The Sea Witch’s Apprentice: Book 1 of the Ink-Crossed Duology
Copyright 2024 Marisa R. Bowman
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Acknowledgments
To The Plotfather™ for the plot, the plan, and the scheme.
And
To Specialist 34; expert in arms, legs, and other weaponry.
Prologue Part 1
HIS EXCELLENCY, HIGH KING TITUS OF ATLANTIS
The icy water in the throne room dropped a few more degrees in the wake of the king’s irritation, but, swimming before him, the captain of the guard had the good sense not to shiver. High King Titus had dismissed the courtiers, advisors, and even the servants from the expansive hall. The court would gossip about this irregularity, but the good opinion of his people no longer mattered. Captain Kael of the king’s retainer waited at attention until the last flurries of fins and curious onlookers drained from the room, and its great pearl doors closed with their usual well-oiled snnnick!
He and Captain Kael were alone. The king’s frown hardened. Kael wore a uniform of armored scales, and a professionally blank stare. It was not the expression of a merman with good news for his ruler. Rather, it was the sort of expression that promised a need for punishments worse than kelp-stringing or chum duty. Worser still, the captain was alone. Evidently, none of his compatriots had deigned to accompany this report.
Titus wrestled between the burning in his lungs, and an irrational urge to delay news of more failure. However, the luxury of time was no longer his. He swallowed the cough that threatened to eat through his throat the wrong way, and lifted a finger to grant his captain the right to speak.
To his credit, Kael wasted no time in delivering the sorry report.
“The Erwin Caves were empty apart from a few stragglers, my king,” Kael stated; fins rigidly at his side. Jaw clenched. “None of the men were able to read the prophecies on the cave walls, either. Seemed to think they were children’s drawings. Or oddly-shaped lichen.”
“Convenient,” the king growled bitterly.
“We surmised as much, as well, Majesty,” Kael agreed, managing not to twitch under the king’s glare. “Unfortunately, some of our men tended to agree with the captives. The prophecies of Erwin do require a more… discerning eye.”
“The drawings emit pulsing light. That didn’t tip anyone off?”
Kael gave the slightest shake of his head. His receding, peppery hair waving about his head with the effort.
“Bioluminescence has become so widespread in the kingdom since the issuing of witch licenses, that a few glowing drawings hardly raise eyebrows anymore. It is harder to impress when magic can be sold for a few pearls at market, Majesty,” Kael offered, almost apologetically. “The fugitives living near the caves had some debate over the meaning of the artwork. Some thought it was a lewd depiction of a sunfish, while others insisted it was a badly written poem. Neither group was particularly attached to those ideas, however.”
Titus grunted. Still, he had to be sure.
“What about the depiction of the lance-wielder? Has it changed? Did no one notice it?”
“Ah—” Captain Kael was visibly uncomfortable, his gray tail twitching beneath him. “—that would be where the ‘lewd’ part of the assumption came from, I think. Apparently, a lance-wielder is a rare enough subject for art that the depiction was… otherwise interpreted.”
The king sighed, and immediately regretted it. Deep breaths always irritated his cough, and once again, it threatened to claw its way out sideways.
“And the fugitives in the cave. Unpapered?” The king asked tightly.
“All unpapered,” the captain confirmed.
For the briefest instant, Titus held his breath. It was possible, then, that they’d found a magic-user among the last fugitives. Perhaps there was even one with enough royal blood to withstand holding a god weapon—one who could fulfill the Erwin prophecies. He could only assume—
“—But when examined, none had the magical fortitude to withstand the tests. Our search for the prophesied lance-wielder continues,” Kael said, killing that last spark of hope.
The High King nodded. The last corners of his kingdom had been searched, and the merman prophesied to wield the inkthral lance had not been found. With the realization of what that meant, the burning in his gills and lungs flared. A single cough escaped his throat, and the sound of it was ghastly. Even in the underwater throne room, it managed to sound wet.
“And the Silent Market?” King Titus bit out, gritting his teeth. Anything to avoid losing face in front of one of his elite.
If he could find the Silent Market, there would be more mages to test. More fugitives. More possibilities—if he could only find it. But, being a market of magic—lots of magic—it managed to evade his men, himself, and even the currents that the bident of the High Throne summoned. The Silent Market was so named because it was just that—a whole town able to elude the high king and the god weapon he wielded.
“It remains as elusive to our men as the location of the Kingdom of the Depths,” Kael confirmed, giving no indicator that he’d noticed his king’s discomfort.
A stiff silence fell over the empty throne room. One by one, Titus’ plans were dissolving before his eyes. He needed more time… time!
“If I may, your majesty,” oblivious to the king’s desperation, the Captain captain braced himself, rightly expecting to be thrown out of the throne room at any moment. His words were steady as he offered a risky criticism to his king:
“Majesty. The test subjects rarely survive testing, and many of the citizens in the outer rings are fond of the unpapered. If anything, the practice has only discouraged the migration of mages into our borders. The princesses as well, have voiced concern,” Captain Kael swallowed hard, the action forcing water through his lungs. It was dangerous to even hint to the king of the involvement of the royal princesses in internal affairs. “We’ve looked in every corner of the seas, Majesty. It is possible that the wielder…does not exist.”
Had Titus been younger, he might have raged at the Captain, given him a good kelp-stringing, or given him a day of de-barnacling the palace in the places that stuck above the surface. However, Captain Kael had voiced the very thing that so heavily weighed on Titus’ mind.
“Very well,” said Titus, a feeling of dread weighing his fins nearly down to the silt. It was time to prepare for the eventuality that the wielder, and the lance, itself, might never be found.
“Yes, your Majesty. I am aware that I overstep; however, I—”
“Call a halt to the search.”
Captain Kael couldn’t have looked more surprised than Titus had informed him that he’d just sprouted a second tail. He stumbled over his next few words, mouth agape.
“I beg your pardon, Majesty? Call off the search?”
“Open a proclamation. Offer untried papers to anyone with information about the wielder’s whereabouts. Offer papers to the entire reef. Rewards. Anything.”
“What about containment? The other kingdoms will assume we are searching for another heir,” Kael asked, mouth agape. “And the sea witches. With papers, anyone could practice magic—”
“License them.”
The order was curt and short, and Kael recognized it for what it was. Fists returning to his sides, the captain snapped back to attention, the movement waving his peppery hair through the water into his eyes.
“Yes, Majesty.”
“And hire mages into my retainer, under your own supervision.” Titus added. “Qualified ones.”
“Y-yes, majesty.”
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Titus waited for Kael to protest—to tell him the obvious: that there had never been successful cases of mages working directly for the crown since the Cecaelian war. That the number of mages in the kingdom—nay, in the ocean, had dwindled severely since the Purges by Titus’ own orders. There would be uproar. There would be scandal on both sides—the citizenry, and those unpapered migrants whose families he, High King of Atlantis, had robbed. The captain, however, seemed to feel that he had pushed his luck with the king enough for one meeting.
King Titus let his hand fall back to the seat of the throne. Though the order carried risk, perhaps the presence of more magic wielders under palace control would help to regulate what was coming. The tests were never meant to last so long. He gave Kael his final order.
“Send for Advisor Marlin.”
There was dismissal in every syllable, and Kael would have had to be separated from his senses to mistake it. Titus raised the bident an inch, and a current opened the towering entryway doors enough for one merman to pass through. The captain gave a curt nod, and with a powerful flick of his tail, crossed the length of the throne room, and fled through the doors.
It is time. Time to tell someone what’s coming—what I’ve done, he determined, as the doors closed once again.
Finally alone, the king released his clenched jaw. Putting his free hand on his throat, as though that would somehow help, Titus let the cough have its way.
His tail fins shook with the effort. He sputtered and wheezed through every fiery breath he took. It was as though he was trying to breathe above water. Searing pain flared from his lungs and into his throat as he sputtered and wheezed, and it didn’t stop. It could have gone on forever had his energy not waned enough that his chest finally stopped heaving. Salt burned his eyes as he slumped back in the hard shell throne. He would have given his scales for a pillow, but pillows meant comfort. Comfort meant weakness.
“Alone at last, are we? Poor little king. Does it hurt to die?”
The woman’s voice was derisive, and unconcerned. It belonged to no one, echoing from every shadow in the room from the ones behind each coral pillar to the shade cast by the very throne where he sat. It was a voice that slunk merrily into his bones, chilling and stabbing at his nerves.
“Eris,” the king greeted, hating that his own words came out in a rasp. “Come to gloat?”
“I never kick a man when he’s down,” Eris lied.
“Come out and speak face to face, Eris. Or shall I have a conversation with the shadow under my seat cushion instead.”
“Giving orders? To me?” said the shadow under his seat somewhat huffily.
Titus bit down another cough, waiting.
A watery sigh danced its way across the room, taking its time, until at last, Eris came out.
A shadow cast by one of the coral pillars scraped itself up from the silt floor. It floated like silt around the pearly base, and wisped around, forming a set of dark eyes and the hem of a sinewy skirt as Eris stepped out from behind the pillar on long, dark, human legs.
“You’re out of time, little king. Your debts have come due,” Eris purred.
Eris could have been beautiful—assuming one looked at her from a distance with both eyes closed. Her features were sharp and spindly, all pale skin, and angles, and sneers. Her form coalesced before him, flickering as though she had great difficulty staying in one place. Her hair billowed below her waist, and high above her head, like a cloak caught in a current. Glittering black eyes missed no detail of her surroundings. It was as though she could see his every movement, discomfort, and weakness.
She paced closer, instead of swimming or floating, and there was something unnerving about the movement, as though the elements themselves didn’t have quite as much pull on her as they did on everyone else. Her expressions mimicked the same emotions that Titus was used to seeing on the other merfolk, with the caveat that they did not transition by means of muscle and intention. Instead, they flitted from one mood to the next like smoke in the water, no part of her ever truly ‘there.’
It was with one of these flitty, ‘other’ sort of motions that Eris extended a hand to him, stepping through the water as though on invisible glass steps toward his resting perch on the throne.
“I’ve come to collect,” she said, her voice at last belonging to just one place.
“What, no hello, Eris?” Titus deflected. “It’s been what? Months? Years? Shall I call for tea?”
Eris stopped in her tracks. “Jokes… How very mortal. So little time left, and still wasting it, Titus.”
“Humor gives time meaning—not that you would understand, Eris.”
She smiled, a ghastly movement that revealed unnaturally flat, polished teeth. “To the contrary. I find your predicament highly amusing. Did I hear correctly, Titus? You’ve been trying to find the wielder of the Inkthral lance—a weapon not seen in these waters for over a hundred of your mortal years?”
“A king can dream,” Titus said, swallowing hard. There would be time for pain later. The coughing fit had abated some of the burning in his lungs, though his voice still had a hard grate to it when he spoke.
“And dream, you have,” said Eris. She leaned conspiratorially on an unseen wall, the picture of graceful indolence. “Have you forgotten the price of those dreams? Your war was won on the backs of others. Now, you pay the price.”
“Tea?” the king tried again weakly, but his attempt was rewarded with a scowl that darkened Eris’ glare.
“You are dying Titus, and when you die, all that precious royal blood in your veins will run out. I am not stupid enough to be blind to your attempts to renege—unless you are planning on leaving the dregs of our bargain to your daughters. I did think even you were so deliciously selfish.”
Titus gripped the cracked bident in his hand, and the god-weapon gleamed under his touch, ready and eager to be wielded. “I have plenty of years left, Eris. Leave me another decade of peace, and you’ll have your due.”
“Look at you, mortal king!” Eris’ hair flared behind her, rendering her anger all the larger. “Have you grown so old you can no longer see your own reflection? The depths can only say that this palace has enough surfaces! You do not have years. You have days! I have shown sufferance thus far—”
“Sufferance? That’s not at all what I recall—”
“Enough! Fulfill your end of the deal, Titus. Open the blood seal, and let Cetus free from his prison. Do it now, or upon your deathbed, I’ll have your sweet children do it for you. Your preference. A drop of blood from you, or I carve every ounce of it I can from their little fins.”
“My children are no longer mine,” Titus said calmly. “Only I can fulfill our bargain, and I am not yet ready to release a leviathan on my kingdom.”
Eris hissed, but her rage evaporated as quickly as the cold smile returned.
“It does not matter whether you are ready. You think I haven’t noticed your unfruitful search? Your daughters' marriages? True, the first several of them are beyond my reach, but you still have three daughters left. Three precious, unwed morsels. Unprotected the moment you leave them.”
Titus did not wince, or beg, or cower. He was High King of all the seas and oceans—one who had paid a terrible price for the tenuous peace those waters enjoyed. However; he was also a father. And, as the burning in his chest, throat, and scales reminded him, he was indeed dying. So, the king held the god-weapon in his hand more firmly, and clenched his jaw tighter, knowing that no one else was to blame for the fate of his kingdom than himself. But he was not quite yet out of time, and there was still one thing left to try. He only needed enough time to let it come to fruition. Time. The one thing he didn’t have.
His attention sharpened when Eris whirled around, as though sensing his dissension. In a flurry of dark water, she was suddenly floating right before his face, no longer pretending to walk through the water. He could have reached out and touched her, if he thought she was really there.
“Blood for blood, Titus!” she demanded, invoking his name for the first time. “Decades you’ve sat on this blood-soaked throne, forgetting who put you there, and at what cost. You. Weak mortal king. Living on borrowed time. Claiming false glory. Bringing children into this world, as though you thought you could create a world for them to live in. I am tired of your squirming. And I am tired of this draining, tedious wait.”
“You cannot force my hand, Eris. I did not sign this deal with you,” said Titus with a regality he did not feel. “We both know you can’t stay in this palace for long. Leave me be until the contract truly has come due.”
Eris' scowl interchanged with her usual smile, as though she could not decide which one to wear.
“Just so. I cannot stay,” she sighed at last. “But do you think I would not leave…contingencies? It is rather poetic, how well you’ve come to trust the traitors in your own walls.”
“No one in my palace is desperate enough to make a deal with a devil,” Titus replied. Of that, at least, he was sure.
“No one?” Eris breathed—or at least, something close to it. Leaning back, she returned to her smooth pacing stalk, a movement that took her a more comfortable distance away from his person. “Then you have nothing to be concerned about—until you are on your deathbed, that is.”
Just then, the sound of horns met his ears, announcing the approach of a visitor to the throne room.
Marlin, he thought, with no small amount of relief. It’s about time. I can tell someone. Someone has to know.
“It seems you have a guest, and I do hate to feel redundant,” Eris hummed.
Without warning or farewell, Eris left. It was as though all the room’s shadows had been released at once, each one flying back into its original place as she dissolved before his eyes. The room was darker, but the darkness was a natural, peaceful one. With her departure, a tense vibration left the water in the room, leaving him with the first sense of calm he’d had since Captain Kael had arrived. However, Titus’ relief was short-lived.
When the doors opened again, it was not his trusted advisor, who crossed the threshold of the throne room.
“King Ezra of the Cecaelia!” announced the blowfish outside the doors, before scuttling away from King Ezra’s tentacle span as he swooped into the room.
The cecaelian king was scant decades younger than Titus, though years had touched him just as heavily. His black tentacles were scarred and battleworn from the Cecaelian war. If he noticed the way the throne room drained of any warmth when the king caught sight of him, he gave no notice. Instead, he gave an ironic bow, his black pupils never leaving Titus’ own. As he bent, his scant clothing clinked delicately. A collection of chains and pendants partly covered his brazenly bare torso, doing little to conceal his battle scars. Ezra never hid the evidence of his participation in the rebellion wars for the throne of Atlantis. He wore them proudly, despite the snarls that statement drew from both of his peoples.
“Rise—” Titus said—or at least, he started to say it.
The sound choked in his throat, and this time, his struggle had nothing to do with that infernal cough. One of the many pendants and jewels that decorated Ezra’s torso had arrested his attention so thoroughly, that he almost didn’t hear the soft, “Excellency,” that the lesser king uttered in greeting.
The pendant was no pendant at all, but a conglomerate of swirling shadows just like the ones that had over the throne room—just like Eris. They were already reaching for him, seeping into his mind, and filling his eyes and ears like tar, before he could move, before he could even cry out.
Marlin, he wanted to scream. Marlin! I have to tell him. I have to tell someone…what’s coming!
But, one by one, his senses, his faculties, were draining away from him. It was as though he’d been shoved into a cell somewhere in the back of his own mind. Titus was forced to watch as he, himself, beckoned Ezra forward to a place in his advisor’s seat.
“I have a proposition for you, Excellency, that I dearly hope you will consider…” he saw Ezra’s mouth form the words before his vision clouded completely, and his hands were no longer his to control.
“Proposition? Of course….of course,” were the last things he heard, spoken in his own voice.