by Kai Meyer
Griffin didn’t utter a sound. What he saw in front of him, constantly in motion, incomplete like a half-finished clay bust, was his double, over which, in quick succession, repeatedly flitted the face of a girl.
Jolly’s face.
And then he understood. It was the wyvern, the shape changer, which he and Jolly had met on the burning bridge between worlds. That time the creature had met them in the shape of the bridge builder Agostini. The wyvern had taken flight when the bridge had gone up in flames. Griffin had hardly given it a thought since then.
The wyvern smiled—a bizarre mixture of Jolly’s and Griffin’s own smiles. Obviously the creature hadn’t decided yet which form it wanted to take. Not only did the two faces alternate on the creature’s head, they also appeared anything but complete. The nose somehow resembled neither Griffin’s nor Jolly’s, and the wyvern was having a hard time replicating Jolly’s long black hair. But its difficulties with the numerous rings in Jolly’s ears and the silver pin through the skin at the bridge of her nose were even greater.
The time before, when Agostini’s double had dissolved before his very eyes, Griffin had been able to get a look at the true form of this creature. Now, in this condition of indecisive transformation, the wyvern’s real makeup was also visible. For it was not a single creature but a throng of thousands upon thousands of tiny beetles. They came together like seething grains of sand in a skinlike surface, taking on various tones of color like a chameleon, and thus could give the impression of a human or any other living creature.
So now it would be Griffin. Or Jolly. One of the two. Griffin’s capture had probably decided the issue.
Wordlessly the wyvern stretched a pulsating hand toward him.
Griffin pushed off the ground with all his strength. He wouldn’t permit the wyvern, camouflaged as his double, to be slipped behind the defense walls of Aelenium. Because of his adventures at the side of the polliwogs, Griffin had access to all the defense installations and dignitaries of the sea star city. It was unthinkable what damage the wyvern could wreak in his form.
But evidently the finishing touch was missing. Something that required Griffin himself, the living, breathing model.
And that, whatever it was, Griffin did not intend to give the creature.
He stumbled backward, pulling the two kobalins with him, and his sudden movement caused the entire mussel island to begin rocking. Again the edges of the shell grated over each other. For an instant, a broad crack opened beside him. Furious jabbering arose from the bunch of kobalins beneath the mussel shells.
The wyvern gave a high, long-drawn-out cry, which penetrated all Griffin’s bones like an icy storm wind. It started after him, but because of its unfinished body it didn’t have complete control over its movements. It reeled, stopped, and swayed for a moment before it found new stability and straightened up.
Griffin rammed his left elbow behind him, felt the teeth of one of the kobalins shatter under the impact, and shook him off. Squealing, the kobalin slid backward into the water. The second kobalin, who’d pulled Griffin up, didn’t let himself be outwitted so easily. Griffin also struck at him, but the creature ducked, sprang crouching beneath the blow, and tried to grab him by the hips. Griffin was just able to turn sideways and escape one of the kobalin’s paws; the other struck his side with its claws. The points of the long talons dug into his skin, and he cried out in pain and rage. He seized the kobalin’s outstretched arm and slung the creature over the edge of the mussel island. Gibbering, the kobalin slapped into the water.
Something had fastened onto the back of Griffin’s head. A stabbing pain like the touch of stinging jellyfish spread through his skull. Then there was scrambling movement on his temples, his neck, his forehead. Griffin roared, shook himself in revulsion, and threw himself on his side. The wyvern was pulled to the ground with him, while the tiny beetle creatures swarmed over Griffin’s face to study its form and transfer it to the swarm.
Somehow Griffin succeeded in drawing the knife from his belt. The blade passed through the body of the wyvern like butter, but there was no wound—it was as if he’d plunged the blade into a heap of sand. When he withdrew the weapon, the swarming insects closed the opening like trickling sand.
The heads of the kobalins appeared around the mussel hump. They’d encircled the strange island, and after a brief hesitation they pushed themselves over the edge of the platform. The first pulled themselves out of the water with bared fangs, which shimmered yellow-white through the mist of the fog.
But Griffin paid no attention to them. His battle was hopeless, he knew that. Nevertheless he refused to give up. He ran his hand over his face and wiped a broad furrow in the layer of beetles that were about to close over his features like a mask. The wyvern bellowed with pain. Griffin realized that the beetles were very probably elements of a single organism. When he separated some of them from the rest, it was if he cut off part of the wyvern’s body.
Armed with this new knowledge, Griffin fought mercilessly. The wyvern screeched and screamed as Griffin did his best to rip entire clumps of beetles out of the monster and throw them out onto the water.
He didn’t have much time left. And yet in all this tumult, as he tried not to be enclosed by the beetles, the behavior of the kobalins was puzzling. They’d surrounded him, and almost all had now climbed up onto the mussel shells. And yet they didn’t seize him. It was almost as if they were watching him—and awaiting the outcome of his grotesque duel with the wyvern.
The shape changer struck at him with crawling, seething limbs. Gradually Griffin’s strength was flagging. All the hours in the ray’s saddle, the tension, the fear; then the plunge into the sea, his hopeless struggling with the soldiers of the deep tribes, and now, last of all, his fight with the wyvern, were accompanied by the never-ending rain of dead fish.
To the right of him the waves broke apart, an eruption of dark saltwater, followed by a transparent ball of gelatin, which soon towered out of the waves like a glassy finger. Twelve feet high and clear as crystal. And in its interior, standing upright, with crossed arms and a malicious smile at the corners of his mouth—the boy.
The same boy that Griffin had seen from the ray when the jellyfish creature had encircled Jasconius. Black-haired, dark, and very delicate. Younger than he was. Really a pretty child—had there not been the smile that changed his face into a malignant grimace.
Griffin and the wyvern were knitted into a grotesque embrace, half standing, half on the ground. On the water, nests of wriggling beetles were floating everywhere, trying blindly and frantically to return to their swarm. The wyvern suffered terrible pain, but it had not yet given up its plan to take Griffin’s form.
But then it caught sight of the boy, who towered over the mussel island in his jellyfish sphere. It cried out harshly from a dozen body openings at the same time, orders perhaps, demands for support. But the boy only looked on and smiled.
What’s going on here? thought Griffin. Who’s fighting whom? What have I gotten into?
The shape changer bellowed again, but the boy in the jellyfish shook his head barely perceptibly. He made a short hand motion in the direction of the kobalins. The ones that had climbed onto the mussel shells were waiting with dangling claws and bared teeth to fall upon Griffin. Now their master gave them the silent order to withdraw. Swiftly the soldiers of the deep tribes slid into the water. A few seconds later Griffin and the wyvern were alone on the backs of the mussel shells.
Griffin closed his eyes. That the lord of the kobalins surfaced here, uninjured, could only mean that he’d triumphed over the whale.
Griffin gave vent to his rage and despair with a scream. And it might have been his anger or a last rebellion that gave him the strength to break the wyvern’s resistance. Griffin drove his fist into the blurry face of the shape changer; he felt his fingers penetrate it and come up against something like a hard pit in the center of the teeming skull. He couldn’t be certain that he’d actually found the wyvern’s
brain. He trusted his intuition alone and his luck.
His hand closed around the firm substance—and he pulled it out of the whirling chaos of beetles with a wild yell.
Instantly the swarm collapsed on itself, hitting the mussel shells and spraying out in a firework of colors. Then, as a cascade of beetles, it flowed into the cracks and over the edges of the island.
Seconds later Griffin was alone, crouching exhausted on his knees and closing his right hand around the brain of the wyvern with all the strength he had left. The black organ, which resembled a clump of earth, was not firm enough to withstand his grip. Silently it crumbled between his fingers.
The boy inside the jellyfish laughed.
His mouth opened like a portrait coming to life behind glass. His hands twitched with excitement. Only his eyes remained unchanged, wide open, staring at Griffin. He looked like a puppet that is manipulated by too few hands to move naturally—each movement looked incomplete, every motion lacked the details: eyes that didn’t laugh with the mouth; fists on which the thumbs remained spread, as if paralyzed; and when he opened his mouth to speak, no sound came out.
He speaks with them through his thoughts, Griffin decided. Then all at once the mussel shells under his feet shifted closer together again and all the gaps closed. And the kobalins in the water formed themselves into a perfect circle around the hump.
The jellyfish towered upright over the waves behind the kobalins. The waves struck against its sides, but they didn’t bounce off. They were absorbed by the gelatin, as if it drew its strength from the ocean itself.
So that was why Jasconius hadn’t been able to overcome him, Griffin thought in grim sorrow. No matter how much the whale attacked the jellyfish monster, as long as it was in the water, its reserves of strength were inexhaustible.
“What do you want of me?” Griffin roared at the boy. The wounds that he’d suffered in this and the previous fights hurt. He was dizzy, and his legs were threatening to buckle. But no wound, no matter how severe, would make him fall on his knees before this monster.
Some of the kobalins were growing restless. Griffin saw them only blurrily, but he noticed that their jabbering sounded more excited. Some were paddling nervously back and forth, others ducked their heads under the water and looked into the depths.
The boy inside the jellyfish opened his mouth wide, as if in a piercing scream.
And the sea exploded.
Griffin saw the water surface under the jellyfish curve upward. The jaws of a giant whale rose up around the lord of the kobalins like a black wall, enclosed him completely—and swallowed him. But still Jasconius continued to rise from the sea like a black tower, rushing quickly but at the same time in slow motion, as if time itself had slowed so that everyone could appreciate the majesty of the whale rising from the waves.
The kobalins under the mussel platform scattered, screeching. Suddenly Griffin no longer had a floor under his feet. The mussels slid apart in all directions, and a mighty tidal wave swirled over him and the soldiers of the deep tribes.
Jasconius’s gigantic body twisted itself ever higher, until more than half his body towered out of the ocean. Then the whale reached the highest point, seemed to float free for a fraction of a second—and let himself fall on his side.
In a mighty eruption of water, foam, and tossed-about kobalins, Jasconius plunged back into the sea. His mouth was now closed, the jellyfish and the boy vanished inside. While Griffin kicked desperately to stay on the surface, he saw that the entire body of the whale was covered with lifeless kobalins and countless harpoons. The jellyfish boy must have thrown the combined might of the deep tribes against his adversary. But he hadn’t reckoned with the tenacity of the giant whale.
Griffin saw Jasconius sink with his prey and he guessed—hoped, prayed—that the duel was decided: In Jasconius’s stomach the lord of the kobalins was only a gigantic jellyfish without the opportunity to renew itself in the water. Griffin had seen a thousand times what happened to jellyfish that were thrown onto land: They dried out and finally dissolved.
But that meant that no more water could get into Jasconius’s body. And suddenly Griffin understood what the whale and Ebenezer had done.
Jasconius was dying. Hundreds of harpoons were sticking into his body. The claws and teeth of the kobalins had torn deep wounds in his skin. His attack on the lord of the kobalins was a last convulsion, a final, determined effort of will.
“No!” Griffin howled so loudly that even the fog scarcely muffled his voice. Shattered, he floated in the churning waters, oblivious to the fleeing kobalins and incapable of following his dying friend to the bottom. He wanted to be there when the end came, wanted to thank Jasconius one last time for everything that he’d done. And Ebenezer…just the thought of him burrowed into Griffin’s entrails like sharp steel.
He struck his fist on the water in desperation. Then he dove under, headfirst, swam down into darkness, as deep as he could. The need for air was unbearable, and the pain of the water pressure raged in his ears. But he kept sinking deeper, although he knew that it was pointless.
He’d never see Jasconius again. The whale had taken the lord of the kobalins to death with him.
He cried out, this time into the water, and his rage and grief turned into a last burst of air bubbles, which pushed quickly upward. He couldn’t help it, he had to get to the surface. Right now.
He let himself be moved by water pressure, without using his arms and legs, for at this moment he didn’t care if he arrived on the surface living or dead. He’d lost Jolly, perhaps forever; Aelenium was sinking in fire and the attacks of the deep tribes; Soledad had possibly fallen in the battle at the anchor chain; and now Jasconius and Ebenezer…especially those two, whom he’d drawn into this business and who’d joined the fight for his sake.
They’d sacrificed themselves. For him. For all the others.
His head broke the surface in the midst of the fog. In anguish he gulped air and bellowed angrily once more. Then he relaxed, let himself drift. It didn’t matter where. Deeper into the fog or out onto the battlefield again. It didn’t matter at all.
But something happened that roused him. Instantly his will to survive returned, and this time it was not the thought of Jolly.
A dark silhouette was moving through the fog not far from him, was coming right up to him. For one rapturous moment he hoped it was Jasconius, to whom nothing had happened, who was still alive and—
It was the bow of a ship.
Wild shouting was coming down from the deck of the galleon. The sails hung slack on the yards, and the ship itself moved painfully slowly. It wasn’t hard for Griffin to reach it with a few strokes. His heart thumping, he looked up at the high plank wall.
Heads were dangling from the bowsprit. They were the severed heads of men, and he recognized at least two of them from his years as a ship’s boy.
One was Rouquette, the oldest of the council of the Antilles captains. Beside him dangled the head of his fellow captain, Galliano.
The battle between the cannibal king and the Antilles captains was decided. Tyrone’s fleet had finally set its course for Aelenium.
The ship that was moving through the fog ring in front of Griffin must be the flagship of the cannibal king. No other was entitled to ornament his prow with the heads of fallen enemies.
Griffin glided over to the hull of the ship and let it pass by him for a short distance. Then he grabbed hold of a rope that might have been left dangling into the sea after the last keelhauling and was being dragged along through the waves. The ship lay low in the water; it must be filled to bursting with fighters, cannibals, and cannon.
Griffin clenched his teeth and climbed up the rope hand over hand. He’d done the same thing a dozen times, but today the wound in his side slowed him; it hurt hellishly. An arm’s length below the railing, he waited until the ship moved forward into the interior of the fog ring and all the seamen were distracted by the sight of the burning sea star city.
Then he pulled himself soundlessly aboard, scurried over to a chest full of weapons, and took cover behind it, unnoticed.
“The kobalins are running away!” shouted someone in the line of defenders, and soon other voices took up the cry: “They’re quitting! They’re getting out of here!”
Soledad had been fighting at Walker’s side for the past few hours, in the middle of a wall of harried, tattered, exhausted figures. The stink of fire, blood, and sweat hung in the air.
Buenaventure was right beside them, grim and silent. He must have slain more kobalins than any other, and the only thing he ever said was a curse now and then that his saber was getting too dull to kill three of them with one blow.
They were standing on the second defense wall, above the Poets’ Quarter. Smoke rose up to them from far below, but the fires along the shores didn’t appear to have spread.
“They’re right,” Walker murmured. “The kobalins are making tracks. Devil take me, well, I’ll be damned!”
His long locks were matted, his face smeared with kobalin blood and dirt. Like the clothing of all the others, his shirt and his trousers had turned a muddy brown; in many places the cloth was shredded by the claws of the enemy, showing deep scratches underneath.
“Soledad!”
She turned around to him. Only unwillingly and still with a trace of disbelief could she take her eyes off the kobalin masses now turning from the wall and plunging head over heels through the streets back toward the shore. A stampede of scaled bodies, fanged teeth, and scraping claws, the deep tribes surged down to the water.
Soledad repressed the urge to fall on Walker’s neck in relief—she still didn’t trust the sudden peace. Maybe the unexpected retreat was a trick, some kind of devilishness that was supposed to lull the defenders into a sense of security. But why was the withdrawal so disorderly then? Why did the kobalins trample each other in their flight, scratching and biting in their struggle to be the first to jump back into the sea?
