“Yaz!” she shouted. “How much farther?”
He was right next to her, cupping his compass with both hands. “We should be there by now!” he shouted back.
Another monster vortex rolled over them then, shrieking so loudly it drowned out all other sounds. Clio reared, and it was all Sera could do to hold on to the terrified creature. Just when she thought Clio would yank her arms out of their sockets, the vortex passed. As it did, the waters behind it settled a bit. Sera heard Yaz yelling her name.
“Look!” He was pointing ahead.
Sera turned her head and saw a steep, craggy black mountain looming in the distance.
“Bleak Mount! Two leagues away! Come on!” Yazeed shouted, right before another vortex slammed down on them.
The Black Fins struggled on for another hour before the storm let up. When the waters finally calmed, they found they were on flat ground, and at the base of Bleak Mount.
Sera wiped the silt out her eyes and peered ahead through the murky sea. Looming up at them was a forbidding prison of stone and ice—the Carceron.
“We’re here,” Sera said, her voice ragged. “At last.”
Before Yazeed could say anything, Garstig caught up with them. “We’ve got to make camp now,” he said. “The troops are exhausted. We lost animals in the storms. If we don’t shelter, and fast, we’ll lose soldiers.”
Sera gave the order to put up the tents, but she insisted that they be pitched well back from the Carceron. As her troops got busy unpacking, she started toward the prison. Becca, Neela, Ling, and Ava went with her.
Sera pulled her seal fur parka tightly around her as she swam. Her face was gaunt; there were dark circles under eyes. Hunger had been the Black Fins’ constant companion on the trek to the Southern Sea. It had taken them nine weeks to reach the prison, much longer than she’d anticipated. Now that they’d arrived, she didn’t know whether it was smarter to order her troops to make camp or to tell them to turn around and swim for their lives.
The mere sight of the place raised the scales on the back of her tail, and the thought of what was inside it made her stomach tighten with fear.
Ice had crusted over the Carceron’s heavy stones centuries ago. They gleamed a dull, pearly gray in the half-light. It glazed the iron bars of its soaring gate and encased its massive lock.
Ten yards from the gates, the mermaids stopped. Neela cast an illuminata. Its glow was weak. Little light reached the Southern Sea’s depths.
“It’s quiet. Too quiet. I wonder if it knows we’re here,” Ling said.
“I’m going to call it,” Sera said, drawing her sword. “I want to lay eyes on it again. See if we can find any weaknesses.”
Becca, Ling, and Neela drew their swords, ready to rush to her defense.
“Abbadon!” Sera called out, as she approached the gate. “Abbadon, come out!”
She tensed, adrenaline racing through her body, ready for the monster to throw itself against the bars. It would growl and shriek. It would reach through the bars with its terrible hands. It would try to kill her.
Except it didn’t.
Cautiously, Sera swam up to the gate and peered through. From her studies of ancient Atlantean history she knew that there was open space between the prison’s dizzingly high outer wall and its inner wall, which enclosed the cellblocks. She fully expected the monster to be lurking in it.
But it wasn’t.
Sera swung the flat of her sword against the gate’s bars. Ice cracked and fell away, the sound echoing through the water. She did it again and again until almost all the ice was off.
“Sera, be careful!” Neela shouted. “It could be a trap. Abbadon might be trying to lure you close.”
“Ava, what do you see?” Sera called out.
Ava lowered her head, as if concentrating. If anyone could sense where the monster was, and what it was doing, it would be her.
After a moment, Ava raised her head. With Ling’s help, she swam over to Sera. Neela and Becca were right behind them.
“It’s not a trap,” she said. “The monster’s not here.”
“Not here? You mean, not in the prison?” Becca said, incredulous.
“No, not by the gates,” Ava replied. “It’s in the prison, all right. Deep inside. Hiding. Waiting. It knows we’re here, but for some reason, it doesn’t want to fight us,” she said. “Not yet, at least.”
Sera put her sword back in its scabbard. She turned to face her friends and said, “Why does that scare me even more?”
MOURNERS PILED Regelbrott’s grave high with rocks. Sera placed the last one.
Then, head bowed, she joined her voice with the others, goblin and mer, singing the soldier’s dirges.