Chapter Sixty-One
Kavoe Farnea
After looking over the endlessly cityscape of mage light and polished sea stone, the Merhoii woman guided Michael by the hand down into the city, pointing out various beautiful or historical monuments, from statues of great, spear-wielding Holorhis in the town’s square, to the Garden of the Tide, a flourishing, underwater orchard which changed coloured every time the sea’s current altered itself.
The Sea Dweller took him down a main thoroughfare, paved with razor-sharp coral. Michael nearly asked why such dangerous ground would be used in the road when it occurred to him they didn’t need to touch it.
As they moved, Michael noticed other Mariniads going through the motions of their day, paying them very little notice at all as they zipped into their homes or darted down the street.
They came over a rise, and out ahead of them appeared the most breath-taking structure in the city by a clear mark.
It was an enormous pyramid of black rock, smooth as sea-glass, with a platform on top and small pillars holding up the entire structure from its base. From afar, its dark stone made it difficult to see, but now being up close, it towered above the city like a guardian.
Michael couldn’t believe his eyes. “That’s Dead Man’s Point.”
The green-skinned lady swirled her tail excitedly as she watched him piece her city together. “We call it the Selir’s Peak, but yes.”
“Which means those are the Staadi Spires!” Michael said, looking to the tall, twisting towers scattered throughout the city, piercing up and out of the metropolitan light, into the dark tides above.
The Holorhi-Nahni smiled as they continued on their way, nodding to the sapphire and lapis towers he was enamoured with. “What have you been told?”
“My mother told me stories about this place. About how Tanis the Tinker came to this city and how he thought they were lazily constructed and got sentenced to death for it.”
Michael looked up at the unending pillars of sapphire and couldn’t believe such a thought had ever been had. “Supposedly he was the reason that the platform on Dead Man’s Point was built, because he was insulted by the prospect of being executed by a rusty spear in the town’s square.”
Everyone knew about Tanis the Tinker. He was a discoverer with Olympae Windbringer, and an inventor alongside Amelia Steelthought. He was one of those people who was famous among artists as well as astronomers. He was with Talis Windbringer in the first days of the empire. He was a rebel when Emperor Eriscus became corrupt. And when the madness of grief took Talis’ mind, it was said that the Tinker battled his old friend to the death on the steps of the emperor’s palace.
The Holorhi-Nahni nodded. “It was long before my time. But he was the first Legacy invited to our city, and unfortunately also the last guest we had for some time.”
“Legacy?”
She nodded softly and guided them away from the from street, down into a darker section of the sea-city. “Yes. We don’t have guests, anymore,” she added sadly.
Michael blinked, disheartened. “Because of Tanis?”
The Holorhi-Nahni shook her head. “No. Because of Nikereus.”
Michael went still. For the space of that beautiful moment he’d almost forgotten what was at stake. About all the people waiting on him back at Fort Guardian and all the unrest to come. He said nothing as he was towed through the twisting streets, which unlike the imperial roads, took no sharp bends and breaks, simply flowing back and forward.
It occurred to him, Jack ought to know about their current status and Michael dug the Kosadi stone out of his pocket. Its light flickered weakly and he frowned, not realising he’d missed a message. Admittedly it’d been a long day.
The message read:
Our scouts have told us that Nikereus’ forces are on their way but there’s no sign of your party. Report as soon as safe.
Jack
Michael had no idea where his scribing pen was and reached for an arrow to
use its point, only to remember he didn’t have it when he was pulled out of the water. He sighed and tried to scratch off the old message on the stone’s surface with his fingernail but the gem merely flickered unevenly.
“Come on…”
“Oh, that won’t work here,” the Holorhi-Nahni said. “Too much salt in the water.”
“Salt interferes with magic?” Michael cursed internally, hoping Jack hadn’t given up them just yet. “How?”
“Salt is a biproduct of some old Gargan war-curses. It still carries some anti-magic properties.”
Michael sighed and put his Kosadi away. “Would it be bad if I’ve been eating it with every meal my entire life?”
The Merhoii woman shrugged, though still upbeat. “Probably.”
They zipped down several streets and made more turns and twists than Michael could remember. Many houses weren’t even attached to the seabed and instead chained to it by lengths of braided vegetation. According to the Holorhi-Nahni, they used pockets of air to suspend them from the ground. Michael saw young Sea Dweller children playing on the anchor-ropes, using them to keep others from tagging them in a game of chase. Their hair was short and fair, and their scales were closer to green than dark blue. They squealed, trying to avoid their pursuing friends when an elder Merhoii darted down from the attached house and sternly scolded them.
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Michael didn’t recognise the words, only the tone, as he asked, “What’s the name of your language? Or does everyone here speak Common?”
The Holorhi-Nahni seemed amused that he’d called his language Common and said, “The Merhoii all speak Hoiise. However, we have knowledge scrolls which help us learn other languages. Actually very few Merhoii know land-tongues.”
They moved up a street of stone hovels and then brought Michael around a corner to see the third largest structure in Kavoe Farnea yet. It was an enormous obsidian palace grown straight from the ground. Pillars of white stone arched over the top of the building, one from the north, the other from the east, criss-crossing in the middle. Knitted between the two pale archways was a thin sheen of clear energy, almost invisible to the untrained eye.
In front of the pillar on their side of the palace, five Merhoii guards floated cautiously towards them, armed with long, spiral-tipped spears. The warriors all had small intricacies about them, from the colour of their long, dark hair, and the chiselled nature of their jawlines to the swirling inscriptions on their stone breastplates.
Michael wondered how on Draendica they even managed to move let alone fight in that armour, and simply decided he wasn’t going to find out.
The shortest guard of the five floated forward. Unlike the others, she was bare-chested, armoured only with stone bracers on her forearms. She addressed the Holorhi-Nahni and didn’t so much as look at Michael, speaking quickly and quietly in Hoiise. Her eyes were damn near black and made Michael’s skin crawl.
He understood nothing that was being said, doing his best to interpret the body language, but both the guard and the Holorhi-Nahni were stiff and unemphatic.
The guard cast an offhand gesture to the central pyramid and the Holorhi-Nahni’s face become still with disbelief. Michael’s guide then muttered a single sentence in Hoiise and the guard sighed. She moved back to her position and placed a hand high on the enchanted dome. The sphere of spellwork suddenly dammed up at her hand like a clogged waterfall, creating a doorway for them to pass through.
The Holorhi-Nahni ushered Michael inside.
“Do they know where my friends are?” Michael asked, sensing some tension between her and the palace guards as the spell closed behind them.
“No, apparently, they’ve been instructed not to say, but they implied you should be forced to wait in the Cages for him,” she said, bitterly.
Michael suddenly felt the chill in the water and glanced back at the head guard, watching him as he was escorted toward the doors. “The Cages?”
“It’s our city prison... But I said you are not an enemy and do not belong there, and besides, I think my father will want to speak to you in his hold,” the Holorhi-Nahni said, not sounding particularly excited about it.
She pushed through a single stone door on the face of the obsidian building and it swung back on its hinges, letting a great deal of warm, yellow light out onto the palace foyer.
Michael felt it upon his skin as he was brought inside, and quickly he was amongst a crowded room, full of Merhoii officials. In the corners of the room, flames were suspended in pockets of air, casting their swirling light through the ever-moving water. The room had several thin, stone desks positioned at chest height for the Mariniads, with plenty of empty space beneath for their tails.
“Who are they?”
“Law-makers. My father has been re-drafting some outdated legal practices,” she said, anxiously looking among them, before glancing high above. “I’d hoped he’d be down here, but he hasn’t come out of his chambers in a while.”
Michael glanced up to see that there were floors above, each with a porthole to swim through if you needed to arise or descend through them. “What does Holorhi mean?”
“Chieftain might be the closest word.”
The Holorhi-Nahni got Michael to take hold of her shoulders and together they swam up to the top floor of the building, coming into an open room with a single dark obsidian door. High in the shoulders of the building, it was quiet, and the busy chatter down below fell away.
Michael made a quiet note of the fact that it was the only door inside the palace.
The Holorhi-Nahni swam forward and placed her hand on the door-knocked. She tapped it once and the soft sound flowed through the volcanic glass. She drifted back from it, waiting patiently.
Michael fiddled with his thumbs before his face turned bright red with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. This is terrible… my name’s Michael, by the way. What’s yours?”
If Michael thought he was embarrassed, it was nothing compared to her. The Holorhi-Nahni blushed from her natural sapphire skin-tone to a complexion brighter than a cloudless sky. She covered her mouth in a fit of genuine shock, as if he’d openly stated that he would like to have sex on her cheiftain’s doorstep. She shook her head but hid a sliver of a smile behind her hands.
Michael sputtered in confusion as he asked, “What did I say?”
The Holorhi-Nahni blushed and looked deeply into his eyes, before drifting toward him and touching his chin sweetly. “We do not exchange our names. Only family may know our names. It is not...proper? No. Rather, it is quite intimate. I am more used to Striders so it’s okay,” she said kindly, though still grinning. “However, when you say it as flippantly as you have, it was the verbal equivalent of pulling down those.”
She pointed to his trousers, drifting in the water.
Michael gaped openly and couldn’t even remotely believe how embarrassed he was. He decided to press on, certain he couldn’t make a bigger arse of himself, and said, “Well, the cats out of the bag, my name is Michael. Of course, I’ll call you Holorhi-Nahni, because I don’t want you to feel like... you know... you’re...” he gestured vaguely to her lower-half before realising what he was doing and shoving his hands in his pockets.
The Chieftain’s Daughter smothered her own face in a tapestry of guilty giggling when a deep boom echoed from the doors behind her.
The woman’s smile faded a touch as she said, “For the love of the Gargan, don’t call yourself...” she pursed her lips and looked around for anyone nearby, “Michael,” she whispered, breaking out in a wide smile again, “while you’re with him. He is very traditional.”
Michael stared at her in shock. “You aren’t coming?”
The Merhoii woman shook her head, nervously folding her arms. “You’ll be fine, just make sure you keep those on.” She nodded to his pants again, smiling. “I’ll be right out here.”
“What do we call each other?”
“He is Holorhi. Not Chieftain. He hates Common Tongue. And you are a Legacy... Wait, are you from a stronghold?” she asked quickly, hearing another boom rattle through the water.
“Fort Guardian,” he said quietly, feeling odd about proclaiming it. “I’m a Paladin.”
She brought him close to the doorway and then looked him over, grimacing slightly at his state of dress before shrugging. “Introduce yourself by your titles, then. Speak only when he asks things of you. Good luck, I hope you find your friends... Paladin.”
Michael smiled back, grateful it was her who found him and not some ill-tempered sea-guard. He took a deep breath, giving him the strange realisation of being underwater once more as he turned and placed his hand on the door.
“Paladin!” she called to him, bringing his attention one last time. “I told you I felt your Arcancy before. Do not use it in there. He, like I, am of the Shanii, but unlike me, he has been accustomed to darkness for some time, and it will be received poorly. Be gentle with him.”
“Of course.” He twisted the cold, obsidian handle and drew the heavy door open, wondering how exactly the Common Tongue word for Created had become Monster, when so many of them were just like her. It made him wonder what they called people like him.