Wrath of Kerberos tok-9

by Jonathan Oliver

  Silus looked around them. The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue.

  “Deceptive, ain’t it?” Ignacio said. “Come on, we best secure the ship before the next one arrives.”

  Silus helped lash down anything likely to be swept overboard, and then he, Dunsany and Ignacio reset the boom and secured the masts. The sun was reaching its zenith as they finished, and all were drenched in sweat and out of breath.

  Silus took a long draught from one of the rain barrels. He detected an odd taste in the water — something like cinnamon and burnt stone.

  Now, fully prepared, the crew settled in to await the arrival of the next storm, but if anything, the sea was calmer than before. Silus felt the merest breath of wind, but after several minutes it became clear that it was not to be the harbinger of anything more significant.

  On the other side of the deck, Emuel rose from the crate he had been sitting on and approached the prow. He stood at the rail with his back to them, his right hand rising, moving from side to side, the fingers twitching as they picked out the notes of a melody only he could hear.

  Another breeze touched Silus’s face, and this time it was redolent with the smell of damp caverns and lichen-encrusted rock.

  Kelos, too, had climbed to his feet, and he began to move towards the eunuch, who turned to meet him.

  “You can hear that, can’t you, Kelos?” he said.

  “There is… something, yes.”

  “The song?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Katya,” Silus said. “Get Zac below, now.”

  Emuel began to sing. It was the first time in a long time they had heard him do so, and Silus had forgotten how pure and clear his voice was. The tattoos that covered the pale flesh of the emasculated boy started to move, entwining around each other, swirling to the music that all of them were now beginning to hear.

  Katya stood at the top of the steps, entranced, Zac squirming in her grip as he reached out towards Emuel.

  None of this seemed right to Silus. This wasn’t the same song that had once empowered the Llothriall. Why couldn’t any of them see that?

  Ignacio, though, seemed to have an inkling. He ran up to Emuel and shook him hard.

  “This is not the time!” he shouted. “Emuel, snap out of it, something is coming.”

  And, indeed, something was. There was a darkness gathering on the horizon, moving swiftly and silently towards them.

  Emuel did not stop. Something else added its voice to the song as, above them, Kerberos began to sing.

  “Katya, I said go!” Silus shouted.

  This time she acknowledged him and hurried below.

  The darkness had arisen on all sides of the Llothriall. The small circle of sea on which they sat was beginning to rapidly shrink, and the only ones who seemed to be doing anything about it were Dunsany and Ignacio. They rushed about the deck, trying to ready the ship to escape this new threat.

  But there was nowhere to go.

  Silus to reach out to Kerberos, but there was no response from his god.

  The darkness closed on the Llothriall, the song died and then they were falling.

  With a terrific bang, Brother Sequilious was flung onto his back as a wall of ice-cold water crashed over him. There was the burn of salt at the back of his throat and he floundered on the cavern floor for a moment, before he realised that he was not drowning.

  As he got to his feet an octopus dropped to the ground, its tentacles uncoiling from his thigh. All around him, fish littered the floor, mouths gaping as they drowned in the air. There was a strange smell about him; a smell that made the sorcerer’s balls shrivel in fear — the smell of magic gone wrong. He turned to the lake to see just how wrong.

  He had retrieved the Llothriall, albeit only half of it. The broken ship sat a while on the lake, before beginning to keel over. He got a brief glimpse into the interior as water flooded in. Cabins had been sheared in half, spilling shattered furniture and broken cargo. The sorcerer thought that he saw a body hit the water as the ship sank. Soon, only a curve of the hull was visible. In despair, Brother Sequilious began to wade into the lake, desperate to salvage anything from his disastrous summoning attempt. But as the cold water rose above his thighs, he knew that it was useless. He had lost Katherine Makennon her greatest prize.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Daddy?”

  Silus was dimly aware that someone was prodding him in the cheek. One side of his face was on fire, the other side covered in grit.

  “Daddy?”

  There was that prod again, and now small fingers were trying to peel back his eyelids.

  He tasted sand and tried to spit it out as he sat up, but his mouth was bone dry. His eyes watering, he could only make out a jumble of shapes before him. One of them resolved itself into the face of his son, Zac. The child was standing unsteadily, one hand leaning against Silus for support. There were tears in his eyes, and Silus immediately gathered him into his arms.

  “It’s alright, Zac. We’re okay.”

  But such promises were entirely empty, as Silus had no idea where they were.

  Shallow dunes stretched away to the horizon; the sky cloudless and bleached almost white by the intense light of the relentless sun.

  “Boat, daddy. Boat.”

  Silus couldn’t see anything but sand and he didn’t know what had drawn Zac’s attention until he turned around.

  The Llothriall sat with its stern facing them. The ground was dark and wet for several yards around the vessel, and fish thrashed in the sand as they drowned. Silus could see barnacles encrusting the wood, and seaweed clinging to the hull in places.

  “Katya!” he shouted, as he ran towards the Llothriall. “Kat — ”

  His breath caught in his throat as he saw what had happened to their ship.

  Beyond the mainmast there was nothing; the Llothriall had been shorn in half as neatly as if it had been struck by an enormous blade.

  “Katya?”

  “Mummy!” Zac cried, his fists bunching in Silus’s shirt.

  There was movement from somewhere within the ship; a sheet fluttered down, followed by a shoe. Silus heard a shriek and looked up to see his wife clinging to a doorframe, beyond which was nothing but a drop to the hot sand.

  “Katya, thank the gods. Don’t move.”

  He looked about him for any means to help her down, but the only thing nearby was a torn section of sail and it wasn’t long enough to fashion into a rope.

  “Heads up!” came a shout, and a length of rope coiled down from the deck.

  “Dunsany? Is that you?” Katya called.

  “It is! Now, grab hold and climb down.”

  Katya shinned down the rope, followed by Dunsany, Kelos and Bestion. It wasn’t just their ship that had been torn asunder; they were also missing some of their crew.

  “Where’s Emuel and Ignacio?”

  “I don’t know,” Dunsany said. “I haven’t seen them since the… since-”

  “Since what?”

  “What did happen? What’s the last thing you remember?”

  They looked at each other blankly. A hot wind picked up, whipping sand about the ruins of the ship, singing through holes in the vessel.

  “There was the song,” Kelos said. “Emuel said that he could hear the song. So, it was certainly sorcery of some kind. Nothing else could have brought the Llothriall here.”

  “And here is?” Katya said.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a landscape quite like this.”

  Silus looked up at the cloudless sky and the one thing that had been staring them directly in the face — or, rather, hadn’t — finally hit him.

  “Kelos, where has Kerberos gone?”

  “I… but that’s impossible.”

  All their lives the deity had looked down upon them; the vast azure sphere a permanent reminder of His watchful gaze. Without Kerberos, Silus felt lost, strangely bereft. Although it was Bestion who looked the most alarmed.

 
“He is gone. The Allfather is gone. This is the end.” The priest wailed.

  “Don’t worry, Bestion, there’ll be a way to get back, you’ll see.” The mage turned in a circle, scanning the horizon, but everywhere looked much the same.

  “Let’s gather supplies,” Dunsany said, at last giving them some purpose. “We’ll strike out and find… somewhere. This can’t be all there is.”

  With half the Llothriall gone, their supplies were somewhat depleted. The galley had been cut in half, so food was scarce, though they had enough water to last several days. The remains of the sails were cut up to provide them with the makings of shelter, and bundles of broken planks would suffice as firewood should the temperature drop. There seemed little likelihood of that happening, however; as they struck away from the ruins of the ship, the sand beneath their feet burned as hot as coals.

  Silus kept expecting to see Kerberos rising over the horizon as they crested dune after dune. But as the sun set, throwing their shadows far ahead of them, there was no sign of the god.

  None of them slept well that night. The cold that rose from the ground was like winter come early and a vicious wind howled over the dunes, the mournful sound finding its way into their broken dreams.

  The next day was very much like the one before. The same cruel sun, the same blank dunes.

  Silus was beginning to wish they had stayed with the ship, when they heard a sound coming towards them from over the next rise.

  With a high-pitched wheezing and an avalanche of sand, a small, rotund creature tumbled towards them, its many legs failing to give it purchase on the dune. It came to a stop on its back, its legs still frantically scrabbling.

  Dunsany and Silus put away the swords they had half-drawn. It was clear that this thing was no threat, though as Bestion knelt down and reached towards it, Silus batted his hand away.

  “No! Don’t touch it. You don’t know what it is.”

  “Come on Silus, it’s just some strange… dog thing. I’m sure that it’s perfectly amiable, aren’t you fellah?”

  Bestion helped the creature to its feet and it looked up at him with big wet mournful eyes. A long, thin tongue flickered briefly across its lips. There was a foul smell coming from it; its flesh was cracked and weeping in places.

  “He seems even less suited to the terrain than us,” Katya said. “Do you think he was caught up in whatever sorcery brought us here?”

  “Possibly,” Kelos said. “Though I can’t imagine where it may have come from. Although it does bear a certain resemblance to a thing I once saw in the Drakengrat Mountains.”

  “It’s not getting up that dune again without our help,” Bestion said.

  “Well, I’m not touching it,” Dunsany said. “Have you smelt it? It could have any kind of disease.”

  “I say we leave it,” Silus said, though Zac clearly disagreed with him as he squirmed in Katya’s arms, determined to get closer to the creature.

  The dog thing stopped whining and shuffled round to look back up the dune, its head cocked as though it was listening to something. Then they all heard it: a call. It came again, closer, and the creature responded with a yip, its feet scrabbling as it tried to race towards the voice.

  “Come on,” Bestion said, picking up the creature and starting up the dune. He glanced back to see the rest of the crew looking at him with bemused expressions. “Stop worrying. It’s just a… dog, I think. Whoever owns him may be able to help us get where we’re going.”

  Silus thought that Bestion’s line of thinking was perhaps a little naive, though as they crested the dune there was indeed someone coming towards them and the creature responded to its calls with a delighted yip.

  The sun was behind the figure, making it difficult to make out its features, though it was about the size of a young child with a long, shaggy head of hair.

  Bestion put the dog-thing down and it raced towards his master, who lifted him up, speaking to the creature in a sing-song voice.

  The sex of the person now coming towards them was difficult to ascertain, though if Silus had to guess he’d say that it was a girl. Her skin was smooth. She had no fingernails, and when she smiled her teeth were all exactly alike. The girl’s eyes were disturbingly pale and Silus wondered whether she might be blind, though as she regarded them with interest, it became clear that this wasn’t the case.

  “Hello,” Katya said. “Is that your dog?”

  “We’re friends,” Dunsany said. “ Friends. Do you live somewhere nearby?”

  “Whoever this child is,” Silus said. “I don’t think that she speaks our language.”

  “And how do you know it’s a child?” Kelos said.

  “Well, I mean… I… I don’t know.”

  “Indeed. Never make assumptions.”

  “You mean like Bestion did with that dog thing?”

  “I mean never make assumptions that turn out be incorrect.”

  “Thanks. That’s useful.”

  The girl smiled at them and laughed. She said something before reaching out, tapping Silus’s hand and racing away.

  “What did that mean?” Silus said.

  “I believe,” Bestion said, “that you are ‘it.’ Come on.”

  They hurried after the girl and her pet, losing sight of them several times and once going in the wrong direction entirely before they spotted her again, waiting for them atop a dune and gesturing for them to catch up.

  Just before they reached her, the girl threw herself down the other side of the sandy slope, rolling over and over with the dog creature still in her arms, giggling hysterically. They were about to follow when what they saw beyond the dune arrested their descent.

  There was a vast settlement in the middle of the desert.

  As they watched, the girl reached its outskirts, dropped her pet and called out. Soon she was surrounded by a crowd of people, their gazes following the direction of her excited gestures towards where the strangers stood. They stared in silence for a moment before rushing towards them, calling out to others as they came, until there was a veritable tide of people flowing across the sand.

  “Bestion, I hope that your assumptions about them being friendly turn out to be correct,” Silus said.

  “Yes, so do I.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Emuel had often wondered how it would feel to be back in the arms of the Final Faith. The Church had nurtured him from a young age, ever since miraculous visions had been visited upon him as he toiled in the Drakengrat salt mines. Soon afterwards, word of the devout nine-year-old boy to whom the Lord of All had chosen to speak had reached the seminary at Nurn, and an emissary was promptly dispatched to take the boy under his wing, even though Emuel would normally be considered far too young to enter the order. Not only was he the youngest acolyte that the seminary had admitted, but he also quickly became the youngest priest — breezing through his studies, displaying a level of devotion and wisdom unusual in a boy his age.

  It wasn’t long after his ordination that the Faith bestowed upon Emuel his own Drakengrat parish, installing him as an Enlightened One, pastor to a hardy mountain people. But Emuel’s flock came from much further afield than the Drakengrat range. Pilgrims travelled from as far as Gargas to receive his blessing, having heard of Emuel’s wondrous visions, some claiming that the slightest touch from the boy could cure all manner of illness.

  The Archimandrites at Scholten cathedral closely monitored Emuel’s progress, and it wasn’t long into his ministry that Querilous Fitch was dispatched to talk to him.

  As Querilous described to Emuel the special assignment that the Anointed Lord had chosen him for, the pale boy had grown even paler. After all, what they were asking him to do would radically change him. The use of sorcery to mark and alter his flesh went against everything he believed. But Querilous’s words were persuasive, his arguments cogent and passionately made, and when he laid his hands on Emuel’s head in blessing, the boy heard the voice of his god and knew, with a sacred clarity, that this wa
s indeed the path that had been chosen for him.

  Throughout the journey to Scholten Cathedral, Emuel felt the guiding hand of the Lord, and he felt sure that it was this same hand that guided the pen and the blade of the Final Faith surgeon as — accompanied by chants and the burning of astringent incense — he needled and scarified into Emuel’s flesh the ancient elven runics. Every inch of his skin was illustrated; the pain was indescribable. The greatest challenge, however, was yet to come, as the surgeon turned his blade on Emuel’s sex and began the process of emasculation.

  Querilous Fitch had been there, through every long hour of the procedure, holding Emuel’s hand and praying him through the pain.

  The first night after the operation, Emuel’s body sang with agony. The stitches and scar tissue throbbed with every beat of his heart. But Querilous had taught him that he should listen for the voice beyond the pain; use the purity of his agony to focus his mind so that he could hear the sacred song that underlay everything. And there it had been, very quiet at first, but growing in volume; the whisper of the divine blossoming into a song of stunning, heart-breaking complexity.

  When he awoke, Emuel was certain that he was now complete, ready to board the Llothriall and take the Word beyond the Storm Wall for the first time.

  But then they had come.

  The first that Emuel knew of their arrival was the strangulated cry of the guard outside his cell door. A thin trickle of blood found its way towards where he lay, the lock of the door melted, and Kelos and Dunsany forced their way into his life.

  In a matter of hours, Emuel had been spirited away from Scholten cathedral and onto the Llothriall, there forced to sing the song that had only just been revealed to him. The Final Faith’s flagship vessel had been stolen for an adventure that saw the deaths of many and the transformation of Emuel’s world. Yet there had never been a time when he had not heard the voice of the Lord of All. With their blades and their inks, the Faith had made him into something truly extraordinary.

  But then the Llothriall had come to Morat — the wondrous city riding upon the crest of an eternal wave — and there the Stone Seers had revealed that the tattoos and the emasculation had nothing to do with whether Emuel could hear and channel the song or not. All he had ever had to do was listen; the sacred music had always been there. The pain and the indignity that he had suffered had been for naught. With the best of intentions, the Stone Seers had completely dismantled Emuel’s faith.