Kingdom of the Sea

by Isobel Robertson

  Where had he felt this before?

  The memory came drifting up, slow but certain. A dark harbour, Lisbetta beside him, and an important mission ahead of him. And this man, stood alone in the centre of the harbour, his arms spread wide and his power pouring out of him. Even Lisbetta had been afraid. Who was this man? How could he be so powerful - and so familiar?

  Cormac backed away, uncertain and more than a little afraid. The man - Gunnar- stepped towards him, then paused. Cormac stared at him. Gunnar took another step. Cormac snapped, racing in the opposite direction, swimming as fast as he could back into the palace, but he did not know his way, and the stranger was gaining on him rapidly. Should he call the guards? Would they lock him up again?

  “Wait!” Gunnar shouted, and Cormac panicked, careening around a tight bend and into a deserted corridor. This palace seemed to have twists and turns that bent the rules of what was possible. He pulled open the nearest door and threw himself through it - only to find himself standing in a small weed-filled storeroom. Trapped. Gunnar flew in beside him and slammed the door shut, hovering a few feet off the floor as he stared down at Cormac.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Gunnar said, but his every thought was edged with a dark power that made Cormac’s heart beat faster.

  “Who are you?” Cormac managed to ask.

  Gunnar smiled, a surprisingly warm expression. “I am just like you, Cormac,” he said softly. “I was once a human man, until I mastered this magic that lets us live and breathe under the sea. My name is Gunnar, and I have been court magician to the selkie rulers for a very long time. Longer than any of the records last.”

  Had he misunderstood? Might this man be an ally, rather than a threat? Cormac found himself relaxing just a little, when suddenly he heard a loud crash, and his head filled with thoughts and noise. Was that Lisbetta’s name they were calling? What had happened? He pushed past Gunnar, barely noticing the magic that shot through his veins at the touch, and swam back out through the corridor, shooting back out into the tiny courtyard, where a mass of selkies had gathered, all chattering and shouting. It was a second before the first selkie noticed him, but then the change was unsettling. They all moved aside to let him pass, an uneasy silence falling, and he swam through to the centre of the crowd. No one met his eyes.

  A dolphin and a seal hovered together in the middle of the courtyard, huddled tightly against each other. Why was everyone so interested in them? Cormac bent closer, frowning. As he drew nearer, a sudden wave of foreboding swept through him. This was no ordinary seal. It turned to look at him, raising its face so he could look into those deep, dark eyes, and he suddenly understood, touched by a spark of recognition that was as much magic as sight. This was Lisbetta.

  He had found her! At last!

  For the briefest moment, he was happy, ready to cry with relief. They could go home. They could live a normal life again, and pretend none of this had ever happened. But then, as she stared at him with her dark seal eyes, he realised the entire truth. This horror story was not yet over. His wife was trapped in her seal form, unable to change back. His beautiful wife was somewhere behind this animal skin, and she couldn’t get out.

  Forgetting the audience, forgetting where he was, he wrapped his arms tight around the little seal. As his wife sank against him, still shaking a little, he cried as if he’d lost her forever. What good was magic when it could not bring him happiness? And what good was this entire kingdom, with all its silver and gold, if it could not bring Lisbetta back?

  The little courtyard erupted into bustle and noise as a group of chattering ladies spirited Lisbetta away, insisting she needed to rest. Someone else dealt with the dolphin, no doubt taking it off to the equivalent of stables, and Cormac found himself swimming alongside Gunnar, on their way to Anja’s council chamber. No one had invited him, but if Lisbetta couldn’t talk to him herself, then he had to find out what her sister knew.

  “What is he doing here?” Anja asked, the second Cormac passed through the door. All the warmth had gone from her thoughts. No more mentions of her brother or her honoured guest. Just an act, as he’d suspected. She was as icy cold as the silver and jewels that covered her from head to toe. Even the water around her felt colder, although Cormac suspected this lofty vaulted room, with its white stone arches, was never warm.

  “He is here to learn about his wife, and what has befallen her,” Gunnar said, the words even and measured. “He has as much right to know the truth as anyone else.”

  Anja swept a murderous glare over Cormac.

  “How do you know he wasn’t involved? It’s not like you to be so trusting, Gunnar.”

  “He has been tested,” Gunnar said. The burst of magic that accompanied his words was so strong that even Cormac could feel it.

  Delicately stroking the heavy pearls around her neck, Anja narrowed her eyes at her magician, then seemed to dismiss him. Bold or foolish?

  “Stay quiet and try not to interfere,” she told Cormac, before gliding towards the decorated chair that sat at one end of the table.

  Cormac drew in a deep breath, trying to ignore the strange feeling of his gills, and settled into the nearest chair. Selkies filed in all around him, each finely dressed and sparkling with magic, until the council circle was complete. The water in the room hung heavy with magic, and Cormac felt sick. This was all wrong. They were all wrong - unnatural, inhuman. He couldn’t stand to feel all this magic crawling across his skin.

  He had never been able to tell Lisbetta why magic terrified him so much. He hadn’t even told Moira, although she might have understood a little better.

  As a child, Cormac had not believed in magic, and he had laughed at the superstitious fear of everyone who did. Who could possibly believe in something so foolish, so stupid? The world was made up only of what he could touch, see, understand.

  But then everything had changed.

  Liam had drowned. His beloved older brother had slipped and fallen, hitting his head on a rock and tumbling into the sea. Cormac, watching from the beach, had tried desperately to help, but he’d been too late. Liam had drowned right there in front of him, close enough to see, too far to reach.

  Everyone understood that Cormac was traumatised by what he’d seen, even if it was nothing unusual in a fishing town. But no one understood what he’d heard.

  Voices. Strange voices, chanting, whispering, rising up out of the water and echoing off the rocks. He still didn’t know who or what made the sounds, but those few moments had been enough to convince him that there was an entire world he did not understand. And he was terrified of it. If they could take his brother like that, what else could they do?

  A year later, when he learnt that Moira had magical powers of her own, his first reaction had been fear. Never of his little sister - they loved each other too fiercely for that - but of what the magic might do to her. What she might become. Discovering that she had taken advantage of Liam’s death as a magical power source had been difficult. He understood her logic, but he could not agree with it. Everything he learnt about magic convinced him more and more that it was black, evil, and dangerous, no matter how much Lisbetta and Moira tried to convince him otherwise.

  “I suspect Erlend,” Anja announced, cutting through Cormac’s thoughts.

  “Erlend hasn’t been heard from in years,” another selkie said. Quite dismissively, considering he was speaking to his queen.

  “He could be working with the humans, though,” a selkie on the other side of the room suggested.

  “What humans?” Cormac interrupted. Lisbetta’s ex-fiancee, Erlend, had caused a lot of trouble before. Could he have returned for revenge on Lisbetta? He had been exiled from the selkie kingdom as punishment for his plots, but perhaps he was not as powerless as Lisbetta had made him out to be.

  “It is not necessary for you to know all the details,” Anja said. Cormac could almost feel the anxiety radiating off the other selkies. What were they not telling him?

  “Anything that i
nvolves Lisbetta is my business,” he said firmly. “She’s my only concern. I don’t plan to do anything that would hurt her homeland. You can trust me.”

  “While you have our utmost respect and trust, we do not wish to bore you with details of our politics,” one selkie said smoothly. Cormac disliked him immediately.

  “If this Erlend may have been involved in my wife’s disappearance, then I think I need to know all about him.”

  Faces around the room twitched. Were they silently discussing him? If only he could work out how to have private conversations like that.

  “A fleet of ships has been skirting our borders,” one selkie lord said at last, ignoring Anja’s angry glare. “That in itself is nothing unusual, but these ships do not appear to be on their way to any further destination. We suspect they are looking for us. Given that Erlend has worked with humans before, we worry that he has led these humans to our borders.”

  “And you’re worried I may be working with these same humans,” Cormac said, trying to keep the anger out of his thoughts.

  Another selkie shrugged. “The appearance of a human at this particular moment of time is undeniably suspicious.”

  “Well, I’m certainly no friend of Erlend!” Cormac said. “And besides, has everyone forgotten that Anja and Erlend -”

  A wave of pain slammed into him, cutting off his thoughts. He moaned a little and looked up at Anja. Her eyes were fixed on him. This was her doing. What did she not want him to say? He tried weakly to fight, but she had a firm chokehold on his mind.

  “Erlend is no friend of mine,” she said abruptly. “But that does not mean that he was guilty of this, especially when someone else seems equally suspicious.”

  She strengthened the magic, and now Cormac could feel it cutting off his air, freezing his body as he slowly choked.

  “Enough!”

  Gunnar stood up, making a strange motion in the air with one hand. Cormac’s breathing suddenly returned, and he sank into his chair in relief as his body relaxed again.

  Anja surged to her feet, glaring down at Cormac.

  “Leave this chamber,” she told him, her voice like ice. “I will not discuss the matter of the humans while you sit here.”

  “Should I leave as well then?” Gunnar asked, a sarcastic twist to his words. “After all, I am also a human.”

  “For speaking to me like that, I order you to leave as well,” Anja said, her thoughts vibrating with anger. One hand rested on the elaborate silver pommel of her sword. Did she know how to use it, or was it simply for decoration?

  Gunnar shot to his feet, and for a moment Cormac held his breath. But Gunnar simply bowed, and turned to look at Cormac, one eyebrow slightly raised.

  “Let us leave before we upset our queen any further.”

  She’s not my queen, Cormac wanted to say, but he held the words back.

  He followed Gunnar out of the room, letting the door slam behind him, a flurry of bubbles shooting out.

  “I have every right to know!” Cormac shouted, not caring who else could hear his thoughts. “If Erlend took revenge on Lisbetta, how dare Anja protect him, whatever her history with him! He deserves to face justice.”

  The righteous anger bubbled up through him, almost ready to explode. At last, someone to blame, something to act on.

  “Hush! Control your thoughts!”

  Gunnar grabbed his arm and towed him down the corridor, away from the council chamber.

  “There are still many people at court who support Erlend,” he warned, once they had gone a safe distance. “He may have been gone for seven years, but his influence is still powerful. Be careful what you say about him. And remember, as far as anyone knows, he betrayed Anja as well as Lisbetta, and you would be wise not to contradict that. Our queen would rather look like a victim than a traitor.”

  “I don’t care about selkie politics! I just want my wife back, and I want to punish whoever did this to her. I want to punish Erlend.”

  Gunnar shook his head slowly.

  “Conclusions are easy to reach. But magic is complex and subtle, and certainly never easy. Things may not be quite as they appear.”

  Cormac found himself staring into Gunnar’s dark eyes, oddly familiar, and wondering if anything in this strange world was at all what it appeared. How could he navigate through such uneasy waters and still find his way safely home?

  “Gunnar! I need to talk to you!”

  Cormac banged hard on Gunnar’s door, perhaps a little hard than necessary. No answer. He briefly considered pushing the door open, but it seemed unwise to surprise such a powerful magician. He knocked again and this time a weary reply drifted into his thoughts.

  “Come in, Cormac.”

  He pushed the door open and slipped into the magician’s workshop, determined that this was the beginning of Lisbetta’s rescue.

  The room was every bit as strange as expected, with sea plants growing out of almost every inch of the walls and floor. Cormac even saw one or two that he was fairly sure belonged on land. Piles of stones sat carefully balanced at various points in the room, some plain pebbles and some glittering crystals. Cormac carefully navigated around all of them as he crossed the room to Gunnar.

  The magician sat in the corner of the room, below the highest point of the circular roof that soared overhead. He was gazing upwards, although to Cormac the plain white roof did not seem much worth looking at. The water smelt of magic and Cormac swallowed down his fear. He was here to free Lisbetta from whatever dark spell trapped her. Much as he disliked it, ending magic would require magic.

  “How can I help you?” Gunnar asked, not turning round.

  “Ye have tae help me free Lisbetta,” Cormac said, twisting his fingers and rubbing the cool metal of his wedding ring. “I need yer magic tae break that spell.”

  “When I don’t even know what that spell is, how do you expect me to break it?” Gunnar asked, still staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. Cormac felt like shaking him.

  “I ken that spells can be broken wi’out any knowledge about them. I’ve seen it done. Why will ye no’ help me?”

  Gunnar sighed, finally turning to look at him. “Some spells can be broken like that, true. But only some. And it still requires a great deal of force, applied in exactly the right place. Not to mention luck.”

  “Then why not at least try?” Cormac argued. “Ye’re strong, I know ye are. If ye provide the magic, and I make Lisbetta think hard about her human form, mayhap that will work and we can shatter Erlend’s magic.”

  Gunnar shook his head slowly. “It won’t work. This is powerful magic. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t want to get any more involved than I already am. This kind of magic has risks.”

  “Then ye do know something about it? Please, Gunnar, ye have to help me. Ye have to help Lisbetta.”

  Gunnar was wrong. How could Cormac have avoided learning about magic, after all the years he’d spent living with his sister, Moira, and then Lisbetta? His life was full of magic, much as he tried to avoid and ignore it. He might not know everything, but he knew a lot more than Gunnar gave him credit for.

  While charms and formal spells were a major part of magic, a lot could be achieved through sheer force of will. Gunnar must know that. Why was he not willing to do whatever it took to free Lisbetta? If Lisbetta’s own magic was joined to the human magician’s strength, surely they would have enough strength to force through the spell. Cormac wished for a second that Moira was there. She was as strong as any selkie, and he knew she would do anything for Lisbetta.

  Finally, Gunnar nodded in agreement.

  “No promises,” he warned. “But I will at least try. Let’s find Lisbetta.”

  Lisbetta was in the courtyard where she had first appeared, swimming mournfully around the columns in figures of eight. She burst into happy squeaks when she saw Cormac, swimming over to rub against him enthusiastically. He hugged her tight, feeling guilty that he had avoided her so much. He still loved her,
yes, but this shape made him uneasy. He wanted his wife back.

  “We’re here to try and help you,” Gunnar explained. “Your husband thinks we might be able to break the spell on you.”

  Lisbetta seemed to agree, jerking her head up and down. If she could understand, why could she not communicate?

  Gunnar seemed to have had the same thought.

  “Even in seal form, she should be able to speak telepathically,” he said, frowning. “That’s what worried everyone the most when she appeared. This is clearly deep magic. But I will do what I can.”

  He crouched low, pressing his face close against Lisbetta’s, his pale skin touching her soft sealskin. Cormac felt the flow of power begin to move between them. He swallowed hard, stepping forward to lay one hand on Lisbetta’s side. This time, the flash of magic was so vivid that he saw it as well as felt it, a bright glow lighting up the dull water. Feeling for the link that he knew was there, Cormac tried desperately to flood Lisbetta with memories of her human self. He thought of her on their wedding day, her exhausted face after Rona was born, Lisbetta dancing at a wedding, her red curls flying out around her. He forced memory after memory through the link, both good and bad, until his face was wet with tears and he could barely breathe. He sent one final push of energy and memory - and Lisbetta screamed, magic flying out in all directions as she writhed and pulled herself away from both men.