David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  “Assuming that means ‘yes’—”

  Garth nodded again.

  “And assuming you accept this test of your own free will—”

  “He does!” shouted Dahkaa.

  “Then we leave you with this,” said the General of the Dead. Then turning to an officer, the General received one of two identical necklaces, a lanyard hung with a small glass vial.

  “As a gift to those who battle the Beast,” the General began, “you’ll have an entire lifetime to finish your task. Unfortunately—” He draped the necklace around Garth’s neck. “The life in question lasts but a moon.”

  Feeling the vial twitch, Garth watched a small egg within crack apart; and staggering into its very short life, a lantern bug began to glow red.

  “As for its twin,” the General added, “that stays behind.” Following the General’s nod, the officer looped the second necklace around Ioso’s neck.

  “But should you fail,” the General warned Garth, “if you don’t bring us the head of a Beast by the last light of the fly, then your death—” Extending an arthritic finger, he tapped Ioso’s vial. “Will also mean theirs.”

  Ioso’s vial quivered, lit her face with an ill-fated glow.

  “As for us,” the old General concluded, “we’ll wait near the caves, where land and sea meet. Your task is clear?”

  Everything tilting, distorting with each sway of a wave and creak of the deck, Garth looked at the fog just twenty feet ahead. “But — all I see is fog, where’s the Cave?”

  The old General said nothing, but the officer nearby flashed an odd, dark smirk.

  “Answer me!” Garth shouted, now finding his voice. “Where’s the land, where—?” But before he could finish, a guard shoved him out, and as Garth stumbled onto the plank, the show resumed with warrior shouts and sloshes of ale.

  “Jump, David!” Breaking from his guards, Dahkaa charged the gate. “Then swim, follow the noise!”

  Glued to the plank and refusing to move, Garth gawked at the sea twenty-feet down.

  “Jump, David, let go! I assume you can swim?”

  “I can swim,” Garth croaked, not much to his voice. “I mean, I once took lessons, but—”

  “But?”

  Garth swallowed. “I quit.”

  Dahkaa’s eyes widened, Ioso’s simply shut, and when the fog’s first tendril touched the plank, an uvah horn wailed.

  Tusk slammed a lever. The flagship shuddered and reversed from the fog, an action flipping Garth off the plank. A splicing of moments both brilliant and blurred, he sensed nothing but an overwhelming truth.

  I’m going to die.

  The sea hit hard. But instead of cold, the shock felt warm, a salty punch sweaty with froth.

  “Swim!” shouted Dahkaa, the ship backing away. “Swim for the fog!”

  Fighting the weight of his boots, clothes, and X-blades, Garth heard nothing, could barely stay up. But his eyes still worked, and though stung with salt, he glimpsed a shadow under the waves, and best guess, the thing that nibbled his chum now rippled his way.

  “The fog!” cried Dahkaa, his voice in singular pitch. “Swim!”

  Fleeing the shadow, that subsurface shade, Garth tried to synchronize his limbs into propulsion, some tractable thrash. But his clothes and blades retarded all progress and redoubled his work, and despite all effort, he barely crawled.

  Then it bumped. Reflexively twisting, corkscrewing around, Garth saw the thing’s mouth, its bristle-brush teeth now chomping his boot.

  Garth shrieked, wasted his breath while kicking and flailing and trying to flee. But though the thing released, it kept snapping, near-missing his boots, so Garth unsheathed his blades. He found the triggers and squeezed them hard, an action now shooting a flash-banging arc straight through its mouth, a conducting path at one with the sea and also his hands.

  The fish rolled over, went fat-belly up, but so did Garth. Yet though he flickered, he never blacked out, and regaining his wits, he looked for the fish.

  Gone. But so were the blades, their discharge had shocked open his grip, and though he treaded water and looked all around, he saw only waves. But then looking up, he saw Dahkaa as well. His gifted blades gone, no more Excalibur for the son of Kel Vek, the Man of Scars said nothing, just stared from the rail. But his look said it all, Garth had lost before he’d begun.

  “Forward!” the Blood General yelled. “Into the Mist!”

  Blood’s parting shot shook loose more guffaws, and as a hundred warriors flung obscene farewells, the flagship faded, vanished beyond the mist swirling all around. Consumed by cloud with visibility nil, Garth sputtered without direction or sense.

  “Dahkaa!” he shrieked, spitting out sea. “I’m drowning, I’m lost, come back!”

  Dahkaa didn’t answer, and neither did the rest. Yet Garth did hear something, so struggling to lessen his splash, he listened a bit — then heard it again, that howl in the mist. But as horrific creatures invaded his mind, as he suddenly wondered if a bull Beast could swim, something passed on his left. Possibly imagined, an artifact of fear, but the image that lingered was a red, speckled fin.

  A big fin, if he trusted his mind.

  Unleashing all kick and wind-milling slap, Garth plowed the waves. Direction didn’t matter, anywhere would do, but between wheezes, he noted the howls were louder, much closer in. Yet so, apparently, was the fish, that red-speckled fin now slid past his face.

  Adrenaline flagging, Garth flogged on, just beat through waves and fog. He’d spent nearly everything, exhausted both energy and breath, so he struggled just to float, to close his throat to the sea. Which seemed, he belatedly sensed, not only warm, but quite nearly hot, a percolation trending toward soup.

  But where’s the land, where’s the Cave! Nothing made sense, he saw only fog — so did the Beast live below, was the Cave in the sea?

  A horrific question, it spun up his panic once more. But with this surge of energy, he had to be smart, and since he first needed breath, he decided to shed whatever weighed the most.

  Garth swiped for his left boot. Yet instead of leather, he felt only skin, so he lifted his leg. But where his left boot had been? Nothing remained but his bare, bloody foot.

  Collateral damage from the bristle-brush mouth, his wound both bloodied the sea and lit up his mind. Raised on Shark Week, should have never read Jaws, but the imagined terrors at least added fuel to his fire, and with one boot on and another gone, Garth swam from every slime-scaled kluge of fin and gill in this hot, briny broth.

  Too focused to notice, too busy staying alive, so Garth didn’t feel it at first, the change from liquid sea to mist. But as drag decreased and a howling wind cycloned around, Garth sensed reality slip when he felt the last thing expected, a rising sensation of up.

  Impossible, of course; have I drowned? But as the howl swelled into shrieks and the slog of swimming flipped into ascent, Garth lurched, inconceivably, completely out of the sea. The scalding mist burned, but the corkscrewing blow lofted him higher and faster until without warning, he broke into the clear. Shocking, but not as much as the view.

  Steep and dark, the cliff ahead looked solid, a near-vertical bluff. Land? So it appeared, and as Garth hovered on some bewildering geyser of up-rushing mist, he imagined a skydiver, someone in a similar full-body splay. Desperate to move, he tilted his body slightly ahead — and lurched, incredibly, toward the bluff, a crag of C’raggh firma so beautifully dry.

  Then without warning, he fell back into the mist. No more wind, the shrieking geyser just petered out, and as Garth blindly plunged, he braced for the hot-water crash. Yet the impact never quite came, for as the geyser repeated its vent, it coughed him up once more, and when he cleared the mist again, he didn’t delay. Leaning forward, perhaps a bit too much, Garth body-surfed the whirlwind straight into the bluff.

  A bird into bricks, Garth smashed against rock and started to slide. Skittering and scraping the near-vertical slope, he clawed the black surface until snagging a
crack. Then he just hung there, veered between conscious and not high over boulders roiled in mist — and recalled, dimly, he’d felt this sort of rock before. And that’s when he remembered, without purpose or point, the box in his room with the smooth, sharp-edged stones.

  But as the edge of the rock cut into his hands, Garth knew he needed to move. Reliving his trial on the Great Wall of Ice, he probed with his fingers and found purchase with toes until eventually, relentlessly, he inched on up. The goal was an outcrop, a lump overhead tufted with plants, but the swim had wrecked him, every muscle spasm’d or cramped. Sharp-edged rock bloodied his bare foot as well, but since his toes fit gaps his boot never would, he wondered if the attack of that bristle-brush mouth had been propitious, a stroke of luck.

  Then again, maybe not, reason gets iffy when clinging to cliffs. But luck or not, he had no choice, so gritting through gasp and agony and the cut of the rock, he climbed until he felt it, the fat, leafy stem.

  Hanging from the outcrop an arm’s length above, the plant seemed a miracle of hope. Garth trusted neither, but he had nothing else, so grabbing the stem, he gave it a tug.

  It held. At least for now, so trusting it further, he tugged a bit more. A trick, this stem, of course it would break, and when it did, he’d plummet into the mist and rocks. But still it held, so he continued his climb until, clambering up and over, he rolled onto the outcrop of sharp, bare rock. Which wasn’t, he realized, sharp and bare at all.

  Exulting in the feel, Garth reclined in a glory of grass.

  The carpet soothed, assuaged the pain of his miserable flesh. Aromas of clover and rose distracted as well, just let him drift while muscles recovered and breathing caught up. Paradise found on a rocky bluff, this berth of repose severed all connection with climbing and drowning and red-speckled fins. But paradise or not, every repose eventually ends, and needing to check his bare left foot, Garth opened his eyes.

  The sky of ice still hung overhead, but in contrast to its glazed, gray mass, flowers nipped the grass in pastels fit for a nursery or dorm, some safe space wall. Time to relax, tend to his cuts, so extending his left foot, he wiped its crusted blood in the lush of the grass. Had he really survived it all, the swim from the ship and riding the geyser and climbing this obsidian cliff?

  Garth rolled to a sit. Improving with every breath, he lifted his gaze to the rocky heights. Then wondered, his brow starting to knit, why the surrounding bluffs seem pocked, smudged with dark stains. But as icy skylight revealed each stain had depth, he no longer improved.

  Caves, they were, every ugly one. Five or ten and likely more, they both riddled the bluffs and revived his mind, why he sprawled in this aerie-like perch. Tongue going dry and the sweat coming back, Garth staggered up; and beheld, from the edge of his small meadow, a sight that hollowed his gut.

  He knew it, that dark shape ahead, the mouth of a cave resembled a spade. An inverted heart stuffed with dark, the cave on the meadow’s edge matched the ship’s tattered flag, I’m camped in the yard of the Beast.

  A coyote-ish yip dropped him flat. Not from the cave, it came from below, so easing back to the edge of the bluff, he eyed the heights just climbed. Nothing moved, not that he saw, so expanding his search to the beach farther down, he spied a misty patchwork of boulders and surf — and flopping on the shore, a red-speckled fish.

  Was that it, the one that swam past? It looked large enough, five feet or six. Yet if it was the same one, what impelled such a brute to flip onto land? Thinking a moment, Garth surveyed more beach, but when he again looked back, no fish remained. Something had stolen it, snatched it away, and whatever the thief, it was coming up quick.

  Ascending the bluff preternaturally fast, a reddish-brown flash hauled the fish behind. Whorls of mist and overhangs of rock obscured the hauler’s form, but its catch marked its progress, the fish still flipping, still alive in its grasp.

  Hadn’t Dahkaa mentioned a predilection to wound, the Beast’s desire to keep the meat fresh?

  Garth lurched back from the edge and backpedaled through grass, through the pretty pastels snarling his feet. He needed to run. but where, the question, which way led out? Steep bluffs enclosed the meadow, and though he could possibly climb, the Beast went vertical as if gravitationally unstrung. Going cold in the grass while pebbles skittered down and the clatter came up, Garth had no choice, and that’s why he fled to the only place left.

  Springing and leaping and dragging the fish, the Beast broke a trail worthy of goats. It moved with power, a bounding grace, and showed, by its stone-clattered wake, an indifference to both discovery and stealth. A last leap put it back on its turf, but by the quiver of its nose, the meadow had changed.

  Flaring its nostrils and squatting down low, the Beast hackled and sniffed, then licked the grass. It knew the scent, had tasted it before, nothing roused like sweat pungent with fear. Drool strung, claws catted out, and now looking up, its copper green gaze fixed on the cave.

  Garth tripped and nearly crashed. Careening through caves, a labyrinth of switchbacks and steepening drops, he banged between walls lit only by his vial, by a bottled-up fly dreaming of flight. Dark rock walls scraped and gouged, but the real terror remained undiscerned, the horrors watching, encroaching all round. But he had to keep going, couldn’t turn back, he had to outrun whatever ran the dark. Then again, where would it end? Did this cave lead out or just deeper in?

  Another trip and he tumbled, slid into mush. Trying to recover, regain his feet, he nearly retched from the stench, an aroma of ammonia both fecal and rich reminding of… bats?

  The thought snapped back his head, and sure enough, a furry lump clung above. Distant kin to a vampire, some alien fruit bat lightyears removed? Possibly, but the species proved unique when it hackled and hissed, then flung an excremental ounce.

  The splatter burned his forehead, but Garth ignored. Already running, ricocheting down the next run of cave, he felt increased pressure oppress his ears, proof of continued descent. Yet the deeper he went, the warmer and thicker some hideous scent; and though he’d never spent time with the dead, the smell conjured graves, festering tombs steeped in decay.

  Then rounding a corner, he ran into light. Baffled by the source, he then saw the veins, lodes of minerals emitting a deep, green glow. Pallors of witchery, the light reminded of cauldrons, of ghastly concoctions coming to boil. Yet at least he could see, could pick up his pace, but rounding a turn in a downhill sprint, he clipped a rock and fell, slid all the way to a stump.

  But just like the bat that wasn’t, neither was this, and as Garth laid there, the stump-ish thing bristled with patchy brown fur. It was small, the size of a cat, but as it stood, it looked more spindly baboon. Then it spoke, made a sound, but neither grunt nor bark, the squeak could have come from a doll, some stuffed little plush with Pixar eyes and cute nubbins — of horn?

  Startled by it, Garth tried to reconcile a cute little varmint with golech, the Beast. Was this all it was? And if so, did nubbins of horn qualify as ‘large?’

  Questioning ceased at the screech behind, at the feral howl gaffing the cave. And whatever the source, this ululation unhinged made the baboonish thing spring seven feet up and cling to the ceiling above. Which, Garth noted, was lumped with five more, creatures larger and stronger and hackling with hiss. But worse were their crowns, brush-worthy tangles of pumpkin-stem horn gnarled and twisted and dense.

  Yet queerest of all was their color, how they reminded of chameleons in a tree or octopi on a reef, for as emotional states swung between curious and enraged, so did their shades, the tints of their fur. Dull brown seemed their baseline calm, but as each now flashed between orange and red, Garth sensed it time to depart. But would they chase? Were they like pit bulls or bears, should he stay and stand his ground?

  That hideous screech sounded again, and when the creatures above replied in kind, Garth left his stand with a bolting lunge. The lump just above swiped for his head, but he dodged and raced on, just resumed his bang-and-scr
ape through the curving, mazing mess.

  The walls of the cave a green phosphor smear, Garth fled the raucous pursuit. Yet no matter his speed, the screech and bray stayed seconds behind, he couldn’t pull away. Were they playing, was it all just a game? A shattering thought, but now, so was the recognition, the familiar look of the turns and walls. Hadn’t he been down this path, was he simply running laps?

  Then it swung down, an apish arm of rust-colored fur walloped Garth square to his chest. Stunned by the blow, then by his fall, the son of Kel Vek lost all tenuous grip on the present to instead just drift, wander between muscular grunts and an excremental scent.

  Golech, his singular thought. And when the Beast grabbed him with a King Kong grip and hurled him again with a stupefying screech, Garth knew, just before impact, he would never wake up.

  Somewhere above where the light wasn’t green, somewhere outside where the scream of the Beast went unheard, Dahkaa carried his wife through thigh-high surf. Romantic, his view, Ioso in his arms and the black sand beach, but he gazed instead upon a great arch of cave, a tall black mouth flanked by old torches, both unlit. The terminus of every interior cave, it provided the only path out for those tested by Rhetta Dahz. And was, therefore, a path rarely used.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ioso. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “But you did,” Dahkaa replied. “And not for the first time, I enjoyed your surprise.”

  “Mm,” her usual reply to Dahkaa’s white lies. “But tell me, husband, if your friends will kill us because you broke their trust, what, exactly, is the punishment for worse? Is there no middle way to the Law of the Clans, would they also sentence death for my stew?”

  He’d heard it before, but it still, almost, brought a smile. “I love your stew.”

  “Mm.”

  “And we’re not going to die,” he added.