Page 88 of Beneath the Haunting Sea

Then the sailor hung a gold medallion around her neckand gave her a ring of keys, and he and the little girl strode away.

Suddenly, the sailor stood in the cove where Talia was, though the sun was shining in his dark hair and he was alone. He seemed to be staring straight into her eyes. “I know you will come back one day,” he said. “My descendant, and hers. I want you to know you are strong, strong enough to find Rahn’s Hall, strong enough to defeather. And I want you to tell Endain, when you find her again, that I love her, that I never stopped loving her, that though I am dead and gone I think of her still, and I’m waiting for her beyond the circles of the world. Break Rahn’s curse. Stop her before she comes to rule the world. Set Endain free. Set yourself free.” And then the sailor smiled, and vanished.

Talia staggered backward and almostfell into the sea, but she grabbed hold of the cliff and kept herself upright. Waves lashed against her and rain bit at her face.

If she’d denied it before, she couldn’t any longer.

She understood now why she could hear the music in the waves. Understood why the gods had burdened her with this fate and why her mother had leapt into the sea—she’d known about their heritage. She’d known Rahn sensedher and Talia’s presence. She’d cast herself into the storm so Rahn would take her instead of Talia. And Rahn had. But she sensed Talia still, and was tormenting her mother because of it. Talia was part Wave, part sea god. She could never escape that.

The realization overwhelmed her, horrified her. It thrilled her somehow, too.

But there was still one more thing she had to know.

She was soakedthrough by the time she arrived at the Ruen-Dahr, breathless and shaking the water from her hair. She bolted past a confused Ahned, and nearly ran headlong into a man carrying a bucket of fresh plaster. She jerked sideways to avoid him, and dashed up the stairs to the room she hadn’t seen in weeks, praying they were still there, that they hadn’t been thrown out.

She tore through the gowns inher wardrobe and there they were—the clothes she had worn aboard theLazy Jackalhalf a year ago, balled in the corner underneath a pair of dirty riding boots.

She pulled them out, scrabbling in the pockets of the baggy pants. The right one was empty, and her panic redoubled.

In the left pocket she found the piece of paper, crumpled and creased and stiff with seawater.

She crouched back onher heels, hardly daring to breathe, and unfolded it.

Her mother’s handwriting marched in front of her eyes, the words Talia had thought the ravings of a madwoman all at once perfectly clear:

The sea runs in my veins, as it does in yours, my darling girl. My father told me when I was young. We are the heritage of the sea god, we are Endain’s children, and so only we can strike the goddess down from her throne. Endain rode the Whale here, and we must ride it back again. The Whale will save us. We must take the Star from Rahn’s hand, we must turn her own power against her, we must set the dead free. The time has come. The nine hundred years are nearly ended, and when they are she will rise with her dead and fill all the world with shadows. I have felt it. I have heard it in the song of the Waves. We must stop her, before it is too late. We must return to our birthright. The sea made us, and the sea will take us back again. Come, my dearest Talia. I will be waiting for you there.

The paper tore between Talia’s fingers. She started to shake.

She left her room almost without realizing it, and her feet took her up to the library. The door was unlocked but the tower was empty,the hearth swept clean. She felt the power of the mirror room, dancing just behind her eyes—she could almost see the sparks of light glimmering where the door ought to be. She didn’t know the Words Wen had used to open it, but she realized she didn’t need them.

“I am Endain’s daughter,” she whispered to the air. “I belong here. Let me in.”

The wall shimmered and the door appeared. She steppedthrough.

With an effort she passed by mirror after mirror until she came to the last one. “What will happen if I do not go?” she asked. It seemed a question the mirror was meant to answer. She steeled herself for the things she didn’t want to see, and looked in.

The black glass wavered. She felt suddenly very cold.

Water pressed in all around her, but she could see nothing. Fire burned in hereyes; she knew it would never stop. Her fingers whispered past her harp strings and she played a lament for the bond laid on herself and her sisters, for the loss of the man she had loved, for the dead souls bound forever in the shadows that moved beyond her blind eyes.

The mirror twisted and changed, flashing images in quick succession. Talia once more saw her mother, screaming before Rahn’sthrone, the pain twisting in and in and in. She heard the clank of chains, saw sparks fly from a hammer somewhere in the dark. She heard the Billow Maidens singing, and their music wasdangerandsorrowandpain never ending.

She saw the image from her dream, a wide black sea and the dead rising out of it, silent and screaming. They were bound in iron around their necks and wrists and ankles,all chained together in a grotesque, clanking horde. Rahn led them, riding on the back of a blue-and-silver serpent. Her woven crown was made of fire and human finger bones, and the Star gleamed from her hand. Behind her came the Billow Maidens, and they were collared in gold and bound with chains between them, like the dead.

No!Talia tried to scream, but the mirror wasn’t finished.

She blinkedand saw the shore of the Ruen-Dahr, a lone figure standing with one arm outstretched. He held a sword that pulsed with the power of the Words. He trembled as he waited, and Talia knew him to be the guardian, the last defense for the land against the sea goddess.

But more than that: It was Wen. He looked solemn and strange; there were silver threads in his hair.

Rahn came toward him with theWaves and the dead at her back. She stepped from the sea onto the shore, and Wen did not waver. “Go back,” he said. “Go back to the deep.”

But the goddess laughed. “Whatever power was woven into this shore is ended now.” She lifted her hand and the Ruen-Dahr crumbled to dust behind him. But still he did not back down.

“Go back to the deep!”

Rahn smiled and raised the Star. “You cannot stopme.”

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