Pirate Wars (25 page)

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered a moment later, still very close to his ear.

He hesitated until he gradually began to remember what happened. “Tyrone…he was here. Where is he?”

“He’s lying out there in the hall.”

He stroked her hair with his uninjured hand. “You fought with him?”

She nodded. “He’s wounded. And unconscious.”

Walker smiled. “I noticed outside there on the wall…you left a whole crowd of those cutthroats alive. Discovered you love them, hmm?”

For a moment she avoided his eyes, almost as if she were a little ashamed, but then she looked him in the eye and, smiling, kissed him once more.

As she pulled back, she noticed that his eyes had changed. His face had turned ashen, but even before he said anything, his arm shot forward and pushed her away from him. Completely confused, she flew to one side and crashed
against the wall, was going to protest—and saw the figure who stood bent behind her, the saber raised to split her skull with a single blow.

Tyrone’s eyes were dull, his mouth hung slightly open.

He turned toward her. His superior smile was gone, and now there was only hatred in his face. The runny war paint looked as if someone had clawed deep furrows with his fingers in a face of clay.

“No!”
Walker roared when he realized that Tyrone was going to fling his saber at Soledad like a lance.

“Go to hell!” whispered the cannibal king.

She tried to roll to one side, when something distracted her and made her hesitate for a second.

Something thundered in through the door like an angry steer. Steel flashed.

Tyrone threw the saber.

She turned at the last moment, but not far enough. The blade bored into her right shoulder and flung her upper body back against the floor.

The powerful figure who ran forward behind Tyrone struck at him as he ran. A toothed saber blade cut through Tyrone’s black ponytail. There were two clatters when the dead cannibal king fell to the floor.

The pain in her shoulder robbed Soledad of her wits. She groaned softly, raised her head once more, and looked at the steel stuck in her shoulder.

“Oh, damn,” she whispered tonelessly.

Walker slid across to her on his belly and just caught the
back of her head as she lost consciousness. Before everything went black, she saw him bending over her, his face frightened and filled with concern.

Beside him was a second face.

To her surprise, it was that of a dog.

“Griffin!” Munk stumbled onto his feet again. “Stop this nonsense!”

“Nonsense” was really much too friendly a word for what Griffin had in mind. However, as he was making the ray just brush over Munk for the third time, serious doubts came to him. Was he mentally still in the middle of a battle where you blindly struck out in all directions, without any thought about guilt or innocence? What had become of principles like fairness or justice?

In short, had he completely lost his mind?

Shocked at himself, he reined in the ray and made it come around again, but much more slowly this time. He flew until he was a few yards away from Munk, who was crouching on the waves, out of breath and on all fours and looking up at him.

Griffin cleared his throat. He felt a little of his tension and aggression fall away, but not the panicked fear about Jolly.

“Where is she?” he called down to the boy beneath him.

“I don’t know, damn it.” Munk looked as if he were close to bursting into tears. But he kept himself under control. “When suddenly everything…got bright, then
she…then we were separated. It went so fast. Water came from everywhere, and at the same moment…I don’t know, it was as if something grabbed at me—like a tunnel through the sea—and pulled me away…somewhere. And all at once I was on the surface and…and I have no idea where she is, Griffin. I simply do not know.”

“You were together down there?” asked Griffin. “In the Maelstrom?”

“Right in the middle of it.” Munk’s face now mirrored his despair and rage. “And damn it all, I didn’t manage to get up here alive, only to be knocked down by a ray! I didn’t do anything to Jolly. The pearl…the magic…I don’t know, exploded and there was light everywhere, and then…and then…” He gulped and was silent.

Bad conscience welled up in Griffin full force, and he suddenly felt rotten. Had he really intended to kill Munk? Good Lord, what had this filthy war done to them that now even friends were going at each other?

“If I can get down close enough to the water, can you climb on?” Griffin asked.

“I think so.”

Griffin made the ray heave to by several degrees and descend so low that the crests of the waves almost splashed against the animal’s belly. Munk was able to grab the edge of a wing and pull himself up on it. Breathless and weak, he climbed into the saddle behind Griffin.

“I’m sorry,” said Griffin, and he honestly meant it. “I…I don’t know what got into me.”

“You did it because of Jolly,” Munk got out feebly. It didn’t sound like an accusation, only a statement.

“Yes,” said Griffin uncomfortably.

Munk placed a hand on his shoulder. “Then let’s go,” he said. “We’ll find her!”

Somewhere in the
depths of the ocean Jolly was rushing through a tube of water, not a vortex like the Maelstrom, but something that went through the sea horizontally. Light and dark brushed past her, sometimes individual blobs of color, perhaps swarms of fish or banks of coral or even creatures that no one had ever seen before. In the beginning she’d fallen into a panic, tried to move more slowly, to resist, but without success. Then she remembered that she’d already traveled in this same manner once before, and she understood that though she was rushing through the sea, she might also be rushing through something that just looked like it.

She still wasn’t sure if the home of the water spinners lay on the bottom of an ordinary ocean; just as the Olympus of the Greek gods had been no ordinary mountain and the Asgard of the Norsemen was not at the end of a real rainbow.

At last she just let herself be carried along, closed her eyes, and concentrated on not letting this speed make her feel sick. She didn’t want to meet the spinners with a green face and bloodshot eyes.

The past few minutes—or hours?—were unreeling in a strange whirl around her, as if she were standing outside events. The last thing she could remember clearly was the fading pearl in the darkness of the Maelstrom. Or no, there was more: The light was extinguished, the pearl sank into darkness. Then an enormous movement, which she only felt, did not see. Something had moved up to her with hellish speed, something so big that the water was pushed back around her and tore her with it, somewhere else, away from the pearl, and probably also from Munk.

Munk! What had become of him? The thought of him hurt, as if…yes, as if she might never see him again.

And then there’d been the light, far away, for the water pressure had flung her away. And in front of the light she’d seen for a moment, really only for a fraction of a second, a gigantic silhouette—the outline of the being that had circled them and had moved toward them when the light was extinguished. But it had all happened much too fast for her to have seen any kind of detail. She was left with an impression of gigantic size and alienness—an intimation of the being’s astonishment over the power that was set free there.

Afterwards the light had turned to darkness, probably not really, but in her recollection. She guessed that she’d lost consciousness for a moment. Perhaps, however, what
had happened before her eyes was too strange, too mighty, for her mind to deal with. It was as if her intellect had simply made fast the hatches and refused to take in any more, the way a certain measure of cargo just fit into a galleon’s hold. Her ability to comprehend was overflowing, like a rain barrel. More simply would not fit inside.

And now the water spinners, too.

It was strange how matter-of-factly she awaited the meeting with the three. She’d reached the end of her journey. She didn’t know if the magic set free by the pearl had destroyed the Maelstrom or not. But one way or the other, this was the end.

Perhaps she was dead.

“Not dead,” said a female voice in her thoughts, and when she opened her eyes, she sank the last few handsbreadths onto the sand of an undersea plain.

In front of her stood three mussel-encrusted spinning wheels, arranged as points of a triangle. At them, their backs to each other and their ancient faces turned outward, sat the three water spinners. Like the first time they’d called Jolly to them, they were grown together by their long hair. The white strands stretched across the five feet of distance among them like bundles of fine spiderwebs.

“You are not dead,” repeated the voice. The last time it had irritated Jolly that she never could tell which of the three was speaking. Not one of them lifted her head, nor did any of them stop her work. Their fingers tirelessly worked the spinning wheels and from pure water spun the yarn with
which they wove the magic net. The finger-thick strands, as transparently clear as crystal, stretched in all directions of the plain and far out beyond it, through all the depths and shallows of the ocean.

“You are back,” declared one of the old women.

“That is good,” said another.

“Very good,” said the third.

“That means the Maelstrom is destroyed.”

“The passage to the Mare Tenebrosum is closed.”

“The danger from the masters is banished.”

“For the time being.”

“Yes, for the time being.”

“Not forever.”

“Well, hardly.”

Jolly’s head swam at the speed with which the spinners were firing the sentences in her direction. Her knees gave, she sank down on her haunches. Sand billowed up and settled again. She was dizzy, and now she was feeling sick, too.

“That will soon pass,” said one of the old ones.

“Have no fear.”

Jolly lifted her head and stubbornly scrambled up again. “I don’t. Not of you.”

The three were silent. Their fingers danced over the spindles, they sorted fibers of water, and they kept their gaze down.

“May I ask you something?”

“Whatever you will,” replied one of the women.

Jolly thought for a bit. “Aina became the Maelstrom
because she got mixed up with the masters of the Mare Tenebrosum, is that right?”

“They gave her the power to become the Maelstrom.”

That was a difference, but one that was no longer important. Jolly went on, “And then she…the Maelstrom refused to cooperate with the masters of the Mare. He wanted to carry out his revenge on the humans alone. Aina’s revenge. Is that right?”

“That is one explanation, yes.”

“But then where did the shape changer come in?” Jolly asked.

“He was a creature of the masters. They called him over the borders of the worlds and outside the magic of the Maelstrom.”

A second spinner took up the thread. “When the Maelstrom noticed that, it was almost too late. The wyvern had built the bridge over which you were supposed to go into the Mare.”

“That is why the Maelstrom sent the kobalins,” said the third woman.

“However, he was not capable of attacking the wyvern directly. To some extent, he even helped it. The wyvern was formed out of a part of himself. The Maelstrom would have had to turn his magic against himself to destroy it.”

“And yet the wyvern has been destroyed.”

“Your friend has killed it.”

“My friend?” Jolly exclaimed excitedly. “You mean…
Griffin?
…How is he?”

“He lives.”

She was so relieved that her knees almost gave out a second time.

“He has destroyed the wyvern,” said a spinner, unmoved, “and with that done what the Maelstrom himself could not accomplish.”

Jolly protested. “He certainly didn’t do it to help the Maelstrom.”

“Of course not.”

“But nonetheless the wyvern’s death suited the Maelstrom. For with that, the masters of the Mare Tenebrosum had no more influence on the battle for Aelenium.”

“What’s happened to Aelenium? Are they all well?” That was a shallow hope, and she knew it. It couldn’t be that simple.

“Aelenium will be built up again.”

“And my friends?” asked Jolly hesitantly. She was afraid of the answer, terribly afraid.

“Many have survived the battle.”

“But…that means that some are dead, doesn’t it?” she asked tentatively, although the relief that Griffin was all right still outweighed all other feelings.

“Yes.”

She swallowed down a lump in her throat. “And Munk?”

“The second polliwog is alive.”

She sighed deeply.

“Others are dead,” said one spinner.

“The One is gone.”

The One?
thought Jolly. Then she understood. “Forefather is dead?”

“The Creator has gone away.”

“And he has left the world behind.”

“In our care.”

The thoughts in Jolly’s head were swirling like a swarm of mosquitos. She suspected that she was forgetting things—things she should ask now, for this might be her last opportunity to do it. But she could think of only one more question. It sounded like an accusation. “Why didn’t you help me in the Crustal Breach?”

“But we did.”

“As well as we could.”

“We sent the lantern fish.”

Jolly nodded slowly. “The Maelstrom swallowed them.”

“Yes, that is sad.”

“But when everything looked so bad, why didn’t you get me out of there?” Jolly asked. “Just like before.”

“We were not able to do that.”

“Not so close to the Maelstrom.”

“Not as long as he was alive.”

“He would have sucked up our strength and become even stronger.”

“And even if we had been able to, why should we have gotten you out of there?”

All Jolly’s limbs hurt, and the dizziness simply would not go away. Slowly she walked up to one of the spinners. “Why?” she repeated. “Because I almost died. That’s why.”

“But then who would have destroyed the Maelstrom?” asked one of the old ones disarmingly.

Jolly lowered her voice. “I didn’t destroy him. That was Munk. It was his idea and also his magic.”

“He would not have done it if you had not been with him. You brought him to reason.”

“It was all part of your fate.”

“You were the trigger.”

“Who is more important?” asked one spinner. “The gun or the cannoneer who lights the fuse?”

“The saber or the soldier who wields it?”

“The soldier or the general who leads him into battle?”

Everything was revolving around Jolly, even the words of the old women: They seemed to assume vague shapes, a whirl of syllables and letters that lulled her and made her sleepy.

“We thank you, Jolly.”

“You are exhausted and must rest now.”

She nodded numbly. “I would like to do that with my friends.”

“Farewell, Jolly. You have done more than you believe.”

“So much more.”

She was about to contradict, when she felt herself again seized by an invisible suction. Something snatched her from the ground, away from the spinners, until the three women were only pale dots in the distance, the blurry, mysterious source of the yarn. It occurred to Jolly that
yarn
was another word for
story
. And had not this story also had its source in the works of the spinners? They had created the polliwogs, also Aina, and thus in a way the Maelstrom itself. It seemed to Jolly that she’d stumbled on the trace of an even greater
truth. But as so often happens when you notice that you’re very close to something important, it escapes you before you can grasp it. And so Jolly too forgot her observation and didn’t give it a second thought.

Once more the water became a narrow tunnel around her, through which she rushed away, and for the first time she understood that it was the magic veins themselves through which she moved. Straight through the yarn to one of its ends.

Griffin and Munk spoke not a word as the exhausted ray carried them back to Aelenium.

They’d spent hours circling over the sea, first where the Maelstrom had been, then in ever-larger circles. At some point Munk had observed that they were moving in the form of a spiral, or a vortex, as if the Maelstrom still held them in his power. These words made Griffin so uncomfortable that he had the ray fly in arbitrary zigzags for the remainder of their search and was slightly relieved not to feel any uncanny suction drawing them back into their old spiral course.

It was all for nothing. They hadn’t found Jolly. It had grown dark quickly, but they’d continued to search anyway, while the moon transformed the sea into a landscape of gray peaks and deep black shadow valleys.

They would probably have flown on until the next day and even afterwards, but soon it had become clear to them that the exhausted ray wouldn’t carry them much longer. It had spent many hours in the tumult of the battle and had scarcely any time to rest before Griffin had flown to the
Maelstrom. But now it had finally reached the end of its strength.

“It will crash if we don’t turn around,” Griffin said, and Munk wordlessly agreed with him. They would not find Jolly.

Now, quite a while later, they were approaching the fog ring. At first sight it looked as if nothing had changed—if there hadn’t been the innumerable floating bits of wreckage. Sometimes they caught sight of corpses in the water and girded themselves for a picture of horrors that might await them on the other side of the fog.

When the mist thinned, it was worse than their worst expectations. The sight of the devastated coral cliffs was dreadful, a white-gray landscape of ruin, which reminded Griffin of the fissured lava flows on the flanks of the volcanoes rising on some Caribbean islands. But the most terrible thing was that nowhere in this wasteland did he see any people. He’d expected that they would be strolling through the ruins singly or in groups, searching for survivors or things that were still useful. But the cliffs were empty, completely desolate.

Only when they came closer did he see in the moonlight that the upper third of the city had remained unharmed. There stood undamaged houses, towers, and palaces; streets and squares were spanned by filigreed bridges, as they’d been before; and the glowing points flickering at many places revealed themselves to be campfires around which numerous people crowded.

Munk said nothing the whole time, and when Griffin
spoke to him, only a few disconnected words came from him in answer. Munk had probably hoped the destruction of the Maelstrom might have kept the worst from Aelenium, but now he was painfully undeceived.

Yet they had—for all the horror, all the pain—reason enough to be grateful that the city still lay in its anchor place and that there were people who could build again what the war and the waves had destroyed.

The ray drifted, reeling slightly, over the roofs of the undamaged quarter and, in a last effort, soared up to the shelter.

Two people stood on the ledge that ran around the opening. One was the Ghost Trader. His wide, bulging mantle covered the other figure. Both appeared to be facing the new arrivals, but the ray was too exhausted to slow so close to its goal or even to hover in place. Completely worn out, it sank down into the opening and landed on the ground of the ray hall with a bump.