فصل 13

CHAPTER 13

THE POD

THE POD SLID SWIFTLY THROUGH THE SEA, deep enough to leave no sign, not even a ripple, on the surface above.

The pod was made of metal, but not an earthly metal; it was blacker than coal, harder than diamond, stronger than steel. It was a sleek cylinder, seventy-five feet in length and tapered to a sharp point at each end.

The interior was divided into compartments. At the moment the one at the forward end, a small, totally dark enclosed chamber, held only Ombra. At the aft end of the pod were four large cages. Between these and Ombra’s chamber was an open main cabin, lit by a lone swaying lantern overhead and occupied by eight members of the Rundoon Royal Guard.

They were hand-picked men—strong, skilled, well-armed fighters. Each one was brave, battle-tested, and—at the moment—quite terrified. They did not show their fear; they were too disciplined for that. But they were afraid nonetheless—of the thing in the forward compartment but also of the bizarre vessel in which they were traveling.

When they had been ordered to report to the harbor in Maknar, they had expected to be boarding a sailing ship. Instead, on arriving at the appointed dock, they had been surprised to find…nothing. Where a ship should have been, there was only a patch of murky water. The guardsmen waited a few minutes, not knowing what to do.

Then the murky water began to bubble and swell. As the men stared, a long black shape broke through the surface and rose, settling itself against the dock. A section of the hull slid open smoothly, creating an opening about six feet wide, with stairs leading to the dim interior of the hull. The guardsmen looked at it uncertainly, none of them moving.

Then a voice came from inside the hull, an inhuman groan.

“Enter,” it said.

The guardsmen did not want to enter, but they were disciplined soldiers, and they knew the horrible price they would pay if they disobeyed an order. And so, one by one, they descended the stairway into the main cabin. The instant the last man was inside, the opening slid silently shut. They were now trapped inside this strange vessel.

“You will remain in this cabin,” said the groaning voice. The men looked forward and saw its source: the dark shape of Ombra, nearly invisible in the gloom.

“We will travel for one day,” he said. “I will give you further orders when we arrive at our destination.”

Ombra turned and glided through the opening into his forward chamber. The door closed silently. The guardsmen looked at one another. Each had many questions; none had any answers.

They felt the vessel descend. They heard the water sloshing against the sides and then overhead. They were underwater.

And then they were moving—slowly as they left the harbor, then faster and faster, until the swooshing sound of water slipping past the hull made conversation difficult. The guardsmen could see nothing, as the vessel had no portholes, but it felt to them as though they were moving far faster than any normal sailing ship. And, in fact, they were.

The men heard no engine sound; they did not know how the vessel was moving. It was just as well that they didn’t. Their fear would have grown tenfold had they been able to peer into the gloomy water ahead to see what moved the pod so swiftly through the water.

It was pulled by four gigantic squid.

The creatures, each well over a hundred feet from the tip of its huge, dome-shaped, broad-finned mantle to the ends of its longest tentacle pair, were wearing special harnesses attached by steel cables to four rings on the front of the pod. The monstrous creatures worked rhythmically, sucking huge quantities of water into their mantles, then contracting to eject the water out the back with immense force, causing themselves and the pod to surge forward. They responded to unspoken thought commands from Ombra, whose presence they felt intimately, and who could sense, through them, everything in the sea near the pod.

At the moment there was little to sense; save for a few small fish and the strange vessel passing through, the sea here was open water. But soon enough that would change.

Soon enough, because on its present course, the pod would arrive at Mollusk Island.