by Kai Meyer
“I’m damn glad you’re back with us again, little Jolly! Damn glad!” Smiling his dog smile, he looked over at Griffin, who grinned wearily back. “Glad you made it too, Fresh Brat.”
The two shook hands—Griffin’s disappearing almost entirely in the grip of the pit bull man—and then Buenaventure turned around theatrically to show them his back. He wore a knapsack, out of which stared the head of a bizarre creature, half caterpillar, half beetle, but as long as a man’s arm: the Hexhermetic Shipworm. Below a shield of shell that covered most of his head, a mouth opened.
“My lady Jolly,” the creature announced unctuously (he’d never called her that before), “I count myself more than fortunate to see you and your brave companion again.”
“Brave?” asked Griffin, looking puzzled. They were certainly used to a different tone from the Hexhermetic Shipworm, the master of ten thousand oaths and even more insults.
“I welcome you to Aelenium,” the worm continued undaunted, “and would like to take the opportunity to offer for your benefit a few modest verses which I have created with poetic zeal especially for your arrival.”
“Uhh,” Jolly began.
“Right now?” Griffin asked.
The shipworm cleared his throat audibly and was just about to begin when Walker’s open hand landed on the shell shield.
“Stop!” said the captain, who’d dragged himself over on trembling legs. “Forgotten already? No poems and no verse when I’m in the vicinity.”
“Says who?” said the worm excitedly, for a moment losing his dignified formality. “That rule might perhaps have held onboard your filthy, stinking pirate tub, but not here in wonderful Aelenium, where they know how to value high poesie and art.”
Buenaventure looked back over his shoulder at Jolly. “The people here honor him. ‘;Font of beautiful language,’ they call him, and ‘Maestro Poeticus.’”
“Don’t forget ‘Wonderworm,’” said the shipworm.
“Six days away,” growled Walker, “and already a worm is walking all over me.”
“Won-der-worm,” the worm repeated in the captain’s direction, emphasizing every single syllable. “Mark it well, barbarian! ‘Merlin of Marvelous Meters,’ someone called me. And ‘Diamond of Poetic Art.’”
Walker made a noise that sounded neither marvelous nor poetic.
“Puh!” said the worm, cleared his throat again, and began:
The heroes’ return in times of gloom,
to storms of joy and women’s bliss,
shall lead us all to victory soon,
and thus drive Evil to its own abyss.
My lady Jolly, Chevalier Griffin,
from the enemy’s hand made free,
might soon to fame indeed be—
“Owwww!” screamed the worm. “That hurt!”
“Just like your rhymes,” said Walker.
“No one hits a poet!”
“I just did!” The captain came so close to the Hexhermetic Shipworm that his nose almost poked against the shell shield. “I have murdered children, robbed women, and crippled cripples. Who’s going to keep me from roasting a worm alive and eating it, eh?”
“Eating?” asked the worm in a small voice.
“With salt and pepper. And a touch of red wine vinegar.”
“Walker!” Soledad gently placed her hand on the captain’s shoulder. “He meant well.”
“Not with me,” said Walker grimly.
Jolly looked at Griffin and sighed. “Welcome home,” she whispered.
They reached the interior of a coral palace over steps and bridges. High passages led deeper into the heart of the city. Their way led under slanting, never symmetrical ceilings and past walls from which all kinds of angular structures grew. Seen up close, they no longer resembled anything that an architect could have invented.
Aelenium was a coral, the largest anyone had ever heard of: Ancient particles had fastened onto the back of the gigantic sea star and grown with time, layer by layer of fantastic deposits, out of which something had developed that more resembled a termite hill than a city made by human hands.
Paths here seemed always to be longer than necessary, flights of stairs led apparently nowhere, and there were halls and salons in which not even the tiniest corner existed, just round forms, curves, and bulging bays.
“Where’s Munk, anyway?” Jolly felt a stab of bad conscience because she hadn’t asked after him earlier.
“He’s working,” said the Ghost Trader shortly.
“Working?”
“On his talents. On the mussel magic.”
“Why wasn’t he there when we arrived?”
The Trader was silent for a moment, then said without looking at her, “Perhaps no one told him of it.”
“But the other people knew all about it!”
Griffin touched her arm. “Maybe he didn’t want to come.”
“But that’s—” She broke off, her protest fizzling out unuttered.
“Munk has learned much more in the last few days,” said the Ghost Trader, who hadn’t failed to notice how disappointed she was. “You have some catching up to do.”
She was silent, but she thought that she too would have something to say about what she was going to do with her time. She wasn’t a mussel magician like Munk, polliwog or not. And she had no intention of becoming one.
She intended to be a pirate. The most important and most feared woman freebooter in the Caribbean. And she intended to find out what had happened to Captain Bannon and the crew of the Skinny Maddy. Let others worry about the Maelstrom and the Masters of the Mare Tenebrosum. Munk, for instance. And the Ghost Trader himself. Jolly was sick and tired of having somebody trying to prescribe for her what she had to do and what she had to allow. And least of all could she tolerate another single one of those forebodings.
“Where are we going?” she asked, and she was already dreading her reception under the coral domes, the sage men and women who would greet her as if the fate of the world actually depended on her.
“I’ve assumed that you would want to rest for a while,” said the Ghost Trader. “Therefore, someone will first show you your chambers. Sleep for a few hours. Then we’ll see what happens next.”
Chambers. Jolly nodded absently. She imagined Munk as she had last seen him: his face reddened with fever, bending over his collection of mussels, which he kept rearranging in new patterns to make magic arise from them.
As if he were possessed, she thought, and she didn’t feel very comfortable at the thought.
I am not like him.
I will never be like Munk.
She must have slept for a long time, for when she awakened, her clothing lay washed and dry on a stool beside the bed. Her linen trousers had been replaced with leather ones that were astonishingly light and comfortable to wear. Twilight spread before the high, arching windows, but whether it was morning or evening, she wasn’t able to say. No matter—the main thing was that she’d slept enough. The Ghost Trader had given her some nasty herbal brew to drink before she lay down. And whether it was the mysterious drink or the hours of rest she had to thank, she felt fresh and ready for an exploratory expedition. Except that her backside was still hurting from the long ride, and when she looked in a mirror, she discovered she had black-and-blue spots there as big as coconuts.
A little later she left her sleeping place: a chamber much higher than it was wide, with a shimmering, arched ceiling, which had a pinkish glimmer to it that was visible only from certain spots in the room. The door was of wood, as was all the furniture, which made the amazing surroundings seem a little more real. Human beings lived here, not angels or fairies. Human beings from all over the world who’d ended up in Aelenium for the craziest reasons.
Griffin had been put in the chamber next to hers, but when she knocked, there was no answer. He must still be asleep.
So she went on her way alone and followed the Ghost Trader’s advice not to climb farther up but always take the downhill dire
ction at crossings and forks—that way you could be almost sure not to get lost in Aelenium, he’d said.
Jolly found the advice odd, of course, but she soon forgot to think about it, for the sight of the city captured her completely. For one thing, she realized that Aelenium wasn’t at all the compact mass it had appeared to be from a distance. In fact, most of the houses, even the palace where she’d slept, were rather small and intricately lacy. Behind, between, often under or even on constructed bridges ran a maze of lanes, paths, and streets. And so one walked, even if only for short distances, mostly under the open sky. There were a great number of different smells in the air. Jolly’s path took her through markets with fresh fruit, past windows from which delicately perfumed fragrances wafted, or simply onto balconies high over the sea, where she took deep gulps of the salt ocean air, realizing how long it had been since she’d consciously perceived it.
The inhabitants of Aelenium clearly differed from the mobs in the harbor cities. Not that those mobs had ever bothered Jolly—after all, she belonged to them herself. But she couldn’t avoid acknowledging that everything here was a little more orderly and pleasant than in the filthy lanes of Port Nassau or the low districts of the Jamaican harbor dives.
For one thing, there were obviously not too many people living in Aelenium, certainly not more than a few thousand. She saw only a few men and gathered that most were preparing for the defense of the city. Women and children were simply but richly dressed. And if there was anything at all that detracted from the impression of a romantic idyll, it was the fact that most people went about their daily business outdoors as quickly as possible and with harried expressions on their faces.
They appeared to know how things stood with the sea star city. The approaching war against the Maelstrom and the powers of the Mare Tenebrosum was obviously no secret in the coral houses and byways. And so this city, in spite of all its beauty and apparent peace, was nevertheless making itself ready for a siege.
Everyone must know what a defeat would mean: the complete destruction of Aelenium and the death of all its inhabitants. Considering that, Jolly found it astonishing that the atmosphere was still one of calm and harmony. But then she remembered Port Nassau and the threat of the Spanish armada: There, too, hardly anyone had worried about the danger, all went busily about their dubious businesses, the pirates, the traders, and the prostitutes. Why should it be any different here? A dweller in Aelenium might be better mannered and a little finer, but possibly all humans were alike when they were looking an unavoidable fate in the eye.
Jolly had a lump in her throat as she wandered over the bridges, steps, and terraces of Aelenium. Gradually she understood why the Ghost Trader staked so much on saving this place. The Trader was old, much older than she could comprehend, and there was an aura of the superhuman about him that sometimes frightened Jolly. Had he found peace in this city—only now to see this peace threatened by the Masters of the Mare Tenebrosurn? Was he therefore prepared to offer any imaginable sacrifice for a victory over the Maelstrom?
She shuddered at this thought and clenched her hands a little more tightly around the railing of the balcony from which she was looking down into the lower city. Below her, on the other side of the roofs and towers and minarets, lay four of the mighty sea star points, which stood out in the evening mist like white fingers against the dark ocean surface. Sailboats and hippocampi circled the floating city, and above all, in the air, were the mighty rays with their armed riders, always watchful, always on the lookout for the smallest indication of an attack.
The wind whistled sharply through the narrow coral chasms and sighed like a bizarre organ concert. Jolly pushed back her hair and absently raised her eyes from the waves to the wall of fog that lay around Aelenium in a protective ring. Veils of fog wobbled and waved, forming fantastic shapes, sometimes also threatening faces, which appeared only to those who looked long enough.
You’re brooding, Jolly told herself. And you’re driving yourself into defeatism. Aelenium isn’t lost yet. There’s still a chance to save this city.
It depends on you, whispered the voices inside her. It all lies in your hands.
She shook her head as if she could chase away the thoughts like flies, but it didn’t help. The Ghost Trader had driven his message into her mind too deeply: Only the two polliwogs could keep Aelenium from destruction. And with the city the entire Caribbean, all that Jolly knew and loved.
“Jolly!” A call made her jump. She was almost grateful for it, even if her heart stopped for a moment.
“Jolly, up here!”
She looked up and saw a mighty shadow over her, triangular like a giant lance point, with wings that rose and fell deliberately, as if they were still swimming in the depths of the sea.
Majestically the ray glided down until both its riders were at the level of the railing, separated from her only by a few feet of utter void.
“Jolly … you’re all right, thank God!”
One of the riders was d’Artois, the captain of the ray guard and master of the hippocampi. Jolly recognized him. He’d been with the others at the bridge. Yet it wasn’t he who had spoken, but the thin blond figure sitting behind him in the saddle.
Jolly sighed, and a smile stole across her lips.
“Munk,” she said with relief. “Where the devil have you been?”
4
Polliwog Magic
“Come on, climb on!”
Munk’s face was red, but now excitement seemed to be the reason, not fever and, best of all, not the accursed mussel magic. She stared at him over the void as if she had a ghost before her.
Deep inside she was still angry at him because he hadn’t been there to greet her when she arrived. But as he sat there in front of her on the back of this monster, clearly healthier than at their parting a week ago, she was more than willing to forgive him.
Munk had lost both his parents when the Acherus had come to his island. But now he was obviously able to be happy again. The enthusiasm was practically flashing from his eyes, and that was an improvement that Jolly hadn’t dared to hope for.
“Climb on?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “Are you crazy?”
D’Artois pulled on the ray’s reins and brought him even closer to the railing. Behind Jolly, on a small spot between white coral walls, the wing beats whirled up straw and a few dried flowers.
“I can’t climb up there,” she said.
“Sure you can,” said the captain.
He let out a shrill whistle. Jolly crouched as the ray swept over her and sank onto the ground with a thump. It had no feet or claws, like birds, and Jolly guessed that it usually landed on the water. But here it just lay on its belly, let its wings sink flat on the ground, and waited patiently.
Munk stretched out a hand to her. “Now, come on. We have enough room for three.”
Jolly still hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“The rays can carry up to five of us,” d’Artois said with a smile. “And they’re gentle animals, much easier to steer than the hippocampi.”
“My rear end is still sore.”
Munk sighed. “You didn’t used to act like this.”
Jolly sent him a sharp look, then gave herself a shake, climbed carefully over the pointed tail of the ray, and took a place behind Munk in the saddle. The back of the ray did in fact have places for more riders. There were footholds and handholds for each one, so that they didn’t even have to hold onto each other.
Nevertheless, she slid forward close to Munk for a moment and embraced him from behind. “Great to see you again!”
His face took on the color of a ripe tomato, and his grin reached from one ear to the other. He grasped her hands and pressed them hard. “I missed you.”
“Hey, hey,” cried d’Artois. “I’m still here!”
Jolly let go of Munk and sat back on the smooth leather saddle. She shoved her hands and feet into the straps, unable to suppress a short groan as the bruises reminded her painfully of t
he condition of her backside.
“Are you ready?” the captain asked. Jolly nodded. “Good, then let’s go. Hold on tight!”
He let out another whistle, and immediately the ray rose a few feet off the ground with graceful wing beats, turned between the houses, and glided out into emptiness. It seemed to Jolly as though she sat in a boat in a calm, so imperceptible were the movements of the powerful body. But in her legs she could feel that under the smooth leathery skin of the animal were tensed muscle fibers as thick as her arm.
The wings kept her from looking down. It was rather as if she were floating on a flying carpet. Only when she looked over her shoulder could she get a glimpse straight down past the ray’s tail. However, she immediately became so dizzy that she quickly looked forward again. D’Artois’s long hair was blown out almost horizontal in the air, just like her own. The headwind was cooler than she’d expected, but that was because the sun had long vanished behind the fog. Only the upper edges of the bright layers of air glowed delicately like rumpled gold leaf.
The coral roofs of the city were behind them, fifty or sixty yards away. Then the captain of the rays flew a loop, which took them in a spiral around Aelenium. For the first time Jolly got a look at the other side of the sea star city, and so she discovered that there one of the points was missing and two others were broken off at an angle into the sea. The houses on the remnants of these points were destroyed, the debris blackened, as though a great fire had raged there not too long ago.
“What happened down there?” she asked.
“Maelstrom creatures,” replied d’Artois shortly. “An attack that we beat back.”
“No one here likes to talk about it,” said Munk. “It was just a few months ago that—”
“Five,” the captain interrupted.
“Five months,” said Munk, as if he’d been living in Aelenium at the time. “A troop of kobalins dove under the fog, led by … yes, by what, actually?”
D’Artois remained dour; he didn’t like this subject. “By something for which there is no name. Larger than the largest ship. And more dangerous than the giant kraken.”
