Mitra, no don’t leave me please…I can’t do this without you.
You are strong now, she replied, her voice already fading from my mind. Never stop fighting…
I whirled my Mizrak around me, trying to create some space and desperately searching for her in the confusion of battle. As I glanced down, in the few moments before I was completely surrounded again, I saw her beautiful ribbon-like body drifting gently away into the dark.
32. Light
Tears melted into the water around me as I continued to fight, watching the snarling, angry expressions of my enemies as they did everything in their power to kill me.
In the moments between deflecting blows I tried to get a sense of how the rest of my army were doing. The Zmija continued to dash through groups of enemy Oceanids although now that they had watched Mitra fall there were more and more injuries to our animal friends.
I managed to fight my way towards two of my army who were desperately trying to defend themselves. It was Takimu and the anger with which the Oceanids around him attacked him made it obvious that he’d done a good job of being accepted in the enemy army before betraying them.
“Where is the rest of your team?” I asked between ducking away from an Oceanid and hurling poison in his face.
“Dead,” Takimu replied, still whirling at the angry attack from the enemy.
Very slowly we managed to get to some other allies only to helplessly witness their deaths just before we could get to them.
My heart sank as I watched their lifeless bodies carelessly swept aside as our enemy began to taste victory. I was doing everything I possibly could, fighting with every ounce of strength, and yet I knew that it still wasn’t going to be enough. We would all die trying to stop Neith’s army.
It seemed ironic to me that the Oceanids we were fighting hadn’t even realised that Neith wasn’t around. They didn’t know he was dead because no one had told them. I doubted the enemy would believe me but I knew my army would.
“Don’t give up,” I shouted as I fought, “fight for freedom, fight for justice, Neith is already dead, don’t give up...”
Those around me caught on to the refrain and shouted it just as loudly, the message seeming to renew their vigour and energy as they fought.
To my surprise the enemy seemed bewildered by the words we were shouting, their fighting beginning to lack the conviction it had once had as they began to look around them.
I heard a few whispers of “Where is Neith?” and a few of them even fell back from the heat of the battle clearly searching the writhing crowd for him.
The slight slackening of the pressure allowed the remnants of my army to congregate in a ball at the very centre of Ferengren. I hurriedly pushed the injured Oceanids into the middle where the rest of us could protect them, if only for a short while, and allow them to rest and recuperate.
“Maya, you need to heal as many as you can as fast as you can.” Maya rushed to obey me, sheathing her Mizrak and diving into the middle of the Oceanids.
“I can’t share any more talents with you,” I told them. “You will have to use your specific talents and we must protect those on the inside.”
A warbled whistle from within Ferengren changed the uncertainty in our enemies’ faces to fury as they surrounded us and attacked.
“Neith was right about you,” one of them spat at me as he threw dozens of needled spines at me. I blocked as many as I could with my Mizrak.
“That’s unlikely,” I replied, heating the water around him until his skin turned red and began to blister. He dove away from me only to be replaced by another one swirling his Mizrak at me.
“You are a liar,” this Oceanid told me, each word venomous as he tried to run me through. “Neith is alive, we have just heard his call from within Ferengren.”
The first Oceanid reappeared over the top of my army, hurling another fistful of razor-sharp spines at me as I continued to protect myself from the Mizrak the Oceanid in front of me continued to wield. The spines buried themselves into the right side of my body, a few of them glancing off the armour that protected my face and abdomen but several still piercing my leg and side.
The pain was unbearable at first and then terrifyingly numb.
The Oceanids around me pulled me back into the protective ball we had created, replacing me with another soldier as I was quickly moved to the centre where Maya was working tirelessly.
Every Oceanid she healed was replaced by another two injured.
She went pale when she saw me, leaving the soldier she was tending to worm her way through the crowd towards me.
“No, finish with him first,” I gasped, knowing how desperate the front line was for strong soldiers.
She did so quickly before inspecting the spines in my wounds.
“They’re poisoned,” she told me, pulling them from my unfeeling flesh.
I nodded, finding myself drowsy and uncaring as to what was going on around me. I was just tired, so very tired.
I drifted for what could have only been moments and in that time the tiniest sound, a child’s giggle amidst the roar of clashing Mizraks, sparked a moment of hope. Maya had only just lifted her hands from me before I was worming my way back to the front line, yelling for Thanh.
He appeared still on Allentia.
“Protect the entrance,” I yelled, and he and the remaining Zmija immediately formed a roiling mass of aggressive bodies at the entrance to Ferengren.
Amidst the fighting and in between the wildly thrashing bodies of those around me, I watched as brilliant colours slipped in between the blues and greens of the Zmija and the entire tangle of creatures slowly fought their way to us.
The Zmija formed tunnel spiked with teeth and Mizraks through which dozens of children were hurried into the centre of our defences, and along with them, to my utmost relief, came Merrick.
“Where’s my Dad?” I greeted him having dived into the centre to check everyone was OKand work out how we were going to get them out alive.
“He stayed in Ferengren to stop whoever is giving commands.”
“We have to get them out of here.” I nodded towards the children who were huddled together in a protective and frightened bundle.
I gave the order for the Oceanids to shuffle so that the defensive talents were on the bottom and sides of the sphere and the offensive on the top.
Another warbled and high-pitched whistle ruined my plans instantly as the Oceanids attacked with greater zeal and ferocity than we’d experienced so far. Merrick and I wriggled our way to the front lines only to watch in horror as the sphere began to break apart. Dozens of our friends and allies felling back, injured.
I pulled my Mizrak from its sheath and protected as many of them as I could, realising as I did so that we had lost. There was no escaping the sheer numbers of them.
“Get back,” I yelled as the children who had been in the centre of our sphere drifted out to form an orb around us. I tried to push past them, to get in front of them, but before I could a massive jolt shimmered through the water followed by a blinding flash of brilliant white light.
33. Aftermath
When I opened my eyes again, all of the enemy Oceanids were floating haphazardly in the water, their eyes open and some of them with their Mizraks raised as if to attack.
Everyone behind the children was fine.
“What happened?” I asked the child in front of me.
“We stopped it,” she replied shyly.
“How?”
“As a group we sort of just said no.”
“Did you know that would happen?”
She shrugged. “Not that way.”
We were all so stunned by the sudden and abrupt victory that it took a few more moments before the celebrations began.
Merrick swept me into his arms, kissing every available part of my face and laughing as we whirled together in the water.
“You did it!” he laughed hugging me.
“We did it,” I replied hugg
ing others who came up to thank and congratulate me.
In the midst of the excitement my stomach suddenly dropped.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked Merrick suddenly terribly afraid.
We swam quickly into Ferengren, desperately searching the now empty cells and hallways.
I found him drifting in the great hall where I’d first glimpsed Neith’s army. His body was a patchwork of ugly cuts and bruises and his face had been badly beaten. The only other Oceanid in the room was a beautiful red-headed woman, her face drawn into a vicious snarl as she floated, frozen, in the water.
“He’s still alive,” I gasped as I felt his heart still pounding in his chest.
Merrick nodded. “They all are, they’ve just been put into somnus.”
I searched my memory for the vaguely familiar word as I poured my energy into healing Dad, watching with satisfaction as his cuts and bruises recovered.
“How do I get him out of it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Let’s ask Pelagius.”
As Merrick said Pelagius’s name the memory snapped into place: somnus was what he had been in after Sabrina died. He’d described it as hibernating.
It took Pelagius only a few seconds to wake Dad, and when he woke it was as if he was still in mid-fight as he swirled away from us ending up crouched against a wall.
“It’s OK,Dad, it’s over.”
“What do you mean?”
I explained about the children and how they had put our enemies into somnus.
“Who is that?” I asked, pointing to the woman whose hair floated around her as she turned and drifted in the current.
Dad sighed. “That is Nasrin.”
“Your second in command from all those years ago?”
“Yes. She joined forces with Neith, that’s why he had such a huge army. If I’d known what she’d been plotting all these years, I would have hunted her down and tried to stop her ages ago.”
“I think all of us would have done something if we’d been more aware,” Merrick agreed.
“How long is the somnus going to last?”
“I chose to go into my somnus and that lasted a long time,” Pelagius answered. “I’m not sure how long their forced somnus will last.”
“Let’s put them in jail,” I suggested but Merrick shook his head.
“We don’t have things like jail underwater, it takes too many resources and too much energy to maintain, and anyway so few Oceanids ever need to be put in one.”
“Well, we can’t leave them all together like this, at the very least we need to separate them and get them as far away from each other as possible.”
“I also think we should find a holding place for Nasrin,” Dad chipped in. “I have a particular cave I’d like to reacquaint Nasrin with.” He left the group to go and tow her to the cave he had in mind.
We were organising the Oceanids so that those of the enemy that had belonged to their communities were taken home and kept there, and those we didn’t recognise would be taken to the far corners of the globe and placed in communities the Oceanids trusted.
We were still discussing the logistics of moving hundreds of sleeping Oceanids across open and dangerous waters when Dad reappeared, his face pale.
“She’s gone,” he told us.
“What!”
“That’s impossible,” Pelagius informed Dad “If she was in somnus she’ll not move for months.”
“Well, she’s not in the hall.”
We sent search parties all over Ferengren looking for Nasrin but there wasn’t a trace of her.
“How is this possible?” I asked Pelagius.
“It isn’t,” he replied, “unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless she had help from another Oceanid.”
“But the only Oceanids who are not in somnus are our Oceanids…” My heart skipped a beat as my mind skimmed the battle. Neith’s information about us had been pinpoint accurate, nothing like the rubbish we’d been feeding Cyan. He had lured us to Ferengren and very nearly succeeded in annihilating us, and he’d done it with insider information.
“There’s another spy,” I breathed.
Dad nodded. “There must be. Alexandra, I’ll take a contingent and hunt Nasrin down. She cannot be left unfound.”
I nodded “OK, good idea, she can’t have gotten far,” I replied, not realising that I wouldn’t see him for months as his search took him across the oceans and back again without a trace of her.
By the time the sun was at its fullest, almost all of Ferengren was deserted.
I said goodbye to the last of the pods who had come to The Haven’s aid and fought with us so bravely before drifting to the depths of Ferengren, tears melting into the water around me as I said goodbye to Mitra.
Merrick swam to me and took my hand.
“She was incredibly brave, a true queen.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me gently. “Just like her rider.”
I rested my head on his chest as I took one last look at the yawning depths that held the best friend and greatest mentor I’d ever had.
Goodbye, Mitra. Thank you for all you’ve given me.
I knew not to expect it but the absence of the mental nudge I’d grown so used to tore at my heart as I turned with Merrick and left Ferengren for good.
34. Queen
The days following the victory at Ferengren were a confusion of administration as on our return to The Haven we discovered that Aoi had taken Azura’s body and left.
As soon as we got back it seemed to naturally fall to me to organise teams of the Oceanids that chose to stay at The Haven to begin the clean-up, starting with food, supplies and sleeping arrangements.
The whole operation had taken several days, and in that time Merrick and I worked tirelessly, comforting those who had lost loved ones, finding willing parents for children whose families had been lost and dealing with the myriad of tiny but important issues that comes with housing and feeding hundreds of people.
The children worried me the most. Gone was their enthusiastic, joyful play and in the place of former laughter and smiles, their little faces seemed constantly creased in frowns and they spoke seriously of the problems we all faced.
“I don’t know how to get things back to the way they were.,” I told Merrick one evening after dinner. We were floating on the reed mats at the surface, gazing at the star-encrusted sky.
He flipped onto his stomach, slinging an arm across my midriff and pulling me to his side before kissing me.
I wriggled onto my side so that I could look him in the eye.
“Merrick, this is serious.”
He sighed. “I know, Alex, and that is half the problem, we’re all so serious. The truth is the battle changed all of us. We are different now and trying to get back to what we were is a wasted effort. We need to move forward to what we will be.”
“And what is that?”
“Well, that’s up to all of us to define isn’t it?”
I shrugged, thinking about what I wanted to be, where I wanted to be.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, propping his head up on one hand and running his hand from my shoulder down the length of my arm until it rested on my waist.
I smiled at him, relishing his touch.
“I was thinking about your question, and where I want to be.”
“And what is the answer?”
“ I want to be with you.” I gazed into his eyes, no longer afraid to let him see how much I adored him.
He beamed, pulling me closer to him.
“Well, that’s good news,” he replied huskily, his eyes lit with a hungry fire as he kissed me, “because otherwise I’d have to stalk you for the rest of your life.”
I laughed before sobering a little. “I just don’t know where I want to be with you.” His eyebrows shot up in surprise as I rushed to explain.
“I am so torn. I love the ocean, it feels like home, but every time I think about staying here I wonder how my m
om is doing, how she’s coping without me. I think about how sad she must be…I came to the ocean to rescue you, and now that that is done I feel kind of…spare.”
He pulled me off the reed mat, holding me tight against his body as we slowly sank into the beautiful blue, spiralling gently as we went.
“Well, the world, including the ocean, is our oyster as the humans say. We can go back to your human life. I would have to enrol at school and stay in the bedroom next to yours…which would be kind of weird, but we could do it.” He grinned as I wrinkled my nose at the idea of going back to ordinary life…I’d changed so much I didn’t know how I would cope with ‘fitting in’ again.
“Or we could stay here and finish helping The Haven, and then explore the ocean…and maybe make this…” he kissed me, his tongue tracing the outline of my lips, “more official.” He grinned. “It’s up to you really.”
The murmured voices of the entire pod below us as they spilled over the edges of the arena interrupted our delicious discussion.
Pelagius waved us over.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to Merrick as we swam into the centre of the arena.
He looked as bewildered as I was. “No idea.”
“Merrick and Alexandra,” Pelagius began, floating slightly above the crowd. “Words cannot express how grateful we are for your bravery, courage and sacrifice. You led our people, Merrick through enduring great pain and overcoming massive obstacles, and Alexandra through leading our people so bravely through the fires of battle into victory.”
I blushed at the extravagant description of me.
“You have shown yourselves, despite your age, to hold the true qualities of leadership and it is for this reason that we humbly request you to be the King and Queen of The Haven.”
Epilogue
I had chosen a deep sapphire-blue gown, shot through with turquoise and emerald.. It swirled around me in the warm lazy water, imitating my hair as it drifted in the current, which was held out of my eyes by a few intricate plaits woven through with crystals and pearls.
Fire (The Mermaid Legacy - Book 2) Page 21
