Pirate Wars (4 page)

“Farewell,” she said, thinking it was terrible that nothing
better occurred to her, something that expressed everything she felt and felt for him.

“Good luck,” said Griffin. “Come back soon, the two of you.” He glided over to Munk in one stroke and shook his hand below the water. “Take care of yourselves.”

Munk nodded to him abruptly.

A moment later, when the sun illuminated that spot where the polliwogs had just been treading water, they’d both vanished.

The feeling was not new anymore and had long lost its charm. With outstretched arms and legs Jolly and Munk rushed down, unaffected by the water pressure, which would have killed any other human after the first few minutes. Their polliwog vision allowed them to see several hundred feet ahead of them, but down here there was nothing that could have held their glance.

They fell through a nowhere of gray into gray, for polliwog vision emptied all things of most of their color, making them pale and plain and ugly—even if there’d been things there to see. But around them there was nothing, only empty water, in which a swarm of tiny particles floated now and then. No fish. No trace of light. The armies of the kobalins had driven all living things out of this part of the sea.

“Do you think there are any here?” asked Jolly. “Kobalins, I mean.”

Munk shrugged, while they floated ever downward.
“Maybe. But that really doesn’t make any sense. They’d be more needed in Aelenium than out here.”

Jolly thought over what the Ghost Trader had said. About the currents the Maelstrom could use to seek and find them. Once they got down on the sea bottom, they might perhaps be safer from them. But what about now, while they were still sinking even farther downward? Weren’t they helplessly exposed to the searching currents of the Maelstrom the whole time?

She hastily repressed the thought and concentrated on finding something in her surroundings on which she could fasten her gaze. But there was nothing except Munk, who was floating along on a level with her. She didn’t even have the feeling of sinking, really, since the water offered them no trace of resistance and there was never anything to see that would allow them to estimate their speed. Were they sinking slowly? Or at a breakneck speed?

During the practices in the waters around Aelenium there had always been the undercity nearby, the formation of sharp-pointed coral structures on the underside of the giant sea star. The sight of it had made it easier to orient themselves. But out here there was nothing like that.

Jolly’s dejection grew harder and harder to bear. Looking at Munk, she saw that it was the same with him. His features were closed, as if he were caught in the suction of his own gloomy thoughts. At some point she groped for his hand as they sank deeper side by side. He returned the gesture so gratefully that for the first time she felt a hope that he could
forget their quarrel and again become the old Munk, the same lovable, playful Munk she’d first met on his parents’ island. The same Munk she’d shown how to shoot a cannon and who’d dreamed of being a pirate.

The weeks that had passed since then had changed him, made him more withdrawn, grimmer, and more opaque. But perhaps all those traits would disappear and they could be friends again as they had before. Down here they were dependent on each other, and there would be times when they needed to give each other courage and reassure themselves. How would that work if Munk still hated her because she’d fallen in love with Griffin and not with him?

Jolly lost any feeling of time as they sank into the deep hand in hand. Once something twitched forward up ahead at the edge of her field of vision, possibly just a fish. Not big enough for a kobalin, thank God.

They might have been under way one hour or several, and most of the time they had been swimming. Both avoided speaking about their rift. Sooner or later they’d have to talk about it, Jolly knew that. There was no point in keeping silent. And as little as he could excuse her for what had happened, she understood his behavior. There had been so much selfishness in him, so much anger and injured vanity.

Sometime, after half an eternity, they made out the sea bottom below them. Rocky points reached toward them in the darkness. At first sight they looked like figures in hooded capes. Shapeless stone structures stretched toward them like bony fingers. The cliffs rose out of a dark, rocky
underground, a plain that led gently downward—down to the Crustal Breach.

Thirty miles
, went through Jolly icily. She felt deathly sick.

“That place up ahead looks good,” said Munk.

“Good?” she asked scornfully, but at once she was sorry. Who was the one picking a quarrel now?

The place Munk was pointing to lay a bit farther north—provided that north was the direction where the land fell away. They knew only that the Crustal Breach was the deepest point far and wide, at least Forefather had claimed that.

With quick strokes they moved sideways and let themselves sink to the ground. Both were wearing sandals with firm soles, which offered hardly any resistance to the water and protected them from rough surfaces underfoot, as long as the undersea wasn’t too different from land. But who could know whether everything might look very different in such a place? Did any of the laws of the surface apply here at all?

Shivering, Jolly realized that they were the first humans who’d gone this deep in the ocean. Or no, not the very first—polliwogs had set out to conquer the Maelstrom before, thousands of years ago. That was the first time he’d tried to tear down the borders to the Mare Tenebrosum. The polliwogs, so it was said, had shut him into the mussel in the Crustal Breach, until fourteen years ago he’d managed to burst his prison. Right afterwards new polliwogs were born, all of whom had perished since then except for two. Only Jolly and Munk were left. It was now their responsibility to walk the path of the polliwogs once again and to overcome the Maelstrom.

The landscape was impressive in its absolute desolation. The ground looked like a mixture of cooled lava and firmly baked ashes. There were no plants far and wide. Forefather said they couldn’t survive at such depths. The stone wasn’t even covered with lichens; all was bare and desolate like the tip of a volcanic island, which Jolly knew from her travels with Bannon.

They also saw no fish, although Jolly couldn’t shake off the feeling that they were being observed from the splits and cracks in the porous rock surface. There must be life down here, and with a shudder she thought of all the stories of giant krakens and other monsters that were said to live on the bottom of the sea.

From the ground, the rock needles around them seemed even higher and more bizarre. Some looked as if someone had piled black cinders on top of each other and had let them set, half liquid. Others were so sharp-edged that it hurt her just to look at them. Not a few resembled grotesque, distorted bodies, which bent over them like giants and showed teeth of dark stone. Those that lay on the edge of their vision appeared to move if you weren’t looking at them directly.

Jolly bit her lower lip in the hope that the pain would turn her from her fears. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t help. She straightened her knapsack, checked all the fastenings and belts, then turned to Munk.

“Let’s go,” she said, and with that she sucked a deep breath of fresh salt water into her lungs.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Let’s get on the road.”

On his return
to Aelenium, Griffin was struck by how very much the city had changed. He’d barely noticed it earlier, in his frenzy to find Matador and chase after Jolly—even if only to say good-bye.

The coral mountain bristled with weapons and war machines. The markets that had still existed at numerous places in the labyrinth of streets one or two weeks before had vanished. The storytellers’ square was now piled with sandbags and chests of weapons. Soldiers patrolled in the Poets’ Quarter, which lay just below the second defense wall; here, too, there were no more public lectures, readings, or singing.

At first, it seemed as though the burghers of Aelenium had vanished into thin air. Instead you saw only people in uniform in the narrow coral streets. But when he looked more closely, Griffin saw that many civilians had changed
their everyday clothing for the leather uniforms of the guard.

In the city’s squares and gardens they were being instructed by weapons experts in the basics of fighting with saber and pistol. All too quickly it became obvious that the inhabitants of the sea star city were not people of war. Those not responsible for the provisioning of the city as traders, fishermen, or their employees usually worked in the library—there was no one among them who’d really mastered the handling of weapons, even though the council had begun years ago to subject the citizens to regular training.

They’d known for a long time that the Maelstrom was arming for war, but now it was painfully obvious that the preparations for defense hadn’t been sufficient. Count Aristotle and the other lords of the city had relied a bit too airily on the polliwogs’ being found in time to fight the Maelstrom.

Griffin provided for Matador and asked the stable boy to care for the animal especially attentively after the strenuous ride. The worst was still to come for the sea horses, too. Griffin wasn’t sure when action would come—but when it did, the battle in the water against the kobalins certainly wouldn’t be any picnic.

Walker and Buenaventure, who’d greeted him on his arrival, had hurried away again to help reinforce the first defense wall above the breakwater. More and more wooden beams, sandbags, and pieces of coral from the undercity were heaved onto the barricades to make penetration more difficult for the kobalins. But it was questionable which was the
bigger danger: the deep tribes or the fleet of the cannibal king Tyrone.

D’Artois, the Ghost Trader, and the council seemed to be divided on that. Certainly the kobalins were horrible creatures with claws and murderous sharks’ teeth. But their element was the water, and no one knew yet how well they’d fight on land.

On the other hand, the cannibals and pirates Tyrone would lead into battle were ordinary men, and in great numbers. For fighting in the streets, they were the perfect allies for the Maelstrom.

Still, Tyrone and his fleet had been involved in wasting sea battles in the waters west of the Lesser Antilles. The Antilles captains, who’d ruled that region of the Caribbean for years, felt themselves betrayed by the cannibal king and swore vengeance.

This could only be a good thing for the defenders of Aelenium. Not only would Tyrone—and with him the Maelstrom—be significantly weakened by the sea battle, but he also lost valuable time as well. What had been planned as a surprise attack on the sea star city had now turned into a predictable military expedition, which the inhabitants of Aelenium could incorporate into their plans.

Griffin picked his way through the lanes and over steep steps. Along the way he passed the two defense walls and various smaller barricades.

People in uniform were everywhere—mostly men, but there were also some women among them who intended to
fight for the city. Some soldiers were formed into troops and marched in formation, while others ran around in disorder, reinforcing the walls or receiving last instructions.

The Ghost Trader had vanished immediately after their return to Aelenium. He was last seen at Forefather’s side, and when Griffin asked d’Artois about it, he confirmed that the two sages had withdrawn into the library. “No affair of mine,” the captain had declared gruffly before he took himself off to his troops to go over last-minute strategies.

Griffin wondered what Forefather and the Ghost Trader had to discuss up there. Soledad had told him in a whisper of the water spinners Jolly met when the
Carfax
sank and also of what the three mysterious women deep on the floor of the sea had told her. Even if Soledad wasn’t quite sure what Jolly thought about it, Griffin could hardly imagine that Jolly had been having a hallucination. Perhaps Aelenium really was a place where the gods had gathered before they went into oblivion and died. And perhaps Forefather actually was the creator himself, the first deity, who had created this world.

Griffin found it all just as incredible as Soledad did. But some of it definitely did fit into the picture, beginning with the existence of such an inconceivable city as Aelenium, and then to the remarkable capabilities of the Ghost Trader. Captain d’Artois had once told him that Forefather was the soul of Aelenium. Possibly that had been far more than an empty phrase.

Griffin went up the last steps and reached the palace square. The sentries who normally guarded the door had
been withdrawn. Danger wasn’t threatening here—high over the water—but way down below on the shores of the sea star.

Griffin met scarcely anyone in the palace, either. Most of the women and children were hiding in protective shelters deep in the heart of the city. There were no more servants in the corridors, the guest section seemed swept empty. A depressing atmosphere pervaded the abandoned passageways and salons. More than once Griffin thought he heard footsteps following him; but then there was only the echo of his own steps.

He ran past his room, deciding against changing the pirate outfit for a new leather uniform. He’d assembled his odds and ends of pirate clothes from the wreckage in the belly of the whale: a pair of leather trousers, a black shirt, and a vest into which someone had sewn a bent Spanish gold doubloon over the heart, obviously a good luck charm.

Griffin decided it didn’t really matter what clothes he wore into a fight against kobalins and cannibals. Teeth and claws could go through leather, too.

He stopped at Jolly’s door. It hurt to imagine that she could still be waiting for him behind it—quite aside from the fact, he thought with a melancholy smile, that it was definitely not her way to wait for
anyone at all
.

The door was not locked; he could enter unhindered. The bedclothes were all roiled up.

“Looks as if Jolly had nightmares during her last night in Aelenium,” said a voice behind him.

Griffin whirled around. “So I did hear steps.”

Soledad shook her head with a smile. “Certainly not mine. No one hears me if I don’t want them to.” That sounded a little arrogant, but Griffin knew that the princess was speaking the truth. Even when she was just walking along beside you, her movements were fluid, catlike.

With a suppressed sigh he turned again to the empty room. “I think Jolly often had bad dreams—not only last night.”

It was an odd moment in which they both merely stood there, staring at the disordered bedclothes and focusing their thoughts on Jolly.

Griffin cleared his throat. “We’re talking about her as if she wasn’t coming back.”

“She’ll come back.”

“Yes,” he replied softly. “She will.”

“No one goes on a journey like that without playing it through in her head a hundred times beforehand,” Soledad said. “In dreams, too, whether she wants to or not.”

Griffin shuddered at the thought of the terrors that Jolly must have painted for herself, and shivered still more at the idea of what she might actually expect down there. His imagination exhausted itself in pictures of grisly monsters before he came to a much more obvious terror: the loneliness in the black wasteland of the deep sea.

The same thoughts seemed to be worrying Soledad. “The greatest fear she had, I think, was not the Maelstrom.” She turned and stared at him until he returned her gaze. “But Munk, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do think so, for sure.”

“Is he a danger to her down there?”

Griffin was amazed that Soledad had thought about that. Until now he’d believed that he was the only one who saw Munk as a threat to Jolly. “If only I knew.”

“That night on the
Carfax
, they almost fought with each other. He wanted to force her to remain in Aelenium.” Soledad’s eyes looked more shadowed than usual. It made him uneasy to see her that way; perhaps because he’d hoped she could dispel his own worries. Instead her words only confirmed what he’d secretly been fearing himself.

“Why did you come here?” she asked. “Into her room, I mean.”

He hesitated. “For the same reason you did, right? To be close to her. To say good-bye.”

She walked past him to an arched window. The room was very high and narrow, almost like the inside of a tower. Many rooms in Aelenium had such odd dimensions, evidence of the fact that the city had grown and not been constructed.

Griffin followed the princess and looked over the steep cliff into the city below, over the furrowed slope of lanes and roofs that led down to the points of the sea star and the water. Not much longer and then nothing would be as it once had been anymore. Death and destruction would strike the city.

The image tore at his heart. For the first time he felt a real bond with this wondrous place, and something like a feeling of responsibility rose in him. If Jolly was ready to sacrifice herself for Aelenium, then he must ask the same of himself.

“What are you going to do?” Soledad asked, as if she’d just asked herself the same question and already found an answer.

“Fight,” he said. “Like Jolly.”

She nodded silently.

“And you?”

Soledad shrugged. “They won’t let me ride the rays because I’m a woman, those idiots. And no one seems to know yet whether they’re really going to use the sea horses against the kobalins.”

He nodded.

“I’m going with the divers,” she went on. “I’ve been taking lessons the last few days. I was down at the anchor chain. The kobalins will try to cut it to detach Aelenium from the sea bottom.”

“If they really try it, no one can stop them. The divers can’t go to the bottom. It’s too deep.”

“Nevertheless, we aren’t going to just look on and do nothing.”

He shook his head sadly. “It’s madness to confront the kobalins in their own element.”

“One has to do something.” The corners of her mouth twitched slightly, but no smile followed. “And you?”

“D’Artois has assigned me to the ray riders.”

Suddenly the princess walked up to him and hugged him. “Then take care of yourself, Griffin. Don’t make me be the one who has to tell Jolly when she comes back that the kobalins have torn you to pieces.”

He returned the embrace and blushed when she gave him a kiss on the forehead.

“I’ll leave you alone up here now. And give Jolly a nice greeting from me when you think about her.” With a wink she went out into the corridor and pulled the door closed behind her.

Griffin stared at the door for a long moment. Then, with a heavy heart, he turned to the window again. Over the fog the rays were moving in their majestic orbits.

It was Soledad’s ninth dive, but she’d been told that the constricted feeling in the diving suit never diminished, even by the fiftieth time. True, she could breathe for fifteen to twenty minutes through hoses that ran to the bubblestone in a metal container strapped under her chin. But the air was already thin and stuffy after a few minutes.

Soledad had never seen anything like the bubblestones before her arrival in the sea star city, and she wondered where they came from. The other divers seemed not to know the answer to that either. They explained to Soledad that the stones were kept in a cave near the core and carefully protected. When a stone had given up all its air, it needed several hours to dry out completely and absorb new oxygen. Because there were only several hundred of these stones in existence, the supply would inevitably run low during the battle if the fighting under water lasted too long.

Soledad and a handful of others dove down along the furrowed underside of a sea star arm. The princess had been able to sleep for a few hours to gather strength, which
she would urgently need in the days to come. Although the sun was shining on the water above, it was very dark down here below. Only where the mighty anchor chain emerged from a complicated tangle of steel and branching coral was there pale light. Shafts had been driven through the sea star point and within them, above water level and at regular intervals, were placed torches. A yellow glow fell from them but was soon lost in the depths. Enough light to recognize attackers and to oppose them—but too little to, say, read the print in a book. The murky soup would make the battle down here even more difficult.

The anchor chain was so broad that it would take twenty men to encircle one of the powerful links with outstretched arms. Next to the rusty chain links, a human was as lost as a fish. Disheveled water plants floated on invisible currents and settled around the metal in many places like dense shrubbery.

Every time Soledad looked down into the deep from the chain, she grew dizzy.

It was true that the endless ribbon sank down to the edge of the field of light, out of the torchlight into darkness, but the idea that it reached to the bottom of the sea turned her stomach. Even though she was underwater, that thought gave her something like acrophobia. So much emptiness beneath her, so much nothing.

Walker had argued with her when she told him that she was going to join the divers. She hadn’t let herself be budged from her decision, however, not even by him.

Soledad knew what she was letting herself in for. She
could have chosen the easy way and fought on the barricades, and no one would have reproached her for that. But she wouldn’t be her father’s daughter, the future empress of all the pirates between Tortuga and New Providence, if she watched passively as the kobalins streamed onto land. She wanted to fight the creatures of the Maelstrom—and as quickly as possible.