Waterfire Saga, Book One: Deep Blue (A Waterfire Saga Novel) (15 page)

Daughter of Merrow, leave your sleep,

The ways of childhood no more to keep.

The dream will die, a nightmare rise,

Sleep no more, child, open your eyes….

I
T WAS THE SAME NIGHTMARE.
The same chant. Only the monster was stronger now. When it shook the bars of its cage, they groaned and cracked, and ice fell from them.

Suddenly, the elderly witch, Vrăja, stopped chanting. She turned and stared at Serafina, her eyes wide with fear.

He’s coming….

“No,” Serafina mumbled in her sleep.

He’s close, child—you must flee!

There was a booming crash then, so powerful that it shook the walls of the palazzo.

Serafina sat bolt upright and reached for Blu. He was gone, but she wasn’t alone. Someone else was here. She could feel it. She stared into the gray, early morning light, her eyes sweeping across the room, her heart pounding. It was there. In the corner. A dark, hooded figure.

“Who are you?” she asked, terrified. And then she realized the figure was not in the room; it was in the mirror. A pale hand was pressed against the inside of the glass. “Baba Vrăja!” she whispered. “Am I still dreaming?”

She got out of bed, swam to the mirror, and pressed her hand to Vrăja’s. The glass, cold and hard at first, shimmered, then gave way ever so slightly. Sera felt as if her hand was sinking into thick soft mud. She cried out as Vrăja grasped her hand. The witch’s skin was warm, her talons hard and sharp.

“Leave this place, child!
Quickly!
He’s coming, and even the Praedatori won’t be able to stop him.”

“
Who
? Who’s coming?”

“I must go. It’s too dangerous. He’s using me to find you. You must come to us. Both of you. Please, Serafina!”

“How? Where are you? How do I find you?”

“The River Olt. In the black mountains. Two leagues past the Maiden’s Leap, in the waters of the Malacostraca. Follow the bones.”

At that very second, the door to Serafina’s bedchamber burst open.

Blu swam inside. He had Neela with him. “Get dressed, Sera. Hurry,” he said.

“What is it? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know. Something’s going on topside. We may have to get you and Neela out of here. For now, stay here and lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone but me,” he said. Then he was gone.

“Sera, it happened again,” Neela said. “The nightmare. I saw her—Baba Vrăja.”

“I did too. In the nightmare and in my room. Inside the mirror.” She turned back to the glass, but it was empty.

“The duca’s wrong, Sera. It’s real. It has to be.”

Serafina remembered Vrăja’s sharp talons against her skin. “Yeah, Neela, it is,” she said softly.

Neela was already dressed. Sera shrugged out of her nightclothes, took the blue dress from its hanger, and pulled it over her head. A split second later, she and Neela both heard shouting.

“What’s going on?” Neela asked anxiously.

“I don’t know, but we need to find out,” Serafina said.

The mermaids left Sera’s room. They swam down the hallway, past the canal-side doors, and up to the pool. As they surfaced, they saw the duca, still in his robe and pajamas, shouting orders to a dozen Praedatori. Someone was trying to break down the palazzo doors, he was telling them. They were to take the princesses to safety. The makos were agitated, swimming to and fro. Leery of them, the mermaids hugged the edge of the pool. As they neared the pool’s steps, there was a shattering crash from the floor above, and a scream.

“Filomena?” the duca shouted.
“Filomena!”

There was no answer, just the sound of feet on the stone steps. The duca ran to a table, grabbed a small cloth sack that was on it, and threw it to Serafina.

“There’s some currensea in there. Get to a safe house. The Praedatori will help you.”

“Duca Armando, what’s happening?” Serafina said.

“Go!
Now!
Get out of here!” the duca shouted.

Serafina and Neela were about to dive when four human men rushed into the room. Their leader’s face was obscured by sunglasses and the brim of a baseball cap, but the duca knew him.

“
You!
How
dare
you come into my home!” he shouted.

The man was carrying a speargun. As Serafina watched, he aimed it at the duca.

“No!”
she screamed.

The man whipped around…and leveled the gun at
her
.

It happened so fast, she had no time to cast a deflecto spell. Luckily, the duca lunged at the man and grabbed his arm. The gun went off. Trailing a thin, nylon line, the spear hit a wall and fell into the water.

“Get them!” the man shouted. The duca threw a punch at him, but he deflected it, grabbed the duca, and hurled him against a wall. The duca crashed to the floor, motionless. The three other invaders, all armed with spearguns, dove into the pool.

Serafina felt hands on her, pulling her down through the water. It was Blu. Grigio had Neela. The attackers were in pursuit, but at a signal from Blu, high-pitched and piercing, the makos were on them. The sharks were fast, but not fast enough. All three men had time to get shots off. Two silver spears buried themselves deep into two makos, mortally wounding them. The third pierced Grigio’s tail. He was jerked backward by the nylon line. Serafina screamed as he thrashed against it. Blu swam to him, his knife drawn, and sliced through the line. There was a high, thin scream as a mako’s teeth sank into an attacker’s flesh.

“Cover us!” Blu shouted at the other Praedatori as he and Grigio pulled the mermaids down through the pool to the canal doors.

Grigio was about to slide the heavy iron bolt back and open them, when they all heard two deep voices say,
“Qui vadit ibi?”
Instead of answering, whoever was outside started battering on the doors.
“Cavete! Cavete! Interpellatores!”
the stone voices shouted.
Beware! Intruders!

Grigio risked a quick look through a small barred window to the left of the door. He swore, then turned back to the others. “It’s Traho,” he said grimly.

“Go!” Blu shouted, pushing the mermaids down the hallway.

“Where?” Serafina shouted back.

“Into your room! Lock the door and stay there!”

Neela was already inside Sera’s room when the outside door crashed in and a spear came hurtling through the water. Sera looked back in time to see it hit Blu’s back with a sickening
thuk
and exit his body under his collarbone. His attacker yanked on the line attached to the spear, pulling the cruel, barbed head into his flesh. Blu thrashed madly against it. He twisted in the water, his knife in his hand, trying to cut the line. All Serafina could see was the blur of his powerful tail, frothing water, and blood.

“Blu!
No!
” she screamed, swimming back to him.

“Get her out of here!” he yelled.

Grigio shoved Serafina into her room. He handed her his knife. “Take it!” he shouted. “Lock the door!”

Neela pulled the door shut, slid the bolt, and backed away from it. “If Traho got through the outside door, he can get through this one,” she said, her voice shaking.

“Neela, we’ve got to go back out there. We’ve got to help them!” Serafina cried.

“That’s
Traho
out there, Sera! It’s us he wants. The only way we can help the Praedatori is by getting out of here.”

“
How?
The window has bars on it!”

“Are they bronze? Can we melt them with a liquesco spell?”

Sera shook her head. “They’re iron.”

“Maybe there’s a door that connects to another room,” Neela said, desperation in her voice. “Maybe there’s a secret passage, a trapdoor to a tunnel, or—”

Her words were cut off by the sound of pounding. Traho’s men were on the other side of the door.

Neela cast a quick robus spell, hoping to shore up the door. “Hurry, Sera, help me pull up the rug!” she cried.

Serafina slipped Grigio’s knife into a deep pocket of her dress. Then she and Neela searched the floor frantically for an outline of a trapdoor, but there was nothing. They heard the sound of splintering wood. Neela’s robus was no match for Traho’s men. They’d be in the room any minute. She whirled around, desperately looking for a way out, but there was nothing. And then her eyes fell on the looking glass.

“Neela, remember when I said I saw Vrăja in the mirror?”

“How exactly does that help us right now?” Neela asked, her eyes on the door.

“She reached for me, and I reached for her, and my hand went through the glass.”

Neela looked at her. “No way. Not even the canta magi can do that. We could
die
in there.”

“We’ll die out here if Traho gets us.”

An ax blade cleaved the door.

“We have about two seconds, Neels.”

Neela took a deep breath, then grabbed Sera’s hand.

Together, they dove into the mirror.

I
T WAS LIKE
swimming through sea lily honey. Silver sea lily honey.

“Neela? Neels, where are you?” Serafina called out anxiously.

“
Here
. Yuck. I don’t like this, Sera.”

Neela was behind her, trying to catch up. It was an effort just to breathe in the liquid silver, never mind to move.

Sera looked past her, at the mirror they’d just swum through. She could see what was happening on its other side. Traho was in her room. He was furious. His soldiers had ripped the doors off a wardrobe and flipped over the bed looking for them. As both mermaids watched, he peered into the glass, then pounded a fist against it. Serafina shuddered. Neela pulled her away.

“I think he can see us,” she said.

“Even if he can, he can’t get to us. He can’t swim through the glass.”

“Um, Sera? How did we?”

“I don’t know,” Serafina said. “Right now, the bigger question is, can we get out again?”

The two mermaids turned and stared out at the strange new place they’d just entered, a glittering high-ceilinged hall that seemed to go on forever. Vitrina were everywhere. They sat slumped in chairs or on benches. Or stood motionlessly, heads hanging. A few lay facedown on the ground on the marble floor, as lifeless as flung-away toys. Ghosts of vain terragoggs whose souls had been captured by the mirror, vitrina craved admiration. They became listless without it.

Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and mirrors of every shape and size adorned the walls. Some were incredibly ornate. Others were sleek and modern. Some boasted frames of precious metals, studded with jewels. Others were made of cheap plastic.

“There must be
thousands
of them,” Neela said wonderingly, touching one. “Which one do we take? Where do we go?”

Sera didn’t reply right away. Then finally she said, “To the Iele.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s time to stop swimming away from everything and start swimming toward something.”

“You know how to get there? Because I don’t.”

“I do. Sort of. ‘The River Olt,’ Vrăja told me. ‘In the black mountains. Two leagues past the Maiden’s Leap, in the waters of the Malacostraca. Follow the bones.
’
”

“Okay, but how do we get there from
here
?”

“I don’t know. I know this, though: I’m sick of being scared. Sick of being hunted. Sick of Traho, and those goggs with their spearguns. They don’t get to decide what happens to us anymore. We do. Come on.”

Sera led Neela to a mirror. They pressed their faces to the glass. It started to give way, melting around them just as the mirror in the duca’s palazzo had. A human girl was on the other side, in her bedroom. They hadn’t seen her, but she saw them—and let out an earsplitting scream. They quickly scrambled back from the glass.

“We’d better not do that again or we’ll end up flopping around on some terragogg’s floor,” Serafina said. “If we want to get to the Iele, we need to find the mirror Vrăja used.”

“Good luck with
that
,” Neela said, looking at the endless hallway and its multitude of mirrors. “We need directions, or a map.”

“Maybe we could ask the vitrina how to navigate in here,” Serafina said.

“Let’s do it quickly,” Neela said, looking around uneasily. “This place gives me the creeps.”

Serafina swam to a vitrina—a woman in a slinky golden dress, with bobbed hair and pouty red lips. “Hello?” she said. “Excuse me…” She got no reponse. “Oh, isn’t she pretty!” Sera added, knowing how to perk up a vitrina. “And her dress is
gorgeous.
”

The vitrina drew a breath and opened her eyes. Color came into her cheeks. “Oh, thank you!” she said, sitting up in her chair. She frowned. “But what do you think of my hair?”

“It’s
so
beautiful!” Serafina said. “Please, Miss…”

“Josephine.”

“I know why this place creeps me out,” Neela suddenly said. “There aren’t any children here.”

“Of course there aren’t,” Josephine said. “Rorrim Drol
hates
children.”

“Why?” Neela asked.

“Because they’re strong and fearless. Their little backbones are made of steel. It takes years for them to soften. Fear only sets in as one grows up, you see.”

“Backbones?” Neela echoed, looking confused.

“Who’s Rorrim Drol?” Serafina asked.

The vitrina looked past them. “Shh! Here he comes! Be careful!” she said. “Don’t let him get close or he’ll bind you to the glass too.”

The mermaids turned and saw a fat bald man in a red silk robe and blue velvet slippers shuffling toward them.

He held out his arms, smiling wide.

“Is that, like, a caballabong cheer or something?” Neela whispered to Serafina.

the man said, rubbing his plump hands together.

“I’m very sorry, sir, but we can’t understand you,” Serafina said.

The man pressed a hand to his chest. “
Do
forgive me! I was speaking Rursus, the lingua franca of Vadus, the mirror realm.” He swept a bow. “Rorrim Drol, at your service. Welcome to the Hall of Sighs.”

Serafina thought fast. She knew now how dangerous it could be to reveal her real identity to strangers. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’m Sofia…and this is Noor.”

The man gave them an oily smile, revealing small, pointed teeth. “No need to pretend
here
, my darlings! You’re perfectly safe.
I
know who you are. Your fame precedes you,” he said. He nodded at Josephine. “I see you’ve been talking to my vitrina. So kind of you. They
adore
admirers. Simply can’t get enough compliments. Come, meet a few more.”

He walked over to a young woman wearing a damask gown with a square neckline and pointed bodice. Her face was deathly pale. “This is our darling Katharine. She ended up here because her complexion was darker than was fashionable during her time, and she feared it hurt her chances of finding a husband,” he said.

Katharine smiled and Serafina saw that her teeth were black. Rorrim ran a finger down her cheek, then showed them the tip. It was covered with a white, satiny substance. “Venetian ceruse. Used by Renaissance ladies to whiten the skin. And it
did
, my dears! Unfortunately, it also caused their teeth to rot and their bodies to wither. It was absolutely
full
of lead and it poisoned them,” he explained happily.

He moved to another woman. She wore a high-necked dress with puffy sleeves. Her eyes, sunken and empty, were like two black holes in her head. “And of course there’s the lovely Alice, who ate arsenic mixed with vinegar to improve
her
complexion. She was getting on in years—all of twenty-three!—and feared losing her beauty. Arsenic was all the rage in the nineteenth century. The vomiting and convulsions it brought on were a bit daunting, but I’m happy to say that Alice persevered and succeeded. There’s
nothing
paler than a corpse, is there?”

Smiling, he glided over to a third vitrina. Her blond head lolled sickeningly on her shoulder. “And we musn’t forget our sweet Lydia.
Bel-la-don-na
,” he said, relishing each syllable. “It means
beautiful lady
. Lydia feared losing her beau to another, so she put drops of belladonna into her eyes to make her pupils dilate. Victorian men found doe-eyed women oh so alluring, you see. Though, I must say, it wasn’t so pretty when she lost her eyesight to the poison, fell down a stairwell, and broke her neck.”

Rorrim smiled at Serafina. He circled her. “I wonder, little principessa, what do
you
fear?”

Sera felt a chill and realized Rorrim was running his cold fingers down her spine.

“Oh, this is no good at all,” he said. “Much too strong. I’ll have to soften this up or I’ll starve.”

“Stop it!” Serafina said angrily. “Take your hands off me!” She tried to swim away from him but found she couldn’t. Her tail was suddenly as heavy as stone. The liquid silver held her fast.

“Neela, I can’t move!” she cried, panic-stricken.

Neela started toward her.

“No! Don’t come near me! He’ll get you, too!”

“Hang on, Sera!” Neela said. She cast a depulsio, a songspell used to move objects, hoping to push Rorrim away, but nothing happened.

“You’re wasting your breath, my dear,” Rorrim said. “Early mirrors were made of polished iron. There’s a great deal of it in the Vadus, I’m afraid.”

“Find the way out, Neela! Hurry!” Sera urged.

Neela hesitated, torn, then she swam off.

“Wait a moment…what have we here?” Rorrim said, probing the spaces between Sera’s vertebrae. “You hide your fears well, Princess, but I’ve found one. Ha! Got you!”

Sera felt a strange popping sensation in her back, and then Rorrim swam out from behind her. He had something soft and dark pinched between his fingers. It was fluttering and squealing.

“What is that?” she asked, horrified.

“It’s called a dankling. It’s a little piece of fear. They burrow into backbones. A few of them will infest a nice strong spine, and then as the bones weaken, more come,” Rorrim explained. He put it in his mouth and swallowed it. “Mmm! Simply divine!” he said, licking his fingers. “There’s nothing, absolutely
nothing
, as tasty as fear. Doubt is delectable, of course. Insecurities, anxieties—all delicious, but fear? Oh, fear is exquisite! And that one was especially piquant…fear for the luscious Mr. Blu! That
was
a rather bad injury he sustained on your behalf, wasn’t it?”

Desperate to escape, Serafina struggled harder to break free.

“Don’t bother. It’s pointless,” Rorrim said. “There’s a lot of mercury here, too. The older mirrors are full of it. It weakens you.”

He was behind her again. She could see his reflection in the mirrors on the walls. He’d grown fatter.

“Fight him, Sera!” Neela shouted, as she moved from mirror to mirror, frantically peering in each one. “He’s feeding on your fear! Don’t let him!” Getting nowhere, she swam to the broken-necked vitrina. “Lydia, hey,” she said, cocking her head to meet the ghost’s eyes. “I need to get to the Olt River. Can you help me?”

Lydia closed her doe-like eyes.

Neela swam to Alice. “Alice, please,” she begged.

Alice frowned. “Paler. I could be paler still. Don’t you think? I know I’d find a husband then.”

Neela started toward Katharine, but Rorrim spoke before she could reach her.

“My dear, dear, Princess Neela, do slow down! You look
so
stressed. Here, just for you. A kanjaywoohoo,” he said, holding out a sweet on his palm. “Swallow it, darling. Just like you swallow all your fears and frustrations. They leave such a bitter taste, don’t they? This is much sweeter.”

Neela stopped dead.

“It gets so tiring, doesn’t it? Always having to smile and agree. Never being able to speak your mind. The sweets make up for it all. Cram a bag of bing-bangs into your mouth and you forget for a while how much you hate pink. And the palace. You forget how much you fear your future—the boredom, the longing to do something else, to
be
something else.”