Revel (29 page)
The plateau of rock came into view and I surged over it. The top of one of my feet whacked against stone in my frenzied kick, and somewhere, dimly, I registered the pain. Maybe someone like Jax could have outmaneuvered this thing in a minute. But I was still a clumsy swimmer in comparison. And panic only made it worse.
Think
.
Stopping to try to use my voice was out of the question. I didn’t have any idea if that would work again, or how to control it.
I bolted into one of the smaller cave openings, hoping to find some secure place that the Icer wouldn’t fit through. All concerns about what was inside the caves flew out of my mind. I didn’t care. I’d take a faceful of moray eel any day over the monster behind me. Inside the mouth of the cave was a long, narrow chamber. Small breaks in its ceiling let tiny flecks of light through. I swam along this channel as fast as I could.
There was a surge of pressure behind me, and a faint darkening of the light. The Icer had followed me into the tunnel.
Now the space became a little narrower. I could reach out and pull myself along as I swam, both hands clutching at the
sides of the tunnel. Unfortunately, it was still wide enough for the Icer too. I could sense the thing behind me getting closer. The tunnel slanted down, going deeper, but there was no choice. I couldn’t turn around now.
Finally I came to a place where I had to squirm through a narrow opening. I found myself in a small, roughly round space, with no exit. A dead end. There was barely room to turn around and face the opening. The walls of stone scraped my skin. I pressed myself back as far as I could against the back of my little hole. Great.
Brilliant plan, Delia
.
I felt rather than saw the presence of the monster beyond the opening. It was too big. It couldn’t get in here, could it?
I leaned forward and tried screaming at it. “Die!”
Nothing happened. The Icer was moving, trying to fit its jaws into the opening. The stone must have blocked my voice. Or it wasn’t the magic word. Or it just wasn’t working anymore.
The Icer’s ribbonlike tentacle floated into the space. The glowing knob of tissue at its end lit the cramped black hole around me. I cringed back as it dangled there, inches from my face.
Now I couldn’t move anywhere and the full truth of my situation hit me: I was trapped in a cave underwater with no escape. I was going to die here. I was going to die in this small, dark place under the water.
The Icer was too big to pass through entirely, but it reached a long arm in and swiped at me, slicing my shin and
sending a plume of blood into the water. It sickened me that I could taste it.
The creature peered in, ravenous mouth open. Again the hideous hand came scrabbling toward my face. I couldn’t move back any farther. My body was balled up as small as I could make myself. Now it was just a matter of time. It was going to reach in and claw me to death. Slowly. Piece by piece it would get me.
I felt breathless and realized that my tightly coiled position was pressing my legs up too tight against my belly, making it hard to breathe. I straightened slightly, allowing water to rush over the gills. But the movement brought me within range. The Icer’s claw snagged my hair, yanking my head forward against a sharp stone. The stab of pain was so intense that for a moment it drove out the fear. My blood tinged the water again. Outside the tiny niche I sensed the Icer’s frenzy of excitement, of hunger.
It could taste me too.
It held on to my hair, pulling harder; the top of my head ground forward against the sloping roof of the crevice.
It was trying to drag me out.
Rage at this ugly creature, frustration that I was trapped here like a mouse in a hole, and the throbbing ache in my head all combined. I gripped my hair and yanked it from the clawed grip.
I needed to do something different, now.
I aimed my voice. Not at the small opening, but at the wall of stone in front of me.
“Break!” I screamed.
Nothing happened.
Panic flooded me. It didn’t work.
Why didn’t it work?
Desperately I tried to calm my mind. Tried to forget where I was. The thing that was trying to kill me. I gathered my breath and focused my mind on the image of the stone exploding.
“Break!”
The blast was deafening. The wall shot out and away as if I’d detonated a bomb. I clung to the back wall of my now-opened hiding place. Gradually I straightened, waving the floating dust from the water before me, and swam out into a rain of gravel. The Icer lay beneath a pile of rubble, its body mashed into pulp.
Okay, that works
.
Jax hurtled toward me through the muddied water and pulled me close. “Are you hurt?”
“Just scratched up a little,” I told him. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, and looked distracted as he gazed at the rubble piled around us. “We need to get out of here. I don’t know how many more there could be. We’ll take a different route back. Stay close to me.”
He wasn’t going to get any argument. My swimming wasn’t graceful or efficient anymore. My muscles screamed with fatigue and I was pushing as hard as I could to simply move.
After we’d been swimming for maybe ten minutes, Jax stopped abruptly. “That’s impossible,” he said, staring. “Look. There’s a break in the reef.”
I looked to the right. There was a huge gash through part of the reef there. It was as if some giant wrecking ball had smashed through, leaving a gaping hole about twenty feet wide.
“
This
is how the Icers got through,” said Jax. “But why hasn’t it been reported?”
“Maybe no one noticed it.”
“It’s the duty of the Glaukos to patrol this perimeter,” Jax said. I could hear the fierce anger in his mind as well as his concern for the safety of the island, of his clan.
He cared a lot more than he wanted anyone to know.
“We need to go back now,” he said. “The clan needs to be warned.”
W
e swam to the sea caves at the westernmost part of the island. I followed Jax through the winding tunnels and soon found myself in the same vast hall where I’d faced the Council members. Jax caught sight of a Glaukos and in a low voice gave the creature some orders.
“It shouldn’t be long,” he told me as I sank down to rest on a low step.
Soon Xarras appeared at the mouth of one of the tunnels and hurried toward us.
“Jax,” he said, raising his arms to embrace his son. “What’s so urgent that you need to meet me now? And in secret?”
“The island’s in danger,” Jax said in a low voice. “The Hundred Hands has been breached. That was how the Icer came through on the night of Revel. Delia and I were
attacked by five of them near the wreck in the Hollow less than an hour ago.”
“But how?” wondered Xarras aloud. “The reef is indestructible.”
“Apparently not,” said Jax. “The Glaukos need to be dispatched immediately to guard the break, and to repair it if they can.”
“Of course,” said Xarras, frowning in contemplation. “I’ll tell Lukus of this at once.” He glanced at me. “Ah,” he said with a courteous smile. “I have the pleasure once more, my dear. I hope you are well?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I understand that there was much excitement over your attendance at Revel. I heard the accounts from Mikos, at some length.” He gave Jax a conspiratorial smile. “A very intriguing tale, I must say.” His gaze settled on me once more, and I thought I saw a flicker of approval. “I think Mikos owes you an apology, my dear. But to be honest, I do not expect you will receive one.”
He turned to Jax. “Thank you for coming, Jax. I know it hasn’t been easy for you. Tonight you’ve done a service to the clan.” The two of them clasped arms. “It won’t be forgotten.”
The usual composure on Jax’s dark feature’s broke, and I could see how much those words touched him as a spark of pleasure lit his eyes. Then the momentary lapse was gone and he was in command again, nodding courteously to his father.
Xarras looked at me and added, “Take care of her, Jax. She’s one of us now.”
Jax led me through a curving tunnel.
“This isn’t the way we came.”
Jax looked at me with surprise. “Very good. It is a different path.”
“So where are we going now?” I asked as I followed him down narrow steps. I was exhausted and dirty and bloody. This had better be important.
“To see someone who may be able to help you,” said Jax. “His name is Kephalos. He’s an oracle. It’s possible he can tell you something about how to control your voice.”
“So I take it you don’t approve of the way I dealt with the Icer back there?” I asked archly.
“Oh, I approve,” Jax said with an amused curl of his lips. “It’s just that in the future a little more finesse may be required.”
“Kephalos is a fortune-teller?”
“Nothing so crass. An oracle doesn’t accept money for his visions. They’re considered gifts bestowed on him by the gods. And it’s dangerous to consult him unless you have a good reason.”
We walked farther in silence; then, “Here,” said Jax. He stopped before a small black opening in the wall. “I have to wait here. You must see him alone.”
“Oh,” I said, eyeing the entrance doubtfully. I didn’t like the idea of going in there all alone. “Really? Okay. What if he’s asleep?”
“The oracle doesn’t sleep,” Jax said impatiently. “Just don’t say anything to offend him. He’s touchy about his appearance.”
“Right.” I crept through the narrow hole, supporting myself with a hand on either side, gripping cool, wet stone. I came out into a dimly lit cave, the floor of which sloped down to a pool in the center.
“Hello?”
Only the drip of water answered, echoing through the chamber.
Then there was a splash and a faint sloshing sound.
I narrowed my eyes, trying to adjust to the dim green glow that came from the pool. There was something in the shadows. Gray tentacles unfurled under the surface of the water, and I felt a chill of revulsion as the rest of the thing crawled from behind a rock. A bald white head appeared. A man’s head. For a moment I couldn’t register what I was seeing.
The head floated toward me on top of the water. It was attached to the coiling body of an octopus. I reared back so fast I nearly lost my balance on the slick rocks.
It came closer, seeming to skim over the sand at the bottom of the shallow pool. “You’ve just been born.” Kephalos spoke the words with a trace of a lisp from beneath a crooked overbite of large teeth.
It took a moment for me to recover and decipher what it, or rather
he
, had said. Just born?
“No,” I said unsteadily, “I—I’m seventeen.”
The head lurched slightly, side to side, as the purplish-gray tentacles shifted. It moved closer. Kephalos’s bulbous eyes rolled up to regard me.
“I meant the Aitros in you. That was just brought to life, wasn’t it?”
I put a hand to my belly, where the gills felt like newly exposed skin. “Oh. Yes.”
“Why do you come here? I don’t like to be disturbed.” Kephalos peered at me expectantly.
Jax hadn’t exactly prepared me for this part. What was I supposed to ask?
“I want to know about being a siren,” I said. “If I’m meant to stay here on Trespass and what I’m supposed to do.”
“Those are three vague and useless questions,” Kephalos snapped. Green blotches of color suffused his fleshy arms as they unfurled toward me, matching the mottled colors of the rocks they came in contact with. I was fascinated by the chameleon changes of color and pattern that made Kephalos blend in with his surroundings. At least the octopus part. His head seemed to stay the same pasty white.
“Then I don’t know the right question to ask,” I said, watching the undulating tentacles.
“Good,” remarked Kephalos grudgingly. “The first step in acquiring wisdom is to acknowledge that you lack it.
Actually
, the first step is having an adequate brainpan. And, as you can see, I’ve been blessed with a capacious cranium.” He eyed my head critically. “As for you. Well. We’ll do the best we can.”
There was a pause. It could have definitely been called an awkward pause, considering the fact that I was waiting to hear what an octopus-man that I’d never seen before was going to tell me about my own life. And he’d just insulted me.