Starspawn

by Wendy N. Wagner

  “He’s with another boy!” Vorrin shouted. “There, in the front row. They’re trying to get to the windows.”

  She could see Kran now, with Oric in tow. Jendara drew her sword. “We’ll have to cut our way through the ulat-kini.”

  The scepter’s light surged brighter. Ahrzur raised it over his head, and a beam of white light shot out onto the shimmering chapel wall. The ground flung itself sideways. Jendara and Vorrin grabbed at each other as they slid down the suddenly tilting floor.

  Salt spray erupted from the crevice, which had more than doubled in width. The ancient beams beneath the floor groaned, and on the far side of the gash in the ground, an ulat-kini warrior screamed as one of the huge floor tiles broke loose and plummeted into open space. Within the crack, something with a faint luminescence struggled to writhe its way upward.

  The deep ones rushed the front of the room. Humans and ulat-kini no longer mattered to them: they cared only for the scepter that controlled their god. They threw themselves at the denizens of Leng and the fleshy moon-beasts.

  Jendara scrambled up the sloping floor. “We’ve got to get to Kran,” she warned Vorrin, reaching backward for his hand. She grabbed the edge of a crumbling pew and pulled them onto safer ground.

  This part of the chapel, just moments ago packed with terrified people, was mostly clear now—but the spaces between the pews were filled with fallen rock and the dead and injured of several species. Jendara didn’t have time to pick her way carefully across the debris. She jumped on top of the pew. The stone back of the bench wobbled beneath her boots, and she jumped to the next one.

  A huge deep one, nearly the size of the Elder, rushed past her.

  “It is not time!” it bellowed. “The stars are wrong!”

  Roaring as it ran, it flung itself at Ahrzur. They slammed into the portal device. The denizen of Leng was momentarily stunned. The huge deep one grabbed Ahrzur’s limp arm and began to tug. The denizen of Leng struggled in the beast’s grasp, but his arm stretched taut for a moment and then ripped free. There was no blood, no screaming, no nasty exposed bits of tendon and snapped arteries—his arm was simply no longer attached to his body. The hulking deep one gave a hoot of delight and flung the limb, star scepter and all, up into the air.

  The scepter flew free of Ahrzur’s hand and hung for a moment, its glow fading. Then it spun end over end out the open window and was gone.

  * * *

  Ahrzur’s arm fell to the ground and lay there, a dead snake of a thing. The denizen of Leng lashed out with his free hand, slashing open the deep one’s chest with his black talons. The deep one stumbled backward, clutching at the shredded flesh. Ahrzur drove a kick into the creature’s torso and sent it flying backward. The beast hit the end of the crevasse in the floor and pedaled for traction, but it was too close to the edge. The deep one fell back into the opening.

  A tentacle whipped up out of the crack, the massive deep one wrapped tightly in its coils. It squeezed the fish-faced creature, and blood ran out of the beast in rivulets. The tentacle gave one last squeeze and then tossed the creature down into the depths of the pit.

  The tentacle hung motionless for a second, its tip pointed like a dog’s nose fixed on a scent. Then it slithered forward, groping along the ground until it reached the spattered blood left by the injured deep one. It rubbed itself in the gore, its surface seeming to drink it up.

  Jendara turned away from the sight. She had to find her boy. “Kran!” she shouted. She was close, she knew it.

  “Jendara!” a young voice screamed, and she saw Oric at the front of the room, waving, frantic to get her attention.

  “No!” Vorrin roared, and Jendara realized what he saw: the denizen of Leng bearing down on the boys. The creature snatched up Oric and leaped over the debris that separated them from the end of the crevice in the floor.

  Kran ran after his friend.

  Time seemed to stand still for Jendara. She saw her son’s enraged face, the knife in his hand. She saw the denizen of Leng holding up Oric as it shrieked jubilantly and raced toward the blood-hungry tentacles. The boy was a lure, she realized. The damned denizen of Leng still thought it could lure the sleeping god through the portal, using Kran’s best friend as bait.

  Kran threw his dagger and it flew true, slamming home in the denizen of Leng’s shoulder blade, the shoulder of the arm that gripped Oric. Oric tumbled to the ground and rolled to his feet.

  The tentacle lashed out, sweeping the denizen of Leng down into the crevice. The entire chapel rumbled and shook. The floor beneath Kran and Oric tipped sideways, down the aisle and away from Jendara. The ground groaned, and the far end of the crevasse opened wider. It now threatened to swallow up the chapel’s back wall, and the boys were sliding right toward it.

  “Kran!” Vorrin yelled, and then he was off. Jendara spun around to catch up with him. He was headed for the huge slab of roof that had fallen across the aisle and now spanned the crevasse like a bridge. He scrambled up onto the rock, hoping to grab the boys as they passed below.

  Something rose up out of the pit, huge and leathery like the wing of some gigantic bat. A film of phosphorescent algae clung to it so it glowed a pustulant green. The wing twitched, sending out air currents that sent everything around it flying.

  Including Vorrin.

  27

  THE SLEEPING GOD

  Jendara’s boot caught the end of the nearest pew and she crashed to her knees. Her son. Her husband. She couldn’t save them both.

  A hand brought her upright. “Look,” Tam shouted in her ear. “Just look!”

  Fylga, her white coat outlined dark against the green glow, stood half-on and half-off the slab of fallen stone, her teeth clamped shut on the back of Kran’s jacket. His arms were wrapped tightly around Oric, whose boots were jammed against an outcropping of stone. It and Fylga were the only things keeping the boys from plummeting over the edge.

  Tam and Jendara ran to the crevasse.

  “Help!” a voice shouted from far below. “Help me!”

  Jendara’s eyes widened. “That’s Vorrin!” She dropped onto her belly, peering into the gloomy depths below. She could just see him, clinging to the end of a broken support beam a good two floors below.

  “I’ve got the boys,” Tam said. “Go find something to lower to the captain!”

  “But—”

  “Trust me!” he bellowed.

  She ran to the pews where she’d cut through so much green rope. She found several short lengths before she found one of the longer pieces. Her fingers trembled as she knotted them all together. Would it even hold? She dropped to her stomach and tossed it over the edge. It dangled a good four feet too short.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she breathed.

  Zuna threw herself down beside Jendara. “Is that the captain down there?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Boruc! Send those survivors to the Milady and get over here!”

  She yanked off her belt. “I’m going to lash this around your feet,” she announced.

  “What?” Jendara blinked at her stupidly. Vorrin, Kran, they were both going to die. She didn’t care if she slid over the edge after them.

  Zuna tightened the belt around Jendara’s ankles. “Boruc, grab onto me,” she ordered, as she wrapped the end of the belt around her own muscular forearm. “You bring him back,” she commanded.

  Jendara finally understood. She pushed herself over the edge and watched her makeshift rope hang down beside Vorrin’s face. “Grab on!”

  He reached out for it with one hand. For a second, he hesitated. Once he let go of that support beam, his life would hang on Jendara’s makeshift line.

  A patter of rocks rained down on his head. Jendara risked a glance upward. Tam had a hold of Oric. By the gods, the boys were going to be all right.

  Vorrin yanked on the line. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Pull!” Jendara shouted. She rose slowly up the cliff’s face.

  In the corner of her left eye, something
glimmered. Jendara didn’t want to look, but she knew she had to.

  Something huge gleamed below her, something that for a long moment her brain refused to recognize. It rolled wildly at her, a vast black orb whose depths showed the madly dancing stars. That orb, she felt—she knew—meant the end of the world and the beginning of eternal nightmare. It beamed pure raw evil straight into her heart.

  It was the sleeping god’s eye.

  “Jendara!” Vorrin shouted.

  She snapped her attention back to him. The muscles in her hands and arms screamed. She was nearly out of the crevasse, but she didn’t know if she could pull him up.

  Maybe it would be a blessing to just let him go. He would die quickly, instead of drowning in the madness the god would wreak upon them all. She stared down at him, memorizing his face, his hair, the shape of his knuckles gripping the rope.

  “Jendara,” he repeated, softer. She blinked hard. What was she thinking? She couldn’t let Vorrin go!

  “Help me!” she shouted, and with a lurch, she was suddenly back on the ground. Boruc and Zuna were reeling Vorrin back up over the cliff. Jendara lay still for a moment, just breathing and wishing that horrible eye would disappear from her memory.

  Someone laughed, the happy laugh of a child, and she sat up to see Glayn and Oric nearly dancing beside the crevice. Kran knelt beside him, hugging Fylga. But Tam was standing far too close to the edge. Her heart gave a sudden swoop of horrible certainty. The god had seen her and called to her, and she had denied him his tribute.

  “Tam.” But her voice was only a tiny whisper, not nearly loud enough to reach him as the tentacle appeared behind him.

  Fylga barked a warning, but she was too late. The tentacle wrapped around Tam’s ankle and pulled him over the brink.

  Glayn rushed forward and dropped to his knees, staring down into the darkness. He cried out in wordless despair.

  “What happened?” Vorrin asked, still pulling himself over the wall.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Zuna snapped.

  Vorrin rolled onto ground, breathing hard. “Is—” he had to stop and catch his breath. He tried again: “Is everyone all right?”

  “No,” Jendara said. She freed herself from Zuna’s belt and tossed it back to the other woman. She hurried to Glayn’s side and knelt beside him. “We have to go.”

  He refused to look up at her, shaking his head wildly. “Not without Tam.”

  “Come on,” she said, her voice rough and thick. “Come on!”

  “No!” he shouted. “We saved Vorrin! We saved your son! Why not my Tam?”

  “It’ll get us all,” she said. “It wants us all!”

  Zuna shoved Jendara out of the way and scooped the gnome up into her arms. “Hush now, Glayn. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  The floor shook and Zuna stumbled a little. Something deep inside the island groaned, and a slab of rock slammed down beside the group. Without looking back for the others, Zuna broke into a run.

  Boruc raced after her, pulling Oric along by his unbroken arm. Fylga gave a worried bark and dashed ahead of them.

  Kran tugged on Jendara’s arm and pointed back at the portal device. Behind it, the wall of the chapel was gone, replaced by a black doorway outlined in eye-searingly bright blue light. Jendara pulled Kran closer as they watched the last of the moon-beasts run through that horrible gate.

  Horrible was the only word for it. The world beyond was a gray wasteland of rock and sand and mountains so sharp they cut the sky and made it weep black, angry tears. Stars like none she’d ever seen wheeled and spun in the ink-stained heavens, their coruscating lights making her head ache. She realized she was holding her breath and had to cough to find air.

  An ulat-kini—no, not an ulat-kini, but Skortti, bleeding and battered, darted for the doorway. Only a few of the denizens of Leng remained at the portal, and one spun around to face the ulat-kini wiseman. The denizen drew a black scimitar from its belt.

  Skortti dodged away from the creature’s slash. For a second, Jendara thought he would make it: that the ulat-kini would cross into the realm where he’d been promised all the power and glory their own world had denied him. But the scimitar flashed in the air and Skortti stopped at the very edge of the doorway, clutching his throat in startled agony.

  His body had come up short, but momentum propelled his severed head across the boundary between worlds. His eyes widened and then the life went out of them. Skortti’s head struck a big charcoal stone and bounced off it, coming to a stop upon the gray sand, his olive-toned flesh the only color in all that world.

  “Jendara!”

  She spun around to see Vorrin beckon to her. The stones around them grumbled and smaller fissures began shooting out from the edges of the great gash in the floor. She and Kran ran as hard and as fast as they could toward the bronze doors of the chapel. They leaped over one last fissure and then they were out in the nearly empty boulevard.

  * * *

  The whole island shook and shuddered as they ran down the dark hallway. No starlight or moonlight penetrated the great skylights; nothing lit up the debris-strewn boulevard except for the faint bobbing light of Zuna’s lantern in the distance. The light jerked right and vanished.

  “Zuna, wait!”

  Zuna had found the staircase. Jendara could only hope that she and Vorrin could do the same. The dark pressed down on her as if it had its own mass. It filled the air and made it hard to breathe, and when the island shook, its velvety, unpleasant folds wrapped around her like a damp blanket.

  A bark, just a few feet ahead, shook off the weight.

  “Fylga!”

  The dog barked again and Zuna’s light reappeared. “Hurry up!”

  Jendara raced toward the light, Fylga panting along beside her. To her right, stained glass shattered as it hit the floor. The island was shaking itself to bits. Kran sped ahead, and the dog kept pace with him.

  “Come on!” shouted Zuna. She waved her free hand wildly.

  They all rounded the corner and launched themselves down the stairs in less a run than a barely contained fall. The strangely shaped stairs jerked and twitched beneath their boots, but no one tripped. Jendara hit the beach and felt a new strength enter her legs. Boruc had already dropped the Milady’s gangplank, and was waving a crowd of haggard Sorinders on board. Jendara saw Leyla and Morul in the crowd, and her heart stirred.

  She slowed to a stop. There was another craft behind the Milady, a smaller longship that looked like it was struggling to get away from the shore. The sail was still furled, and no one had put out oars.

  “That ship’s from Sorind,” Vorrin said. “If we could get some hands on board, we could lighten the Milady’s load.”

  Boruc shook his head. “It’s not abandoned. I saw an ulat-kini cast off just before the first villagers hit the beach.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Vorrin spat. “We ought to capture that boat and throw the scum overboard.”

  The ground lurched and the gangplank bucked. A stalactite smashed on the end of the dock, just inches from Kran.

  “We don’t have time!” Jendara shoved a woman onto the gangplank and urged her forward. “This island is breaking apart.”

  And the island, Jendara realized, was the only thing containing the sleeping god. The scepter was gone. The moon-beasts were gone. There was nothing that could control that monstrous thing.

  She rubbed the back of her left hand, where the ancestors’ mark blazed across the tendons. They had saved her before, but she had no idea if their spirits could do anything against the might of a god. She didn’t bother looking at the skull and crossbones inked on her right hand. Even if she still worshiped Besmara, the pirate goddess wasn’t likely to stand up for one unimportant ex-pirate.

  No, she was on her own.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she warned.

  Vorrin nodded. They hurried on board and stowed the gangplank. Vorrin began barking orders to the fisherfolk he recognized from S
orind, pressing them into duty. Jendara eyed the out-of-control longship. Its bow spun slowly around. In a minute or two, it would hit the cave wall and grind to a halt. A longship could sail with a small crew, but it was nearly impossible for one this size to be sailed by one person alone.

  Jendara frowned. Hadn’t Zuna said all the ulat-kini’s boats and the longships that had brought in the Sorind prisoners had been scuttled or cut loose? So how had this one gotten inside the cave? It would have had to run against the current.

  She saw a small figure at the mast, fighting to get the sail up. It looked more human and less stocky than most ulat-kini, and realization hit her.

  Korthax.

  Korthax had stolen this longship because, as a hybrid, he couldn’t just swim away from the island once he woke the sleeping god. He had to breathe, after all. He’d gotten rid of the ulat-kini’s other boats because he needed to make sure the others wouldn’t follow him away from the island. He’d known the ulat-kini would never accept him as a leader after confronting Skortti and the denizens of Leng. He’d planned to escape on a ship with the sleeping god following behind him like a pet.

  Now he was on his own and failing. Moreover, he hadn’t taken the time to disable the Milady. He had probably expected the other ulat-kini to wipe out all their prisoners, and what remained would have certainly gotten picked off by the angry deep ones.

  Anger stirred heat into her cheeks. He hadn’t thought much of her and her crew, had he? By the gods, she’d be glad to watch the island swallow him up.

  A horrible grinding sounded overhead, and Jendara snapped her gaze up at the ceiling. The roof was splitting. A slab of stone splashed down beside the ship, sending up a massive wave that immediately drenched Jendara. She grabbed the deck railing as the ship rocked hard.

  She smelled mold and rancid seaweed, and caught a glimpse of something black unfolding from the ceiling. Seawater filled her eyes, and as she blinked it away, the huge blackness swung down and slapped her hard enough to break her grip and send her overboard.

  She hit the water and sank into the boiling surf.