by Rob J. Hayes
"All the difference," Yorin said, his voice remaining calm where Isen was getting heated. "Everyone I've killed, I've done in a fight. Maybe not a fair fight, but every one of them signed up for it, just like you did. I beat every single one with my own fists or the weapons they agreed to. I've never attacked a man who weren't ready for it. I certainly didn't sail around an ocean murdering other people because they were different."
That seemed to bring an end to the argument. I think Isen and Hardt knew what they had done. They struggled to come to terms with it. Hardt still does.
I'd had enough of the arguing. "Any chance we could stop attacking each other, and one of you could tell me about this other city?" Diplomacy is overrated. Sometimes people just need beating into line.
"We found it by accident," Hardt said. "After boarding a pahht ship and stealing the most valuable cargo. We thought it was another job well done, and we were in the clear. Sailors like to have a drink after a successful spot of buccaneering, and a good few of us were drunk. That's probably why we woke up to find both our navigator and captain dead. Our charts were missing, most likely thrown overboard."
Isen grimaced. "And we had no idea where we were, only that one of the damned cats had stowed away and steered the ship so far off course I barely recognised the colour of the sea."
"Sounds like you had a run in with a chaakan," Tamura said. I thought it was gibberish but the brothers nodded. I later learned the chaakan are the most elite pahht saboteurs, spies, and assassins. Rumours say they are trained from birth and are nearly invisible when they want to be. They strike from the shadows and leave no trace behind, not even a hair. I consider that quite the feat, given that they are covered ear to claw in fur.
In truth the pahht have always held a fascination for me. The ancient Rand used to treat them as pets, though at the height of their power both the Rand and the Djinn used to think of all us lesser peoples as such. But the Rand favoured the pahht for their cat-like appearance and gave them secrets they guard with the utmost jealousy.
"We never found the fucking cat," Isen continued. "Some of the others didn't think there ever was one. They blamed the death on ghosts or something."
"Ghasts," I said, eager to show off some of my own knowledge. Every other member of the group had so much more life experience than I. They had seen things I had only read about in books and many of the things they were discussing I had never heard of, not that I was willing to reveal that ignorance. One thing I did know, though, was magic. And I was foolish enough to advertise the fact.
"Is there a difference?" Yorin asked.
"Ghosts are fragments of the dead raised by Necromancy," I said with a casual shrug. "Unless there was a Sourcerer nearby with a Necromancy Source it couldn't have been a ghost. They can't exist except that a Necromancer summons them and maintains them. Ghasts are disembodied horrors from the Other World. If an Impomancer has summoned one and lost control, they are free to roam our world until someone destroys them. Either way, neither can really affect the living, other to scare them and cause some pretty vivid hallucinations."
Isen was staring at me, a slight smile on his face. "You really are a Sourcerer," he said.
I nodded and smiled back, quite giddy that he looked at me like that. It sent a warm tingle across my skin. The feeling didn't last. Ssserakis saw to that by planting thoughts of betrayal in my head.
"We sailed for days," Hardt continued, "trying to follow the stars, but with the navigator dead we had no idea where we were going." His face looked drawn out, etched with grief. "And more of us kept dying. It got to a point where it wasn't safe to be alone, nor in groups. Each time the shifts changed we'd find another couple of bodies. No one ever saw what was doing it, but I think by then most of us knew it was a chaakan. Eventually there wasn't enough of us left to sail the ship, nor search for whatever was killing us. We lowered the skiffs and piled into them both, scuttled the ship and watched it sink."
"Never did see the cat." Isen had real venom in his voice. I didn't see it at the time, but when I look back, I think maybe Isen was a true Terrelan. He only ever seemed to speak of the other peoples of Ovaeris with derision. Then again, maybe he had good reason to hate those he did, the chaakan had murdered his crewmates, and he no doubt considered some of them friends. "Hope the bastard drowned."
"Right," Yorin scoffed. "The pahht was the bastard for taking a small measure of revenge against the people who boarded their ship and killed their people. On that ship you boarded, how many of them did you leave alive?"
Isen was furious, I could see that. I'd wager Yorin could see it too. The younger brother was red faced even in the gloom, and his muscles stood out around his jaw as he ground his teeth together.
"None," Hardt admitted, his voice soft and laced with guilt. "We never left anyone alive. Those were our orders."
I heard Yorin laugh, but didn't bother turning to look at him. "Monstrous," he said. He wasn't wrong.
Hardt shook his head and continued the story. "If you've ever been stranded at sea, no water or food... Madness sets in. Dehydration, sun exposure. I don't know the cause of it. But... Madness. We were pretty close to the end, no land in sight, and Isen leans out and stares down into the water, saying he sees something. Before I could stop him he just overboards and disappeared beneath the surface."
"Because I did see something," Isen said, a sullen tone in his voice. "Saved both our lives."
Hardt nodded. "You did. I jumped in after him and could just about make him out, swimming straight down. I followed, trying to pull him back. I didn't even see the thing until I was on it. It was..." He ran out of words.
"Have you ever seen a jellyfish?" Isen asked.
I hadn't, though again, I hated to admit my naivety to them. I think it was just Isen I didn't want to admit it to. I didn't want him to think me inexperienced. It was foolish really. Everyone in our little group could see how inexperienced I was. I might have been leading them, but only because no one else wanted the damned job, and Tamura is too bloody crazy to lead himself in a dance.
Isen continued at the silence. "It's not a fish at all, it's more like a big... um..." He stopped and looked to Hardt. "It's a jelly. Slimy skin, no real substance to it at all." His explanation of the creature gave me no real insight into how it looked. I nodded all the same and he forged on.
"Couldn't have been too far from the surface and when I touched it. I just sort of passed through the skin of it." Again, Isen looked to Hardt and again the older brother shrugged. "I could see something vast below me. Couldn't really make it out, given the water blurs everything. There were smaller things too, swimming through the water. Fishes and such, I guess."
"Mur," Hardt said. "The mur are what saved us, Isen. You started drowning and I wasn't far off it either. I saw them come and take you, drag you down. And then one had me too, tentacles wrapped around my arms."
"What's a mur?" Yorin asked and I was glad he did. It saved me the question, and I was loathe to ask it.
"Body a bit like a terran, I guess," Hardt said, gesticulating towards his arms. "They have a face and arms, though the skin looks, uh, stretchy? Rubbery. The bottom half, past the gut is all a writhing mass of tentacles. I've seen them swim, they suck water into their chest, inflating, and then push it out through..."
"Through their arse," Isen said.
"Well, yeah, sort of," Hardt agreed. "But they don't have an arse."
Isen only nodded at that. The truth is mur don't look anything terran, but they can morph their skin to give the appearance of a face. I have spoken to a few. They do it in an attempt to not alarm us terrans. I found their true form to be far less disconcerting.
"Strangest people I've ever seen," Hardt continued. "But they saved us. Dragged us down to the city and threw us out into a room filled with air."
"Underwater?" I asked. "The city is underwater, but not?"
"Some of it is," Hardt said, sounding uncertain. "Well the whole thing, submerged in that jellyfish
creature, but not all of it is flooded. Maybe half the city is water and the other half is air."
"The corridors looked just like this," Isen said. "The way they slope out and in. The same carvings. Only it wasn't deserted. All sorts of things living there."
"People," Hardt said. "They weren't things, Isen. They were people. Just… different people. Mur and pahht, even a few garn. We even found a small group of terrans living there. Orrans who found the place by accident. A bit like us only they decided they liked it there. They're probably still there now."
Isen pulled a face, his lips pinching together. I was too blind to see the truth then. I think everyone else saw it though.
"How did you escape?" Yorin asked.
"We didn't," Hardt continued the story. "The city surfaces every now and then and the creature half... I don't know, spits it out? Luckily for us, it was just a couple of miles off the Terrelan coast. We said our goodbyes and swam it."
"Good riddance," Isen grumbled.
Tamura, walking ahead of us, stopped. He cocked his head one way and then the other, before turning around in a full circle. His eyes were wild, darting every direction and I wondered what he had seen.
"Dead end," Yorin said as he ignored us all and continued walking. He was carrying one of the lanterns and held it up to show the corridor in front of us just stopped, a flat wall blocking our path. "So much for following the breeze."
Tamura was still turning around and around, like a strange dance. I realised I hadn't been paying attention to the breeze for quite a while. Whether the crazy old man was moving about in an attempt to find it again or if he had just lost his mind completely, I couldn't tell.
"Once before and once again," Tamura said.
"Wonderful," Yorin said. He shone the lantern straight at me. "Now what?"
I shrugged. "Now, I guess we find the nearest stairwell and go up." It seemed the most logical course of action. Tamura apparently had other plans.
"Treasure!" the crazy old man shouted and then he was off, running towards a nearby stairwell. I barely had time to react before I saw him vanish into the darkness.
Chapter 26
I've always liked to run. Maybe my training at the academy put that in me, or maybe it was already there before. There is something about a good sprint with legs pumping, carrying me as fast as possible under my own power. It's close to freedom, in a way. Not running from or to anything, but just running for the sheer bloody joy of it. I had fallen out of practice with my time in the Pit, and Tamura was faster than his old bones should have allowed.
I didn't wait for the others to decide what they were doing but took off after him. I could see flickering light fading away down the stairwell and wasted no time in launching myself down the steps. Only Tamura and Yorin carried lanterns, and the stairwell was almost full dark around me, yet I could see. Somehow, I could see the steps outlined in the darkness. I didn't spare it a second thought then. Maybe it was because the darkness inside of me was a shade darker than anything else the world might throw at me.
The steps led down for a while before stopping on a small landing and then doubling back on themselves, always leading further and further down into the bowels of the dead city. I could see Tamura's light bouncing away far below me. The crazy old man was moving faster than I. Youth, apparently, only counts for so much. After every few sets of steps, there was a landing which had a doorway opening out into even deeper darkness. I couldn't see much past those portals, but some had little yellow lights watching me pass.
I lost track of how much deeper Tamura led us into that place. Level after level sped past me in a blur. I heard the others shouting somewhere behind but ignored them. I can't really say why. It might have been wiser just to let the old man run off, disappear into the darkness. Maybe we should have counted him lost and made our way up, looking for a way out. But I couldn't just let Tamura go. I liked him. He spoke in riddles and I'm fairly certain he had fleas, but something about him comforted me. Tamura has always been part friend, part mentor, and more a father to me than any other I can remember.
I wondered how deep into the earth that city went. What secrets it might hold once it was explored fully. It would take a lifetime just to excavate the areas long since buried. I do know that stairwell continued down even after Tamura left it. He was following something, a memory, and it led into a new corridor. I trailed after, breathing heavily as I followed the light that bounced along in his wake. I didn't bother shouting after him, he wouldn't have stopped. For a crazy old man with a splintered reality he can be quite single minded when a compulsion takes him.
I stopped at the doorway to the corridor, partly to catch my breath and partly so the others, still coming behind me, knew we had left the stairwell. No sooner had Isen appeared around the corner, before I was off again, ignoring the burning in my limbs and launching back into a sprint before Tamura's light disappeared and we lost him in the darkness.
It was a strange feeling pushing my body like that. I could feel sweat breaking out all over my skin, yet I still felt cold inside. Cold, and hungry, and lost, but I couldn't share those feelings with anyone. I knew none would understand. Maybe Josef would have. He certainly knew the hunger. I think he knew the feeling of being lost as well. That was something we shared. But he was gone. Behind me. Left to fend for himself against the monsters I abandoned him to. And how I hated myself for abandoning him. No matter what he had done, how he had betrayed me, I missed him so much.
Tamura's light disappeared, stray beams bouncing around to the left of the corridor for a moment and then gone. I skidded to a halt at the doorway he had used. My feet ached as though the bones in my heels were about to shatter from the relentless pounding. My threadbare shoes were disintegrating and I was almost barefoot.
I started through the doorway and stopped, very nearly pitching off a cliff to my death. The sight ahead of me was bloody awe inspiring. A crumbling set of stairs to my left ended after just two steps and opened out into a grand hall so large it put the great cavern of the Pit to shame. Giant pillars stretched from ground to ceiling in columns, each so large it would take two dozen of me to ring it. The walls, much like those of the corridors, sloped outwards before inwards and stretched nearly a hundred feet above me, I found this more than a little amazing, considering the floor was maybe fifty feet below. Oddest of all was how well lit the hall was. Each of the two dozen pillars had spiral veins of glowing blue mineral snaking through it, casting the whole hall in an ethereal hue.
Tamura wasted no time with the view, he was already scrambling down what remained of the staircase, the lantern swinging from his belt. I was still standing there, awestruck, when the others finally caught us up.
"Huh..." Yorin's voice, and for the first time since we had met he sounded cowed. Grandeur on that sort of scale has a way of making even the most egocentric of us realise just how small we are. It was the same sort of reaction people give the first time they see Ro'shan and Do'shan floating through the sky. Or in Do'shan's case floating in the sky, secured firmly in place by massive chains buried deep into the earth.
"Looks just like that underwater city," Hardt said between deep gasping breaths.
"Except... more dead," Isen agreed.
"The other city had a hall just like this?" I asked, unable to take my eyes off the sight in front of me. I hesitate to admit it, but I was acting like a simpleton, staring all around the grand hall and wondering at what could have built it. It is humbling to see such things. To know we walk in the footsteps of giants, and to realise those same giants could crush us without even noticing.
"More than one," Hardt said. I could hear him moving about behind me, scuffing the stone as he leaned out to see Tamura clambering down to the floor. "We saw one completely flooded. Full of mur doing... uh. They said it was where they spawned. The other was dry enough. Had a roaring fire that didn't need any wood to burn, kept the whole place nice and warm. The pahht were using it as a marketplace. Some of the things the
y sold..."
"Remember the one that offered me a child?" Isen asked. "What would I do with a little cat anyway? Would just be a furry mouth to feed. It would probably just have stolen my purse and run back to its mum."
Yorin snorted and pushed passed towards the edge. It took him only a few moments to lower himself over and then he was following Tamura down to the ground.
"Where are you going?" Isen's voice was a snarl.
"Following the only one of you who has a lick of fucking sense," Yorin said, his voice strained as he concentrated on the climb down. Before long all three of us were scrambling down, side by side, after Yorin.
Tamura was waiting for us at the bottom of the climb. The crazy old man shifted from foot to foot and repeatedly counted the pillars in the giant hall. Yorin was kneeling, poking at something on the ground.
"Nice of you to wait." Isen was breathing hard and scowling. I thought it made him look dark and handsome in a brooding sort of way. I think back now, and he sounded petulant, and if there is a less attractive trait in a person, I don't know it.
"Nobody else is going to say it, so I will," Yorin started. "What happened here?" He stood up and was holding an old sword in his hand, rusted beyond use. The blade was already disintegrating into a red brown mist of dust. "There's weapons like this scattered all around; all old and crap, but used. Helms too."
"Not to mention the scarring," Hardt agreed. "Walls with rents slashed through them. Benches caved in. Statues defaced."
Isen snorted. "It's just time. These places are old..."
"Older than old," Tamura said.
"Right," Isen said. "Older than old. You know that, Hardt. We saw it in the other one. The creatures there said they'd been there hundreds of years if not more.
"This..." Isen picked up another rusted old sword and slapped it against the nearby wall. The blade burst into dust. "This is what happens when good metal is left to rot for that long. What I wouldn't give for a real sword in my hand." The look he gave Yorin was vicious, and I knew then that their fight was far from over.
