Chapter Sixty-Three

The Time for Rashness

Michael watched the Holorhi-Nahni turn away, leaving the panicking, confused boy in the knowledge that he’d never summoned Arcancy when bound.

In Common Tongue, the Chieftain’s daughter murmured, “Father…”

He looked up, bitterness still thick on his face.

“I was just... startled,” his daughter said fondly, causing him to frown. “You are our leader and we will follow you, whatever you decide.”

The Holorhi, who’d not been paying nearly enough attention, sighed sadly and stroked her cheek, responding fondly in Hoiise, “One day, you will bear this mantle. Perhaps then...”

Michael blindly groped the spear-shaft behind him, trying to find its end while the guards awkwardly moved around the princess and her father. He felt the cold, rusted point and pulled himself down, widening his wrists as much as he could. As the guards closed in, he several the seaweed cuffs against the spear-tip, doing his best to look blank-face.

The Legacy then realised the Holorhi-Nahni wasn’t looking his way so he’d have to resign to a verbal warning. “Eyes!” he shouted, raising both hands.

The guards leapt.

The Holorhi-Nahni shielded her face.

Michael through his palms out and light painted everyone else in the room.

As the guards and the Holorhi reeled and roared in pain, the Holorhi-Nahni grabbed Michael and rocketed out of the room, hand-in-hand.

They ripped down the portholes in each floor and the Holorhi-Nahni heard her father screaming in rage, “He’s bewitched my daughter! Forget his head, find him and cut off his-”

“What’s he saying?” Michael asked, trying to distract himself from the pain in his aching shoulder as he was torn through the water.

“You don’t want to know!” she said as they shot out the front door of the palace, back into open waters, leaving the Kavoe Farnean officials extremely intrigued about what had just happened upstairs.

Their rapid swimming slowed as they came outside and saw the dome of magic sealing every direction and two guards watching the entry-point they’d come through before.

The Holorhi-Nahni mumbled, “Act natural,” as they swum up from behind. “Excuse me, open the dome!” she called, trying to sound polite but authoritative.

The left guard, pink of scales with pale, white hair, the less meek of the two, muttered, “We’re under strict orders to keep it closed, Ma’am.”

The Holorhi-Nahni let her bubbly smile descend into darkness. A look she hadn’t even given Michael when she thought he’d tried to kill her father.

The right-most, and far more meek guard, looked pale enough for the both of them and stammered, “But you are the Holorhi-Nahni, so...”

Her face melted back into pleasantness as they opened a gate way, when the door of the palace exploded open behind them and the other five guards came thrashing out.

Michael held tight as the chieftainess grabbed him and they went tearing through the open gate, knocking the doormen away in the process so that the magic locked behind them and stopped the guards dead in their tracks.

The Holorhi-Nahni dragged Michael low across the town, darting behind small houses and into seaweed fields as he looked over his shoulder, watching an entire school of Merhoii guards gather above the palace, barking orders and waving hands.

“Did your father say where he was keeping my friends?” Michael asked as they dove down into a small trench.

“There’s only one place for those up for execution. The Cages.” She peaked over the ridge, nodding to the great, central pyramid in the heart of the city.

Michael’s grip on her arm went tight with panic. “Execution? He said they were to be questioned not taken to Dead Man’s Point!”

The Holorhi-Nahni looked him with hard eyes. “Interrogated. If my father’s torturers can’t get answers, they’ll get the chopping block. Get down!” She dragged Michael down into the trench as a group of guards tore overhead toward the pyramid.

Michael grabbed her shoulders and they zipped out of the trench and into the reeds lining the main path toward Dead Man’s Point. As vegetation whipped Michael’s head and shoulders, he found himself staring at the woman guiding him secretly to their destination.

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She slowed to a cautious stop a few blocks away from the enormous, shining black monument, as the group of guards approached the thin pillars upon which it sat.

A sobering fact begin to settle in Michael’s heart as he looked at her.

Michael squeezed her shoulder. “Holorhi-Nahni.”

She turned, anxiously wanting to watch the guards. “What?” she whispered sharply.

“Why are you doing this for me?”

The woman opened her mouth but didn’t speak. Her oval, bright eyes blinked uncertainly.

“You don’t know me. You don’t owe me anything,” he said, brushing a thin reed out of his face. “You’re throwing so much away for me...”

The dark-haired mermaid looked sincerely at him before noticing the guards moving on. She bit her answer and urged him, “Come on.”

“No, this is important. If you help me do this... there’s no going back,” Michael said, letting go of her shoulders before she could start moving.

The Mariniad looked at him for a long moment until she glanced down at her swishing tail. “We are a conservative people... but we do not lie.” The Holorhi-Nahni looked back up at him, grim-faced and pained with sadness. “Ever. And now I know why my father had locked himself away for so long. He’s been hiding since Nikereus first came. Ever since he tainted himself with falsehood.”

Michael frowned and nodded but he knew he was far from understanding.

“Come, we don’t have much time.” She pulled Michael’s hands onto her shoulders again and they took off through the low brush of the seabed.

As they drew closer to the pyramid’s base, Michael realised that the pillars which held up the entire monument also acted as prison bars, and that there was a crowd of figures floating anxiously in the dark on the other side of them.

Michael and the Holorhi-Nahni darted up to the sandstone columns and the archer felt his heart melt as he spotted a familiar swordsman, leaning up against the pillar.

“I guess this makes us even,” Michael said, smiling ear to ear as Oliver spun around at the sound of his voice.

“Michael Williams, have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” Oliver grabbed his hand through the gap between two pillars, kissing his knuckle.

Michael’s friends, old and new, all swam over in a fit of glee, shouting and cheering until the Holorhi-Nahni shushed them urgently, snapping, “Do you want to attract the guards?”

Michael relished the sight of their faces and quickly turned to his Sea Dweller companion. “Where’s the door to this place?”

She nodded to the platform, towering over them high on top of the black pyramid. “Up on the execution platform.”

Sarah rushed forward, urgently muttering, “We’ve searched this whole place. It’s the only way in.”

The princess nodded grimly, glancing anxiously as she was unable to see where the patrol had gone. “It’s a message to prisoners. You have to pass the chopping block to get locked away, and the only time you’ll get let out is when you’re getting put to death.”

Aroha strained back her short, floating mess of hair. “Lovely.”

Michael looked over the base of the pillars and noticed sprouts of shrubbery growing in the gaps. “Rose, could you use your Arcancy and maybe separate these pillars, till its wide enough to squeeze out?”

The mage shook her head, nodding to one, oddly long root of seaweed. “Tried that. The whole monument shook. I think it’s some kind of arcane balancing act, designed to crush anyone who tries to escape that way.”

Michael nodded bitterly and grabbed the Holorhi-Nahni’s arm and said, “Come on, let’s head up to the platform and see if there’s a way to unlock the door before the guards circle back. Did you guys manage to conceal any weapons?”

Carter swam past the others, pulling a small silver blade from the depths of his dark cloak, still tied across his shoulders. He handed it through the bars to Michael and said, “I’ve handed out my last five and Rose still has her wand. The rest of our kit is at the bottom whatever sea this is. Try not to need it.”

Michael took the blade and tucked it in his waistband as the princess took his hand and looked through the bars to the Legacy’s friends. Weary from their journey, they looked almost wild, but even unarmed and imprisoned, the Holorhi-Nahni had trouble keeping a smile from her face. They were the kinds of Draendicans she’d heard stories about.

She glanced at Michael, nodding his readiness, as his dark mismatched hair drifted before his steel eyes. “Mi- Paladin.”

“What?” he asked, somewhat taken aback by her slip.

The sea princess opened her mouth but when she said, “Let’s go,” he knew they weren’t the words she’d meant to say.

The two convicts went speeding up the side of the dark pyramid toward the small platform above, and it only truly occurred to Michael then how enormous the structure was. From the surface beneath the cliff-side where she found Michael, it had taken the Holorhi-Nahni ten minutes of swimming to reach the city. To reach the top of Dead Man’s Point, it took nearly thirty seconds all on its own.

They came to the lip of the platform and peaked over the top.

On the far edge of the stage sat a pair of stone stockades, one for the head and hands, and the other for what Michael assumed was the tail. In the centre of the platform was a dark, greenstone hatch door engraved with Merhoii runic patterns. Around the hatch three Sea Dweller guards floated, tightly gripping spears and poleaxes.

Michael and the Chieftain’s Daughter ducked back out of the sight.

The Paladin sat there for a moment as his companion tried to think, and he drew the knife from his waistband, feeling an anxious idea sprouting in his mind.

The Holorhi-Nahni went wide-eyed and sputtered, “I hope you’re planning on trying to bribe them with that dagger because that’s about all the good it will do.”

Michael scratched his head, glancing at the Chieftain’s Daughter and awkwardly muttered, “I have a plan.”

The Holorhi-Nahni was unable to hold back her grimace at the lack of confidence in his voice. She pinched the bridge of her nose in exhaustion and said, “If the rocks under the cliff-side were still real, this would have been such a different day....” She asked between gritted teeth, “What’s your plan?”

Michael chuckled faintly and gave one last glance out over the city. “I’m thinking a hostage situation.”

The Holorhi-Nahni looked dryly at him.

Michael tried not to smile, feeling that would not inspire confidence.

“I hope you’re a good liar.”

The Paladin pursed his lips, flipping the knife in a swirl through the water. “I know I shouldn’t be proud of this, but yes. Unless my mother happens to be here, but I fuckin’ doubt it.”