Chapter 17
Maren
“Get up,” a voice commanded, slicing through my awareness like a cold, sharp blade.
They should’ve ordered me to wake up first. As my body jolted into an upright position, my sluggish mind hadn’t caught up yet. My eyes remained closed. I lurched from the marble altar and plunged into the water surrounding it.
A bitter cold enclosed me. I floundered in the water, trying to get up but couldn’t find my footing. Panic zapped through me with paralyzing weakness. The water between my legs suddenly felt warmer, sliding along my inner thighs.
Someone grabbed me under my arms and pulled me out.
“Stand up. Open your eyes. Get your body under control,” Jearda’s scratchy voice said slowly and clearly.
With her words, my panic calmed a little, and some sense of reality returned. I became aware of my body. My muscles moved under my command. My mind was still reeling from fear and uncertainty, but I stood on my own two feet and opened my eyes.
Water sloshed around my waist. I panted through the residual grip of horror in my throat, catching my breath.
Dark figures surrounded me. A few dozen, maybe more.
Their black hoods were up, drawn low to conceal their faces.
The hems of their long, black cloaks floated in the water, snuffing out its blue glow.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve just peed myself,” I croaked, thrilled to be able to speak again. “You may want to take off your robes and rinse them out elsewhere.”
Jearda huffed and would’ve probably ordered me to shut up again, but the water around the altar suddenly bubbled and churned, diverting her attention.
A pale green hand emerged from the frothy water. Its skin was rotting with decay, exposing white bones on the knuckles. The long nails looked like claws. They screeched on the marble as the hand gripped the altar.
With a cry of horror, I staggered back. The floor unexpectedly ended under my feet, sending me into an underwater pool. One of the cloaked figures grabbed me by my arm and hauled me up to the surface again. All done in utter silence.
A face emerged next to the ghostly green hand, then the chest of a woman.
Her face and torso matched her hands—pale green skin, black sores of decaying flesh, and exposed white bones.
Her muddy green hair was plastered to her forehead, and her hollowed cheeks were pockmarked with barnacles.
She blinked, taking in the room with her dead black eyes.
One of her eyeballs suddenly fell out, and she let it dangle on a string of sinew from its socket.
“Oh my God...” air rushed out of me with a gasp of horror and disgust.
I scrambled away from the undead creature, but the impenetrable wall of cloaked figures behind me blocked my escape.
“He’s ready for you,” the zombie woman rasped, with a wet gurgling sound coming from her torn throat.
“It’s time,” Jearda uttered breathlessly, clasping her hands in anticipation.
The shrouded figures flanked me on each side. I darted my gaze around the room, searching for a break in the crowd. I’d run. Fuck it. I’d probably be caught before I even crossed the threshold, but I’d at least give it a try.
Strong hands gripped my arms firmly, taking away any hope for an escape.
“Let’s go,” the figure on my right said, and I recognized Dorelea’s voice.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
Now that Jearda gave me back control of my body, the question came out easily.
I expected Dorelea to order me to be quiet again.
But she replied from under the black hood that covered most of her face, “Poor thing. You were doomed from the moment you set foot in the royal palace. Sooner or later, the king would’ve murdered you anyway.
At least now, you have a chance to serve a higher purpose. ”
Maybe I was too desperate for compassion, but the note of pity in her voice emboldened me to grip her hand.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked. “What have I done?”
“Nothing.” She petted my shoulder almost sympathetically.
“I believe it wasn’t even your fault that the king grew fond of you.
He’s been so devastatingly lonely, he would’ve gotten attached to anyone brave or clueless enough to spend some time with him.
You’ve done nothing wrong, and there is nothing you could’ve done differently that would’ve spared you from your fate now. Let that be your consolation.”
“Then why are you punishing me? Let me go,” I pleaded.
“Oh, sweetie, it’s not a punishment,” she cooed gently before her voice hardened again, “There is no fault of yours in anything that has happened in Olathana. King Kye is the only one to blame for all his misfortunes and ours. But we can’t let you go. We need you now to help us right his wrongs.”
The zombie woman arched her back in a dive. As her head and shoulders disappeared in the water, a long black tail slinked over the surface next. The woman had no legs. She was a mermaid. A zombie mermaid. Undead and rotting.
My stomach roiled. I tried to cross my arms over it, but the sirens held my arms firmly.
Jearda dove in next.
The floor we all stood on wasn’t solid. There were openings in it to underwater pools below. Dorelea on my right and another cloaked siren on my left stepped into one of the pools, dragging me down with them.
I had no chance to protest. We went down as if laden with a load of bricks. Water rushed into my mouth, my nose, my eyes... I drew in a breath to scream but only filled my lungs with water too.
The glow of the pool faded in front of my eyes. The water grew darker the deeper we went. I gripped my throat, bulging my eyes out and expecting to pass out from the lack of air soon. I should pass out. How long can one survive with their lungs filled with seawater?
My body felt cold as ice. But my throat remained warm. And it pulsed, as if my heart had migrated up to my neck.
I managed to free my arm from Dorelea and grabbed my throat, but I couldn’t feel my skin under my fingers.
Something was in a way. Rows upon rows of small, hard spheres.
.. Numerous strings of pearls circled my neck like a wide, tight collar.
The pearls felt warm to the touch too, heating my skin and. ..keeping me alive somehow?
I drew in more water into my lungs, then released it as my chest constricted. In and out. In and out. I went through the motions of breathing, only instead of air, my lungs pumped water for me.
Kye had said that pearls held magic in Olathana. It must be the pearls around my neck that allowed me to breathe underwater.
My head was spinning. Darkness rushed up at us from below. Any light or shimmer from fish and plants were left far above us now.
The zombie mermaid swam ahead of us, diving deeper and deeper into the bottomless abyss of this magical ocean.
The Abyss...
They were taking me to the Abyss. What for?
“To right his wrongs,” Dorelea had said. But what did that mean?
Were they going to feed me to whatever nightmares dwelled in the darkness below?
I kicked my legs and moved my one free arm in a desperate attempt to swim away, but Dorelea seized my arm again, trapping me.
Her long, black hair floated around us like a shroud. Black shadows slithered in the dark water, circling closer and closer. Some remained shapeless. Others morphed into humanoid silhouettes with long, serpentine tails trailing behind them instead of legs.
More undead mermaids?
I gripped the cloaks of the sirens on each side of me, no longer trying to swim away. The sirens were the only living beings between me and the monsters lurking in the inky water.
But did the sirens bring me here to feed me to these underwater ghouls?
Horror spread through me anew. I closed my eyes, trying to rein the panic in.
I couldn’t die. Not like this. Not here...
Something brushed my leg, and I jerked, expelling a jet of water from my mouth in a silent scream.
Something long and dark undulated in front of my face.
A ribbon of seaweed?
A water snake?
The shape convulsed, sending a ripple of blue light along its length. Shiny, black orbs rolled under its dark, semi-translucent skin.
Then...a hundred eyelids opened at once.
I recoiled from them and thrashed, fighting the sirens’ grip on my arms. Holding me firmly in place, they bowed their heads to the bizarre creature hovering in the water in front of me.
It was shaped like a thick, bumpy tentacle, peppered with hundreds of open eyes, all of them staring at me.
I froze in terror under those dead, black stares. Random surges of blue glow exploded all along the eyed tentacle, illuminating its tip that curled into a question mark above our heads. The other end of it disappeared into the dark depth below our feet, making the tentacle appear endless.
The sirens straightened, and we continued to descend. I couldn’t look away from the tentacle that kept watching me. Its eyeballs blinked randomly, slowly rolling up and down its length. Sometimes, they would all group together. Other times, they would spread and even briefly disappear from view.
Then, the tentacle curved sharply. The very tip of it pointed straight at my face. The tip bloated. Its skin split open, and another eye blinked at me from inside.
I felt nauseous. My chest and stomach seemed to expand, as if my body was going to explode. The next moment, the opposite sensation hit me. The ocean pressed on me from all sides, threatening to implode me.
Horror racked me. I thrashed, kicking my feet and trying to shake the sirens’ hands off me, to break free from them and this nightmare.
The darkness around us thickened. It spread in wide, black streams like a squid inking the water. A hum buzzed in my brain. My entire body vibrated with it. I could see the sound reverberating through water, its ripples spreading in the darkness.
The hum was coming from the sirens, I realized. The concentric ripples spread out from them, meeting in the middle of the semi-circle that they had formed.