Mage’s Legacy: Cursed Seas

by hamilton, rebecca

  She didn’t know what, but something was down there with Gabriel. The boat rocked several more times before things calmed down, but Gabriel did not resurface. She counted the seconds, then the minutes, then felt her chest closing in on itself. It was getting dark. Gabriel could be hurt. Or worse.

  Taking a knife for herself, she walked to the edge of the boat and looked down into the water again. If Gabriel died down there, she would die up here. She couldn’t get to land like this on her own. There was no way. So, while whatever was under that water might kill her as well, taking the plunge was her only hope.

  “Making me walk the plank?” the bird parroted. “You’re the pinnacle of creativity, LeFwee.”

  “Shut up,” she muttered.

  And then she lowered herself into the water.

  This was a bad idea. Kerina didn’t know how to swim. She knew how to sink, and wherever Gabriel was, it was down. But what was she going to do once she saw him?

  Gabriel had taught her how to float after the first storm. Maybe that’s all swimming was. Floating and moving your arms at the same time.

  Either way, she was dead if she didn’t get him back. Had her life really come to choosing between dying now or dying later?

  Screw it. I’m going down.

  She could barely see through the murk of the water, which stung her eyes every time she tried, but after a few moments, her eyes adjusted.

  She tried the “float while moving arms thing,” but somehow, waving her arms over her head only propelled her body down faster.

  Shadows moved in the distance. Something large and dark careened toward what she now recognized to be Gabriel’s swimming form. The creature’s body appeared to be one large head connected to eight arms. It was five times the size of Gabriel. She tried to direct her sinking form toward him, and as she neared, she noticed the unmistakable red of blood leaving Gabriel’s side like ink in water.

  She wanted to shout, to get his attention, but underwater, she could not. The air in her lungs was begging to be expelled, and she let out a few tiny bubbles, trying to hold onto what she had for as long as she could.

  Gabriel slashed at the creature, the knife connecting with one of its arms. The creature swung another arm and wrapped it around Gabriel’s body. He wriggled free, only to be captured by a different arm.

  The creature was too big and too equipped for Gabriel to handle it alone.

  As Kerina began to make more sense of the way her arms moved and the direction her body sank, she directed herself toward him. She didn’t have much time. He didn’t have much time. Even as he dug his knife into the creature’s arm that held him, it already had begun to wrap him up again.

  She propelled herself faster. Remembering the way she had seen Gabriel move in the water before, she inverted herself to sink headfirst toward him and the sea creature. She let out a few more bubbles of air as she kicked her legs. Getting closer, she held the knife out in front of her, herself becoming a human spear aimed directly at the creature, who seemed too preoccupied with Gabriel to notice her.

  The blade of her knife hit the body of the creature. A plume of black dispersed then, clouding her vision. Something wrapped around her waist. She tried to fight it, but it pulled her. In the black waters, she could not see her death coming. She twisted and kicked, her lungs aching painfully as her body was yanked through the water.

  And then, the inky black began to fade, becoming a distant view as she was propelled toward the light at the top of the ocean. Looking up, she saw Gabriel, who was glaring down at her as he helped her toward the surface. There was an emotion in his eyes—of concern or confusion, she didn’t know.

  They were so close now. She couldn’t see the underside of the boat, but at least they would reach air again soon. Just another twenty feet, perhaps. But she could not hold her breath any longer, and she let out the rest of the air and sucked involuntarily.

  Water rushed into her lungs.

  * * *

  Pain in her chest. Pressure. She coughed and water emptied from her lungs and splashed back up against her face. She blinked her eyes open. Her vision was clouded, but she could see the sky above, just past Gabriel’s face.

  Groaning, she rolled onto her side. The walls of the boat greeted her. They’d made it back. Barely.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Gabriel said from above her.

  She folded the crook of her arm over her eyes, shielding the sun and trying to brace herself against the pain. Another cough brought up a few more trickles of water, which splashed onto the bed of the boat.

  “You could have died!”

  She turned back toward Gabriel, dropping her arm away to look up at him. Her gaze lowered to his bruised ribs and a reopened wound on his side. “You would have died.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Kerina laughed bitterly. “There’s a lot I don’t know, but it hasn’t stopped me yet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Forcing herself to sit up, Kerina pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. If that wasn’t an invitation to tell him she wasn’t really his mage, what was? If only he knew what a mage was really capable of. Anja could have created a bubble of air to breathe from; Kerina could only drown.

  Gabriel eyed her warily for a moment before speaking again. “Why didn’t you use magic? To save us?”

  Kerina froze. Maybe she’d been too quick to assume he didn’t know what mages were capable of.

  “Well,” she said, “I would have. But a mage’s magic doesn’t work under water.”

  This wasn’t true, so she watched his expression to see if he believed it.

  “I’m only teasing,” he said.

  Kerina pressed her lips together. Clearly, Gabriel was a prideful man. She should feel bad for taking advantage of that.

  She pushed herself to her feet and almost fell over, but grabbed the side of the boat for balance. “Anyway, I think you meant to say, ‘Thank you for saving my life, Kerina.’”

  When he didn’t respond, she pushed the wet hair from her face and lifted her head to look at him. His expression had gone from angry concern to something more somber and solemn.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. “Thank you. But don’t do it again.”

  The bird flew to her shoulder and chirped, “Aye, aye, Captain! Land ahoy!”

  It took a moment for the African grey’s words to process in her mind as something more than nonsense. It seemed to hit Gabriel at the same time, as his gaze lifted to the horizon ahead of him just as she was turning her head in the same direction.

  Sure enough, a sliver of land had materialized in the distance.

  She took in the shoreline, her heart sinking with each moment. The shores were made of rock, and inland from there, the grounds were so dry they had cracked and split. There was nothing green anywhere in sight. Even as they neared the land, Kerina noticed the lack of sea life as well. No fish, not even small ones. No seaweed. No...anything.

  “Is that it?” she asked.

  “Rio de Janeiro,” Gabriel said, coming up behind her. “We did it. We’re here.

  But Kerina didn’t want to believe that. She didn’t want to believe things had really gotten this bad; that the lands were this close to death.

  They sailed the rest of the way in silence. Perhaps Gabriel was also feeling struck by the sight of the stricken land up ahead. Gabriel steered their boat to the land and, with her help, pushed it up past where waves crashed. No sooner did a wave moisten the stone than it was dry again. Gabriel tied the boat to a dying tree.

  “Is there anything you can do?” he asked.

  Kerina was certain he meant magic. Magic to protect the boat from being stolen? Magic to fix the land? Anja would have been able to do both, even if only in their part of the world. She’d used magic to cloak things before, and it had been her magic that had kept their land producing, even if things over the past few months had been dying.

  She should have s
een the signs of Anja’s death sooner. Prepared better. But it was too late now. And now she was faced with the realization that, since Anja’s death, all of the lands she oversaw were dying. Not just the island they lived on.

  Kerina glanced around for something, but she wasn’t sure what. She just hoped she would know it when she saw it.

  When she saw nothing, she smiled back at Gabriel, intentionally dropping her gaze to his ribs. “Why don’t you go treat your wound? I’ll secure the boat and meet you upshore.”

  Gabriel nodded as she handed him some herbs from their supply on the boat. When he was far out of the way, she packed up as many of their supplies as she could fit in her carry along pouch and then used dead tree limbs and the dried yellow palm leaves to hide her boat as best as possible.

  Camouflage was the best “magic” she could feign for today. Hopefully no one on land came down this way very often.

  How did anyone survive out here? There was no sign of life or vegetation anywhere.

  She glanced up at the parrot who had taken up residence on the skeleton of a nearby tree. “Guard the boat, will you?” was all she said by way of farewell. Her voice shook. Would she ever see that bird again? She didn’t know, and she couldn’t afford to dwell on what it meant.

  She hurried to catch up with Gabriel, and together they walked side by side in silence as they headed into the city, passing the bones of the dead along the way.

  Many had found this place before. But had any left alive?

  Chapter 9

  “Is this normal?” Kerina did not raise her voice, but in the vast vacuum of life around them, it rang like a challenge.

  Gabriel inhaled deeply, drawing the sea breeze into his lungs as if to brace himself before replying to Kerina’s question. “It’s the same as everywhere else. Rio was just the first to succumb.”

  His shoulders moved in a slight shrug, but his grip tightened around the spear he had fashioned from one of Kerina’s knives and a thin but sturdy branch, tightly wound together with twine. He used it as a walking stick, too, to ease the strain of moving on the injury. The muscles in his abdomen pulled as he strode through the abandoned streets, but not nearly as painfully as they should have. He had sprinkled some of Kerina’s magical plants over his wound, then wrapped it with a strip of cloth. Already, it was healing.

  “What happened?” Kerina asked, drawing his thoughts back into the present.

  “The fishermen living hereabouts told us that Tua had taken physical form.”

  “Tua?”

  “The Evil One. Everyone thought he was a myth, a story told around the fireplace by the Guaraní tribe—until he actually appeared with his seven children.”

  “Seven?”

  “Monsters. All different.” Gabriel’s gaze flicked up to the mountains overlooking the sea. He bit back the story he had heard, too, about how Tua’s seven children came about, and the woman—Kerana—who bore them. “It’s said that Tua has taken up residence in caves deep within the mountain, behind three portals, each guarded by his children.”

  “Seven? And you’re certain he has the Legacy Stone?”

  “Very likely. Before he came, the city of Rio de Janeiro had a museum—a place where they stored the remnants of the shattered wonders that once filled the earth. According to the fishermen, when Tua appeared, he destroyed the museum and took from it a large gem—glowing blue like the living, beating heart of the ocean—before taking up residence in the caves.”

  “The Legacy Stone…”

  Gabriel nodded. “I think so. It’s the only clue we have on the Legacy Stone.”

  Kerina followed his gaze up to the dark opening in the side of the mountain. “And I don’t suppose anyone knows for a fact if he still has it, or if there’s a map of the cave?”

  He shook his head. “Humans have ventured in, but if they return at all, their thoughts are twisted, their stories garbled. The rumors splice together the scant facts, but no one knows anything for certain.”

  Kerina muttered something under her breath. It almost sounded like, “Story of my life,” but surely Gabriel had to have misheard it.

  “What are these monsters like?” she asked.

  “Beastly in appearance, but with the shrewdness of a human and the powers of a god. According to the old stories, they’re near-immortals. They do not age.”

  Kerina stopped walking and glared at Gabriel, her hands on her hips. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me now—like perhaps that ‘they can’t die?’”

  “They’re spirits in physical forms, and physical forms can be destroyed, right?”

  Kerina did not reply for so long that fear looped into a knot deep in the pit of Gabriel’s stomach. What was she thinking? What did she know?

  Was his quest to find and return the Legacy Stone doomed even before its start?

  Kerina glanced back out at the sea, glistening blue beneath the sun. He could not make out the expression in her eyes. Was she thinking about the long distance she had traveled to fight a battle that was not even hers to fight?

  And if she were hurt—killed—

  The thought made his breath catch. He was a warrior. Death, in his mind, had been reduced to a daily possibility.

  But Kerina…

  He stared into her face and tried to imagine it, still, unmoving, frozen in death.

  His stomach pitched. His mind recoiled.

  He was prepared to die for his clan, but how could he ask it of Kerina? His breath shuddered out of him. “If you don’t want to…there’s a village on the other side of the mountain. You might even be able to find someone to help you sail your boat back—”

  She stared blankly at him, then her eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about? I’m here, right? I put up with a whole month of dried meat, dried fruit, and raw fish, didn’t I? I came all this way to help you.”

  The knot in the pit of his stomach tightened until he had to press his fist against it, to keep it from doubling him over in pain. His fingertips were icy-cold. “All right…just leave the fighting to me.”

  She tilted her head in that questioning, challenging way that came so naturally to her and stared pointedly at the bandage covering his side.

  “Unless I’m losing,” he amended with a soft chuckle. “Come on, it’s this way.”

  He extended his hand to help her over the rocks, but was startled by the brush of her palm against his, and the easy way their fingers entwined—as if they had always fit perfectly together.

  He stared down at their joined hands, then jerked his astonished gaze back up to her face, but she was not looking at him. In fact, she had deliberately turned away so that he could catch only a glimpse of her profile. Was he the only one confused by the haze of conflicting signals from his head and from his heart?

  Kerina was a mage, bound to life on land. He was a siren clan chief, bound to life underwater.

  Even if they weren’t about to face down Tua and his demonic children, Gabriel and Kerina had no future in common.

  The facts wrenched at him.

  “Watch your step.” He fell back on the ordinary, the mundane, as a cover for his tangled emotions. “The rocks aren’t stable here.”

  Hand-in-hand, they clambered up the mountainside and approached the cave mouth. The smell wafting from the darkness was heavy and putrid with rot. Gabriel recoiled from the stench, but Kerina lifted her head, her eyes closed, and breathed deeply.

  Her eyes flashed open and she looked more thoughtful than alarmed. She tugged at his hand. “Come on.”

  He pulled her back. “I’ll go first.”

  She rolled her eyes at his back—he did not see it, but he was almost certain he felt it. He crouched in a battle-ready stance and brushed away the low-hanging foliage draped across the cave entrance, holding it aside for her to enter. The blinding light of day melted into shadows, but the air remained humid, clogged with moisture and pungent with scents he could not identify. He stepped around burnt corpses, their final expressio
ns contorted with terror. Something moved in the darkness in front of him. He squinted, trying to make it out. It was large, ponderous, and—

  Heat rushed toward him. He leapt aside, yanking Kerina behind him. Tongues of flames—red, orange, and yellow, twisting sinuously—flared past him. The light from the fire lit up the monster concealed in the darkness, outlining a massive dog’s head. Its eyes glittered, irises smoldering like embers in a fireplace.

  The creature tossed its head, the motion slow and laborious.

  And movement rippled through the darkness.

  Another head appeared, and then another—

  Gabriel held his breath and counted as Teyú Yaguá, the first of Tua’s monstrous children, plodded forward—three…four…five…six…seven dog heads carried over the squat and muscular body of a lizard. Its golden scales glowed even in the poor light. Teyú raised its many heads, its noses twitching at the foreign scents pervading its cave. The upper lip of one of its heads pulled back in a snarl, and as if on cue, the others did too, baring glistening white fangs.

  One of its heads fixed on Gabriel and Kerina. The embers in its eyes lit, leaping into flame.

  “Get down!” Gabriel pulled Kerina to the ground.

  Fire roared over their heads, spreading across the rock wall behind them before flickering out. Gabriel raised his head and saw the darkness of the passageway extending behind Teyú. The bulk of the monster blocked the way forward; the way was not past Teyú, but through him.

  His teeth gritted, Gabriel tightened his grip on his spear and prepared to lunge, but Kerina’s small hand on his bicep stopped him. He glanced over his shoulder. She looked tiny, even fragile in the shadows, but her eyes were intent.

  There was no fear in them.

  And they were fixed on something in the far corner of the cave.

  “It’s all right, Gabriel. Lower your spear.” Kerina reached into her pouch and took something from it. In the dim light, it looked like a small berry. “Don’t do anything. Just stay here.”