“I know nothing about an undersea king,” Kearan says. “We were sent here to find a missing ship and crew. To rescue the survivors and bring them home. Instead, we lost our ship, and we’re stranded in this frozen wilderness.”
“Why did the first ship come?” Zarian asks on behalf of Dynkinar. It’s clear that the Speaker knows about our first crew. If she hadn’t dealt with them personally, someone she knows reported to her of their existence. She must know what became of them.
“To explore unknown waters. To discover more of the world.”
Dynkinar humphs. “You mean to conquer. To steal. To take.”
“I do not know.” Kearan pauses a moment before saying, “My people are divided. The women we were sent to find were spies on the ship that traveled this way. Our queen likes to keep eyes on her enemies. When the spies did not return, she sent us to find them.”
“Then why, Kearan, are you not looking for your lost crew? Why instead are you waking beings that are better left sleeping?”
“We assumed you held our friends captive. We spotted some of your men guarding what we assumed was a prison, so we searched it for the missing crew.”
There is a pause so long, I wonder if I’ve missed Dynkinar leaving the tent.
Then Kearan barks out, “Why did you attack us, and what did you do to the crew who arrived before we did?”
A valid question.
“Our people were charged long ago with protecting the cursed tomb. We were ordered to kill anyone who came to this land, for no one must wake the King of the Undersea.”
“Who charged you with this task? Who is he?”
There is a shifting in the tent, as though Dynkinar is making herself more comfortable. “A thousand years ago, our ancestors were once like your people: explorers looking to discover more of the world. A crew landed here and found a slechian artifact.”
It takes me some time to translate slechian, but I find the word before Zarian translates it for Kearan.
Siren.
“They called it the panaceum, and it was not long before they realized how special it was. It granted the possessor long life, made them impervious to afflictions of the flesh. Rendered them essentially unkillable. It could heal any sickness, cure any wound.
“The travelers were excited to take the item home and share it with the world, but one among them decided he would keep it for himself instead.”
Threydan.
“The King of the Undersea, though he was not known as such at the time, stole the panaceum. He found a way to make the panaceum part of himself so he could never be parted from it, and that joining corrupted the magic.”
There was no explaining it, but once I fused with the panaceum, I could feel them.
The dead.
I could sense where they were buried beneath the earth and taste their ashes on the wind.
It was not long after that my crew attacked, demanding that I return the artifact, even though it was impossible to do so now. They threw their spears, and I returned their attacks with my sword, felling three of them before I grew heavy from all the metal within my body.
I tried to stand, to pull the weapons from my flesh, but they surrounded me, thwarting my efforts. For the first time, I became aware of a new horror. I was undead, but they could still restrain me for all eternity if they wished. I could be alive but trapped.
Until I tried something new.
There were dead bodies still bleeding on the ground, and I reached for them. Not with my arms, but with my mind.
They answered.
My body floods with horror as I come out of the vision.
He can raise the dead. He can command them. I saw it.
Dynkinar is still speaking. “… moved effortlessly underwater, which is how he earned his name. The ocean is where he would hide his undead army, when they weren’t busy attacking the rest of the explorers. He hunted them down, and the survivors eventually turned to the sirens for help.
“The King of the Undersea could not be killed, so the original explorers had to restrain him, while the sirens sang him to sleep and buried him in ice. The dead were also put in ice by the sirens so he could not call them to his aid, for while he could control the undead, he could not control the elements. He’d be hard-pressed to dig each set of bones out from feet of solid ice.”
I saw those bones. Perfectly captured in ice. The work of sirens. I did not know they had control over water, though Alosa said she once accidentally controlled water. She pulled it straight out of Riden’s lungs after he drowned. But she has never managed to replicate it.
Dynkinar continues. “The King of the Undersea has been waiting all this time for someone to wake him. And now you have.”
Her tone is full of condemnation. As if it were our plan all along to wake a being who can control the dead. As though this all couldn’t have been avoided if they would stop sinking ships and just talk to those who arrive.
When the boy finishes translating, Kearan says, “I’ve told you it was an accident. Something that could have been avoided if you’d simply talked to us upon our arrival instead of attacking! My captain has paid the price for that mistake. What more do you want?”
Indeed.
“Your captain was not killed for waking the King of the Undersea. She was killed because he’d started to make her like him.”
My heart skips a beat as Kearan says, “What?”
“She could understand my warriors. The gift of tongues was another that the King of the Undersea possessed. When she proved to have it, it was clear that he’d chosen his mate.”
“His what?” Kearan repeats.
“The sirens warned our people long ago that this might happen. He is the panaceum now, but he can share its powers with one other. One whom he can make invincible and immortal. I’m surprised he chose someone so quickly. Your captain must have struck some sort of bargain with him.”
No, that’s not what happened at all.
I struck him, and I think that might have linked us somehow. These memories …
“Why would this power-hungry wretch wish to share his powers?” Kearan asks.
“He needs a woman. Someone who will be unaffected by siren song so he can exact his revenge and reign supreme over the known world.”
Kearan clearly finds that notion as ludicrous as I do. “What good is one woman against an army of sirens?”
I saw what happened when Alosa rallied sirens to her cause to save us and her mother. No one human person could fight against that might.
“She wouldn’t have been an ordinary woman if he’d been allowed to finish changing her. She would have been an immortal capable of commanding the dead as he does.”
My fingers twitch. I really want to kill something.
“So you … spared her that fate?” Kearan asks.
“We cut the King of the Undersea’s power in half by ensuring he cannot use her in such a manner. It’s bad enough that we will have to find a way to capture him once again. Before there are dead for him to command.”
“Well, you did. Congratulations,” he deadpans. “Now where is the crew who came before us?”
Zarian translates, “Many died during the initial battle. Some who made it to land were lost to the elements, and others are still out there somewhere, surviving in the wilderness as your crew is now. Our food and supplies go missing from time to time.”