by Kai Meyer
For a moment he weighed actually plunging into the deep with the ray and just seeing how far they got. How deep could he thrust into the Maelstrom without being caught by the rotating walls of water? But he rejected the idea, for what good would it have done to take his own life in the bargain? He would help neither Jolly nor his friends in Aelenium that way.
In a curious way he was almost relieved, in spite of everything. He was finally seeing with his own eyes what they had only talked about for so long. He looked at the Maelstrom lying below him, heard its roaring, felt its terrible suction. He felt the nearness of the enemy, and that spurred his hatred again. Determination rose in him, and if he succeeded in returning safely to Aelenium, he would fight for the freedom of mankind until there were only two possible ways left—survival or going straight to the end.
Before he turned around and started back, however, he couldn’t resist the temptation to go a little lower. It was as if the suction of the Maelstrom also had an effect on his thoughts, as if there were a pull there that drew him down like a magnet.
Come closer, hissed up out of the throat of the Maelstrom. You cannot escape me.
While he was still wrestling with himself, trying to resist the temptation, he saw something that startled him alert in an instant.
Deep below him, beyond the cover of water vapor and the arcs of splashing water that now and again formed over the abyss like bridges, a glittering brightness flared up.
At first he took it for another cloud of water droplets, snowy white and denser than the others. But then he realized that the entire cloud cover was glowing, as if lightning had struck and ignited the whole world for the fraction of a second.
A fountain of light shot up out of the depths and stood only a few stone’s throws removed from Griffin in the center of the Maelstrom like a pillar of glittering, blazing fire.
The ray reared as if it had flown against an invisible wall. Griffin hollered in fright, slumped in his safety belt, and for seconds fought to keep from falling out of the saddle. The wounds in his side burned. When the animal was horizontal again and Griffin had managed to pull himself together in his pain and regain his balance, the pillar of light dissolved before his eyes into a cascade of glittering points of fire.
From deep, deep below an enormous rumbling thundered up, entirely drowning out the roaring of the water masses and seeming to rotate in common with the walls of the Maelstrom, at one moment on this side, the next moment on the other side. The ray fell into a panic, but it no longer shook, rather it shot forward with powerful wing beats, faster than Griffin had ever experienced with one of these animals. It was looking for the shortest way to the edge of the Maelstrom, away from his center and the swarm of light points that were still dancing and sparking there.
The rumbling grew louder, and suddenly it appeared to Griffin as though the edge of the funnel kept moving away from them, as though it intended to keep the ray and rider from ever reaching it. And while a bizarre competition broke out between the ray and the curvature of the Maelstrom, Griffin looked down over the animal’s wings into the deep.
The waves of vapor flew apart and with them the water masses around the chasm in the sea. The funnel grew wider and broader, while the bestial rumbling filled the world with a sound quite different from the noise of the raging water.
The wings of the ray flapped up and down, faster and faster now, as if the animal were still not yet at the end of its strength. Gradually the edge of the abyss came closer, that whirling steepness that somewhere merged into the level of the ocean.
But before they arrived there, Griffin saw something else.
Beneath him there was no more water vapor. The clouds had pulled away and the walls of the funnel were glowing on their own, as if the water had turned to glowing lava.
Down below them gaped a shaft in the water that reached all the way to the bottom of the sea.
He grew dizzy and then sick, but when he retched, nothing but gall came up. No wonder—he hadn’t eaten anything for an eternity.
Under him lay the Crustal Breach.
Six miles deep and at least two miles wide yawned the abyss. On its bottom was a white surface, sand perhaps, like a piece of desert in the midst of the sea. Something shimmered in its center, a dot, which might be anything. Much too big for a human being. Perhaps a shipwreck.
Or a closed mussel.
The ray let out a strange sound, a muttering cry of alarm, and a moment later Griffin realized the reason.
The abyss was closing again! From all sides at once the rotating walls of the Maelstrom stormed closed. The bottom of the sea was already invisible now. The waves circled ever faster, drew together, filled the emptiness with the floods of ocean.
“Faster!” Griffin screamed in panic. “Faster!”
The ray now had a speed almost approaching that of a sea horse. Its wings beat in an unprecedented rhythm, and its heart was pumping so hard that Griffin was bouncing up and down in the saddle.
They made it.
Somehow they made it.
When the Maelstrom closed behind them and a colossal column of water rose into the sky, they were just far enough away not to be caught by the flood.
Griffin closed his eyes and shouted, and the water thrown up plunged from the sky in crystal curtains around him.
Beneath him the sea surface curved up in a tidal wave several hundred feet high. For a moment it almost appeared to freeze. Then it rolled apart in an eruption of gigantic force in rings in all directions, to bury the shores of the world beneath it.
The voices of innumerable gods were swirling through the Ghost Trader’s consciousness when he caught sight of the light on the horizon. Like a finger of glittering brightness it shot up over the horizon and bored into the gray-blue of the heavens like a glowing dagger.
The Trader was distracted for a moment, and the connection to the forgotten ones was snapped. An angry bellowing arose, forcing its way out of fields where they were impatiently awaiting their rebirth—and was suddenly cut off.
An invisible fist struck the Ghost Trader and flung him to the ground. The silver ring slid from his hand and rolled to the edge of the ledge. The Trader was lucky that he’d stumbled only a few steps backward; the impact had almost thrown him over the edge of the plateau, down into the depths of the ray shelter. But he remained lying there, groaning, then lifted his head again and stared out at the horizon.
The light in the midst of the wavering walls of mist paled again. The world seemed to be holding its breath. Silence sealed his ears like liquid wax. The only thing the Trader heard was the blood pounding in his temples. Even the noise of the battle seemed to have halted, perhaps because the fighters also felt that something had happened that no one expected.
The door through which the ghosts of the dead gods of this world had intended to enter was closed. It would cost much strength and conviction to reopen it and begin the invocation all over again.
But perhaps it wouldn’t be necessary anymore.
Out of the heart of the Maelstrom, so many miles away, a gray tower of water twisted up, which was clearly recognizable even at this distance. Its point touched the sky, blossomed out like the cup of a flower, and finally broke apart in an explosion of water cascades.
The Ghost Trader saw all this and realized at the same moment that the tidal wave would come. Knew it before he finally saw a wall of seawater under which the ocean curved up, bucked like a stubborn animal, and made the air itself tremble.
Over the Ghost Trader the two parrots shot up into the heavens, ascending until they were only two dark dots.
He struggled to his feet, looked for a hold, and found the body of the old ray. Without taking his eyes off the tidal wave thundering toward Aelenium, he ran over to the dead animal, leaned his back against it, and closed his eyes in anxious expectation.
Silent and motionless he waited for the end.
Destruction
A few minutes before the mysterious light burst the
Maelstrom, before the Ghost Trader broke off his invocation, and before Griffin’s ray reached a safe height over the tidal wave with its last strength, the defense wall for the upper third of Aelenium broke for the second time.
As in the case of the south side, the attackers succeeded in making a gash in the desperate defense of the guard on the west side. Pouring over the wall now were ragged figures who’d stayed all day long in the darkness of the storerooms of Tyrone’s fleet, awaiting the outcome of the sea battle against the Antilles captains. Several cannon that had been brought on land and rolled up the streets had torn a breach in the defenses. Many of the inhabitants of Aelenium would have been killed, had the responsible commander not seen the situation in time and got his people to safety in the adjoining streets.
Now pirates and cannibals were streaming through the dense smoke from the guns, stumbling over broken splinters of coral and wooden debris, yelling and waving sabers, and trampling across a square where children used to play and people would sit in the evenings with wine and songs.
The first wave of the attackers came to a halt when the guardsmen opened fire behind a corner of the street and a few makeshift barricades. But those who fell back used the moments in which rifles and pistols were being reloaded to engage the defenders in fierce hand-to-hand fighting.
From the air, the ray riders saw what was happening, and d’Artois immediately felt compelled to divide his ray force and send a troop out of the hotly contested south to the new breach in the west. The result was that the attackers there were stopped, certainly, but those in the south now encountered less opposition and gradually won the upper hand.
“It’s hopeless,” said the captain to his sharpshooter. As commander, he couldn’t show his despair openly, but he and his marksman had known each other for years and had no secrets from each other. “They’ll take the city,” he said dejectedly, “before the sun goes down.”
The marksman fired a salvo down to the ground from several rifles. As the smoke of his weapons cleared, his eyes fell on the fog in the north.
“Look at that!” he cried, thumping d’Artois on the shoulder. The captain followed his outstretched hand and saw what he meant. On the other side of the fog ring, high over the ragged strands of mist, the sky colored brilliant white for a moment, as if a second sun had risen somewhere over the Atlantic. An instant of gloomy dusk followed the light a moment later, before an unearthly rumbling sounded like the eruption of a volcano.
Then something high and gray rent the captain’s vision, as if an ax had split the horizon. It was as if someone had stood the world on its head: The water of the ocean shot into the sky with a roar.
Soledad had long stopped counting how many arrows were protruding from the flying serpent’s body. The creature that had once been the Hexhermetic Shipworm was still fighting with the recklessness of a predator, but even his strength was gradually being weakened by the many wounds. Certainly the serpent was big, his bites and the blows with the end of his body were lethal, but he offered an easy target for the arrows of the cannibals and the bullets of the pirates.
From her place behind the wall, where Soledad had withdrawn to rest for a moment, she could clearly see that the flying reptile was bleeding from many wounds even where no arrows were sticking out between his scales. And as great as the panic that he spread among the attackers was, the triumphant cries when another arrow hit its mark were loud as well, and the courage and determination of the invaders was kindled anew.
Soledad was just about to jump up and plunge into the battle again when suddenly Buenaventure was standing next to her, panting, his tongue hanging out of his dog muzzle. The toothed saber now had more nicks than teeth.
“Walker’s wounded!” he shouted to her.
Her heart almost stopped beating.
“I carried him away from the wall,” the pit bull man went on, “into an empty house at the edge of the square. The one with the little windows over there.”
“How bad is it?”
“Not too bad. A wound in the side. And a deep knife cut in the left upper arm. Nothing that will kill someone like him. But he’s lost a lot of blood and can’t fight anymore.”
“Take over my place. I’ll be right back.” She pointed to one of the houses. “That one there?”
Buenaventure growled agreement; then he plunged into the battle with a wild war cry.
Soledad ran as fast up the steep square as she could. Several times she had to avoid wounded who were being carried from the wall to the field hospital. In the beginning there were still plenty of reinforcements moving up across the square, but that was long past. Anyone who could hold a weapon was now fighting at the very front.
She reached the entrance of the house, stormed into a hallway, and looked into the open doors right and left.
“Walker?”
“Soledad?” came a voice from the second floor. “Up here. That hairy, stinking monster of a friend has laid me aside here like an old man. Help me get back—”
He broke off as she came flying through the door of a room on the second floor, her face pale with alarm.
“Damn it,” he said with a pain-filled grin, “you were worried about me!” He lay on the floor, a single pillow under his head. The rest of the room was empty—all the furniture had been taken out to strengthen the wall.
“Not in the least,” she retorted. Then she leaped over beside him and embraced him hard. “When he said you were wounded, I thought…”
He tried to raise himself from his supine position. “Nothing happened to me. It just makes me sick to lie here uselessly, while—”
The rest of his words were lost in a terrible din that came in through both windows and even overwhelmed the noise of the battlefield.
Soledad jumped up. “What the devil…” She couldn’t hear her own voice, it had grown so loud outside suddenly. The floor trembled, and then she was thrown off her feet as if by a gale wind and tumbled through the room in a somersault.
Chance willed it that she crashed against the wall beside one of the windows. Groaning, she tried to get to her feet, but for some reason her sense of balance wasn’t cooperating. Then she understood: The floor was no longer level. The whole house was lying on a slant like a ship in a storm!
The wooden shutters had been smashed by a ricochet, probably hours ago, and so her eyes fell on the square unhindered.
At first she didn’t take in what she was seeing.
Something like a hurricane had hit the city. Everywhere there was water, spray, gray foam, and people in panic. But that was only a foretaste of what was approaching from the other side.
A gray wall.
The Maelstrom, shot through her mind, almost matter-of-factly. He’s here. He’s come to get us all.
But it was not the Maelstrom. It was the ocean itself that rose against them.
And then, in those endless, unreal fragments of seconds, before the tidal wave hit Aelenium, she saw something else.
The defense wall had vanished, torn away by the first surging water masses. And with it all the people who had been on it. The place where Soledad herself had just been fighting was now only emptiness.
Buenaventure and all the others were gone.
The tidal wave looked like water, acted like water, and for the drowning it even tasted like water during their last, terrible moments. Yet in that second when it hit Aelenium, it seemed hewn out of solid stone and ground up beneath it people, coral, and ships on the shore equally.
The great miracle in the midst of all this misfortune and death and the absolute feeling of being at the end was the fact that the anchor chain held.
There was a list of other miracles, though certainly lesser in comparison, that were for some people just as marvelous and merciful.
There was the little girl who had stolen out of the refuge hall with her brother to watch the battle from above; at the last moment she was caught by a ray’s wing as a water fountain poured down on her from a rooftop.
> There was the cannibal who got himself to safety on a statue and was able to grab a guardsman as he was torn away by the flood; the tribesman pulled the man up beside him on the shoulders of the statue and there they sat silently side by side, deadly enemies just before who now faced a common, incomprehensible opponent.
There was the cook of a pirate ship who only survived because at the last moment he fell headfirst into a half-empty apple barrel. And while the hull of the ship broke into pieces beneath him, he remained unharmed for some mysterious reason and was found unconscious but alive, floating in his barrel, still with his head down; he never went to sea or touched an apple again in his life.
Then there was the small troop of guardsmen who were able to save themselves on the roof of the only house that remained undestroyed in the Poets’ Quarter. And the old woman who in spite of her great age was hobbling to the wall and approached the first waves with stick raised like a soldier swinging a saber against a superior enemy force; even she survived, half-drowned, of course, but sturdy enough to save herself. And the doctor who in his despair kept his back against the door of the hospital to protect the many wounded from the water with his own body; actually, the waves flowed around the house, which might have been because some god or other had saved it or because the building was sited unnoticeably higher than the land around it.
There were many such episodes, but also far more of those with the unhappy ending of death and the disappearance of many people without a trace.
It affected the attackers most of all. The tidal wave was high enough to lay waste to the lower two-thirds of Aelenium, and by that time the area was exclusively occupied by the cannibals and pirates who were hurrying up to the upper wall. They were all swept away. Of the dozens of ships at the shoreline not one was left, and the few men who’d remained aboard during the battle were miserably drowned, except for a handful.
