The Skybound Sea

by Samuel Sykes

  “Will there be a need for getting answers? Because I might like that,” the harbormaster said as Miron walked between them.

  “All shall be answered in time,” the Lord Emissary replied, his gaze cast out over the harbor waters.

  “And in the time it takes, there’s the matter of the coin—”

  “In much more humble terms, I must concur with the heathen, Lord Emissary,” Quillian interrupted. “The adventurers are long dead and their mission doubtlessly failed. Our time would be better served formulating a secondary strategy for the procurement of the tome.”

  “I didn’t mind them so much, but this is costing me some money, Evenhands,” Argaol chimed in. “And she’s probably right. They’re probably dead. Eaten. Whatever. It’s just not practical to wait any longer.”

  “Faith often contradicts practicality,” Miron replied. “And for this, the faithful are rewarded.”

  “With coin, I hope,” the harbormaster grumbled.

  “Something much better,” Miron replied.

  The smile upon his face grew broader. He took a slow, deliberate step to the side to reveal the shape. A small, black dot on the horizon growing closer until it took shape. A boat, six bodies aboard, rowing tirelessly toward the harbor.

  “The knowledge that the Gods do, occasionally, listen. Even if it takes a few weeks of praying.”

  “That and the opportunity to look as smug as a bloody—” the harbormaster grunted as Quillian delivered a stiff elbow to him.

  The vessel rowed its way forward, a reeking cloud of stench heralding the arrival like several cherubs possessed of indigestion. It was fitting for the rabble that clawed its way off the ship with a few weapons, clothes stained white with salt, hair stiff from dried sweat, bodies in various stages of disrepair and all eyes sunken.

  Lenk was alive in name only. But that was enough for him to stand before Miron as he held up the satchel.

  “Here.”

  His voice came on a very soft breath. “Is that …”

  “Uh huh. Doom of the world, key to heaven, all that good stuff.”

  Miron accepted it with eyes wide. “I must admit, in some part of me, I doubted you could actually retrieve it.” His whispers were reverent, eerily so. “I prayed, of course. But how could a man pray to Gods to retrieve an item they so loathed? How could a man ask for that which could unmake their creation? How could—”

  “Hey.” Lenk cleared his throat. “I haven’t bathed in a couple of weeks now.”

  Miron looked at him blankly.

  “Just … thought you should know,” Lenk said, “before you got going there. So … we’re going to go remember why outhouses are made with only enough room for one person, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do not.”

  “Well, think about it for a while. I don’t really have the time and you don’t have the stomach for me to paint a picture,” the young man said, pushing past. “Just point us to wherever you’re staying and we’ll catch up real soon. You know, after everyone’s bathed and eaten things that don’t taste like insoles.”

  “Wouldn’t have had that problem if you had just heard me out,” Denaos said, tossing a sack out of the vessel and climbing onto the dock. “It’s not like it was a bad idea.”

  “Cannibalism is not typically noted as a traditional second resort after the meat runs out,” Dreadaeleon replied as a spell carried him up and over the rogue’s head and onto the dock.

  “We could have had a more thorough discussion of it if we hadn’t all argued who’d be eating who.”

  “Who’d be eating whom.”

  “And that’s why everyone decided we’d eat you first,” the rogue muttered. He glanced to Lenk. “Did he tell you where we’re bedding down or what? Some of us need baths.”

  “Some of us desperately so,” Asper replied, glaring over her shoulder as she crawled onto the dock.

  Kataria came bounding up after her, teeth bared in a snarl. “If you were intimidated by a shict’s natural odor, you should have thought of that before you decided to stay in a boat for weeks with one.”

  “I didn’t have a choice or an issue with your aroma …” Asper cringed at the memory. “Not until you started … rubbing yourself on things.”

  “Well, how do you let people know what’s yours, if you’re so damn smart?” The shict snorted, sneering at her. “Kept you from touching my share of the food, at least.”

  “And mine,” Asper muttered.

  “Should’ve said something. Or rubbed something.” Kataria snarled. “Can we feed little miss ‘can’t-eat-something-that-someone-else-touched,’ then?”

  “We will as soon as Miron tells us,” Lenk snapped. “Which would help if everyone could just stop being the center of attention for a moment and let the man speak.”

  They looked expectantly to the Lord Emissary, who in turn nodded to the harbormaster. “We will be at sea within the hour, sir. You have my thanks for your generosity.”

  “Wait … what?”

  “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind adjourning to the Riptide, I’ll be happy to fill you in,” Miron said, looking to Argaol. “Would you kindly rally your crew, captain?”

  “This isn’t funny,” Lenk said.

  “Unfortunately, the only thing keeping us here was your absence,” Miron replied. “With your timely arrival, we may finally depart.”

  “I just spent … weeks at sea, Miron. I put things that came out of me into the ocean.”

  “And now you’ll at least have larger accommodations.”

  Lenk held up a hand to silence the unrest fomenting behind him. “Fine. We’ll do this. We’ll go back aboard the ship. But out of protest, we’re not bathing for another day.”

  Denaos leaned over to the young man. “Did … that sound like a better threat in your head?”

  “Shut up and come on,” Lenk sighed, trudging off toward the ship with his companions in tow.

  “One moment!” The harbormaster cried after them, flailing at the tiny vessel. “You can’t leave something like this docked here! Not without signing, not without a fee!”

  “Gariath will handle it.”

  The dragonman hauled himself onto the dock before the harbormaster could ask. Wordlessly, he pushed past the assembled to the far end of the dock and returned dragging a freshly-polished anchor behind him. With a heft, a grunt, and a snarl, he tossed it onto the deck of their vessel. There was a loud crack, then a sputtering sound.

  “Handled,” Gariath growled, turning to stalk toward the ship with the others.

  “It won’t be poor accommodations,” Miron said, walking alongside Lenk. “Goodness knows you’ve been through enough. We’ll arrange for private cabins … or one, at least. And food. You’ve done us a great service, Lenk, and are to be rewarded justly.”

  “As I recall, the reward is just about one thousand coins,” Lenk said. “Gold. Unsealed. No kings or gods or birds or crap on them. I want to be able to spend them in any nation I happen to feel the need to get drunk in.”

  “And you shall have the full amount,” Miron said, voice dipping, “in time.”

  Lenk came to a halt. “What?”

  The Lord Emissary’s smile turned sheepish. “There were expenses, I’m afraid, that had to come from somewhere. And Port Destiny is largely Zamanthran. Rest assured, when we return to the mainland and to a proper temple of Talanas, we’ll be able to—”

  “How much?”

  “Pardon?”

  “How much can you give me now?”

  Miron smiled. “Well …”

  “Thirty.”

  Denaos stared at him for a long moment from across the table. “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. I think I had a if you think I’m going to take that crap I will gut you like a fish in my ear.”

  “The deal was for one thousand,” Asper said, wincing. “Granted, I wasn’t keen on taking money from the church and I was planning on giving it all back, anyway, but to make the gesture would have been nice.”

  �
��Well, I had plans,” Kataria muttered. “Plans that involved me replacing a bow I lost while I was out nearly dying for the pious moron who was supposed to pay us.”

  “This does seem like duplicity,” Dreadaeleon said. “My share was going to go toward research, fees for the Venarium, that sort of thing. How am I to get anything done with five coins to my name?”

  “Four, actually,” Lenk said. He tapped the bottle at the center of the table. “This stuff is actually supposed to be pretty good, according to the smelly gentleman I bought it from.”

  “And is it?”

  “I haven’t tasted it yet.”

  “You spent five coins on a bottle of whiskey,” Kataria said, “without knowing what it tastes like.”

  “He was very smelly. I assumed he was a drunk. So, I figured he probably knew what was good enough to smuggle out of Argaol’s hold.”

  Denaos blinked, struggling to find words. “I mean … that’s kind of logical, but—”

  “And I wanted to celebrate,” Lenk said. “I mean … we’re alive, right? We succeeded in what we set out to do. We retrieved the Tome of the Undergates, stopped a demonic incursion—”

  “We set out to get paid, technically,” Dreadaeleon corrected him. “Adventurers, and all.”

  “So, we procedurally succeeded, shut up,” Lenk spat. “And we owe ourselves a drink for it.” He all but tore the cork from the bottle and downed a long, slow swig. When he set the bottle back down, they were staring at him curiously. “What?”

  “I feel you’re acting like we’ve accomplished more than we have,” Asper said. “No matter what happens next, whether we all stay together or go our separate ways, we’re still adventurers, still not exactly a respectable trade.”

  “Which might affect the glory of this whole thing,” Dreadaeleon said. “Not a single one of the sailors believed me when I told them what happened. Nor would I fault them for doing so.”

  “We left behind a lot of dead bodies and a couple of races previously unknown by most cultures that join those same cultures in hating us,” Kataria said, slumping in her seat. “We … did things on those islands.”

  “So, when you get down to it,” Denaos added, “we went out to the middle of nowhere, nearly killed ourselves, came back with terrible injuries that will probably last us a lifetime, somehow managed to earn the wrath of several races through the actions of six people, all for the sum of thirty—”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-five gold coins and to possibly spare a world that loathed us a gigantic demon eating them alive, which they wouldn’t believe we did, anyway.” He looked around the table. “Have I got that right?”

  “Roughly,” Asper said.

  “Yeah,” Kataria grunted.

  “More or less,” Dreadaeleon sighed.

  “So, why should we be celebrating?”

  Lenk had no answer. He looked at himself, wounded and hurting. He looked at his sword, resting in the corner of the cabin and ready to be called back. He looked back in his mind and saw the Abysmyths latching onto their mother and calling to her.

  And he wondered if he had done anything more than kill a mother trying to reunite with her children because someone in a robe told him to.

  He had no answer.

  Someone else did. That someone rousted himself from his cot and with slow, lumbering steps, came to the tiny table of their tiny cabin and sat down in a chair that was tiny for him. Gariath leaned on it, the wood groaning beneath his weight. He stared at the bottle for a moment, as though he expected it to come alive at any moment and give him a profound answer.

  When nothing came, he reached over as if to strangle it and took it by its neck. He looked at each of them, in turn.

  “Because this,” he said, “is all that we have. And it is something solid.”

  He threw his head back and poured the liquid down his gullet. His nostrils flared. His earfrills fanned out. He snorted, passed it to Lenk.

  “This tastes like shit.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE GRAY MAN AND HIS LONG TEETH

  The Aeons’ Gate

  The Sea of Buradan

  To my most esteemed colleague,

  It may grieve you to hear of the loss of Sheraptus and his warriors. It most certainly may grieve you to know that the vast majority of his knowledge on the manipulation of portals went to the grave with him. You undoubtedly know by now that our agents were unable to retrieve anything from his operations on Komga but bodies and a flimsy gate he used to enter.

  Comparatively, the loss of the martyr stones he loved so well may seem a trifle.

  Still, I must urge you to look at this as a gain for us. Ulbecetonth is dead. This is certain. And her brood and consort and prophet followed her back into hell. I can sense no more of her taint in this world. It is of little consequence that Sheraptus’s hand was not the one that struck the final blow, as was intended.

  It may even be to our boon that it was not. I know you were originally skeptical of my decision to send adventurers as insurance should Sheraptus fail—and for this, I will expect more deliberate thought given to my ideas in the future—but I presume you take no issue with the results of their handiwork, admittedly sloppy.

  Regardless, the item is once again in my possession. I make for Cier’Djaal at once and shall rejoin you in ample time.

  I anticipate the guise may have to be left behind, unfortunately. While Toha is far enough removed from civil society that the nation of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity is easy enough to believe, it will be harder to masquerade as a Lord Emissary of a nonexistent organization in a more populous area.

  You will have questions, undoubtedly. I will provide answers. With one more obstacle removed, our goals are that much closer. I can speak only for myself, as I ever do, but I view any loss as acceptable so long as it brings us closer to our goal of awakening these mortals to the reality of their situation and the blindness of their gods.

  Yours,

  A.M.

  When he was done, Miron set aside his quill and inkwell. He neatly folded his letter into thirds and placed it in an envelope. He dripped a bit of wax upon it and let it dry before holding it to his lips and muttering something in the old words from the old speakers.

  And then he turned to his window.

  The creature perched there looked at him without eyes. A woman’s face, gentle and curved, rested on her hands. Behind her, a bulbous abdomen quivered beneath a pair of moth wings. Those wings rose, the eye spots upon them blinked. She spoke through teeth contorted into a permanent smile.

  “It goes?”

  “It goes,” Miron replied, handing the letter to the creature. “Far away and you know where.”

  “I cannot forget. Ever.” Its eyes drifted to the book, the flat black square upon the table. “This goes?”

  “This stays. You go.”

  “I go.”

  And with that, the creature took the envelope and fluttered away into the night. Miron did not bother to watch it go. He had watched it go many times and always had it found its way. The Laments had their way of going unnoticed.

  That was no worry for him, either. He had more pressing concerns.

  The book. The tome. The key to everything. Despite everything else he had ever spoken of, he had been earnest when he said he doubted the adventurers. Even knowing Lenk to be what he was, he had doubted the man’s ability to deliver.

  Maybe it had been that inside him that had delivered it. Maybe it was something else, something mortal.

  Little problems for little men.

  He had a vision.

  And now, he had the means to realize it. He slid his hands over the tome. The change came almost instinctually, reaching out to the words in the book as they reached out to him. His skin slid off of his hands, his fingers suddenly too large for it. Gray flesh shone stark like stone in the firelight. He felt his lips peel over themselves, his teeth too large for his mouth.

  He felt his hands tighten aro
und the book as it whispered to him. As it told him all the great things he may accomplish, all that he was doing was good.

  It spoke to him.

  And Azhu-Mahl answered.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SAM SYKES is an author. You probably already figured that out, since you’ve just read his book, though. Unless you skipped right to the end? Shame on you. Or did you skip right to the About the Author page? That’s weird. I’m not sure why you would do that. Nobody reads these things.

  And since nobody reads these things, I can say pretty much anything I want to back here. And you know something? I really don’t care for manatees at all.

  Sam Sykes is 28. He lives in Arizona. He can eat most animals alive.