Crystal Doors #2: Ocean Realm (No. 2) (27 page)

“We will need to build the proper equipment, of course,” they continued, obviously unaware of the hope they had created and then dashed.

“How, uh, long would that take?” Vic asked.

“Twenty days,” they said. “Perhaps less, if the sages in Elantya have the proper materials and offer us their assistance.”

Vic’s father pressed the faceplate of his mask and both of his gloved hands against the ice coral and stared at his wife, speechless for a long time. “We’ll come back for you, my Kyara,” he said at last. “I promise. But we need to help others, too —” His voice caught. It tore at Vic to see his parents so close together — a sight he had dreamed of for two long years — and yet impossibly separate.

“Come on, Uncle Cap,” Gwen said softly.

But Dr. Pierce could not bring himself to leave.

Vic didn’t want to go either. For a moment, he wanted to tell the others to go on without them, to leave him and his dad behind. Didn’t the two of them belong here with his mother? But he could not abandon his friends. Vic put a hand on his father’s wet-suited shoulder. “Azric won’t harm her. Without me and Gwen, she’s his only bargaining chip and his only hope for breaking a crystal door seal.”

Gwen took her crystal dagger out of its pouch. “Right now we have to go rescue Tiaret and Sharif, who are in immediate danger. If there’s going to be a fight, we’ll all need weapons.”

The somber group headed back up the narrow tunnel, towed by the anemonite bubletts. When they emerged from the treacherous tunnel and swam past the mangled electric eels, Vic and Gwen pointed the way toward Lavaja Canyon. Overhead, the bright flashes and rumbles of sea fireworks showed that the battle was continuing. Far, far above they could see the dark shapes of war galleys, swimming creatures, and massed merlon warriors.

They did not, however, see two branded sharks streak toward them like fanged torpedoes.

Lyssandra grabbed Vic and pulled him back as a shark raced in for a vicious attack. Gwen slashed instinctively with her knife hand, then released the bublett so she could swim out of the way.

Dr. Pierce in his strange scuba gear seemed to attract the sharks, which dove toward him. Vic foolishly darted toward the predators, jabbing his small crystal dagger into one tough gray hide. When Gwen also rushed to protect Vic’s father, they temporarily startled the sharks away. The anemonite bubletts rammed and harassed the sharks, chasing them off before they could do more damage.

But the sharp fangs had done enough. One of the attackers had torn a hole in the scuba air hose, and bubbles streamed upward from it, like white foamy blood.

Vic’s father let out a cry of dismay. Water began seeping into his mask as he grasped the damaged hose, wrapping his gloves across the gash to seal the leak.

“He can’t stay down here!” Vic shouted. “He’s got to get to the surface, or he’ll drown!” Gwen was already at her uncle’s waist, unhooking the heavy weight belt that kept him down at the depths. Dr. Pierce seemed to be trying to say something, but he could not form words.

Working quickly, Gwen took her handkerchief out, wrapped her leather pouch around the split hose to hold it together, and tied the leather in place with the hankie. Vic’s dad put his hand over the “patch” to hold it in position.

“We will take him,” Gedup said from the bublett that he and his daughter Imbra now shared.

“I can’t let . . .” Dr. Pierce managed to say.

“Dad! Live now, argue later.” There was no way Vic was going to lose either of his parents, if he could help it. He placed his father’s free hand on the fin of Gedup’s bublett.

“Don’t worry, Uncle Cap. We’ll handle the rest,” Gwen said. “We’re getting good at this sort of thing.”

Shaking his head, Dr. Pierce looked longingly back toward the cavern where his wife waited.

“We’ll find a way, Dad,” Vic said. “But there’s no time now. You’ve got get to safety.” Vic patted the side of the bublett, and Gedup threw the engines to maximum. Within seconds, the two anemonites had hauled Vic’s father out of sight, racing toward the dubious safety of the ocean’s surface before the last scraps of his air gave out.

31

AT THE LAVAJA CRACKS, Sharif continued his endless, grueling work, scooping up molten crystal. Since the horrific branding incident, neither Orpheon nor General Blackfrill had let him work with the captive jhanta, obviously worried that he would try to escape again. Sharif had a genuine connection with the undersea creature. As he’d had with Piri . . .

Nearby, Tiaret and the other slaves were tethered to their work areas, laboring near the burning fissures and unsettled seabed. Sharif also had a seaweed rope tied to his ankle, keeping him in his work zone so that the guards could more easily patrol the slaves and make sure they remained in line. The brevi Sharif wore — barely more than a loincloth — offered no protection from injury. Too close to the hot fissures, both he and Tiaret already had numerous scorches and heat scars on their skin from the spurting lavaja. The brand mark still burned on the skin of his shoulder.

Trapped out here, Sharif had a great deal of time to dwell in deep thought. Stripped of everything he owned, Sharif saw clearly what all the riches of his world could not buy for him and the merlons could not take away: friendship, true friendship, undeserved and unearned. The kind his fellow apprentices and the jhanta and Piri had shown him. In fact, in their efforts to break his spirit, the merlons and Orpheon had shown Sharif what he truly was inside. As the people of Irrakesh said, “Adversity illuminates the soul.”

He fingered the raw, painful mark on his shoulder and smiled faintly. He was not ashamed to be branded, for it had taught him something very important. Pausing in his tedious work, he stared into the bright lavaja for a time, letting the light fill his mind.

Sharif looked over to where Orpheon was browbeating a merlon slave, who had accidentally spilled a full crucible of lavaja into the mud. Orpheon actually seemed to enjoy bullying anyone who was not in a position to resist. Maybe it made him feel important.

Seeing this, and remembering how he himself had often felt superior, Sharif promised silently that if he ever escaped from this place, he would be a different person. He would not look down on those who were not noble-born, but instead admire them for their accomplishments and thank the Air Spirits of Irrakesh for the work they did.

Sharif would not demand his people’s loyalty and respect. He would earn it. And those gifts the Air Spirits saw fit to grant him, he would use to help those who needed it and to fight against tyrants, slave masters, and anyone else who robbed others of their dignity for their own selfish gain.

He vowed to strive to be worthy of those who had so freely offered him their friendship: Vic and Gwen, Tiaret and Lyssandra, the jhanta, Piri, even his flying carpet. They were all so different, yet bound by one thread. They were all his friends.

Suddenly, far above the undersea city, there were flashes and booming explosions, causing a stir among the workers and their slave masters. Sharif looked up and tried to assess what he saw. Distant rumbles echoed through the water.

For Sharif, the implications sank in almost immediately. The Elantyans must have come for them, at last! To a distant part of his mind, the colorful flashes felt like fireworks celebrating the epiphany he’d just experienced.

In a frenzy the remaining merlon guards sounded a call to arms. General Blackfrill, working beside Orpheon as he often did, seemed agitated that he could not go and fight with Goldskin against the Elantyans. He snarled at Orpheon, clearly resenting his lowly responsibilities.

As if in counterpoint to the overhead show of sea fireworks, the lavaja fissures burned brighter, blazing in front of Sharif and drawing his gaze again. He had changed and now saw himself in a completely different light. The loss of so much — Piri, his friends, his position, even his faithful flying carpet — had completely altered his perspective. The incandescent molten crystal burned a bright spot on his retinas, and he seemed to be staring into dazzling potential.

And something more. The lavaja pulled at him, and he sensed a seething magic much more powerful than the mere heat of the lavaja.

Gradually, like a minuscule buoy rising from the darkness of a bottomless ocean, a tiny bubble of hope formed within Sharif and drifted upward. At first he thought it was just imaginary. Then the feeling became solid and real — unlike anything he had ever experienced before. The vows he had just made to himself could not be empty ones. He would make good on his promises even if he had to give up his life to accomplish it.

While merlon warriors rallied and swam off to join the fight at the water’s surface, a flicker inside the flowing crystal of the fissure caught his eye. The heat and bright fire inside the lavaja increased, like the hope inside him. It seemed to be connected to his own thoughts, his own resolve. Something was definitely happening!

A split second later a strobing dome of furious red broke the surface like an inflating bubble — then rose up until it hovered above the lavaja crack. A real blazing sphere, a crystal globe brighter than he had ever before seen it, floated at his feet in a brilliant rebirth. Sharif knew exactly what it was, though he could scarcely believe it.

“Piri, you are alive!”

At the sound of his voice, Piri’s eggsphere shot upward, dripping a few sparkles of the molten crystal. The throbbing ball changed from the dark red of anger to the deep purple of love. Moving away from the thermal fissure, the nymph djinni began flashing a rainbow of colors: the white of pride, happy pink, friendly yellow, worried green, and urgent orange. Her orb spun in circles around him from head to toe and back again as if she were examining him for injuries. When she reached the brand on his shoulder, her glow turned back to a fiery red.

Piri had survived. Somehow, enduring the blazing heat of lavaja, she had been transformed, growing stronger rather than being destroyed. She had undergone a magical metamorphosis in the inferno.

Tethered to the work area, Sharif reached out, caught her orb, and pressed the superheated curved surface against his cheek, but her touch did not burn him. Magic. “It is all right, Piri. I am fine.” His throat was clogged with emotion. “But you, Piri — look at you. You are alive and you can fly — or float — by yourself! You could not do that before!”

Her orb twinkled pink with laughter, and he heard a faint, soft voice in his head, tiny and high-pitched. Yes. He had never heard Piri’s voice before, and now she spoke to him in one- and two-word bursts of thought.

Fly. Float.

Aja change.

New magic.

Amazed, Sharif held his breath and stared at the delicate female form inside the protective walls of the orb. His eyes burned. “You . . . you can talk?”

Just you, said the tiny voice in his mind. For now.

“Piri, I missed you so!”

I know, the tiny voice replied.

“I love you, too. I have so much more to tell you, but we must escape immediately.” Even though Orpheon and Blackfrill remained among the slaves at Lavaja Canyon, during the unexpected attack, their minds were elsewhere. Neither had noticed Piri yet, but the dazzling bright djinni sphere was sure to draw attention soon.

He looked warily around and saw that a wide-eyed Tiaret had noticed what was going on. In a hushed voice, Sharif quickly said, “Stay low, Piri, close to the bright cracks. After we free Tiaretya, we will go back for Gwenya and Viccus.”

Friends here, Piri said.

“They are back in the merlon city, with Azric,” Sharif corrected. “We have to find —”

No. Here, Piri said emphatically. She blazed white with pride.

Sharif turned and caught a glimpse of Vic and Gwen coming over the ridge of the canyon. He saw his friends — including Lyssandra! — holding onto silvery bubble contraptions that scooted them along at great speed. Farther down the edge of the blazing fissure, he saw Tiaret’s eyes come alive with anticipation.

“All right, Piri. I will not doubt you again.”

32

SHARING THE TWO REMAINING anemonite bubletts, Vic, Gwen, and Lyssandra streaked toward the simmering orange glow of the lavaja cracks.

“This isn’t going to be easy, you know,” Gwen said. “General Blackfrill will still be there, and probably Orpheon, too.”

Ahead, the roaring fissures of lavaja crystal blazed brighter as if in angry response to the battles going on overhead. Blackfrill and all the workers had surely seen the fireworks. Many merlon warriors had already gone to join the fight above.

“We must take advantage of the confusion,” Lyssandra said.

“All we have to do is free Sharif and Tiaret,” Vic said, as if it would be a simple thing. “Then we can get out of here.”

When they approached the glowing, scabbed landscape, they saw shadows playing around the ocean bed, flares and flashes from unstable eruptions of magical crystal. While the tethered merlon slaves resentfully toiled, Blackfrill moved back and forth, waving Tiaret’s teaching staff, warning them not to be distracted by the battle.

“How are we going to approach them without being seen?” Gwen said.

“Who says we have to do it without being seen?” Vic asked. “It’s time to try it my way: leap now, look later.” He urged one of the bubletts forward. “There’s Tiaret.”