There were 12 rings in the end.
They opened one after another in the black water above the slope, each as wide as a house and as pale as the moon. Out of each ring came a piece of another World, a wide disk of ground with its own air above it. Each piece sank slowly through the sea, like a stone through oil, until it settled on the seabed.
Mav had watched Ronald’s hills and Tamsin’s forest come down the same way two nights before. But his friends had come because he asked them to. These people had paid for his coordinates.
The first was a plain of gray ash under a dull red sky. The second was a slope of red rock. The third was a valley of giant ferns under a green sky. The others settled beside them in a long, uneven line, until 12 domes of foreign land stood on the field of stones in front of his walls. Their air shone faintly where it touched his water, like the inside of a soap bubble.
The largest dome landed last, closest to the gate.
It was a flat white plain of salt, so bright that it hurt to look at. A woman in a gray coat stood in the middle of it with her hands in her pockets. Above her, a dozen gray owls turned in slow circles. Each of them was as large as a man, but none of them made a sound.
Mav had seen her only once, sitting on a fallen tree at the edge of the marsh with a notebook on her knee. He still couldn’t have described her face. But he knew the coat, and he knew the stillness.
It was Rhea Calder.
’So it’s Ashgrove,’ he thought. ’Of course it is.’
He was afraid for Ronald and Tamsin, and for the small fish in the dens. For himself, he felt only a cold, steady calm. He had chosen this ground. He knew every stone of it, but the people in those domes didn’t.
He reached into the minds of his Subjects and found every one of them waiting.
’Twelve, send the older ones up to Two. Keep the small ones with you.’
She obeyed at once, without fuss. Two hundred young needlefish of the first spawn rose out of the dens in a silver stream and vanished into the dark above the slope.
’Nobody else moves until I say so.’
-----
The raiders didn’t wait long.
Their beasts came out of the domes at the same moment, as if someone had given a signal. Armored boars came from the ash plain, and gray stone serpents slid down from the red rock. Great gray bears with horns on their shoulders pushed out of the ferns. Each beast that left its dome kept a thin, shining skin of its own World around its body, no thicker than a hand.
Mav understood exactly what that meant, and so did the raiders. Inside that skin, a land beast could walk on his seabed. It could breathe there, and it could fight. But it was slow in the water, and a hard blow could tear the air away.
The first wave came at the main wall. It was mostly boars, perhaps 60 of them, moving heavily through the black water toward the gate where Six was waiting.
’Two. Now.’
The army came down from the dark above the slope.
Two led it, with the other seaweed needlefish around him and the 200 young behind them. They moved as one silver blade. They ignored the boars themselves and went for the skins. Each needlefish went straight through a film of air and out the other side, and the torn air rose behind it in a stream of bubbles. A charging boar suddenly stopped. Its legs kicked once in the water. Then it began to sink.
Eighteen’s spined fish hit the rest of the wave from the side. They were slow, but they only needed to be close. Every boar that bit one of them filled its own mouth with spines, and Sting made it weak. The needlefish did the rest.
On the ash plain, a man shouted something that Mav couldn’t hear. The surviving boars turned and ran back toward their dome.
That was when Ronald’s boars came off his hills.
They came from the north side, inside their own skins of mountain air. They didn’t charge at the beasts, but at the edge of the ash plain’s dome. Ronald had thought about it for two nights, and he had seen something that Mav hadn’t. A dome on the seabed had a weak place where it touched the stones, because the foreign ground and his sea pushed against each other there. Fourteen stone boars hit that place at full speed with Charge.
The edge of the dome bent inward like a sheet in the wind. Black water poured through the gap onto the ash.
It didn’t break, but for a few seconds, the man on the plain stood up to his knees in the sea. He stared down at the water in horror, and Mav would never forget his face.
-----
The second wave was smarter.
The stone serpents went under the field instead of across it. The seabed in front of the city shivered. Three long lines of disturbed stones began to move toward the walls, too deep for his fish to reach.
’Twelve, the dens. They’re coming under the dens.’
Her answer came at once, calm and sure. She already knew, and she was moving the small ones toward the back rooms. Two had chosen her because she never lost her head, and she wasn’t losing it now.
[You have borrowed a skill: Dart.]
Dart carried Mav to the dens. He reached them just as the floor of the south den burst open. A gray serpent as thick as his body came up through the stones, into a room full of young needlefish.
It was a mistake for the serpent, because the den was full of water.
It had brought its skin of air with it, so it could still breathe for a while. Now it was in a small room with stone walls, and the young fish poured over it like silver rain. Twelve went for its eye. The serpent threw its head against the wall, and Mav heard something break in the little needlefish.
Twelve’s pain went through his own side, so sharp that he almost dropped his harpoon.
[You have borrowed a skill: Discharge.]
[You have borrowed a skill: Sting.]
He landed against the serpent’s neck and let his lightning go. The Discharge went through the skin of air into the serpent itself, and the great body jerked. Then he drove his harpoon into the soft place behind its head. He felt the poisoned point sink deep.
The skin of air tore, and the serpent drowned slowly in the dark room.
Twelve was floating near the ceiling. Her seaweed was already closing what it could, but she was hurt badly. She couldn’t swim straight.
’Stay in the dens. You’ve done enough.’
She sent him a picture instead of an answer. It showed two more lines of moving stones, one under the gate and one under the Reefkin quarter.
She was right. Six caught the second serpent at the main gate. He held its head in one great claw while the spined fish tore its skin away. The third came up inside the Reefkin quarter, in front of three builders who were carrying eggs to the deep halls.
Mav was too far away. He felt three small points go out in his head, one after another, like candles. A rush of rage went through him, but he kept it cold.
For a moment, he couldn’t see anything. Then Birch arrived from the gate of the halls, and the third serpent didn’t come up any farther.
-----
The raiders had expected him to defend the dome of the Heartstone at any cost. That was why they sent their strongest beasts there.
They were four of the horned bears, each one of them rank D, wrapped in skins of warm, wet air. They had waited among the ferns until the others drew his army away. Then they ran straight across the field of stones and up the slope.
Mav let them come.
He had told Sela what to do, and she did it. The four collared Reefkin stepped back from the opening of the dome, as if they were afraid. The bears pushed inside one after another. The first one put both of its huge paws on the Heartstone and pulled.
Then Sela closed her hands.
All four Reefkin raised their arms, and the water inside the dome moved. This time, it moved like a fist instead of a rope. It crushed every skin of air in the room at once, pressing four bears against the crystal that they had come to steal. They were strong, and they fought hard. But the Reefkin held them there until they stopped moving.
They died touching his Heartstone.
Mav felt it in his chest. It was deeper and slower than the warm rush that came with a kill, and it went into the stone itself. Four rank D beasts had given everything that they had to his World.
On the salt plain, Rhea Calder took her hands out of her pockets for the first time.
She had understood. She had read about Heartstones too. She looked at the dome, and then at him, standing at the gate with his harpoon. She tilted her head a little, as if he had become more interesting.
Then she raised one hand, and all 12 of her owls dived at once.
They came down through the black water without a sound. They flew inside skins of salt air, as fast as if there were no sea around them at all, and every one of them was diving at Mav.
He had expected that.
’Seven.’
The great pale eel had been waiting at the foot of the cliff since dusk. She rose out of the dark under the owls like a white line drawn in the water.
Seven’s first flash lit the whole sea.