Into Eternity (The Eternals Book 3) Read online

  “A rope, Walter. I have a rope.”

  “Bravo, sir! Now, what the hell are you going to tie it to?” Merryweather shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  “I could tie it to you and chuck you out of here,” I snarled.

  “My fingernails aren't what they used to be,” he said, chewing on one to demonstrate. “I suspect I'd be as much good as a chocolate fireguard.”

  “Aren't you always,” I mumbled.

  “Pardon? Hm? What?”

  “If I can fashion a hook, I might throw it beyond the ceiling into the pack ice.”

  “Ooh, you're a regular boy scout.”

  “A what?”

  “Never mind, now is not the time to jest.”

  “Is it ever?” I growled and gave him such a look of contempt as to curdle milk.

  “Well…”

  “Well, what?” I retorted.

  “Get on with it.”

  Chapter Two

  -

  Wet

  Buried amongst the debris was a shard of steel almost sword-like in length. I flexed the thing, which offered substantial resistance, so heaved with all my might to twist one end upon itself. The metal bit deep into my skin, but my force was fashioned from desperation and I was not to be denied. Once happy I'd made as good a hook as an unskilled man might, I then realised it useless without a hole to feed the rope through. That was less easily accomplished. I flickered around like a lighted match seeking to remain un-wetted as the waters poured in from every angle. The Marquis' name was never far from my cursing lips as I slipped and fell, only to watch a riveted unit shake free from the wall and collapse upon my prize. However, to my astonishment, the retrieved blade-cum-hook had acquired a gash down one side that allowed at least in principle for the rope to gain some purchase along its flank. I wrapped the rope around said gash three times, then once more for good measure, fastened it beneath the hook and with a word of warning to Merryweather, who chose to ignore me, tossed the thing high into the air.

  “Ouch!” I yelped, as it hit me on the head.

  “Oh, bravo, genius, you nearly made it a quarter of the way that time.”

  Although I wanted to rip out Merryweather's vocal cords, he was correct, I had miscalculated, and not by a bit. “You could always help,” I suggested.

  “I could,” he said, flicking water from the chamber floor at my trousers.

  “Try should.” However, he'd already turned away.

  And so I started my beachcombing a second time searching for anything I might tie together to form an extension to my original grappling iron. I found nothing.

  “Use the curtains,” came a Britannian voice.

  “Why didn't you say that before,” I growled, as I sprinted across the deepening surface to tear two thirty-foot-high drapes from either side of the tunnelled entrance.

  “I would have, but I found them in rather good taste and didn't wish them sullied.”

  “I'll sully you in a minute!”

  “Temper, temper. Anyway, I'm doing all the hard work.”

  “Lifting Aura's head from the floor is not my definition of hard work.”

  “She's heavy, and I'd rather you addressed her by her full name, not some abbreviated abhorrence.”

  “Aura, Aura, Aura,” I rattled off, as I knotted the curtains together, and then attached them to the end of the rope. A sharp tug and the whole assembly knitted together. It was the best I could do; I was not a handy man.

  “What a botch job,” Merryweather bemoaned. “A child could have done better. If only your father could see you now.”

  That rankled, but I ignored him, took a step back and tossed the hook high into the air and out of the chamber: it held.

  “I think I shall risk the water,” Merryweather stated. “It is no comment on your craftsmanship, but I have no desire to fall from so great a height. I shall sit here in the water and levitate into the atmosphere like an Arabian djinn in silent splendour.”

  “Walter,” I said, lifting Aurora from his arms and tossing her over my shoulder, “I couldn't care less.”

  The look on his face was priceless, almost worth a wet end. Almost. The dandy looked so perplexed that I thought I might laugh. But, as ever, Merryweather was quick to adjust his plans to the situation. He jumped to his feet in a spray of water, leapt over my head, and clambered up the rope.

  “Wait for us, you Britannian git,” I called, as I struggled hand over hand after his fast-ascending form.

  Merryweather climbed at such a pace that the rope jiggled and wiggled in my clutches and I thought the hook to come unsecured at any moment. However, fortune favoured us, as it did not. The greater problem was that I could not climb fast enough to outrun the ocean. The seawater poured through the cracked walls at such velocity that with every passing second the chamber stood in an ever-deepening flood. I looked back once and once was enough.

  I battled on with the resigned expectation of soon becoming orca chow or worse. Aurora rocked back and forth across my shoulder like a see-saw; a perilous ascent made worse, as the bottom of the rope churned in the maelstrom of the chambered ocean.

  “Merryweather, you coward!” I bellowed into the Arctic darkness. “Bloody well help us!” Futile expletives, the Britannian was long gone. Aurora and mine's extraction would take considerably longer.

  I took a deep, unnecessary breath, focused straight ahead, and almost let go of the rope; an eye observed me through those translucent walls. At first, I thought it a trick of what blue light remained. But it was not a thing of blue, a mere reflection in cobalt of some circular object, but an eye of jet black. A huge dark star, far bigger than that of any orca I'd witnessed, it hung in the midnight depths as though suspended in time. A gentle thing, quite unlike the cold calculations of an orca eye, which devised your demise in divisions of pain, it was the orb of a pacifist, a thinker, and it meant no harm. I knew it with a rare certainty, for I felt it in my heart. The creature blinked; an eyelid of barnacles slid over its giant orb to say hello before retracting away. And, for some unknown reason, I stopped.

  Despite the crescendo from the tumultuous waters cascading and clattering around the great chamber of invention, a serene calm came over me. We linked that leviathan of the deep and I, two creatures as out of place as each other. We shared our grief for the past, the present, and the shortening future, and for a fleeting, fraction of existence, I felt a kindred soul. We were one, but not for long. No sooner had we bonded than our link was broken. The creature tore away in a flash of dread. And although it should have been impossible to tell from an eye what the creature behind the orb experienced, I knew it feared for its life. Something passed between us as it turned away from Hvit's almost-glass walls, enormous flukes propelling the creature into Arctic depths. The whale, for what else could it have been, was pursued; another experience we shared. No sooner had it turned tail than three obsidian hunters shot past in the liquid darkness. Another life had not long to live in our dying world, one I would have imagined already long extinct. A fourth streamlined predator did not transcend into those netherworld depths but paused mid-flight. The thing hovered where its larger compatriot had lingered and smiled a dagger-toothed grin. In a six-inch proliferation of teeth, it found humour in my expected demise.

  There was a time when I would have panicked, the killer before me waiting for Hvit's walls to shatter, the water rising, ever rising, but I would not die in that damned place. I would not succumb to the fear of a submerged finale, nor perish in the jaws of a murderous fish like Grella and who knew how many countless Nordic others. I was Jean, an Eternal, and I would not allow the girl I carried to die whilst in my care.

  So, I climbed. I hauled myself and my burden up, the freezing waters gaining by the second. The orca rose with us. The beast watched through that lens of a wall, observed its prey; that only fuelled my fires. In fact, any fear of the creature evaporated as it disappeared then returned after taking a gulp of required oxygen. It was an air breather, and I pitied
its pathetic existence, always one breath away from death. I almost wished for those walls to shatter so I could dig my talons into its dirty, great eyes and rip them out. I'd take the beast with me to Hell if it was the last thing I did. Merryweather, too, if I got half a chance. The Britannian might even have returned to the top of my list if I'd had longer to stew on it, but, again, I had misrepresented him.

  I had miscalculated on Walter's behalf. I had thought him fleeing when he ascended, but I was wrong. For as my toes felt the tumbling waters lick at them, I found myself hauled at great speed into the air. Up and up my burden and I shot. We traversed with such haste that I had all on just to retain my grip. I dug my talons deep into the rope and pinioned Aurora between my neck and shoulder. Walter pulled as though his life depended on it, never mind ours, such velocity did we attain. A glance down saw the ocean a distance below, a glance up, clear air drawing rapidly closer.

  By the time Aurora and I flew out of the chamber roof and an extra twenty feet into the air, before plummeting to the ground in a shared heap, I was almost too shocked for words.

  I lay on the compacted snow just glad to be alive, in a manner of speaking, my non-heart almost beating with relief. I scratched at the deep blanket of white as if for confirmation of non-liquidity and sighed with relief at its resistance.

  In fact, so relieved was I, that when I stood to thank Walter for his eventual assistance, seeing him gasping into the snow some way off came as little surprise. The deep baritone of someone demanding of more respect than he caused a more substantial shock.

  “Good evening, Jean. Thank you for saving my sister.”

  “You're welcome, Prince Grella. You're very welcome indeed.”

  Chapter Three

  -

  Brother

  “How badly is she hurt?”

  “Just knocked unconscious,” a Britannian voice replied. Merryweather again held Aurora off the ground.

  “Who is he?” Grella asked. The dismissive nod of his head suggested he did not overly care.

  “May I introduce the most annoying creature the world has ever known, Sir Walter Merryweather.”

  “Merryweather.” Grella rolled the word around his palette as if sampling a dream.

  “Charming,” Merryweather huffed. “I didn't have to save her, you know.”

  “You didn't,” I protested.

  “But I would have, I was prepped and ready to go. I was you know. Thing is, you're so big and strong, it made practical sense for you to do the lugging and I the thinking.”

  “And what have you thought?”

  “Nothing yet, but I'm working on it. I am, after all, caring for our dear princess, so I'm clearly preoccupied. One might call it a role reversal or such like. I'm sure it's only temporary, as I can't expect you to do any thinking for more than a few minutes.”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, in my most sarcastic tone.

  “You two seem to know each other well,” Grella said. He gave Merryweather a sideways glance, his eyes narrowing, but nothing more.

  “Oh, yes,” beamed Merryweather despite Grella addressing me. “Jean and I are very best friends.”

  “I'd term it in a looser manner.”

  “Hm! I'm both shocked and disturbed by that,” Merryweather sulked. “I could have said I was your only friend, but I didn't wish to embarrass you. Now, I wish I had.”

  “You are not his only friend,” Grella interjected much to my surprise. Any further comments were cut short, the Nordic prince staggering then dropping to one knee, his face etched with pain.

  Merryweather looked my way and shrugged his slim shoulders. “I never touched him.”

  I ignored the fool and took a half step forward to aid the stricken prince. He responded by raising his palm and shaking his head. “The orca,” I suggested.

  “The orca.”

  “May I see?”

  Grella set his jaw and drew back his cloak. The result was sickening, and I almost baulked. His unveiling revealed a near perfect set of symmetrical teeth marks across his midriff. Every dagger-like gouge pooled with blood, the outer rim of each individual hole encrusted with Grella's life essence. He looked like a man of two parts sewn together by the world's worst seamstress.

  “Good God, man!” I exclaimed.

  “I fear God forsook us many aeons ago.”

  “You're not wrong there,” Merryweather quipped.

  Grella folded his cloak back about him almost as if ashamed of his injuries. With an effort akin to toppling a mountain, the prince got to his feet and wobbled over to his sister's side. He took her head with delicate grace from the dandy, then eased the rest of her body into his arms and rested with her in the piled snow. Merryweather did not protest and allowed the Nordic to cradle his sister in a loving embrace.

  “Dare I ask how?” I enquired.

  “How what?” Grella sighed.

  “How you escaped the death both Aura and I felt certain you'd suffered.”

  Grella pulled such a sour face I thought he should scold me for even asking. But his expression softened when he realised I meant no slander.

  “Luck.”

  “Ah, that clears that up then.”

  I shot Merryweather one of my best foul looks. He responded by zipping at his mouth.

  “I'm sure it was more than just luck.”

  “Not really.”

  “But Aurora said even she could not catch you, that the beast carried you far away.”

  “She came after me?” Grella looked astounded.

  “She did. Without a second thought, she dove under the ice in pursuit. When she did not resurface, I reasoned to have lost you both.”

  “One less burden,” Grella huffed.

  “Never that, Prince Grella. I believe you to be the single most underrated man I have ever met. You astound me at every turn.”

  “Why was I not included in your calculations?” Merryweather held a hand to his heart. He gave a look of such abject horror, I almost wanted to laugh, but remembered at the last moment just how much he antagonised me. I remedied the slip with a dirty look. He sidled away.

  “Underrated man,” Grella sneered. “Are we men, Jean? I am less certain of it with every accursed day.”

  “I believe so even though at times I have doubted it above all else. If we look and think as men do does that not make us such?”

  “Perhaps,” he replied, but his slumped shoulders suggested he remained unconvinced.

  “You are the best of men,” came words of such quiet that even an Eternal's ears struggled to hear them.

  “Sister,” Grella whispered. “You sought to save me.”

  “I did.”

  “Then, Jean did not exaggerate.”

  “I do not believe Jean prone to such embellishments.”

  “No, I suppose not,” he said, stroking long, milk-white hair from her face.

  “And I believe you still owe both he and I an explanation.”

  “Oh, you heard.”

  “Yes,” a simple reply. “I believe we make our own luck and should like to hear how you made yours.”

  Grella appeared lost for a moment. He raised his head and stared off towards the ocean, reflective, deep.

  “The creature hurt you, didn't it? You, who thought himself above pain.”

  “I had forgotten such things.”

  “Pain is something I have lived with every day of my life.”

  “I am sorry, my sister. If I could change things I would, but time is a fickle mistress and always seeks to distort one's best intentions. You have been wronged in the worst of ways, a sin I am guiltier of than most, for I knew it so from the start. I do not know what else to say.”

  “You don't have to say anything. But the pain I felt as the leviathan tore away into the dark depths with you impaled upon its teeth hurt me more than anything I have ever experienced. That is no mean claim for a child with centuries of hurt. I never thought to look into your ruby eyes ever again. So, dear brother, tell us how yo
u survived to then save us.”

  “It was the being taken that shocked me, not the pain,” he whispered. “I heard the crunching of ribs, saw blood disperse into the water, even wondered whence it came. I hung in the creature's maw unable to believe how I a prince amongst men, an heir to a world, albeit a doomed one, could suffer at the teeth of one of the ebony giants. But I did, sister, I did. I almost gave up, too. It was not the anguish, but the fact a beast had achieved what I had thought impossible. A beast!” he reiterated. “It was the embarrassment that caused me to freeze, the shame.” Grella placed his free hand to his wounds as though they leaked his spirit into the Arctic night. “Everything was so still, so silent in those minutes. I hung there in the abyss waiting for it all to end, a snowflake in an obsidian night. Like a ghost, I perused the darkness expecting to join with it forever. The water pushed past, and I relaxed into the oblivion I had thought myself as an Eternal cheated of. That's when I heard the sound of motors. They saved me. Only one thing could cause such a tumultuous disturbance to the still Arctic waters: our city's most secret chamber opened to the elements. Mother was leaving Hvit. I angered.”

  “And…” Merryweather pressed, his interest in proceedings suddenly piqued.

  “And…” Grella mimicked.

  “How did you know it was she? Why did you anger? How did you get away?” The dandy blurted question after question to an impassive monarch-in-waiting.

  “I have suspected her plotting for some time. The realisation of that truth spawned my anger. And I escaped the orca by drowning it. When the creature thought me deceased it drove for the surface to shatter the ice and break free, which it almost did.”

  “And…” I found myself saying much to my own foolish pride.

  “I braced myself against the underside of the ice sheet and held the creature submerged. The orca required air, I did not. Extricating myself from its death grip was not so easy as we drifted ever-deeper, nor dealing with the blood loss I had suffered. But, as you bear witness to, I survived. The swim back to Hvit coincided with the Super-Zeppelin's departure and your whimpering friend's cries of anguish.”