Seirra: Chapter Twenty-Five

I woke up in my own bed in the room that was designated for me in the castle. To be honest, the fortress was more like a home to me than our own coral house in the Celari reef. More often than not, I would be found patrolling the castle or training with my father to become a responsible Celari leader.

At first, I heard no sound and saw only the blurred surroundings of my room. It was simple: my bed, a table made of polished coral and two chairs were the only other furniture that adorned the room. The only indication that made me certain that this was indeed my room was the Ardus sword that hung horizontally on the wall adjacent to the entrance. Glowing jellyfish swam freely around, serving as lights to my otherwise dark quarters.

Movement caught my eye and I turned my head towards the entrance. The first thing I noticed was a tail that was more a shining purple than a lavender and green. It could only belong to one particular mermaid. Princess Marina was immediately let in by the tentacle door and she glided gracefully to my bedside. I blinked several times to clear my vision and to see the expression on her face. I lifted my eyes and saw that she decided not to bother with her looks as her blond hair was arranged in a simple ponytail, her face clear of any color or face paint. She smiled but her eyes told me that something was up.

“How long have I been unconscious?” I asked in a surprisingly clear voice.

“Just three hours as far as I know,” she replied.

“Who rescued us?”

“Aquanians who just arrived from scavenging. They saw the cyclone from afar and thought that Aquania was in danger. I was told they found us right after they saw you lose consciousness.” Marina didn’t sound too worried and I had to pause to gather my thoughts.

“I assume they never saw the enemies.” She nodded silently and I continued, “Marina, what did you tell the King?” I took a deep breath as I remembered one important fact. With my heart racing, I stared at Marina’s eyes and asked the dreaded question. “What happened to Erwann?”

She took my hand in hers and squeezed before she replied. “Erwann’s still asleep.” Relief washed over me but when Marina averted her eyes, I knew she left out something important. I squeezed her hand this time, urging her to say everything. She looked back at me, her eyes almost haunted. “I woke up in time to hear one of the helpers say that the healers were struggling to keep him alive.”

A tear ran down her cheek but she didn’t seem to notice. “It immediately got my attention and I forced the helper to tell me what else he knew about Erwann’s situation. He told me that Erwann was hit with a tremendous amount of power and the healers were only thankful it had not been strong enough to kill him immediately.” The clouds in her eyes began to clear and her voice held a stronger tone. “The news gave me enough strength to get up and look for him. I would have been dead had he not used his body to protect me, Seirra. I needed to save him.”

Her hand was now gripping mine and I understood. The princess may be hotheaded and bitchy but when it came to people who matter, she could be a fierce protector.

“You healed Erwann, Marina. He didn’t die,” I told her with a smile.

She swallowed back her tears and nodded. We released each other’s hands and she wiped the tears that had stained her cheeks before she straightened her shoulders to tell me more of what happened.

“After I helped the healers with Erwann, Sire Kalus arrived and escorted me to the Scribe Chamber. My father and the other royals were there.”

I struggled to sit up on my bed and braced myself for the news she was about to impart. If the higher-ups had completed their investigation on Doris’s death and found out that we had been hiding precious information from them, then the three of us would get punished. The lack of worry in Marina’s face, however, assured me that she was able to avoid any possible punishment.

“They still don’t have any idea as to why Doris would be killed. There was no evidence of forced entry in her house. The chain and her scrolls were obviously the only things that gave any clue about her death. And they didn’t know of it because of us.”

She placed her hands on her hips and began to absently move around the room as she tried to narrate everything she had found out.

“When they were informed that we had been attacked, another investigation was conducted at the scene. However, even the ruins of the cave had been blown up into pieces.” She stopped her pacing and stared straight into my eyes. “I convinced the elders that someone was probably targeting Aquania’s VIPs—you know, since they killed a former Oracle and now they attacked the Celari leader, the Princess of Aquania and another royal.” She shrugged. “I thought that story might make them concentrate on Aquania’s list of enemies instead of on us, who still have Doris’s gold chain and who found her hidden scrolls.” She paused and then as if doubting her reason, she asked, “Right?”

“I guess.” She heaved a sigh of relief as I crossed my arms in front of me. “We’re the only ones who knew that the enemy was Aquanian. So if the elders wanted to start an investigation, the dissenter—if he’s indeed a powerful merman—wouldn’t exactly raise up his guard because he knew that the search would start with either the kingdoms of the New Seas or the possible allies of captured prisoners. Putting their focus on the idea that the enemy was after Aquania’s powerful merpeople instead of the veil should make the enemy think that we knew nothing about his plans, making it easier to sneak in with our own investigation.”

Marina was smiling by the end of my small speech, and for some reason, I felt the need to tell her a bit of reality. “However,” I began with a hint of warning in my voice. “One wrong move that might ‘offend’ any of the enemy kingdoms can incite a war.”

She swallowed before asking, “What do you mean by ‘offend’?”

“As you know, we were never really in good terms with them. If they find out that Aquania is accusing them of killing royalty, they might get ‘offended’ and start hurling their own accusations against our kingdom.” I paused and she bit her lip. “That, Princess, can be the beginning of a war.”

“Shit. I’m sorry!”

“Not your fault, Marina. But it means we have to find the enemy faster.”

“Argh! I’m going to kill that bastard who made me suffer with all this!”

“You’ll have to fall in line. I’m sure your father will get the honor of killing him first.”

“Hmph! I can convince him to pass it on to me.”

That made me smile but then a thought passed by my mind and I gasped. It caught Marina’s attention.

“The scrolls,” I began, my eyes affixed on hers. “They’re gone.”

The princess was confused at first and then slowly, her back stiffened and her eyes widened in realization.

“We dropped them in the cave when we were attacked. And now the place was blown up.”

She was on the verge of tears but I knew it wasn't only because she was disappointed but also because she was angrily desperate. And then she slumped to the ground and began pounding the floor in frustration.

“Now what do we do?” she roared.

The tentacles in the entrance moved as Erwann made his way in. He looked pale and fatigue was visible in his face.

“Now we keep our voices a bit lower, Princess,” he scolded. “It wouldn’t do to announce our plans to passersby.

Marina snorted at him as he assisted her up and escorted her to a chair. He sat on the other and looked at both of us.

“I wasn’t able to move immediately so I was left with my thoughts for quite some time,” Erwann told us.

“And so?” Marina interrupted, still annoyed at being reprimanded.

“I also realized that the scrolls were now gone.” Marina let out another unladylike snort before he could say his next sentence. We both just raised an eyebrow at her. “However, I thought that there might be other copies of those scrolls.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked my friend. If there were others, why would Doris hide the scrolls in a trapdoor as if those were the only copies?

“I know what you’re thinking, Seirra,” he told me with a hint of impatience. “But you forget that she was an Oracle.” When I still looked as confused as Marina, he sighed and stood up from his seat. “The Oracles have their own scroll chamber, remember? The restricted area of the Scribe Chamber.”

My eyes widened in realization. “Of course! How could I have forgotten that?” I laughed at my own forgetfulness. “We tried to get in there several times since we were kids but the curtains won’t budge.”

His smile got even wider. “And the only thing that was odd about the entrance was the small eyehook on the lower right side of the wall.”

That statement was what made Marina gasp and exclaim a rather loud, “Oh my gosh! Are you serious?”

Erwann and I lifted our fingers to shush her and she immediately covered her mouth with her hands.

“She could’ve kept copies of her scrolls there as well. After all, only the people with the gold chain can enter the place,” Erwann explained.

“I guess you’re right. This means we have to get inside that chamber soon,” I announced.

“As far as I know, the current Oracle leaves the castle as soon as darkness falls,” Erwann said informatively.

“The elders don’t enter the Scribe Chamber at night except for important meetings, either,” I added.

“Great! We can sneak in tonight,” Marina told us excitedly. When we looked at her blankly, she said, “I didn’t leave immediately after they dismissed me a while ago so I heard them say that they would have a closed-door meeting in my father’s office, which happens to be at the other side of the castle.”

“Closed-door? Office?” Erwann asked.

“It’s how humans call it when no one except the involved people are allowed to be present during the meeting. Not even the guards would be let in. And what she meant by office was the King’s reading quarters,” I explained.

“Oh,” Erwann replied.

I nodded and then, “We’re going tonight. I don’t think we’ll get another opportunity like this.”

“Exactly,” Marina piped in.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Erwann agreed.

*****

It was just as Marina said. Even the hallway that we needed to pass through had been deserted. We still moved as quietly as possible to avoid unnecessary attention. When we reached the end of the dark hallway, we came face to face with a curtain of tentacles that looked more like stalactites covered in seaweeds. As the Celari leader, I could enter the chamber without any problem and tonight was no different. The door recognized who we were and the tentacles seemed to defrost slowly as they moved to make way for us.

Once inside, we called for a smack of jellyfish to form a torch-like shape and serve as our source of light. It still amazed Marina how sea creatures seemed to read the minds of merpeople and she continued staring at the glowing jellyfish as we made our way to the back of the huge room. I looked at Erwann the moment we saw the entrance to the Oracle’s scroll chamber and we both swallowed and moved aside. Marina motioned forward and brought out the chain from a purse made of shells. The chain immediately began drifting towards the eyehook and Marina released it. It floated until it had attached itself to the hook. It became rigid stick of gold for a moment and I assumed it was the trigger that would open the entrance to the restricted area.

Soon enough, the curtain moved and created a passageway for us. My heart started racing as I watched our makeshift torch precede us and light up the small room. It was circular in shape and three-fourths of the wall was filled with scrolls from top to bottom. The remaining space were filled with corals and shells shaped like bottles, bowls and flasks. In the middle was a huge circular table where Oracles probably tested their enchantments. Both Erwann and I looked wary and amazed while Marina openly gushed at the sight of the room.

“You know, this place reminds me so much of the Harry Potter movies,” Marina exclaimed as she rushed inside.

Erwann looked at me in question and I shrugged. I had no idea about that movie but I was able to watch a movie before. I told Erwann of that experience and since then, he had been curious about it. “Sorry, I haven’t seen those,” I whispered in answer.

We followed the princess and continued to observe the room—watching for possible traps. When we found nothing suspicious after our perusal, I called them over to explain how we will perform our search.

“There are hundreds of scrolls in here so we have to work fast,” I began. “What we need are scrolls that contain information on how I can go back on land and how we can turn Margaret into a mermaid. But don’t ignore the ‘facts’ that seem suspicious. We’re going to need every piece of information we can find to know who our enemy is. The Oracles may have written something that could give us a clue.” They both nodded so I straightened and pointed towards the shelves nearest the entrance. “I’ll scale through this part. Marina, you go through that,” I directed her to the shelves that were at a sixty-degree angle from the entrance until the part that was directly in front of the door.

“Sure,” she said and then she rushed over to her designated area.

“Erwann, take care of the remaining shelves.”

“No problem.”

I turned towards my section of the room and began my search from the top. After going through about a dozen, I realized that the scrolls were actually arranged in groups, depending on who wrote them. And I stumbled upon the works of the very first Oracle. I browsed through his words, some of which I immediately dismissed as mere narratives of the history of Aquania. He even wrote about King Acionus’s romantic affairs before he married Dylana, the mother of Tethya and Medana.

He also documented how the first king, Velano, organized a group of mermen to search for a place to settle in. It was known that merpeople used to be sea nomads. They had been the first to do that thus, making Aquania the first kingdom of the sea. Apparently, they didn’t have women with them at the time of their settlement, and they resorted to abduction of sirens as well as rape so they could populate their new kingdom. A shiver ran past my spine and I skipped the details of the rape and abduction. I returned those scrolls and took out the others.

Just as Erwann and Marina did, I sorted out relevant scrolls and compiled them in three separate groups on the table using magic to keep them from mixing up. Nearly an hour passed before Erwann finished scanning the last scroll in the shelves. We came up with a total of seventeen scrolls: six had enchantments or data about turning a human into a mermaid; eight had information about going on land; and three contained suspicious facts.

“I guess we should start with the group that had the least number of scrolls,” Erwann suggested as we gathered around the table.

Marina swallowed as I nodded and took one scroll from the group of three. It was not an old scroll and talked about the immediate family of a Celari who had been convicted of treason.

“Arius Celari,” I read the name aloud. “He was caught spying for the kingdom of Karagas.”

“His family insisted that he was innocent. That someone set him up,” Erwann added, being the one who found it.

“He’s a Celari and apparently, the Oracle who foresaw his treason was Doris,” Marina said as she read the contents of the scroll. “That’s definitely Doris’s handwriting.” It was enough proof aside from the fact that her name was at the upper left corner of the scroll. “His family could have been the ones behind this.”

Both of them looked at me and I nodded. “I remember the stories about him and I knew his youngest son, Cregor.” I dropped my chin in between my fingers, trying to recall what I knew about the family. “He never seemed like someone who’s plotting revenge but then again, he’s just two years younger than I am. And I don’t particularly know the rest of his family.”

“Best to investigate on it then,” Erwann deduced.

I rolled the scroll back and placed it in its canister as Marina opened the next scroll. It was about a vision that an Oracle had where a merman died. Turns out, the merman died when he got caught in the middle of an encounter between Celari warriors and a group of criminal vagabonds. Surprisingly, his fiancé was a Celari who wanted to convict the Celari warrior that killed the merman.

“I thought she might have some grudge against Aquania for the death of her fiancé. She could’ve made plans or something,” the princess explained.

“Highly doubtful. It was four Oracles ago and Doris had nothing to do with her and the veil,” I replied negatively.

“True. But the former Oracle also wrote there that the merman who died wanted to know more about humans,” Marina insisted.

“That’s a possible reason for wanting to keep the veil open but it’s still not a strong enough motive to commit an act of treason. Especially for a Celari,” I told her in a firm voice.

She pursed her lips as she put the scroll back in its container. I took the last scroll and opened it. It was in Doris’s handwriting again.

“That one’s a bit odd because there was no mention of a name. Not even Celari,” Erwann told us.

“Then why take it?” Marina asked.

“Read the story.”

The princess and I looked down to read the words that Doris wrote. It was a story of a merman who fell in love with a human. The human girl decided to leave her family to join him. They traveled for a while, allowing the human to get used to being a mermaid. But only several weeks after she got to Aquania, she died of illness coupled with extreme depression. She had borne a child, however, and it seemed that he grew up to be a fine young man.

The passage ended there.

“It was like some sort of fairy tale,” Marina commented.

“The thing is, whoever this merman was, he knew how to turn a human into a mermaid. This means that we have a chance of saving the veil from total wreck,” Erwann elaborated.

“Exactly,” I agreed. The story felt a bit familiar to me but I dismissed that thought immediately. We had to focus on the problems at hand. “Let’s hope the answer is somewhere in these remaining scrolls.”

None of us got to read the enchantments and details of how to go on land and how to turn a human into a mermaid when we first scanned them. We merely looked for the keywords and now, we have fourteen scrolls left to read.

“We can’t stay here too long so we have to analyze the scrolls separately,” I told Erwann and Marina in an urgent voice. “We won’t divide the number between us. Just read as much as you can.”

“Agree. That’ll make things go faster,” Marina said and Erwann nodded.

We did as planned and began to peruse through the scrolls as fast yet as careful as we can. Marina was the first to react excitedly.

“What?” I asked her impatiently.

“There’s an enchantment that would keep you from aging after you got back from land!” she exclaimed. The scroll she was holding was from my side of the room and I placed it in the pile when I saw the word ‘land’ and the phrase ‘no need for the Crystal Key of Saol’. “Here, look at this.”

Erwann and I read it and found out that for a merman to go on land for one Aquanian day—meaning one human week, someone must sacrifice and take the ‘aging damage’ upon himself.

“Of course,” Erwann muttered in an annoyed voice. “A sacrifice. There is always a sacrifice involved.”

“It can’t be helped,” I replied despondently.

“Well, at least there’s a solution,” Marina said positively. “I can sacrifice.”

My head snapped towards the princess in surprise. “You?”

She laughed at whatever expression I had on my face. “I know you don’t think I’m capable of sacrificing myself for others but I rather want to know of this spell would work on me. I mean, I didn’t age when I first came here, remember? Perhaps, I’m immune,” she ended with a grin.

“You’re right. You could do this,” I gave in.

Erwann had gone back to reading but he lifted his head and decided to give his own opinion. “I have a feeling the princess really wanted to help and was hiding behind her so-called ‘curiosity’.”

“Don’t assume too much, cousin dear,” Marina retorted good-naturedly.

“I’m too distant a relative to be called your cousin. And I still think you’re not as ‘bitchy’ as Seirra told me this morning.”

“Whatever,” Marina mumbled mockingly as she rolled her eyes at Erwann.

“Okay. Let’s keep that scroll and hope that the Oracle won’t notice that it’s missing until after we’re done using it,” I told them as I motioned for Marina to separate the scroll from the others.

We went back to reading and it took several minutes to read until there was only one scroll left. Erwann was the first to finish his own scroll but Marina and I were not far behind. I was putting my scroll in its canister as Erwann opened the last scroll that contained an enchantment. Everything we’ve read by far had no specific instructions on how we can turn Margaret into a mermaid and I could only hope that this one would be it.

Erwann laid the open scroll on top of the pile on the table and all three of us looked over to read. Marina didn’t bother to roll back the scroll she had just finished reading as she struggled to keep up with us.

Seconds passed before I could react to what was written in the scroll.

In a voice that was a mix of annoyance, desperation and excitement, I hissed, “That’s ridiculous!”