Crystal Doors #2: Ocean Realm (No. 2) (6 page)

“While I was out there drifting, thinking about Kyara and the two of you until well after dark, I started to talk, just whispering things: how much I missed you, how much I wanted to be with Kyara again, how I wanted to protect you. Suddenly something seemed to materialize on the water in front of me. It looked like someone had lit a spotlight behind a clear kaleidoscope that was two stories high. The air sparkled and rippled with constantly changing patterns. Something clicked inside me, and I knew what it was. I knew it couldn’t be a mirage or fog or the moon hitting the waves. It was a crystal door.

“And I didn’t waste a moment. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I could get through, or if I would slam into it like a car hitting a brick wall, but I revved up the boat engine and shot straight forward, closing my eyes just at the last moment.

“When I opened my eyes again, there I was, still on warm waves. There was still a moon shining down, but the night seemed darker than before. I couldn’t see the shoreline anymore, even though I’d been cruising parallel to it. In fact, there were no lights anywhere, other than the moon and stars. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of any of the constellations, and that’s when it hit me: I had done it. I was somewhere else, in some other world!

“And I had no idea where to go. So after studying the stars for a while to get a few points to help me gauge my direction, I headed forward, hoping I would just bump into something. I kept going for three days, until the motor ran out of gas, and I just drifted, like a castaway. I didn’t even have a sail to get me moving again.”

“Elantya is the only speck of land on this whole world,” Gwen said. “It wouldn’t be easy to find.”

“Finally, I spotted a huge three-masted wooden ship. I shouted and waved some colored towels. I tried to get the engine started again, and it coughed and sputtered a bit, but even the gasoline fumes had run out. Then I shot a signal flare into the sky. Someone saw it, and the sailing ship turned and came to rescue me. Nobody understood what I was babbling about, but when I said the word Elantya, they nodded and smiled. Elantya. Elantya. I had to use sign language and a bit of pantomime, but I got them to tow my speedboat behind the ship — they’d never seen anything like it before.”

“And now you’re here,” Vic said. “Finally.”

Dr. Pierce scratched the back of his sunburned neck and yawned. “I think I’ve been running on sheer adrenaline for days.” Just then, he wavered and would have fallen off the bench if Gwen and Vic hadn’t caught him. “Sorry. Too much excitement, I guess. Just a bit tired. And too much . . . sun. I’ll be fi —” His head nodded forward, and he was sound asleep.

Rubicas broke in. “There will be time to talk further in the morning, Viccus. Your father needs to rest and recover. I suggest that we take him to the healers and let them attend to him. Sage Pierce must regain his energy and his spirit.”

“Sure thing, but I’m staying with him,” Vic said.

“Me, too.” Gwen would not be separated from her uncle now. “Even if we have to sleep on the floor.”

Sharif got out of the hot springs pool and proudly spoke the rune-command that brought his purple carpet sailing to his side. “I could swiftly deliver all three of you to the Hall of Healers on my flying carpet.”

“Cool. Do you have a flashing red light and an ambulance siren?” Vic asked.

Gwen grabbed her cousin’s arm. “Come on, I’ll get some blankets and pillows. That way we’ll both be right next to your dad when he wakes up in the morning.”

6

FILLED WITH ANXIOUS ANTICIPATION, the cousins spent an uncomfortable night in the Hall of Healers. Uncle Cap slept deeply, probably more relaxed and content than he had been in months. He still didn’t know about all the troubles with the merlons. Gwen sat cross-legged in a chair, trying to sleep, while Vic sprawled out on the stone floor beside his father’s bed.

Uncle Cap had explained a lot, but Gwen’s mind still overflowed with questions. In the morning, though her eyes felt gritty and her throat scratchy, she was glad to see that Vic’s dad looked much improved. The plump chief Healer indulged them by letting the two stay for breakfast with Dr. Pierce, but then she shooed them out.

“The man needs his rest, and we will take good care of him here.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And are you not two of the new apprentices to Ven Sage Rubicas? I am certain he has important work for you.”

Uncle Cap gave them each a hug. “Don’t worry, you two. I’m here now. I’ll come and see you as soon as they let me out of here.”

Feeling relieved, tired, and excited all at the same time, Gwen left the Hall of Healers with Vic and headed off to join their three companions in Rubicas’s main laboratory.

Seeing Uncle Cap had reminded her of all the things that had changed for them since coming to this watery world full of magic and danger. Sure, she missed her friends from Stephen Hawking High. She missed being able to choose from dozens of tops, shorts, slacks, dresses, and skirts in her wardrobe. She missed her tennis shoes and sandals. She missed shopping, cinnamon buns, In-N-Out burgers, and school dances.

But there were plenty of things she didn’t miss: heavy traffic on the freeways, earthquakes, smog, computer viruses, tedious homework assignments, irritating commercials on TV and the Internet, junk email, having to explain to teachers why her parents couldn’t come to parent-teacher conferences. . . .

Now that Uncle Cap was here in Elantya, Earth no longer held the draw for her that it once had. She had good friends in this new world, the mystery of her family’s background to solve, and the opportunity to learn more than she could possibly absorb in a lifetime — and an obligation to help in the war against the merlons. In an odd way, Gwen actually belonged here.

As they arrived in the communal area of the apprentice quarters, Tiaret trotted in from her morning run, glistening with perspiration.

Without pausing, she bounded through the archway, down the stairs into the communal area, and jumped feet-first into the hot springs pool, throwing up just the barest hint of a splash. She submerged herself completely, then sprang back out onto the rim of the pool all in the space of a few heartbeats. She stood there dripping, in the short outfit of animal leathers and furs that she wore day after day. Tiaret brushed droplets of water from her skin.

Sharif entered, carrying his rolled-up carpet under one arm. He stashed the carpet in his adjoining quarters and strutted back out wearing a look of surprise, as if wondering why the others hadn’t already started work without him. “Ven Rubicas is waiting for us. As my people say: A day wasted is never regained.”

“Where’s Lyssandra?” Vic asked.

“Coming.” She emerged moments later from her quarters looking tired and pale but otherwise ready for work.

At the same time, Vic and Sharif asked, “Nightmares?”

Lyssandra produced a faint smile. “You know me well. Drowning again, and explosions, fire and water — and sea monsters.” She shook her head. “I do not wish to think of it.”

They went together into Rubicas’s primary experimental chamber, where the racks, shelves, and tables overflowed with scrolls and equipment. Bright morning light streamed through windows and the skylights in the domed ceiling, drawing attention to the giant aquariums built into the curved wall.

The first task that the preoccupied Rubicas assigned his apprentices for the day was to refill the wall-sized aquariums at long last. The great tanks had stood empty for many weeks, ever since his apprentice Orpheon had tried to kill him, smashing the glass fronts of the aquariums in the process. The aquits that once inhabited the tanks had been living in a deep urn waiting for their home to be repaired. A few days ago, a ship had arrived carrying the crystal replacement panes, which workers had immediately installed.

The Ven Sage himself sat on a tall stool at his high marble writing lectern, busily compiling a single scroll from all of the most successful verses and spell fragments he had collected so far in his efforts to reconstruct and expand the shield spell for Elantya. He looked as if he had a headache.

Before Orpheon betrayed Elantya and fled to live among the merlons, Rubicas had crafted a complicated spell for a powerful force field that he hoped would one day protect the entire island. But the assistant had stolen key parts of the work, and now the old sage worked to reproduce it from scratch.

A thick pile of unfurled spell scrolls lay beside him on the sloped desktop, and the sage used his elbow as a paperweight. Each time Rubicas finished with one of the fragment scrolls, he lifted his elbow to allow it to reroll itself, then dropped the scroll gently to the floor beneath the desk.

Gwen sighed, knowing she would have quite a job of reorganizing the scrolls. She was aware, however, that the shield spell was crucial to defending the island and its inhabitants from the merlons. So absorbed was Rubicas in his work that he never looked up once after giving his apprentices their assignment for the morning. His only sounds were an occasional “Hmm” or “ahhh” and the furious scritching of his quill.

Gwen turned to look at the empty aquariums, biting the edge of her lower lip as she pondered her approach to the problem. “The aquits prefer seawater, and I think that the creatures the Ven Sage plans to collect live in salt water, too.”

Tiaret nodded. “What is our closest source?”

Vic cocked an eyebrow at her. “You mean, other than the ocean?”

Piri, who seemed to find this funny, twinkled a bright pink through the mesh of the net that hung at Sharif’s neck. The boy from Irrakesh looked dubious. “Yes, the ocean is close, and we could use buckets and my flying carpet, but it would take a very long time. Thousands of buckets. There is a saying among my people: A wall may be built one grain of sand at a time. But a supply of large rocks speeds up the process.”

Vic laughed out loud. Ignoring her cousin, Gwen mused, “So the question is, how do we get a large supply of water here faster than in buckets?”

“We could fill barrels and move them here on a sail cart,” Lyssandra said. “But the barrels would be very heavy.”

“How about a garden hose?” Vic suggested.

Lyssandra put out a hand to touch his arm and drew the image from his mind. “Yes, we have such things.”

“We can’t really run the hose all the way down to the harbor and then make the water run uphill, can we?” Gwen said.

Vic snapped his fingers. “Water runs both up- and downhill here. We just have to find the right spell.”

Sharif looked relieved. “Indeed it does, Viccus. Most of the canals that line the streets in Elantya carry seawater. When I first came here, I often allowed Piri to ride in a small boat in the canals beside me while I walked from place to place, getting to know the city.” The nymph djinni gave off a yellow glow of contentment at the memory.

“I would have thought you’d just use your magic carpet to explore every street without getting your feet tired,” Vic teased, though the prince did not seem to find it amusing.

“I did that as well, but I do not wish to become fat and lazy, refusing to use my own muscles or my own mind as some sultans have done.” His voice was haughty, his olive green eyes full of pride.

“Good,” Gwen broke in. “Let’s use the canal along the street outside the tower.”

Vic stroked his chin with a thumb and forefinger, pretending to be very thoughtful. “Nothing simpler then. If Lyssandra can get the hose for us, we’ll rig it so it enters the canal beneath the surface of the water so we won’t block any deliveries, maybe flare the opening a bit so that it gathers more water. Then we face the end of the hose into the current — and let gravity or magic do the rest of the work.”

Lyssandra’s father always kept a hose at the ready while designing his pyrotechnics, so Sharif flew the petite girl home on his carpet to fetch it. Meanwhile, Gwen busied herself rearranging Rubicas’s discarded scrolls, and Vic and Tiaret went outside to survey the canal and make plans. When Lyssandra and Sharif returned, the five of them set to work together.

Vic admired the vivid spring green color of the thick tubing. “How do they make this?”

“We do not make it. We collect it from the sea. It comes from doolya, a type of seaweed that can grow up to a hundred times as long as I am tall. We use the sap-stalk as tubing, and the fronds make excellent rope. Thick jungles of doolya grow in many places beneath the water, and we harvest what we need.”

Gwen found herself fascinated by this explanation. The doolya stalk was as tough as bamboo, yet nearly as flexible as a boiled noodle, and translucent. Working together, they ran the hose from the main aquarium tank through the experimental chamber, down the hallway, out to the street, and into the canal. When all was ready, Gwen waited by the canal holding one end of the hose and sent Tiaret and Vic inside to hold the other end steady where it ran into the aquarium, so that the flow of water would not accidentally dislodge it.

When they were ready, Tiaret signaled from the top of the tower above Rubicas’s laboratory. “You may begin!” she shouted down, then disappeared again.

While Piri “supervised” the operation through her eggsphere wall, Sharif and Gwen fed the tube into the canal and Lyssandra weighted it down, securing it at the bottom of the canal with rocks. Water gushed into the tubing, filling the hollow space and making the hose twitch and buck. The three went back into the laboratory to watch the tanks fill.