Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga, #1)(67)

Serafina was speechless. They all were. The six mermaids looked at each other in wide-eyed disbelief, then all started talking at once.

“Go to the Southern Sea?” Ling said.

“We’ll freeze to death!” Becca said.

“Kill Abbadon?” Ava said.

“How would we even find him? The Southern Sea is huge!” Neela said.

“This is totally insane,” Astrid said. “I’m out of here.”

As Serafina watched Astrid swim toward the door, lines from her nightmare suddenly came back to her.

Gather now from seas and rivers, Become one mind, one heart, one bond Before the waters, and all creatures in them, Are laid to waste by Abbadon!

And suddenly she knew what she had to do. Just as she had moments ago, when the monster attacked them. She had to keep the group together, no matter what. One mind, one heart, one bond. She couldn’t let anyone leave.

“Astrid, wait,” she said.

Astrid snorted. “Later,” she said.

“You’re afraid,” Serafina said, sensing that the only way to stop her was to challenge her.

She was right. Astrid stopped dead, then turned around, eyes blazing.

“What did you say?”

“I said, you’re afraid. You’re afraid of the story. That’s why you want to leave.”

“Afraid of what story? What are you talking about? You’re as crazy as she is,” Astrid said, nodding at Vr?ja.

Serafina turned to the river witch. “Baba Vr?ja, before you opened the door to this room, you said that what’s inside it had a story,” she said. “And that it would tell us who we are. We need to hear that story. Now.”





Three eyeballs, set in three amber rings, twisted around in their settings and stared at Serafina.

Serafina stared back uneasily.

“You like them?” Vr?ja asked, as she handed her a cup and saucer.

“They’re very, um, unusual,” Sera replied.

Vr?ja had led the mermaids back to her study. She’d invited them all to sit down, and had sent a servant for a pot of tea.

“They’re terragogg eyes,” she said now.

“Did they drown or something?” Neela asked.

“Or something,” Vr?ja said. She smiled and Serafina noticed, for the first time, that her teeth were very sharp. “One dumped oil into my river. Another killed an otter. The third bulldozed trees where osprey nested. They live still—or rather, exist—as cadavru. I use them as sentries.”

“That rotter by the mouth of the Olt, is he one?” Neela asked.

“Yes. He has his right eye and I have his left. What he sees, I see. Very handy when death riders are about.”

She finished pouring the tea and sat on the edge of her desk. She’d poured a cup for herself, but didn’t drink it. Instead she picked up a piece of smooth, flat stone that was lying next to the teapot and turned it over in her hands. Symbols were carved into its surface.

“The songspell to make a cadavru is called a trezi. A Romanian spell. Very old,” she said. “I have many such spells. Passed down from obar?ie to obar?ie. These spells are how we, the Order of the Iele, have endured as long as we have. Merrow created us four thousand years ago, and we have carried out the duties she entrusted to us ever since, in order to protect the merfolk.”

“From what?” Ling asked.

Vr?ja smiled. “Ourselves.”

She held the stone out so that Sera, Neela, Astrid, Becca, and Ling could see it, then handed it to Ava, so she could feel it. Baby, dozing in his mistress’s lap, growled in his sleep.

“Did you know that this writing is nearly forty centuries old?” Vr?ja asked. “It came from a Minoan temple. It’s one of the few surviving records of Atlantis. It—like Plato’s accounts, and those of other ancients—Posidonius, Hellanicus, Philo—tells us that the island sank because of natural causes.” She looked at the mermaids, then said, “It lies.”

“Why?” Ava asked.

“Because that’s what Merrow wanted the world to know about Atlantis—lies. Stories have great power. Stories endure. Merrow knew that, so she had everything that told the true story of Atlantis expunged.”

“But why would she do that?” Neela asked.

“The truth was too dangerous,” Vr?ja said. “Merrow had seen her people—men and women, little children—swallowed by fire and water. You see, it wasn’t an earthquake or a volcano that doomed Atlantis, as you undoubtedly have been taught. Those were only the mechanisms of its ruin. It was one of the island’s own who destroyed it.”

“Baba Vr?ja, how do you know this?” Serafina asked. She was mesmerized by the witch’s words. Ancient Atlantean history was her passion. All her life, she had hungered to know more about the lost island, but there were so few conchs from the period, so little information to be had.

“We know from Merrow herself. She gave the truth to the first obar?ie in a bloodsong. The obar?ie kept it in her heart. On her deathbed, she passed it to her successor, and so on. We are forbidden to speak of it unless the monster rises. For four thousand years, we have been silent.”

“Until now,” Ling said.

“Yes,” Vr?ja said. “Until now. But I have begun at the end, and beginnings are much better places to start. Whatever you do or dream you can do—begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it. A terragogg wrote that. Some say it was the poet Goethe. He could have been writing about Atlantis for that was Atlantis—a boldness. A place made of genius and magic. Ah, such magic!” she said, smiling. “Nothing could compare to it. Athens? A backwater. Rome? A dusty hill town. Thebes? A watering hole. Mines of copper, tin, silver, and gold made Atlantis wealthy. Fertile soil made it fruitful. Bountiful waters fed its people. This island paradise was governed by mages—”