Quinn, who knew Alaric was at least five hundred years past being called a youngling, shot a suspicious look at Archelaus but decided she was too tired to care about the relative ages of Atlantean warriors. “Just take us to her. Jack, are you coming?”
Jack slouched down off the bed and padded after her as she followed Archelaus down the stone corridor toward a kind of courtyard. The area was enclosed by the walls of the cave, but high up on one side an opening allowed sunshine to stream into the space. The surprise at first had been the garden flourishing in the heart of a cavern, filled with fantastical flowers that she’d never seen before. She noticed a trace of a smile cross Alaric’s face and wondered at the source. She realized they’d never both been in the garden at the same time before.
She raised an eyebrow. “You like flowers?”
“It’s a miniature replica of the main palace courtyard in Atlantis, even to the tiny fountain burbling in the corner,” he said.
Archelaus nodded. “Yes. A bit of home I couldn’t resist bringing with me. My friends are always asking for cuttings and seedlings, so I fear I have introduced Atlantean life to the surface before Conlan was quite ready.”
“I doubt the high prince is concerned about this kind of population,” Alaric said dryly.
Quinn tilted her head and stared up at the jagged edges of the window, which was actually not much more than a cleft torn in the ground above. “Had any hikers fallen in recently?”
Archelaus smiled. “As you know, there is a powerful repellent spell in the area above. I may not have mentioned this before, but no hiker has come near the spot since the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, came on a pilgrimage to the sacred Fuji-san in 1867.”
“The mountain is sacred to the Japanese?”
The Atlantean elder nodded. “Yes. Certainly more at that time than now, as so many of our gods and sacred places have lost their meaning in this modern age.”
“But not to you,” she pointed out, slanting a long look at Alaric. “Your god, Poseidon, is as real to you today as he ever was.”
Jack, who was prowling around the edges of the room, lifted his shaggy head and aimed his amber gaze at Alaric, growling softly.
Alaric ignored the tiger. He crossed his arms on his chest and stared right back at Quinn. “As real, and even more demanding. Yet not all of us will continue to dance to his tune forever.”
“You are his sworn high priest, my son,” Archelaus said, his face troubled. “What you speak is worse than blasphemy; it is akin to breaking an oath.”
Alaric turned away from the man, as if dismissing the topic, and pointed at the dark-haired woman sitting silently on a bench in the middle of the space. Her back was toward them, but Quinn recognized the cut of her hair and her slight figure.
“Yes, that is our visitor. Her name is Noriko, and it is also Gailea, as far as we can understand. She speaks in an odd language—a confusion of ancient Atlantean mixed with Japanese. Between my friend Mizuki and myself, we’ve managed to cobble together what we think she means, but she mostly has sat silent, as you see her, since she arrived, refusing to talk much at all. She was very ill when she arrived and now she appears to be somewhat better, but she will not allow us to examine her, nor will she allow Alaric near enough to attempt a healing.” Archelaus frowned. “I confess I do not know how to proceed with her. I am merely an old warrior, not wise enough in the ways of women or lost souls.”
The woman turned her head and pinned her dark gaze on Archelaus. “You are quite wise, and your heart is evident, Old One,” she said in perfect, lightly accented English.
Alaric stepped forward slightly so that he stood between Quinn and the woman. Probably thought he was being subtle about his protectiveness. Quinn rolled her eyes as she dodged around him.
“Now that you have deigned to speak to me, state your name and how you appeared in our portal,” Alaric demanded.
The woman rose gracefully to her feet and bowed, dark eyes flashing with a hint of defiance. “I needed time to discover the shape of my current reality. I am Gailea, the one you know as the spirit of the portal, and you, Alaric, are as arrogant as ever, I see.”
“The shape of your reality. Yeah, because that makes sense,” Quinn said, studying Gailea’s delicate Japanese features and raising an eyebrow, not caring that the other woman recognized her skepticism. “You look so much like the other ancient Atlantean woman I know. You and Serai could practically be sisters.”
Gailea bowed again, this time toward Quinn. “And I am also Noriko, the woman you see before you. She came to Mount Fuji to die. She recently discovered that she had an advanced stage of cancer, and having lost her family to the tsunami, she believed she had no reason to live.”
Shame flushed Quinn’s cheeks with heat, but she knew better, after years of dealing with traitors, spies, and villains, to take anything that anyone said at face value. “And we should believe you why, exactly?”
Noriko/Gailea calmly said quite a long paragraph of . . . something.
Alaric snapped to attention, whatever it was that she’d said. His body tensed and he clenched his hands into fists at his sides.
“Poseidon’s long-term plans and schemes can no longer rule my life,” he snapped. “I don’t want to know what you think.”
Before Gailea could respond, Jack snarled viciously and leapt through the air toward her, knocking the woman/portal spirit to one side. As Noriko backed away toward the cave wall, Quinn automatically drew her gun and dropped into a battle-ready crouch; years of fighting with Jack at her side had trained her responses to his actions to be instantaneous. She followed Jack’s gaze up and up. The light in the chamber suddenly dimmed, and everyone else looked up at the opening in the top of the room, too, just in time to see the first of a wave of wild creatures with bared fangs and outstretched claws leap down through the air.
Quinn’s mouth dropped open. “Monkeys? Now we’re being attacked by flying monkeys?”
Chapter 3
Alaric didn’t even blink at the sight of a dozen or more man-sized brutish apes leaping down upon them. Their red faces contorted into feral grimaces as they shrieked and roared. After hundreds of years as a warrior and Poseidon’s high priest, veteran of thousands of battles and survivor of nearly as many deadly schemes, Alaric was surprised by nothing anymore. Especially when Quinn was around.
Not even flying monkeys.
“Quinn, get out of here,” he barked, as he called to his magic. First, he wove a powerful protection spell over the barrier to prevent further intruders from dropping down on their heads. Then he formed twin spheres of blue- green electricity in his outstretched palms, and he hurled the first with fatal accuracy at the lead ape. For an instant its brown fur shone with a luminous blue light, like a bizarre mammalian form of deep-sea creature. The light abruptly vanished as the ape collapsed and died.
The harsh bark of gunfire reverberated through the room, and the second ape dropped to the ground, dead, directly in front of Gailea. Alaric whipped his head around to glare at Quinn, who glared right back at him.
“Run from danger?” she called out, taking fresh aim at another attacker. “Have you
Alaric snarled out an Atlantean oath and whirled to protect Gailea, but she’d already thrown up a protective shield around herself in the form of a miniature dome of transparent energy. Two of the apes thudded against it as he watched, but it held firm.
Alaric spared a glance for his other companions, and discovered Archelaus wielding a sword he’d produced from somewhere, slashing and stabbing at the creatures in a whirlwind frenzy. Across the room, Jack tore into two more of them with the primal fury of an apex predator.
“Behind you,” Quinn shouted, and Alaric formed a sword of pure, flashing magic and spun around, slicing through the air and sending three of them to the nine hells. The echoing report of Quinn’s gun barked again and again, and only the sure knowledge that none of the creatures came even close to approaching her kept Alaric sane.
