Pirate Wars (13 page)

For a long moment the man’s features twitched. Griffin saw that his words had hit the mark.

“The least we can do is wait for the outcome,” said Griffin in a firm voice. “We two are the only ones who can tell the others about it. We at least owe Jasconius and Ebenezer a damn
remembrance
, don’t you think?”

Ismael hesitated, and a trace of guilt appeared in his face. But then he looked down in alarm. “We won’t be able to tell anyone else about it!” he shouted. “Turn away, boy—
turn away
!”

At the sound of Ismael’s voice Griffin acted instinctively. His hands pulled on the reins, but the ray moved much too heavily. A lance rammed through its right wing and came out again through the top. The animal shook itself and let out a deep roar. Its wing beats became irregular, and for a moment it looked as though it would throw off both riders. Ismael cried out, Griffin too, but somehow they succeeded in staying in the saddle. More harpoons twitched upward, sharpened bone points full of hooks, and one grazed the animal’s body, and this time Griffin lost control. Ismael bellowed and cursed, then instantly fell silent as a harpoon ate a bloody furrow into his thigh. The shock robbed his powers of speech for a few seconds. Then he cried out, a high sound of pain that went to the very marrow of Griffin’s bones.

“I can’t…hold him!” Griffin yelled. Then the reins were snatched from his hands, the ray reared, and its body completed a snakelike movement that Griffin would never have believed the colossus capable of.

“Hold on tight!” he cried to the marksman, then invisible hands tore him from the saddle, he lost his balance—and slipped off.

“Griffin!” Ismael saw the boy fall, and for a moment forgot the burning pain in his leg and tried to grab him.

He just managed to catch Griffin’s right hand.

Griffin cried out as a murderous jerk went through his arm. Then he realized that the crash on the water had not come, that he was still hanging in the air. He was dangling at the side of the ray, held only by Ismael’s hand.

“I’ll…pull you…up,” the man gasped grimly, but they both knew it was hopeless.

Down below the kobalins chattered, harpoons twitched after them. But the wavering ray had already distanced itself from the pack in the water, and the shots went awry. What nothing would change was that the animal kept shaking in pain and rearing; it was unable to coordinate the beats of its healthy and injured wings.

Griffin was being shaken back and forth. He hung there, helpless, too weak to pull himself up Ismael’s arm with just one hand. The wounded marksman’s strength was also ebbing, and both realized at the same time that their efforts were in vain.

“It’s not going to work!” cried Griffin. Perhaps he only
thought it. He felt his fingers slide through Ismael’s hand. Bit by bit, with a nightmarish slowness. And yet the end could no longer be checked.

Ismael’s face was distorted into a desperate grimace. He could scarcely hold himself in the saddle. The injured ray was going completely out of control and flying in a wavering zigzag, which didn’t really bring it any nearer to the city.

A wide panicked swerve, then the animal sailed wobblingly back in the direction from which they had come, again over the screaming kobalins and their sharp-toothed hooked lances.

Griffin was going to fall. He knew it.

Only seconds more.

Ismael had tears of grief and rage in his eyes when he looked down at Griffin. Their eyes met. They both knew the outcome of this hellish ride.

Griffin accepted the truth a moment sooner.

“No!” roared Ismael when he realized what the boy was going to do.

But Griffin didn’t listen to him. He had the choice: He could let himself fall, a good fifty yards away from the kobalins—or he could hold out a few seconds longer and then plunge right onto their lance points.

“No!” cried the marksman again, but it was too late.

“Take the reins!” Griffin yelled, gasped for air—

—and let go.

Ismael’s cries filled his ears, his head, until he hit the water hard. The waves seized him with their fingers of spume and pulled him down under. Darkness, penetrated by a red glow,
surrounded Griffin as he sank down like a stone, then began to kick, first in panic, then with more confidence. He’d lost his orientation, didn’t know if the kobalins were already on their way to him.

He only hoped that Ismael had succeeded in getting the wobbling ray under his control. Then it wouldn’t be entirely for nothing that he drowned or was torn to pieces by the soldiers of the deep tribes. Then it would all still have some meaning, somehow.

The claws of the kobalins grabbed him. He felt he must scream, even though he didn’t, even though he resisted and did his best to fight, not to give up.

Not to die. Not now.

Not without seeing Jolly one last time, holding her, hearing her voice.

Then they fell on him, a whole dozen, and they pulled him with them. In all directions at once.

For a moment
Griffin thought the kobalins were going to tear him to shreds. They pulled and tore at his arms and legs—until finally one of them uttered a high scream, all the others froze in fright, and the pain in Griffin’s limbs slackened.

He immediately began to fight again, but there was no point. There were too many, a dozen or more—exactly how many he couldn’t tell in the seething, raging waters. All around him were snapping mouths, long claws, and skinny, shimmering bodies, swirling in veils of air bubbles and whirling turbulence.

They pushed him up to the surface so that he could breathe. He gasped greedily for air and even tried to catch a glimpse of Ismael and the ray up above, but he couldn’t see them.

He felt the creatures pulling on him again. At the same time a ring of ugly kobalin faces surfaced around him. Then three of them dragged him swiftly in one direction, so fast that the spume spraying into his face almost took his breath away again. Somehow he managed to get some air now and then as they rushed him toward the fog wall, which was glowing orange in the light of the early morning. Not even the smoke rising from the burning shores of Aelenium could entirely obscure the shining of the morning sun.

But when they dove into the fog, the light stayed behind. The only thing from the outside penetrating the mist was the hail of dead fish that fell around them. The lord of the kobalins must be nearby. Despair overwhelmed Griffin, not only for his own sake but because he feared that the jellyfish creature might have killed the whale and Ebenezer. He wondered what would happen to the rooms behind the magic door if Jasconius died. And to Ebenezer, if he’d managed to hide there.

But he had no more time to think seriously about the whale’s defeat, for now he saw where the kobalins had brought him.

A remarkable hump rose out of the water ahead of him, half veiled in fog. At first glance it looked like a tiny island, not ten yards in diameter, which rose about three feet out of the water. As they came nearer, Griffin saw that it consisted of large mussel halves; the shape was similar to a gigantic turtle shell. He was very close to it when he discovered that each of the mussel shells was held over the head of a kobalin—
on the underside of the hump it was swarming with kobalin soldiers who bore the artificial island on their clawed hands. On top stood a figure, half concealed by veils of fog.

Two of the kobalins sprang onto the shell, seized Griffin by the arms, and pulled him out of the water. The mussels scraped and crunched under his feet but held together without a gap. It wasn’t very easy to stand steadily on them, for the two kobalins were leading him to face the figure that stood waiting for him on the highest point of the mussel shells.

Griffin’s breath stopped when he looked into the face of the person opposite him.

It was his own.

Almost, anyway. For another face mixed in with the image of his features like ink trails in the water, narrower, more finely cut—and feminine.

Griffin didn’t utter a sound. What he saw in front of him, constantly in motion, incomplete like a half-finished clay bust, was his double, over which, in quick succession, repeatedly flitted the face of a girl.

Jolly’s face.

And then he understood. It was the wyvern, the shape changer, which he and Jolly had met on the burning bridge between worlds. That time the creature had met them in the shape of the bridge builder Agostini. The wyvern had taken flight when the bridge had gone up in flames. Griffin had hardly given it a thought since then.

The wyvern smiled—a bizarre mixture of Jolly’s and
Griffin’s own smiles. Obviously the creature hadn’t decided yet which form it wanted to take. Not only did the two faces alternate on the creature’s head, they also appeared anything but complete. The nose somehow resembled neither Griffin’s nor Jolly’s, and the wyvern was having a hard time replicating Jolly’s long black hair. But its difficulties with the numerous rings in Jolly’s ears and the silver pin through the skin at the bridge of her nose were even greater.

The time before, when Agostini’s double had dissolved before his very eyes, Griffin had been able to get a look at the true form of this creature. Now, in this condition of indecisive transformation, the wyvern’s real makeup was also visible. For it was not a single creature but a throng of thousands upon thousands of tiny beetles. They came together like seething grains of sand in a skinlike surface, taking on various tones of color like a chameleon, and thus could give the impression of a human or any other living creature.

So now it would be Griffin. Or Jolly. One of the two. Griffin’s capture had probably decided the issue.

Wordlessly the wyvern stretched a pulsating hand toward him.

Griffin pushed off the ground with all his strength. He wouldn’t permit the wyvern, camouflaged as his double, to be slipped behind the defense walls of Aelenium. Because of his adventures at the side of the polliwogs, Griffin had access to all the defense installations and dignitaries of the sea star city. It was unthinkable what damage the wyvern could wreak in his form.

But evidently the finishing touch was missing. Something that required Griffin himself, the living, breathing model.

And that, whatever it was, Griffin did not intend to give the creature.

He stumbled backward, pulling the two kobalins with him, and his sudden movement caused the entire mussel island to begin rocking. Again the edges of the shell grated over each other. For an instant, a broad crack opened beside him. Furious jabbering arose from the bunch of kobalins beneath the mussel shells.

The wyvern gave a high, long-drawn-out cry, which penetrated all Griffin’s bones like an icy storm wind. It started after him, but because of its unfinished body it didn’t have complete control over its movements. It reeled, stopped, and swayed for a moment before it found new stability and straightened up.

Griffin rammed his left elbow behind him, felt the teeth of one of the kobalins shatter under the impact, and shook him off. Squealing, the kobalin slid backward into the water. The second kobalin, who’d pulled Griffin up, didn’t let himself be outwitted so easily. Griffin also struck at him, but the creature ducked, sprang crouching beneath the blow, and tried to grab him by the hips. Griffin was just able to turn sideways and escape one of the kobalin’s paws; the other struck his side with its claws. The points of the long talons dug into his skin, and he cried out in pain and rage. He seized the kobalin’s outstretched arm and slung the creature over the edge of the mussel island. Gibbering, the kobalin slapped into the water.

Something had fastened onto the back of Griffin’s head. A stabbing pain like the touch of stinging jellyfish spread through his skull. Then there was scrambling movement on his temples, his neck, his forehead. Griffin roared, shook himself in revulsion, and threw himself on his side. The wyvern was pulled to the ground with him, while the tiny beetle creatures swarmed over Griffin’s face to study its form and transfer it to the swarm.

Somehow Griffin succeeded in drawing the knife from his belt. The blade passed through the body of the wyvern like butter, but there was no wound—it was as if he’d plunged the blade into a heap of sand. When he withdrew the weapon, the swarming insects closed the opening like trickling sand.

The heads of the kobalins appeared around the mussel hump. They’d encircled the strange island, and after a brief hesitation they pushed themselves over the edge of the platform. The first pulled themselves out of the water with bared fangs, which shimmered yellow-white through the mist of the fog.

But Griffin paid no attention to them. His battle was hopeless, he knew that. Nevertheless he refused to give up. He ran his hand over his face and wiped a broad furrow in the layer of beetles that were about to close over his features like a mask. The wyvern bellowed with pain. Griffin realized that the beetles were very probably elements of a single organism. When he separated some of them from the rest, it was if he cut off part of the wyvern’s body.

Armed with this new knowledge, Griffin fought mercilessly. The wyvern screeched and screamed as Griffin did his best to rip entire clumps of beetles out of the monster and throw them out onto the water.

He didn’t have much time left. And yet in all this tumult, as he tried not to be enclosed by the beetles, the behavior of the kobalins was puzzling. They’d surrounded him, and almost all had now climbed up onto the mussel shells. And yet they didn’t seize him. It was almost as if they were watching him—and awaiting the outcome of his grotesque duel with the wyvern.

The shape changer struck at him with crawling, seething limbs. Gradually Griffin’s strength was flagging. All the hours in the ray’s saddle, the tension, the fear; then the plunge into the sea, his hopeless struggling with the soldiers of the deep tribes, and now, last of all, his fight with the wyvern, were accompanied by the never-ending rain of dead fish.

To the right of him the waves broke apart, an eruption of dark saltwater, followed by a transparent ball of gelatin, which soon towered out of the waves like a glassy finger. Twelve feet high and clear as crystal. And in its interior, standing upright, with crossed arms and a malicious smile at the corners of his mouth—the boy.

The same boy that Griffin had seen from the ray when the jellyfish creature had encircled Jasconius. Black-haired, dark, and very delicate. Younger than he was. Really a pretty child—had there not been the smile that changed his face into a malignant grimace.

Griffin and the wyvern were knitted into a grotesque embrace, half standing, half on the ground. On the water, nests of wriggling beetles were floating everywhere, trying blindly and frantically to return to their swarm. The wyvern suffered terrible pain, but it had not yet given up its plan to take Griffin’s form.

But then it caught sight of the boy, who towered over the mussel island in his jellyfish sphere. It cried out harshly from a dozen body openings at the same time, orders perhaps, demands for support. But the boy only looked on and smiled.

What’s going on here?
thought Griffin.
Who’s fighting whom? What have I gotten into?

The shape changer bellowed again, but the boy in the jellyfish shook his head barely perceptibly. He made a short hand motion in the direction of the kobalins. The ones that had climbed onto the mussel shells were waiting with dangling claws and bared teeth to fall upon Griffin. Now their master gave them the silent order to withdraw. Swiftly the soldiers of the deep tribes slid into the water. A few seconds later Griffin and the wyvern were alone on the backs of the mussel shells.

Griffin closed his eyes. That the lord of the kobalins surfaced here, uninjured, could only mean that he’d triumphed over the whale.

Griffin gave vent to his rage and despair with a scream. And it might have been his anger or a last rebellion that gave him the strength to break the wyvern’s resistance. Griffin drove his fist into the blurry face of the shape changer; he felt
his fingers penetrate it and come up against something like a hard pit in the center of the teeming skull. He couldn’t be certain that he’d actually found the wyvern’s brain. He trusted his intuition alone and his luck.

His hand closed around the firm substance—and he pulled it out of the whirling chaos of beetles with a wild yell.

Instantly the swarm collapsed on itself, hitting the mussel shells and spraying out in a firework of colors. Then, as a cascade of beetles, it flowed into the cracks and over the edges of the island.

Seconds later Griffin was alone, crouching exhausted on his knees and closing his right hand around the brain of the wyvern with all the strength he had left. The black organ, which resembled a clump of earth, was not firm enough to withstand his grip. Silently it crumbled between his fingers.

The boy inside the jellyfish laughed.

His mouth opened like a portrait coming to life behind glass. His hands twitched with excitement. Only his eyes remained unchanged, wide open, staring at Griffin. He looked like a puppet that is manipulated by too few hands to move naturally—each movement looked incomplete, every motion lacked the details: eyes that didn’t laugh with the mouth; fists on which the thumbs remained spread, as if paralyzed; and when he opened his mouth to speak, no sound came out.

He speaks with them through his thoughts
, Griffin decided. Then all at once the mussel shells under his feet shifted closer together again and all the gaps closed. And the
kobalins in the water formed themselves into a perfect circle around the hump.

The jellyfish towered upright over the waves behind the kobalins. The waves struck against its sides, but they didn’t bounce off. They were absorbed by the gelatin, as if it drew its strength from the ocean itself.

So that was why Jasconius hadn’t been able to overcome him, Griffin thought in grim sorrow. No matter how much the whale attacked the jellyfish monster, as long as it was in the water, its reserves of strength were inexhaustible.

“What do you want of me?” Griffin roared at the boy. The wounds that he’d suffered in this and the previous fights hurt. He was dizzy, and his legs were threatening to buckle. But no wound, no matter how severe, would make him fall on his knees before this monster.

Some of the kobalins were growing restless. Griffin saw them only blurrily, but he noticed that their jabbering sounded more excited. Some were paddling nervously back and forth, others ducked their heads under the water and looked into the depths.

The boy inside the jellyfish opened his mouth wide, as if in a piercing scream.

And the sea exploded.

Griffin saw the water surface under the jellyfish curve upward. The jaws of a giant whale rose up around the lord of the kobalins like a black wall, enclosed him completely—and swallowed him. But still Jasconius continued to rise from the sea like a black tower, rushing quickly but
at the same time in slow motion, as if time itself had slowed so that everyone could appreciate the majesty of the whale rising from the waves.