by Sam Sykes
And for all that he strained to deny her, he could not help but stare back.
‘What do you dream about?’
‘Dawn is rising. The others will be getting up soon.’ That he seemed unable to pull himself from her was a fleeting thought. ‘Go and bother one of them.’
‘Do you dream of your family?’ Her grip tightened on his arm. ‘Do you see them when you close your eyes?’ She clenched his hand in hers. ‘Lenk. . is it them you hear?’
‘Shut UP!’
He ripped himself from her with a shocking ease, meeting her stare with a scowl. Where her eyes were a vast, passionless green, he felt his brim with a scornful blue. He suddenly felt very cold.
‘I don’t need your interrogations.’ His voice leaked between his teeth in a frigid cloud. ‘I don’t need your sympathy. I don’t need to talk about this and I’m not going to.’
At once, her gaze lost its distance and lack of expression. It flitted like that of a beast, darting between fear and resolve, squirming between trembling and firmness. In response, his grew harder, going deep and narrow like a dagger’s cut. His jaw clenched, his hands trembled at his sides.
‘I need you to stop staring at me.’
The journal fell to the sand. The sound of it crashing upon the earth echoed through the dawn.
When he turned, all of nature fell silent behind him. The morning took on a thick and oppressive sentience, the mist twisting to angry fingers that sought to impose themselves between the two companions to make room for another presence.
Someone else seemed to step between them, carving a stand with icy feet and turning a hostile, eyeless scowl upon the shict.
And she did not yield.
She had felt it before, seen it walking behind Lenk as an envious shadow, seeking to push others away as it sought to pull itself forwards. She had seen it pull itself into him, overcome him, become him.
She did not fear it, not any more, not for herself.
‘Sorry …’
His body shrank with his sigh. She grunted in reply.
‘You remember seeing me fall,’ she said. ‘Do you remember what happened next. . with the Abysmyth?’
‘I don’t.’
‘You do. I do.’ She took a tentative step forwards. ‘I was alive. . awake long enough to see it. You fought well, better than I’d ever seen you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘It wasn’t you fighting, though.’ Her voice was hesitant, even as her stare was steady. ‘It wasn’t you who knelt over me. It was someone else.’ She forced herself to stare out over the sea. ‘Someone with eyes that had no pupils.’
Lenk offered no reply. The beach was reluctant to speak for him, its waves quiet and breezes humble. She rubbed her arms, feeling rather cold at that moment, caught between the silence of the sea and him.
Between them both stood someone else.
She took a step to the side, quietly, as if to get away from the presence. Immediately, she felt a bit warmer, but not because of any removal from an imaginary presence. It wasn’t until she felt much warmer that she glanced out of the corner of her eye to see Lenk standing in her footprints, staring out over the ocean, silent.
And they were content to say nothing.
‘I can barely remember it.’
He shattered the silence with a murmur.
‘I don’t remember how they died, only that they were dead.’ His eyes were blank and empty. ‘I remember shadows, fire. . swords. There was no one left afterwards.’ His eyes turned downwards. ‘I woke up in a barn, a burned-out thing. I had hidden, I don’t remember why I didn’t fight. I don’t remember whose barn it was, I don’t remember what house it was closest to. I don’t remember anything about my mother, my father, my grandfather but their faces. .’
She heard his eyes shut tight.
‘Sometimes. . not even that.’
He turned away, made a move as if to leave and let the cold presence take his place. Her hand shot out, seizing his and pulling him back.
‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ he whispered.
She squeezed his hand, turned him to face her and smiled.
‘Then don’t.’
A breeze sang across the sea, heavy with waking warmth. As if possessed of a sense of humour all its own, it pulled their long hair up into the sky, strands of silver and gold batting playfully at each other.
The stars disappeared completely. The sun found its courage in the murmurs of the forest and the shore’s crude symphony. Day rose.
‘Time to go soon, huh?’ She glanced out at the orange horizon. ‘I should probably prepare myself.’
‘I haven’t even told you my plan,’ he replied. ‘You might not even be involved.’
‘Of course I’m involved,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m the smart one.’
She patted a pouch at her belt before darting off down the beach, long hair trailing behind her. Lenk watched her go and found a smile creeping of its own accord onto his face. She was pleasant company indeed, he thought, and her imminent death would indeed be a tragedy.
In moments, the sounds of her fleeting feet were replaced by a decidedly lazier step. Lenk glanced over his shoulder to spy Denaos approaching, scratching himself in all manner of places that hardly needed bringing attention to. Hair a mess, vest hanging open around his torso, he casually slurped at a tin cup brimming with coffee.
‘Good morning.’ He paused to take a long sip, glancing at Kataria’s diminishing form. ‘My goodness, driven her away at last, have you? Did I miss something fun?’
‘Solitude and tranquility,’ Lenk grumbled.
‘Both hard to come by.’ He nodded. ‘I’d be rightly irate, were I you.’
‘What are you doing up, anyway?’ The young man tilted his head at the rogue. ‘You don’t usually stir before midday unless you have to piss or you’re on fire.’
‘First of all, that only happened once. And I couldn’t sleep. Everyone was keeping me up.’
‘Everyone, huh?’
‘Everyone,’ he grunted. ‘Gariath snores like the beast he is and Asper snores like the beast she ought to resemble. Dreadaeleon and his green-haired harlot were the worst, though.’
‘What, he wanted a lullaby?’
‘Apparently so.’ The rogue shrugged. ‘He says her songs help him focus his Venarie or clear his mind or empty his bowels or some equally stupid wizardly garbage, I don’t know. At any rate, the little trollop of the sea apparently doesn’t need to sleep, so she just hums all the Gods-damned time.’ He quirked a brow. ‘What were you two doing, anyway?’
‘Not sleeping, same as yourself,’ Lenk replied.
‘Unfortunate.’ He shook his head and sipped. ‘I’m not sure what the procedure for marching into a demon’s nest is, but I’m certain it requires at least eight hours of rest. You can’t scream for mercy if you’re yawning, after all.’
‘I’m going to miss these little chats.’
‘Well, I’ll burn a candle for you later, if I happen to remember in between offering thanks to Silf that it wasn’t me who got his head eaten.’
‘Oh?’ Someone giggled. ‘You think your God loves you enough to spare you that?’
Both men glanced up, expecting to see Kataria, though neither seemed to recognise the creature stalking towards them. It was her height, same slender build, same pointed, notched ears, but it wore an entirely different skin.
Jagged bands of glistening black warpaint alternated down her body and arms, giving her a dark, animalistic appearance. Her broad canines were white against the two solid bands of black that covered her eyes and mouth. Her ears, also painstakingly painted, twitched excitedly.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’
‘Not precisely the word I’d use to describe you.’ Lenk looked her up and down. ‘And yet. . I feel compelled to ask — why?’
‘Why not?’ She rolled her black shoulders. ‘I’m about to go to war, aren’t I?’
‘We’ve done that before,’ Lenk repli
ed, ‘and I’ve never seen you like. . this. . What the hell are you supposed to be, anyway?’
‘A shict about to receive the favour of her Goddess,’ she said proudly. ‘When the land is smeared with bodies, Riffid will look down and see my colours,’ she thumped her chest, ‘and know that it was Kataria of the sixth tribe who killed them.’
‘I see.’ Lenk didn’t bother to hide his cringe. ‘So. . you expect to make a lot of kills today?’
‘You really are stupid, aren’t you?’ She grinned and tapped a particularly large stripe on her belly. ‘This is camouflage, you moron. We’re going into some place likely rather dark and, if you hadn’t noticed, I’m paler than a corpse.’
‘Convenience, I’d say.’ Denaos sipped his coffee. ‘I mean, if you’ve got the pallor of a dead body, that’s one less step before you’re actually dead. I suppose the paint will let me know which corpse is yours when you wash up on shore.’
‘If you live to see her die,’ Lenk said.
Denaos stared at him blankly, disbelief straining to express itself in his eyes as a particularly venomous curse strained to break free from his lips. Lenk, for his part, merely smiled back.
‘As the shict said, your God doesn’t love you nearly as well as you’d hope.’
The rogue paused, opened his mouth as if to say something, but could find nothing more than a sigh to offer.
‘I take it, then,’ he said, ‘that you’ve given some thought to the recovery of our precious tome.’
‘I have.’ Lenk nodded.
‘Thusly, you’ve no doubt a plan.’
‘I do.’
Denaos stared at him, purse-lipped, for a moment.
‘And?’
The young man smiled gently. ‘And you’re not going to like it.’
Twenty-One
A SERMON FOR THE DAMNED
The frogmen, this one decided, still had needs.
It, for it was now far beyond a ‘he’, would have thought it slightly ironic, had this one still the capability to appreciate such a concept. This one had long ago grown past the desire for what it vaguely remembered as being needs. Comforts of family, of flesh and of company were no longer recalled; families died, flesh was weak, company had shunned him.
And yet, flashes of those necessities still clung frustratingly to this one, the claws of the weak and sorrowful creature this one had long ago sought to kill. While other frogmen had received Mother Deep’s blessing and no longer felt the need for food or for air or for water beyond a body to immerse themselves in, this one still felt knots in its belly, could not remain underwater.
Nor, this one thought irately, could this one ignore the growing pain in its loins any longer.
Quietly, this one crept into an alcove, carved by the crumbling tower as walls fell and endless blue seeped in. This one glanced over its shoulder; if any of those ones had seen it, it knew, there would be shame, there would be pain, and Mother Deep’s blessing would continually evade this one.
As it would continue to evade this one, it knew, after it dropped its loincloth to spill its water in the shallow pool that had formed in the alcove’s corner. To desecrate water blessed by the Shepherds, this one knew, was to displease Mother Deep. This one was not worried, however; Mother Deep was kind, Mother Deep was forgiving, Mother Deep had given this one the blessing of forgetting and a new life beneath the endless blue.
This one was not worried as it let itself leak out into the water with a great sigh.
This one was not worried as it felt the air grow a little colder.
It was only when this one noticed the rope descending from above that it felt the need to scream.
What emerged from its lips, however, was a strangled gargle as the thin, sharp rope bit into its neck and pulled. It felt itself slam against an unyielding surface, felt the rope knot behind its neck tighten. Its own voice fell silent as the yellow stream arced out in a terrified spray, its claws felt so feeble and weak as it raked at the rope.
‘Shh,’ something hissed behind it.
Its vision swam, eyes bulging from their sockets as though trying to escape. It kicked against leather, strained feebly to reach for the knife attached to the loincloth pooled around its ankles. Only as it felt its lungs tighten into pink fists inside it did this one remember the need to breathe.
A need this one never knew again.
Denaos caught the corpse as it slumped to the floor. Quietly, he laid it in the puddle of yellow filth and gave it a quick, distasteful shove. With barely a splash, it rolled over an outcropping and slipped into the black pool. No matter how shallow it might or might not have been, the frogman was well hidden from sight, and Denaos had no urge to see how deep such a pit went.
Instead, he rose and glanced out of the alcove, looking up and down the halls. The faintest traces of sunlight crept in through the faintest scratches in Irontide’s hide, but even such a small source of light was not permitted to live long within the tower. It was consumed by the dark water, pulled below to die soundlessly in the brackish depths that drowned the hall.
The poetry, while not lost on Denaos, would have to wait. For the moment, he was thrilled to find no frogmen, no Abysmyths, nothing that stopped him from making a beckoning gesture. Footsteps, wince-inducingly loud, filled the hall as a pair of shadows slipped into the alcove from around a corner.
‘Well done,’ Lenk whispered as he hunkered into the crevasse. ‘Clean and quiet.’
‘Quiet, maybe,’ Denaos mumbled. ‘Clean, hardly.’ He wrung out a lock of his hair, gagging at the drops of yellow that dropped to the floor. ‘I suppose I deserve it. Silf wouldn’t smile upon garrotting a man while he’s draining the dragon.’
‘What’s. .’ Kataria grimaced. ‘What’s “draining the dragon”?’
‘It’s not important.’ Lenk waved her down. ‘Think, now. Where would they have the tome?’
‘Somewhere they don’t piss, I suppose.’ Denaos sighed.
‘Probably down there.’ Kataria gestured further along the hall. ‘Something’s going on.’
‘What’s going on?’
The shict glanced at him, her ears twitching as though that would be enough. Blinking, she coughed.
‘Oh, right, you’re. .’ She shook her head. ‘Never mind. It’s hard to make out over all the water, but they seem to be. . chanting or something, I don’t know.’ She frowned. ‘It’s not a pleasant noise, I can tell you that.’
‘Chanting is never good,’ Lenk muttered. ‘As if we needed any more reason to grab the tome and get out of here quickly.’
‘Agreed.’ Kataria nodded. She glanced between the two men. ‘So, uh. . which one of you knows where it is?’
‘You might be missing the point of this. If we knew where it was, we wouldn’t be stumbling about in the dark waiting for our heads to be eaten.’ Lenk glanced down the hall. ‘I’ll wager, however, that whatever there is to be found is probably going to be found with the chanting.’
‘What we’ll find is a bunch of bloodthirsty demons,’ Denaos grumbled. ‘And, given that we have the rare opportunity of knowing where they are, we should probably go in the other direction.’
‘Do you have a better idea?’ Lenk held up a hand before the rogue could reply. ‘Do you have a better idea that doesn’t involve running away or soiling ourselves?’
‘Ah, well. . you’ve got me there.’
‘Yeah,’ Lenk grunted. He glanced out of the alcove, then back to Denaos. ‘We’ll continue as we have, with you on point and Kataria covering our. . or rather my rear.’
‘And what will you be doing while I’m sniffing your farts?’ the shict sneered. ‘Put me in the lead.’
‘Fat lot of good that piece of wood will do you in the lead.’ Denaos pointed at her bow. ‘It’s too cramped in here to draw the damn thing, let alone hit anything.’
‘And if you go in the lead, we’ll be found out for sure.’ She twitched her ears. ‘I could hear that splash for ages after you dumped the body.’
‘Any dim-witted Kou’ru can sneak around and strangle something,’ Kataria hissed. ‘True stalking is a delicate practice, involving equal parts verbal and non-verbal.’
‘Verbal. . you do know the point is to stay silent, don’t you?’
Whatever retort she had was cut off by the sound of legs splashing through the water, however. They tensed as one, waiting for the sound to pass. While it did so, they could still hear the heavy breathing of something just around the corner.
‘Hello?’ it gurgled. ‘Is that one there?’
Before anyone could stop her, Kataria sprang out from the alcove and levelled her bow at the creature.
‘No,’ she replied.
Air split apart, there was a hollow sound, then the sound of something slumping quietly beneath the black waters. Kataria cast a glance over her shoulder at Denaos and grinned haughtily.
‘Case in point.’ She slung her bow over her shoulder. ‘I’ll take lead.’
‘For a fortress, there’s not much to it, is there?’ Lenk murmured as quietly as he could as they crept through the hallway.
Total silence had become unattainable; the water seeping into the fortress had drowned the halls in ever-rising tides. It was all they could do to restrain their fears of something reaching out and seizing them from below as they mucked through the knee-high deeps.
‘I haven’t seen any rooms,’ he continued, ‘no barracks, no kitchens, no mess. .’
They hesitated where the hall forked into two black paths. Kataria glanced up and down both, ears twitching, before gesturing for the two men to follow as she stalked further into Irontide. The sunlight, terrified even to peek a scant ray any further, completely disappeared, leaving them sloshing about in the dark.
‘If rumours can be trusted,’ Denaos replied softly, ‘there used to be sleeping quarters down here.’ He pointed towards the dripping ceiling. ‘Business was conducted further up.’
‘So what happened?’ Kataria whispered.
‘All I know is stories.’
