“You know what we’re up against,” Kai told Thaleia. “There is no safe path through this madness.”
“I gave up my right to safety a long time ago when I chose to bear your father’s child.” Thaleia raised her head, as proud and noble as a queen. “My responsibility is to my people and to their future king.” She met Kai’s eyes. “You.”
“All right,” Kai said finally. “Let’s go.” His gaze flicked across the Beltiamatu, before focusing on the brawny warrior. “Protect my people. Keep them safe until I return.”
The Beltiamatu warrior brought his clenched fist to his heart. “I will, my lord.”
Zamir nodded. Kai had done the right thing for his people. He, Ginny, and Thaleia swam behind Kai, out from the shadow of the caves and into open water. Kai’s shoulders tightened against constant spasms of pain. Too often, he squeezed his eyes shut, as if it to conceal the agony pulsing within.
Badur’s removal of the aether core from the immediate vicinity had bought Kai time, but it was borrowed time.
They were still in a race against Kai’s fading strength.
Against Kai’s dying body.
Chapter 13
Endless hours blended into long days before Zamir, Kai, Ginny, and Thaleia finally caught up with the pirate hunter Endling about seven hundred miles from the coast of North America. “There you are!” Corey grinned with relief as he extended his hand to help Zamir onto the Endling. “You didn’t show up for so long, we worried we’d headed on a wild-goose chase.”
“Not so wild. Badur’s on that ship—with the aether core we salvaged from Atlantis.” Zamir boosted Ginny instead, high out of the water, so that she could grab Corey’s wrist.
Corey pulled her onboard. “Towels are in the usual place.”
“Welcome back!” Meifeng shouted from the bridge. “It’s been days—and just about the entire breadth of the Atlantic. I can’t believe you swam all that way.”
“I can’t either,” Ginny murmured. “But this time, I wasn’t the one slowing us down.” She leaned over the rail as Zamir lifted Kai out of the water.
Corey paled, his hands almost slipping in his desperate fumble to grab on to Kai’s slick shoulders. Kai’s eyelashes moved, and his throat clenched reflexively, but those were the only signs that he was alive.
“Meifeng!” Corey shouted for help.
Together, with Zamir and Thaleia holding Kai up, Corey, Meifeng, and Ginny were able—barely—to pull Kai, tail and all, onto the Endling.
“Did he just transform?” Corey asked as Zamir climbed up after Kai.
“A few hours ago, but he’s been transforming every four hours. It was every six hours when we left the colony. The duration between each transformation is getting shorter. He doesn’t have time to recover from one before the other hits.”
Zamir turned and extended his hand to Thaleia, but she shook her head as she handed him a tightly wrapped pack of gisthil. “I’ll scout ahead, and rest under the boat if I need to.”
“Don’t go far,” he told her.
“I won’t.”
Zamir turned back to see Corey squatting next to Kai, examining him. “I’ve got some drugs for pain,” Corey said, “but I don’t know how those things act on mer-people.”
“Let’s not chance it. We’re racing against time as it is.” Zamir toweled off then strode toward the bridge. “Any chance of actually catching up with their ship?”
“We’re faster, but only by a bit. Might take us twelve or so hours to pull abreast.”
“I’d be faster swimming.”
“Alone perhaps, but with Kai?” Meifeng darted a glance to the deck. “How is he, really?”
“Dying,” Zamir said bluntly.
“Can anything save him?” the Endling’s navigator asked.
“We have to get the aether core back from Badur.” Zamir grimaced. “Kai’s condition stabilizes if the aether is inside him, but then it doesn’t do any one else any good—and the Beltiamatu need it to rebuild their empire.”
“So you have to choose between the life of one person, and the future of the entire species?” Meifeng shook his head. His shoulders sagged on a silent sigh. “That’s…a tough choice, especially when that person is the prince.”
“Zamir!” Thaleia’s voice, high-pitched in air, summoned him to the rail. She swam beside the ship, keeping up effortlessly. “We’re passing over Oceri.”
“What is Oceri?” Ginny asked as she joined Zamir at the rail.
“The largest mer-colony outside of Shulim.” Zamir glanced over the seemingly featureless sea to get his bearings. He’d forgotten about Oceri. In truth, he hadn’t thought about the colonies at all, not with ninety-nine percent or more of the Beltiamatu people, and power, centered in Shulim.
Corey, having overheard the conversation, joined in. “A mer-colony? Here, in the Bermuda Triangle?”
Ginny straightened. “Is that where we are? In the triangle?” She glanced at Zamir. “We could use some help. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. And I can’t use aether as freely as I used to, not when it affects Kai so badly.”
Zamir turned to look at his grandson. “Kai can’t make it down there. He’s barely even conscious.”
“But you can.” Ginny glared at him. “I know none of your people recognize you in this body, but the time for concealing your identity is long past. I know you didn’t want to get in the way of Kai establishing his authority as the future king, but your secrecy serves no purpose anymore. Kai can’t rule, not now, and perhaps not ever, unless we get the aether core back from Badur. And we won’t be able to get it back—not if it’s just us.” She swept her arm across the length of the Endling, then glared at Zamir, enunciating each word separately. “Get help.”
He stared at her—the short and skinny human woman, unremarkable in every way except for her oversized personality and incisive mind. No one had ever spoken to him that way before. No one dared.
Except Ginny.
And she was right.
He could not fix all of his people’s troubles on his own.
Zamir turned to Meifeng. “Maintain a steady distance from their ship. Do not engage until we return. Corey?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Keep Kai as safe and comfortable as you can. Even if he thinks he’s strong enough, do not let him come after us.”
Corey huffed. “Never had much luck telling Kai what to do, but I’ll do my best.”
Zamir plucked the brown contact lenses out of his eyes and, for several moments, closed his eyes against the subtly different sensation. He opened his eyes and endured Ginny’s full-on stare. A slow smile crept over her lips. “I love your real eyes.”
His real eyes. The stamp of Beltiamatu royalty, passed down through the bloodline. In his eyes, the blue and green of the ocean swirled like tossing waves. Gold flecks, like scattered sunlight, danced over its surface.
Like Kai’s eyes.
And like Badur’s eyes—before they were gouged out.
Zamir’s eyes were undeniable proof of his identity.
He dived overboard, then he and Thaleia bobbed in the water, waiting, as Ginny climbed over the rail and dropped, feet first into the water. Zamir gripped Ginny’s waist—she felt, as always, absurdly tiny and fragile in his arms—then nodded to Thaleia. “Let’s go.”
Kai’s mother led the way, her sleek body and tail undulating through the clear blue water. Fish teemed on the shallow shelfs touched by sunlight and blooming with algae. Large shadows passing overhead reminded Zamir that they were swimming beneath some of the most heavily traveled shipping routes in the world.
“How does a mer-colony stay hidden down here?” Ginny mused aloud.
“A combination of trickery and technology,” Zamir replied, following Thaleia as she swam toward a large cluster of rocks. The currents sweeping against them strengthened into a riptide. “Careful now. We have to go single-file. The opening’s just large enough to enter one at a time.”
“Go first,”
Ginny said. “I’ll hold on to your feet.”
In spite of the buffeting currents, they managed to reposition themselves, Zamir in front, Ginny behind. Swimming his way through the complex cross-currents took lots of minute adjustments, nearly impossible for a human, but instinctive for the Beltiamatu. Thaleia paused at the edge of the rock and glanced over her shoulder at Zamir to make sure they were keeping up, then she bent toward the large stone and melted into it.
“What just—?” Ginny gaped. Her grip on Zamir’s feet faltered for a moment before the swirling currents reminded her to hold tight or be swept away. “What just happened?”
“It’s a hologram,” Zamir told her as they swam up to the rock together. “It protects the entrance.” He felt around the edges, where solid rock gave way to emptiness. “Watch your head. You go first.”
Ginny nodded. A muscle twitched in her cheek, but she said nothing as she ducked her head and swam into the stone, vanishing as if she had never been there.
Zamir cast a final glance at his surroundings, confirmed that no one observed him, then he too entered Oceri.
The black edges of the hologram sizzled around him, then faded as he emerged into a low and narrow cavern, its phosphorescent walls smoothed into a curve. Small holes in the ceiling pockmarked the otherwise flawless surface. A single corridor led from the cave. That way, however, was blocked by a mer-warrior. Behind that merman, other Beltiamatu warriors surrounded Thaleia and Ginny.
“Who are you?” the mer-warrior demanded, his platinum spear pointed at Zamir.
Glints of light reflected off the spears concealed within the holes in the ceiling—spears that could emerge to pierce the trespasser who made it as far as this chamber. As defenses went, it was simple but beautifully executed. A hidden path, a concealed door, a chamber only large enough for one person to enter, and an unescapable death trap.
“Who are you?” the mer-warrior challenged again, but his tone was less certain. His gaze searched Zamir’s face, fixed on Zamir’s eyes, and his jaw dropped. His hand shook; his spear trembled.
Zamir straightened. “I am your king.”
Chapter 14
Ginny was fluent in Sumerian—one of a mere handful of people in the world who understood that ancient language. It had given her a scaffold for learning Beltiamatu, and her many weeks of keeping company with Kai, Badur, and Thaleia had allowed her to become nearly fluent in Beltiamatu. Following the flurry of conversation was not difficult.
Even if she didn’t understand the words, she would have had no trouble interpreting the body language.
The Oceri Beltiamatu were bewildered and afraid.
They had heard that their king, Zamir, and their prince, Kai, had both been killed in the destruction of Shulim. To learn now that their prince was not dead, but was dying from repeated transformations between legs and a tail, and that their king was not dead either, but in an entirely different body, without a tail, was almost too much to handle.
The news that the king’s son and the prince’s father, Bahari, believed to have been dead for a hundred years, was alive, and that he had stolen the aether core overstepped the bounds of credulity.
Ginny had no doubt that Zamir would win them over, if only because no one really dared challenge his authority, tail or no tail. There were certainly times when absolutism worked better and faster than democracy, and the Beltiamatu, as a people, were too steeped in their absolute obedience to the throne.
Still, the Beltiamatu’s disbelief reminded Ginny that she and Zamir had a bigger problem to solve.
Nergal.
A shard of Nergal’s soul was entwined into Zamir.
And Ondine, apparently, wanted it back.
But if there was a way to separate soul fragments from a psychic chimera, it was completely beyond Ginny’s knowledge of ancient civilizations, religion, and mythology. She turned to Thaleia and whispered, “Is there a library here?”
“Library?” Thaleia straightened. “I don’t know. I’ll ask.” She turned to one of the guards standing beside them and asked her question in lowered tones, before turning back to Ginny. “Yes. And he’ll take us to it.”
“I’m not a prisoner?”
“No, of course not. No one would have the audacity to take the king’s companion prisoner.”
“So, no one doubts Zamir’s claim?”
“Of course not,” Thaleia said. “His eyes are proof of who he is. And even if he didn’t have them, his tone of royal command would have everyone believing anyway. Don’t worry. No one would dare challenge him, which gives you absolute freedom of movement here in Oceri.”
The king’s companion. Was that how Thaleia and the other Beltiamatu saw her?
And no one challenged that, even knowing how disastrous it had been the last time a mer-king dallied with a human woman?
She wasn’t going to be the first to question the little blessings that worked in her favor, even though, as a people, the Beltiamatu really needed to grow spines and independent thought. “Let’s go, then,” Ginny said.
“What are we looking for?” Thaleia asked as they followed the Beltiamatu warrior down the narrow corridor.
“A way to get Nergal’s soul out of Zamir. I don’t think—” Ginny’s jaw dropped as the corridor abruptly opened out into the vast space of an underwater cavern. It was so large she could not see the other end of it, or the breadth of its sides. A gleaming city, with sleek towers rising to the full height of the cave ceiling, filled the entire expanse of the cave.
Devoid of colorful corals or pearlescent hues, the mer-colony of Oceri was nothing like Ginny could have imagined. It would have looked perfectly at home in a dome-encased space colony with only the endless backdrop of the universe around it. “I’ve never…it’s beautiful.”
“Oceri is the only colony, outside of Shulim, that is powered by aether. Aether makes all this possible.”
“There’s aether here?” Ginny asked.
Thaleia nodded. “That is why Kai cannot come here. The exposure could kill him even through the aether core here is a tiny fraction of the ones at Shulim and Atlantis.”
“Did Shulim look like this?”
Thaleia tilted her head as she studied the seemingly endless sprawl of the city beneath them. The pain in Thaleia’s eyes told Ginny that the mermaid was traveling along old paths trod by her memories. “Yes, Oceri is much like Shulim, only smaller, and without the splendor of the Oceans Court, the royal palace. And that building…its symmetry was perfect, its lines graceful. There was nothing—and there will be nothing—like it in all the ocean, and the Earth.”
Thaleia lapsed into silence as they followed the guard to one of the tallest towers in the city. Oceri bustled with activity. Although it existed within a contained space of a cave, it did not feel constrained because movement spread across all three dimensional planes.
Mermaids and mermen paused to gawk at Ginny, but Thaleia’s and the guard’s presence deterred questions. The rumors raced ahead of them though. Beltiamatu gathered in clusters, their musical, melodic voices carrying across the currents.
“The king is alive, and he is here.”
“The prince is alive, but he is badly injured, dying.”
“And the king’s son, the prince’s father, he’s…”
He’s…what? Ginny wondered. He’s a traitor?
But why would Badur steal the aether core Kai had almost died to bring back to the colony? Why would Badur abscond with the aether core he knew his people needed so badly?
He wouldn’t.
The only explanation that seemed to make sense was that he had been forcibly abducted, but even that did not make sense. Badur had voluntarily left the colony with the aether concealed within him. Ginny glanced at Thaleia, who was quieter and more reclusive than was normal for her, as if she were paying some unasked-for penalty over what Badur had done.
“Did you and Badur ever speak of Kai after…?” Ginny fumbled over the words.
“After we gave h
im up?” Thaleia’s voice wrenched with pain and guilt. “No. Living in the colonies, we heard of him, of course. We knew he lived and thrived, but we never spoke of him.” She shook her head. “Zamir makes it sound as if we threw Kai away so that we could ensure our freedom, but that wasn’t what happened. Our plan was to live together as a family on the outskirts of a small colony, but the birth exhausted me, and I rested for too long. The king’s guards caught up with us and demanded that Badur and Kai return with them to Shulim. Badur asked what the guards intended to do with me. They didn’t even hesitate even though they were some of Badur’s closest friends. They said they would do as the king and the law demanded.
“Badur tried to reason with them. He and Kai would return to Shulim if the guards would let me escape. I was prepared to swear never to return to Shulim, but the guards would have none of it. Their fear of their king exceeded even their bonds of friendship to Badur. When he realized that no bargain would allow me to live, he attacked them and shouted at me to flee with Kai.”
Thaleia shuddered. “That was our mistake—thinking that we could keep Kai with us. Badur was a strong warrior, but he was outnumbered from the start and defeated. If I had escaped on my own, perhaps the guards might not have bothered to come after me, but I had stolen the heir. The guards searched for us as I huddled among rocks, cradling Kai, praying that he would be silent. He nuzzled me, hungry and starving, and began to cry.”
Ginny blinked back tears.
Thaleia’s eyes were dry, but her voice ached with pain as vivid as the day she had lost her son. “I held Kai close as the guards swam toward us. I drew into me everything I could of his shape, his smell, his warmth. I knew I would never hold him like that again. But the guards did not kill me immediately. They brought me and Kai back to Badur. Perhaps they wanted Badur to witness, for himself, my death, but it was then that Badur made them another offer, and this time, they listened. And they agreed.
“The guards had to hold me up when they blinded and castrated Badur. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t bear the price he was paying for my life. And before they took Kai from us, they allowed us to hold him one last time. Badur was in unbelievable pain, but his arms around Kai were gentle and filled with love. The blood from his empty eye sockets fell like tears on Kai’s face.
Cursed Legacy: Lord of the Ocean #3 Page 8
