illuminated that spot where the polliwogs had just been treading water, they’d both vanished.
The feeling was not new anymore and had long lost its charm. With outstretched arms and legs Jolly and Munk rushed down, unaffected by the water pressure, which would have killed any other human after the first few minutes. Their polliwog vision allowed them to see several hundred feet ahead of them, but down here there was nothing that could have held their glance.
They fell through a nowhere of gray into gray, for polliwog vision emptied all things of most of their color, making them pale and plain and ugly—even if there’d been things there to see. But around them there was nothing, only empty water, in which a swarm of tiny particles floated now and then. No fish. No trace of light. The armies of the kobalins had driven all living things out of this part of the sea.
“Do you think there are any here?” asked Jolly. “Kobalins, I mean.”
Munk shrugged, while they floated ever downward. “Maybe. But that really doesn’t make any sense. They’d be more needed in Aelenium than out here.”
Jolly thought over what the Ghost Trader had said. About the currents the Maelstrom could use to seek and find them. Once they got down on the sea bottom, they might perhaps be safer from them. But what about now, while they were still sinking even farther downward? Weren’t they helplessly exposed to the searching currents of the Maelstrom the whole time?
She hastily repressed the thought and concentrated on finding something in her surroundings on which she could fasten her gaze. But there was nothing except Munk, who was floating along on a level with her. She didn’t even have the feeling of sinking, really, since the water offered them no trace of resistance and there was never anything to see that would allow them to estimate their speed. Were they sinking slowly? Or at a breakneck speed?
During the practices in the waters around Aelenium there had always been the undercity nearby, the formation of sharp-pointed coral structures on the underside of the giant sea star. The sight of it had made it easier to orient themselves. But out here there was nothing like that.
Jolly’s dejection grew harder and harder to bear. Looking at Munk, she saw that it was the same with him. His features were closed, as if he were caught in the suction of his own gloomy thoughts. At some point she groped for his hand as they sank deeper side by side. He returned the gesture so gratefully that for the first time she felt a hope that he could forget their quarrel and again become the old Munk, the same lovable, playful Munk she’d first met on his parents’ island. The same Munk she’d shown how to shoot a cannon and who’d dreamed of being a pirate.
The weeks that had passed since then had changed him, made him more withdrawn, grimmer, and more opaque. But perhaps all those traits would disappear and they could be friends again as they had before. Down here they were dependent on each other, and there would be times when they needed to give each other courage and reassure themselves. How would that work if Munk still hated her because she’d fallen in love with Griffin and not with him?
Jolly lost any feeling of time as they sank into the deep hand in hand. Once something twitched forward up ahead at the edge of her field of vision, possibly just a fish. Not big enough for a kobalin, thank God.
They might have been under way one hour or several, and most of the time they had been swimming. Both avoided speaking about their rift. Sooner or later they’d have to talk about it, Jolly knew that. There was no point in keeping silent. And as little as he could excuse her for what had happened, she understood his behavior. There had been so much selfishness in him, so much anger and injured vanity.
Sometime, after half an eternity, they made out the sea bottom below them. Rocky points reached toward them in the darkness. At first sight they looked like figures in hooded capes. Shapeless stone structures stretched toward them like bony fingers. The cliffs rose out of a dark, rocky underground, a plain that led gently downward—down to the Crustal Breach.
Thirty miles, went through Jolly icily. She felt deathly sick.
“That place up ahead looks good,” said Munk.
“Good?” she asked scornfully, but at once she was sorry. Who was the one picking a quarrel now?
The place Munk was pointing to lay a bit farther north—provided that north was the direction where the land fell away. They knew only that the Crustal Breach was the deepest point far and wide, at least Forefather had claimed that.
With quick strokes they moved sideways and let themselves sink to the ground. Both were wearing sandals with firm soles, which offered hardly any resistance to the water and protected them from rough surfaces underfoot, as long as the undersea wasn’t too different from land. But who could know whether everything might look very different in such a place? Did any of the laws of the surface apply here at all?
Shivering, Jolly realized that they were the first humans who’d gone this deep in the ocean. Or no, not the very first—polliwogs had set out to conquer the Maelstrom before, thousands of years ago. That was the first time he’d tried to tear down the borders to the Mare Tenebrosum. The polliwogs, so it was said, had shut him into the mussel in the Crustal Breach, until fourteen years ago he’d managed to burst his prison. Right afterwards new polliwogs were born, all of whom had perished since then except for two. Only Jolly and Munk were left. It was now their responsibility to walk the path of the polliwogs once again and to overcome the Maelstrom.
The landscape was impressive in its absolute desolation. The ground looked like a mixture of cooled lava and firmly baked ashes. There were no plants far and wide. Forefather said they couldn’t survive at such depths. The stone wasn’t even covered with lichens; all was bare and desolate like the tip of a volcanic island, which Jolly knew from her travels with Bannon.
They also saw no fish, although Jolly couldn’t shake off the feeling that they were being observed from the splits and cracks in the porous rock surface. There must be life down here, and with a shudder she thought of all the stories of giant krakens and other monsters that were said to live on the bottom of the sea.
From the ground, the rock needles around them seemed even higher and more bizarre. Some looked as if someone had piled black cinders on top of each other and had let them set, half liquid. Others were so sharp-edged that it hurt her just to look at them. Not a few resembled grotesque, distorted bodies, which bent over them like giants and showed teeth of dark stone. Those that lay on the edge of their vision appeared to move if you weren’t looking at them directly.
Jolly bit her lower lip in the hope that the pain would turn her from her fears. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t help. She straightened her knapsack, checked all the fastenings and belts, then turned to Munk.
&n
bsp; “Let’s go,” she said, and with that she sucked a deep breath of fresh salt water into her lungs.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Let’s get on the road.”
The Threshold of War
On his return to Aelenium, Griffin was struck by how very much the city had changed. He’d barely noticed it earlier, in his frenzy to find Matador and chase after Jolly—even if only to say good-bye.
The coral mountain bristled with weapons and war machines. The markets that had still existed at numerous places in the labyrinth of streets one or two weeks before had vanished. The storytellers’ square was now piled with sandbags and chests of weapons. Soldiers patrolled in the Poets’ Quarter, which lay just below the second defense wall; here, too, there were no more public lectures, readings, or singing.
At first, it seemed as though the burghers of Aelenium had vanished into thin air. Instead you saw only people in uniform in the narrow coral streets. But when he looked more closely, Griffin saw that many civilians had changed their everyday clothing for the leather uniforms of the guard.
In the city’s squares and gardens they were being instructed by weapons experts in the basics of fighting with saber and pistol. All too quickly it became obvious that the inhabitants of the sea star city were not people of war. Those not responsible for the provisioning of the city as traders, fishermen, or their employees usually worked in the library—there was no one among them who’d really mastered the handling of weapons, even though the council had begun years ago to subject the citizens to regular training.
They’d known for a long time that the Maelstrom was arming for war, but now it was painfully obvious that the preparations for defense hadn’t been sufficient. Count Aristotle and the other lords of the city had relied a bit too airily on the polliwogs’ being found in time to fight the Maelstrom.
