Heights of the Depths

by Peter David

  He did not respond. She did not expect him to, and then as he turned away, she shouted, “I feel sorry for you!” Slowly she got to her feet and continued, “That’s right. Me. The lowly human. I feel sorry for you, for whatever you are. You’re the most pathetic creature since…since…” Her mind raced for comparison and she found it. “Gant. The most pathetic creature since—”

  One moment he was across the deck from her, and the next he was right there, in her face, speaking with a sense of urgency.

  “Gant?”

  “Yes,” she said uncertainly. “One of the Bottom Feeders. The clan I was with for a time when you…when your brethren…carried me away. Gant.”

  “Describe him,” came the whispery voice.

  “I don’t—”

  “Describe him.”

  She jumped back, frightened by the Traveler’s intensity. Her bouts of bravado suddenly seemed very far away and long forgotten. “He’s hard to describe!” she said defensively. “He’s just…he’s sort of this…this blob. He doesn’t really have much of a shape at all.”

  “A blob.” His voice was flat. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or was echoing her or mocking her. “A blob, you say.”

  “Yes. And I know, there’s no race like that. At least not that I know of. But you would know. Is there a race? Of blobs?”

  There was just the smallest shaking of his hood. The other Traveler, the one who had prevented him from snapping Jepp’s neck, had drifted back and now appeared to be watching the two of them. He appeared uncertain as to what to do next. Jepp could sympathize.

  “I didn’t think so. He claimed…that is to say, I was told…that he used to be a Phey. But I’ve never seen a Phey, so I don’t know if they look like blobs at all…”

  “They…do not,” said the Traveler.

  “Karsen told me that he was transformed. That he was romancing first one Phey sister and then another, each without the other knowing. And once they discovered it, they exacted a terrible vengeance upon him, turning him into…into whatever he was.”

  “He told you that.”

  “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  It was the closest thing to a conversation Jepp had had since setting foot aboard the ship. It didn’t involve threats nor the concern that the next word could be her last. “Not much else. That Karsen’s clan came upon him and made him one of them. They are Bottom Feeders, after all, and so not especially strict when it comes to matters of race. Well…except where I was involved. That seemed to make a huge difference. But they probably didn’t think of me as a race, anyway. I’m a human, which makes me little more than an animal in their eyes.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Animals have uses,” the Traveler said with an edge to his voice.

  She felt a stinging in her cheeks. She would have thought, after all this time and all that she had endured, that it was no longer possible for her to feel embarrassed. She was dismayed to discover that she was wrong. This time when he turned away from her, she made no effort to stop him, but instead shouted after him, “Go to hell!”

  “Already there,” the Traveler whispered back at her.

  ii.

  It was several turns of the Damned World later that Jepp saw the storm rolling toward them.

  She had witnessed foul weather countless times before, but she had never in her life seen anything quite like this. One minute she was gazing out at the same, unchanging vista that she had grown accustomed to over all this time. She was beginning to wonder if this was what the rest of her life was going to be like. After all, Jepp didn’t know of a certainty that the Travelers had any particular destination in mind. It might have been that their intention was to just sail around with her until she died and then pitch her overboard. It didn’t make any sense, of course. If they wanted her dead, they could have simply killed her when they first took her. We’re talking about Travelers. It doesn’t have to make sense. That was what she told herself, but even as she did, she didn’t quite believe it. Nobody did things for no reason. Even the insane had reasons for their actions; they were just insane reasons that made sense only to them. Whatever else they were, though, the Travelers were not insane.

  Jepp started paying closer attention when the Travelers were talking to each other. She discovered that if she listened closely enough, she could pick up isolated words here and there. One of the words that she was certain she had heard was “Gant,” and that was of great curiosity to her. Why were they so interested in Gant? What was it about a lone Bottom Feeder that would so intrigue the mighty Travelers?

  A possible solution suggested herself, but she found it hard to believe. Still, it was a notion worth pursuing. Subtlety was not Jepp’s strong suit. Her belief was that if someone wanted to learn something, there was no better way to go about it than directly. So she had gone straight over to the Traveler that had spoken to her of Gant the other day. When she had first boarded the ship she had not been able to distinguish one Traveler from the other, but by now she had learned to discern who was who simply through observing small tics in their body language.

  “Are you a Phey?”

  If she was looking for him to give something away in his reaction, she was destined to be disappointed. He didn’t react in the slightest.

  “I said,” she began again, “are you a—?”

  “I heard you.”

  “Well?”

  He approached her and she involuntarily took a step back. He seemed to loom over her, occupying the entirety of her world.

  “To look upon the Phey is to die,” he said. “If I am of the Phey, and you look upon me, then you will take that knowledge to the next world.” He lifted his hands to either side of his hood. “Are you prepared for that?”

  She wanted to stand up to him with as much gusto as she had days ago, but this time she hesitated. She felt as if there was so much more for her to learn, things that were just beyond her comprehension that could be greatly important for everyone and everything. If she died, she would never be able to understand any of it, much less make things better.

  And she could make things better. She wasn’t sure quite how yet, but she was beginning to get a sense that she had a role in the grand scheme of things. She wanted to find out what that role was.

  But she also wanted to find out if she was right about the Travelers. That was going to be important as well.

  She was reminded of an artifact left over from the days when humans actually were in charge of the Damned World. She had seen it when she was much younger, little more than a child, being played with by a young Mandraque who seemed to be having some difficulty with it. He had noticed that Jepp was watching and, rather than hissing at her in anger, had brought it over to the slave pen, placed it just outside, and gestured for her to try her hand at it.

  The toy had consisted of small pieces of wood that interlocked and seemed to come together to form a picture of several whores. The young Mandraque was unable to figure out exactly how the pieces interlocked, however. Slowly at first but then with increasing speed and confidence, Jepp assembled the puzzle. She displayed it proudly, at which point an adult Mandraque had come by, seen what she had done, grabbed the puzzle away and smashed it into so many small pieces that an army of Jepps wouldn’t have been able to reassemble it.

  She had always remembered that moment, though, and how easily she had been able to see how the pieces fit together.

  Jepp felt as if the world had transformed into a vast puzzle. There were pieces out there, pieces that she needed to find. Once she did so, she would see how all of them came together, and she would hold the entire picture in her hands.

  My dreams are a piece. The Travelers are a piece. Apparently Gant is a piece, and the Phey might also be as well. I need to get all the pieces in order to see the picture, and I have to say or do the correct thing at any given moment if I’m going to accomplish that.

  “No,” she said softly to the Traveler. “I am n
ot prepared for that.”

  Slowly the Traveler lowered his hands from his hood. He did not commend her or tell her that she had made a wise decision. Instead he was about to turn away from her.

  But then he looked off toward the horizon line and stopped, something having caught his interest. Jepp’s back was to where he was looking, and so she turned to see just what was so interesting.

  The storm was rolling right toward them.

  It was dead ahead of them and inescapable. The sky directly above them was still blue and pleasant, but ahead of them it was absolutely black, with thick gray clouds and lightning dancing within them. She could see a solid sheet of rain barreling toward them as if some great unseen being were gripping it by either edge and drawing it across the skies. The waves were surging fiercely, and the waters beneath their own craft was starting to buck in response to the oncoming churning.

  “Go below,” said the Traveler with a rasp. The second Traveler was already at the sails, preparing them for the violent weather that was bearing down on them. The third was lashing the wheel in order to keep the ship on course. “Now,” he added forcefully when Jepp didn’t move fast enough.

  Jepp did as she was bid, fleeing to the lower depths of the ship. By the time she got down there, the ship was already tilting violently. Jepp had never been more glad that she had been eating lightly. She had developed a stronger constitution than when she’d first boarded, but had anything been in her stomach at that moment, it likely would have been decorating the inside of her room before long.

  Within minutes the wind was howling outside. She tried to find something to grab onto, and when she couldn’t, contented herself with sitting on the floor, putting her hands to either side. She forced herself to breathe slowly and regularly, determined to remain calm. And as she did so, the storm continued to grow in intensity, howling like a thing alive.

  The more she listened to it, the more fascinated she became by it. I want to see it, she thought, and the thought surprised even her. I have never seen a storm like this. Maybe there’s never been a storm like this. And yet here I cower. I should see it, witness it. I should pay obeisance to it. I think…

  I think it is coming for me. And it would only be respectful to look it in the eye.

  She clambered up the ladder, up onto the deck. The wind immediately hit her with the force of an anvil, knocking her backwards onto the rain-slicked deck. She drew her cloak more tightly around her and fought her way to her feet. The rocking of the boat was even more severe topside. If this had happened during her first days on the ship, she would have been tossed around as helplessly as a pebble skipped across the surface of a pond. As it was, even with the amount of sea craft she had developed over the past weeks of travel, it was still all she could do to resist being thrown about.

  She got to her feet, staggered, and then skidded yet again. She hit the deck hard, banging her elbows, and she cried out in pain. Suddenly she was yanked to her feet by a Traveler—her Traveler, as she had come to think of him—who bellowed practically into her face, “What are you doing here!? Go below!”

  “No! I want to see it!” she shouted and she pulled away from him. Ordinarily she never would have been able to do so, but his gloved hands were wet from the rain, and so was she. She staggered across the deck.

  He came right after her, his cloak billowing around him. “You’re being an idiot!”

  “I’m being a human!”

  “Same thing!”

  He grabbed for her and she eluded his grasp. “Are you a Phey?!”

  “Not that again!”

  “I need to know!”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know!”

  She suspected that if she could see his eyes, he would have been rolling them at that point. Truthfully, she wouldn’t have blamed him.

  Jepp backed up, stumbled again, and this time fell solidly on her rump. The Traveler advanced, swaying with the motion of the ship but otherwise not appearing discommoded by the movement. He grabbed at her but she rolled out of his reach, grabbed some rigging and pulled herself to her feet once more.

  “Thunderation, human, if you have a death wish, then just indulge yourself and save us some time!” He grabbed at her and she eluded him as much by the pitching of the ship as from any effort on her own part.

  “I want to know what’s happening! I want to know what this is all about!”

  “No!”

  “I have the right—!”

  “You are human! You have no rights!”

  “You’re wrong!” she shouted, gripping the edge of the rail. “We had a right to live! To laugh! To love! We had a right to exist!”

  “Yes, and we took it away! Rather easily! So it couldn’t have been that important to you to begin with!”

  “You didn’t take it away!” Jepp said defiantly. “It’s still there! You may be keeping us from it, but it’s there just the same, waiting for us to take it back! That’s what you’re really afraid of, isn’t it!”

  Thunder blasted overhead at the exact same time that lightning crackled. When the light flashed, Jepp saw a glint of silver beneath the hood. “I am not afraid! We are not afraid! We are masters of this world!”

  “How dare you! How dare you make such a ridiculous claim to be masters of this world when you stand in the face of this!” and she gestured overhead. “This world can brush you off like insects if it so chooses! Who are you to think you are anything other than interlopers, fearful that sooner or later, this world will notice your presence and cast you aside!”

  “We are not afraid!”

  “Then answer my question! Are you of the Phey?”

  Having had more than enough, the Traveler advanced upon her, his dark form almost disappearing against the backdrop of blackness that surrounded them. “Come here! Right now!”

  iii.

  Graves had had more than his fill of humans in general and certainly this one in particular.

  It was all he could do not to say, “To hell with you!” and leave her to the elements. But that wasn’t an option. He knew that and, worse still, she was obviously figuring it out as well. He never would have imagined her capable of that. Morts should have had no capacity for reason, and yet this one was constantly finding ways to frustrate him, second guess him, and in general annoy the hell out of him.

  Jepp backed up, and suddenly a massive wave of water cascaded over the edge of the ship as the vessel rocked violently. It slammed into Jepp and lifted her up and over the far side.

  iv.

  For a moment, Graves was tempted to let nature take its course.

  There was no question that the human female was getting on his nerves with her incessant questions and her inability to respect the natural boundaries that should have come with his being a Traveler. He was accustomed to the strongest races of the Twelve recoiling from him whenever he was remotely in the vicinity. This human, this Mort, this “Jepp” should have been no different. Indeed, when his brethren had kidnapped her and presented her to him at the dock for transport, they had assured him that she would present no problems. That she was as easily malleable and weak-willed as any of her nearly extinct race, if not moreso.

  Something had happened. Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. He would have suspected a Changeling was involved somehow, if it weren’t for the fact that the Changeling race was still happily and contentedly in the Elserealms, looking down at the travails of the Banished and doubtless laughing their shapeshifting asses off. For some reason, the young woman who had stepped aboard the ship had become, in doing so, a very different creature than the one who had initially been carried off.

  Graves was beginning to think that the reason for it had to do with the kidnapping itself. By giving her that sort of attention they had elevated her opinion of herself. The very action of focusing on her served to give her a sense of importance in her own eyes. If they had just left her alone, then the chances were that nothing she would have gone on to say or do in her li
fe would have mattered in the least.

  But no. No, they had been compelled to seek her out, to take her away from her natural habitat of being a nobody. They had allowed her to get far too close, closer than any resident of the Damned World aside from the Overseer himself had gotten.

  And now it had come to this.

  Graves watched in horror as Jepp was knocked over the edge of the ship and vanished into the darkness. Despite the fact that every instinct was screaming at him, Let the bitch just drown already, he moved quickly to the side of the ship and looked down. Despite the hellacious situation that was surrounding him, he nevertheless sighed in relief.

  Jepp was clinging to the anchor. It had not been lowered during the storm; to have done so would have risked the ship being torn asunder. Better to ride out whatever buffeting the waves had in mind. There was the anchor on the side of the boat, and there was Jepp, her arms and legs wrapped around it. She looked like a drenched bat as she held on, the waves continuing to slam into her.

  Damn, but the girl is strong, thought Graves, impressed in spite of himself. He had grabbed a length of rope, tied it off to the mast, and had now lashed it around himself. The last thing he needed was to be washed overboard himself. If he’d had more rope, he would have lowered it down to her, but it was all he had on hand and he was more interested in securing himself than Jepp. Besides, she was still within arm’s length. He leaned over the side of the boat and stretched out his hand to her. “Come here, girl!” he shouted.

  “No!”

  “Don’t be afraid!”

  “I’m not afraid! The worst I can do is die, and I’ve been ready for that from the moment you took me away from Karsen!” She clutched the anchor with even greater ferocity. “Answer my question!”

  “I’m going to kill her,” he muttered. “I’m going to kill her, I’m going to kill the Overseer, watch my entire race die out, and then find a way to annihilate every living thing on this world before capping it off with a knife through my own skull. Nothing is worth this.”

  “Answer my quest—”