Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel (5 page)

The pain was excruciating. Sera screamed and thrashed against it, which sank the barbed spearhead even deeper into her flesh.

“Sera,
listen
to me!” a voice hissed in her ear. “Stop thrashing. Pretend you’re surrendering.”

Sera whipped her head around. It was Sophia’s voice, but there was no Sophia in sight.
She must’ve cast her pebble,
Sera thought.

“Move closer to him,” Sophia hissed. “I need slack in the line so he can’t feel me cutting it.”

Sera put her hands up and let herself drift. The death rider stopped pulling on the line and started swimming toward her. With his eyes fixed on Sera, he didn’t see a loop form in the
line, or see that loop go taut.

“I’ve got one!” he yelled. Two more soldiers rushed toward him.

“Hurry, Soph…oh, gods, hurry,” Sera groaned.

“Trying…it’s thick…wait…
Got it!
”

Death swims on a fast fin,
Tavia, Sera’s nursemaid, used to say. It swam so fast to the soldiers, they never saw it coming.

As the two ends of cut line sank to the seafloor, Sophia’s knife whizzed through the water and buried itself in the chest of the death rider who’d shot Serafina. Sera dove for her
dropped crossbow, grabbed it, and fired twice. She’d become an excellent shot; the other two death riders were dead before their bodies hit the silt.

“Let’s go. Before their friends come looking for them,” she said to Sophia.

“You can’t swim with the spear in you.”

Sera knew what Sophia was saying. “Do it,” she said, her voice ragged with pain.

“I’ll be quick, I swear. I’ll—”

“Just
do it
, Soph.”

Sophia cut the line again, as close to the spear’s shaft as she could. Then she grabbed Sera’s tail with one hand and the shaft with the other. Sera bit back a shriek as Sophia
forced the spearhead all the way through her tail and out the other side. The pain bent her double. More blood plumed from the wound. Sophia grabbed Sera’s jacket—tied around
Sera’s waist—and wrapped it around her tail.

“You still with me?” she said.

“Barely,” Sera rasped.

“We’ve got to get away from here. They’re pouring out of the Traitors’ Gate. They’ll fan out to search the grounds.”

Sera was aware of voices now, and the glow of lava torches.

“Go, Soph. They can’t see you. Swim back to the hills.”

“Forget it. I’m not leaving you.”

“That’s an ord—”

With a sickening
thuk
, a spearhead sank into the silt only inches from Serafina.

Invisible hands grabbed her. “Come
on
!” Sophia yelled.

Before the death rider could shoot again, Sera and Sophia were streaking for cover. They sped over coral and seaweed, zigzagging to confuse him. Spears ricocheted off rocks around them, or
buried themselves in kelp. The shooter had been joined by others.

“Follow me!” Sera shouted.

The reggia, Merrow’s ancient palace, was just ahead. Merrow, the first ruler of the merfolk, had built the reggia four thousand years ago. Sera loved the ancient ruins and had often stolen
away from her court to explore them. She was hoping to draw the death riders into the ruins after her, lose them in the maze-like interior, then bolt out again.

The shouts behind them grew louder. The spears kept coming. Sera plunged down through the water, shot under a crumbling stone arch, and swam through a passageway.

“Sophia?” she called as loudly as she dared. “Are you there?”

“Right behind you,” came the answer.

Sophia was shimmering. Her transparensea pebble was wearing off. Sera sang a quick illuminata and gathered some moon rays into a ball. She grabbed Sophia’s hand and pulled her down a long
hallway just as the death riders swam through the arch.

The two mermaids sped from room to room, through tunnels, and across courts. After five minutes of swimming flat-out, they’d lost their pursuers. Sera stopped, panting, to catch her
breath.

“Where are we?” Sophia asked, fully visible now.

“Merrow’s private wing,” Sera replied. “We’ve just come through her apartments. They connect to the stables and an indoor ring that backs onto the kelp
forest.”

Merrow had loved to ride, and had gone hunting in the forest almost every morning. The ancient kelp stalks, lovingly tended through the centuries, covered a large swath of seafloor.

“If we can just get into the forest, the kelp will give us cover,” Sera continued. “We’ll be well north of the city by the time we swim out of it.”

“How’s your tail?” Sophia asked.

Sera looked at it, grimacing. The makeshift bandage was soaked with blood.

“It hurts, but I’ll make it,” she said. “Let’s keep moving.”

No matter how much agony she was in, Sera knew she couldn’t allow herself to be caught, not with so much at stake. Hoping that the other Black Fins and the manta rays had made it to
safety, she pushed the pain down and started swimming again.

She and Sophia moved warily through the stables. Empty stalls loomed eerily in the weak glow of Sera’s illuminata. She was glad when they reached the other side and emerged in the indoor
ring.

Its floor was pitted and cracked, its walls colonized by anemones and tube worms. The ring was immense. It was not only wide, but its ceiling was very high, as mer swooped up and down on their
mounts when they rode.

“Ugh. Do you smell something?” Sophia suddenly asked, wrinkling her nose. “Something really bad?”

“Something really dead,” Sera said, her fins prickling.

She held the illuminata at arm’s length and turned in a slow, wary circle. Its light glinted off a metallic object in the middle of the ring. It appeared to be a large and deep trough,
stabilized with four short metal legs. The two mermaids swam toward it and peered over its edge.

“Whoa!” Sophia said, recoiling. “That is
so
nasty!”

The smell, up close, was sickening. The sight was even worse.

The trough was full of bones. Sera saw the skulls of large fish, the spines and ribs of smaller ones, and a few terragogg legs—some with shoes still on them. Chunks of flesh and guts, all
in various stages of decay, had been mixed with the bones.

“It looks like some kind of feeding trough,” Sera said when she could speak again. “Though I’d hate to see what it fed.”

“Sera…oh, my gods, Sera…” Sophia said. She wasn’t looking at the trough anymore.

“What is it?” Sera asked, turning to her.

“Do. Not.
Move
,” Sophia said, her voice cracking with fear.

“Okay. I’m not moving,” Sera said.

“Look up. Very, very slowly.”

Sera did. And gasped.

Clinging to the ceiling, like demons in a nightmare, were three massive Blackclaw dragons.

S
ERA’S HEART WAS beating so hard, she thought it would crack her ribs.

Enormous and powerful, with lethal teeth and talons, Blackclaws were one of the fiercest breeds of dragon known to mer.

“The death riders must be stabling them here,” Sera said, anger replacing her fear. She’d had no idea the fragile ruins were being used to house such destructive creatures.

As she and Sophia watched, one of the dragons—the biggest one, a female—scented the water. Her head swayed slowly from side to side. Her yellow eyes narrowed to slits. The spiked
frill on her neck stood up.

“It’s my wound. She can smell the blood. We’re chowder,” Sera said.

“We might be able to make it back to the doorway,” Sophia whispered.

As if sensing her intent, the huge dragon scrabbled across the ceiling toward the entrance.

Sera glanced around wildly, searching for a way out. “Soph, look!” she said excitedly. “To the right of the trough!”

“Please don’t tell me it’s another dragon.”

“There’s a crack in the floor! I think we can fit through it!”

Sera slowly swung the illuminata around to her right. Sophia’s eyes followed the light. A section of floor had heaved up—probably, Sera reasoned, from the dragons stomping around on
it. The broken pieces had been driven into one another like plates of ice on a polar sea. Two of them didn’t meet entirely, leaving a space that was small, but maybe just big enough for a
mermaid to fit through.

“We don’t know what’s down there,” Sophia said.

“We know what’s up here, though. And it’s not good,” Sera said. “Start moving. Nice and slow.”

Sophia did, and Sera followed. They were only a few feet away from the crack when the big dragon hissed. She crouched, ready to spring, and then the sound of voices coming from the stables
stopped her. Her head swiveled toward the noise. That was all the two mermaids needed.

“Forget slow!” Sera said. “
Hurry
, Soph!”

Sophia shot into the crack. Sera was right behind her, still holding her illuminata. She had just enough time to see that they were in some sort of underground room when the big dragon started
roaring.

Sera and Sophia peered out of the crack. The death riders, torches blazing, had stopped in the safety of the doorway. The dragon, furious she couldn’t get at them, was shrieking now and
flapping her enormous wings.

“I think we’re safe. For the moment,” Sera said. “The death riders won’t come after us unless they want to get eaten.”

She started to swim away from the crack, intending to explore the space they’d swum into, but Sophia stopped her. “First, we need to do something about that hole in your tail.
Sit.”

Sera didn’t argue. She sat down, leaned against a wall, and closed her eyes. Sophia untied the blood-soaked bandage and grimaced at the wound. Fresh blood was leaking from it. The spear
had torn Sera’s flesh horribly.

“Wow. Gods. This is a
mess
. So’s your face. You’re as white as a barnacle.”

Sera managed to smile. “Great bedside manner, Soph.”

Shaking her head, Sophia asked Sera for her dagger, cut the sleeves off her own jacket, and used them to fashion a new bandage.

A few minutes later, she said, “There. Done. Hopefully that will do the trick until we get back to HQ.”

“Thanks,” Sera said. The pain was still bad, but the bleeding had slowed.

“Any idea where we are?” Sophia asked, glancing around.

“Not a clue,” Sera replied.

She rose, held up her illuminata, and looked around. The room was hexagonal, and every square inch of it was covered in mosaics. Painted urns stood on the floor. Ancient bronze lava lamps hung
from the ceiling.

“I thought you knew everything about the reggia,” Sophia said.

“So did I,” Sera said, her eyes wide, her voice full of wonder. “I’ve listened to every conch there is on this place. And no one—no courtier or minister or
historian ever mentioned a room under the stables.”

“Sera…those figures,” said Sophia, pointing to one of the six walls. “They’re not gods. And they’re not mer.”

Sera swam to one of the walls and gazed up at the intricate mosaic of the man who adorned it. “They’re human,” she said, running her fingertips over the man’s sandaled
feet.

Each figure had a name above it, written in ancient Mermish. Sera’s pulse quickened as she read them aloud. “Merrow, Nyx, Sycorax, Pyrrha, Navi, Orfeo…the Six Who Ruled. This is a
tomb, Soph, only it has no bodies in it. I bet Merrow had this built in memory of her fellow mages.”

Sera knew that Merrow was the only one of the Six who had survived the fall of Atlantis. The other mages’ bodies were never recovered. As her eyes traveled over the figures, she saw that
they were all depicted the same way—gazing out at the viewer, left hand at his or her side, right hand raised to chest height, palm up. Resting on each palm was a different object. Sera
gasped as she realized what they were.

“Great Neria, it’s all
here
in this room…” she whispered, trembling with excitement. “The answers I’ve been trying to find ever since I entered the
Iele’s caves are right in front of me!”

She and Ling had discovered what three of the six talismans were when they visited the ruins of Atlantis, but they’d had to flee for their lives before learning about the rest.
“Sera, check this out,” Sophia said. “Merrow’s holding—”

“—a blue diamond,” Sera said.

“And Navi’s got—”

“—a moonstone.”

“Orfeo’s holding—”

“—a black pearl.”

“How did you know that?” Sophia asked. “You’re not even looking at them.”

Sera didn’t answer. She was still gazing at the figure before her—a regal, dark-skinned man with long black braids and blind eyes.

“Nyx has a ruby ring,” she said out loud, wanting to engrave the image into her memory.

She swam to the next wall. A tall, strongly built woman with long red hair and intense blue eyes stared back at her. “Pyrrha has a gold coin with an image of Neria on it,” she said,
her excitement growing.

The mosaic on the next wall featured a slender woman with onyx-black hair and almond-shaped eyes. Sera examined it closely. “Sycorax has a white…is that a puzzle ball? Looks like it has
a phoenix on it. Remember that, Sera. You have to
remember
,” she told herself.

“Hey, Sera?” Sophia said. “What’s going on?”