Stephen Hunt - From the Deep of the Dark

‘This stands against all the blessed forms,’ the commodore protested, close enough to sound loud and clear over the jeering assembly. ‘It’s old Blacky who should be fighting you first.’

The clan leader shook his head, ‘It was you that sought admittance, silver-beard, not I that offered it. And I say your surface dwelling fancy piece shall fight me first.’ He glanced meaningfully towards Charlotte, then back at the commodore. ‘You shall know loss before I meet you in the arena.’

‘Ah, Vane. I’ve known loss since I left the clan. I lost the woman who would have been my wife and seen my own daughter perish. I’ve lost friends by the dozen and my mortal pride by the pound as I’ve scurried and run from my enemies. But this lass is not my blood, there is no need for you to involve her in our vendetta.’

‘Then you will not mind greatly when I slice her apart in front of you before tossing her carcass down into the darkness.’

‘The forms do not require that this be a death match,’ said Tera, the clan’s wise woman bobbing behind the chieftain.

‘Nor do they forbid it!’ He beckoned to Maeva and the old woman came forward bearing a case embedded with polished crab shells. Opening it, she revealed two short spears topped by jagged blades of diamond.

‘No rotor-spears in this trial,’ Vane said to Charlotte. ‘You must be close enough to look into my eyes when you come at me. To seek admittance to the clan you must understand us, know your blood and ours.’

No rotor-spears, but Charlotte had something else. She touched her diving suit below her neck, the Eye of Fate nestled reassuringly beneath the thick canvas. Will the amulet work underwater, beneath the suit? If I can throw him off for a second, paralyse him, then maybe I can live through this after all?

‘I’ve known more than a few bastards in my time,’ said Charlotte. ‘I don’t need to be close enough to you, honey, to smell your stink.’

He laughed. ‘A little spirit from you at last. I may hope for a show after all.’

They moved through a gap in the weapons and inside the semicircle of spears.

Vane traced a line in front of the rotor-spears. ‘Stay inside this space during the trial of admittance. Pass no further than fifty feet above the seabed. Flee our circle before the trial ends and we will slaughter you.’

The commodore moved in to disconnect their voice line, whispering over the private line as he did. ‘Vane will toy with you first, lass. He wants to draw the wicked game out to make me squirm and please the clan. Before he finishes you, he’ll swim behind and sever your rebreather’s air hose. Wait for that moment and jab behind. Go for his neck. His scales are weakest there, for flexibility. Until then, just play the damsel in distress.’

Play? This is one act I won’t have to study for. ‘All right.’ Charlotte was trying to fight down the rising feeling of panic, not helped by the cold currents from the trench playing across her diving suit. As cold as hell, a voice inside her whispered. Somehow, she knew that this was the reason they were fighting here. The nomads believed that the trench was the opening to the underworld.

Someone in the ring of surrounding seanore — it might have been Tera — held a crystal aloft on the end of a staff, triggering a short sunburst from the gem. Vane didn’t need any further urging; the chieftain launched himself above her head, short powerful thrusts of his legs powering him through the water. It was all Charlotte could do to spin around trying to fix his continually shifting position. If the clan leader had been minded to, he could have torn the spine of her suit open on the way past. Bastard. He’s playing with me. The roar of the crowd transmitted to her speaker box diminished to a distant surf as she raised the short glittering head of her spear against Vane — but the nomad wasn’t where she thought he would be. Where?

‘Over here,’ hissed Vane, a shadow moving off her side. ‘Has the silver-beard not trained you better than this? Can’t you even swim, surface dweller?’

She contorted around and jabbed out, but the chieftain was moving too fast, a sinuous twisting shape beating an undulating passage through the waves as though he was a merman.

‘What would you do among the seanore, what good would you be?’ he laughed. ‘I would not trust you to clean the seaweed off our nets.’

Vane darted in and stabbed her in the right thigh, a quick piercing pain burning her muscles. So fast. She yelled in anger and tried to thrust back, but he was already gone, an underwater whiplash retreating. The water around her leg was misting with blood, her blood. I don’t have that much to spare to begin with. At this rate she wasn’t going to last until Vane came at her from behind to sever her rebreather’s air pipes. Charlotte willed the Eye of Fate into life, but instead of the tug of power that usually filled her when the jewel leaked its hypnotic radiation, her head flared with an aching light. A panicked breath as she mistook this new spinning lance of pain for the ground falling away under her feet.

‘Foolish girl,’ something whispered. ‘Duelling with a lowly nomad of the depths.’ The words were coming out of Charlotte’s lips, but not at the bidding of her mind!

Not my voice! That’s ‘Elizica. I told you, girl-child, you walk in my footsteps.’

Vane slashed at Charlotte’s arm with the jagged gem-bladed shaft, but she had already turned and kicked herself away. A slight, spare movement, but the inch of distance between Charlotte and the spear might as well have been a mile. The clan leader hissed in frustration as he realized she had avoided his blow.

‘And now, my footsteps walk in you,’ whispered Elizica.

‘What are you babbling about, surface dweller?’ snarled Vane.

‘That a clan chief should be more careful who he chooses to fight.’

The gem nestled between Charlotte’s breasts weighed down as heavy as a block of lead, absorbing all of her mass, the rest of her left so light, buoyant and quicksilver fast. The jewel’s energies were not entering Vane, casting a glamour over him. They were entering Charlotte, binding her, changing her. What is this?

‘The Eye of Fate has had many owners over the ages. Even I was not the first of them, although I had a hand in refashioning the eye’s original purpose. I wore it once, my soul imprinted across its angles when I walked where you walked,’ said Elizica.

Charlotte had worn the Eye of Fate for so long, how had she failed to see? All these years, had she been using the amulet or had the jewel been using her? Preparing Charlotte until the shock of her confrontation in the pie shop reawakened the gem’s true purpose.

As Charlotte spoke a dead queen’s words, her left hand fiddled with the controls on the chest-mounted speaker box, her right turning the spear, tracing a deadly pattern through the water. Slowly, the constant roar of the crowd died away to be replaced by a different sound… a low-pitched whistling rising and falling. The modulation of the box was changing with the sinuous movement of Vane circling Charlotte, the clan leader trying to unsettle her into dizziness. You’ve changed the range and frequency of the box. I can track him!

‘That’s all sound is underwater… sonar.’

‘The sounds of your death scream!’ cried Vane, arrowing in with his spear to impale Charlotte. She bent herself into a ball, before unfolding on the charging clan leader’s flank, cutting out with her spear’s blade like a sword. Vane connected with its lethal edge along his ribs, an explosion of blood clouding above the seabed.

‘You bleed red blood, gill-neck, just the same as me. Why is that, I wonder?’

Vane moaned, clutching his side and no doubt re-evaluating his options now that Charlotte was proving to be an opponent worthy of the challenge.