Band of Breakers Page 11

  Arc had said the magic would hold even if the sea washed the blood away. But the plant that was meant to help Vahly see wasn’t magic. Though rare and new to her, it was obviously a simple healing arts paste. Surely the ocean would clean the mixture from her eyes and she would be lost, the watery world going blurry around her. And were those terrifying creatures with black fins and pointed teeth in this area? Even if she and Arc managed to evade sea folk, they could still be ripped to shreds by one of those enormous, carnivorous fish.

  “My hair will be a disaster after all of this,” Vahly joked, covering her fear.

  “You are strong and your magic has led you to this. I’m confident we’ll be successful.” Arc jumped from the last of the coast’s rocks into the water. Bobbing back to the surface, he looked up. His black hair clung to his head, highlighting the proud shape of his warrior’s face. The small scar beside his nose. Tiny scratches along his jawline and cheekbones that made Vahly think of a bronze statue that had been roughly polished over a great span of time. His eyes showed the alchemist side—darting gaze, taking in information, always analyzing.

  Vahly gathered her courage, and with one last glance at Nix on shore and Amona flying above, she dove into the water.

  Arc submerged alongside her, gave her a once-over, then held out a hand.

  Lead the way, my queen.

  The ocean’s filtered sunlight possessed the sky’s hue and the pale jade of the seaweed growing far below. The water chilled Vahly’s skin. Her linen shirt and trousers clung to her as she kicked and spread her arms wide, then pulled them back.

  Shapes the color of charcoal, fog, and obsidian rose before them.

  Vahly’s heart surged.

  Here it was. The ruins of the great city of Bihotzetik.

  Arc’s plant and blood magic seemed to be working. She could see clearly and breathe normally. A tentative smile slid over her mouth, her heart lifting, but the gnawing sensation in her stomach only grew stronger to overcome her struggling hope. Water extended for miles upon miles. This was very different from swimming in the Silver River. Of course, the salt water bit at her and there was the magic she had to have to function down here, but it was so much more than that.

  At any moment, the sea folk could rush through the blurred and foreign world and kill her, also destroying any chance for Nix, Amona, and Arc to live a full, long life. The Sea Queen had made her declaration of war, her announcement that she and her army would smother the world in water. And there would be no changing her mind. Not after eons of feuding. Queen Astraea’s vehemence for achieving ultimate power and control hadn’t wavered.

  Vahly had to survive this quest into the sea and make the risk they were all taking worthwhile.

  The earth’s heartbeat drummed dully here, its strength lessened by the water. But she could still hear it in her ears and feel it in her chest. Magic tugged at that one spot near her heart, telling her to push forward, to strive onward, to uncover whatever it was she needed to fully wake her powers and become a true Earth Queen.

  Shops and homes with tiled roofs crowded in circles and along roads. The juxtaposition of a dwelling developed for ground travel set into this watery place made her head spin. It was disorienting to think that she was basically flying over a city that her ancestors had built.

  A few strokes ahead of Arc, Vahly swam deeper into the city.

  Every house boasted what she guessed was a sigil for the family who had lived there. The house to her right showed a boar on a green field. Next door, the owners had used a hawk as their symbol. Across the street, three houses in a row showed the same sigil—a stag with a wide set of antlers.

  They must have had a great many children, Arc said inside Vahly’s head.

  An invisible knife sliced through Vahly’s chest. Human sisters. Brothers. A father and a mother. The sea folk had killed her mother during the flooding of the Lost Valley. Amona had told Vahly the tale.

  Arc was looking through the window of the three stag-marked homes. Vahly swam inside, and Arc followed her. Wide shelves seemed to have served as beds for the humans. They were stacked one on top of the other by way of tree trunks. Vahly ran a hand over the long-submerged wood. The grain was coarse and slimy. Perhaps the salt water had somehow petrified the trunks, turning the wood to stone. Nothing was left of any blankets or pillows that might have been here during the city’s life.

  Barnacles and emerald sea moss covered the surface of the nearest bed. Vahly touched the spot where a head would have rested at night and wondered who had slept there.

  Vahly assumed that her father had died the same day as her mother. That was logical. But what of her siblings? It was likely her mother and father had borne more children. What had they been like? Perhaps they’d slept in beds such as these, their heads turned so they could talk and joke late into the night. Had they been forced to watch as their mother saved Vahly on that fateful day and not them? Vahly covered her ears, their imagined shrieks echoing in her mind, their faces twisted in horror as Amona lifted Vahly into the sky. What had their deaths been like?

  Vahly. Arc gripped her arm, his solemn face coming into view and wiping her manic imaginings away. Breathe. You’re shaking badly. Do we need to go back? We can try again later. You may need time to absorb the intensity of the situation here.

  She took a breath, feeling like she’d been gored by a boar’s tusk. I’m fine, she lied. Let’s keep going. Sorry for the dramatics.

  No apologies. This must be very difficult. I cannot imagine the pain in your heart at seeing this, at seeing what you lost.

  Putting a fist against her churning stomach, Vahly pressed onward.

  The tattered remains of a basket lay in a rough circle beside the last of the stacked beds. Several ruined scrolls sat inside. Fish had eaten away most of the vellum; the wooden rods of the scroll Vahly lifted crumbled into the water. The copper knobs that had been on the ends of the wooden rods sat in the mess on the floor, their metal green with age. She’d get no information from scrolls here.

  With a nod to Arc, she swam out of the large home and into the wide avenue. A chill shook her as pale-bellied fish—as large as Xabier or Helena the healer in dragon form—drifted overhead like ghosts. She shivered. This was far more eerie than she’d thought it would be. She’d been so focused on following her magic that she hadn’t considered the emotional impact this place would have on her.

  Steeling herself and remembering her human mother’s courage, she moved forward.

  Beyond the houses, five shops with faded red walls made a circle around a mosaic of smoky-gray and ivory tiles. The mosaic showed interlocking oak leaves and the face of a woman with a narrow jaw and full, pink lips. Was this an Earth Queen? Perhaps touching the image would somehow help her own magic rise…

  But when her fingers brushed the tiles, no insight or vision materialized, no deep awareness. No hunch on what this person might mean to the history of who and what Vahly was. Sighing, she swam on.

  The nearest shop stocked the remains of what must have been rugs. Only patches of the wool and cotton remained, strings of ruby, emerald, and onyx. Most of the color had gone gray from the salt water. Vahly swam around the shop.

  A great black spire rose in the distance.

  Energy rushed over Vahly’s scalp and down to her chest. She grabbed Arc’s arm. Earth magic drummed through her bones as if it wanted to speak to her.

  As if the magic wanted to say, Yes. There.

  Arc treaded water. That’s the first of the cathedral’s spires.

  Why does one building need five spires?

  They swam on together, bubbles rising from their mouths and dancing away from the city to the sunny surface of the water.

  The five most powerful Earth Queens in history added a spire, Arc said.

  Vahly felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She paused, floating, unmoored. They built that with their magic? Stones. She’d never be able to do magic like that. Not a chance.

  Arc eyed
her like she was a puzzle he was trying to solve.

  She frowned and swam on, wishing she didn’t long for him to pipe up with another of his optimistic sentiments about Vahly being the one to bet on.

  The first section of the massive cathedral rose from the sea floor. Like a spear thrust through the sand by an unknown god hiding inside the world’s core. Vahly’s reflection showed in its obsidian surface.

  Earth magic pulsed through her blood and bones three times.

  A hand knocking on a door. Rap. Rap. Rap.

  This was exactly where her magic wanted her to be.

  The building stood straight and true, like smooth tree trunks banded together by an invisible force. The structure’s distant, tapering peak foamed the surface of the water, curling pearly clouds of ocean around its tip. A school of bottle-nosed fish—Vahly thought perhaps they were called dolphins—glided past the upper reaches of this spire. Their tails flashed the inconsistent sunlight against the cathedral’s glossy exterior.

  Not bad, Vahly said.

  Indeed. Arc placed a hand on the cathedral, his eyes narrowing on the stone. It’s obsidian.

  Fast-cooled molten rock? That’s what I had guessed.

  Yes. The Earth Queens raised the lava so quickly that it remained smooth as it formed under their command. The rock material is unable to form its usual crystalline structure because of the speed of the magic.

  A sudden current rushed between them, pulling at clothing and hair. Vahly looked over her shoulder, but the city slept as it had for generations despite the strange and powerful eddy. The water yanked Arc’s shirt against his body, and his collarbone showed like a blade in a beam of sunlight. He kicked his legs like he’d been born to swim, steady and sure. Vahly felt like she was thrashing just to stay put.

  You sure you don’t have a touch of sea folk in your blood? Vahly raised an eyebrow at him before swimming into the cathedral’s door.

  She would’ve been sweating if she hadn’t been underwater. That current was a keen reminder that sea folk could attack at any moment. They had to stay alert. She had to keep from being too consumed by this cathedral and what it might mean for her future as Earth Queen. If she was distracted and the sea folk arrived, she was as good as dead.

  A ten-foot tall opening led to a cavernous room, whose gold-painted ceilings were nearly too far away to see. Mosaics set with tiny tiles of vermilion, smoke, amber, and verdigris covered every inch of the walls. Long benches lined the floor, some fallen and eaten by the salt water, others intact as if Vahly’s kynd had just stood up and walked out of the cathedral not two minutes ago. Her stomach clenched with a longing that was an echo of the feeling she’d had at the bridge with the Spirit of the River.

  This place must have flooded slowly for the benches to remain upright as they were. So strange. She tried to imagine the day everyone had died, and how the Earth Queen of the time would’ve fought against the water. There was no evidence of her battle around this spire. Perhaps signs of a fight would show themselves at the other sections of the cathedral.

  Of course, the previous Earth Queen had been very weak. Vahly was almost certain she hadn’t added a spire, because the former King of the Elves, Mattin, had tricked both her and her predecessors with the diluted Blackwater. The loss of direct interaction with Blackwater over the generations had resulted in that last Earth Queen being completely unable to defend her people from the sea folk.

  Vahly said a silent prayer. Hopefully, her own powers would rise strong and capable. But her own magic had come from her ancestors. Mattin’s generations-long trickery would surely have an adverse effect on Vahly too.

  She allowed herself to drift toward the front of this section of the cathedral. If the other four areas were as awe-inspiring and detailed as this one, searching for what her magic wanted her to find would take an eon. So far, her magic had only knocked hard that first time. She assumed that meant she had not yet stumbled onto the truth it wished to reveal. Of course, she could be completely wrong.

  A hulking table lorded over the front of the room, fashioned from an oak’s trunk that the humans had cut across and left in a rough-hewn state. A multitude of lines showed the age of the cut tree at around four hundred and fifty years, by Vahly’s approximation.

  Another rush of water made Vahly glance over her shoulder, her nerves jumping. But Arc treaded water at the door. He was on watch and didn’t look alarmed, so she continued searching through the altar’s treasures.

  A bronze candelabrum lay on its side, so Vahly set it straight. The candles were long gone, but the flame-snuffer endured, its patina green and the hinge stiff. A tiny trunk reminded Vahly of Nix’s money box back at the cider house. On this chest, circular lapis lazuli stones threaded in thick bands of pyrite decorated the top and sides. A gem like a multi-faceted raindrop glittered near the latch. The latch’s stone had obviously been cut to refract light and did its job well.

  Vahly longed to keep it. The old Vahly would have used it to play Trap with the high rollers at the cider house, but today’s Vahly had no time for that kind of gambling.

  Unfortunately, she was forced to gamble with her life, as well as everyone else’s.

  Shaking her head, she placed the small trunk beside the candelabrum, then headed toward the back wall of the room.

  An algae-cloaked mosaic covered the wall, and with one look, Vahly felt magic pounding through her heart.

  She bent double, the tug of her power almost painful.

  Vahly? Arc swam to the side of the door, glancing back and forth between her and the exit.

  She straightened and paddled disjointedly behind the oaken altar table to get a better look. I’m all right, she said, even though she wasn’t so certain.

  A swathe of lime-colored algae veiled the artwork, but she could tell darker and lighter tiles did indeed make up an image. An image her magic demanded she see in full.

  I assume you have found something of note, Arc said.

  Using her forearm, Vahly wiped the algae away. Frustrated that she couldn’t move more easily in the water, she swam backward as quickly as she could in order to view the mosaic in its entirety.

  It was a gryphon.

  Her heart leapt three times, and a frisson of power electrified her blood.

  The Bihotzetik people had arranged countless garnet tiles to form a gryphon. The creature’s eagle wings stretched wide within a tangle of riotous forest growth—grape vines, oak leaves, and olive branches—and his lion paws clawed into a field of midnight earth and glittering stones.

  The thrill of power steadied itself into a slow rhythm that buzzed through Vahly, head to toe.

  This was definitely a part of what she needed to discover here in the sunken ruins of the former capital.

  If you hadn’t already told me that the egg was that of a gryphon, I’d know now. She turned to see if Arc was looking at the mosaic.

  Arc smiled at the artwork. Beautiful. So this trip into the sea is tied to what that unborn gryphon will mean for you.

  For us.

  Each of the mosaic’s four corners boasted a new scene. The top left showed a circle of jet black touched with diminutive tiles in the same glittering stones as the ones at the gryphon’s feet. The Blackwater.

  Vahly swam up to look closer at the circle. It was lapis lazuli. It’s Mattin’s bowl. This is the Blackwater.

  Arc slipped through the water to the scene on the top right edge. He ran a broad hand over a gathering of animals. This looks like a cliff owl and a bear. And here is a—

  A rock lizard and a dawn hawk. These are their animals. The humans’ animals. But what was this mosaic’s point? Why was the gryphon in the center of these four scenes?

  The corner below the Blackwater showed a bundle of cloth and pair of antlers. Vahly frowned, unsure what it could be. Engraved words ringed the two images, but the salt water had eaten the interior color away; the phrases weren’t legible.

  Can you read this somehow? she asked Arc. Perhaps his el
ven sight could pick up more than her human eyes.

  Arc swam down, then cocked his head, studying the lines. His fingers moved over the image. I’m not certain about the first part here, but the remainder is a spell. The words, they move me. He made a fist and pressed it against his chest.

  Vahly swam closer and brushed a palm over the spell. Her head felt light as a feather. My magic agrees with you.

  Arc tapped his bottom lip with his thumb, his feet kicking to stay in place. The section I can read says,

  ‘Two to twine,

  Born to bind.

  Earthen bred,

  Power bled,

  Alone alive’—I’m not entirely sure about this part either—‘as one to rise.’ That is my best guess, anyway, Arc said.

  Born. Ah. So the bundle was a human baby. Perhaps the antlers indicated an animal familiar. Were they bound at birth? Or was this simply a reference to birth in another way?

  The fourth corner of the mosaic held a sprawling oak. Vahly and Arc rubbed the artwork until the algae gave way to the tree’s great limbs and roots, both of which were wider and more twisting than a dragon’s tail, if the owls in the image were indicative of scale. The tiles that made up the earth at the base of the oak sparkled like coins.

  It was so lovely, and the sight of it all lessened her terror of being down here under the sea. Her magic drummed a steady rhythm, and hope beamed inside her heart.

  Then a sickening sound like a thousand breaking waves roared around them.

  Vahly and Arc whirled to find the source of the noise.

  A dark shape flew through the cathedral door.

  It was one of the sea folk.

  Feeling as though her chest were caving in, Vahly opened her mouth to scream as the sea kynd slammed Arc into the mosaic. Algae exploded in great clouds of emerald, and Vahly’s hand went to where her sword normally hung, but of course, it wasn’t there.

  The clouds cleared even as Arc fought back with a cascade of inky, gurgling darkness that reeled the sea kynd around and pitched him backward. The sea kynd raised a scarlet coral spear, and the water—still twilight-hued from air magic—heaved in on itself. The current rushed at Arc in a torrent of whitewater. Arc’s and the sea kynd’s movements blurred with the twist and roll of the ocean. The sea kynd drove Arc across the room to smash into the cathedral’s obsidian bones.