Pirate Wars (9 page)

The Trader’s hands were extended from beneath his dark robe and clutching the edge of the balustrade. Forefather was supporting himself with both hands on a stick that towered over him by a head. Griffin could see that their lips were moving, but the sound of the battle and the rushing of the ray’s wings drowned out their words.

The ray bore him past the balustrade, barely a stone’s throw from the two mysterious figures. Griffin felt a prickling on his skin, a tickling and scratching, as there sometimes was over the deck of a ship when a mighty stroke of lightning came too close. Like an invisible explosion, the certainty flared in him that there were things happening on this balcony that would decide the fate of Aelenium, perhaps of the entire world.

Suddenly the battle was only half as important and certainly not decisive. This was all taking place just to win time. Time for Jolly and Munk, but perhaps also for something else.

He shuddered as he tried to imagine what that might be. His imagination failed at the task. He was almost glad of it.

The balcony with Forefather and the Trader was behind him. He was uncertain if they’d noticed the single rider on his ray, off course outside the ring formation and near them.

Griffin shook himself, got his head clear again, and looked for his landing place in the confusion of narrow streets. What was he fighting for? To that, at least, he had an answer.

Certainly not for Aelenium. Not even for himself.

Most of all he was fighting for Jolly.

Up on the balustrade, dozens of fathoms over the turmoil of the battle, Forefather’s hands clutched his long stick. The liver spots on the backs of his hands were stretched, and the Ghost Trader could imagine he heard the old man’s knuckles crack.

Above them, on a coral ledge, sat the two black parrots, Hugh and Moe. Two pairs of eyes, each a different color, stared impassively down on what was happening below.

“We cannot wait any longer,” Forefather said in a hoarse voice. It was even hoarser than usual from the long, sometimes excited conversation. “You must do what has to be done.”

“No, not before the second wall falls,” countered the Ghost Trader. “I’ve said it many times, and I say it again: The danger is too great. And the price…” He let the words die away with a somber shake of his head. “The price could be higher than we can imagine.”

“Against that are hundreds of deaths. And perhaps the final destruction.”

“The one can produce that as well as the other. Let’s not argue about it anymore, old friend. I’ve made my decision. Until now they’ve held the first wall. After that we have the second. And only then…” Again he broke off.

“You’re still placing all your hopes on the polliwogs.” Forefather surveyed him out of eyes that had watched the eons pass the way a mortal does the ebb and flow of the tides.

“And why not?”

Forefather shook his gray head. “What makes you so sure of them that you would risk everything?”

“There’s no certainty, I know that.” The Ghost Trader hesitated. “But I know the boy. He has the power that is needed.”

“But does he also possess the sense of responsibility and the wisdom that such a task requires?”

“That is why Jolly is with him.”

“She’s still a child too.”

The one-eyed one smiled sadly as he looked at Forefather. Above, both parrots titled their heads. “
Still
a child, you said, not
only
a child. And you know why. You know the difference.”

“But you also know what happened the last time. We both witnessed it, very much like today. We stood by and watched and were unable to change it.” He sighed. “Even then we were too weak.”

“Today we are wiser.”

“Are we?” Forefather giggled hoarsely. “I’m older than you, but even I am still waiting for the wisdom of age. Gradually I’ve given up hope of ever attaining it.”

The Ghost Trader smiled again. “At least you’ve learned to know the obstinacy of age.”

“If I were as obstinate as you think, I’d force you to do everything necessary. Instead I’m trying to convince you, and I am forced to observe how unsuccessful I am.”

The Trader suddenly grew serious. “It won’t work. Not yet. Only if there’s no other way out.”

“We’ve seen so many die, you and I. So many squandered lives in all the ages.”

Over the water the ray riders formed into a single broad ring, which moved closer around the cliffs of the city. They’d given up trying to free the waters of the kobalins as far as the fog. Instead they were concentrating on the shores and on the waves of attackers who surged up from the surf there.

“It’s raining dead fish in the north,” said Forefather, pointing to the flashes in front of the fog background. The evening sun bathed the edge of the clouds in a reddish yellow firelight. From a distance a rain of sparks seemed to be falling in front of the fog.

“Then he’s here,” said the Ghost Trader. “He comes late.”

“Not late enough.”

“Hardly.”

Again the old man turned to the Trader. “You can change the dying into stories, my friend. But more stories have been told about the two of us than anyone could ever collect or write down. Doesn’t that mean that we are, in a sense, long dead?”

The Ghost Trader thought about it, then he nodded. “Perhaps we just haven’t noticed it yet.”

Can’t be much
farther to the center of the earth
, Jolly thought gloomily. She felt as though she and Munk had been running through this darkness for a lifetime. Aina had led them through the ruins of the sunken coral city, on a downward slope. Two or three times they’d come to the edges of dark chasms and had to dive down along the rock walls. And they were always going farther down.

Once Aina warned them not to take the direct way along a row of remarkable rock chimneys from whose tops rose something that looked like black smoke. It actually was the boiling, ash-filled water out of the maw of the earth.

“Undersea volcanoes,” Aina explained, adding that the warm waters around the craters were inhabited by all kinds of animals that were better not encountered.

Jolly soon saw that Aina had been right to warn them. In
the distance, almost at the limit of her polliwog sight, Jolly saw mighty silhouettes eddying around the chimneys. The creatures resembled white-skinned morays with gigantic mouths and repellent light feelers that arose between half-blind eyes. The polliwogs might have fallen victim to them had Aina not led them in an arc around the crater. As she did so the girl kept urging them to hurry, especially if they had to deal with detours like this.

She didn’t speak about it often, but she seemed to be very worried about her friends, whom she’d left behind in the clutches of the Maelstrom. Perhaps she also felt guilty for what had happened.

More than once, Jolly imagined how Aina might have been in those days when she left to go to the Maelstrom. Had she undertaken her fate as willingly as Munk? Or had she felt as Jolly had?

They left the chimneys and their warm waters behind them. Aina went first, followed by Munk and Jolly, who kept her eye on the jagged rocky landscape on both sides of them.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Jolly asked the strange girl suddenly.

“Of the Maelstrom? Certainly. I—”

“No, I didn’t mean that. If we really should succeed in destroying him and freeing your friends…then you’ll come back up to the surface with us, won’t you?”

Aina hesitated. Then she nodded slowly.

“The world today is a whole lot different from your time. Everything has changed.”

“Not people,” said Aina, and a bitter expression played around the corners of her mouth. “People never change.”

Jolly exchanged a look with Munk. “What do you mean by that?”

The girl didn’t answer right away. She seemed to be thinking, as if there were suddenly a wall between her and her memories that she had to overcome first. “People weren’t good to me. They were afraid because I was different from them. We could do things that—”

“That they couldn’t do,” Munk finished her sentence.

Jolly’s feelings wavered between agreement and amazement. She knew what it meant to be different. But wasn’t that ultimately only a question of the people you surrounded yourself with? The pirates aboard the
Skinny Maddy
had themselves been outcasts, the lepers of society—and they’d accepted Jolly for what she was.

Munk’s bitterness, on the other hand, obviously applied to the inhabitants of Aelenium. Certainly he’d enjoyed their honoring him as a savior. However, maybe their admiration had only been the mask behind which they concealed their fear of the polliwogs? Suddenly this idea didn’t seem at all farfetched to Jolly. Perhaps Munk had just seen through the people much sooner than she had, and now he shared Aina’s dislike.

“They beat and kicked me,” the girl said, without looking around. She now sounded very depressed again, as if the old time lay not thousands of years back but only a few days. “First it was only scorn, then fear was added to that. And
finally they tortured me, again and again. My own family turned me out.”

Jolly nodded, lost in thought. Bannon and his crew had been her family, and they had also betrayed her. Aina must have been just as wounded and despairing as Jolly.

The longer she listened to the girl, the more ironic it seemed to her that they three, of all people, were the ones chosen to save mankind. Of all people, they, whom the inhabitants of Port Royal or Havana met only with dislike, or arrogance at best.

“Nevertheless, you came down here to destroy the Maelstrom,” Jolly said to Aina.

Aina gave her a long look. “Where else was I supposed to go if I didn’t?”

And then she was silent again.

The meeting with Aina had distracted Jolly from her misery at the sight of this wasteland, but now the gray, dark environment seeped into her again.

“Didn’t the Maelstrom have you followed?” she asked at last in Aina’s direction, just to hear a voice again.

“Oh, yes, of course. He’s looking for me.”

“The current?” Munk asked, and Aina nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It hit you, too, did it?”

Jolly frowned. “We thought he was looking for us.”

“No,” said Aina. “I don’t believe he knows you’re here yet.”

Was the girl really more important to the Maelstrom than Jolly and Munk? Perhaps he wasn’t afraid of the two of them at all, perhaps they were completely unimportant to him; he
knew that they couldn’t harm him. Jolly surreptitiously clenched one hand into a fist. She’d rather keep on believing that the search current had been aimed at them. At least until now she’d had the feeling that the Maelstrom took them seriously. But now their whole mission looked even more hopeless. Sometimes it was an advantage to be afraid.

On the incline ahead of them now grew something that looked at first glance like the pale plant worms that thrived among the ruins of the coral city. In fact they were a very similar type of plant, only these were much bigger. It wasn’t long before the worms towered over their heads, waving at them like gigantic arms and legs that someone had stuck in the ground by the wrists and ankles. They grew side by side in broad clumps, but between them there were more and more lanes, through which the three could walk without any effort. Munk suggested swimming over the bizarre forest, but Aina declined. They were too close to the Crustal Breach, she said. And she seemed to be about to add something, but then she thought better of it.

“How much farther is it?” Jolly asked.

“Not much. We’ve already covered more than half the distance.”

How long had they been traveling? Jolly didn’t know. The missing sense of time down here worried her more and more.

“Careful!” Aina stopped.

Jolly and Munk also froze. Tensely they stared first at the girl, then into their gloomy surroundings.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s something here.” Aina’s eyes traveled over the wall of plant arms waving soundlessly back and forth. Forth and back again, disturbed by unseen currents.

Jolly looked at Munk, but he gave a barely noticeable shrug. Neither of them had seen anything.

“Down off the path,” whispered Aina, and with one swift stroke she glided from the ground between the bending stems. “Quick!”

“Path?” Munk looked bewilderedly at the ground. The lanes between the plants didn’t look as if they were laid out by design. Jolly signaled to him silently that she hadn’t the slightest idea what the girl was talking about. Nevertheless they quickly followed Aina between the plants. The white, spongy flesh of the plants felt revolting, much more organic than Jolly liked.

“Is that really a path that you’ve been leading us along?” Munk asked in a hushed voice.

Aina nodded. “A path of the claw men,” she whispered, then immediately indicated with a finger on her lips that he should ask no more questions.

They waited, anxious and motionless, while the plants gently stroked their bodies as if they were trying to examine the three invaders in their midst.

In the silence Jolly heard a gentle rushing and rustling—the rubbing of the plant stems against each other. After she first noticed the sound, it came from all directions at once, until it even drowned out the hammering of her heart.

Three kobalins struggled along the path, shoulders bent.
Their bodies were low and very broad, and they had shorter, more muscular legs than the kobalins on the shape changer’s island. Their nostrils were deformed to fist-sized. In return, they had no eyes—mere slight depressions above the sharp cheekbones showed where the eye sockets had been in their ancient forebears. Like all animals and plants down here, they were also of a transparent whiteness, like fresh coconut milk.

Jolly’s stomach twisted. She prayed that an especially strong current might close the plant stems in front of her before one of the creatures picked up her scent.

Munk grasped her hand. She nearly cried out in fright. His fingers closed so hard on hers that it almost hurt. But she understood him only too well.

Aina didn’t move. Her eyes were firmly fixed on the creatures that were passing not five yards away from them. The girl’s face showed deep worry.

Jolly stopped breathing. It was a strange feeling when the water stayed in her lungs and gradually warmed. But to breathe it out now appeared too dangerous to her.

One of the kobalins stopped.

He senses us,
Jolly thought.
He senses that we’re here.

The edges of the giant nostrils widened, drew together again. At the same time the many-toothed mouth opened and closed as if the creature were trying to taste something out of the water.

Us
, thought Jolly icily.
He’s tasting
us!

The two other kobalins halted too. It occurred to Jolly that none of the three possessed webbed feet. Therefore their
feet were uncommonly broad and plump, almost as if this species of kobalin were bound to the bottom of the sea.

Of course! It was so obvious: white skin, no eyes, the bent posture—everything suggested that these creatures passed their entire lives down here and for countless generations had been exposed to the pressure of the water mass.

Now they were snuffling around the area with nostrils quivering, making smacking noises with their mouths.

They’re going to find us
, flashed into Jolly’s mind.
They simply have to find us.

The kobalins uttered a few whispering sounds, and then they went on, following the path in the direction from which Jolly and the others had just come.

The polliwogs remained in their hiding place for a long time, until Aina finally gave the all clear with a sigh. “We’re safe now,” she said. “At least for the time being.”

“Whatever were those?” Munk burst out as they pushed their way between the stalks.

“They live down here.” Aina looked once more in all directions, checking, and then stepped out onto the path. “They’re different from the ones that you know, aren’t they? There aren’t many of them anymore, but they’re at least as dangerous as the tribes farther up. Anyway, they can’t swim, at least not very well.”

“Can it be that they were looking for you?” Jolly asked. “Maybe the Maelstrom sent them.”

Aina starting moving ahead and downward. “Either that—or…”

“Or?”

“Probably they’re only hunting because they’re hungry.” After a moment she added, “You decide which you prefer.”

Jolly swallowed and said nothing.

“But they couldn’t eat you,” said Munk, and Jolly was annoyed with herself that she hadn’t thought of that. “You don’t have a solid body.”

Aina’s pretty face twisted slightly in pain, then she shrugged. “That wouldn’t help you, would it? Two polliwogs aren’t a bad catch.”

Jolly felt a nausea rising in her that was almost painful.

They went on, even more watchfully than before. Soon there were no more traces of the kobalins to be seen; the dust had covered their tracks.

The forest of deep-sea plants ended at the edge of a high plain. The abyss on the other side of the rock edge billowed in uncertain blackness.

“Listen!” said Aina.

Jolly and Munk started in alarm, but the girl made a calming gesture. “Just listen over there,” she repeated in a whisper.

They did so, if hesitantly, and it took a moment before Jolly realized what Aina meant. Out of the darkness in front of them came a distant roaring and thundering, like the noise of a mighty waterfall or a tidal wave.

“Search currents?” asked Munk.

“No,” returned Aina, shuddering. “That is
he
.”

“The Maelstrom?” Jolly strained even harder to hear. Yes, it might sound like that if an inconceivably large mass of
water rotating in the deep were sucked in and spit out again. The ominous noise in the distance seemed to grab her and shake her. Jolly trembled, as though a powerful voice were speaking to her from the indistinct raging and fuming so as to intimidate her.

To her amazement she saw that Munk had squatted at the edge of the drop-off and unpacked his mussels from his belt pouch. He was deftly laying them out in front of him in the dust. Aina watched him with interest, her head tilted slightly to one side.

“What are you doing?” Jolly asked.

“I’m laying out the mussels.”

“I see that! But why now?” Had she missed something? Had he noticed a danger that she didn’t yet see? At the same time her hand involuntarily slid toward her own mussels in their belt pouch.

Munk didn’t look up. His fingers pushed the mussels around in their circle, sorted out some, replaced them with others, or changed the order, as he sought for the one definite combination. “Forefather said we should try out how the mussels react in the vicinity of the Maelstrom. Whether they behave differently from usual. That would be important, he said.” He stopped for a moment, and then he looked up at Jolly once more. “You can’t know that, you weren’t there.”

She weighed whether to do the same as he did and take out her mussels. But then she let it be; she didn’t begrudge him this triumph.

“What do they say?” asked Aina, turning to Munk.

Say?
thought Jolly.

Munk looked up at Aina with a smile, clearly overjoyed that here was someone who obviously understood mussel magic better than Jolly. “They’re speaking, but not clearly. It’s more a…something like a tugging. They want us to go on, as if something were drawing them.”