The Skybound Sea tag-3

by Sam Sykes

  “How would killing it help us?”

  His face screwed up. “I’d love to answer, but I don’t think I was prepared to hear anything quite that insane today.”

  “The fact that we are not trying to kill something is insane?”

  An unsettling question, he noted, one that would be far less unsettling had it not been accompanied by her stare. Eyes like arrowheads, hers jammed into his, hard and sharp and aimed at something he could not see in his own head.

  Something cold and cruel that didn’t want to be seen.

  “I need you to trust me.”

  “I can’t.” The answer came tumbling out on a hot breath, on his own voice and no one else’s. He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  “I know.”

  She flashed him a smile, something old and sick and full of tears. She walked toward him slowly, hands held up before her, as though she approached a frightened beast and not the man she had kissed, not the man she had betrayed.

  “I’m not going to apologize for it,” she said.

  “I don’t want apologies.”

  She was before him. He could feel her warmth through the chill of water. He could see her clearly through the haze of the fog. He could hear her. Only her.

  “Then let me give you what you want,” she whispered. “Lenk, I-”

  Her voice was drowned in the crash of waves and thunderous roar as the sea split apart before them. They cowered beneath the railing, a great wave sweeping over them and sending their vessel rocking violently. Lenk looked up and beheld only the writhing blue column of the creature’s body, the rest lost to the mist as he stared upward.

  And, like a single star in a dead sky, a yellow eye stared back at him.

  Absorbed as he might have been in the creature’s stare, Kataria shared no such fascination. He could hear her bow sing a mournful tune as she let an arrow fly into the fog, aiming for the eye.

  “The spear!” she screamed over her shoulder as she drew another arrow. “The spear! Hit it! Hit it now!”

  The deck trembled with Gariath’s charge, arm drawn back and splintering spear in hand as he rushed to the bow and hurled the weapon. It sailed through the air, rope whipping behind it before it bit into the beast’s hide with a thick squishing sound.

  Undeterred by the length of wood and rusted steel jutting from its hide, the beast began to crane toward them, the eye growing larger. A curse accompanied each wail of arrow as Kataria sent feathered shafts into the mist.

  And still, the beast came. Each breath brought it closer, taking shape in the wall of gray: the great crest of its fin, the jagged shape of its skull. Within three breaths, Lenk could almost count the individual teeth as its jaws slid out of the fog and gaped wide.

  He wondered almost idly, as he brought his impotent sliver of steel up before the cavernous maw, how many it would take to split him in half.

  If the answer came at all to him, it was lost in a fevered shriek of an arrow flying and the keening wail of a beast in pain. The missile struck beneath the beast’s eye, joining a small cluster of quivering shafts in the thin flesh of its eyelid.

  “Didn’t think I knew where I was shooting, did you?” Kataria shrieked, though to whom wasn’t clear. “Did you?”

  The Akaneed, at a distinct loss for replies that didn’t involve high-pitched, pained screeches, chose instead to leave the question unanswered. Its body tipped, falling into the ocean where it disappeared with a resounding splash.

  “See? See?” Kataria’s laughter had never been a particularly beautiful noise, though it had never grown quite as close to the sound of a mule as it did at that moment. “I told you it would work! Damn thing’s not going to risk its only eye just to kill you.”

  “I should have killed it,” Gariath muttered, folding massive arms over massive chest. “It deserved better than you.”

  She sneered over her shoulder at him. “Maybe it just thought I was prettier.”

  “What. .” Lenk had hoped to have something more colorful to say as he stared out over the waves, “what was that?”

  “That,” Kataria replied, “was the plan. To lure the thing out and then send it running. Any wounded animal will always flee to its lair.” Her ears shot up triumphantly. “In this case. .”

  “Jaga,” Lenk finished for her. His eyebrows rose appreciatively. “That. . almost makes sense.”

  “Almost?” she asked, ears drooping slightly.

  “Well, what was the spear for?”

  A faint whistling sound brought their attention to the rope sliding across the deck.

  “Oh, right.” She bent down, plucking up the rope and sturdying herself against the bow. “Pick that up.” She looked past Lenk to Gariath, “Mind grabbing the rudder? This is the part I didn’t really think out.”

  Lenk plucked up the thick rope. He opened his mouth to inquire but found reason to do so lacking. Everything became clear the moment he felt the tug on the rope and felt the boat move.

  Questions did tear themselves from his mouth, though: noisy ones, mostly wordless, mostly curse-filled. If any answers came back, he didn’t hear them, what with all the screaming.

  It was funny, he thought as he was jerked violently forward, but he had never before thought of arm sockets as a liability. As he was pulled from his feet and slammed upon the deck, though, he wondered if it might not have been easier if his arms had just been torn off and gone flying into the mist with the rest of the rope.

  That thought occurred to him roughly a moment after he skidded across the slick timbers to crash against the railings and a moment before instinct shouted down rational thought.

  Get up, it screamed. Get up!

  He did so, staggeringly. And even when he found purchase, it didn’t last long. Even as the vessel tore through the water, pulled along by its unwilling, bellowing beast, the deck slowly slid beneath his feet. He was dragged forward, skidding across the timbers until he came chest-to-back with Kataria.

  The shict stood her ground, bracing with her legs spread and feet firmly against the bow as she leaned back and held on tight. He slid into her stance as he collided with her, the rope slipping out of his hands briefly.

  She let out a sharp cry as she was jerked forward, looking as though the thing would pull her over at any moment. He snatched up the rope again, feeling it gnaw angrily at his palms as he struggled to regain his grip.

  “Hold on!” Kataria shrieked to be heard over the roar of waves beneath them and the bellowing of the Akaneed before them.

  “I am!” he cried back, seizing the rope and holding it tightly.

  “Hold on!” she screamed again.

  “I said I was!”

  “HOLD ON!”

  “That’s not as helpful as you might think!”

  “LEFT!”

  It became clear she was talking to Gariath about the same time it became clear that they were about to die.

  A great rock face, jagged and gray, came shooting out of the mist, seeming to have risen out of the very ocean just to stop them. It passed them with a breathless scream as Gariath snarled and jammed hard on the rudder, angling them out of the way and denying stony teeth a meal of more than a few splinters.

  More came out of the endless gray on stony howls and wordless whispers as they sped past, until it came to resemble less a sea and more a forest, with granite trees rising up around them in great, reaching number. Kataria continued to cry out commands, Gariath continued to grunt and to strain against the rudder.

  And in the shadows painted ashen against the mist, Lenk thought he could see things other than the stone faces. Great, man-shaped things that rose from the water and extended thick hands as if to ward off the mist. Thin, skeletal arms reaching out of the sea with tatters of flesh hanging from their knobby and broken fingers.

  What are those? He squinted his eyes to see more clearly. Masts? Ship masts?

  “Down!” Kataria shrieked as she fell to the deck.

  Yes, he thought as a yardarm
yawned out of the fog directly in front of him and struck him squarely against the chin, ship masts.

  The rope tore itself from his grasp as his hands became concerned with the matter of checking to see how many pieces his jaw was in. One, fortunately, albeit one with a few splinters jutting from it.

  “Up,” a voice urged him through gritted teeth. “Up!”

  He looked to Kataria straining against the rope, barely holding on. He scrambled for it, but as he rose to his feet again, something stopped him from reasserting his grip.

  “Let go,” the voice whispered inside his head. “Let her fly. Let her die as she let you die.”

  “Lenk!” Kataria cried, pulling hard against the rope.

  “Let her go. Turn upon the other traitor.”

  “Lenk!”

  “Kill.”

  He began to miss the silence.

  And yet the voice was soft. His muscles were burning, his head was warm. He felt no chill. The voice didn’t command. It had seen her betray him, heard him call out to her, watched her turn her back on him. In some part of him, free from the voice, he wanted to let go.

  Such a flimsy thing, so weightless. It would be such a trifling matter to let go. And who could blame him?

  The voice did not repeat itself. It didn’t have to.

  The ship buckled under a sudden pull. She hauled herself backward. He felt her crash against him, felt her muscle press against his, felt her growl course from inside her to inside him.

  He felt her warmth.

  “I won’t let go,” she snarled, perhaps to him. “Not again.”

  She didn’t.

  Neither did he.

  Not that he wasn’t sorely tempted to as another great rock came shrieking soundlessly out of the fog.

  “Right,” Kataria screamed as the rock grew closer. “RIGHT!” She screamed as the ship drifted into its path. “GARIATH, YOU-”

  In a wail of wood, her curse was lost. The rocky teeth bit deeply into the vessel, smashing timbers and sending shards screaming. They cowered, but did not let go, holding onto the rope only narrowly keeping them from flying off in the haze of splinters and dust.

  When they cleared the rock, they had left the railing and most of the deck with it. Water began to rise up onto the deck as the boat shifted awkwardly with its new weight.

  “What the hell was that, Gariath?” Lenk cried over his shoulder. “She said ‘right!’”

  “I know,” the dragonman snarled, as he rose up and picked his way across the slippery deck. “I chose to go left.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve just been choosing which way to go on my own.”

  “Kataria’s been calling out-”

  The dragonman stopped beside him and held a hand up, the rudder’s handle clutched firmly in it. . the rest of it somewhere else. Lenk looked up, bulging eyes sweeping from the shattered rudder to the violent mess that had once been the vessel’s stern. When he looked back to Gariath, the dragonman almost looked insulted.

  “Oh, like I’m not justified in ignoring her,” he snorted, tossing the useless hunk of wood overboard. His snort turned to a snarl as he reached out and seized the rope. “This was getting obnoxious, anyway.”

  His strength was all that allowed them to hold on as the vessel, without rudder or hope, went sweeping wildly across the sea. Rocks flew past them, some avoided, most not, each one claiming a piece of their ship.

  Yardarms and masts of dead ships cropped out of the water with increasing frequency. Statues of great robed figures rose up around them, hands outstretched before them. The mist began to thin, giving sight to something in the distance.

  Vast.

  Dark.

  Jaga, he thought. It worked. He could hardly believe it. Kataria actually managed to-

  He should have known better than to think that.

  Where the crop of rock had come from, he had no idea. Unlike its massive and braggart brothers, this one rose shyly out of the water, extending just its jagged brow above the surface as if to see what was going on.

  As it happened, that was more than enough to completely ruin everything.

  The boat all but disintegrated beneath their feet, the rope torn from their hands as they came to a sudden and angry stop. Three voices cried for it, six hands scrambled, trying to seize it, trying to seize anything but air as they went tumbling haplessly through the air alongside planks and splinters to crash into the water.

  What followed was a confusion of drowning voices, sputtering commands and flailing limbs all centered around a singular, urgent need.

  “Out!” Lenk cried. “Out of the water!”

  His vessel bobbing haplessly around him in pieces, his attentions became fixed on the distant outcropping of rock. It rose up from a base so jagged and insignificant, it might as well not be there. But he stood a better chance on land than he did flailing in the water.

  As good a chance as one typically stood against a colossal sea serpent, anyway.

  He kicked his way to the great pillar rising stoically out of the sea, scrambled around its base as he searched for a place to hoist himself up amidst the jagged rocks.

  And yet, he found no jagged rocks, no insubstantial footing. Slick, sturdy stone greeted his wandering grasp, a small landing, more than enough for a man to stand comfortably upon, grew out of the rock’s face. It was smooth, too smooth to be natural. Someone had carved it.

  He might have wondered who, if a clawed hand wrapping around his neck hadn’t instantly seized his attentions. Gariath didn’t seem to care, either, as he callously threw the young man out from the water and onto the landing. He hauled himself up afterward, spreading his wings and shaking his body, sending stinging droplets into Lenk’s eyes.

  “Watch it,” Lenk muttered.

  “If you said less stupid things, you’d have credibility to resent me when I called you stupid,” the dragonman replied crisply, folding his wings behind him.

  “Would you call me stupid less?”

  “No. But I might feel a little less good about it.”

  Lenk opened his mouth to retort when his eyes suddenly went wide, sweeping over the sea.

  “Where’s Kataria?”

  The first answer came with an uncaring roll of Gariath’s broad shoulders.

  The second, slightly more helpful answer came from the bubbles rising up beside the landing. A sopping mess of golden hair, frazzled feathers and sputtering gasps emerged moments later. With some difficulty, it made its way over to the landing and hooked an arm onto the stone. It looked up at them, the only thing visible through the mess of wet straw being an angry, canine-bared snarl.

  “Help me, you idiots,” Kataria snapped. “I didn’t go back to get your stupid supplies so I could die for them.”

  She seemed less than annoyed when Gariath took her by the arms and hauled her effortlessly from the water, callously dropping her and the stuff she carried to the landing. Steel rattled upon stone, a blade sliding away from her to rest at Lenk’s feet like a waiting puppy.

  “You. .” he whispered, reaching down to take it by the hilt with a slightly unnerving gentleness, “went back for my sword.”

  “You’re useless without it,” she muttered. She rose up, kicked a sopping leather satchel toward him. “And these are useless without you.”

  “The small bag?”

  “It looked important.”

  “There’s no food in it,” he said, looking at her askew. “There’s nothing in them.”

  Except my journal, he thought.

  She stared at him intently, as though she could stare past his befuddled eyes and into his thoughts. She snorted, pulling wet hair behind her head and callously wringing it out.

  “Important to someone, then,” she said.

  “Right,” he said, voice fading on a breeze that wasn’t there.

  It wasn’t lost on her, though; her long ears, three ragged notches to a length, twitched with an anxious fervor, swallowing his voice. Her entire body seemed to fo
llow suit, the sinew of her arms flexing as she twisted her hair out, naked abdomen tensing, sending droplets of salt dancing down the shallow contours of her muscle to disappear in the water-slick cling of her breeches.

  And amidst all the motion of her body, only her eyes remained still, fixated. On him.

  Absently, he wondered if it was telling that he only seemed to notice her in such a way before or after a near death experience.

  “Stairs.”

  He startled at the sound; Gariath’s voice felt something rough and coarse on his ears. Almost as rough and coarse as his claws felt wrapped around his neck. The dragonman hoisted him up, turned him around sharply to face them: a narrow set of steps, worn by salt and storm, spiraling up around the pillar of rock.

  “Right,” Lenk whispered, shouldering sword and satchel alike, “stairs.”

  Nothing more need be said; no one needed a reason to get farther away from the water. The mist thinned as they followed it to the top, though not by much. When feet were set upon the smooth, hewn tableau of the pillar, it was still thick enough to strangle the sun, if not banish it entirely.

  Perhaps the light was just enough to let them see it clearly. Perhaps there was no mist thick enough to smother it entirely from view. But in the distance, still vast, still dark, loomed an imposing shape.

  “Jaga,” Lenk whispered, as though speaking the name louder might draw its attention.

  “It doesn’t look like an island,” Kataria said, squinting into the gloom. “Not like any I’ve seen, anyway.” She shrugged. “Then again, I’ve never seen an island with a walkway leading conveniently to it.”

  True enough, there it was. However narrow and however precarious, a walkway of stone stretched from the end of the pillar into the mist toward the distant island.

  “I’ve never heard of a giant rock that had such a neat and tidy top,” Lenk replied, tapping his feet upon the hewn tableau. “Nor ones with naturally occurring staircases, either. Not that it wasn’t nice of them, but why would the Shen carve any of this?”

  “They didn’t.”

  There was an edge in Gariath’s voice, less coarse and more jagged, as though he took offense at the insinuation. As Lenk turned about, met the dragonman’s black, narrow glare, he felt considerable credence lent to the theory.