“You don’t know us. You never met us. If they find out we allowed you in our home, that’s the end of us,” they said, slamming the door behind him.
Sennar was dumbstruck at the sight of the Underworld, or Zalenia, as he now knew it was called. An immense ampoule, made of a crystal-like material, surrounded the entire village. It was like a bizarre sea village on dry land. The dome-shaped houses were built of sand and rock and decorated with iridescent shells. The smell of salt filled the air, just as in his own Land, but more distinctly, more intensely. A meticulous order reigned over the village. The roads were straight and wide, and all seemed to be carefully tended.
He touched the wall of the ampoule. It was cold, like glass. As he drew his hand back, however, he was shocked to find his palm glimmering faintly. He examined the strange material more carefully. Only then did he realize that the entire structure was coated in this oily, fluorescent substance. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make out the ocean below. He could see algae rocking lazily in the current—several types of algae, it seemed, though it was difficult to tell from that height. All of it glimmered, just as his palm had. Sennar could hardly believe the genius of the village’s inhabitants. The ampoule itself doubled as a light source, amplifying the meager rays of sunlight from above via the unctuous substance given off by the algae.
Barreling downward through the beds of algae was a massive, transparent column—the ampoule’s base. A second column spiked upward from the top of the ampoule, probably a means of collecting air from the surface. In the distance, Sennar could just make out the figures of several other ampoules connected to each other by a series of transparent tunnels. He shook his head. It was the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen. The people of Zalenia had created an underwater network of villages suspended between sky and water, miniature worlds contained in glass. Still dizzy with amazement, Sennar stuffed his hands in the pockets of his tunic and started walking.
While life was teeming in the waters outside the ampoule, inside all was wrapped in the quiet calm of the early morning. The neighborhood in which he’d spent his first few days was small, but the ampoule itself was enormous. Beyond the inhabited areas stretched a series of orderly fields, irrigated by an impressive network of canals. The plants cultivated there were much like the plants in the Overworld, but their kingdom wasn’t limited to dry vegetation alone. There were still more fields at the bottom of the sea, fields of algae, not quite as numerous or as well kept as those above, but far more vast.
Sennar walked along in a daze, never tiring of the view. High above he could just make out the sun’s reflection on the water—its heat so far off, and yet it didn’t feel cold. On the contrary, the air was pleasantly warm, and the columns gave off a light, steady breeze.
He continued walking, with no particular destination, as the inhabitants began exiting their houses and heading for work in the fields. So taken was he by the landscape, he didn’t notice that he was being watched.
“Halt, stranger!” he heard a booming voice command, and it was as if he’d been shaken rudely from a pleasant dream.
The sorcerer halted. A man carrying a long lance and wearing light armor darted over and raised his weapon to Sennar’s throat. “Who are you?” he asked threateningly.
A small crowd gathered at the edge of the street.
“I am an ambassador from the Overworld,” Sennar replied calmly.
A confused murmur rose up among the crowd and a young woman stepped forward. She was in a tizzy. “I knew it! I didn’t want to believe it, but now …”
“What are you talking about, Ma’am?” asked the guard.
“My son. He told me that a friend of his, Anfitris, had found someone from Above. I assumed it was just their childish imaginations getting the best of them.”
The murmuring increased and the guard’s expression turned grave. “Go and get the child.”
Anfitris was around six years old. Her hair was tied up in long, white pigtails, and she was desperately frightened.
“Have you seen this man before?” the guard asked.
The little girl seemed on the verge of tears. “Yes, but he was dead,” she whimpered. Two tears slid down her cheeks.
“Where was he?” the guard went on.
“Below the whirlpool. I was playing with my brother and we heard a thud. We went to see what it was,” she said between sniffles.
The guard turned and glared at Sennar. “So you really are one of those mongrels. And for all these years we thought we were done with you for good.” Then he pushed his lance into Sennar’s back and began prodding him forward.
“But wait,” said Sennar. “I’m here on a mission of peace. I need to speak right away with …”
“Quiet! Your fate is in the hands of the count now.”
Sennar did everything he could to stop the soldier. He reasoned, he shouted, he displayed his medallion as proof of his role on the Council of Sorcerers, but all his efforts served only to aggravate the guard even further. In the end, Sennar desisted and followed peacefully.
The guard led him into a squat building and shut him in a cell. Shortly after, he returned with an old, austere-looking man.
“This way, venerable Deliah,” he repeated in a respectful tone.
The man was hunched over with age and walked with his wrinkled face fixed on the ground. His long white hair cascaded over his blue robe and down to the floor, where it dragged like a bridal train. In his gnarled hand he held a long, wooden staff topped with a large turquoise sphere. The old man approached slowly, leaning on his staff, until he stood before the prisoner.
Sennar extended his right hand. “The count, I take it.”
Rather than respond, the old man took hold of Sennar’s chin and examined his face, turning it in every direction.
“He’s one of them,” he said with a cavernous voice.
The guard raised his chin pompously. “Of course. I’d assumed so immediately.”
“I’m begging you, Count, please listen to me,” Sennar began. “I am an ambassador from the Overworld and …”
The guard rammed his fist into Sennar’s stomach before Sennar could finish speaking. He curled up, the wind knocked out of him, and fell to the ground. Immediately, the guard jumped on top of him, stuffed a rag in his mouth, and pinned his arms down.
The old man stepped calmly forward and touched the handle of his staff to Sennar’s forehead, reciting an incantation under his breath.
Though he understood what was happening to him, the sorcerer had no time to react. He felt himself suffocating and gradually began to lose consciousness.
The guard swiped the gag back from out of Sennar’s mouth.
“I’m not the count,” said the old man before walking away, a cold smile on his face.
When Sennar came to, his head was spinning. He tried pushing himself back onto his feet, using the cell wall as leverage. His strength returned to him slowly, followed by the memory of what had just occurred.
“Damn,” he muttered between his teeth. He knew that spell. He knew it back and forth.
He tested to see if he could still perform magic. With the palm of his hand open, he pronounced the incantation for fire. Nothing. In vain, he tried producing one harmless, colorful flash after another. Again and again he tried, but always with the same results. The spells flowed uselessly from his lips.
In a fit of anger, he threw himself back to the floor. The old man had locked him in a seal—until it was broken, he was stripped of his powers.
Now he was neither a sorcerer nor a councilor, only a boy trapped in a stinking cell, miles and miles away from home.
To escape was impossible. The only opening in his cell was far above his head, and the door was made of thick, sturdy bars. Sennar felt like an idiot for the way he’d allowed himself to be mocked, a complete fool for disregarding the hostility of the people of the Underworld.
The entire day he saw no one. When night came, he slept little and poorly. Nightmar
es haunted him: he was put on trial before the imaginary count and condemned to execution, derided by the other councilors, congratulated by the Tyrant for the great job he’d done. He dreamed also of Nihal. Nihal in battle, Nihal in danger, Nihal dead.
When he awoke, a thin, gloomy light had just begun to fill the cell. The first sound he heard came from his own stomach, demanding to be fed. He called out for the guard, but got no response.
The whole thing was absurd. He was at the bottom of the sea, on the floor of a damp cell, and, other than the growling of his stomach, surrounded by complete silence.
It was mid-day already when he finally heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door. “Where the devil have you been? Did you want me to die of starvation?” the sorcerer groaned.
The footsteps ceased. “Please forgive me,” came a girl’s voice. “They didn’t tell me until this morning that there was a prisoner.”
Between the bars, Sennar noticed a girl approaching with a tray in hand. She was delicate looking, not very tall, and she couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Her face was a perfect oval, with two rosy cheeks. Up until then, Sennar had seen only white hair among the inhabitants, but the girl standing before him sported several, thick tufts of brown.
Standing face-to-face, they fell into an awkward silence.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to raise my voice,” Sennar muttered, out of sorts. “I thought I was speaking to the guard.”
The girl smiled back timidly. “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, here’s your food, at last.” She passed the tray through a narrow gap at the bottom of the cell.
Sennar grabbed it immediately and began uncovering the bowls. One was filled with a sort of broth, in which strange, black tendrils floated. In another, there was something that resembled chicken, covered in a lime green sauce. The third was a bowl of unrecognizable mollusks. The only familiar item on the tray was a red apple, but the sorcerer wasn’t one to be picky. He slurped down the soup with such zeal he could hardly tell what it tasted like. The girl looked on in silence, a flash of amusement in her green eyes.
Sennar put down the bowl. “Exquisite,” he said, moving to the next. “Are you the chef?”
“Yes. Practically everyone in my family is a prison keeper. With the color of our hair, and all.” She held forth one of her dark tufts of hair.
“What do you mean?” Sennar asked, curious.
“My ancestors were among the last to descend. Which is why our hair isn’t completely white yet.”
“When did they get here?”
“About fifty years ago. My parents were born here, but my grandparents came from Above and … people like us don’t have very many privileges. This is one of the few jobs we can hold.”
“Taking care of prisoners isn’t exactly the best job for a young girl.”
She blushed. “Usually it’s my brother that carries the food in; I just do the cooking. It’s just that … Well, to be honest, I wanted to see you in person. The whole city’s talking about you. Everyone’s on edge. But me, I’m not scared of you. I have a few relatives that stayed Above.”
Sennar moved on to the mollusks. “Where are your relatives from?”
“The Land of the Sea.”
“That’s the Land I come from, too. Have you ever seen it?”
The girl laughed out loud. “Obviously not! We’re not allowed to go up. Only sorcerers can visit the Overworld.”
At last, Sennar lifted his eyes from the bowl. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d been alone with a woman, but in that moment, with that kindhearted girl standing before him, it knocked him back a bit. She’s lovely.
She must have felt herself being observed, for just then she began to fix her pleated skirt in embarrassment.
Sennar turned to his tray. Nothing was left but an apple core. “Thank you. You have no idea what good this has done me,” he said, pushing the tray back through to her.
“It’s nothing. It’s my job. I’ll be back tonight. On time, I promise. I won’t let you starve to death.” She laughed.
She was already walking away when the sorcerer shouted after her: “Wait! I never even got your name. I’m Sennar.”
“My name is Ondine. Well, see you later, Sennar,” she replied, and was on her way again.
Mornings and evenings, Ondine came to his cell.
For Sennar, she was a ray of sunlight in the dark. She was caring, always smiling. She lifted him out of his abysmal loneliness.
As time passed, they became friends. They spoke of their separate worlds, shared their personal histories. She was fascinated by the idea of a sky—she couldn’t believe that in the Overworld so much blue lay above their heads. She told Sennar of her deep love for the sea, of how she wished she were a siren.
“A siren?” he asked, perplexed.
“Yes. They’re descendents of the mermaids.”
“I thought mermaids didn’t exist.”
Ondine laughed. “Of course they exist!” She then told Sennar of Zalenia’s construction, of how the tritons and mermaids had helped them—and then, some time after the foundation of their kingdom, how the mermaids began to give birth to strange creatures: beings descended from both mermaids and land dwellers. They didn’t have a tail fin, but did have small gills that allowed them to live under water. “They’re extraordinary beings. There’s no above or below for them, no inside or outside. How I envy their freedom!”
From her stories, Sennar could see how passionately her people hated the Overworld and everyone in it. “The Ones from Above,” as they were referred to in Zalenia, were considered an exclusively homicidal, warring people, incapable of living at peace with themselves or others. This hatred ran so deep that even the more recent arrivals to the Underworld, like Ondine and her family, suffered its consequences. The telltale sign of “the new arrivals” were their tufts of dark hair. They were regarded with suspicion and had access to only the most demeaning forms of labor. Ondine’s father was among those charged with the duty of maintaining the glass columns connecting the ampoules to the surface above. He was forced to work while suspended in mid air, removing refuse that accumulated along the walls of the tubes and clogged the airflow.
“As a family, we do the best we can. I won’t even have a dowry. But then, who would want to marry me, anyway?”
“Where I come from, you’d have hordes of suitors,” Sennar replied shyly. He wasn’t used to giving compliments.
Ondine shook her head and smiled skeptically. “With hair like this and these red cheeks?”
It all seemed so backward to Sennar. According to Moni, the founders of the Underworld wanted a new and better world, where everyone lived in peace. As far as he could tell, though, it was a kingdom founded on hatred and discrimination.
Sennar asked Ondine to explain Zalenia’s political structure. Each group of ampoules was directed by a count, a sort of absolute sovereign with extreme individual power. The count was also responsible for collecting a tax, part of which was then turned over to the king. Whatever remained, he could distribute as he wished. A lucky few lived in an ampoule run by an enlightened count, who employed the tax to better the lives of his subjects—most, though, were governed by cruel despots. Above all ruled the king, though he hardly concerned himself with the more distant territories.
In the past, things had been different. Rather than a king, the people had governed themselves. At set times of the year, the inhabitants of each village met and together discussed the most important issues. Likewise, for more general concerns, ambassadors from each ampoule met to determine the fate of the kingdom. But that didn’t last very long. A few of the men resorted to violence in an attempt to seize power, and Zalenia found itself on the brink of war. In order to avoid the conflict, one of the more charismatic ambassadors proposed the election of a king.
“All in all, we can’t really complain,” Ondine went on to say. “What’s important is that we remain peaceful. If a rotten count comes along, we keep up hope that the
next will be better. A storm can’t last forever, right?”
Justice, too, was in the hands of the count. If captured by the guards, a criminal was held in prison until the count could assess the situation and pronounce his verdict. He alone was charged with meting out punishment.
“And if the count … what happens if the count never shows up?” Sennar asked nervously.
Ondine hesitated. “I’m not so sure you want to know.”
“Just tell me.”
She bit into her bottom lip. “If the count never shows, the guards decide the prisoner’s fate,” she said in a rush, and immediately flashed him a reassuring smile. “But you don’t have to worry about that. I’m positive the count will hear you out and allow you to speak with the king. I mean it.”
Sennar hoped she was right. Nevertheless, the days passed without a trace of the count.
11
An Old Man in the Forest
They moved along safely through the forest, keeping their distance from the border. Nihal felt nothing of the joy and excitement of her first travels. It had all become habit—the hours on horseback; the short passages on foot when the path narrowed and she was forced to lead her horse by the reins; the silent, hastily consumed meals. If she’d been traveling alone with Laio, they might at least have passed the time in conversation, but with another soldier in tow, it wasn’t the most friendly of atmospheres.
Mathon must have been only six or seven years older than her, but he was as grim and laconic as a grouchy old man. He hardly uttered a word, and never smiled.
“He’s had a difficult life,” Laio explained to her one evening. “He’s the bastard child of noble parents, abandoned as a young boy outside a barracks. The army took him in and raised him, and he grew up as wild as a wolf. He’s seen his share of troubles, the poor guy.”