John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

I said, "But Victor is telling us the wrong thing to do! And who says Victor's in charge anyway? Colin's dad warned us that…"

Victor said in a maddeningly calm voice, "I'd be willing to abide by the outcome of a vote. Fight or flee?"

Vanity said, "Flee!" at the same time Quentin said, "Fight. If Victor can stop the ring…"

Vanity shrieked, "He's listening! He knows what you are planning to do! He's right here! He's here!"

Quentin said, puzzled, "We should be able to hear his wooden leg on the boards."

Victor, still in a voice of exasperating calmness, as if we had all the time in the world, said, "It's a tie. I guess we need Colin after all…"

I took a few steps toward the boat, saying, "Vanity, if we run for the boat, the boys will have to come."

There was a note of panic in my voice, a shrill sound I did not like hearing.

Victor said patiently, "Of course, by that logic, if Quentin and I were to stand our ground, you would have to get out of the boat and come back. All that will do is split us into two bite-size pieces."

Vanity said to me in a quivering voice, "I'm not moving! He could be standing between me and the boat."

Her wide green eyes rolled this way and that, seeing nothing but empty docks.

Victor said, "Does that mean you change your vote… ?" To me, he said, "Get in the circle and put your back to us. We have a majority."

1

I put my hand on the ladder to get down into the mo-torboat. The others were standing in a triangle, their backs to each other, about ten feet away.

I stopped. There was something wrong, all wrong.

Quentin said in a loud, clear voice, "Mr. Glum! Are you waiting for something? Why haven't you done anything yet… ?"

He wasn't after them.

He was after me.

He was waiting for me to get farther away from them.

I turned and ran back toward the group. I had taken two steps when the boards underneath the feet of Victor, Vanity, and Quentin exploded upward with a noise that stunned my ears.

Surrounded by flying splinters and snapping boards, a translucent column of water, a hooded cloak made of glass rose up in the midst of the explosion, with droplets like shining gems flying in each direction from it.

Not a cloak of glass. It was shivering seawater, sluicing in rivulets from an unseen form that was thrusting up through the docks. These boards were at least an inch thick, hardened by years, but they shattered like balsa before irresistible strength.

Victor did not have time to turn around. A blow tore the back of his coat and sent him stumbling over the edge of the pier. Into the waters he went. I saw the hilt of a knife sticking in the back of his coat. He rotated his head as he fell, and he opened his third eye. A blue spark flashed across the pier, and struck.

Then the gray waters closed over Victor's calm face, and he was gone. He sank like a stone. He had still been wearing the chain-mail jerkin, pounds upon pounds of metal.

The blue spark struck home. Grendel Glum flickered and became visible. His face was painted, and he had a necklace of teeth rattling at his throat. A baggy gray shirt and baggy pants hung in sopping folds on his body. One pants leg had been tied off around the top of his peg leg. In one hand he held the axe-handle he had just torn from the grip of little Quentin.

Quentin had no time to cast spells or do anything but try to raise his arms. Glum clubbed him with the axe-handle. There was a sickening noise, and Quentin fell to the boards, bleeding from his face.

I tried to move into the fourth dimension. Nothing happened. I saw nothing. Even my hypersphere, my light the ghost said would not fail, was not shining.

Grendel tossed the axe-handle away, put one huge arm around Vanity's waist and, with one huge thrust of his single leg, came flying in a low tackle across the pier toward me.

I could not move. I was paralyzed with fear. Grendel didn't want me to move.

He caught me around the legs. He, Vanity, and I hung in the air for a moment as the world toppled end over end. The shockingly cold waters of the midwinter sea struck us with the force of a falling wall. It was like being stunned with a club; I could not feel my hands or feet.

I had no control. Grendel had knocked the wind out of me with his tackle. Icy salt water flooded my lungs before I could stop myself.

Swirling green-brown gloom was around us. I saw the dark pillars from the pier, reaching down to further darkness. Down we went.

Vanity was struggling and writhing, and silver bubbles came from her lips, and then stopped. Maybe Grendel had squeezed the air out of her by tightening his arm. My hands, of their own accord, clawed and struck at Gren-del's face and arms. I tried to dig my fingers into his eyes; I kicked between his legs.

My blows were slow and weak. Or landed wrong. Or Grendel did not desire any blows to hurt him.

The bottom was much, much farther down than I would have believed possible. My vision was turning red around the edges. Was it possible to die so quickly?

There was rubbish here, rusted barrel-hoops, a broken anchor, coral, bottles, a net weighted with balls of stone.

I saw a blue light. Victor slid into view, swift and quiet as a submarine, and the third eye in his head was sweeping through the murk of the bottom like a searchlight. He was not moving his arms or legs, and his coat was streaming back, revealing the chain-mail jerkin beneath. The knife was still hanging through the back of the fabric of his jacket, but whether the coat of rings had turned the blade or not, I could not see.

When the blue light swept over us, Grendel held Vanity overhead, where Victor could clearly see her.

Then, with a huge thrust of his arm, Grendel shoved her down into the mud and sand of the bottom, and threw the net over her. Her struggles grew feebler, and then stopped.

Grendel kicked off the bottom and soared through the murk. Like Mestor, like Victor, he had some ability to propel himself through the water by thought alone. I do not know whether his method was faster or slower than Victor's. Victor dived down to haul the net off Vanity.

I lost sight of Victor as he was carrying Vanity quickly to the surface, behind us and growing farther behind, at about the same time I lost consciousness.

2.

Dimly, I sensed a sensation of warmth, of motion. My breathing was slow, heavy, and full. Someone was carrying me. Someone who loved me. Was it Victor… ?

I came more awake. I drew a deep breath. No, not a breath. Something heavier.

I opened my eyes and sat up. My movements were dream-slow.

I was lying in the shell of a giant clam, on a soft surface made of some sort of sea moss or red-gold seaweed.

It was beautiful to the eye, but repellent to the touch, cold and rubbery. The gold weeds were half-weightless, and they floated and stirred as I sat up.

I was in a palace with a floor of gold. The ceiling was ribbed like the skeleton of a whale. Between the ribs were shingles of mother-of-pearl, nacre, and strands of hammered gold. The ribs themselves were crusted with pearl. It was more beautiful than a jewelry box, finer than a photo of a Faberge egg I once saw. And yet it was the belly of a whale. I had been swallowed.

The walls were crusts of living coral, which had been sculpted with fantastic scenes of mermaids and storms, whales and dolphins and strange leviathans. But the carvings had a crude, rough look to them, and I realized that the coral out of which the walls were carved was still alive, rough and knobbed, so that, each month, a little bit of the carvings must be blotted out and grown over.

Even as I looked, blushes like blood appeared and disappeared across the intricately carven surface, as thousands of tiny red worms stuck their heads out into the floating dirt, or yanked them back in.