Cursed Throne: Lord of the Ocean #2 Page 15

  He was grateful that Ginny stood beside him.

  Even more grateful that Kai did too.

  “Why did you let us think you were human?” Thaleia asked.

  “Because I was. It’s a complicated story. And it’s not important.”

  Thaleia’s mouth dropped open. “How can you say that? Do you know who you are?”

  Zamir looked away. I thought I did.

  “According to Beltiamatu mythology, you were the first commander of the starship that brought the children of An from the stars to Earth.”

  “It’s not myth,” Zamir said simply.

  Thaleia’s eyebrows drew together. “Do you not die?”

  “I did. Arman did. We both did.” Zamir squeezed his eyes shut. “Actually, we all did.” And now we’re jammed in here—three, maybe even four—of us, living out a second half-life.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Ginny held up her hand. “I don’t think anyone does. But the short of it is that he has Arman’s soul.”

  “His memories? His consciousness?” Thaleia asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Zamir said. “Sometimes, there are flashes that might be memories, but there’s nothing I can coherently put together in any way that makes sense.”

  “But that voice, that man, said another name. His name,” Thaleia continued. “Marduk.”

  Ginny nodded. “And even humans know of that name. He was the patron deity of Babylon. His most famous deed was the defeat of Tiamat.”

  “Tiamat…” Zamir frowned.

  “Does that name ring a bell?” Ginny asked.

  “Tiamat…What is it?”

  “A primordial force in the universe. Chaos, if you will. Usually symbolized as a dragon. Myths say that Marduk slew the dragon and, from its carcass, created heaven and earth.” Ginny shrugged. “I know the Sumerians were more literal than not, but I’m pretty sure heaven and earth were created long before Marduk battled Tiamat—if he ever did.”

  “That’s not what our legends say,” Thaleia countered. “According to our stories, Marduk was the second commander, a servant of An, like Arman.”

  “Same name, different person?” Ginny suggested to Zamir. “But that would explain how he knows you.”

  Kai spoke up. “You seemed to recognize him at the grove.”

  Ginny’s mouth dropped open. “You saw him?”

  “He emerged from the pedestal as it melted, every bit of him as golden as the pedestal had been.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “A man. Well-formed, but without hair. His features…they looked like his.” Kai glanced toward Zamir. “Human, but different.”

  “Predatory?” Ginny suggested.

  Zamir glared at her but Kai nodded. “It’s the eyes. They look like birds of prey.”

  Ginny turned to Thaleia. “What happened to Marduk, according to your legends?”

  “It says he tried to return to the stars but was brought low.”

  “And?”

  Thaleia shook her head. “And nothing. That’s all we know.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” Ginny asked. “What do your legends say about Arman?”

  “That he was the first commander of the starships, and he served the family of An faithfully.”

  “No mention of how he died, or when?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  Ginny paced the deck. “We know that the Illojim age according to a vastly different schedule. A day to them would be a thousand years on Earth. And you, the Beltiamatu, follow cycles four times longer than that of a human. The Altanteans were supposed to be long-lived too. If there’s some kind of hierarchy of lifecycles, with the Illojim at the top and the humans at the bottom, it wouldn’t be a stretch to suppose that Arman and Marduk fit in somewhere between the Illojim and the Beltiamatu.”

  “There’s a huge difference between a day lasting a thousand Earth years for the Illojim, and a day lasting four Earth days for the Beltiamatu,” Thaleia pointed out.

  “True, but assuming Marduk’s in his original body, he’s lived for at least ten thousand years so far. It’s not illogical to suggest that he’s closer to an Illojim than a Beltiamatu.”

  “That gets us no closer to figuring out what he wants.”

  “No,” Ginny conceded. She glanced at Zamir. “Unless you can remember something. Anything.”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  Ginny’s mouth twitched. “He didn’t sound like he liked you. In fact, there was a definite tone of challenge.”

  Zamir shrugged.

  “I wouldn’t dismiss it lightly,” Ginny cautioned him. “Lifecycles, remember? What may seem like ancient history to you may have just happened a few days ago, as far as they’re concerned. The anger and the hate is still fresh. Why was he at Atlantis? And why didn’t we see him there before?”

  “Probably because we didn’t wreck the place before,” Zamir said. “He was beneath the pedestal. Perhaps he was a guardian, set in place by the patron goddess of Atlantis—Inanna.”

  Ginny tapped her fingers against the rail. “Didn’t Inanna imprison her own sister underground for several millennia?”

  Zamir nodded.

  “She’s got a thing for burying people alive. I wouldn’t put it past that goddess to have done something like that to Marduk too. I’d like to have a word with her, if we can find her.”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to look,” Zamir murmured.

  “Would Ereshkigal?”

  Zamir spun around. “We are not going back down to the underworld. The crisis is here, on Earth. Right here. Right now. And it is my problem. I will not take the crisis back to the goddess who created it and escalated it and hope that she will have somehow grown up in the past ten days enough to fix it.”

  “You’re just like your…” Ginny bit her lip. “Ashe. For all that she railed against the immature aliens playing at gods, she always felt compelled to fix their mistakes.”

  “Mistakes that she—and I—had a hand in. It’s irresponsible to do anything other than attempt to fix it.”

  “So what do we do?” Kai asked quietly.

  “We beat them back to the Levantine Sea.” Zamir cast a glance at the darkening sky. “And we pray for good weather.”

  Far beneath, the ocean trembled from exploding torpedoes fired by the frigates. Perhaps they believed the prince of the Beltiamatu was underwater.

  How much longer before they started targeting the Endling?

  Chapter 23

  Minutes, Kai realized.

  It would be mere minutes before the frigates targeted the Endling.

  It was time to plan for the worst. If he were killed, Thaleia and Badur would need a way to carry the aether core back to the colony.

  He turned to his grandfather. “Can I see the regulator you took from the drone?”

  Zamir handed it to him, and Kai turned it over in his hand, examining the delicate adamantine device from every angle.

  “Can it be fixed?” Zamir asked.

  Kai looked up at his grandfather then turned his gaze to the ocean behind them. From their seat on the stern, the sky appeared a threatening gray, clumped with dark storm clouds. “I don’t know,” he told Zamir. “I’ve never actually looked at one of these closely. We always had others build and maintain these things for us.”

  “It has to be fixed, or there will be no place to contain the aether once it’s out of you.”

  Badur’s voice rose from the ocean. “There will be a place for the aether.”

  Kai looked over the edge of the ship. Badur and Thaleia bobbed along the stern, keeping up easily with the Endling.

  “Some in the colony know these things. Before we left, I told them to put a functioning regulator in place. If our luck holds, it will be working by the time we return.”

  Surprised by Badur’s foresight, Kai murmured, “Thank you.”

  “Never leave the practicalities to royals.” Badur scowled. “Can your ship go any faster? We must hurry.
The ocean is awhirl below.”

  “Why?” Kai glanced around, before raising his face to the breeze. His innate sense of direction and distance honed in on his location. He drew a deep breath when he realized where he was. “It’s asleep, isn’t it?”

  “It hasn’t been asleep in a while, not since death started pouring out of Shulim, riding in the diseased bodies of the Beltiamatu. Pestilence reached it.” Badur scowled. “It didn’t die—it’s too big to die—but it sickened and maddened with pain. It doesn’t sleep. Not anymore. And the activity above and below the water has stirred it.”

  Kai rose. “Can we escape it?”

  “Escape an Ancient?” Badur sneered at Kai. “No.”

  “How far are the other ships and the submarines?”

  “Three leagues. They’re not gaining on us, but neither are we increasing the distance between us.”

  Kai frowned. “Three leagues? The titan could cover that distance with a single stroke.” He ran through his options; they were disturbingly few. “We have to try to get past without aggravating it into an attack. Get Naia out of the water.”

  “What?” Thaleia asked.

  “Both of you too. Its attack, if I recall correctly, churns riptides.” He glanced over his shoulder at Zamir. “Can you help them out of the water? I’ll get Naia.” Kai dived overboard and swam under the ship where Naia curled in a hammock of tightly woven kelp attached to the ship’s hull. Her violet hair swayed in the water, but not even the long strands could conceal the lattice of lash wounds on her back.

  Kai braced himself for what he would see. Thaleia had been sparing in her description of Naia’s injuries, but Kai was perfectly capable of reading between the lines. The irukandji attack had permanently injured and scarred Naia.

  She had been attacked while luring the irukandji away from him.

  While he had been helpless, powerless, tossing in the throes of transformation, she had risked her life to protect him. And she had paid the price.

  “Naia,” he called her name.

  She stiffened, then curled more tightly into herself.

  “We’re coming up on the titan’s hunting grounds. I need to get you up on the ship for your own protection.”

  Her head moved weakly, shaking from side to side. “There’s nothing to protect here.” Her words were muffled, almost slurred.

  He swam forward and touched her shoulder gently. Around him, the current trembled, swaying incoherently. The water was already murky, as if the ocean floor had stirred.

  As if something large were on the move.

  “Come, Naia. Now.” He grasped her shoulders and eased her out of the hammock. For a moment, a too-brief moment, he caught a glimpse of her face before she turned it away, drawing her hair like a veil over her face.

  A scar cut diagonally across her face, from forehead to chin, narrowly missing her eye, but slashing across the corner of her mouth, the injury so deep and disfiguring that he could see the bone beneath it. Her chest, like her back, were laced with lash lines, and the long strips of scales had been torn off her tail, revealing red, raw flesh beneath.

  Her injuries would heal—perhaps—but the scars would never go away.

  Kai kicked his way back to the Endling, but a shadow passed beneath him. He stopped. With Naia still in his arms, he looked down as darkness poured out of the earth to take on the shape of a four-legged monster.

  Or at least he thought it might have been a four-legged monster.

  All he saw was one leg, so thick it blocked his view of anything beyond it. The ocean pulsed into tidal waves as the creature surged toward the surface, displacing massive volumes of water along the way. The shadow—and the safety of the Endling above them—vanished as the ship was slammed away by the cascade of massive waves.

  Kai and Naia tumbled in the currents as the sea swirled into a vortex. Naia screamed, but her voice vanished in the roar of the water around them. The frenzy of the whirlpool ripped them apart. Naia’s tail fin, usually an advantage in water, was not a blessing in a whirlpool. The greater surface area made her more vulnerable to the pulls and pushes of the current. Her exhausted, beaten state made it more difficult to break free.

  The monster moved, and with it, the inexorable whirlpools.

  Kai kicked hard, and burst through the wall of rushing water. A massive shadow loomed over the frantic currents, but there was no shape that he could tell beyond ominous darkness.

  And Naia still swirled, trapped within the seemingly living, malicious whirlpools that spun around the titan.

  She was not the only one.

  Fishes and even large sharks thrashed in the whirlpool’s grip, trapped in a net that sucked them in deeper and deeper.

  Kai had barely broken out the first time. He did not know if he could do it again, but he had to try.

  He could not leave Naia.

  He could never leave Naia.

  Kai swam after the titan, damning his absent tail and his lack of speed. His heart pounded from his exertions, even though the titan had barely taken a step in the entire time it had taken Kai to catch up with it.

  The water swirling in front of Kai was as solid as a physical wall. Already the currents were drawing him in, stronger and faster than moments earlier.

  If he plunged back into the madness, he might never make it out.

  The water spun Naia past him, her body limp. The whirlpool flung her around as if she were a lifeless rag doll.

  Was he too late?

  Kai dove into the whirlpool, and the force of the water struck him like a thousand blows. His head throbbed; his senses reeled. There was no fighting the current, he realized instantly. The only reason he had been able to break out earlier was because the titan had not been moving.

  Now that it was, the whirlpools generated by its passage were far stronger.

  If he could not fight it—

  He glanced up; Naia tossed in the upper reaches of the whirlpool.

  —go with the current.

  He swam hard, looping within the whirlpool, propelled forward at terrifying speeds. He twisted sharply to the side to avoid a panicked, thrashing mako shark, then dove beneath the flailing arms of a giant octopus. Shoals of fish scattered into solitary individuals, each one a speck of silver against the whirling dark currents.

  Kai kicked hard, avoiding one large fish and then another. He darted past a dolphin pod. A mother dolphin squealed in panic, trying to reach her young calf as it tossed helplessly several feet ahead of her. Amid the chaos, their eyes met.

  Understanding, and perhaps something more—a plea—passed between them. Kai flung his arm over the dolphin’s narrow back and swam hard. Pushing with the currents, they reached the calf, and Kai flung his other arm around the young dolphin.

  The little dolphin’s panicked squeals instantly vanished when he realized his mother was swimming beside him, albeit with a Beltiamatu prince holding them together. “Up there,” Kai murmured in Beltiamatu, glancing at Naia.

  Beltiamatu was the lingua franca of the sea. Even the dolphins understood it.

  Together, they swam along the bands of the whirlpool, ever closer to Naia. “Naia!” Kai shouted her name. Her eyelashes fluttered as they approached. “Grab on!”

  She reached for the dolphin as they passed, but her hand slipped, and the greater momentum and speed carried Kai past her.

  Grimacing, Kai, with his dolphin companions swept around the whirlpool once more. The distance seemed farther, and the area more crowded with thrashing fish and ocean mammals. A moaning sperm whale smashed down its tail, forcing Kai to let go of the dolphin. Immediately, the baby dolphin squealed with distress. Kai blocked out the sounds of its panic as he swam alongside the whale, keeping his eye on the mother dolphin who darted along the other side of the large whale. It seemed as if the dolphin were watching him too, and as if perfectly planned, they swam back together once they were past the sperm whale’s head. Kai grabbed on to the dolphin and shouted to Naia as they approached for a second
pass.

  She twisted as they closed the distance, then caught on, barely, to the dolphin’s back. Kai and Naia’s fingers brushed. Their eyes met, then Naia’s gaze flicked to something behind Kai’s shoulder. “Watch out!”

  The bands of the whirlpool flung a pilot whale at the foursome. Cradling the small dolphin against his chest, Kai turned his back on the large creature.

  The bulk of the whale slamming against his back and his shoulders broke his grip on the mother dolphin.

  Stunned by the blow, Kai was only distantly aware of the baby dolphin’s cries, pitched high and anxious, unrelenting in his ear. Someone—Naia, perhaps—screamed his name, but the sound was scarcely audible in the increasingly loud whirling of the water and currents around him.

  The speed of the whirlpool intensified. Riptides cut across the water, escalating its deadliness. If he and Naia did not break out soon, they would die amid the madness of other dying fish. Kai searched the crowded waters for Naia and the dolphin, but did not see either of them. Had they broken out together?

  “Kai!” Naia’s voice shouted from behind him.

  He twisted around in the water, and blindly, instinctively caught on to the sleek gray shape as it raced past him.

  Safely nestled in Kai’s arm, the baby dolphin’s panicked squeals subsided as it was once again returned to its mother’s side.

  “Make for the wall, now!” Kai ordered.

  Together, Kai, the dolphin, and Naia swam straight for the wall.

  It was worse than swimming against the strongest riptides. The currents pummeled them, pushing them backward even as they strove, with everything in them, to break through.

  “It’s not working!” Naia screamed.

  Despair dug claws in Kai’s chest. Naia was right. They couldn’t make it.

  Not anymore. The currents were too strong—

  The two dolphins threw up their heads. Their high-pitched wails rippled across the water. Kai glanced over his shoulder as the bands of the whirlpool carried the sperm whale—once again—toward them.