*
Deep within the darkness of one of Cardonea Tower’s halls Maanta first was attracted to the Zharista’s beauty. Even traumatized and delusional from the shock of her father’s death, Anna’s deep emerald eyes carried a kind of knowledge and truth which caught him in a blush. Her pale blue skin reminded him of the sky in the world above, which he had seen once upon daring to venture close towards the ocean’s surface. He could love her, Maanta realized in that moment, but what she needed now was a friend.
“Ghost,” she whispered at him, shutting herself off from reality. “I saw you the night before the strangers came, traveling with the dark skinned man, dark skin just like the leader of the strangers. You are an apparition, come to save my family, but now have found there’s only me.”
“Zharista, I…” Maanta began.
“The Zharista is my mother, Ghost; I am still merely the daughter of the Zhar.”
“I am not a ghost. I am a boy, a Meridian boy who somehow woke up inside this tower which seems to be wrapped in chaos. One of your family’s guards described to me how your family was murdered. He led me to you and told me you were alive.”
“If you’re not an apparition then how did you find me amongst this labyrinth of halls?”
It hasn’t been easy, he thought to himself.
“I saw you open your door as I swam through your window to warn you about the massacre. When I called to you, you wouldn’t listen and I’ve been following you through the darkness, bellowing out your name, ever since.”
Anna pursed her lips at him and whispered, “Ghost.”
Well, if she thinks I’m a ghost, he thought, then so be it. We’ve got to get out of here before the foreigners come through again and discover us.
“Maanta’s my name, not Ghost, but no matter who you think I am we need to leave this tower and find safety.”
“Why didn’t you appear in time to save my family, Ghost? We’re all dead, you know.”
There isn’t time for this now, Maanta thought as his webbed hand clasped on her arm’s soft skin. We have to escape.
To where, he didn’t know, but the muscles in his limbs flexed with adrenaline to fuel him. At first Anna’s weight was a strain on his body, but after a few whale’s lengths she began to swim of her own accord. Her eyes stared blankly ahead, as if she were in a trance just mimicking his movements.
Maanta found the darkness and gore numbing as he rushed toward Anna’s window and the end of it all, or toward clean waters at least. His skin pricked, while the hollow echo of nothing but their own movements resonated in his ears. It was too silent. Such a tremendous tragedy was occurring and yet the waters stood calm. And then a soft yet distant sound, something like the cooling of molten lava, crept into his ears.
“Sssssssss,” the noise came from the end of the corridor behind them as they neared Anna’s room.
Maanta swirled to look back on a slim, tailfinned boy. His burning red eyes illuminated the dark. Both Maanta and Anna paused while hovering, as if trapped.
“More fun for me.” Venge grinned. He had been searching the tower for anyone still living.
In the time it takes for a breath to elapse his tail swooshed in the waters and covered the spans between them. Ripples rolled over on themselves behind him as he thrust a spear toward Maanta.
Maanta dodged it, feeling the cold, gray tip barely catch in his shoulder while zipping past.
He’s fast, Maanta realized, quicker than any Meridian.
Maanta turned to flee, grasping Anna’s arm and barreling toward her room, but looming above them was the fang-toothed Venge. He dove and clasped his fist upon Anna’s throat. His cracking lips stretched along his teeth.
Swirling and then thrusting his legs into Venge, Maanta retaliated. Venge dove for Maanta and grabbed the back of his skull, plunging his face toward the bottom of the cragged stone hall.
And then in the back of Maanta’s sight, something dark swept in from the window, thrashing Venge’s side, somersaulting his body sideways against a flowing kelp tapestry depicting the anointing of the first Zhar. Venge let loose Maanta’s hair as he was hit.
As Maanta turned towards the scene above him a large noir skinned man floated, fists ready, glaring with dark hatred at the fang-toothed Venge.
“Sift, isn’t it?” the fanged one questioned while licking his own blood from his lips. “How did you escape?”
“He let me out.” The runes across Sift’s body illuminated as he answered.
“Who?” The red in Venge’s eyes curled.
“Someone whose soul has become dark since then. That is all.” Sift slowly drifted forward. “Which one are you?”
“I am Venge, the son of the dark one. You know the one I speak of. He wants you, you and all these weak creatures to enslave.” A white fire burned in the center of the boy’s eyes.
“You, your father and your entire race will meet your ends and face Gelu one day, boy. I pray I will have a hand in it.” Sift swept swiftly toward Venge but the boy whipped his tailfin once and was gone, lost in the darkness.
“Sssssssss…” The boy hissed while swimming away.
Maanta realized that pursuing Venge wasn’t an option for Sift, to do so would be to leave him and Anna alone again and who knew what else might find them in this darkness.
“Are you harmed?” Sift questioned.
“My neck is sore, but aside from that all seems to be well. How did you find me?”
“Your dolphin scented you out and led me to you. She waits beyond the window.”
Just outside Anna’s window Maanta could barely make out Archa’s smooth, bobbing head, her eyes looking for him over her sleek nose, waiting patiently for him to join her.
It seemed to Maanta as if he had a question for every moment which had passed since he had last seen Sift. How did he get to Cardonea Tower? What had happened to him to put him in the potions room? Who was Venge? How did Sift know the boy’s father? Did the chaos in Meridia have anything to do with why Sift had come here? There were so many more questions.
Maanta looked into Sift’s heavy eyes. His posture shrank as a look of weariness overcame him.
“Who is your female companion?” Sift asked. He swam before her and glanced in to her blank stare. “She looks as if her mind is in another place.”
“Angel,” Anna whispered, jutting her head forward as she did so, waving crimson curly locks to and fro. Her soft blue fingertips lifted to Sift’s cheeks, “of death.”
“At least you’re an angel,” Maanta remarked sarcastically as Sift turned to him in wonderment. “She thinks I’m a ghost who came to save her family. She watched us as we arrived the other night and I guess you’re the angel of death. She’s delusional.”
“Clearly. Whose family is she of?”
“Zhar Nicholea’s, and they’re all dead except her, slaughtered at the hands of their own guards as the foreigners possessed their minds. She’s Zharista now, but she won’t believe it.”
“And she is disillusioned because of this?”
“That and because she found out about it when discovering the Zhar’s decapitated head knocking on her door.”
“It is such a shame that ones as young as you and her should witness such harsh realities. And there is no time to rest, to work this madness from her. We must escape Meridia’s misfortune and meet with Amaranth along the outskirts of Orion’s Birth.”
Maanta gusted to the waters before Sift and Anna now. “How do you know of Amaranth? What have you been hiding from me?”
“I haven’t hidden anything. I thought there would be more time before Sangfoul’s warriors arrived to explain what was coming. When we arrived I sought out Amaranth and spoke with him of the coming foreigners and what they may bring. One of my people once knew him and told me to confide in him first. That is why I came, to warn your people, but we underestimated the dark ones’ speed.”
“Who are they, Sift?”
“They are the race who enslave my people
, young Maanta. Evanshade, the one who led them here, seared my back with the marking of the eye himself.”
“And how did I get to Cardonea Tower?”
“There is no time. I will tell you all you wish to know as we flee this place, but Meridia is dying and the dark ones are searching for others to bring death to.”
Anna’s eyes grew large. “Death! Take me to the waters of the un-living, Angel, where I might find my family.”
Maanta could feel irritation building inside himself, lost in this madness with a beautiful girl who wouldn’t believe the truth. “He’s not an angel of death and I’m not a ghost!” He rolled his eyes over at Sift. “We’ll leave along the darkened crevices along the bottom of the West Shale Wall. I used to sneak away that way once night fell, as a youth before my mother passed. I can ride Archa and you Lola but how will we bring Anna?”
“Ghost,” Anna whispered. “You are not needed. You have failed my family and I must travel with Death now.”
Maanta smiled. “I think I’ll come along, thanks.”
Sift looked to Maanta as he spoke in a low voice, his eyes reminding the boy not to show rudeness to the Zharista, as he might regret it once she woke from her spell. “She can be braced in front of me while riding Lola. Lola has strength enough to carry both.”
The waters beyond Anna’s window seemed to breathe a frosty chill over the tower as the three passed through it, embarking forth on their journey. Archa’s smooth head and back slid beneath Maanta as he led them. She dove swiftly down the tower towards the coral flora below. Its rough, colorful foliage wove about the tower as they met it and dove amongst its labyrinth of crevices.
Lola’s delicate, shimmering scales whipped along the tower’s outer wall as she met Sift who pulled himself upon her, embracing Anna closely in front of him, and nudged the massive fish downward after Maanta.
As Sift joined him, Maanta gazed through a webbing of holes in the orange coral above his eyes’ sight. Cardonea Tower’s slim spindle of glowing silvery white rose above toward the ocean’s surface. I’ve always thought of this as the iris of a great eye watching and protecting the waters close by, Maanta thought. Now it resembles more a great worm fleeing for the births above.
Tailfinned creatures swept over the tower’s shimmering radiance, dark silhouettes across the night-lights above. Some stabbed at silhouettes of Meridians with things unseen. Others swept in and out of the tower’s entrances, pillaging its valuables. Silhouettes of Meridians also hovered as nothing but slain, faceless blotches, speckling the waters above.
“They swept in.” Sift turned to him while the party wove amongst the coral and kelp weavings toward the dark hollow crevices of the West Shale Wall. “As darkness fell, a tsunami of tailfinned men swept over the East and West Shale Walls, pillaging home coves and bringing death to your people. I told Amaranth of Evanshade’s arrival and so he warned those Meridians who trusted him, fleeing with them before the brutalities, but so many were lost.”
“AaaaaHoooo,” Maanta cupped his mouth close to Archa’s ear hole telling her to scoop within the West Shale Wall’s crevices from the vibrant coral.
Three dark walls surrounded them as they looked toward the tower they fled. Barely visible stone whipped by in the darkness.
“What will we do?” Emptiness and vulnerability swelled within Maanta. He had never felt a strong attachment to Meridia or his fellow Meridians after his mother had died. But now that his world appeared to be slipping beyond his grasp, Maanta found a love for things he had been distancing himself from. He had always reveled in nature, sounds, scents and his own daydreams but overlooked the city’s workings themselves. He began missing the burnt scent of the Meridian water heaters as they fed kelp to the molten pit along the floor beneath his cove home. He thought of the market place with its hovering food and craft stands, the Meridians laughing, talking or sometimes grumbling while bumping into one another as they shopped. Who would feed the small fish who begged for scraps now that the Meridians were leaving?
Sixteen years had passed in his lifetime, barely enough to experience all he should experience here, Maanta thought.
“We will teach your people how to fight and defend themselves, and together both our peoples shall retake your realm,” Sift spoke. “Do not fear, we will retake Meridia and come to free my people they have enslaved there.”
But what of the things they’ve taken from us for all time? Maanta thought. What of Anna’s family? What of our way of life? Will the things that made us happy ever be here again? Will we even experience the same sorrows we once did?
While sweeping closer toward Meridia’s outskirts, Maanta noticed a young girl about his age pressing her slim back along the wall’s darkness. Her eyes glared out towards the city’s center with an alertness flickering in them.
“Young one!” Sift bellowed to her. “We’re leaving the city to meet others. Come with us and you will be rescued from these tortures befalling Meridia.”
Maanta recognized her then. “Illala,” he spoke. “It’s Maanta from your classes at Meridian Hearth School. Come with us. They’re destroying Meridia. There’s nothing left for us here.”
“I’ll come if you’ll have me, but first I must tell you something.”
“There can’t be anything that would make us leave you behind. Hurry, we must escape before being seen.”
“I was sleeping when the scale tailed creatures dove through the holes in my family’s cove home walls,” Illala said. “I woke to the wails of my mother in the other room as they tortured her. They choked my brother and father in the waters outside our cove, where I discovered them while escaping, blood spewing from their lips.
“Their leader came to the room where I had been resting after he killed my father. His dark skin shone as his deep eyes looked upon me. I was horrified, but as he watched me I could see that he was attracted to me, and more than that, that he was wrestling with something in his own mind. I backed away in fear, but his look was one of confusion, despair. I was vulnerable, but I did not see evil in his eyes. He spared me then, telling his men that I was dead.
“I fear him and what he has done to my family. Yet somehow I was attracted to him. I still am. How can this man who rescued me be the same who attacks Meridia?
“I escaped once they left and have been watching him and his people with fear and wonderment ever since.”
“How could you be attracted to a man who slaughtered your family and is destroying our home?” Maanta’s stomach churned. Did he want someone with any feeling but hatred for the tailfinned men with him? Could someone like her possibly turn on them someday and bring Evanshade to them? A look in Sift’s eyes told Maanta that Sift knew what he was thinking.
Anna sat like a doll, wordless and staring forward, in front of Sift on Lola’s back.
Sift spoke to Illala. “There is something in Evanshade’s eyes which brings the emotions of trust and love. I don’t know why he has spared you but don’t mistake him as anything but an evil man. Do not scorn yourself for feeling longing for him. He has entranced many with his stare. It does not matter how you feel. If you wish, you are welcome with us.”
“Thank you for your understanding. What was your name, sir?” Illala asked.
“Sift, Miss, a pleasure to meet you.”
“I’ll join you.” A high-pitched whistle leapt through Illala’s lips as a small fish swam from coral weavings nearby. It nudged the girl’s fingertips playfully. “And Lisaly shall carry me. I must confess though, part of why I’m agreeing to leave is because I see there will be safeness with your group and yet you seem to have much you could tell me of the beings of Evanshade’s race.”
“I have much to share with you and all Meridians, and I will answer any question you have,” Sift spoke. “We must flee now, though. The tailfinned ones will find and be upon us if we linger in Meridia.”
A boom careened through the waters as shards of stone flicked from the shale wall opposite them where the intruders blas
ted through its storage chambers. Startled by the sudden noise, Archa swept forward toward the city’s outskirts.
“That settles it.” Maanta smiled and looked back towards his companions following swiftly in pursuit. He wove his arm as if daring them to catch up. Hopefully Sift’s right to trust her, he thought. To leave someone I’ve known behind when she needed us would lead to a dark descent of the mind, but bringing her with us could prove a decision defeating the purpose of our escape.
Archa, Lisaly and Lola hugged tightly to the wall as they swept toward Meridia’s ominous city border, their riders clinging close upon their backs. The cool waters rushing past played and swiveled upon Maanta’s webbed fingertips reminding him of days when he’d drift through the city with Archa, off venturing toward the unknown.
Here’s an adventure I never thought we would experience together, Archa, he thought. How bizarre that so many of our adventures were to escape Meridia and now we embark on one to hopefully someday retake this place.
Sheens of light rippled along the pale skinned boy sweeping away from Meridia’s Eye, Cardonea Tower and the East and West Shale Walls. As he sped toward Orion’s Birth to reunite with his people, the boy didn’t turn to see his home and the destruction befalling it.
I’ll think of it the way it was before the tailfinned beings came, he thought. And our people will return to reclaim this land and bring it to the way it once was.
The company swept onward and at the tail of them all a girl, Illala, looked back not upon Meridia but desiring a man whose eyes were Evanshade’s.
*
Two crimson eyes glared at them from a dark area in the kelp and coral woven flora, silently following.
11
A Companion Lost
Waters far outside Meridia