Crystal Doors #1 (20 page)

At first Vic was more curious than afraid. He spotted both male and female merlons — slippery, lithe, moving in the water with a grace that reminded him of otters. All the merlons wore thick mother-of-pearl and coral necklaces, and heavy armor made from jagged shells. One of the creatures even had a pair of long, thick tentacles sprouting from its head like demonic horns.

Ignoring the captain’s shouted threats, the merlons flexed their webbed hands and sank their claws into the hull planks. Now Vic saw the exotic weapons they carried: clubs with spiny sea urchins on the ends, perforated swords made of sharpened shells, spiral knives fashioned from what looked like narwhal horns.

Tiaret thrust one of Kaisa’s wide frying pans into Vic’s hands. “Viccus, prepare yourself to fight.” Turning to the others, the girl shouted quickly, “The tympanic membranes on their foreheads are their ears. Sage Polup told me those are sensitive spots. Those, and the eyes! Hit them there if you can — but by any means possible,
hit them.”

The scaly creatures began their attack.

NO MATTER HOW FAST the flying carpet went, Gwen feared it would be too long before emergency ships could reach the stranded
Walrus.
Her heart sank.

“I hate to leave them behind,” she said. “We should be there to help them fight.” She grasped the battered oar Vic had given her for defense, and hoped she wouldn’t need it.

Sharif stroked Piri’s glowing sphere and glanced back at her. “Out here alone in the open on a small carpet, we are far more unprotected than they are, Gwenya.”

“If that’s your idea of a comforting speech,” Gwen said wryly, “you may want to take a few classes.”

He flew onward as fast as the carpet could go. Inside her glowing sphere, the female djinni bent forward, extending tiny hands as if her magic could help the carpet go faster. Maybe it could… .

They cruised low over the ocean, flying for hours. Though the sea offered no landmarks, Sharif seemed confident of their route, reminding Gwen of Uncle Cap, who never stopped to ask directions. Gwen’s blond hair whipped around in the moist, salty breeze. At any other time she might have enjoyed the freedom of this reckless flight.

The hypnotic, sun-dappled waves made her feel sleepy, but she didn’t dare doze and risk falling off the carpet. Sharif concentrated, sometimes letting his olive-green eyes fall closed as his fingertips touched the carpet’s golden maze of embroidery. Gwen envied his self-assurance. “Are you ever afraid?” she asked.

Sharif sat up straighter “My people have a saying: a mind that knows no fear is the mind of a fool.”

“So… is that a yes, or a no?”

Instead of answering directly, he said, “I cannot swim, yet we are flying less than a camel’s height above the deepest water I have ever known. Can you guess my answer?”

The boy from Irrakesh went up a notch in Gwen’s estimation. “I guess you’re not as foolish as I thought.”

He gave her a sardonic smirk. “You are most perceptive.”

Unexpectedly, a choppy section of white froth appeared in the water ahead of them, as if a pot had begun to boil. “Sharif, what’s that? Over there.”

The young man glanced down before returning his concentration to the embroidered patterns. “A school of fish feeding.”

“Must be an awfully large one.”

Like popcorn popping, scaled bodies leaped out of the water, jumping from the roiling froth and flapping sharp wingfins. Within seconds, more than a hundred of the deadly fish took to the air and homed in on the soaring carpet.

Gwen felt a knot at the pit of her stomach. “It’s the flying piranhas again!”

“The merlons must be controlling them. They have tracked us.”

“How can they possibly be hungry after last night? They ate half the ship!”

“They are always hungry.” Sharif hunched over and tried to go faster, but the flying carpet had already been racing along at top speed. He took the carpet higher, as well.

Gwen gripped her oar with both hands, ready to make a desperate stand. Her palms were sweaty, but the wooden implement was her only way of defending them. She would not let go of it.

Her skin crawled as the flying piranhas made their familiar buzzing sound. The ravenous fish streaked toward them like a pack of flying wolves, jaws snapping. They beat their wings and sprayed droplets of water, driving up to intercept the flying carpet.

Sharif tried to lift them higher as the creatures swarmed around them. Gwen fought off a flurry of flapping fins and snapping jaws. With her back to Sharif so that she had more room to move, she swung the oar to bat fish out of the air. Each time she felt a solid impact, a little victory sparked inside her, but she didn’t take the time to keep score.
Gasping with the effort, Gwen struck down another piranha and another. The mindless fish displayed no sense of self-preservation, focused only on bringing the flying carpet down. Sharif flew upward at a steep angle, and the deadly fish kept up.

Five piranhas snapped at the dangling golden tassels, then began chewing the embroidered fabric, fraying the intricate threads. She whacked them with the flat of the oar, dislodging two fish, but others held on like shredding machines.

“They are damaging my carpet!” Sharif growled. “My father had it made for my brother Hashim, and then gave it to me after… Azric.” He took one hand from the embroidery to claw at a chewing fish and ripped the creature away. As soon as he was distracted, though, the carpet dipped and wobbled. Sharif zigzagged to throw the fish off, urging the carpet to greater speed.

Piri’s crystal globe strobed bright red as she angrily shook her tiny hands at the fish. The glowing djinni danced about in helpless fury, as if wishing her magic were more mature so she could help in the fight.

As it rushed through the air, the magical rug began to unravel. Gwen didn’t know the magic or science that drove the carpet, but she guessed that if the material were too damaged, Sharif wouldn’t be able to keep them aloft.

“Let go, stupid fish!” By the time she dislodged two clinging piranhas, seven more had darted in to strike. She saw one creature bite at the white fabric of Sharif’s flowing sleeve. Before she could do anything, another flew into Gwen’s shoulderlength
hair, tangling in the strands like a panicked bat. She thrashed and shook it away.

Behind her, Gwen heard two of the sharp-toothed fish slam into Sharif’s unprotected back. Somehow maintaining control, Sharif lifted his hand again from the embroidery patterns to knock them away. The flying carpet began to lose altitude. “Gwenya, you must fight them so that I can concentrate on the carpet, or we will crash.”

She wanted to argue that she was doing her best, but he was right. She would have to do better or they might not survive, and her cousin, the crew, and the students on the
Walrus
would never be rescued. She turned at an angle so she could better cover herself and him. “Can you get higher, Sharif? They’re flying fish — I doubt they can climb very far.”

“I shall try. But there is a limit…”

The carpet tilted upward again so that Gwen had trouble holding on. She swung the oar, knocking a piranha away from Sharif’s head. A fish snapped at the mesh bag that held Piri’s eggsphere, but the djinni flared bright orange, disorienting the creature enough that Sharif managed to swat it away as they continued their mad flight.

Sharif pulled the carpet up at an even steeper angle. Some of the piranhas had fallen behind now and gave up the pursuit. But others, sensing that Gwen was poorly armed and vulnerable, converged on her. They snapped and tore at her hair. One nipped her cheek, drawing blood.

Gwen was astonished when six of the mindless fish acted in concert, cooperating as they clamped onto the flat blade
of her oar. Together, they chewed and split the wood while at the same time they weighed it down with their heavy bodies.

She jerked the oar from side to side to fling them off, but the oar was overbalanced in her hands and her palms were slick with sweat and fish slime. The long handle slipped out of her fingers. Gwen lunged for it just as another flying piranha bit her left forearm. She yelped in sudden, helpless pain, and the oar went over the side of the flying carpet. Lost.

“No!” she shouted, making a last desperate grab — and lost her balance on the tilted rug. With a sickening lurch in her stomach, Gwen realized she was falling. Frantic, she reached up to grab for the tassels. Her fingers caught a few of the loose threads, but they snapped under her weight, and she dropped away from the flying carpet. Gwen tumbled toward the water far below.

Piranhas swirled all around her, intending to strip the flesh from her bones before she could hit the waves far below. But she was falling too fast. She couldn’t even scream.

Falling.

Terror clamped its icy hand around her heart. Blond hair whipped around her face, and she knew she was going to crash into the water. After a fall from this height, the waves would feel as hard as cement. Gwen saw the water rushing toward her and knew what it must feel like to be a skydiver without a parachute.

Her logical mind suggested in desperation that in this strange world where magic sometimes worked, perhaps she could take flight and soar away. In a place where carpets and piranhas could fly, why not her? Gwen held out her arms, in
stinctively flapping and struggling. Air whistled through the rips in her Ocean Kingdoms sweatshirt.

High above, Sharif swooped the flying carpet around and lunged downward with a force superior to gravity’s. He zoomed past her.

When Gwen saw him, she drew her legs up against her chest like a cannonball, hoping she could land softly. Sharif flew beneath, did his best to match her speed, and then rose just enough to scoop her up, like a collector catching a butterfly with a net. Gwen flopped with barely a bounce on the embroidered fabric.

“I never let a friend down,” he said.

As soon as she was back aboard, he flew forward at a steep ascent, but the damaged carpet couldn’t gain enough altitude to escape all of the fish. There wasn’t enough power left. Gwen flattened herself out on the mangled purple rug, clutching the ragged edges and breathing heavily. Her heart was pounding too hard for her to say more than two words. “Thank you.”

The flying piranhas chomped and buzzed. They continued to tear at the fabric, ripping more strands loose, so that a fringe of ragged threads dangled like a lion’s mane in all directions.

The carpet wobbled, its flight path uncertain. Sharif hunched over in concentration, but so many of the stitched spell lines were unraveling, he could barely control his erratic course. The relentless predatory fish kept after them.

Though she could barely move her trembling body, Gwen forced herself to sit up again. With scratched and bloodied
hands she slapped at more fish, protecting Sharif at all costs. They raced onward, too close to the choppy waves for Gwen, who could think only a few seconds ahead, just trying to survive.

She was not at all certain they would ever reach Elantya.

WITH THE SOUND OF a rattlesnake being pressed with a steam iron, merlons swarmed up the side of the
Golden Walrus’s
hull, raking the already-scarred wood with their long claws.

Before the first ones came over the rails, Tiaret was there to meet them. Her lioness eyes blazing, her face drawn in an expression of fiery determination, she looked fearsome enough to make a bull elephoar run in terror. “I see you need to learn my lesson again. Do some of you still carry battle wounds from when Master Kundu and I fought you?” She bared her teeth. “Perhaps I need to emphasize my point more.”

Showing no hesitation after her previous ordeal, Tiaret attacked the enemy vanguard. As a merlon’s head appeared over the deck rail, she swung her teaching staff. The polished stone cracked the first intruder in the center of its forehead. The
merlon warrior let out a wet-sounding wail that thrummed from a bladder in its throat, and slipped over the side to splash back into the sea.

Vic tightened his grip on the cast-iron frying pan and swung it menacingly from side to side. “Time to kick some fish butt.” He picked up a second pan from where it lay on the deck, holding one in each hand. He knew, though, that merlons were going to be a lot harder to knock down than a few flying piranhas.

The aquatic attackers edged forward, gurgling incomprehensible words. Using a defiant voice, Lyssandra shouted back at them in the same language. The merlons spun, surprised that she could speak to them. Instead of heeding the telepathic girl’s threat, two of them charged her.

Seeing his friend in danger, Vic came at the merlon warriors with his iron pans, pounding one of the creatures on the back of its scaly head and hitting the other in the throat. His mother would have been proud of his swift, flowing reflexes. The first merlon reeled, grunted, and lurched toward him, brandishing a sea-urchin club. Before he could lose his nerve, Vic squeezed his eyes shut and swung again with all his might.

He surprised himself this time by striking the sensitive tympanic membranes in the middle of the merlon’s forehead. The creature grabbed its head as if Vic had deafened it. With a hollow yowling sound, the creature stumbled on the slippery deck and fell through the broken guard rail and into the waves.

He grinned as he had a sudden idea. In order to hear vibrations underwater, the merlons’ ear membranes had to be quite sensitive… and noises were a lot louder here above the surface.