The Mermaids Madness

middle of the back made her gasp. She twisted away from Danielle’s hand.
    “I’m fine.” Talia’s voice sounded hoarse even to her own ears.
    Danielle looked past Talia to Snow, and compassion softened her face. “Snow, I’ve seen you cast illusions before. Would it be terribly difficult to use your magic to clothe us? I’m . . . I’ve always been self-conscious. This is too distracting.”
    Shame burned Talia’s cheeks.
    “You’ve got nothing to be self-conscious about,” Snow said, grinning. “You’d never know that body spat out a prince.”
    “Please?” Danielle asked.
    With a shrug, Snow touched her mirror. A low-cut blouse and trousers shimmered into existence, covering Danielle’s body. Similar garments soon appeared on Snow and Talia.
    Talia sighed. She recognized these clothes from Snow’s wardrobe, and they weren’t too much better than being naked. Nor could they do anything to erase the images in Talia’s mind. But it was better than nothing.
    She started to thank Danielle, but that would mean acknowledging what Danielle had done. Instead, she turned to the tower wall. “Keep your body close to the tower, and try to put your hands and feet where I do. Move one limb at a time.”
    Illusory clothing did nothing to protect her body from the rough-hewn stone. The lowest window was three stories high, and she was soon bleeding from scrapes on her arms and legs. She peeked through arrow slits as she climbed, but the interior was too dark to see anything.
    The marble sill of the window was wet and slick to the touch. She found a higher foothold and pushed herself up. She held her breath, listening for any sound inside: a footstep or a quick breath as someone prepared to decapitate her. The only sounds were the lapping of the water below and Snow’s muttered complaints.
    “Wait here.” Talia pulled herself through the window, landing lightly on a stone floor inside. There, she waited for her vision to adjust. She could make out an orange glow rising from the center of the room. The light showed the outline of a pit where the center of the floor had crumbled away. She didn’t trust the broken floor enough to investigate more closely.
    A staircase wound along the outer wall. Overhead, she could see the fading stars through holes in the roof.
    She returned to the window and reached down to help Danielle and Snow through. Danielle’s sword clinked against the windowframe as she climbed inside. Talia froze, waiting for some sound from below, but if Lirea was down there, she didn’t appear to have heard.
    “Stay close to the wall.” Talia led them to the steps. “Keep quiet.”
    This must have been a guard tower originally. The very top would have held cannons or ballista, as well as a signal bell. The weight of all that equipment was probably what had broken through the floors.
    The stairs descended through a makeshift armory. Many of the old weapon racks were bare or broken, but Lirea had built up a fair collection of her own. Undine-style spears and knives carved from wood, stone, and bone stood in neat rows. Lirea kept enough weapons to fight a small army. Further along were more exotic weapons. Danielle picked up a grooved paddle that curved into a hook at one end.
    “Spear thrower,” Talia whispered, helping herself to a curved sword. The blade was tarnished but still sharp. It wasn’t old enough to belong to the tower’s original inhabitants. How many of these weapons had come from sunken ships? Her fingers tightened to fists when she spotted a knife with a polished white stone set in the cross guard. Such knives were common in the northern part of Lorindar, and the shine of the blade meant this was a new acquisition. “Come on.”
    They descended through another room, this one lined with broken, moldy bunks. Through the broken floor, Talia could see candle flames reflecting on the water below. Rusted hinges showed where a trapdoor had once locked the lowest part of the tower off from the rest. A dungeon of some sort? That might explain why it had been built below sea level. Locking prisoners in waist-deep water would be a good way to break their spirits. For humans, at any rate. For a mermaid, this was probably the perfect bedroom.
    Talia kept her sword ready as she crept down the stairs, searching for Lirea. Dead, moldering flowers hung from the walls, filling the air with the sick-sweet smell of rot. Polished shells were mounted between the flowers, the kind of random