Of Sea and Shadow (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 1) (39 page)

This time, Calder didn’t fully understand the summons, so he hoped the clarity of his desperation would make up for what he lacked in specificity.
Whoever you are, come now! I require your power!

It was easier than Calder had expected.

One second, he floated in freezing black; the next, he sat on a low couch next to a blazing fire.

He was dry and warm, resting in a sitting room straight out of the ancient Empire. The walls were monuments of polished stone, supported by intricately carved columns. Every entrance was a door-less arch, and the walls were padded with tapestries just as the floor was lined with brightly patterned carpets.

He should have been startled by the abrupt transition, but he was mostly just relieved. Encounters with Elders were supposed to be nightmarish and dramatic, not plush and comfortable. If this was the typical experience of a summoner, then he should try sending summons more often.

Calder leaned forward, warming the remembered chill from his fingertips, when suddenly a voice spoke from next to the fire.

“Welcome, Calder Marten! Those who knock at my door are too often misers, but you have left me such gifts.”

He looked to the right, only slightly surprised to see a seated man where a moment ago had only been empty space.

The man reminded Calder of no one so much as the Emperor. He had the dark skin of a full-blooded Heartlander as well as the poise of good breeding, and he had draped himself in shiny fabrics. A robe of cloth-of-gold was embroidered with a climbing serpent and closed with a sash of orange. Jeweled rings flashed on every finger, layers of necklaces fanned over his chest, and loops of gold hung from his ears. He was not hairless, as the Emperor seemed to be: the hair on his head was trimmed short, his beard limited to a thin goatee.

But by far his most remarkable features were his eyes. Or rather, the device that covered them.

A band of some silver metal circled his whole head, with bolts where his eyes should have been. It was as though someone had fashioned him a steel blindfold and then bolted it into his sockets.

Calder stopped staring at the man, looking for any similarity to Shuffles, and tried to recall his previous comment.
Gifts.

Calder had no idea what gifts he was talking about, but he wasn’t going to expose his ignorance at the very beginning of a negotiation. He gave his best smile, though he didn’t know if the man could see it. “Of course! I would not send out such an invitation without something to welcome you.”

The man spread his hands like a salesman demonstrating his wares, and suddenly a table appeared on the floor before him. Spread out on the surface of the table, arranged on cushions of velvet, were seven simple objects. Objects that Calder recognized.

One, a small hammer that he had invested to break stone. Another, a spool of thread invested to bind a man’s hands and feet. They were his contingency tools, packed to help break his father out of prison and abandoned into Candle Bay when they proved themselves unnecessary.

“I must say, it was unwise of you to send such a message so broadly,” the man said. “There are others of my siblings with holdings in this sea, and none of them so generous as I.”

“Then I am greatly pleased that my call reached your ears,” Calder said graciously. “What may I call you, sir?”

The man smiled, revealing a pair of teeth capped in gold. “I was once called the Father of Merchants, the Lord of Coin. The Gambler’s Delight, they named me, and Miser’s Bane. I was the Keeper of the Vaults, the Hoard-gatherer, the Seeker of Treasures. Now, I believe, men call me Kell’arrack.”

“Kelarac,” Calder repeated, his mouth suddenly dry.

Kelarac licked his lips as thought tasting the word. “Kelarac...is that how it is said, these days? Human language changes so quickly. It is a name I favored, though. Collector of Souls.” He rubbed his hands together, a man expecting a feast. “What have you come to purchase with
your
soul, Calder Marten?”

Calder felt like he had slid a foot out on thin ice, only to find out that there was no ice at all. Only deep, dark seas filled with hungry sharks.

Tread carefully, Calder. Whatever you do, don’t mess this up.

If he focused his Intent any harder, he would end up investing himself.

“I apologize for bothering you, Lord Kelarac,” Calder said, with an attempt at a seated bow. “I was seeking a lesser member of your…entourage.”

Kelarac adjusted the steel band over his eyes like a man fiddling with his spectacles. “I see. Caught a bigger fish than you expected, did you? If that is the case, I will be more than satisfied to take your gifts and walk away. Simply…throw me back.”

He started to rise, but Calder threw out a hand to stop him. “Please wait just a moment, Lord Kelarac. It’s possible that we can come to some sort of an arrangement.”

Kelarac seated himself once more, plucking a grape from thin air and pushing it into his mouth. “You have my attention, Reader of Memory.”

“Two of my companions and I are trapped on some rocks in Candle Bay. A number of armed men are closing in around us. I had hoped to call something big enough to carry us to shore.”

That was what the Blackwatch were trying to do with
The Testament,
after all: summon something that could drag a whole ship through the ocean. If he called a creature that wouldn’t or couldn’t listen to reason, well, he always had his seven nails.

Kelarac laughed, and it was surprisingly…ordinary. The room didn’t shake like an earthquake, and Calder didn’t feel his brain dribbling out his ears. It was simply the laugh of a man hearing an amusing story.

“I did not realize you were so young, Calder Marten, even for one of your kind. I doubt you understand how improbable your survival was.”

“I’m beginning to,” he said honestly.

“Yes. I think you are.” Kelarac stroked his short beard, deliberating. “I have a servant in your area who might serve you well. Yes, very well indeed. But there is, of course, the matter of price.”

Calder nodded to the invested odds and ends displayed on the table. “Those are quality work. They represent months of my time and Intent. Surely, they are valuable enough to warrant this one small task.”

Behind the metal blindfold, Kelarac’s eyebrows raised. “These? These are the gifts you offer for the pleasure of my hospitality. If you wish to make a transaction with me, then I require something more substantial.”

“Not my soul,” Calder said quickly. Painful as it was to die in Candle Bay, he didn’t want
that
fate hanging over his afterlife.

Kelarac waved one jeweled hand. “What is a soul? Despite the name I was given by men, I do not understand souls. I like the title because ‘Soul Collector’ implies that I
own
humans in their entirety. Minds. Bodies. Service. These things I understand.”

Was it worth living, if it meant servitude to a nameless Elder beneath the sea?

If it means Jerri and my father go free, then yes.

“How much of my service might this cost me?”

Kelarac laughed again. “I collect whole objects, Reader of Memory, not pieces. To that end, I require something else that I believe is in your possession. A small copper key.”

Calder’s mind flashed to the Emperor’s key. Jerri should have had it, which meant it should be in his coat!

“You have a deal,” Calder said quickly, before the Elder could change his mind. He patted down the pockets of the coat until he located the key, holding it out for Kelarac.

The Great Elder shook his head. “We exist right now only in this dream-space. Give the key to me when you return to the cold, and the dark. Then my Lyathatan will come to your aid.”

Calder stood up, buttoning his coat as though he meant to walk out into the winter wind. “A pleasure doing business with you, Lord Kelarac.”

Kelarac drummed ringed fingers on his display table. “A word to the youthful, child. Alchemy is a new discipline, but we had addictive substances of our own when I walked this earth. Among the purveyors of such blends, there is a saying. I believe it has survived into this era. ‘The first taste is always free,’ yes?”

He smiled his gold-capped smile. “I hope you enjoyed your first taste, Calder Marten. I do look forward to the second.”

Then the cold, dark water came crashing back.

~~~

Calder climbed up onto the rocks of the bay with just enough strength to breathe. Jerri hauled him up as his father stood dumbly nearby, watching.

“I hope you found some help down there,” Jerri said.

He looked up at her, a little disappointed. “A little concern would be appreciated, thank you.”

“You said to trust you.” She smiled and placed a hand on his wet coat. “I trusted you.”

If he was anything but freezing, that would have warmed him. As it was, he tried to smile through his violent shivers.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. Then he threw the Emperor’s key into the water.

She watched the copper flash as it fell into the darkness. “I take it back. I don’t trust you anymore.”

“Trust me.”

“No, it’s too late for that now.”

There came the sound of something slapping against rock, and they turned. The prison guards had thrown down a ladder and were descending, pistols or batons in hand, to the rocks.

“I’m going back,” Rojric whispered, and Calder couldn’t tell if he sounded terrified or delighted. “They’re taking me back!”

Across the bay, a huge construction of wooden planks and boards shook like a rattled cage.

Calder pointed with one shaking hand. “Lady, gentleman, I believe our transportation has arrived.”

The wooden scaffolding, which had surrounded
The Testament
like a cage for two years, exploded outward in a shower of splinters. Debris the size of small trees flew halfway across Candle Bay, sending up sprays of water wherever they landed.

When the air between them cleared, the dark green ship was sailing toward the rocks. No wind filled its sails because there were no sails to fill, but still the ship slid across the black glass of Candle Bay.

 
Its wake stretched behind it like a bridal train, but a ripple preceded the ship as well. Almost as though something huge were swimming in front. Dragging the ship along.

When the vessel loomed over them, the guards backed against the walls of the prison in panic. They knew what haunted the Aion Sea, and nothing that dragged a ship behind it could be anything less than a monster.

Calder turned his back to the ship. He grinned at Jerri and his father.

“I’d like to introduce my friend, the Lyathatan.” The ship slowly ground to a halt.

Rojric looked confused. “Is that...the name of the ship?”

“No, the ship is
The Testament.
The Lyathatan is...” Calder gestured to the bay, sure that this time his timing would be perfect.

The ship creaked as it settled in the water. A rain of droplets flowed down its wooden sides in a steady patter.

He gestured again. No Elderspawn appeared.

“There’s supposed to be a huge monster pulling the ship,” he said at last.

The guards decided that moment to rush the rocks. Rojric stepped forward, holding out his wrists to be shackled.

“No!” Calder shouted. He reached into his coat for an iron spike—if it worked on Elders, it would surely do something unpleasant to a living man. Jerri, for some reason, reached up to her earring.

And
finally
, the Lyathatan burst out of the water.

It lunged up like a cannon-shot, a giant creature shaped like a man and standing even taller out of the bay than
The Testament
’s mast. Moonlight rippled over its fish-like scales, shining through the ridges running down its spine. Its six-fingered hands were webbed and tipped with nails like spikes. Shackles wrapped around each scaled wrist, attached to chains that led beneath the ship.

And its face...a shark’s mouth with three black eyes on either side of its head. Gills flared on its short, muscular neck.

Calder’s breath left him, but he forced a smile. “You...see?” he asked, teeth chattering from cold and fear. “He fights with us!”

The Lyathatan let out a hiss as loud as a roar, like air shrieking through a thousand teakettles.

One of the guards raised his pistol and fired in a puff of smoke. It did exactly what Calder had expected: nothing except to make the Elderspawn target
that
particular victim first.

Its claws closed on the guard, deceptively fast, and then the Lyathatan swallowed him whole.

“Fire!” someone yelled, and then muskets were firing from the top of the prison, all aimed at the monster.

Calder wasn’t going to wait to get hit by an enthusiastic marksman or a rampaging creature. He grabbed his father, scrambling for the edge of the rocks, aiming to swim for one of the last construction materials to cling to
The Testament:
a rope ladder dangling from its side.

“No!” Rojric yelled, struggling. “Not in the water! Not with that thing!”

Calder had to admit, his father’s fears were reasonable. Normally, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere within ten miles of anything that looked like the Lyathatan.

But of all the things he’d ever heard about Kelarac, he’d never heard anyone say that the Great Elder ever broke his bargains.

He grabbed his father and shoved him into the water.

Calder turned to Jerri, planning to help her down, but she had already executed a perfect dive into the waters of Candle Bay. Far from showing terror, she actually stopped to tread water underneath the Lyathatan, staring up at its gargantuan body with a grin on her face.

Suddenly, his expression matched hers. He’d almost gotten her arrested, summoned a monster, and told her to swim through ice-cold water for the dubious safety of an Elder-pulled unfinished ship...and she looked like she was having the time of her life.

I’m going to marry that woman,
he thought, and jumped into Candle Bay.

The climb up the rope ladder qualified as one of the most tense, frightening, and
exhilarating
things he’d ever done. Musket-balls tore finger-sized holes out of the hull, the Lyathatan raged and smashed men into rocks, guards shouted, and water rushed in a deafening cacophony. As the monster fought, the chains jerked the boat this way and that, making the ladder swing against the hull.