A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2 Read online

  This was important, since Katya’s form of water-magic, though not nearly as powerful as her Sorceress-sister’s and virtually identical to it in such things as “calling water” or forcing water creatures to obey her at need, did one thing that none of the rest could do.

  She could walk on the Drylands without precautions or a second thought. That was the gift that touch of Siren’s blood gave to her. Beneath the waves, she breathed the water, while above it, she breathed the air. Transitions were effortless and instantaneous.

  That, combined with her appearance—tiny, white-blond, like an exquisite and fragile doll—made her the ideal secret agent for the Sea King in the Drylands as well as within his own Court.

  He had been the first to suggest such a thing, when she’d brought some of her uncannily accurate observations to him when she was only nine, though he had not proposed anything of the sort at the time. “Keep watching, my cunning little vixen,” he had said. “Keep watching and come to me and we will talk about what you have seen.” She had nodded, pleased that she had pleased him. On her thirteenth birthday, he had told her what she was actually doing. On her sixteenth, he asked if she wanted to continue. On her seventeenth, he’d had sent her to the Drylands for the first time. No one else had known what she was doing. Not even her mother. She had returned with the information that wreckers were taking ships and blaming the Sea King. With that, her father had stopped a war before it started.

  Now she had passed the last hurdle. Now that they both knew that she could go anywhere, any time, the King would be free to send her anywhere he needed her.

  “Well this should be interesting for you,” the Sea King said, nodding with satisfaction. “The seabirds tell me that something dreadful is arising on the island Kingdom of Nippon.”

  Katya felt her eyebrows rising, as she looked into her father’s handsome face. “I have never been to Nippon.” This was definitely promising! She tried to recall what she knew about that Kingdom. Nothing really. It was a chain of many small islands and one very large one; she could not really think of anything else. This island Kingdom was as far from the Palace as it was possible to be and still be touching their borders.

  “Nor I, actually. I know only what is in the library. But if the seabirds are noticing something bad, it is likely to be very bad indeed.” He grimaced. “Since normally all one ever hears out of a seabird is ‘Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!’ this does not bode well. I tend to leave Nippon alone, as they are very touchy, but—”

  “They are an island and touch the Sea on all sides, and anything arising there will have to cross the Sea to go elsewhere.” Katya nodded. “Lord King my father, I will visit the library to acquaint myself with all that we have, and then I will be on my way.”

  His look of pride filled her with confidence, even though this was the first time he had set her a task in a place where neither of them had any real previous experience. If he believed in her, and believed she was ready—then she was ready! “I depend upon your eyes and ears and cleverness, my daughter. I know you will not fail me, nor your Kingdom.”

  He returned to his counting-house, and she swam down to the repository of knowledge they all referred to as a “library” although it hadn’t a single book in it. It couldn’t have real books, of course; paper would rapidly disintegrate here. All the magical books that Tasha read were especially created just for her, the letters incised into paper-thin metal pages, the bindings all of metal-covered wood. But to preserve a library full of real books would mean the casting of many spells to protect them, more to allow them to be handled and read. Again, the question of the delicate balance of magics inside the protective shield around the Palace arose, and the answer was the same as always. It was not worth the risk.

  But the “library” had been here forever. It had been here since there had been a Sea King in this Kingdom. The magic around the Palace had been put there when it had already been in place for centuries. It was very likely, in fact, that the Palace had been erected here in the first place primarily because the library was already here.

  She swam through a coral garden, the most popular garden surrounding the Palace, full of secluded, blue-lit grottos, great staghorn branches of black and red corals surrounding soft pockets of sand, sea fans providing endless places for children or adults to play hide-and-seek. But in the center of the coral garden was her goal, hidden within a sea cave, and illuminated by the glow of a set of strange, luminescent corals she had never seen anywhere else.

  She swam inside, waited for her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light, then approached the library.

  In the center of the cave was a slab of stone; something translucent and white. She thought it might be quartz, but no one knew for sure, because no one wanted to upset the magic here, and it would probably take magic to find out. It was precisely cut into the shape of a triangle. By whom? No one knew.

  On the top of the stone lay a shell.

  Not an ordinary shell, mind. In the shape of a conch shell, this one was made of the same translucent white stuff as the table. It must have been carved, although every detail was precisely identical to a real conch, including a few little irregularities and places where it looked as if barnacles had tried to attach.

  This, in fact, was the library.

  And unlike a real library, it was not portable. You could not move the stone slab; it was somehow rooted to the rock beneath it. You could not take the shell, either. The moment you left the grotto, it would vanish from your hand and reappear back on top of the slab. Whatever magic had created it also appeared to protect it. You could smash both shell and slab with hammers, and both would heal themselves within moments.

  She picked the shell up. “I need to know as much as possible about the Kingdom of Nippon,” she said carefully. Then she drifted up onto the white stone triangle and settled down on it. When she was comfortable, she put the shell to her ear and closed her eyes.

  At first, she heard only what you would hear up on the Drylands if you put a shell to your ear; something like the sound of the sea. It was like the sound of the sea, although it was not the actual sound of the sea of course; you could not fool someone from the Sea Kingdoms into thinking it was. But under that sound came a soft murmuring, and she listened deeply to that murmur, allowing it to lull her, as the voice became clearer and clearer. She never exactly went to sleep; this was more like a state of trance, though that was something she never achieved except when listening to the library. For a very, very long time she remained this way. Somehow her arm never became fatigued, nor her legs cramped from sitting in one position for so very long without moving.

  She literally could not tell how long it was that she sat there. The grotto was a timeless place, and there was no light leaking in from the outside.

  It was dark when she emerged from the sea cave, with everything the collective scholars of this Sea Kingdom knew about Nippon stowed away in her mind. Alas that it was not a great deal. She knew nothing, for example, of what the people wore, though she did know what they looked like. They were small, but not blond; though another aspect of the magic she got from the Sirens—the ability to look like anyone she cared to—would come into play here, she would not know how to dress. She would have to rely on The Tradition to help her. Tricky, that. It would do so only if the story needed her intervention, or if her story needed its intervention. Still. It had helped her before, and it would likely do so again, and it was always worth trying.

  Her eyes were drawn inexorably to her home. Now that it was night, the Palace glowed against the dark water like a giant lantern, all pale pink, and if possible, looking even more like a creation out of a dream. The lights from within glowed through the coral walls; except when the Palace settled down to sleep, no room was ever left unlit, so the effect was never spoiled by dark patches. Even then, there were always small lights left burning, so that there was always a faint glow to the place. Down in the gardens, the night fish had come out; luminescent, they sported patterns or lu
res of glowing green or pale blue along their flanks. Some of the little squid and octopods that lived in the garden also glowed. Some of the patterns moved, or flashed on and off. Some of the anemones glowed as well. The glowing Palace was surrounded by a garden full of tiny, moving lights. And on the surface above and just a little below it, the glow-drift gleamed, thin scarves of pale light that were really made up of millions and millions of tiny sea creatures almost too small to be seen. This served as stars for the Sea Kingdoms, though no one who had ever seen the actual stars ever found the glow-drift as satisfying.

  Armed with her information, and already wearing her fish-scale armor, Katya was ready to go.

  Now, it was a curious thing with her father; he hated goodbyes. He liked the illusion that if he turned a corner, he just might come across the person that he knew very well was somewhere far, far away. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that as a young child, most of the people he had actually said goodbye to had never returned. That had been a turbulent time, when war raged between this Kingdom and the Drylanders of the south, and she could hardly fault her father for having such a reaction.

  And although the rest of the family was well aware of how she served King and Kingdom, as were his advisers and other special agents, he had made it very clear that the family was not to know when and where she had gone when she took on a task for him. It could be dangerous for her, for even as cautious as they were, it was possible for something to fall in conversation where it could be overheard. As for the Court—well, since more than a few of those tasks she’d been set when she was younger had been about uncovering the true motives of one Court member or another…it was not wise to inform them, either.

  As a matter of principle, she allowed herself to trust no one in the Court. Not even when her father trusted them.

  So she never said goodbye to anyone. Ever. She just went.

  That was what she did now; she swam to the stables to find herself a ride.

  Stables was a misnomer, really. It was really an enclosure, with walls of net strung between pylons formed of old ship masts, where various small whales and dolphins who were visiting the Palace could stay. The net kept them from drifting off when they dozed, and mullet was served to the visitors several times a day. That made it a good spot for them to relax and hang about; some to gossip with each other, some to get fed without effort, some just because they were willing to lend a fluke now and again to some task like Katya’s. Normally Katya would select a dolphin, porpoise, or a pilot whale to carry her where she needed to go, but this time, the journey would be a long one, and she needed strength, speed, and stamina. With the smaller cetaceans, you could have any combination of two, but not all three.

  So she was going to have to choose something very different from her old friends, and no little bit dangerous.

  She needed an orca.

  When she entered the enclosure, there were three orcas there, all habitués of the Palace. Two of them were old, seasoned veterans, one with his flank scarred by the marks of squid suckers, the second with a lopped-off dorsal fin where a shark had bitten it off. The youngest was the one she was most interested in; he was known to be a fast swimmer, not because he had ever taken a rider before, but because he had won several inter-pod races. He was handsome, but not unscarred; there were the marks of combat on his flukes, a clear impression of teeth.

  He was awake, too, which was good, as the other two were already dozing. Orcas tended to be testy if you woke them.

  Like all the Royal Family, Katya had tasted Dragon’s Blood, that of an ancient Sea Drake that lived in a sea cave beneath the Palace itself, and woke only once every hundred years or so. She had never seen it awake, though her father had. She envied him.

  She and the last four of her siblings had all tasted the blood at once. The Drake was impossibly beautiful, like an enormous cross between a Sea Serpent and a Lionfish. In sleep, it lay coiled around a stone in the center of its cave that had been worn smooth by its movements as it slept. It had an enormous frill of black-and-white striped spines, and a ridge of similar spines down its back. Both were folded flat, but moved a little as the King took a knife, nicked the membrane between two toes and collected a thick drop of blood. She had moved forward very carefully and with the others, tasted it from the point of the knife before it could wash away.

  And then…then she had understood the language of the Beasts. Interestingly enough, it had also given her the Gift for understanding the various spoken and written languages of every race she had ever encountered, though it had not done so for her siblings. She had spoken first to a dolphin, and her life had seemed changed forever.

  The Dragon’s Blood had unlocked the speech of every cetacean, of course. So it was no difficulty at all for her to bow to the orca and say to it, “Eagle of the Sea, I wonder if I might trouble you for a moment,” and be perfectly understood.

  The orca regarded her with its right eye, round and shrewd. “The Sea King’s youngest daughter comes to have words with me, although we have never met. Presumably, you want something.”

  Orcas were odd beasts. They absolutely required formality and deference from those who initially approached them, then tested them with rudeness, or sometimes even threats. It was probably because that was the way they treated each other. Big predators were always testing each other.

  So she laughed. “But of course! Doesn’t everyone? This offers challenge though. An epic swim, if you will, and perhaps at the end of it, something interesting to see. Have you ever been to the place the Drylanders call Nippon?”

  He rolled so that he looked at her with his other eye. “Hmm. I have not. It would be a new place to see. An epic swim, you say?” He blasted her with a jolt of sound that jarred her insides for a moment. She didn’t even flinch; definitely another test. “Such a thing would make me attractive to the females. I am looking to start a pod soon. A strong swimmer, a good hunter. Hmm.” He rolled back to the other side. “And you…you are a warrior.”

  “Of sorts,” she agreed.

  “You do not show fear, only proper deference.” He blew a blast of bubbles. “You would be a good companion. We will go.”

  “My thanks. May I know your name?” she asked, going over to the side of the enclosure, which really served only to keep the visitors from drifting off on the currents as they slept, and as a place to hang the various sizes of traveling harness and the weapons one needed when traveling.

  “Sharptooth. You would be the one called Tsunami.”

  That pulled her up sharply. She had never heard her Orcan name before. “Tsunami? Why am I called that?” she asked, as she fitted the harness over his nose.

  He blew a string of laugh bubbles. “Because nothing at all of you shows on the surface, and only at the last moment do you reveal yourself. And those who see you are swept away.”

  She had to admit, that was a fairly good encapsulation of her style. “I trust you approve and agree with such a name,” she said dryly, slowly working the traveling harness over his tall dorsal fin.

  He blew another string of laugh bubbles. “I am of the People. You need to ask?”

  * * *

  Orcas were the fastest swimmers in the sea. Sharptooth was probably one of the fastest orcas in the Kingdom. Katya held to his harness, flattened herself down along his back to reduce resistance, and let him go. As for giving him directions—this was an orca. He had access to the best guides in the world. Other orcas, and the only great whales that could rival an orca for fierce nature, the sperm whales. He simply set out in the right general direction and began calling out his destination. Soon, someone replied. “This way.” He oriented himself on the call without slackening his pace.

  Once out of the shelter of the magic around the Palace, the water had turned cold and the magic that allowed anyone to breathe water vanished as they crossed the invisible barrier, and her body had reacted by changing, just as the Sirens’ bodies did. There was one moment of icy cold, and a moment when it fe
lt as if she was choking.

  Then she was warm again, and she could breathe.

  They paused to chase down, catch, and eat some salmon. She spread a purse net vertically in the water; he chased the school toward it. The school hit the net and she pulled the cord that turned it into a bag, catching enough for him with one left over for her meal.

  As she sliced raw bits off and ate them, he eyed her. “There were seals,” he offered. “I did not chase them.”

  She eyed him back. “If it is a choice between seal and starving…”

  He blew bubbles. “Good, you are practical. I doubt you would let me take porpoise under any circumstances though….”

  “I’d rather you didn’t eat my allies.” She suspected, from the tone of his voice, that he was teasing her. “It makes for bad feelings all around if you eat allies.”

  “True. And we should be gone.”

  “So we should.” She sliced off the fillets and stowed them in a fish-skin pouch on the harness. She was set for food now; all they had to worry about was keeping him fed. She secured herself to his harness, tucked herself down again, and they were off.

  A journey like this had a curious timelessness about it. They stopped to rest when they were tired, hanging together in the featureless, empty blue that was the midocean far from any shore. When he was hungry, he would query the surrounding water until he got an answer about where the food was, and they would make a slight detour. The sun rose and set above the water; once they waited as it touched the horizon to see if they could catch the “green flash” that supposedly came as it passed beneath the waves, but neither of them saw anything. So they moved on.

  Finally, there were gulls in the sky, bits of greenery on the waves, and they knew they were nearing some kind of land.

  Then they saw it.

  Journey’s end, but the mere beginning for Katya; though Sharptooth would be a part of this for a bit longer. First, Katya had to find the right part of what was really a very large island.