The Call of Kerberos

by Jonathan Oliver

Chapter Eight

  Emuel closed his eyes and opened his mouth. His lungs filled with air and then his throat contracted as he hit the note. He held the delicate pitch for almost a full minute, during which time the gem shuddered, threads of magical energy pouring from its many facets and through the channels of power woven through the Llothriall. At the height of the note Emuel took a short breath before segueing into the cascade of lyrical resonances that formed the first verse of the ancient elf song.

  The ship shuddered in response, like a lover in the first throws of an orgasm or as one touched by the voice of the Lord of All, as Emuel had been when he first heard the call in a tiny chapel in the foothills of the Drakengrat mountains.

  Even though the song he sung was that of an ancient heathen race, Emuel couldn't but help be moved by its ethereal beauty, and it was this that he offered up to his Lord; hoping that He too would see to the heart of the music and the sincerity of Emuel's soul.

  Two decks above, Dunsany rejoiced in the feeling of the wheel in his hands. Too long a time had passed since he had been in control of a ship. You never forget your sea-legs, that's what he'd learned as an apprentice sailor and as the boat began to roll gently beneath him, he instinctively adjusted himself to its pitch.

  Above him, the smugglers - Jacquinto and his comrades - moved through the rigging. They had taken to the ropes immediately, moving between the masts with the surety and grace of those well used to a life at sea. The sails billowed around them, the shimmering cloth moving with a supernatural silence as it caught and played the winds. As they left the shelter of the lagoon and entered the fierce seas, Dunsany worried that the smugglers would be hurled from their nests, but the Llothriall was calm and graceful, effortlessly cutting through the churning waves.

  Silus paced the main deck, appalled at the apparent lack of concern from the rest of the crew in response to their hurried flight. He threw a worried look back at the island, urging the ship onwards, as, with a surreal calm, the Llothriall entered waters that hadn't seen a manned vessel for thousands of years.

  Still, he constantly scanned the waves, wondering whether the Chadassa would burst from them at any moment and claim him for their own. And would he go willingly? Part of Silus thought he would, remembering how easily he had fallen under Belck's enchantment. Was this because Belck was correct and he truly was one of the Chadassa?

  As they moved further away from the peninsula, Silus felt a sudden yearning for home. It was true that he had always dreamed of voyaging beyond the known seas, but now that they were actually cutting through the waves towards an alien horizon, he felt that perhaps the reason the human race had never ventured this far was because they weren't meant to.

  However, it was too late for such doubts and, turning to look back, he saw that the island where the Llothriall had been sheltered was rapidly becoming a speck in the distance.

  Nestled in a comfortable bunk on the deck below, Father Maylan had no such worries. He had finally freed himself from the shackles of the Faith and become, in effect, a heretic. This was a role that suited him just fine. He had grown tired of kowtowing to Katherine Makennon and her cronies, sick of playing the politics of the church and as a heretic he was in good company.

  His uncle Stel had been branded an apostate when the Faith had first declared its interests on Sarcre and had been burnt for his sins in the town square. Even as the flames had consumed his flesh Uncle Stel had railed and sworn against the occupying church.

  Maylan had been five and was a long way from receiving the mantle 'Father'. He stood with his family, who had been forced to watch the cleansing of the unbeliever in their midst. But even though Maylan was appalled at the spectacle of his uncle's fiery death, he was still inspired by the flames of Stel's passion as he preached one last sermon. Those words, bellowed over the crackle and hiss of human flesh cooking, had never left him and when Maylan became Head Diviner of the Many Paths twelve years later, it was his uncle's lessons that had driven him on. If the Faith ever discovered his heresy he would have been proud to burn for his beliefs. But they never did and when the Eminence of the Final Faith church on Sarcre died, Maylan put himself forward for the role, claiming miraculous visions.

  At first the Final Faith were wary of his claims - the apostasy in his family had not been forgotten - but, like his uncle, Dunsany was a first class performer. He claimed to have been struck down by the Lord of All as he was fishing one day and made to see the error of his ways. A great light had shone down from Kerberos and Maylan had been shown that there were not many paths to the truth, but one and one alone. Now that he had been shown the straight and narrow road to God, he was inspired to preach the way to his fellow man.

  As Maylan had revealed this to the board of Archimandrites at Scholten he had even begun to speak in tongues, just for good measure.

  The robed hierarchy had clearly been impressed because, after intense training, Maylan was given the title 'Father' and put in charge of the Faith's one and only church on Sarcre. Conveniently for him they then left him to his own devices. The islanders had no interest in the ways of the Faith and Father Maylan never tried to preach the dictates of the Lord of All to them. Instead he continued to be the Head Diviner of the Many Paths while paying lip service to the rituals of the Final Faith.

  This island-wide conspiracy had now been in place for many years but Father Maylan had begun to tire of the charade, and after the brutality displayed by the Faith in the last conflict between Vos and Pontaine, he no longer wanted to even play along with the pretence. So, when Dunsany had offered him the chance to become a full time heretic and discover the wider world, he had taken it without hesitation.

  Without him, the islanders would be able to carry on as normal, having learnt to hide their day-to-day heresies with tact and skill. When the new Eminence was installed at Sarcre they would no doubt listen to his sermons and follow the rituals, but behind the doors of their own homes, their offerings would not be to the Lord of All. It was true that there were people that Father Maylan would miss, but he would never again have to wear the robes with the crossed circle and he would never again have to give benedictions that he didn't mean, and for that he was grateful.

  As the Llothriall began to roll he was lulled into sleep and, as he dreamed, a gentle smile lightened his features.

  It was magic that gave the glow to Kelos's face. Emuel was just finishing his song as he entered the gem room and as the last notes were sung, the light pouring from the stone increased until it was almost blinding.

  "Thank you Emuel, that should keep us going for quite a while. You can rest now."

  Squinting against the harsh glow of raw magic, Kelos manipulated the threads that diverted the worst of the winds away from the ship and stabilised the vessel.

  He exulted in the powers that he was channelling, knowing that these were the least of the ship's abilities. The possibilities unlocked by Emuel's song were something that no mage of his ability would ever have dreamed they could control. After years of intense study Kelos had only just begun to understand the smallest part of Old Race magic. The mysteries of the elves and the dwarves had remained mainly in shadow, yet here he was, controlling what surely was one of the crowning achievements of the elven empire.

  This was why he had entered into a life of esoteric study in the first place, not just so he could put wards on war ships and equip fisherman with cantrips to better their hauls. Magic was supposed to be wielded in the pursuit of the extraordinary and with the Llothriall they were opening up Twilight's ancient legacies.

  Something of Emuel's song still resonated within the gem room and as Kelos listened to its echo he felt it reaching back, harmonising with the voice of a distant and fascinating past. The secrets of the millennia old forces now at his fingertips overwhelmed him for a moment - these songs that had never before been sung by a human, these magics woven from a tapestry so rich that not even the highest mage on Twilight had the barest inkling of its complete design - and his co
ncentration was masked, for just a moment, by his awe at the power surrounding him.

  The ship lurched suddenly to starboard and Kelos was shaken from his reverie to bring the magic back under control, righting the vessel.

  Then he smiled to himself, shook his head and reached out to the threads.

  It was just a small lurch but on the deck above Katya groaned as she staggered down the corridor. Their flight from the Chadassa had left her feeling nauseous and weak and the knowledge that they were pursued by enemies fanatical and demonic made the impending birth of their child seem all the more overwhelming. She mounted the steps to the main deck and, as she emerged into the sunlight, Silus held out a hand to steady her.

  "Come on, the fresh air will make you feel better."

  "What would make me feel better is not being on this bloody ship. You know, I never imagined that our child would be born at sea."

  "If it's any consolation, Father Maylan has performed the duties of a midwife before and we have enough supplies to sustain us for quite a while. I'm sure that we'll find land soon."

  "Really? And what if all of the rest of this world is just one great ocean? Had you ever considered that? What if the reason that there are no records of what the original elf ships found is because there was nothing to find?"

  As Katya raised her voice there was laughter from above her and she looked up to see Ioannis enjoying their little dispute. The look that she shot him soon had him scrabbling back up the rigging and out of sight.

  Looking back at Silus, Katya's anger softened as she saw the hurt in his eyes. After all, she considered, none of this was really his fault. They had been swept up in a maelstrom of events out of their control and Katya didn't think that any of them could have done anything differently.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  There was a gentle kick then and she put a hand to her belly.

  "Are you alright?" Silus said.

  "Yes, I just think we may have woken someone up."

  Silus put his hand over Katya's.

  "Feels like our child is going to be a fighter."

  "Then he or she will take after the father."

  Katya smiled and the infant kicked again.

  Chapter Nine

  For five days they saw nothing but rough seas; the iron green waters rising and falling around them like a range of wild and constantly changing hills. Rain lashed the sails while lightning arced down to discharge itself into the water. Through all of this the Llothriall remained the one calm point, the deck remaining steady beneath their feet.

  The ship sighed and sang as it made its way through the maelstrom. The magic that flowed through the Llothriall warmed it so that the temperature on board felt always like a balmy summer afternoon. On top of the subtle incense-like scent of the warm timbers was a stronger odour, like the musk of an ancient book or bales of perfumed cloth.

  Kelos had told them that each strand of magic had its own particular smell and that sometimes they combined to produce heady, otherworldly scents. Ioannis was of the opinion that these otherworldly scents were more to do with the strange weed that Father Maylan was in the habit of smoking.

  On the sixth day the sea calmed a little and Dunsany postulated that they had broken through the Storm Wall, the first vessel manned by humans ever to have done so.

  That evening they celebrated and Ioannis introduced them all to a variety of sea shanties that Katya was grateful her child was not yet born to hear. The drinking would have continued well beyond the point where the majority of them were comfortably drunk, had not Dunsany pointed out that they probably didn't want to exhaust their supplies this early into the voyage.

  And so, the crew offered their goodnights. The only one not to do so was Emuel, who had retired long before.

  In their cabin Silus admired Katya as she slept, impressed that she had managed to hold court with as much élan as the drunken men who surrounded her. He kissed her as she sighed in her sleep, she didn't need drink to be witty or to be persuaded into song. Silus watched her for a moment more before leaving the cabin.

  On the main deck the wheel held steady, set to a course that Dunsany and Kelos had decided between them. The boards of the deck steamed slightly as the recent rains dried and Silus enjoyed the touch of this gentle mist as he lay down.

  Kerberos seemed to hang lower and larger in the sky than usual and he wondered whether the seas they were traversing would prove to be a path to the seat of the ancestors. (Father Maylan had told him that all paths lead to Kerberos, but Silus didn't fully understand what he meant). Taking a telescope from a pocket he trained it on the azure orb and watched the play of clouds that covered its surface. He wondered how many times he had sent entreaties into those impenetrable vapours. How many times had he asked a blessing of the ancestors who resided there, or cursed the unknowable sphere for some imagined bad luck or malady?

  Silus put the telescope down and closed his eyes. Below him, the deck pitched gently and, for the first time during the voyage, he felt calm, though always there was the fear that the Chadassa would find them.

  The susurrus of the sea and the touch of a gentle wind conspired with the alcohol in his blood to take him into sleep, and he gave up consciousness gladly.

  He was falling towards an endless sea of clouds. On the horizon the first rays of a rising run sent shards of light across the slowly evolving landscape below. Flickering tongues of lightning erupted from hills of vapour, heavy with the threat of thunder while clouds parted to open up on great amethyst pools, their depths endless and hungry.

  Far above him hung a blue-green sphere and he knew that it was from there that he had fallen.

  He drifted down into the purple sea and the clouds parted only briefly to mark his passage.

  He had no way of measuring the speed of his descent. On all sides he was surrounded by slowly rolling thunderheads, skeins of mist and great valleys and peaks that constantly shifted and changed.

  A shadow passed him and he saw that there were other travellers in the storm.

  He noted the look of serenity on the faces of those that fell past, arms outstretched, before they faded from view. Others rode the columns of cloud that boiled up from the depths below. He recognised one man, rocketing towards him, as Pandrick, the owner of The Necromancer's Barge. Windmilling his arms, he managed to get out of the way before Pandrick collided with him. He shouted a greeting to the publican, but any response that he may have called was eaten by the howling winds.

  He only had a moment to consider what lay below him, on the other side of the clouds, before he was through and he saw for himself.

  Silus was thrown out of sleep, across the deck and into the side of a locker as the Llothriall came to a sudden halt.

  He struggled to regain his breath as, with a clatter of footsteps, the crew rushed up from below.

  "I though that you said nothing could stop this ship." Jacquinto shouted.

  "Yes, well I wasn't counting on running into the tip of a bloody great spire out on the open seas now was I?" Dunsany snapped.

  Nursing the large bruise that was beginning to blossom on the small of his back, Silus got to his feet and joined them at the prow of the ship.

  There, rising above the masts, was a tapering column of stone. Looking over the side of the ship Silus could see a ragged hole where they had collided with it.

  "Bail! Now!" He shouted, starting to move. But Kelos put a hand out to stop him.

  "No Silus. The Llothriall will provide for herself. Look."

  Silus followed the direction of Kelos's pointed finger and saw a membrane forming over the hole. With a wet pop it quickly closed up, re-sealing the ship.

  "In time she'll even grow a new skin of wood. Now, what do we have here?" Kelos said, the excitement of discovery evident in his voice.

  Silus began to relax as he realised that they weren't about to sink and he took in the strange vista before them.

  The structure that they had run into was just one of a rin
g of six towers, rising from the waves. Gulls called to each other as they swooped around the delicate spires or nested in niches in the columns of brightly marbled stone. None of the towers rose any taller than the one which had stopped the Llothriall, though several were grander in design. Intricate carvings had been wrought into three of them. From where Silus stood it was difficult to make out many details, but on one he thought that he could see the design of a figure riding a whale, surrounded by smaller creatures that may have been mermaids.

  "Gods, what is it?" Katya said, joining them.

  Silus slipped a hand into hers and with the other he shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun.

  "It looks like the towers of a cathedral or castle." He said. "But who would have built such a thing out here?"

  "Not the Chadassa?" Katya said, her grip on Silus's hand tightening.

  "I don't think so," Dunsany said. "If it was I'd expect them to be swarming all over us by now."

  There were starting to drift away from the towers and Dunsany signalled to Jacquinto to secure the ship. He scurried up the foremast with a rope, Ignacio in his wake, while Ioannis shouted guidance from below. With a dexterity and grace that Silus would not have expected of such weathered brutes they managed to loop the rope over the stone column before pulling the ship in close.

  "Well I told you that we'd discover something soon enough didn't I?" Kelos said. "Ah, Emuel, you're awake. What do you make of this?"

  The ship's eunuch emerged from below deck, looking so pale that he positively glowed, the tattoos that marked his face and hands standing out starkly against his flesh. He looked at the circle of gull-covered stone, his hands idly toying with the hem of his robe.

  "The towers of a cathedral perhaps?" He said.

  "Which means that there must be more to see below." Dunsany said.

  "Emuel are you okay?" Katya said, noticing the perspiration that beaded the eunuch's forehead.