by Sulivan, Tricia; Nevill, Adam; Tchaikovsky, Adrian; McDougall, Sophia; Tidhar, Lavie
The olfala bigwan is rising, he thinks – the great old one, in the pidgin of the islands. He remembers the anient stories, and in the secret caves deep in the forested mountains there still remain ancient paintings in the colour of copper or blood, and the terrible hieroglyphs in a language none can read that seem to shift and leer as you see them. There is a place deep in the mountains, by the volcano, where an ancient stone statue still squats, a hideous thing with wings and tentacles and teeth, carved, perhaps, by ancestors, perhaps by… something else. There is a pool of sulphur water around the carving, and everything that lives dies when it comes too close, and the statue is surrounded by the preserved corpses of sparrows and giant freshwater prawns.
The kleva is worried, for the song coming from the depths is both terrible and beautiful, as seductive as it is repulsive. He has heard such a call once before, when he was a young boy, but that was then, he thinks uneasily. And the stars are different now.
INT. TOM’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
In the dream he walks through the nameless streets of the nameless city. Sharp angles lead nowhere. Streets shift and change as he walks. Movement is sluggish, as though he’s pushing slowly through water. Hieroglyphs depict hideous creatures on the walls; they shine in a phosphorous haze.
A voice calls out, far away: ‘Daddy? Daddy?’
He tries to hurry. Ahead of him rises the dark citadel. He thinks he sees a woman standing there; her hair is blonde, illuminated like phosphorous deep underwater, the only sign of light in this dark place. The city whispers around him. It seems to rise; when he looks up he sometimes thinks he can see cold and terrible stars, like ancient watching eyes.
EXT. THE SOUTH PACIFIC – DUSK
MEG and CAPTAIN GREGOR stand on the deck of the Sonia Greene. Beyond the ship a strange landmass rises. The sky is red and black and eldritch lightning forms an intricate spider web across it. The rising landmass is black and slimy green, and the first thing to pierce the water is a strange monolith.
MEG: Johansen was right! It rises!
CAPTAIN GREGOR takes a bottle, pulls the cork out with his teeth, spits it over the rail and takes a swig. Something strange seems to happen; all sound ceases as the citadel and its monolith rise from the waves.
CAPTAIN GREGOR points. The bottle falls to the deck and smashes without sound. CAPTAIN GREGOR’S mouth opens in a silent scream.
The picture blurs. There seems to be something in the water, a dark shape, possibly tentacled.
When the picture returns there is no sign of CAPTAIN GREGOR.
INT. BOAT IN NORWAY WATERS – NIGHT
The siren call rises out of the black waves. It is a keening, awful sound, vibrating like a cosmic string, speaking in a language ancient beyond sound itself.
In Norway an old man, the son of an old man, lies awake in his boat, dreaming, nevertheless; dreaming with eyes open, dreaming of an ocean and the dark currents that move in the depths below, dreaming of a man and a woman converging on this single point, dreaming of a citadel rising from the depths, of an old schooner with a hull covered in barnacles, of tentacles reaching out like a whisper from the depths, of a man and a woman and a gibbous moon. he lies shivering on his bunk and the cold wind howls outside, and the sea screams, in a language too old for any human to understand.
EXT. GREEN LAKE, SEATTLE – DAY
All lakes are the sea in miniature. In a flashback scene TOM is on a boat on the lake, with JONAH, who is played by a young curly-haired actor. The sky darkens. Each is wrapped in his own thoughts. It is not a happy scene. In a flashback-within-flashback TOM recalls the last days at the hospital. He was there to hold his wife’s hand when the heart monitor flatlined.
Waves rise on the lake. Clouds gather above. There is a storm. TOM and JONAH try to row back to shore but the wind picks up and waves hit their little boat. We have the vague impression of some vast dark shape under the water, dark currents forming into tentacles that rise out of the water, but this could just be the light.
The boat capsizes.
TOM: NO!
They are both flailing in the water.
TOM: Jonah!
JONAH’s head bobs in the water. For just a moment his hurt, confused eyes look directly at the camera. Then a wave passes over him and he goes under.
TOM: Jonah! No!
TOM dives. We follow him, into the dark water. The currents push at him; he tries to find Jonah; the lake is dark and murky; he is losing his breath; his face twists in pain and we CUT to:
EXT. THE SUNKEN CITY OF R’LYEH – ETERNAL NIGHT
The sunken city of R’lyeh is arisen from the depths, a corpse-city of non-Euclidean geometry overshadowed by the dark citadel. A boat hovers in the shallows of the sea beside the black, slime-covered rock before the citadel. The Sonia Greene is abandoned, though a solitary human figure stands before the great entrance to the citadel: MEG, wet and bedraggled and alive. She waits.
EXT. THE CITY OF R’LYEH – ETERNAL NIGHT
TOM is walking the streets of R’lyeh, the citadel keeps escaping his grasp; he takes turns that lead into other, alien dimensions, following the laughter of his boy. Then he sees her. She is standing by the black rock, at the entrance to the citadel. He runs to her.
EXT. THE CITY OF R’LYEH – ETERNAL NIGHT
‘Tom?’
‘Meg. Meg, it’s you. It’s really you.’
‘I didn’t think you’d come. I… I waited. I’ve been waiting for a long time, Tom.’
‘I lost my way, Meg. In the dreams. I lost my way. It was hard to find the right path. The stars all lied.’
‘The stars are different now.’
‘What’s behind the door, Meg? What’s behind the door of the citadel?’
‘Silly Tom.’ Affection colours her voice. ‘You know what’s behind the door. You’ve always known.’
‘Death,’ he says, at the same time that she says, ‘Love.’
EXT. SOMEWHERE IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC – NIGHT
A man, a woman, the ghostly outline of a child between them holding both their hands. A citadel rises into the sky. The immense black door, as black as night, begins, ever so slowly, to open. Above their heads the stars shine bright and terrible and true.
INT. TOM’S HOUSE – SEATTLE – DAY
In his house in dread Seattle Tom lies dreaming.
TOM: Jonah?
TOM: Shares at three point eight.
TOM: What? No.
TOM: I love you too.
TOM turns in his bed. He cries out in nameless dread. The sheets are soaked with sweat. Outside, it rains. The sound, like waves crashing against the hulk of a ship, like the sound of love, slowly grows gentle. TOM sighs and turns over in his sleep.
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Damnation Seize
My Soul
Jan Edwards
Mercedeys Benks stepped out of the main airlock, keeping her back to the wall whilst she surveyed the concourse. After ‘crowded’, the first word that came to mind was ‘dirty’. Though dirt hardly described the layer of engine grease and soot, acquired over many decades, that gave T’uga its distinctive hue and odour. Filth, she thought, is a more embracing term. But if she called any landmass in this universe home then it was this one: T’uga,the sole construct on a barren clod of craters and rifts. Surrounded by a handful of makeshift airlock tunnels, it resembled nothing more than a bloated tic, as did many of the creatures that scurried within it. Few returned there without great need.
Queen Victoria’s Admiralty had known it as HMS Resistance, once-along-awhile; for a ship it had been, and the largest Dreadnaught ever launched. So large that, away from the witches and mediums of Earth, those who had stolen her could never hope to produce enough ectoplasm to sideslip the mighty steam engines. Running her aground would have been their only viable option.
The concourse was more crowded than she would expect so early in the day. Mercy had often seen T’uga’s denizens in turmoil, yet seldom so determinedly
space-bound as today. They toted duffel-bags and banded trunks – and an obvious urgency to be somewhere else. Plainly something big and bad had stirred the anthill.
T’uga had become a port of refuge, and a highly profitable one now that Mercy and her ship, The Grace, had found both the becalmed Resistance and her thief, John Hicks, and towed them to this safe haven. The recollection had her rubbing her scarred right hand against her waistband. The old sword wounds had begun itching at the memory of their inception: when Hicks had not accepted her terms as easily as he might. Mercy had far too much invested in T’uga to endanger its existence.
“Something’s wrong.” She said. “I can smell it.”
“You wish our brother to atone for the wrongs he did you? That is your right. Llyr may not help you in this, though he will not stand in your way.”
“Should I not try? Evnissyen served us all a great wrong.”
“Would changing his fate make such a difference to the past wrongs? I doubt it.”
“I must do this, Bran ap Llyr.”
“What is done cannot be mended, Branwen. You of all here know that right is not always held by the mighty. But honour at least is on your side. You have my blessing to try. Yet to avenge your blood, Branwen, then you must spill his. If that is the course you have chosen I will provide you with a second chance. But he is not one to be bested easily.”
“I will fight him again,” she replied. “As often as needed, Bran ap Llyr. I do not fear what is to come. It is in the remembering that I find pain.”
“It pains you to recall?”
“No, brother. When I feel pain it is already too late.”
“Ships astern.” The Annika’s steersman sang out, gesturing eastward..
Captain Awilda Synardus stared – and swore. Pushing back the wisps of red hair escaping their tight braids, she shielded her eyes against the sun and read the clouds feathering westward in white-mackerel shafts. That at least was in her favour. “If this bunch of slugs can shift us out beyond the headland we should make good time.”
The four ships under Awilda’s command slid rapidly forward with each crew bending willingly to the oars. None questioned Awilda’s choices of target or enemy. Woman or no, Awilda was her father’s daughter. The sword that hung across her back, and the vivid white scars across her right hand, were testament to her fighting and survival skills. Awilda could hack and stab with the best of them.
“Captain.” Steinn glanced at her, an odd expression on his broad features. “‘Tis himself.”
Awilda nodded. She needed no telling. Eivan’s red and yellow wolf’s head blazed across each closing sail like spilled blood and molten ore. She balanced lightly on the gunwale; one arm hooked around the carved prow, and stared toward the distant ships. “Eivan Brans-son, by Odin.” The man she would destroy for daring to approach her father with offers of marriage and drudgery to be forced upon her. That was no match for a daughter of kings. She bowed to no man, nor ran from him. Instead she had vowed to destroy him. Just as he had destroyed her home and family in return for her refusal.
Her ships were swift with the tide in their favour as they swung about to meet the enemy, and their silence was broken only by the whap of sail and sluice of oars across the dark, deep waters of the fiord. Then a chant was whispered somewhere in the flotilla. Aa-wil-da; each syllable drawn out in distinct separation. Sword hilts and javelins were thrummed against shields, softly at first, growing harder as the voices gained force. “Aa-wil-da, Aa-wil-da, Aa-wil-da.”
Across open water came a steady reply, “Eiv-an, Eiv-an, Eiv-an.”
Awilda stood in the prow, one hand aloft, and smiled at stray enemy arrows falling far short of them. Eivan did not have proper control of his crew and that could be to her advantage. She waited until arrows fell a bare arms-stretch from them. Only then did her fist drop, signalling the first stabbing volley into their enemy. She slipped from her vantage point to avoid the returning fire, leaving her proud Dragon-prows to snarl defiance at the opposing Wolves. Awilda barked the order to swing to port to avoid locking prows and becoming trapped. As starboard sides came broadside to each other, lines were thrown to snag the opposition’s gunwales and draw them together into one huge battle arena.
Chants from each side roared out their defiance vying to overpower the other in sheer volume. Swords, javelins and shields clashed as the warriors from either side launched into hand to hand combat; chants now forgotten in the full-throated roar of a battle charge.
Awilda searched among the gore and armour for Eivan.
A sword thunked against her shield; she staggered back, parrying the blow with a sweeping stroke of her own. Her attacker landed another shattering blow and her shield cracked top to bottom. She threw it aside and hacked at him with a double-handed slash, severing both his sword arm and a goodly chunk of neck. Blood clouded her vision as arteries sprayed death across her face, but Awilda only wiped with the back of her hand and scooped up the fallen warrior’s shield. Leapt across from one shallow hull to the next, blood rushing through her brain like a waterfall in the full-blown flood of spring thaw; singing in her head with the wailing howl of a Valkyrie calling her warriors to victory or glorious Valhalla. She stabbed and slashed a path across two more hulls: to the prow of the central ship and the man she had vowed to kill. She raised her sword high, staring Eivan in the eyes; pausing to savour the recognition she expected.
Too late she parried the double-handed slash which connected with her midriff and swept her over the gunwale into the churning, red-stained brine.
“The sands will not run out just yet,” said Bran ap Llyr.
“Sands shift with the tides, and mainly on your whim,” Branwen replied. “I did your bidding and claimed my reward. Yet you deny it me.”
“Not my bidding but yours, though I gave you my word. The time was wrong, sister. Chance comes to you again and he shall not walk away unchallenged.”
Mercy pushed past Sheyn and concentrated on regaining her bearings. T’uga’s inner workings morphed with the waxing and waning of dominant businesses that plied their dubious trade in the concourse. A different mix each time she returned, but always a thriving community. T’uga was a lucrative venture; even the few hundred guineas which Hicks bilked her for during her long absences was nothing against the security that this place gave her.
She could not recall exactly when the Dreadnaught’s hulk had mutated into T’uga, nor whether it was the ship or the tiny planetoid on which it sat that was T’uga in truth. Confusion and lies were a habit with anything attached to John Hicks. Mercy hardly cared. The ship had been sufficiently disguised from the Admiralty – still seeking their missing leviathan – for many years now. T’uga it was now, with a mythology of its very own, populated by pirates and brigands and assorted low-lives from across the known and unknown universe. None cared what T’uga had been as long as it stayed free of Victoria’s dominion; or that of Napoleon, or Lincoln, or any other of Homeworld’s leaders.
That population, or at least those who bothered to notice her in their panic to leave, were regarding her now. Most with curiosity, a few with open hostility. She eased the sword that hung at her left hip, fingered the pearl-handled pistol that hung at her right; she also checked the knife on her belt and the small derringer in her sleeve before moving off. This being her home port she had not disembarked from The Grace fully armed. Checking the weapons that she did sport, however, was a subconscious act.
Nodding at Sheyn to follow, she moved across the concourse with that measured lilt of one more used to steel-framed grav-boots than the fancy thigh-high leather variety she sported today. Her eyes flickered toward the ceiling lenses just once and she resisted the temptation to flipthem a finger; turning the move into a preening of the tangled red curls twisting from beneath her wide-brimmed hat. Real hair in a life-long spacer was a mere luxury; red hair was a rarity. For Mercy its rarity proved her lineage back to the Chieftain Eoghan Ó Máille and beyond. Mercedeys Benks was a living le
gend – and she loved it.
The deck had begun to vibrate beneath her feet, as if flexing atrophied muscles. A distant hiss and chatter of engines rattled through the passages. That part of T’uga which was the Resistance had awoken. Mercy paused, frowning. Her scarred hand rubbed absent-mindedly at an itch under her belt. Yes, it was commercial sense to keep the power house of T’uga in running order, but this did not feel like a routine turning over of its vast engines. She placed a hand on the bulwark and felt the steady throb of a well-oiled engine shivering through her palm. She glanced back at the surveillance camera, openly this time, her head canted in query. Hicksey should know she was on guard.
Sheyn laid a warning finger to his lips. “Gather what wits you have, lass. There’s a storm a’ brewing,” he whispered.
“Here?” She laughed. “This is T’uga. And I’m not afeared of a little roughhousing.”
“Lass, there’s a little blow and there’s a solar wind. And if’n you trust that Cap’n’s gut of yours you’ll never be far enough adrift to roast alive.”
“This should have ended Bran ap Llyr. It should have ended then.”
“The Wheel turns. Courage, Sister. Evnissyen will be punished for his deeds and your son avenged.”
