Mervidia (33 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

The Coral Assembly floated off to one side of the long stone table that dominated one half of the ro
om. They had arranged themselves into a ring, circling Nayan and Ghita. Everyone had rested and tried to eat, with varying degrees of success, in preparation for the upcoming ritual. They were floating in the open space left after the chairs had been pushed against the wall, calming themselves for the arduous task to come.

Nayan floated calmly next to Ghita, her webbed hand placed gently on the
ethyrie’s shoulder. The late king’s sister was draped in an embroidered yellow cape. The tightly woven kelp of the garment was flowing softly in the water, which was circulated around the room by the tiny vents in the floor.

Inwardly, Uchenna shook his head, amused.
The color of the ceremonial garb was not a naturally occurring one. Someone had applied their sorcerous talents to the cloak, altering the hue.
Such a waste of magic
, the octolaide admonished silently. He looked to Nayan, also wearing a much simpler and shorter version of Ghita’s cape, and guessed it was the jellod, or one of her machi underlings, who had changed the fabric’s hue.
Yet I am the one called vain for wearing my coat,
he thought. The octolaide kalku adjusted his garment, using two of his tentacles to double check its front clasps, ensuring that the longer of his two necklaces was still hidden. The first was his usual bone choker, but the second was the blood coral vial Odette had given him. It scraped against his skin, reminding him of its presence.
As if I could forget,
he griped mentally.
I can’t breathe without this blasted thing digging into me.
He knew why Odette had chosen the containers she had for their intermingled blood, but the constant stinging of his flesh was becoming tiresome.

That’s enough of that,
he silently disciplined himself for complaining. If their plan was going to work, his concentration needed to be absolute. The slightest slip, as he balanced between aiding the Assembly’s seeing and still keeping himself open as a conduit for his wife’s subtle manipulation of the ritual, and all their plans would be for naught.
If we’re discovered,
he thought,
the seeing not going the way we planned will be the least of my concerns.
There were still plenty of empty cells in the palace’s dungeons.
If I’m that lucky.
He remembered Cassondra’s fate, and a tiny tendril of fear slithered its way past his usually iron-like will. Should he and Odette get caught manipulating the Assembly’s ritual, the punishments that could befall them were both numerous and painful.

“The preparations are in place,” Nayan said quietly.
“If we are all ready, please join hands in a circle around Ghita.”

Uchenna suppressed his irritation at the
jellod’s condescending tone. They all knew their parts. Those without magical gifts would lend their support by augmenting the circle and buffering Ghita from the influx of arcane power, while those with arcane talent would draw energy and help fuel the ritual. They didn’t need the obsequious machi explaining it to them. The octolaide took Quag’s massive hand in his left and Kiva’s tiny hand in his right and filled his lungs with water. Slowly letting the breath out, he closed his eyes, quickly tensed and relaxed every muscle in his body from the tips of his tentacles to the thin layer of muscle beneath his scalp. Years of disciplined kalku training allowed him to accomplish the task in the space of a few heartbeats.

As he opened his eyes again, he looked at Ghita floating in the middle of the circle of merwin.
Her attendants had done an excellent job preparing the emotionally devastated ethyrie and making her look presentable. Despite the work of the Divine Family’s servants though, the machi seer’s eyes still looked swollen and puffy.
I guess there’s only so much you can do to dress up a swimming corpse,
he thought. This would be Ghita’s and the Divine Family’s last moments of relevance.
After this, the best thing they can do is die quietly and with dignity, somewhere out of view of those of us who will still matter.

Uchenna felt a surge of power travel into his left arm, through his body, and then out through his right
hand. The circle had been established. Another wave of magic passed through him, again following the same path from left to right, as the ritual began.

Now is the time,
he said silently to Odette, though he knew she could not hear him.
Strike now, my beloved, so that Mervidia can be free of the remora of the Divine Family, and House Chimaera can assume its rightful place under the Fangs.
Another surge, this time travelling more quickly passed through him. As the ritual ramped up, the pulses started to come more rapidly, until his body hummed with arcane energy.

Soon, Uchenna of House Chimaera would know if their gambit worked, and his son would a
ssume the throne. If it failed, he and Odette would be chewed up by the Fangs on their quest for power, as many others had been before them.

Odette was irritated. Something was wrong. She had been waiting for too long. The octolaide knew better though than to move a tentacle from the ritual room, until the seeing ended or Uchenna returned.

Finally, she was rewarded for her patience, as power, sweet and stinging at the same time, rushed into Odette’s body.
For a single, long, glorious moment she simply floated, reveling in the sensuous thrill of magic, as it traveled over her skin and deep beneath it. It penetrated her in ways that made even the most glorious of carnal encounters with her many lovers over the cycles pale in comparison.

Odette shook her head
. The sting from the tiny vial of blood coral scraped across her skin with the motion, directing her mind away from the euphoric feeling of arcane energy. Magic pulsed through her body, which throbbed in response. The octolaide opened the small cage she held, her hand darting into it and seizing the vampire squid inside. In one quick motion, she pulled the squirming sea creature out, stretched it between her left hand and one of her tentacles, and sliced it open with a tiny coral dagger held in her right. The incision, its precision born from cycles of practice, opened all three of the animal’s hearts and its sac of bioluminescent fluid with one smooth motion.

As she began to chant, the vampire squid’s red blood and the glowing liquid from its internal bladder started to swirl in front of Odette
. Her arcane words drew more and more of the creature’s fluids out until only a shrunken husk was left behind. Not taking her milky eyes from the tiny maelstrom of blood and iridescent gel, one of Odette’s tentacles jammed the desiccated body back into the small coral cage from which she had retrieved it. She gently set the enclosure down with another of her appendages, careful not to disturb the other components laid out precisely between the ritual circles.

Odette’s voice changed, her words becoming louder and more guttural as she altered the c
adence of her chant. The swirling cloud of blood and light broke apart, forming seven thin spears of fluid that darted away in all directions. Seven tendrils lanced through the water to strike seven small chunks of raw orihalcyon, penetrating the stones’ surfaces. As the fluid seeped into the rock, the color of the light emanating from the orihalcyon changed. The current season’s orange light radiating from the stones mutated into other colors. Five of the stones adopted the colors red, yellow, green, purple, and white respectively. A sixth chunk simply turned a brighter orange while the seventh went completely black, drinking in the radiance from the other stones around it.

The last spear of blood and luminous fluid drove directly into Odette’s heart
, and the octolaide gasped at its icy touch.

The room purposed for House Chimaera to conduct its more potent sorcerous endeavors was powerfully shielded behind stout arcane wards. Layer upon layer of mystical barrier had been set in place to keep stray energies in and, more importantly, to keep prying senses out. What Uchenna, Odette, and the other Chimaera kalku who had come before them did behind the closed doors of the ritual room they wanted kept secret. They had gone to great lengths to ensure their privacy.

Even had the young kalku not been waiting, her senses piqued for the telltale presence of ma
gic, Marin still would have noticed. Despite the safeguards in place, she was still able to detect the beginning of her mother’s counter ritual. Whether that was due to the strength of the ritual or her own burgeoning magical sensitivity, Marin did not know, nor did she question it. The fact that she could sense it at all assuaged the first of the young kalku’s worries: that she would not know when her parent’s ritual had begun.

Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet,
Marin told herself.
Just because you can feel the ritual doesn’t mean you can tap into it.
She looked at the entrance to her room, making certain the stone rod was still set firmly in place across the spell-fused solid fishbone door, and then prepared her mind and body for her own arcane workings. She took a deep breath of water and readied her body the way her mother had taught her. She flexed and relaxed the muscles of her tentacles, starting at the tips and working her way up to her torso. She continued the process until she had tightened and released every single muscle in her body. The entire process took just a few moments. For any other kalku that amount of time would have been exceptional.

However for the daughter of Uchenna, Domo of House Chimaera,
Marin admonished herself in the mental voice of her father,
that simply will not do.
She could not suppress the grin that came to her face. The irony of using the techniques that her parents had imparted to her over the cycles to derail their machinations and put her own in their place was not lost on Marin.
This is what you and mother taught me over the cycles, isn’t it?
she asked her absent father.
Make your own opportunities, seize them, and use your power to hold on to them. I am simply doing what you have trained me to do.

Marin shook her head, clearing it of concerns about her father’s approval or disappointment.
Whether she succeeded and stood beside Zane as he took the Fangs, or failed and faced her father’s wrath, Uchenna’s opinion of her scheme would be the least of her concerns. She would come out of this untouchable as the king’s consort or likely dead at her father’s hands. Either way, the line was crossed when she retrieved a second squid from its cage resting on the floor with one of her tentacles and plunged a bone dagger into the creature’s hearts.

Ripping the squid’s body open, red blood and black ink bloomed forth over Marin’s hands.
The young kalku began the chant she had learned from one of her father’s books during her earlier excursion into his private library. Marin had snuck in shortly after Uchenna had left that morning, and her mother had disappeared into the ritual chamber. Marin remembered seeing the incantation during one of the rare times she had been left alone in her father’s office a few days before, but she had not had a chance to commit it to memory at the time. Still, she had remembered the book in which it was inscribed and where the tome was on her father’s many shelves. Sneaking in, memorizing the spell, and then replacing the book on the shelf had been easy enough. Her parents were far too distracted by their own schemes to notice their daughter working on one of her own.

Now, it is my turn to get what
I
want,
she thought to herself, her determination hardening like stone.
Too long have I bowed before my parents’ will. Once I have placed Zane on the throne, they will be forced to bow to mine.
Black and red liquid flowed around the room as the mixture of ink and blood slithered to various points around Marin’s hastily drawn ritual circle. Each tendril touched a chunk of raw orihalcyon along its edge, and the ore changed color. Its normal flickering orange hue altering until each stone glowed a different color along the spectrum. Where before only orange light shone forth from the five pieces of arcane mineral, now green, violet, red and yellow radiance filled the room. The fifth piece went completely black, its orange color extinguished entirely.

Marin retrieved a small stone vial from one of her tentacles, removed the thick sponge stopper and placed it to her lips, sucking its contents into her mouth.
She had procured the sample by biting his lip, when she had almost been discovered at his house two days past. She had then spit the harvested fluid into the container as soon as she had gotten outside.

As she ingested her lover’s blood, her hands subconsciously drifted down to her stomach.
The last tendril of mixed squid blood and ink slowly penetrated her chest, snaking its way to her heart. She gasped as even more arcane power flooded her body. The companion ritual to her mother’s commandeering of the Assembly’s seeing had begun.

As the ritual progressed, Uchenna felt the vial of blood coral secreted beneath his coat pulse in time to his own heartbeat. Far away, he knew that Odette’s heart throbbed to the same rhythm, their blood and life forces intrinsically linked. As the Assembly’s energy passed around the ring and through him, he felt a tiny trickle of power from his wife added with each circuit. If Kiva, floating to his right, their hands intertwined, noticed the additional energy, she showed no sign of it.