Crystal Doors #2: Ocean Realm (No. 2) (13 page)

With a clawed hand, Blackfrill snatched one of the anemonite scientists at random. “You have all sabotaged your work and stalled our plans. King Barak showed me his proof.” The jellyfish creature squirmed in the general’s clawed hand.

“You will not be disappointed,” the anemonite squeaked. “I, Gedup, will see to it.”

“I am already disappointed. Fifty of you have done unacceptable work, but I am willing to wager that after this demonstration, forty-nine of you will be perfectly sufficient.” He lifted Tiaret’s teaching staff, ready to skewer the poor anemonite with the sharp point.

“Do not kill him!” Lyssandra cried. “You might be destroying the greatest genius among them.”

“They are all geniuses,” Orpheon sneered. “Interchangeable. But an unmotivated genius does us no good.”

In complete dread, Sharif knew Blackfrill intended to murder Gedup while they all watched, to set a gory, shocking example. The hapless anemonite scientist reminded him of Sage Polup, who had done so much for Elantya, and for the five friends. Sharif remembered the anemonite sage’s tale of longing for the day when his people could be free.

The doomed anemonite squirmed in vain to pull itself out of Blackfrill’s clawed grasp. The general prodded with the sharp tip of the staff, tormenting the creature. Sharif desperately looked around again, hoping for some flicker of movement, a shadow of his flying carpet coming in like the cavalry.

But the waters remained calm and still. Too calm. High overhead, the reflected sunlight beckoned him. Maybe his carpet was above the waves, just circling. If only he could get up to the open air again, he was sure the beautiful rug would be there waiting for him. . . .

Piri’s sphere weighed heavily in her pouch at his chest. He could sense her agitation and knew the nymph djinni was aware of their danger. Sharif remembered how he had once used Piri’s dazzling glow to drive back the light-sensitive merlons who tried to invade Elantya by coming up through undersea tunnels.

Orpheon leered with delight as Blackfrill held Gedup in one hand and drew back his other hand, ready to thrust with the sharp staff —

Sharif could think of no other way to prevent this, and he had no time for second thoughts. He yanked out Piri’s eggsphere and shouted to his comrades, purposely using the Elantyan language. “Friends, cover your eyes!” He hoped the merlons near him couldn’t understand as he raised the crystal sphere toward Blackfrill. “Shine, Piri! Shine!”

He squeezed his eyes shut as the nymph djinni went nova in his hand. A blaze of blinding white light dazzled like a thousand fireworks. The surging burst was enough to make Blackfrill recoil, dropping both the teaching staff and the hapless anemonite.

The flash caused even Orpheon to cry out and back away. The merlon warriors scattered, momentarily reeling and disoriented. Seizing his chance, Sharif stuffed Piri into her pouch, grabbed Gedup, and stroked with all his might toward the surface. “Tiaret, Lyssandra — follow me!”

Holding the scientist under his arm, he unclasped his heavy seashell belt, dropped it, and swam with all of his strength. The new gill slits in his neck pumped water through his neck into his lungs. He had not planned this very well, but he had no other choice. He’d needed to act instantly or watch the innocent anemonite be slaughtered. Below him, though surprised by the unexpected move, Tiaret and Lyssandra opened their eyes, took off their belts, and began to stroke after him. Piri’s sphere dimmed and grew faint as they rushed upward. The little djinni was obviously exhausted.

Knowing he had to abandon the other anemonites, and leave Vic and Gwen behind in the merlon city, Sharif silently vowed to come back and bring help from Elantya. Kicking and stroking, he thought of his flying city of Irrakesh, the great uprooted metropolis that drifted along with the winds and clouds above his desert world. This was like taking a glider up into high drafts, but much more than that — this was life or death!

Beneath them, Sharif caught a glimpse of dark shapes, flashing torpedolike shadows that raced upward in pursuit. Sharks! The merlon guards were also coming after them, furious but still half-blinded.

Sharif tried to swim faster with the anemonite under his arm. Tiaret was a strong young woman, but Lyssandra was a better swimmer. The two caught up with Sharif, stroking frantically.

But it wasn’t enough. Not even halfway to the surface and blessed sunlight and open air, he could already see that they would never make it.

The first shark shot past him like a torpedo, then circled and came back, flashing its rows of sharp teeth. A second shark rammed Sharif aside with its rough sandpapery nose. Sharif nearly lost his grip on Gedup. Tiaret and Lyssandra clustered close to him and turned back to back for mutual defense, facing outward, ready for their last stand. Inside her sphere, Piri remained weak and drained; the blast of light had used most of her energy.

Blackfrill was the first merlon to reach them, brandishing Tiaret’s staff. Sharif saw that the scales on the merlon general’s face and chest were now slightly discolored, possibly a consequence of the brilliant djinni flash. Sharif was sure that now the enraged merlon would use the sharp teaching staff to impale him instead of the anemonite.

“It was a brave attempt,” Tiaret said.

He turned to give his two companions a sad look. “I had to try.”

Orpheon finally caught up with the escapees. He gave the three companions a twisted smile that frightened Sharif even more than Blackfrill’s obvious anger. “That was very foolish.” He drew a glistening, curved knife from a sheath at his waist. “But in a way, I am pleased. We no longer need to sacrifice one of the anemonite geniuses to make our point. You have given me an idea.”

The knife slashed toward Sharif’s chest. Orpheon slit open Piri’s mesh bag, snatched the glowing crystal sphere, and said, “A much better idea.”

THEY WERE ALL DRAGGED back to the cracked landscape of Lavaja Canyon. Blackfrill, the sharks, and the merlon guards had also herded all of the anemonites close to the lavaja cracks so that they could watch.

Sharif knew that whatever was about to happen would be far worse than a day of harsh slave labor in and around the glowing fissures. Gedup was safely back with the other anemonites, but Orpheon still gripped the crystal djinni sphere. Sharif wished he could hold the ball to comfort Piri. She had indeed given her all, expended more power in the single escape attempt than he had ever seen her use. Piri was just a nymph, very young for a djinni, and he couldn’t protect her. He had failed them all.

Three merlons put the seashell belts back on the apprentices, while several guards held weapons at the ready, as if daring the three companions to try something so that they would have reason to retaliate with force.

“I should have confiscated this from you, spoiled prince, when we first took you and your companions under water,” Orpheon said. “I remember how often in Elantya you flaunted your noble breeding, showed off your fancy flying carpet, and boasted that no one else had a young djinni like this one. And now it seems that I have her.”

“Piri will not follow your commands!”

“I know. But she can serve a higher purpose.”

Sharif remembered all the times Ven Rubicas’s surly assistant had been annoyed with them, but neither Sharif nor the others had ever guessed how deep the man’s hatred went.

The armored sea turtles and the weak-looking merlon workers had been rounded up from the blazing fissures. Molten lavaja bubbled up, heating the water as the underwater landscape continued to churn and reshape itself. Lavaja flowed to the surface, like blood oozing from a cracked scab.

“Your nymph djinni possesses an unusual magic.” Orpheon frowned down at the glowing red sphere, inside of which Piri shook her tiny fist at him in anger. “It is insignificant, of course, compared to the powerful magic of the lavaja. Together they might create an interesting synergy. I think it far more likely, however, that the searing magical fire will utterly destroy her.”

Without another word, Orpheon tossed the crystal djinni sphere at the nearest blazing fissure. Piri dropped toward the bubbling cauldron of incandescent melted crystal.

Sharif’s heart lurched. “No!” He lunged, but the merlon guards held him back. One jabbed him with his spear, making a shallow cut along Sharif’s side, but he didn’t feel the pain. “Piri!”

The eggsphere seemed to fall in slow motion. Sharif tried to reach out to her. The crystal walls of her tiny ball would never protect her from the magical inferno. The dazzling, silvery orange glow of the lavaja reflected off the crystal ball, making it flash like a tiny sun.

He caught one last glimpse of the djinni pounding the walls of her sphere before plunging into the furious heat. Piri sank into the dazzling lavaja that quickly engulfed her eggsphere.

Had Sharif been on dry ground he would have collapsed. As it was, here in the hot, foul-tasting water, he went limp and drifted like a dead man. “Oh, Piri,” he kept saying. “Oh, Piri.”

The ocean water washed away his tears. He stared at the fiery cracks until his eyes burned. Tiaret and Lyssandra held him up, trying to give him strength. For what seemed like an eternity, he watched the bubbling surface of molten magic, but his beloved nymph djinni did not reappear.

14

FOR THE REST OF the day, long after their three friends had been taken away by Orpheon, Vic seethed over Azric’s nonchalance. The dark sage didn’t seem to think Gwen should be bothered by his part in the death of her parents, or how Vic’s mother had fled in hopes of protecting her family from Azric. Vic had already decided to hate him, whether or not he and Gwen were the supposed “children of prophecy” who could break open the long-sealed crystal doors to the worlds where Azric’s immortal armies had been trapped.

The ageless wizard left the implied threat to Sharif, Lyssandra, and Tiaret hanging as he guided the cousins to a tall structure, where the immortal tyrant intended to “enlighten” them.

“This is just plain creepy,” Vic said, swimming beside Gwen.

“There’s plenty of creepy stuff to choose from,” she shot back. “One, there’s a whole barbarian civilization down here. Two, at this depth and temperature, we should all be getting hypothermia. Three, we’re breathing water. Water has less oxygen in it than air, you know, so in theory human lungs shouldn’t be able to absorb enough oxygen from the water to —”

Vic was exasperated. “It’s magic, Doc. Live with it. Anyway, I’m not talking about getting cold or breathing under water.” He glanced back at the merlon guards following them, making sure they went where Azric commanded. “It’s the prophecy stuff. You’ve been trying to brush it off ever since we got here, pretending it applied to somebody else. These people really think you and I have some spectacular destiny.”

Swimming ahead of them, Azric led the way into the highest tower in the spectacular merlon city. He glided through a scalloped window-doorway, or “windoor,” as Vic instantly dubbed it, into the uppermost room, as broad and high as Rubicas’s main experimental chamber. The tower’s exterior was made of ornate coral and the interior was lined with glossy mother-of-pearl. Strategically placed windoors made it seem as if the ocean outside, teeming with fish and merlons, might be some sort of vast never-ending aquarium. At several points along the iridescent walls, tapestries rippled upward from the floor, woven from several colors of living seaweed, as well as nova starfish, bits of shell, and baby sea anemones.

Vic and Gwen looked around in wonder. “Wait here. I must make preparations,” Azric said. He stationed merlon guards at each scalloped windoor and left.

When they were alone again, however briefly, Vic leaned toward his cousin and spoke in a quiet voice. “Let me lay it out for you, Doc. Right from the beginning you tried to convince yourself that our being in Elantya was some sort of colossal stroke of bad luck and that we didn’t belong here. Then, when we talked to Dad through that crystal window thing we opened up, we learned that he was actually trying to take us to Elantya in the first place, that our moms thought we’d be safer here. Admit it, we both always knew there was something . . . unearthly about them. Our mothers weren’t just really smart housewives who happened to teach us kids some advanced form of martial arts that nobody on Earth had ever heard of before.”

Gwen’s violet eyes dodged his earnest gaze. “I never thought our moms were just housewives.”

Vic gave a burbling sigh. Leave it to his cousin to pick one thing in his explanation that she disagreed with and focus on that. Couldn’t she see what was right in front of her face?

“Snap out of it, Doc! Even after we found out that we were both Keys and that we have a synergy with Sharif, Lyssandra, and Tiaret like nothing that’s been seen in Elantya for thousands of years — even then you refused to believe the prophecies have anything to do with us. But Dad told us what was in Mom’s letter, and there’s no doubt she thought the two of us were special, and in danger. Your parents died trying to keep us safe from this guy.” He pulled out his trump card now. “Face it, if Azric — a powerful, ancient sage — went to all this trouble to kidnap us and believes we’re the children of the prophecy, then it’s probably true.”

“But he tried to kill me at Ocean Kingdoms.”

Vic nudged aside one of the billowy colorful tapestries rising in front of the chamber wall. “I don’t think so. He said it was a test. And by the time he kidnapped us, he knew full well who we were. Remember, Azric’s had five thousand years to study the prophecies — he didn’t come after us because of some clerical error. He knew what he was doing.”