by Kerstin Hall
The sun blasted the desert. Vasethe shed his shirt and kept working.
He cut hidden notches and keys into the work peices, sanded and smoothed so that the parts slid together as cleanly as an oiled lock. As he set each new piece into place, he double-checked that the top plane remained level. His process was methodical. He rarely looked up from his craft and his movements had a practiced quality, muscles familiar with the heft of the materials.
The tea table was a comfortable size and height, simple and heavy. Vasethe stretched his shoulders and stood. Drawing a bucket of water from the well, he doused himself. It did not take long for him to dry, the sun leeching moisture from his clothes.
Eris stood in the doorway and watched him.
“Carpentry?”
He shook out his damp hair, then gathered it into a ponytail. “One of my first occupations.”
“You must be older than you look, to have practised so many professions.”
“Or I’m a quick learner.” He winked.
Eris gave him a hard look. He lifted the table with a soft grunt, placing it beneath the shade of the awning.
“I can’t trust you,” she said.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“You put on a good show, though.”
“A show?” He crouched down beside the table.
“Absolutely.” She sighed. “I haven’t survived as the border keeper without instincts, and you are not what you seem.”
Vasethe ran his hands over the top of the table, considering his words. “Maybe. I don’t lie very often. But there are things I haven’t told you. Personal, insignificant things.”
“Insignificant?”
“To the great and all-powerful border keeper of the shadowline, yes.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, although his voice was smiling. He picked up a chisel.
Eris fell silent but did not leave. She rubbed her calf muscle, using her left foot.
“You’re dangerous,” she said at last.
“Debatable.”
She sat down on the doorstep. “I find your tattoo confusing. Is it supposed to read as ‘dog of any master’?”
“You recognise traditional Gislapur.”
“But it’s more than that.” She frowned. “It has elements of other languages, or at least some kind of backcountry dialect. Why would you have an insult written in a dead language on your back?”
Vasethe selected a different chisel and set about carving a finer detail. He brushed away a curl of walnut.
“And I assume the misspelling was intentional. ‘Dog’ would be pronounced correctly as ‘tse,’ but it’s a homophone. The pictograph has been altered here; the radical for ‘animal’ is written as ‘true’ or ‘sincere.’”
“I have known scholars who would cut off their own limbs for your knowledge.”
“It turns the phrase into a paradox. ‘Dog of any master’ refers to a disloyal beast. But ‘true’?” She shook her head. “I can’t say I understand the intention behind it.”
“It’s a joke, I suppose. Something like that.”
“This wasn’t the work of some toothless Utyl hesk smoker with a rusted needle. Who gave it to you?”
He finished a swirl, driving the chisel blade into the wood. Eris waited.
“Raisha,” he muttered. “She was a linguist.”
They sat a little longer, him carving vines and flowers and birds, her staring out at the flatlands. The sun hit the saltpan with blinding intensity, but the shadowline stayed black as ink.
“You should not cross to Mkalis again,” said Eris.
“Didn’t you promise to kill me?”
She said nothing.
“Will you still serve as my guide?”
She stood. “Remember to eat.”
Vasethe continued to work on his table after Eris left, but his single-minded devotion to the task was gone. He set aside his tools. The rest of the project would wait. He dusted off his clothes and headed to the clean coolness of the kitchen.
Chapter Seven
ERIS’S BLOOD BURNED ON HIS TONGUE.
Vasethe opened his eyes to a vast yellow ocean. The waves moved in slow motion, water rising like treacle, reaching its full, shining height, then falling at the same languid pace. The beach was glass, incandescent and smooth, honeycombed by large circular funnels along the line of the tide. Above, a too-large sun gleamed through banks of cloud, reflecting off the surface of the water.
He turned to take in his surroundings. He stood at the border of the realm, on a sparse, arid slope. A few feet away, the hillside dissolved into a nothingness that was deeper and darker than blackness. The yawning emptiness made his head spin.
“I fixed your leg.”
Eris sat at the base of a feather-leaved tree, her head resting against the trunk. Her Mkalis body was striking; more graceful and less human than her appearance in Ahri. Her skin had turned obsidian, flecked with emerald freckles across her arms and face, and her features confused the eye—too wide-set or too large. Glittering black hair framed her alien face with wild iridescence.
“Last time, I mended the bone before returning to Ahri. I’ve never been very good at curative magic, so that was about the extent of my abilities.”
“Thank you.”
She groaned and stood up.
“This is Buyak’s realm?” asked Vasethe.
“A backwater corner of it. We’ll need to head for the heartlands to obtain permissions from him. It’s a long way to go.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’ve been better.” She gestured towards his neck. “That hex is a problem.”
Vasethe touched his throat. Maggots floundered in the wet carnage. They had grown in number.
“It came into effect the moment you crossed the shadowline. I’m absorbing the effects on your behalf, but it means my own powers are, well, restrained.”
Vasethe frowned, remembering the fiery agony he had experienced in the cottage. “And last time?”
“I slipped up once or twice.”
“Is there a way of removing it?”
She smiled. “A few. Killing whoever laid it would work. Some demon rulers can get rid of hexes for a price, and your own death would erase it before you passed on to Mkalis.”
“All of those options have significant drawbacks.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry; my pain tolerance far exceeds yours. I can handle it.”
A skittering sound. They both looked towards the beach. Over the treacherous glass, a giant red-and-gold crab weaved from one passage to another.
“I owe you for this,” Vasethe said.
“I look forward to a fully redecorated house.” Eris laughed. “Come on.”
She picked her way down the slope and Vasethe followed. The turf was bleached and dry and crunched underfoot. When he stepped onto the beach, the glass produced a hollow ringing sound, like distant bells. Through the haze of misted reflections he could see strange shapes, tunnels, vast caverns beneath him. Eris walked more lightly. Her reflection shifted and dissolved within the glass. Watching, Vasethe saw flashes of disparate figures, incongruent colours, sudden flickers of scarlet, the glimmer of steel. His own reflection remained steady, if unclear.
The crab registered their approach and halted. With difficulty, it lowered its front legs and tucked in its pincers into the semblance of a bow.
“Greetings, guests of his holiness Kan Buyak, God-King of the 200th realm of Mkalis, Lord of Fluttering Wings, Speaker of Absolutes,” it said. Its voice was rasping but oddly childlike. “I am Lanesh, sanctified guide to those travelling the Hollow Way.”
“Hello, Lanesh,” said Eris. “I am the border keeper, here to escort this mortal through your god’s realm.”
“Hello,” said Vasethe.
Lanesh bowed lower. “It is an honour.”
The crab’s ruby carapace possessed a translucent sheen. The shape of a small, twisted body lay frozen inside
the creature, one hand raised as if to claw its way free of Lanesh’s chitinous shell. Vasethe’s eyes traced the irregular, buckled carapace—knees at a gross angle to the thighs, a hipbone warped and broken, the faint ridges of spasming toes—but he did not say anything.
“We wish to request an audience with Kan Buyak for the purpose of acquiring permission to enter another realm,” said Eris.
Lanesh straightened, raised and lowered his pincers once. “The Solstice Assembly begins a week from today. His Radiance will be available to hear requests before the festivities commence.”
“Ah, good. That’s convenient.”
Vasethe noticed the child’s fingers twitch beneath the carapace, a tiny ripple of fractured bones. Eris’s eyes flicked towards the movement, then away again.
“I am at your service,” said Lanesh. “May we depart?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The crab bobbed. “We will use the wistweed passage. I must warn you that straying from the path may lead to drowning. This way.” He bowed again and scuttled backwards, zigzagging across the beach towards the entrance of a tunnel.
Vasethe leaned nearer to Eris. “Is there a child inside that crab?”
“The child is the crab,” she replied. “A dweller who disobeyed a rule.”
Vasethe stared at the fragile form inside the shell.
“Honoured guests!” Lanesh called, waving a pincer. “We should leave before the tide rises.”
Eris gave Vasethe a warning glare and strode to the mouth of the tunnel. Unearthly whistling sounds issued from the passage as the slow water washed back and forth. The tunnel dropped downwards sharply; once inside, climbing out again would prove near impossible.
“Umbakur is some distance,” said Lanesh. “We must move quickly to reach it before the passage floods.”
Vasethe crouched beside the crab and laid his palm on the carapace above the child’s grasping hand.
“Thank you for helping us,” he said.
Lanesh scurried out of Vasethe’s reach, pincers raised and clacking.
“It is my duty, as Guide of the Hollow Way.” His tone was difficult to decipher, but he was clearly agitated. “I serve my ruler as best I am able.”
“Sorry. I meant no offense.”
Lanesh flexed his pincers once more, then lowered them. He scuttled back to the mouth of the tunnel, giving Vasethe a wide berth.
“This way, please.” He slipped over the lip and slid down into the darkness.
“Lesson learnt?” Eris asked.
Vasethe sighed. He lowered himself down into the salt-scented tunnel after Lanesh.
The passage widened as they descended deeper beneath the ocean. The keening echoes of the waves emanated from all around; the noise grew louder and quieter but never fell entirely silent. At times, the wailing sounded human.
Lanesh’s claws clicked against the ground. Like the sound of Eris’s wards in Ahri. Vasethe glanced at her. She raised an eyebrow and he looked away. The hex did not seem to be affecting her too severely.
The passage levelled out. Above, swift fish cut through the ocean depths, and wispy lights gleamed in the distance. Obscured by bends in the tunnel, it was difficult to determine their source, but to Vasethe’s eyes the lights appeared to move. He squinted. Too far; he could not make them out.
“What is Umbakur?” he asked Lanesh.
The crab’s stalked eyes swivelled, focussed on him.
“The midpoint. It does not flood when the water comes,” he said.
“Is it an island?”
Lanesh waved his pincers as he walked.
“Mkalis geography is flexible,” said Eris, “and our guide does not want to lie.”
Vasethe paused. “Is lying accidentally . . .”
“Still an untruth.”
“I’ll watch my words, then.”
“Ah, but I think you always do.” Her teeth flashed. “Don’t you?”
He smiled, said nothing.
The tunnel branched, one side clear and empty, the other tangled with bone-white kelp. The kelp reeked of dying things and Lanesh veered to avoid it. The child inside his shell was still now.
When Vasethe had touched him, the broken fingers had moved.
One of the lights drew nearer. It bobbed in the water outside, bright and curious. As Vasethe and Eris passed, it shot forward and latched onto the glass with rows of needled suckers. Lanesh jumped.
“I have never seen them do that before,” he said.
Somewhere between a squid and a jellyfish, the creature was no larger than a clenched fist. It glowed with sickly blue luminance in the dark water. As they stepped forward, it detached from the glass.
“What is it?” Vasethe asked.
It drifted along the outside of the tunnel, keeping pace with them.
“Persistent.” Eris eyed it.
“I call them lightfish,” said Lanesh. “It is probably just confused. They are usually shy creatures.”
The lightfish smashed into the glass again.
Lanesh, for all his reassurances, kept close watch on the creature. He did not comment when two more drifted in from the gloom. The creatures appeared oblivious to one another, colliding as they crashed against the tunnel wall.
Vasethe stopped.
“Hold on for a moment,” he said.
“Honoured guest, I do not think that is wise; we must reach Umbakur.”
Vasethe walked a few paces back and stopped again. The lightfish paused in their assault.
“Arrogant, wouldn’t you say?” Eris frowned as one of the creatures swam towards Vasethe, then changed direction and returned to its position directly above her. “But interesting.”
The creatures resumed their assault. She did not flinch.
“Well, I thought that the hex might be the cause of their—” Vasethe broke off.
“What?”
He turned and gazed down the shadowy passage behind them.
The tunnel was empty, but the smell of lilies and ash lingered in the air. Faint, barely perceptible.
“Never mind,” he said.
The passage branched once more. Lanesh kept left, moving a little quicker than before. Vasethe glanced over his shoulder and shivered.
They found the body dredged up at the next intersection. He lay face-down, legs entangled with hollow tubes of brittle coral. His feet had been severed and replaced by meat hooks, metal soldered to bones and bloody flesh, and his shock of silky black hair was still damp. It obscured his face. The skin of his hands had worn raw; one arm stretched forward as if to grasp Vasethe’s ankle. He must have dragged himself through the tunnels, only to be caught by the tide. Eris barely looked at the corpse.
“Don’t touch him,” she warned. “He’s not dead.”
Vasethe’s eyes widened. “Shouldn’t we help him, then?”
“No.”
“Eris, come on.”
She sighed and rolled up her sleeves.
“Honoured border keeper, I really would not recommend—”
She strode forward, grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair, and yanked him upright.
The man had no face—only a toothless, slavering mouth that stretched from hairline to jaw. As Eris pulled his head back, he produced a wet gurgling sound, then screamed.
The noise brought Vasethe to his knees. He grasped his head in his hands, and Lanesh cowered behind him. The scream rose in pitch, unearthly and awful, yet Vasethe could hear whispering beneath it; a voice spoke right into his ear.
“Come closer, come closer, let me, closer, let me closer, come, let me, skin, let me, eat, closer, let me hold . . .”
The man’s terrible legs lashed out, but Eris evaded them. She grasped his jaw with her free hand and wrenched sideways. His neck snapped. The screaming stopped.
“Closer . . .”
The echoes faded down the tunnel and the thumping of the lightfish grew louder. Vasethe leaned against the wall, catching his breath.
“I warned you,” said Er
is, quite calmly, “that Mkalis is dangerous. This is not Ahri. You will listen to me, or you will die.”
There was a new, hoarse edge to her voice. She cleared her throat and winced.
“This way,” Lanesh whispered.
They walked. The lightfish hit the glass. Intersection after intersection, but now the way forward had become less clear. The kelp thickened across the tunnel floor, spreading waxy feelers over their path. It gave underfoot like skin, pliant and smooth, and its sharp smell made it difficult for Vasethe to think straight.
They came across more bodies concealed by the kelp, only their bloated limbs poking out. The corpses were human in shape but mutilated. Most were missing feet, some arms, and crude hooks and barbs protruded from their swollen, leaking wounds. All the bodies lay face-down.
Drip.
The pounding of the lightfish formed one indistinguishable wall of sound. The shoal was everywhere, blinding and packed tight, the water obscured by their bodies. Through the noise, the dripping should have been inaudible.
Drip.
A single dart of pain shot through Vasethe’s throat. The kelp under his feet was wet. Eris brushed a drop of water from her cheek.
“Here, come closer, here . . .”
He swayed. Eris reached out and steadied him. The voice was different, a woman this time. She was washed up against the wall a few feet away. A reel of barbed wire punctured the skin of her stomach and thighs, leaving pinpricks of black. His vision swam. Eris dug her fingernails into his arm, and the whispering quietened.
The glass made an eerie groaning sound punctuated by brief pops. As Vasethe watched, fractures branched through the roof in lightning streaks. Spray jetted from the cracks.
Could she breathe underwater? he wondered.
“There is the terminus.” Lanesh sped over the ground, his claws finding purchase between the slick kelp.
They rounded a bend in the passage. Ahead, the tunnel ended. Vasethe blinked. The ocean just stopped, like someone had cut a funnel through the water. In the centre of this impossible abyss hovered a colossal granite mass. Umbakur. A web of slender bridges connected the fortress to the tunnels; it sat like a fat spider between them. All around, the unnatural waters dropped slowly into the bowls of the earth, silent as blood seeping into fabric.