The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  Lenk’s face twisted into anger. He stalked to the edge of the dock, thrust a finger accusingly out over it. “I told you to stay out of her head.”

  “And I told you I didn’t need to be in it,” Mocca snapped back. “I merely listened. I have heard the yearning in her voice and I have seen the flashes of hatred across her face. When she suspects you of thinking of the shict, they’re there. When she sees your body and all the stories it tells, they’re there. She is driven by desperation.” He sniffed. “Or love. Same thing, really.”

  “You’re just saying that,” Lenk snarled. “You say you’ve been watching? Listening? Then you’ve seen her fight. You’ve heard her talk about stopping you, killing you, if need be.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re afraid.”

  “I am.” Mocca’s voice grew softer. “But not of her.” He looked intently at Lenk once more. “You are drawing close now, you know. There’s not much time left to decide. What will you do when you and she reach Rhuul Khaas?”

  Lenk blinked. Mocca’s form quivered at the edges, as did his voice.

  “Would you stand with her, Lenk,” he whispered, “against me?”

  “You’re a demon.” Lenk forced the words out between his teeth, a rusty blade drawn from a scabbard without oil. “Whatever else you promise, whatever else you say, you were cast down for a reason.”

  “I…” Mocca let his protest drop. He turned his head away. “The Aeons were never fully divine, you know. Sin was well within our capabilities. I acknowledge that.” When he looked up again, his eyes were soft. “But do you not see what she’s doing?”

  “Her duty.”

  “Her function. She was created for violence, she said so herself. She cannot exist without it and she won’t be satisfied until you can’t, either.”

  “And what about me, then?” Lenk demanded. “We’re the same, she and I. Same hair, same eyes, same story. If she’s created to kill, then so am I.”

  “NO.” Mocca’s voice thundered through the chasm, bade animals cower in silence and breezes die. “You are not like her. Not like them. How much have you sacrificed to get here? To find a way of putting down your sword?”

  “And what’s it gotten me?” Lenk shook his head. “I haven’t fucking stopped killing since I came to Cier’Djaal and it’s not going to stop now that I’m gone. I’ve lost blood, I’ve lost money, I’ve lost Kataria. But somehow I never, ever lose the fucking sword.”

  He turned. He began to stalk away, back toward the staircase. He waved a hand fleetingly over his shoulder.

  “If I have to hold on to the sword forever,” he said, “then it’s time I took something in return. With Shuro I at least have someone to talk to. If that’s the price I have to pay, so be it.”

  The sky darkened. The breeze went still. As though all of creation had taken a deep breath and held it.

  He was aware, then, of the death of sound: of the wind in the trees, of the birds in the branches, of his own boots scraping against the stone. He was aware, then, of a deep darkness settling into the chasm, an eager nightfall come too early. He was aware, then, of a single source of light.

  Coming from right behind him.

  “No.”

  He turned. Mocca’s eyes were alive with light, a glow bright and white as any star, pouring from his stare with a terrible glory. The man in white spoke, and his voice sent creation quavering.

  “I will not let you.”

  The light poured out of his eyes, snaking and trembling like a river unto itself. And like a river it flowed: over the water, over the stone, over Lenk. The young man held up a hand to shield himself, shut his eyes and turned his head away, yet it was still not enough. The light seared through his eyelids, made his vision burst with bright-white light.

  He shouted out and could not hear his own voice. Only a faint buzzing rang in his ears as he shut his eyes, shook his head, and screamed at Mocca to make it stop.

  And stop it did.

  The ringing in his ears did fade. And in its wake he could hear the sound of feet scraping on stone, of wooden hulls bumping against docks, of prayers murmured to the flowing river.

  And when he opened his eyes, he did not know where he was.

  The sun—a sun he did not know—poured light into the chasm through a gap in the trees. The choked vines and dead foliage were gone, having left behind only pristine stonework free of cracks and decay. The Lyre burbled gaily nearby, its flow carrying small rivercraft up and down, beneath the spanning bridges and around the central pedestal that had held a pair of granite ankles only moments ago.

  Now it bore a statue of a tall, elegant man. A man whom Lenk had seen before, in all the shattered faces and severed heads of the statues he had come across in the jungle.

  Mocca.

  His stone gaze, impassive and without pupil or iris, looked over the harbor with unblinking concentration. He watched its boats come and go, its sunlight dance upon the water, its people…

  People, Lenk thought. There are people.

  Humans. Shicts. Tulwar. Vulgores. Of many sizes, many ages, many peoples, they gathered. They clothed themselves in white robes, not unlike Mocca’s own, and maintained silence but for the prayers they murmured. Boats arrived to deposit more, who would then quietly file up the staircase Lenk had descended and disappear.

  They did not look at him. They did not look up at all. Lenk was tempted to reach out and touch one, but it somehow seemed… rude. Offensive, even. As though they were now too pure to accept his dirty hands.

  “The Pilgrim’s Path.”

  He turned and saw Mocca. The real Mocca—or at least as real as Mocca could be—standing beside him. The man in white stood demurely aside, watching the robed people make their way up the stairs.

  “This was originally a small offshoot of the Lyre, filled with rocks and river bulls,” Mocca said. “But as it was the only thing remotely close to a landing, people came by the boatload. With all the deaths, only the devout ever managed to make it this far, hence the name. Though we built the dock for them, they kept the name out of respect.”

  “What did they come for?” Lenk asked.

  “One reason,” Mocca said, then paused. “Many reasons. Some left behind hardship, some came with the soil of their loved ones’ graves upon their hands, some were unsatisfied with what they had. All came for a better life.” He smiled an old, weary man’s smile. “Through me.”

  “You?” Lenk asked, not intending to sound as incredulous as he did.

  Mocca’s smile became a bemused grin. “Me.”

  “And what did you give them?”

  “Many things,” Mocca said. “One thing. Some wanted wealth, some wanted freedom, some wanted to be loved. I gave them peace.”

  “Peace.”

  “It was in rare supply then. Not quite as rare as now. But shicts still prowled the forests and tulwar still warred with their neighbors. There was still flame and metal and disease, plenty of ways to die, and I couldn’t protect them from all of it.

  “But the worst of it… the war, the famine, the poverty… that I could spare them. Under my eyes I saw them. I saw all of them. I ensured that they never went hungry. I ensured that they never wanted for purpose. I ensured that they never fought each other, that their races never mattered.”

  Mocca did not change his tone when he said this. Mocca did not even look at Lenk as he did. But at that moment Lenk knew why Mocca had decided to show him this.

  The tulwar, the humans, the shicts. All of them, walking side by side and never once looking at each other with a hostile eye. The sole glances they spared one another were warm, brotherly. Maybe more.

  Perhaps this world was not without violence, not without war. There was certainly suffering, as Mocca had said. But among all that suffering, all that hatred, something like this could happen. A place within a violent world where a man and a shict could walk together.

  And no one would say a thing about it.

  “Sometimes I can’t believe it’s gone.”r />
  Mocca’s voice was barely a whisper. Yet it came with such suddenness that Lenk started. When he looked at his company, the man in white’s face had fallen. The grin was gone. The lines in his face looked deep, ancient, and full of sorrow.

  “It’s like…” Mocca held his hands out, as though trying to grasp the scene between his fingers. “I will go back, as far in my memory as I possibly can, to the very beginning, when I first set foot upon the earth. And from there I’ll go through every breath I can remember, trying to figure out where everything went wrong and what I could have done differently to have made it better. And then…”

  He let his hands fall to his sides, empty.

  “And then I still can’t believe it’s gone.”

  He’s a demon.

  Lenk’s thoughts spoke of their own volition, they twitched to life as easily as the muscles of his sword arm did.

  He’s a hallucination.

  They told him this as he looked upon the image of Mocca—of Khoth-Kapira, he reminded himself—and watched it grow hazy. His shrouded body trembled at the edges. He took a deep breath and his body grew transparent.

  He’s in hell for a reason.

  And he knew this. And he had thought on it often, spoken of it often. And he had spoken of it with Mocca, even. And he knew this.

  “May I ask…”

  Mocca turned to him. His frown was deep. His eyes were clear. His voice was shaking.

  “What you would do differently?”

  And his thoughts turned back to green eyes shining over a fire, an empty patch of sand where a body should have been. And Lenk swallowed and sighed. He thought, then, as he had so many times since that night, that there must have been a word.

  Or a gesture. Or a look. Or a way he could have wrapped his fingers around hers. There had to have been something, just a single something he could have done that would have fixed everything. That would have made her stay.

  And he stared out over the water. And he said the only thing that he was left with at the end of thoughts like those.

  “I don’t know.”

  A moment passed. The sunlight overhead grew dimmer, grayer, as though fading behind clouds that did not exist. The murmured prayers of the faithful went silent, even as their lips still twitched.

  “Perhaps no one does, when it happens.”

  Mocca’s words were breathless. But his eyes were firm as he stared over the harbor.

  “But with enough time, one can learn. With enough time, one can look away from what went wrong and look at the goodness of a work. With enough time, one can see the beauty in a disaster.

  “And I…”

  Mocca raised his hands, spread them out as though parting a curtain. The sunlight focused into a bright beam of light that swept across the harbor and toward the wall of the chasm, shining upon a gray carving.

  “… have had eternity.”

  Lenk’s eyes widened as he saw the fresco—the same fractured, overgrown mess of a wall he had seen before—restored and brought to life beneath the sunlight. He saw its massive scope, how it spanned the entire wall of the chasm, each stroke of the chisel so expertly wrought that he could see the detail in every face upon the fresco.

  And they were joyous.

  Humans, tulwar, shicts, races he had no name for. Elders and children, men and women, merchants and holy men. They all gathered upon the fresco: praying, trading, frolicking, and dancing upon the waves of a stone river. At the center of it all, looming over them with arms outstretched in benediction, was a smiling man in a simple robe.

  Mocca.

  Overlooking the scene with a quiet smile. He could see all the people laughing, all the people arguing, all the people embracing. All the people.

  And not a single sword.

  “It’s beautiful,” Lenk whispered.

  “It is,” Mocca said. “It was. It can be again.”

  “It can?”

  “With your help.”

  “What?”

  “All you need to do is stand aside, Lenk.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Lenk.”

  “What?”

  “Lenk.”

  He blinked.

  And opened his eyes to a gray world. The sun was gone, hidden behind trees that shrouded the sky once more. The stone had fractured and fallen and cracked again. The fresco was gone, hidden behind the overgrown vines. There were no people and everything around him was dark once more, but for a shock of blue right in his face.

  “Shuro,” he said, finally recognizing her and his surroundings. “Sorry, I…” He looked around. “How long has it been?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. She gestured up the staircase with her sword. “Come on. I’ve found something you should see.”

  After so much searching for the war and the strife that should have been left behind, Lenk finally found the bodies.

  Or some bodies, at least.

  Admittedly, he had been expecting something a little more… skeletal. And perhaps a little less…

  Shuro’s body shook beside him as she made a gagging sound.

  Yeah, that.

  While they might not have been ancient as he was expecting, the corpses that littered the jungle floor were far from fresh. They lay in various stages of decay, in such numbers as to make the stink of rot rising from them linger in a cloying, sickly cloud. Some had been chewed on by scavengers—rotted stumps left where entire limbs had been wrenched off by gaambols—and all were swarmed by insects of crawling and flying varieties that scattered in clouds as Lenk approached.

  But that wasn’t what caught Lenk’s attention.

  Most of them were human—many of them Djaalics, but a few of them northerners and others. Some more were tulwar. Even a few shicts were here among the dead. And there were many, many veil-shrouded, scale-skinned saccarii.

  And yet there were no wounds. No weapons. No blood but what had been spilled by the jungle beasts.

  So what killed them?

  Lenk knelt down, swallowed back the bile that crept into his throat because of the stench that rose up, and investigated a nearby Djaalic. His skin was pale and drawn, his eyes sunken and—curiously—his pants dry. His body hadn’t evacuated when he died.

  “Thirst,” Lenk muttered.

  “What?” Shuro called over, having taken several steps back.

  “He died of thirst.” He rose to his feet, cast a glance over the remaining corpses. “Same with all of them, I’d bet. They probably all were traveling together and ran out of water at the same time. Couldn’t find any safe water to drink in time.” He scratched his jaw. “But why were they traveling together in the first place?”

  “Prisoners, maybe,” Shuro replied. “The shicts could have captured them and were ushering them elsewhere.”

  “Shicts don’t take prisoners,” Lenk said. “And if they did, they would have killed them long ago.” He glanced over the corpses. “Maybe there’s something on one of them that will explain it.”

  He took ten paces among the dead before he noticed his were the only footsteps. He looked expectantly up at Shuro, who still stood well away, staring flatly at him.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You going to help?” he replied.

  “Since arriving here, I have spotted, avoided, and fended off exactly twice as many dangers as you have. I have earned the right not to go searching through smelly carcasses.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be the type to shy away from a few bodies,” Lenk said, realizing too late how fucked up it was that he was smiling.

  “For one, this is hardly a few,” Shuro snapped back. “For two, I do not dwell among the dead. When I kill, the enemy ceases to be a threat and I turn my attentions elsewhere.” She folded her arms across her chest and frowned. “And for three, you are incredibly disgusting.”

  He shrugged. “Adventurers get used to it, after a while.”

  “What? The smell of the dead?”

  “Looting i
s a time-honored tradition among adventurers. We usually get to keep only what we take off what we kill. A trained gag reflex and an eye for coin are about the only perks to this job.” He sniffed, began to look among the dead. “I can’t count the times we had to search a dead guy for something useful, or go picking the third pocket or—”

  “What’s the third pocket?”

  “Oh. Uh…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “So, this one time, a merchant who hired us tried to knife us when we came to collect. We searched his body for our payment, but we couldn’t find it. So Denaos says, ‘Maybe he’s hiding it between his…’” He coughed. “So, anyway, I lost the bet and—”

  His voice trailed off as his eye caught something among the dead. He wasn’t sure why he noticed her, a female saccarii, at first; maybe it was just that she had not as many flies on her. But as he drew closer, he saw a familiar veil, scaly patches of flesh he had seen before.

  “Chemoi?”

  She did not respond to the voice. But as he knelt down, he could see that it was, indeed, the leader of the crew of the Old Man. She had somehow survived the shicts and the tulwar, only to die here.

  No, he noted. She didn’t.

  Her body shuddered with the faintest of breaths. He lay a hand on her and felt a body still warm, a pulse still beating, however faint. At his touch her eyelids began to flutter. She drew in a longer breath, ragged with thirst.

  “Chemoi?” He leaned down. “Chemoi, can you hear me?”

  “What is it?” Shuro called over.

  “It’s Chemoi,” he shouted back. “She’s alive. Bring me some water!”

  A pause. And then a question fraught with genuine confusion. “What for?”

  “What do you mean ‘what for’?” Lenk growled back. “She’s dry, like the rest of them. She might not last much longer! Bring me some water!”

  Shuro’s lips puckered, as though she were about to ask the point of that. But the glower he shot her made her think better of it. With a resigned sigh, she pulled a waterskin from her belt and approached as near as she dared before tossing it to Lenk.

  He uncorked it with his teeth as he slid one arm beneath Chemoi and gently lifted her. Her body responded to the touch, the limpness of her form straightening out as he brought the waterskin beneath her veil and pressed its spout between thin, scale-flecked lips.