Tempest Unleashed (35 page)

PART FIVE

Overtopping

“There’s no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.”

—FRANK HERBERT

Chapter 29

“Where’s the Sahul Shelf?” I asked Mahina when I could reason again. It had taken a few minutes—for a while all I could think of was how much blood Kona had to have lost for them to be able to write those gigantic letters on the wall.

Who had done it?
I wondered absently. Tiamat couldn’t leave the water, so had it been Sabyn? Or some other traitor to the mer and selkies that we didn’t yet know about?

I was lost in thought, devastated by the idea of Kona as Tiamat’s prisoner and desperately trying to figure out how to get him back, so it took me a while to realize Mahina hadn’t answered me. I turned to look at her, only to realize she was on the floor too, looking much paler than her Polynesian skin tone should allow.

“Is that blood?” she finally asked hoarsely.

“Yes.”

“Kona’s blood?”

“Yes.” After everything we had seen today, it surprised me a little that this was what had sent her over the edge. Then again, it
had
done a hell of a number on me as well.

“He really is dead, isn’t he, Tempest?”

“I don’t know.” I looked back at the message, read it for the hundredth time. “I hope not.”

There must have been something in my voice, because Mahina snapped her head around to look at me. “You aren’t actually planning on going there, are you? It’s a trap, Tempest.”

“I know it’s a trap, Mahina. I’m not stupid. But if he is alive, I can’t just leave him there. At her mercy.”

“She’ll kill you. That’s what this is all about—you know that. Take away every source of advice and knowledge you can turn to and then lure you in. She figures you’re going to be easy pickings, especially since Sabyn was your trainer and knows everything you can do.”

“Not everything,” I said grimly as I pushed myself to my feet. Never had I been so glad that I’d played my training sessions so close to the vest, not revealing to Sabyn what my newest powers were.

“What does that mean?” Mahina asked.

“Where is the Sahul Shelf?” I repeated.

“I won’t tell you. You can’t do this.”

“Then I’ll find it on my own.” I headed for the door.

“Tempest, wait!” Mahina trailed after me. “This is suicide!”

“It’s suicide
not
to do it,” I told her. “This is Tiamat’s big stand. She thinks she’s broken us, thinks she’ll be able to take me out the second I show up and then there will be nothing left of the prophecy to stand in her way.”

“Well, then, she’d be right. That’s exactly what’s going to happen if you do this.”

“Kona is king now. You realize that, right?”

“So?”

“So without him, what do you think is going to happen to his clan? We can’t just stand by and watch it go down. They’re our most powerful allies. Besides, Hailana as good as told me that she’s done as merQueen. Which means there will be a power vacuum with our clan.”

“Especially if you run off and let Tiamat kill you! We all know you’re supposed to be the next merQueen.”

Just hearing the words come out of her mouth made me nervous. Not about dying, because at this point, not going after Tiamat was as much of a death sentence as trying to stop her. She wasn’t going to be content with Kona, wasn’t going to be content with shattering our clans. She’d be back and, weak as we were, we wouldn’t be able to fight her.

Still, the idea that I would take over, that I was
supposed
to be queen … It certainly wasn’t the first time I’d heard it—Hailana had implied as much when I’d spoken to her earlier, and people had bandied the idea around almost as long as I’d been underwater. But the thought of it, the idea of becoming so completely mermaid, didn’t sit nearly as well with me now as it had all those months ago.

“At the moment, being queen is the last thing on my mind. It’s much more important for Kona to be king than it is for me to be merQueen. I
will
save him.”

“And die doing it.”

A shiver worked its way down my spine. “If that’s what it takes.”

“You’re insane,” Mahina protested even as she followed me out of the house and back toward the water.

“I don’t expect you to come with me,” I told her. “Believe me, I know exactly how dangerous this is.”

“Which is why you can’t do it alone. But I’m warning you, if you get me killed, I’m going to haunt you forever.” She looked across the inlet to the huge expanse of ocean. Then said with a sigh, “Australia’s that way.” She pointed to the right.

“Australia?” I asked.

“You wanted to know where the Sahul Shelf is. It stretches from the coast of Australia up to New Guinea.”

“All right, then.” I dived into the water, then waited for Mahina to do the same.

You don’t have to come
, I told her one more time.
You should stay here—

Shut up and let’s go before I change my mind.
She started swimming.
And where the hell else would your best friend be besides right here, risking her neck with you? Haven’t you ever read Harry Potter?

I smiled despite the gravity of the situation.
Just call you Hermione, oh brilliant one?

Exactly.

We went back through the passage, swam over the death and destruction in the city, and out to the open ocean through the trench.

Mahina headed right, but I stopped her.
We need to go this way.

You’re turned around, Tempest. Australia is in the opposite direction.

Yes, but there’s something we need to do first. You said Tiamat had taken away my every source of advice.

Well, yeah. She pretty much did, didn’t she?

There’s one left.
I dived deeper. It was easier to travel fast the closer to the ocean floor I was.

Who?
Mahina demanded.

My mother.

I sped toward Cecily’s cave, blind and deaf to anything but getting to those pearls. They were her regrets and memories, yes, but I didn’t believe they existed only to torture me, physically and emotionally. Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but maybe, just maybe, there was advice in that cavern that would help me do what my mother had. That would help me defeat Tiamat—if not forever, then at least until the clans could grow strong again.

Three hours later, we hit the cavern fast, so fast that I nearly slammed right into the rock formations that decorated the first room.

Where are we?
Mahina asked her first question in hours.

This cave was my mother’s
, I told her.
She left memories for me here.

Mahina caught on quickly.
So, if we’re lucky, there will be some kind of how-to-take-down-Tiamat instruction manual?

If we’re very, very lucky.

We coasted through the passages, avoiding the fire coral, and within minutes ended up in the pearl-lined chamber.

Holy crap
, breathed Mahina as soon as she saw them.
That’s a lot of memories.

Tell me about it.

Now that I was here again, staring at all those pearls, what I had planned seemed like a daunting task. Or, to be honest, more like an impossible one. How was I supposed to find the right memory among all of these? If each of them hurt as much as the other two had, I wouldn’t survive long enough to die at Tiamat’s hands. My mother would take care of me for her.

Still, I’d come all this way in a last-ditch attempt to find something. I had to try.

Swimming forward, I zipped around the circle, coasting by the pearls, waiting for something, anything. A sign, maybe, or an electric current like the one that had pulled me here to begin with. But there was nothing. Finally I gave up and just grabbed a pearl.

I braced myself for the pain, and it didn’t disappoint—fire licked through me. But I didn’t fight it this time. Instead, I let it take me over in one incendiary rush. It was intense, but before the pain had even begun to dissipate, the memory started playing before my eyes.

This time my mother was with Hailana above water, and it only took a minute for me to realize that she was making a deal with the devil. Or pretty close to it. They were arguing over something, someone, with my mother asserting that it wasn’t time, that
she
wasn’t old enough yet while Hailana insisted that
she
was. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out they were talking about me, any more than it took one to realize my mother had completely sold me out by the end of the conversation.

I couldn’t say how it still managed to surprise me, but it did.

I dropped that pearl, reached for another. This one was Cecily as a young mother, completely overwhelmed. I was sitting in my high chair screaming while she tried everything to comfort me. I didn’t stop until my father came home and swept me into his arms. We went down to the beach and he held my hands while I toddled along the water, my face still stained with tears.

I threw the pearl down in disgust. On another day, at another time, this would all be completely illuminating. For now, however, none of these memories were getting me any closer to finding Kona than I currently was. I stepped back, looked around the chamber, hoping for some kind of inspiration.

My eyes fell on the sea glass and I remembered that first one I’d looked at, of my surfing competition. I felt like an idiot—wouldn’t the information about what I needed to do to defeat Tiamat be in the sea glass, not the pearls? Good things, not regrets?

I reached for the closest piece, a red one, but something stopped me. Instead, I picked up a shard of purple sea glass—rare and beautiful, it called to me in a way the others didn’t.

The second my hand closed around it, memories bombarded me from all sides. My mother locked in bloody battle with Tiamat. They fought viciously, horribly, using whatever weapons they had at their disposal. My mother blasted Tiamat with all the power she had, but the witch only laughed—until that power reached through her defenses to slam against her tender underbelly.

Then she retreated.

I dropped the sea glass, picked up another purple one. Saw Tiamat wound my mother this time. She fooled her, feinted, got her from behind. And once her scaly tentacles were wrapped around Cecily, there was no getting out. My mother would have died if Hailana hadn’t managed to cause some damage of her own.

On and on I went, pulling one piece of purple sea glass off the shelf after another. I was focused, in a frenzy, determined to learn everything I could about this monster who had taken so much from me. I could sense Mahina behind me, and though she couldn’t do anything, her presence comforted me. Even though I would never let her get close enough to fight Tiamat, the fact that I wasn’t alone now—that I wouldn’t be alone during that long swim to Australia—meant more than I could ever tell her.

Memory after memory poured through me and out into the chamber, showing Mahina and me Tiamat’s strengths and weaknesses. Showing us how she fought and the best way to counter her. Some of the battles my mother and Hailana lost, some they won. Sometimes Malakai was there and in some of the most recent, so was Kona’s mother. I absorbed as much knowledge from the battles as I could, but in none of them was Tiamat actually vanquished. Much like my own battle with her, there were setbacks—on both sides—even a desertion of the field. But in the end, she always rose stronger than ever.

I watched the last memory—of Malakai, Hailani, Cecily, and a couple of other people trying unsuccessfully to end Tiamat—and felt my hopes dissipate. It wasn’t here.

I looked around the chamber. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the answer wasn’t necessarily in the purple pieces. But there were so many others. There was no time to look at all of them.

Still, it wasn’t like I had a better idea. I reached for a green piece of glass and found one last purple one hiding behind it. My heart jumped and I reached for it, then hesitated at the last minute. This was it. My last chance at figuring out how to defeat Tiamat. If the secret wasn’t here, then it didn’t exist and I would have made this trip in vain. While the other battles had been interesting to watch and had given me glimpses of Tiamat’s fighting style, none had been the advice—the road map to taking her on—that I’d been hoping for. If this one was just more of the same, then I didn’t know what I would do. How I would beat her and get Kona back.

With a deep breath and a silent prayer that this was somehow everything that I was looking for, I closed my fingers tightly around the glass. It bit into my hand, even drew blood despite the worn-down edges, and I knew it was because I was squeezing it so hard.

Behind me, Mahina gasped in alarm, and when I didn’t respond, she tried to pry my fingers from around it. I held on even more tightly, refusing to budge, and was rewarded with a memory unlike any other I had experienced.