Mervidia (7 page)

Chapter Seven

Zane swam with purpose, though he did not hurry.
Each lash of his muscular sinewy tail was a measured stroke that drove him through the dark waters with no wasted effort. Years of martial training had made the neondra’s movements as lean and graceful as he. It hadn’t always been that way, Zane recollected, letting a wry grin turn up the corners of his mouth. He remembered his Culling and how nervous he had been.

Scared is more like it
, the merwin warrior admitted to himself. Zane had swum with the rest of the adolescent merwin in a tight group, his flailing tail bumping the neondra next to him over and over until they had finally got tangled up together. The pair had fallen behind, out of the protective embrace of the school of other young merwin participating in their rite of passage and the single orihalcyon lantern that they took with them. The young neondra Zane had collided with, a Yellowtail warrior-to-be, was screaming at him, presumably to watch what he was doing and stay out of his way, but Zane’s fear-addled mind had not registered the words. He had been too focused on the large frilled shark that had swum out of the darkness, as the rest of the school continued on, leaving their two fellow neondra behind. As the inky blackness closed in around them, Zane had reached out, grabbed the Yellowtail’s shoulder, spun him around and frantically pointed at the vicious animal that bore down on them. Zane had barely had time to get out a verbal warning before the lantern disappeared into the distance, leaving the two younglings in darkness.

Acting on instinct, the two
neondra had pressed their backs together and started stabbing wildly into the pitch black waters in a desperate bid to stay alive. They had stayed like that for what seemed like forever, enveloped in ebon fear, before a tiny glimmer of yellow light had suddenly blossomed in his companion’s hand, illuminating the water around them. The young Yellowtail neondra had snuck a small chunk of uncut orihalcyon with him on their Culling, concealed in the pouch that hung from his belt. It was late in the season, so the mystical ore had been a bright yellow, almost white; nearly too hot for the grogstack to mine, much less for another race of merwin to hold unprotected. Impossibly though, the Yellowtail had held the orihalcyon in his bare hand high above his head, allowing as much of its radiance to spill out as possible. Through gritted teeth he had called out to Zane, pointing his spear, nearly useless when held with one hand while his other held the orihalcyon, at the rapidly closing frilled shark. Zane had loosened his grip on his long spear and the bone shaft slid through his fingers until he held it near the base of the haft. Placing the butt of the weapon against the front of his hip, he had raised the coral spear’s tip before him just as the shark had lunged forward. Zane had felt the impact against his hip before he realized he had closed his eyes tightly against the fear welling up in his heart. When Zane opened his eyes at last, the frilled shark had impaled itself on his spear, straight through the mouth. It had twitched a few times before finally becoming motionless, inches from Zane’s hands. He had survived his Culling, as had the other neondra, but only through sheer luck and by cheating.

“Survival
is
victory
,
” his domo had said before the younglings were turned out into the Deeps, each with a coral tipped spear and small pouch tied to their waist. In the pouch had been a small tripod fish. As each youngling had been thrust out into the darkness, both the pouch and fish had been pierced once with a needle of rare uklod bone, so that the young merwin trailed blood as he swam through the Deeps. The Culling group had been allowed a single lantern and were expected to return only after they had killed some sort of predator for the feast in their honor; the larger the beast the higher the praise.

Zane slowed his advance as the lights of House Yellowtail appeared in the
distance. Emerging suddenly out of the darkness to a cadre of neondra warriors was not a wise maneuver for anyone, even Zane. He closed the shutter on the lantern he carried with him, only after the guards who stood on duty below the glowing house crest saw him and acknowledged his approach.

“Captain Zane,” one of the guards said, as the commander of the Red Tridents pulled up short, several spear lengths from the main entrance of House Yellowtail’s compound.
The sentry nodded his head, but did not raise his fist to his chest in salute.

Zane had not expected such a gesture though.
Most of Penn’s soldiers regarded Zane’s company as upstarts, swimming too far into the waters traditionally reserved for the acknowledged sentinels of Mervidia, House Yellowtail. The fact that the guard had used his title was surprising enough to make Zane raise an eyebrow in response. The other Yellowtail sentry adjusted his grip on the spear in his right hand, watching the neondra from House Ignis warily out of the corner of his milky eye.

“Domo Penn is expecting you,” the guard who had originally addressed him said, straighte
ning the shaped-bone vambraces that protected his forearms and then pulling his own spear close to his body. “Follow me,” he said curtly before turning and swimming through the circular gateway behind him. It was not a request.

The mercenary leader guessed that the head of House Yellowtail had used Zane’s title, when he sent word that the
captain of the Red Tridents was to be admitted and escorted to his chambers. The fact that the guard was carrying out his orders so brusquely betrayed his feelings towards them, and Zane.

Yellowtails are very good at following orders,
Zane thought.
Well, most of them.
A wry grin again tugged at the corners of the captain’s mouth. Zane felt the familiar weight of his spell-crafted bone dagger at his waist as he swam. Its presence was reassuring, regardless of the much larger weapon his armored guide carried.

As Zane followed the guard, he noted the narrow plates of shaped-bone armor that ran down the other
neondra’s back. They trailed down his tail and ended just above the wide horizontal fin that swished slowly up and down, as it propelled the guard’s bulk through the water. It was more armor than most merwin would think about wearing, but it didn’t appear to hinder the Yellowtail’s motions at all.

Zane wasn’t surprised
. House Yellowtail was more fortress than residence, and its inhabitants were more of an army than a family. As they continued down the hallway, the captain of the Red Tridents peered through the doorways that they passed. In nearly every room was a group of neondra, varying in size, but all training for battle in some way. Zane saw merwin practicing with every weapon from spear and trident to dagger and short blade. Some Yellowtails wore armor, while others didn’t, and they were not always paired up uniformly. Often an armored warrior fought a bare-skinned one, to teach both the strengths and weaknesses of each condition. Unarmed neondra fought other unarmed combatants, or armed ones, depending into which room Zane looked. Some fought one on one, while others fought multiple adversaries. All combinations of armaments, armors, combat styles, and number of opponents were represented in the chambers of House Yellowtail.

Having been here before, Zane was not surprised by the myriad martial
displays. He was also aware of the fact that the guard was not taking him by the most direct route to Domo Penn’s chambers. Zane guessed that the guard he followed was trying to make a point; that this was how a true army looked and trained and that the Red Tridents should stop playing at being a pale imitation of House Yellowtail.

Zane fought down the anger that bubbled up in his chest.
I should kill this over-armored pufferfish right here, just to prove a point,
he thought. There would be no way to convince his escort of the validity of the Red Tridents, short of defeating the other neondra in single combat. He was confident he could best his guide, but thought better of it. Zane knew that this was not the time, and especially not the place, in the heart of House Yellowtail. Besides, it would be showing bad manners. He had been personally invited by the house’s domo. He also wouldn’t put it past a few of the other Yellowtails to try to make an example of
Captain
Zane by putting their spears through his back. Zane was confident in his skills, but even he knew that taking on the entire Yellowtail army was suicide.

Instead, Zane focused on the building
through which he swam. It was composed mostly of stone, a building material not common in Mervidia, but not so rare as to be pretentious. Most of the smaller houses used coral, hand-shaped or spell-wrought, but all the High Houses used stone in their construction. It was sturdier, which was always important when it came to defense, and allowed decoration to be more easily carved directly into it. Also, it was common knowledge, at least amongst the more powerful houses, that these compounds contained clandestine underground chambers. The stone that was pulled out of the seafloor to create these rooms was then used to help build the walls of the upper portion of the house.

House Lumen and House Paua had intricate carvings on
nearly every interior vertical stone surface of their buildings. House Yellowtail’s compound, however, had uniformly unadorned walls, free from extraneous decoration. It was a martial structure filled with martially minded merwin, and its appearance reflected these facts. Zane could appreciate the austere aesthetic of the place. His own House Ignis was similar, though not to such a degree, as were his personal quarters at the Red Trident headquarters. He had to admit though, that on such a large scale, the effect of so many large, plain walls was somewhat depressing.

The knocking of his escort’s meaty fist on the door to Domo Penn’s office brought Zane out of his mental critique of House Yellowtail’s decorating choices.
The sound was strange and reverberated oddly. Looking more closely at the door, Zane saw why. It was made from spell-shaped bone, a common material, but this particular door was not made from the remains of some fish or other sea creature. He recognized a vertebra near the hinge and part of a tailbone near the handle. The shapes of the fused bones revealed that the door had been made from merwin skeletons. Zane guessed that each one had been dispatched personally by the Domo of House Yellowtail.

Still keeping trophies, I see,
Zane thought. Some things about Penn never changed it seemed.

A deep confident voice called out from behind the door, indicating Zane could enter.
The neondra guard who had led the Red Trident’s leader there nodded curtly to him and then swam back to his post, not even doing him the courtesy of opening the door for the domo’s guest. Zane sighed and pushed open the door, entering the chamber beyond.

The room where Penn conducted his official business was a sharp contrast to the rest of House Yellowtail’s compound.
The difference was physically jarring to those who had not seen it before. Whereas the other rooms in the building had been plain and unadorned, there was not a full hand’s span of wall in the domo’s chambers that wasn’t covered with a trophy or prize. Weapons of every type were fastened to the walls; souvenirs, no doubt, of victories won at the webbed hands of Domo Penn of House Yellowtail. There were daggers, tridents, and spears made from coral and bone adorning the walls. Some were broken, others whole, taken from the corpses of his enemies and now gaudily displayed to silently proclaim the martial prowess of the merwin who sat behind the desk on the far side of the room.

Penn uncoiled his tail from the chair on which he sat and swam forward, his hand extended in friendship.
The domo needn’t have displayed his conquests so gaudily. His mere physical presence spoke to his strength clearly enough on its own. Penn was huge, nearly as big as a grogstack, though the glimmering, yellow-scaled horizontal flukes at the end of his long muscular golden tail marked him as a pure-blooded Yellowtail. His naked torso was covered in corded muscle, large yet without appearing bulky. He wore no armor, as his guards did, nor clothing of any kind, save an eel skin belt at his waist. From the belt hung a short blade of uklod bone, its handle wrapped with sharkskin. The only other accessory he wore was a single tooth, a slender fang with curved needle-like hooks protruding off of it, on a thong of woven eel skin around his thick neck.

Zane braced himself for Penn’s greeting, as the
domo’s hand closed tightly around his forearm, threatening to crush it. Though his grasp was not as strong as the Yellowtail warrior’s, Zane managed to return the gesture with no outward sign of distress. Penn held the clinch for a moment longer than was polite, but Zane was not surprised. The domo had a habit of testing those he met with such measures of strength and resilience.

“Still
wearing that thing around, Penn?” Zane said, looking pointedly at the frilled shark’s tooth dangling from the other neondra’s neck.

Penn released his crushing grip and placed his hand gingerly on the trophy, careful not to stab himself on the sharp projections that covered the shark’s fang.
“My first kill,” Penn said resolutely before taking his webbed hand away.

By the Deeps
! You truly believe that now, don’t you?
Zane thought.
You’ve told the lie so many times about our Culling that you’ve managed to convince yourself of its veracity.
Zane barely managed to keep from shaking his head. Ignoring the falsehood that spilled so easily from the domo’s mouth, Zane asked, “Why have you summoned me?”