Erzulie Sangmarée's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Erzulie Sangmarée pressed her palm to the carved seal and felt nothing give. The stone door barred a chamber of old Atlantean rites, the lost magic she had crossed an ocean to claim. She had left her tribe's reefs in the Caribbean for this. Poseidon had summoned her sea witches to serve his rebuilt city. She served, yes. But she came for the ruins and the orichalcum sleeping inside them. Her three red-and-black tentacles braced against the broken stone of the fallen king's hall. Above her, a toppled statue of old Atlan watched with cracked eyes. The seal's script mocked her. Rows of sharp Atlantean letters spiraled across the orichalcum lock. She had read many old tongues. This one refused her. She traced the marks with a tattooed finger and whispered a voodoo word to wake them. The letters only glowed and went dark. The rite stayed locked away. "The dead wrote that," said a voice behind her. "You cannot bully it open." Proteus drifted from the gloom, grey-bearded, his orichalcum staff cutting slow circles. Her student. Her problem. Poseidon had bound the prophet to her lessons, and the old god resented every one. He shared what he knew only with those who could pin him down. "Then read it for me," Erzulie said. "I could." He studied the seal. "I was alive when it was carved. But I give nothing freely. You know my rule." A second shape slid through the ruin. Kymopoleia, the storm princess, her silver gown pale against the ash. Erzulie's other student, and the one who flinched at her own power. She looked at the glowing letters, not at Erzulie. "He means you must catch him," Kymopoleia said quietly. "He always means that." Erzulie smiled. She had hunted slippery things in deep water her whole life. She spread her tentacles wide and sang a binding chant, the kind her grandmothers used on eels. The water thickened around Proteus. He shifted. A shark. A current. A knot of eels. Each form she named and held. Her tentacles cinched the water itself into a cage. "Catch the storm," she told Kymopoleia. "Don't fight it. Push it into my net." Kymopoleia hesitated, then let her grief move through her hands. A small surge of current slammed Proteus against the seal. His staff clattered loose. Erzulie's tentacles closed over his wrists. "Held," she said. "Now read." Proteus laughed, caught at last. He spoke the script aloud. The orichalcum lock turned. The stone door ground open, and the chamber of old rites breathed out cold, bright light. Erzulie floated before the opening, triumphant. Then Proteus went still in her grip. "You opened it," he said. "But the seal was a lid. Something was sealed in, not out." Inside the chamber, a deep orange glow pulsed. The volcanic stone beneath them trembled. A fissure split the floor, and molten light bled up through the crack.