Mervidia (34 page)

Uchenna was unsurprised.
He had carefully chosen his place in the circle. Though perilously clever, Kiva was about as magically sensitive as your average stone, which is why he had placed her to his right. Quag, neither clever nor sensitive, had been placed to his left for more practical reasons. Should the octolaide’s ruse be discovered, having the most dangerous merwin in the room, and his strongest ally, next to him could prove invaluable.

The energy began passing more quickly around the circle, each pulse from his left arm
going through his body and out his right, coming with increasing frequency. Uchenna drew on his inner reserves of strength. Simultaneously aiding the Coral Assembly’s seeing ritual, holding open the conduit to Odette, and maintaining the obfuscation to hide his wife’s influence was beginning to wear on even Uchenna’s formidable will. He did not know how long he would be able to continue the three disparate tasks, but he knew that the future of House Chimaera, and most likely their lives, depended on his doing so. The octolaide kalku would do his part, or die in the attempt.

“I see… something,” Ghita said
. Despite the distant quality common to a machi in the middle of a precognitive trance, she was clearly confused. Suddenly, her back arched brutally and her eyes opened wide, though they appeared to be blind to anything in the room. The ethyrie was becoming engulfed in the prophetic vision ripping into her mind. Nayan tightened her grip on Ghita’s shoulders, trying to prevent the ethyrie from hurting herself as well as keeping her in the center of the ring of merwin. If she floated too far askew the seeing would be disrupted.

Odette’s lungs shuddered. The strain of forcing her heart to beat in rhythm with her husband’s was beginning to take its toll.
I will not fail,
she told herself.
I am Odette of House Chimaera. I did not rise up from the Ghet to fall inches from the throne.
The octolaide redoubled her efforts, concentrating to maintain the ritual that would allow her to put the Fangs on her son’s head and House Chimaera at the top of Mervidia’s food chain. “Ebon will wear the crown,” she whispered, reassuring herself. “Zane will sit on the throne.”

Odette’s heart skipped a beat, and she almost lost the connection to Uchenna.
With a surge of willpower, she grasped the energies swirling around her more tightly, controlling the link to her husband.

What did I just say?!
she wondered.
Did I just say “Zane?” Of course I mean Ebon. The Fangs will sit on Zane’s head.
She faltered again at the slip.

What in the Deeps is happening?
the kalku all but screamed in her head.
Why do I keep saying Zane when I mean Ebon?
Odette took a deep inhalation of water, calming her thoughts. But, try as she might, there was a tiny part of her mind that would not bend to her will; a small corner in her head that refused to fall in line.

A familiar sensation reached Odette’s brain
, though she could not directly focus her attention on it. She needed to concentrate on the ritual, but the sensation still nagged incessantly at the back of her mind. It was a remora attached just out of her line of sight, but she could still feel its presence latched on to her. There was strange quality to it too, a mixture of the taste of her favorite food, combined with the smell of blood, and the echo of a sound that filled her heart with joy.

Marin kept her breathing shallow, part of her irrationally thinking that if she kept quiet her mother would not hear her, despite the thick stone walls of the many rooms separating them. The young octolaide’s mind reasserted itself, using logic and reason to fight back her intrinsic fear of her mother. Odette, despite her pitiless nature, still cared for her daughter, and Marin knew that. She desperately latched on to that knowledge, using it as a foundation stone upon which to rebuild her confidence.

Despite
Marin’s best attempts to remain undetected, the younger octolaide knew that Odette had sensed someone interfering with her ritual to guide the Assembly’s seeing to House Chimaera’s desires. However, it was too late for Marin to turn back now.
For better or worse, there’s no stopping now,
she thought. Marin closed her eyes, mentally picturing the lines of mystical energies and seeing them in her mind’s eye, as she interwove them with the arcane threads of her mother’s spell.

As expected, Odette was too focused on the seeing to fend off her daughter’s intervention.
Her own ritual was in motion and any attempt to halt it at this point would reveal Odette’s intrusion to everyone involved, including the Coral Assembly. Odette was no fumbling novice though. Her knowledge of kalku magic far outstripped Marin’s, and the young octolaide knew it. The chances of Marin getting caught grew with each passing moment.
And if mother detects me, what will it do to her own ritual?
she wondered.
If she and father get caught, what will the Assembly do?
Marin cursed herself for not fully considering the possible outcomes of her actions on House Chimaera. She became worried and her concentration faltered.

She heard Odette’s voice in her head,
fragments of past conversations echoing through her mind.
The timid shark starves,
Odette had said.
The only one responsible for getting what you want is you and you alone. Be smart, but be strong, little fish. Intelligence and beauty will only get you so far. Mervidia respects power above all else. If you can’t fight for what you have, then it’s not truly yours.

Refusing to give up,
Marin intensified her efforts, drawing more and more power into her body from the sea around her. Even the raw chunks of orihalcyon ore on the floor and the sconces on the walls holding the cut stone began to dim and flicker, as she pulled every iota of energy she could into herself. With her eyes closed, however, Marin could not see the effect her exertions were having on the ocean around her.

An image appeared gradually in Uchenna’s mind. The Fangs rested atop the head of an indistinct figure, the top of the stone throne reserved for the monarch of Mervidia visible over the mysterious merwin’s shoulder. The octolaide was surprised. Normally, it was only the seer leading the ritual who was shown the prognosticative vision, but it was not unheard of for the images flooding into the machi’s mind to be shared with those linked to her within the ritual circle. Part of the purpose of the circle was to share the burden of the seeing, to protect the mind of the oracle from the prophetic energies being funneled into it.

It must be a powerful seeing indeed,
Uchenna thought,
for it to be shared with the rest of us.
The octolaide thought of his wife and her clandestine part in the shared vision.
Careful, Odette.
If his wife used too much power, her interference could be revealed and their ruse would be exposed. Odette knew that though. It was unlike his wife to be so heavy-handed.

Blinding light exploded in Uchenna’s mind.
The throne room of Mervidia constructed in his head was suddenly illuminated, and the chamber more brightly lit in the shared vision than it had ever been in reality. As the overwhelming light lessened, the figure sitting on the throne became crystal clear.

The Fangs sat
atop a head with long red hair. Bright milky white eyes, filled with resolve yet clearly tinged with sorrow, stared at Uchenna, their gaze penetrating deep into his mind. Bright red fins sprouted from the figure’s pale forearms and crimson scales covered his tail from the waist down to the matching flukes that waived gently in an unfelt current. The monarch of the vision, sitting on Mervidia’s throne, gripped its arm with his left hand. In his right, he held a long trident. The weapon’s haft was carved from pale uklod bone and topped with three spines of the darkest blood coral Uchenna had ever seen.

“Zane,” Ghita whispered
, as she went limp in Nayan’s arms. Penn sensed the energy of the ritual fading. He released Hasad’s and Slone’s hands, rushing forward to try to help the jellod, but she waved him off. The circle was broken.

“Zane?” Kiva repeated the name, a question posed to no one in particular.

“Zane,” Penn said, answering the faera, but not looking at her, too stunned by the fading vision to do more than speak the name aloud.

“Zane,” Slone uttered, weighing the sound on his tongue,
not sure he found it to his liking.

“Zane,” Uchenna growled through gritted teeth.

Ghita’s faraway voice, though quiet, seized the attention of everyone in the room with its distant, ethereal tone. Her milky white eyes had opened, large and bulging as if her head was threatening to burst with the prophetic knowledge it contained. “Zane shall be seated at the high table, the Fangs upon his brow, and a king’s feast shall be laid out before him.” The ethyrie’s eyes fluttered for a moment and then reclosed as she drifted into unconsciousness.

The
jellod’s hand went to Ghita’s chest and then to her neck, a look of relief washing over her face. “She lives,” Nayan announced, “but the vision has taken its toll on her. She will need rest.”

“We have to tell the city,” Vaschel said, shaking off the last tendrils of the vision’s hold on him.

“That may not be necessary,” Kiva said.

The rest of the Assembly looked at the
faera and followed her eyes to the guards floating by the door. Each of the ethyrie soldiers stationed inside the barred entrance wore matching expressions of wonder, their white eyes wide.

“What did you see?” Hasad asked, addressing the dazed
ethyrie warriors.

Neither merwin responded.

“What did you see, solider?” Penn demanded of the stunned guards. His voice, honed by many cycles of leadership, cut through the ethyries’ confusion like a sharpened knife.

“Zane,” one of the guard’s replied hesitantly.
“Captain Zane,” he corrected. “He was… sitting on the throne, wearing the Fangs, bearing a red trident in his hand.” The other guard could only nod his agreement. Despite the order given to him by Domo Penn, he had still not found his voice.

There came a banging at the door to the
Assembly chamber, the insistent knocking of someone craving immediate entry. The members of the Coral Assembly looked at each other in confusion, the cloying effects of the shared seeing still affecting them.

“Open it!” Uchenna barked at the guards, the impatience and irritation in his voice having nothing to do with the indecisiveness permeating the room.
What did you do, Odette?
he asked mentally, reaching inside his coat and ripping the vial from around his neck. He shoved it into one of its many hidden pockets. Luckily, the rest of the merwin in the room were still too stunned or distracted by the banging at the door to notice his actions.
How could you have screwed this up so badly?
Uchenna started to move towards the door, his anger propelling him. He would get to the bottom of this as soon as he got his tentacles on Odette.

The guards lifted the bar and the doors began to open almost instantaneously.
Whoever was outside wanted in immediately. As soon as the gap between the doors was large enough, Captain Raygo darted into the room, his eyes quickly scanning the chamber, his spear at the ready. A dozen Palace Guards followed their leader into the room, their first instinct to swiftly fan out encircling the Assembly members in a protective ring.

As Uchenna pushed his way past the Palace Guard and out of the room, beginning to swim down the hallway, he heard Penn’s voice over his shoulder.
“Did you experience the vision as well, Captain Raygo?”

“We all did,” the Captain of the
Palace Guard replied shakily. “I think… I think the entire city saw it.”

Odette!
Uchenna raged silently, drawing upon his kalku skills to speed his passage home.
If you blew our chance to sit on the throne, I swear by the Deeps, you will not live to see the results of your own incompetence!

A shadowy blur raced through the city, like a hurled spear aimed at the heart of House Ch
imaera. Even had the citizens of Mervidia not still been shaking off the effects of the Coral Assembly’s communal vision, they would have been hard pressed to see Uchenna, as he darted through the city’s dark waters.

Chapter Thirty-F
our

“No!” Odette groaned, as her spell ended along with Nayan’s ritual in the palace. She felt sick to her stomach. “Not Zane! Ebon, I said Ebon!” she cried at the glowing orihalcyon stones. The octolaide had seen Zane on Mervidia’s throne and not her son as she had planned. The fact that she had been able to see the vision at all was a wonder that she could not explain.

Ghita’s vision
, Odette corrected herself, having felt the emotional turmoil clouding the vision at first, as opposed to the Queen Mother’s usual serene demeanor. She took some satisfaction that Damaris had not shown up for the seeing. It meant that Kiva had done the job asked of her. That victory was bittersweet though; she knew Marin had interfered with House Chimaera’s main objective. Odette had recognized her daughter’s presence, when she seized control of the older octolaide’s ritual, but had been unable to fend her off as focused as she had been on her own spell and keeping their interference with the seeing secret.

Marin,
what have you done!?
Odette silently cursed her daughter, who she knew was just a few rooms away.
Foolish, lovesick child! I must get to you before your father does
. Weakened from her complex and vitality-sapping spell, Odette dragged herself up from the flagstone floor of House Chimaera’s ritual room, abandoning the ring of orihalcyon stone and its fading power. The ore would soon return to its natural orange color, but the room would continue to throb with latent energy for some time. Eventually, the power would sink into the floor, making the chamber feel like a yawning hole of despair and emptiness to anyone who entered the area. Kalku magic was a draining art that demanded sacrifice. The ill aftereffects of a spell of such magnitude might be felt in the space for days.

The
octolaide grasped at the pale skin of her belly, as a stab of pain shot from her head down into her gut. Marin’s interference with Odette’s invocation made everything in the matron’s body feel distorted. She felt light-headed, her ears burning while her flesh felt cold and clammy. Well before she had reached the entryway, Odette sank to the floor again, her palms and tentacles splayed out across the chill stones.

In her anguish, she knocked over the coral cage, in which she had housed the squid used in her ritual.
Its clatter reverberated painfully in her ears and caused her to wince. She lowered a hot cheek to the floor. The coolness of the stone made her feel a little better, but the agonizing sensation from before had further unsettled her stomach, which gave way as she lay there. The kalku retched chunks of brown bile and the remnants of the fish she had eaten for breakfast.

The squid that she had used in her ritual floated into her bleary field of vision, freed from its cage when it had tumbled over.
She used a webbed hand to bat the dead sea creature aside, along with the vomit. Odette flicked her tentacles, propelling herself forward yet again, determined to get her body under control.

The matron pulled the door’s stone b
ar from its wall brackets and pushed it just enough so that it cut through the water at an angle, out of the way of the entry. She let the bar sink gracelessly, the heavy object creating a resounding thudding sound as it met with the hard floor. Odette grabbed the twisted handle and opened the ritual room’s purple coral door. She momentarily steadied herself in the entryway, bracing herself by placing her hands on the jambs to either side. Her vision had cleared considerably; the retching had helped. Although, what she saw outside the door made her wish her sight was still compromised.

The entire atrium was devoid of life.
Usually teaming with the family’s food supply, the fish, still clumped together in their schools, were dead. They floated in slow moving circles, propelled by the minor current of the house’s fresh water vents set into the flagstone pavers. Odette knew what must have happened. Marin’s room was not magically sealed, as the ritual room was. The younger octolaide’s magic had reached out, randomly stealing nearby life to fuel her spell. It was a costly mistake; one that would leave more than a few merwin bellies hungry in the coming days. At least, until Ring could strike a deal with a seifeira house to fill their food stores with kelp and new fish could be brought into the house and allowed to breed. It was a miracle that Odette didn’t see a member of House Chimaera floating lifeless along with the fish. Luckily, it appeared that no octolaide had been in the courtyard when Marin called upon more power for her spell. Kalku magic was not particular; it would draw upon life wherever it could be found, and the larger the animal the more power would be harvested.

I am astounded she only killed the fish
, Odette thought, as she swam down the columned walkway towards her daughter’s room. Each undulation of her tentacles away from the dire-feeling ritual room and the warped spell was slowly returning her strength.
To overpower my evocation, she would have needed to draw upon something the size of an uklod. Unlikely to be the case. Giant sea creatures are too rare. Marin’s natural talent must be the source, which means she is more powerful than her father and I combined… with none of the control.

Her last thought was the most terrifying to Odette.
Marin would have to learn to harness her magical power or many others could be slain by accident, victims of her wild and ravenous spells.
And, if she is discovered as the source of the deaths, her carelessness could lead to some vengeful merwin hiring out an assassin to eliminate her. One person of importance killed and traced back to her would be all it would take for a faera to be hired to make the young octolaide disappear… that is if she survives her father’s wrath after today’s mess,
Odette grimaced.

Odette knew that there was a chance her husband did not know that the younger
octolaide had tampered with the seeing. While Marin and Uchenna had never been close, she knew her daughter through and through. He may not have sensed her during the seeing as Odette had. However, that would lead to Odette being blamed for Zane wearing the Fangs in the vision instead of Ebon. The matron could claim that the combination of the distance of House Chimaera from the Royal Palace, Ghita’s emotional state, and her great machi talent was simply too great for Odette to be able to interfere with the machi vision.

If Uchenna doesn’t know what Marin has done, I can help her,
Odette thought.
I will get her a better teacher than just Uchenna and me. He has actively tried to stifle her learning in hopes that Ebon would show some magical talent and surpass his sister
. Ebon had never shown any mystic ability though, and Marin’s education had fallen to the wayside, a dangerous circumstance for someone with such a strong gift. Odette felt as if she had failed her daughter. These last few cycles she had become so caught up in her own schemes to secure Uchenna’s trust that she had let Marin down.

House Chimaera began to stir
. Many of its inhabitants peeked out of their doors with dazed looks on their faces, their expressions turning utterly befuddled when they saw the dead fish in the atrium. Odette recognized their initially disoriented looks from cycles of working with and studying magic.

Could it be that they saw the vision as well?
Odette thought, as she reached Marin’s solid fishbone door.
I saw it, so why not the whole house too?

Two of the house guards came up an adjacent tunnel that led to the underground part of the house where the nursery, kitchen, and all of their guards were posted.
It was the heart of the house, set apart entirely from the atrium level. Loosely holding their short spears, the guards wore looks of confusion and nervousness on their young faces, as they turned to her for direction in Uchenna’s absence.

“Are the fries okay?” Odette asked, suddenly terrified that Marin’s spell had killed their young as well.
Already sore from matching the rhythm of her husband’s during the ritual, her heart seized at the thought. The sensation pierced like a dagger plunged into her chest.

“Yes, Ma’am,” one answered right away, his long purple hair pulled up into a high ponytail.
“It is just that we all saw that Red Trident neondra on the throne.” Odette knew the guard’s name to be Kwar, an attractive octolaide that usually got the younger female house members’ blood pumping at the mere sight of his smooth square jaw and chiseled bare chest. The female at his side, Jiva, wore a sharkskin vest, and the scar left by a wound that claimed her left eye was a glaringly ugly contrast to Kwar’s more pleasing features. Both were good soldiers however and equally talented with spear and blade.

“Then why are you here!?” Odette barked, infuriated at the two for abandoning their post.
More so though, she was angry that possibly all of Mervidia had beheld Ghita’s premonition, a resounding echo of her failure. The two guards looked at Odette and then blankly at each other. Perhaps they thought it best not to further infuriate the wife of their domo with inane questions about what they had seen. They reached for the tunnel with their black tentacles, turned and descended to the basement, back to their posts at the bottom of the passageway.

At Odette’s biting words, most of the
octolaides poking their heads out their doors retreated back into their rooms. Trying to look unperturbed to the rest of the family still watching her, Odette calmly knocked on Marin’s fused fish-bone door. She took a deep breath, trying to compose herself and harness her irritation at her daughter.
Yelling at her would be pointless. What’s done is done. We have to come up with a new plan, the first part of which is to protect Marin from Uchenna’s wrath,
she thought, organizing priorities in her head.

There was no response to her knock.

Odette tried once more, pounding harder and adding, “Marin, it is your mother,” she said sternly. “Open up.”

Nothing.

Odette was about to force her way in, when she heard the telling sound of sliding stone, as the locking bar was removed from its wall brackets. There was a thud and then no more. The entryway had been unbarred, so Odette pushed the door open. Her strength was still sapped which made the task harder than it should have been. Still, she was able to let herself into the room and close the entrance behind her.

Marin lay on the flagstones on her side, her head tentacles limp across her face.
The stone bar rested across her torso, pinning her to the floor under its weight. Her arms hugged the locking mechanism close like a mother might hold a child. The younger octolaide’s breathing was ragged; the spell had exacted a dreadful toll on its caster. As angry as Odette was, seeing her beloved daughter in such a ghastly, wan state, touched on her motherly instincts. Odette descended, sat next to her daughter and set Marin’s head appendages aside one by one with a delicate touch. When the last tentacle was moved away, the younger octolaide momentarily rolled her bleary white eyes up to regard her mother, before she lost consciousness.

Had she not been a kalku,
Odette would have been more concerned, but she was familiar with the rigors of spell-casting on such a large scale. Marin needed rest. Already, her daughter’s breathing had become more regular as she settled into a deep sleep. The older octolaide shifted her gaze to Marin’s room, seeing her daughter’s ritual set up in the center of the chamber. It mirrored her own in many ways, but the single circle,
two
squid, and the crudely drawn symbols were proof that, despite her innate talent, Marin still needed a good deal more training.

Pushing the stone locking bar off of Marin and leaving it where it lay, the kalku took her daughter in her arms.
She swam to her bed and tucked Marin under the pink woven-kelp sheets, which would keep the slumbering merwin on the mattress and not floating about her room in her sleep. Odette turned away from the bed, sighing deeply in her own weariness and at the urgent task that would not allow her to lie down next to her daughter. She had to purge the bedchamber of any trace that a ritual had been cast there, in hopes that her husband did not know Marin had appropriated their spell. Odette reached the edge of the ritual circle and was grasping first for the daggered squid, when she heard the front door to House Chimaera rumble open and Uchenna’s furious voice shouting her name.
Her hand froze over the dagger, her heart suddenly pounding in fear, knowing she would not have time to conceal her daughter’s betrayal - which was exactly how Uchenna would view it.

Too late!
Odette said inwardly, cursing her husband’s hasty return home.
Marin’s hand in the ritual will be revealed now.
Too stunned by fright to move, she listened to Uchenna throw open the door to House Chimaera’s ritual room, followed by the crash of furniture and probably her precious components too as they were tossed around, the first victims of his seething anger. Odette narrowed her eyes at the weapon before her. She thought about rushing out to meet her husband, in hopes of directing him away from Marin’s room and use the excuse that she had not been powerful enough to interfere with the Assembly’s seeing. Uchenna was smart though. He knew skewing the vision was fully within her abilities. Also, he would see that she was coming from Marin’s bedchamber and would inquire what she had been doing there, rather than cleaning up the ritual room as Odette should have been doing, removing all evidence of their crime of tampering with the divine seeing.