Call of the Bone Ships

by Rj Barker

  “She may never like you,” said Meas, “but you gave her back her life, and now she will die for you.” She was not looking at him when she spoke and he turned, expecting her gaze to be fixed upon Cwell but it was not: it was Narza that Meas watched.

  “I did not expect this,” said Joron.

  “I did not expect it either. But an hour ago I did not expect to survive at all,” said Meas. “Today has been a day of wonders. Let us hope there are no more.”

  And then the call went up, shouted from the tops of the mainspine.

  “Keyshan rising!”

  41

  What Is Lost May Be Hard Found

  The island was still ripping itself apart, massive tremors running through it, huge rock slabs sliding into the sea, their scale so vast that as they sheared from the island their collapse looked stately and controlled – until the moment they crashed into the ocean in a spray of violent white. It was easy for Joron to understand how some eye, far up in the top of the spines, could mistake that chaos for an arakeesian, a sea dragon. But Joron had seen a keyshan up close, spent months flying alongside it, had stared into its shining eyes, had shared its song and seen its terrible wrath. A keyshan was a creature of the sea, built and forged by it to be a perfect machine for riding through the waves, and under them. It was not of the land, of the stone, and if the untrained eye thought the island’s destruction was a keyshan, well, yes he could, and he did, understand that mistake.

  Then he saw the eye.

  The white, bright, burning eye.

  He saw the unmistakeable fire and found his mouth moving. At first hesitant. Then, as he walked up the slate, gathering speed, jumping on to the rail to look better at the crumbling island, the words coming, filling him.

  “Keyshan rising . . . KEYSHAN RISING!”

  Out of the stone, the crumbling rocks, the island crisscrossed by black lines with smoke and dust billowing around it, he heard it. The roar. The blast of noise that was both unbearable and beautiful as the head of the creature was fully revealed. As the keyshan raised itself above the island. Vast. The head as long as the ship they travelled in – no, longer. Far longer. A mouth full of teeth, each the size of a tall woman. Many branched horns sprang from the top of the head, and where the first keyshan – the wakewyrm – had been white and black, this one was red and bright purple.

  It sounded again. And as it did more eyes opened on the huge head. He counted ten just on this side. Three big ones clustered together above the joint of the jaw, three that ran along the top of the jaw and four smaller ones in a quarter circle around the bigger eyes. The sound of its call had all aboard Keyshantooth covering their ears, all apart from Joron and Meas. The creature shook its massive head and the colours on its back changed; a rainbow flowed across it, like oil spilling on water. With a lurch and a roar the keyshan pulled itself up, exposing massive flippers ending in three huge claws the same off-white as the windspire that had crowned the island. All around the crumbling remnants of the island the water was boiling, giant bubbles coming to the surface and breaking in a white froth. The keyshan continued to fight, pushing itself from the wreckage of the island, claws raking at the rock, pulling it apart. Smashing, destroying, as if in fury at the foolish element that thought it could hold back one of the shipmothers of the sea. Between calls, and because the roars of the beast were so great and loud, it was almost as if Keyshantooth flew from the island in silence. Certainly, the gullaime no longer sang, the crew no longer talked. All stood watching the great beast as it struggled for freedom.

  Did it see them? Those shining eyes called to Joron, the song, silent to all but him – it beat within, it sang within. A sound like the bellows of a forge, the lungs of the creature taking in great gulps of air, as if for one final titanic effort. All was still before one last attempt to free itself from the imprisoning rock. Dust settled, the massive boulders stopped rolling from the island. The wreckage revealed a jagged frame of broken white stone around the scintillating, shivering, colour-shifting body of the arakeesian. It shrank down a little into the rock, as if relaxing, opened its mouth and screamed. Then, with a final massive effort it threw itself free of its stone prison. Rising up and up, great flippers beating at the air as if it could fly, and when it seemed impossible it could go up any further, it kept going. And if the first keyshan, the wakewyrm, had been vast, this one was vaster. By an order of magnitude. As it reached a height – unimaginable for something so huge to throw itself up so far, and yet the body kept on going – until it finally let itself fall. Its sheer size defying sense and time, bending it, slowing the world as the keyshan toppled to seaward of them, its mouth open, shouting and screaming and bellowing as if outraged by the cold air as it descended. The remnants of the island crumbling beneath its great bulk – and then, more jointweight than all the combined fleets of the Hundred and Gaunt Islands smashed into the sea with a sound like nothing he had ever heard. If Skearith the godbird had clapped her wings together it must have sounded like this. Painful enough that Joron felt his ears must be bleeding.

  The keyshan fell, but the ocean rose; a massive wave trying, and failing, to reach the great heights that the arakeesian had managed in its birthing pangs. Water roaring. Meas shouting.

  “Brace! Brace! Grab whatever you can and hold on!” He knew they should bring the ship about, that the coming tsunami must be met beak-on or they were likely to be swamped. But they had neither the time nor enough crew for the captured ship. “Get below!” she shouted at the crowd of gullaime and, though the creatures were blind, they moved with plenty of speed, followed by Madorra and Tide Child’s own gullaime. Joron looked about him, aware this could be the last time he saw some, any of his fellows. How unfair, that they had fought so hard, and won free against such great odds, only to be swamped by a creature he was not even sure knew they existed.

  Meas grinned at him. Grabbed a rope and wrapped it round her forearm. He did the same.

  “Hang on, Joron Twiner,” she said. “For I believe this will be a wild ride.”

  Water fell upon them, the edge of the great watery convulsion caused by the keyshan’s impact: but a deluge hard and thick as any storm. Meas turned to face the oncoming wave, a wall of water that Joron was sure must actually reach up and touch the sky. Though it was not this one that was to be feared, he knew that, but the next. And the next. And the next for sure as day followed night more waves would come.

  Then he was rising. The ship climbing a mountain of green swirling water. But this was no normal wave, no giant wall of water generated by the sea itself. This was the wake of the arakeesian, and within the huge wave were maelstroms and currents. Smaller waves crashing against each other and making plumes of white water, whirling eddies and cross-currents. Keyshantooth rose and rose into the air and the water spun it around like a child’s toy in a stream. First one way, then the other. The violent motions throwing Joron into the bonerail, bruising ribs and muscles. The ship slowed, stopped as it reached the crest of the wave and it felt to Joron as if it hovered there, as if he could, for that one single sparkling moment, look out and see the Scattered Archipelago the way Skearith the godbird must once have, the shining seas from storm to storm in all directions. Then, and with a great creak, Keyshantooth crested the wave and began to fall. Here was the danger – the ship was side-on to its direction of travel and too much speed would flip them over, capsizing the ship and drowning everyone aboard.

  “Bring us round!” screamed Meas at Coughlin on the steering oar. The big man was fighting with all he had, Joron could see his muscles straining as he fought the oar, feel the ship tilting as it slipped down the steep water, each moment gathering a rock of speed, each moment leaning another degree nearer to the point where the ship would no longer be upright, where water would catch the slate of the deck, pull the ship over. Smash the spines and break them against the wave, drag the keel from the depths and throw the entire crew down into the Hag’s embrace.

  Faster, steeper, more frightening
.

  Then, when all aboard felt they must be lost – when they felt that the Maiden must be laughing once more at her cruel and deadly trick, letting them escape the island only to die here – the ocean, that greatest trickster of them all, took pity upon them. A vast ambulatory whirlpool moved across the surface of the wave they careened down, dragging all it touched into the black centre. It danced toward them, forward and back and side to side, Joron knew the terrifying power of such maelstroms, had seen small boats eaten whole by them, larger ships spinebroke and swallowed. But this whirling monster only kissed the hull of Keyshantooth, dragging the beak around so that the ship faced directly down the wave, and though the speed increased as Keyshantooth cut through the water, the deck righted.

  “To the steering oar!” shouted Meas, and she and Joron and Farys and every other on the deck ran for the rump of the ship to lend their strength to Coughlin. “We must keep this ship head-on to the waves!” That shipwife voice of hers raised. “All wings furled!” she shouted. “Tie yourselves on if you can!” Then they were part of a press of bodies around the steering oar. All pushing on one another to keep the ship straight, to keep its beak aimed at the base of the next wave.

  The sky was gone. All Joron could see, through a tunnel of bodies, was the deep green sea before them, and all he could hear, through the press of swearing, cursing, breathing deckchilder, was her voice yelling, “Hold on! Hold on!” The sea rushing up to meet them. The speed unlike anything Joron had ever felt.

  Then they were rising, rising once more, up the face of the next wave, this one even bigger. And every woman and man at the oar was sweating and pushing to hold it straight as the ship climbed and climbed. Speed gradually being shed. Meas shouting. “Ready the wings! Ready the wings!” And up and up and up. All the time losing speed as if they steered into the wind, and it no longer became so important to hold the steering oar – there was no pressure against the tiller as the ship slowed almost to a stop.

  And Joron felt despair. For the crest of the wave was so near, but not close enough.

  Then Meas calling.

  “Unfurl the wings!”

  The wings dropped, but the wind coming up the wave was not strong enough. For a moment, the ship held its place and then it was as if they all felt the great jointweight of bone that made up Keyshantooth start to drag them backwards. “Wind,” shouted Meas. “We need wind! Bring those gullaime up . . .”

  “Wind!” A great cawing roar as their own gullaime, followed by Madorra and the four who were already on the ship, ran onto the deck. “Bring wind!” shouted the gullaime and it lifted wings. Screeched.

  And the wind came.

  Whatever malaise had beset the ship’s gullaime had evidently fled before the spectre of certain death, and together with its companions they brought a howling gale. First holding the ship in place on the great wave, giving the illusion of movement as the ship did not fall down the steep side of the water below but the water still moved around it. A wing broke loose, flapping like loose skin in the gale that held Keyshantooth there. The deck was a steep hill before them, the water a steeper one. “More!” shouted Meas against the furious gale. “Gullaime, give us more!”

  And more came.

  A wind like Joron had never felt before. Its pressure against his back almost strong enough to push him, and every other at the oar, off it. The wings above, pristine white, bowing out tight as drumskins, and if they had not been the best wings, the strongest wingcloth only given to the whitest of boneships, Joron was sure they would have split under the great pressure. But they held. A rope snapped, whipping through the air. A scream and a body fell, cut in two and painting the deck in blood. And as if it had needed a spattering of paint for luck the ship climbed. It climbed and it climbed until it tottered once more upon the top of the watery world.

  “Furl the wings!” shouted Meas. “Gullaime, stop the wind. Go below!” She looked around her at those on the oar, and grinned like a madwoman. “Hold him straight if you value your lives!”

  And they fell.

  Down and down another cliff face of freezing water, speed beyond knowing. Someone screaming. Someone shouting for the Hag’s mercy. Some simply silent in the face of the ocean’s fierce and implacable majesty, at the watery giants brought into being by the body of an empress of the sea.

  “Deep breaths!” screamed Meas as they careened down the face of the wave. “Deep breaths! Hold tight!”

  They flew toward the base of the wave. Keyshantooth had no space to come beak-up in the gap between waves. Or room to start climbing the next. The ship’s beak sped toward the sea and Joron took great, deep breaths. Tightened his hands around the handle of the oar. Held on. Watched in horror as the beak of the ship, almost in slow motion, pierced the wall of the sea and then that wall came rushing on. Green and grey and freezing and noisy with froth and spume until it covered him.

  And.

  Silence.

  Eyes open in not quite darkness.

  Faces around him. Locked in panic. In wonder. In fear. In complacency. In acceptance. Swallowed by the sea. Distorted by the sea. Bound for the Hag. Hair waving. Bubbles forming around mouths, only to be whipped away by unseen currents. Stinging water in his nose. His mouth. His eyes.

  There is peace here.

  And.

  Noise.

  Keyshantooth rejected by the sea. Breaking from it in its own small mountain of waves and froth. Air rushing back in, freezing, screaming. So cold. The ship changed by its short passage through the water. Spines torn away and reduced to stumps, gallowbows ripped off. Corpselights gone. Crew missing and the ship sloughing off water in great runnels. Only the fact that this next wave was not of the great steepness as the others – shallower, larger but not as steep – saved them. Now the ship was uncontrolled. Rudder and oar broken. Spinning as the fallen spines caught the water and acted as seastones.

  “Hold on!” shouted Meas, “It is all we can do now! Hold and hope the Hag takes pity on us!”

  And they rose and span and twisted up the shallow wave until they reached the top and Joron saw that in a huge and growing circle around them was walls of water, brought up by the impact of the arakeesian’s body against the sea. He knew those waves would move through the entire archipelago, messengers saying, “I am here! I am born!”

  Below them, the vast body of the keyshan, purple and red and black and green and huge in its movements. Lazy in its progress through the water but faster than any ship could ever hope to be. As they drifted down the final wave, into the centre of the circle where the sea was relatively calm the keyshan raised its head and sounded.

  The noise.

  The music.

  The beauty.

  I am here.

  I. Am. Here.

  42

  Adrift

  The day was cold and clear. The day was thirsty and hungry.

  Of the forty who had gone ashore on McLean’s Rock only twelve humans had survived the battle and the birth of the sea dragon.

  Joron dropped a stone over the side of the ship, and sent with it a prayer of quiet thanks to the Hag that she had not taken Meas, or him, or Barlay, or Coughlin, or Farys, or Jennil, or even Cwell. He watched the stone vanish into the green water, into shoals of fish that appeared and vanished, incorporeal presences in the cold waters. Then he raised his eyes to the sky. Not a cloud, only Skearith’s Eye beating down. Not a breath of wind. It was like the violence of the keyshan’s birth had sucked it all away

  “Smile on your children, Mother,” he said quietly. “For we have been through much.”

  But no reply came, though none was expected from such distant gods.

  All that survived had suffered bruises and cuts. A piece of bone, splintered off from one of the rails, had stuck into Joron’s lower leg, leaving a gaping wound. One of the gullaime had been killed outright as the ship had been thrown around, crushed against a bulkhead below. Another had been broken so badly it would never recover and Madorra – angry, fi
erce, and strange Madorra – had surprised Joron by insisting that it was allowed to nurse that gullaime toward the end of its life. In the moments he had passed by the gullaime cabin he had been surprised to hear Madorra singing a sad and sweet song to the dying creature. He had not thought the windshorn had such a gentle side. But there were to be many surprises in the coming days. Madorra’s surprising gentleness was the only good one.

  Keyshantooth held no spares: no wingcloth. No cord. No ropes. No bolts. No spars. No boneglue. No bone. No hagspit. Nothing. So they were reduced to salvaging what they could of the wreckage still attached to the ship. It was of little use, if any.

  But worse news was to come.

  No water. No dried fish. No dried meat. No grain. No food of any kind. And the only land they had been near, McLean’s Rock, was gone.

  What they did find, upon searching the ship, was a man named Anopp, locked in the brig and barely able to speak. The flesh had almost been whipped from his back and then left to suppurate. Meas had him cleaned and though Joron knew it must have been an agony he did not once cry out. But Joron watched his face, saw the pain in his eyes as rags soaked in salt water were applied to his wounds. Shared it in part as salt water constantly seeped through the bandages on his own leg.

  “What happened here, Anopp?” said Joron, more to distract him as Narza applied the wet cloth. “Why is there nothing aboard this ship?”

  “Our shipwife, Barnt, were a fool. I told him so, which is how I ended up in this state.”

  “You had a rank, to speak so to your shipwife?” said Meas.

  “Deckmother. Had me own cord put to me back and those who I had dealt it out to, well, they were not kind in their revenge.” He hissed as filth was cleaned from an open sore on his back. “I told him, said it were not done to empty a ship of all its stores when there may be a fight in the offing. What if we had to get away quick?” Anopp laughed to himself. “But he wanted the hull checked for leaks and said he’d have no such defeatist talk, that’s what he called it. And when I pressed it, said we could move the stores about within the ship, he said it were too slow. And I argued and, well, now I lie here under the care of a traitor.” His eyes flicked to Meas.