Another quake rocked the Tower, causing Mina to stagger.
“Nuitari?”
“Family issues are going to occupy a considerable amount of time for the Moon-Faced One. He’s trying to work things out with his cousins. On his return, he will find that he has considerable explaining to do to his sister. For now, the Tower of the Blood Sea is all yours, Mina. You are alone in it.”
“Except for the guardian. I need a weapon, my lord.”
“No, you won’t, Mina,” returned Chemosh. “Only a dragonlance would aid you against this guardian, and unfortunately, I have none of those at my disposal. You have your wits, Mina, and you have my blessing. Use them both.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Mina, and she was alone.
11
Mina found the long, circular staircase that wound around the Tower’s interior and began her descent. The staircase was made of mother-of-pearl and spiraled round and round, reminding her of the interior of a nautilus seashell. She could see here and there cracks in the walls, presumably from the shaking the Tower was enduring at the hands of the outraged goddess, and she worried the next jolt might split the walls. Fortunately the quakes rocking the Tower ceased. Mina could not see outside, but she guessed Nuitari had returned and was now trying to placate his furious sister.
Inside the Tower was silent. The seawater surrounding the structure seemed to suck out the sound, so that every noise made within had a muffled quality to it.
The silence was soothing. Now that she was no longer a prisoner, she felt at home here. She found it comforting, knowing the sea cradled her. Perhaps this stirred some long-buried memory of the shipwreck that had taken her parents from her and left her an orphan, a memory that was always there, lying just beneath the surface. One she could never quite recall.
“Our minds blot out such traumatic events in order to protect us from them,” Goldmoon had once told Mina. “You may remember what happened to you some day or you may never remember. Do not fret over it, child. It is quite natural.”
Mina had fretted. She felt guilty and ashamed that she had no memory of those parents who had loved her dearly, perhaps even sacrificed their lives for her, and she tried hard to bring to mind their faces or the sound of a mother’s voice. She became obsessed with trying to remember, an obsession that ended only when the One God, Takhisis, chided her for wasting her time.
“It does not matter who gave you birth!” Takhisis had said, cold and furious. “I am your mother. I am your father. Look to me for protection and succor and nourishment.”
Mina had obeyed the god’s command as she obeyed all others given to her by the One God. She had never allowed herself to think about her parents again, not until she had been imprisoned in this Tower below the sea. She had so much time on her hands in the Tower, time to think, time to remember her childhood. The frustration and the shame and the need to know returned. Mina took care to keep her obsession to herself. She did not want to anger Chemosh as she had angered Takhisis.
The spiral stairs were lit by magical globules of light placed at intervals and renewed daily by Basalt. Doors, opening off the stairs, led to the other floors of the Tower. Mina glanced at them curiously. She would have liked to explore, to see how the rooms were constructed and what they looked like, for the Tower intrigued her.
She did not have time, however. “I will postpone that for another day,” she said to herself, smiling at the thought, for she knew perfectly well she was never likely to see the inside of this Tower again.
The stairs brought her at last to the Tower’s base. She came up against a door made of steel banded with bronze and inscribed with runes. Runes had also been carved into the stone arch around the door. Mina recognized the runes as being the language of magic, the same as she’d read in the book Nuitari had given her. She knew what the runes said; she just didn’t know what they meant.
Giving up on the runes, Mina inspected the door, trying to find some way inside. The door had no handle, no lock. The runes probably provided information on how to open the door. Mina tried reciting them aloud, to no avail. The door didn’t budge.
Frustrated, Mina gave the door a kick.
The door revolved smoothly and silently on a center linchpin and swung open.
Mina stepped back, eyeing the door warily.
“This is too easy. This is a trap,” she muttered.
She did not enter. Drawing closer to the arched doorway, she examined it carefully.
“What an idiot I am!” she scolded herself. “If this is a trap, it is a magical one and I’ll never find it anyway. I might as well chance it.”
Mina walked through the door and was pleasantly surprised to find herself emerging safely on the other side. She was less pleasantly surprised to hear the door revolve and slam shut behind her. There were no runes on this side of the door. Apparently, once you got in, you were supposed to know the secret of how to get back out.
Shrugging, Mina turned away. She’d deal with that problem when the time came. Now she had her task before her. An amazing task. She stood before what looked to be an enormous fish bowl.
Mina and the other children in the orphanage had kept fish in glass bowls filled with water. The children were taught to feed the fish and care for them. They observed their habits and marveled at how the creatures breathed water as easily as people breathed air. This globe was similar to those fish bowls, except it was much, much larger—as big in circumference as the Tower itself. The glass walls were covered with runes etched into the glass. Shafts of sunlight illuminated the globe and the creatures swimming inside.
“It is beautiful,” Mina said softly, awed. “Beautiful and deadly.”
138
The graceful jellyfish, drifting along at the mercy of the swirling currents, killed their prey by stinging it with a venom that paralyzed the victim and prevented it from escaping. These jellyfish were enormous, several times Mina’s size, with tentacles long enough to ensnare a full-grown man.
A gigantic squid, large enough to drag a ship beneath the waves, lay sprawled across the floor, its arms trembling as it slept. Stingrays slithered up the crystal sides of the globe. Monstrous bull sharks swam about, their jaws, filled with the rows of razor-sharp teeth, opening and closing. The floor was covered with fire coral, pretty to look at, burning to the touch.
Inside the center of the globe, surrounded by its lethal guards, was the Solio Febalas.
Mina stared, astonished. The Hall was not at all what she expected.
The structure resembled a child’s sand castle. It was simple in design with four walls, a tower at each corner, and crenellations on the battlements. There were no windows. She could see, from this angle, what appeared to be a door, but she could not make out any details. What was truly amazing was that the Hall of Sacrilege, supposedly containing any number of sacred artifacts, was only about four feet tall and four feet wide.
“It must be an illusion, a trick of the water,” Mina said to herself.
She ran her hand over the rune-etched surface of the crystal wall that blocked her way.
“The question is: how do I reach it? I stand outside an impenetrable wall of crystal encompassing water in which are swimming hundreds of deadly creatures. I have no idea how to get inside the globe, and if I manage that, I cannot breathe water, and even if I could, I would have to battle sharks and men-of-war and—”
She caught her breath. A large coral reef that formed a hillock inside the crystal globe gave a lurch, displacing thousands of fish, which swam away from it in flashing-scaled panic. A head emerged from beneath the coral reef, now revealed to be a huge shell, like that of a tortoise.
Gleaming yellow eyes fixed on Mina. She had found the guardian—a sea dragon.
More to the point, the sea dragon had found Mina.