Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron (25 page)

Danr flailed about, expecting to sink promptly
and
becoming surprised when he didn’t. His oversize trousers fell away and he struggled within his oversize tunic. A hand grabbed the back of his collar and hauled him none too gently into a boat. It was the one they had left at the edge of the Key, with all the sailors in it. Talfi and Aisa were dumped beside him.

“Never seen anything like that in all my life on the sea,” remarked the head sailor. “Glad to see the girl didn’t drown after all. So who the Vik is this, and what happened to the big guy?”

Danr lay on his back, only vaguely aware that he wasn’t wearing pants and blinking up at a bright blue sky that didn’t hurt at all. The sun was a friend to the Kin.

“You!” Aisa scrambled to her feet and lunged for the azure-eyed golem, which was still on the boat. The boat rocked. “You tried to kill me!”

“Whoa! Careful!” The head sailor and a pair of others caught and held her back. “No fighting on the boat. You want to capsize us?”

“Attention! Attention!” said the golem. “Message from the Obsidia masters.” Its voice changed into Sharlee’s silken tone. “That was unexpected, honey! I was sure you would be a casualty of forcing Danr and Talfi to explore the Key. But I can see Danr has found the power of the shape, unless you kidnapped a handsome mermaid. Hurry back! The water is up to the elf’s chest, poor chick. Message ends.”

Talfi scrambled to his feet. “We have to move!”

“Later,” Aisa growled at the golem. It didn’t respond.

They rowed back to the
Slippery Fish
, still at anchor. Captain Greenstone waved at them over the railing. “Where’s Danr?” she called. “He all right?”

“I’m fine!” Danr called up. “We’re—”

The water around them erupted in merfolk. The sailors
shied away while the golem sat impassively in the bottom of the boat.

“Aisa!” Ynara reached across the gunwale to embrace her while the male sailors gawped. “You have returned unharmed! We were so worried!”

Ynara’s parents, Imeld and Markis, were there as well, and they insisted on similar embraces. Danr watched, wondering what it would be like to have a family, even a new one, that showed so much enthusiastic affection. There were also two other merfolk he didn’t recognize, a man and a woman. About then, Danr also became aware that he had lost his trousers in the ocean. He flushed and did a quick check. His tunic, which was five sizes too large for him, covered everything that needed covering, though it was like wearing a giant wet sack.

The boat sloshed and rocked as Captain Greenstone slid down a rope into its center, her heavy hat clapped firmly on her head. “I couldn’t wait to find out what in the Nine’s name is going on down here,” she declared. “Let’s hear it! Starting with who in Vik’s house this is.” Greenstone jabbed a thick finger at Danr.

“It’s me, Danr,” he said with a grin. “Grandfather Wyrm gave us the power of the shape and I’m all Kin now.”

“Are you?” Greenstone sounded more than a little disappointed. “Well, start from the beginning, then.”

Talfi and Aisa quickly told the story while Danr watched the new merfolk. Why were they here? These two were older than the other merfolk Danr had seen, with wrinkles on their faces and white streaks in their hair. They listened intently to the story, especially to Aisa. Danr was getting used to the nudity, though the tattoos still looked fierce.

“And now you possess the power of the shape, sister,” Ynara said.

Aisa replied, “So Grandfather Wyrm said, but I do not yet know how to use it.”

“You will learn quickly,” the older merwoman broke in. “It is your birthright.”

“Yes?” Aisa said politely. “And who are you?”

The old woman reached across the gunwale and took Aisa’s hand. “Very occasionally, the power of the shape appears in our family. My daughter learned she had the power to change shape, but only once. She fell in love with a human man, and she used her power to walk on land and live with him, even though it meant she could never return to the sea. We never saw her again. Her name was Durrah.”

Aisa paled. “That was my mother’s name.”

The old woman nodded. “The name of her human love was Jibran.”

“But . . . my father’s name is Bahir,” Aisa whispered. “Jibran was his brother. My uncle. He died just before I was born.”

“So we heard,” the older man said. “The laws of your country require a widow to marry her dead husband’s brother. Durrah could not change back into her true form, so we could do nothing to stop him.”

“Then you are my . . . grandparents?” Aisa said.

The older man took Aisa’s other hand. “We are. Markis told us you had come. We did not even know you existed, and then we arrived too late. You had already entered the Key.”

“So this is why you love the merfolk so much,” Danr said in awe. “You’re one of them.”

“Join us, sister!” Ynara held out her arms. “Take your true shape and your face!”

Aisa released her grandparents’ hands and stood tall in the center of the boat. Then, with a low cry, she leaped for
the water. Danr gave a shout of his own. With a slim splash, she vanished beneath the waves. The sea bubbled and boiled.

“Aisa!” Danr lunged for the gunwale, making the boat rock sickeningly. “Aisa!”

A gout of water erupted before him. In a shining arc, Aisa leaped over the boat, trailing sparkling ocean behind her. Her breasts were bare, her body was long and sleek, and her silver tail gleamed in the noonday sun. Her eyes met Danr’s as she passed over his head, and he could do nothing but stare with his mouth open. The merfolk shouted and pounded the sides of the boat. Aisa cut into the water and vanished.

W
ater flowed around Aisa like a silken friend, holding her up and letting her fly. She was
free.
Her tail—her
tail
—swept in easy arcs, propelling her through the sea at breathless speeds. Breathless. She was breathing water like air. It rushed through her mouth and nose and through gills in her neck. It was both strange and comforting, something she had been waiting to do all her life. Her clothes were gone, and she had not realized until now how confining they had been. She grinned and dove, reveling in the freedom and not minding the change in temperature or pressure in the slightest. The change of shape had not pained her, either. A rainbow school of fish darted out of her way, and at the bottom, a rich forest of flat-leaved algae waved gently in the soft current. A great garden stretched out in all directions, including above and below, and it was hers to explore.

A garden. Was this why the Gardeners were considering her to . . . She could not complete the thought. The idea was simply too impossibly big to consider. She was a
mortal woman. How could an ordinary woman plant the seeds of fate?

Water, gentle and free, coursed over her body. What would it be like to garden with the Three? Or, she supposed, the Other Two? How would she know what to do? If it was anything like regular gardening, you planted the seeds where you wanted them, kept out the weeds, and pruned what needed—

Pruning. Aisa swallowed. Cutting something in the garden of the Gardeners meant ending a life. Could she do that?
Should
she do that? The Gardeners oversaw the lives of not just Kin, but of Stane and Fae. It seemed to Aisa that the Gardeners needed to be impartial, but it was impossible to be fair when the Fae were involved. Just thinking of them made her remember the elven king and the way he had laid hands on her and addicted her to his touch. And the elf queen had tried to exterminate every Stane on the planet.

No. Being a Gardener was too much responsibility for a mortal woman like her. It was not her place, and never would be.

Aisa shook her head. Here she was, a new-made mermaid, swimming in the bright clear water, and she was thinking about fate and gardens. She should be reveling in her newfound shape, her newfound home, not thinking about Pendra and high-flown offers of fairy-tale power.

“Aisa!” Ynara swam up, her face alight with joy. “You have come home!”

Home! The word brought raw emotion crashing over Aisa. So much was happening so fast, and she was having a hard time keeping up. She wished the world would slow down for a moment and let her catch her breath, or whatever it was that mermaids caught. Mermaid! Rolk! She was a mermaid! Tears formed in her eyes and floated away.

“This is . . . I cannot describe!” she stammered.

“Then do not.” Ynara took her hand. “Come now! You must see.”

They swam together in silence for some time. Aisa found her body moving in new ways, responding to new cues. She could sense changes in the water. This area felt lighter, that one heavier. And her hearing had become sharp as cut glass. Aisa could hear the shape of the algae below her, sense the shape of a pod of dolphins, hear their squeaks and chatters, even though they were more than a mile away. She felt her heart would swell and burst, and she wished she could share this with Danr.

Danr. Who had himself changed his shape. Her tail spread and she swam harder as she remembered. The shock and startlement rocked her through, and although she was not glad to see the pain of his transformation, she had been glad of the distraction. Even without his true eye, he saw a great deal. She had to admit his new form was boyishly handsome. Those soulful eyes and his tousled hair and his fine, careful features would now make any woman glance twice at him.

And Aisa hadn’t cared.

He thought that public approbation mattered to her, that she was afraid of what the world would do to her if she married a half-blood. But she did not care about that. She never had cared. It was the bloody visions of him and the attacks of panic that made her unhappy.

The longer she went without telling him, the harder it became to speak. The lie had grown between them like poison ivy, becoming harder and harder to remove with every passing day. Now he had changed his shape for her, and he would expect their problems to disappear. They had sought out the power of the shape for many other reasons,
but Danr’s reason was deeply personal—and based on a lie. What would she do now?

Ynara’s parents and Aisa’s grandparents joined them now, and Aisa learned her grandfather’s name was Bellog and her grandmother’s name was Grell, but she should call them Grandmother and Grandfather. Aisa, who had never known her grandparents on land, felt like a princess come home to her castle.

“We are nearly there,” Grandmother said.

At her words, Aisa halted, hovering in the water. It would be easy to go with the merfolk, leave Danr and the others behind forever. He had the power of the shape now and could rescue Ranadar from the Obsidia on his own. What did he need with her? But no. The thought of leaving him made her chest tighten, and she owed him more than cold desertion. “We have come so far,” she said. “I cannot abandon my friends.”

“You will not,” Grandfather said. “Imeld, would you swim back to the human ship? Tell them to set sail, and Aisa will catch up with them soon.”

Imeld sped away. Aisa watched her go. “Will I truly be able to catch up with them?” she asked.

Grandfather laughed, and his gills flared. “Human ships sail slower than coral grows. You must trust yourself, granddaughter.”

Ynara took Aisa’s hand. “Come! You will see!”

The ocean floor dropped into a canyon. They skimmed down into it, passing a pod of whales that drifted along like great ships, and their eerie songs echoed through the sea.

At the bottom of the canyon, Aisa paused and caught her breath, if she could catch breath underwater. Ahead of her, stretching like a rainbow coral reef, spread a city. It covered the canyon bottom and climbed up its walls. The
houses and buildings were constructed of everything imaginable—cut stones and giant shells and pieces of coral and colored glass and polished bone—like a rainbow that had shattered across the sea floor. And there were hundreds of merfolk, in all ages and shapes, all of them bare-skinned and tattooed. Laughing children chased each other like dolphins in midair—or midwater, Aisa supposed—while adults and elders watched or attended to tasks Aisa did not understand.

The city was also alive with fish. Aisa did not know one fish from another, not yet, but they swam past in bursts of gold and scarlet and azure. Anemones waved in reefs, and octopi darted about. Dolphins giggled, and one boy even rode a killer whale.

But what stole Aisa’s breath was the city. The entire city was laid out like a great tree. It was something she could only notice approaching from a distance as she was. Bright coral formed its trunk. Algae gardens made leaves that waved in an invisible breeze. Busy streets and houses ran along the branches. The merfolk swam about like seeds fluttering from a maple. The tree lived and breathed with a power made up of everything and everyone in it, and Aisa longed to join it.

“Incredible!” she said. “Why is it a tree underwater?”

“It is Ashkame,” Grandfather said.

“How did you form the city this way?” Aisa swam toward it delicately, as if the city might burst like a bubble.

“Form?” Markis raised his eyebrows. “We do not form the Tree. The Tree forms us.”

Ynara and the others guided her into—over—the city. Once Aisa got closer, she lost the ability to see the city as a tree, but she found the symbol of Ashkame everywhere—carved on doors, etched on stones, even tattooed on faces.

They swam about what passed for streets, though they
seemed to be more avenues of convenience or etiquette than actual streets, since the merfolk and the creatures that lived among them were not bound to the land and could swim in any direction they chose. Aisa found the concept both confusing and intoxicating. Merfolk and fish and other creatures parted for them as they passed, though more than one stared.

“Why do they look at me so?” Aisa asked, and felt suddenly self-conscious about being bare-breasted, even though no other woman here covered herself. Ever since she had seen the merfolk, Aisa had dreamed of freedom from modesty, and now that she had it, she could not bring herself to enjoy it.

Ynara said, “You look strange to them without a face.”

And then it happened again. Blood covered the faces and hands of Ynara and her parents and Aisa’s grandparents, and the water could not wash it away. Terrible axe wounds gaped in their chests, and Aisa heard the whistle of the Iron Axe spinning through the air. But it was not the Axe. It was a sickle, and Aisa was wielding it. Cold fear twisted her insides. The algae about her twisted in a thousand directions, but also converged on this spot. Everything met here. Aisa made a small choked sound.

The blood vanished. The wounds disappeared. Everyone was fine. Aisa’s heart pounded and her gills flared. The others noticed she had stopped, and they pulled up short. A small shark coasted by.

“What is it?” asked Markis.

“I . . . it was . . . ,” Aisa stammered.
It was just a memory, nothing more,
she told herself. But she realized a small part of her had been hoping from the moment she changed her shape that these visions would disappear, and the disappointment put a heavy stone in her heart. Another reminder that Danr’s change had changed nothing. But
why was she seeing the sickle and the Garden? What did Pendra have to do with any of this? Anxiety twisted her bones. She was not a Gardener, and never would be, but she felt like a leaf in a current, rushing toward a waterfall.

“Aisa?” said Markis.

“I am just a little overwhelmed by all this,” she said lamely.

“Easily understood,” Grandmother said. “Look—we have nearly arrived.”

They came to a house built of a ramshackle collection of shells, bones, and living coral. It occurred to Aisa that a house among the merfolk would be built more for privacy than shelter. Small fish wandered among the cracks, feeding on the waving plants that grew there, and Aisa’s spirits rose at the simple beauty.

They swam down to a set of stones that formed seats in a kind of courtyard outside the house. Grandfather and Grandmother took up the stones on either side of her. Grandmother touched Aisa’s face with a long-fingered hand.

“You look so like your mother,” she said. “How can this be you?”

“It is hard for me to understand that I am here,” Aisa said. “The first time I saw merfolk, I wanted . . . I did not know what I wanted. It hurt so much.”

“Of course it did,” Grandfather said. “It is painful in all ways for our kind to leave the sea, even when we are in human form.”

A flash of insight came over Aisa. “Is that why my mother took ill? Is that why she . . . died?”

“I suspect so,” Grandmother’s gills pressed tightly against her neck in sorrow. “She gave up her shape for love, and it turned to sand. Her new husband—your
father—would not even allow her to visit the sea, and she became weaker and weaker.”

Aisa twisted her hands in her scaly lap. Sadness made the water around her heavy. “So my father did more than gamble my life away. I thought I had let that go, but still it makes me sad. And angry.”

“Of course it does,” Grandfather said. His own gills were tight. “Feelings come and go like the tide. Just when we think something has washed away, it returns. The Nine have made us so.”

“The Nine are cruel to make us remember so much fear and sorrow!” Aisa burst out.

Grandmother touched her cheek again, and for a moment, Aisa’s mother was alive again. “Young one, you have been through so much. Fear holds you back. I can see it in your bare face. But rejoice in your power and it will overcome the memory of fear.”

“I do rejoice in my power,” she protested.

“You do not,” Grandmother said. “Not yet. But you have only recently come into it. First you need your face.”

Now the women gathered around her. Imeld returned and clapped her hands, ready to help. Grandmother reached beneath a rock and produced a startled octopus while Ynara came up with a box of tools that included a set of bone needles.

Aisa felt a strange mixture of anticipation and fear, and water rushed hard through her gills. “Will this hurt?”

Ynara looked confused. “Of course. But you have earned your face already, and the pain will be nothing to one such as you. Besides, after a while, the pain will become pleasure.”

Aisa swallowed and made herself sit still, though her tail trembled while Grandmother, Ynara, and the recently returned Imeld set to work with the needles, octopus ink,
and other objects. Aisa sat rigid while the burning sensation of pokes and prods crawled over her face. Her gills flared and tightened under the pain, and she kept her eyes shut. But Ynara had been right—after a while, the pain felt
good
, like the pain of pulling an old scab away from a sore or the relief that followed the lancing of a boil. She wanted this. She had
earned
this. She inhaled more water and gave herself up to the women.

And then they were done. Ynara came up with a hand mirror clearly of human manufacture—perhaps from a shipwreck—and gave it to her. Aisa inhaled and put a hand to her face. Her fingertips found little bumps and ridges over her eyebrows.

“Those are seed pearls,” Grandmother said, “as befits a family of our status. The octopus”—she released the animal, which drifted away, looking stunned—“is bred just for our clan. We are known for our ink.”

“It is . . . beautiful,” Aisa whispered. It truly was. The tattoo that masked her face was a simple design of blue and purple points that curled around her eyes and nose. Two fanglike spikes ran down her cheeks, and the line of seed pearls marched across her forehead. Back when she was a slave, she had worn scarves to mask her face from her owner. Then she had gained the courage to walk about in public with a naked face. Now she had both a mask and a face at the same time, and it was a wonder.