CHAPTER 7
Unlike the north end of Elantya, with its sheer cliffs and crashing waves, the cove on the lee side of the island was sheltered. Inside a protective breakwater wall of neatly stacked boulders, past which the sea bottom dropped off to much greater depths, the water was calm to the point of being glassy.
Vic and Gwen decided the isolated cove was the perfect spot for Tiaret to learn how to swim.
When the five apprentices walked to the empty beach, gray clouds began to gather, promising an afternoon thunderstorm, and the sea beyond the breakwater looked stirred and choppy. Lyssandra was uneasy to be in such a quiet and deserted area of Elantya. “What if it should rain?” Apparently, she was still troubled by ominous dreams she couldn’t understand.
Vic chuckled. “Rain? If we’re swimming, it doesn’t matter how wet we get. As long as there’s no lightning.” He thought about the time his parents had taken him for a day at the beach in San Diego. It had rained briefly that morning, but the day had been perfect anyway. His father had read on the beach for most of the day, while Vic and his mother swam together. She loved the sea and seemed to shine with happiness when she was in the warm waves. She belonged in the water. Not only were the fish not afraid of her, they seemed drawn to his mother, letting her touch them as they swirled around her.
Gwen hurried down to the edge of the calm water, delighted. “Remember a few years ago when our parents took us to Disney World, and then afterwards we stayed on the Florida coast? The water in Tampa was so warm and calm we just floated and splashed around all day.”
Of course he remembered. The thoughts were bittersweet for Vic. Since the day she’d left, every minute he remembered spending with his mother seemed precious. He tried to divert his mind from the pain of not knowing where she was or if she was still alive. “Yup. I remember you got sunburned as red as ketchup, too,” Vic said, coming up beside her and dipping his foot into the water.
“Ketchup? Eww.” Gwen punched him in the shoulder. “Anyway, my point is, it was fun.” Together they walked back onto the dry sand.
“Point taken. I’d rather swim for pleasure than try to dodge merlons, clean up messes from battles, or worry about a ship sinking beneath me.” Vic removed his outer clothes and sandals, tightened the brevi he wore for swimming, and dashed down the sandy beach. Giving his medallion a tug to make sure its cord was secure, he said, “Come on! Last one in is a kraken egg.”
Gwen shed her tunic, so that she wore only her medallion on its leather thong, and a white brevi that consisted of a cropped tank and briefs. She raced him to the water.
Tiaret showed no trepidation. Dressed in her tight animal skins, the girl from Afirik thrust her teaching staff into the sand so that it stuck up next to Vic and Gwen’s clothes. With lithe movements, she bounded into the water.
Since he would not need it while swimming, Sharif had left his flying carpet rolled up and stashed beneath the sleeping pallet in his quarters. He stripped down to his loincloth while considering whether or not to leave Piri behind on the beach. The nymph djinni could survive perfectly well under water in her eggsphere, and she enjoyed teasing the fish by blinking in tempting colors to lure them closer. He put the mesh bag that held Piri back around his neck.
Lyssandra, wearing a short, snug-fitting chamois brevi that tied over one shoulder, pulled her long coppery hair back in a ponytail so the strands wouldn’t get in her eyes and joined the others. She waded in up to her knees, then her waist, turning around to look at the empty beach.
Vic wanted to start by teaching Tiaret his favorite stroke, the butterfly, but Gwen argued that they should begin with floating and kicking. Vic splashed his cousin.
“Treading water is also a useful skill, especially for a beginner,” Lyssandra pointed out. Gwen surprised her with an impulsive splash.
Sharif, getting into the spirit of the occasion, said, “Perhaps we should work on holding your breath first.” While he was looking at Tiaret, Lyssandra’s hand skimmed the surface of the water, sending a spray into Sharif’s face.
“Teach me everything,” Tiaret said. “I will master the skills quickly.”
Since she sounded so serious, everyone responded by splashing her. Soon they were all laughing and shouting in a friendly water fight. Sharif took Piri out of her pouch so that she could join in the fun, and they all played catch with the twinkling pink eggsphere for quite a while before Sharif tucked her back into the mesh pouch around his neck.
Tiaret looked up at the darkening skies and grew serious again. “Although this is most entertaining, should we not begin my actual lessons?”
When it came to athletic endeavors, the girl from Afirik was a quick study. From Gwen, she learned floating and three types of kicks. Sharif added breathing techniques, and Lyssandra showed her how to tread water. Vic demonstrated several types of arm strokes. Trying the dog paddle first, Tiaret thrashed awkwardly halfway across the cove before pausing to tread water and wave at her friends.
The first shark fin pierced the calm water of the cove like a sacrificial dagger. The sharp, triangular fin cut through the water with barely a ripple. Vic cried out, “Shark!”
“Not funny, Taz,” Gwen said. “Anyway, we’re in a protected cove.”
A second shark fin surfaced closer to Gwen, out of her view. An intricate design was branded onto the side of the fin, some sort of magical symbol. Somehow the sharks had gotten inside the rocky breakwater barrier.
“Escape now, argue later,” Vic yelled.
Seeing the danger, Tiaret immediately thrashed toward the shallows.
Within a few moments, six large aquatic predators circled the other four friends, who were too far from the beach. One shark streaked after Tiaret as she sloshed toward the beach where her teaching staff stood in the sand.
Gwen splashed furiously at the circling sharks, trying to get rid of them.
Sharif tried to break through the menacing circle. Two of the sharks shot toward him like underwater torpedoes, churning the water to a froth as they bumped him with their rounded snouts. Kicking out, he struck one, but as the shark spun away in pain, another one came to take its place.
Lyssandra called out for help, but no one was near the isolated area to hear them.
Tiaret reached the safety of shore, though the other four companions were trapped in the deeper water of the cove. She raced toward her teaching staff.
The predators weren’t in a feeding frenzy; they did not attack. Instead, the sharks seemed to be corralling the friends, preventing them from escaping to shore—as if they were being guided, somehow. That made Vic even more nervous.
With a wild yell, Tiaret bounded back into the water, swinging her staff. She struck one of the sharks with a mighty splash, smashing its snout with the round dragon’s-eye stone. She threw herself in among the circling predators, but fighting in the water was different from fighting on land. She couldn’t move as swiftly and smoothly as she’d expected; the water made swinging her staff sluggish.
Then something worse than the sharks arrived. Swimming forms approached like shadows, emerging to show hideous fishlike faces with smooth skin, large eyes, and spiny frills around their heads. They raised clawed, webbed hands.
“I should have known the merlons would arrive sooner or later.” Gwen glared at them.
Tiaret continued to thrash with her teaching staff. Using its pointed end like a spear, she injured another one of the sharks; but the angry merlons soon reached her. They overpowered Tiaret, seized the teaching staff, and wrenched it out of her hand.
One of the six merlons blurred his features, shifting until the face and body became recognizable as human: a handsome yet sneering face, dark hair, dusky skin, and cruel eyes. “Look at the little guppies our sharks caught,” said Orpheon, Rubicas’s treacherous former apprentice. He took Tiaret’s teaching staff from one of the merlons.
“It’s too bad you didn’t hit your head on a rock when you jumped off that cliff,” Gwen said in a cold voice. She and Sharif had chased the traitor from Rubicas’s lab to the edge of the island, where he had transformed into merlon form before leaping into the sea.
Sharif glared at him. “You were afraid to face us. You are a spy and a minion and a coward.”
As if responding to an implied threat, three of the sharks curved up to the surface like dolphins, splashing, showing their wide mouths filled with sharp teeth, then dove again. When the merlons hissed, their gill flaps opened like raw wounds on their necks, fluttering in the air. They extended their claws.
Orpheon said, “Take these two.” He pointed to Vic and Gwen, then smiled wickedly as an idea occurred to him. “In fact, take them all. That one with the copper hair, Lyssandra, can understand merlons. The other two”—he looked dismissively at Tiaret and Sharif—“may provide some sport. I don’t think the flying piranhas have fed recently.”
Merlons grabbed the friends with their slimy hands. Vic gagged at the strong reek of decaying fish that clung to them. He fought back, desperate to get away, thinking of how he and his father had just been reunited. They couldn’t be separated again so soon.
Orpheon muttered some sort of incantation in the merlon language. His eyes glowed green. Crackling sparks flashed around him.
Suddenly remembering, Vic cried out, “Sharif! Use the summoning spell. Call your carpet.”
But the boy from Irrakesh did not hear Vic. A merlon had seized the prince by the hair and pushed his head underwater. Tiaret had never stopped fighting, even after her teaching staff was taken away. Vic thrashed, then slapped one of the merlons on the sensitive tympanic membranes that served as the aquatic creature’s ears. As the hissing merlon reared back, another came forward to grab Vic, extending claws, which dug into his arms.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the merlons pull Sharif’s head out of the water and rake their curved claws along the base of his throat, digging deep into the skin. The prince cried out. The aquatic warriors yanked Lyssandra’s head back. Gwen made a gurgling sound as the merlons also grabbed and slashed parallel lines in her throat.
Vic struggled against the pointed talons pressing into both sides at the base of his own throat. Through the searing pain that pierced his skin, he saw blood staining the calm water around them in the cove.
Then the powerful merlon abductors yanked all five of their captives under the water.