Ocean Of Fear (Book 6)

by William King

  They reached the ocean floor.

  He had been expecting the sort of flat sand that he remembered seeing when swimming underwater near a beach. This was more like flying above the slopes of the mountains in his native land of Aquilea. He supposed that an island was only a mountain whose peak had broken out above the surface of the waves.

  Shoals of fish shimmered into view, unlike anything he had seen closer to the surface. Some were very large and had jaws that could take off a limb as easily as a shark.

  “How do you know where we are going?” Kormak asked.

  There is something below us. Something very powerful. It broadcasts like a foghorn would to your ears, to my senses.

  “I can sense nothing,” Kormak said. “But I suppose that is hardly surprising.”

  You are lucky. It is a most disturbing presence. Like nothing I have ever encountered. It is something truly alien. Like a Quan but unlike one. It is very powerful and yet... She broke off as if struggling to express a concept she did not have the words for.

  It is no use. I cannot tell you exactly what it is about this thing that disturbs me so much. In any case, you’ll see it soon for yourself. We are almost there.

  He realised that they had not been following the ridgelines by accident. They were like men creeping through the hills, using the lay of the land to avoid being seen. He wondered if whatever it was down there perceived Rhiana the way she detected it. He began to wonder whether it had spotted him. Just because he could not sense something did not mean that the reverse was true.

  He shook his head, sending the light beam from the helmet skittering everywhere. A man could drive himself mad with such thoughts. He swam lower, skimming over the slopes, taking advantage of any cover that they provided. The lights provided by his armour and her jewel would make them visible to any watcher anyway so was all a bit pointless. Instinct kept him seeking concealment anyway.

  They breasted the ridge. Beneath them lay something gigantic. In places only shadowy outlines were visible. Other parts glowed with a luminescence of their own. It looked like the body of an enormous crustacean combined with that of the largest squid that had ever existed. It took a long moment for the scale of the thing to really sink in.

  It was bigger than a small town. One sweep of those tentacles could do more than sink a ship. It could smash a castle.

  “It’s a monster,” he said.

  It is a Leviathan. This time Kormak caught something of the wonder and terror in her tone. Horror and awe transfigured her face.

  Kormak hovered above the thing wondering what he could do against such a beast. A hundred war-engines throwing alchemical fire would barely make an impression on such a thing. He looked around to see if he could see any of the Quan.

  There was nothing, not even seaweed or any form of reef. Every living thing in the area gave the monster a wide berth.

  We need to get inside. The Leviathan was not just the Mother of the Quan, it was their home, a vessel in which they lived.

  This creature was a ship of sorts, a living engine. It was one thing to listen to tales about it. It was another to be confronted by the reality.

  What could have made it? Or had it been born and shaped by sorcery? It was easy to imagine something growing to this vast size in the depths of the ocean but how had it been fed? What was there in all creation that could provide prey for such a thing?

  It devoured life. It swept up everything in its path, the way a whale takes down krill. The Quan helped feed it. A portion of every life they took went to Leviathan. Or so the Elders taught me.

  Kormak imagined this giant sweeping through the depths, disgorging thousands of Quan to reave and slay. He imagined it birthing giant squids and other monsters. He had a brief vision of the wars of the elder world titans, the only ones who could stand against such a thing. He doubted anything in the world today could defeat this thing if it sprang to life.

  The Kraken means to wake Leviathan.

  “Now that is a frightening thought,” Kormak said.

  We had best see if we can stop it happening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THEY SWEPT OVER the drowned hillsides of the monster, passing above tentacles larger than the walls of some towns, heading towards the huge shell at the rear of the Leviathan.

  Nearness obscured the outline of the vast creature, made impossible to perceive in its entirety. Instead he noticed the components. Segmented tentacles, like the armoured bodies of massive worms, formed ridges along the sea bottom. The great carapace resembled the side of a mountain covered in luminescent algae. The edges measured twenty strides thick.

  Darkness shadowed a vast area where the shell had blistered and flowed. No algae glowed there. Kormak guessed they were swimming on the edges of the wound caused by whatever weapon Tritureon had used to defeat Leviathan. This huge crater was the result of that mighty stroke. He wondered at the power of something that capable of harming a creature the size of Leviathan. A surge of awe passed through him at the thought of its wielder. The Old Ones had fought wars on a scale near unimaginable to mortal men.

  All he could see of Rhiana was the faint bobbing glow of the green pearl. He followed in her wake, along with the dolphin, dropping into a cold shadow of the mountainous creature. Openings pitted the huge carapace. Up ahead lay one such grotto. A Quan emerged from within it.

  No black robes shrouded this one’s body. Its body expanded and contracted in pulses as it moved through the water. It hovered in the water, its glowing eyes fixed on him. His vision swirled and rippled as if a huge current swept through the ocean depths around him.

  Thousands of Quan spewed forth from hundreds of orifices in the Leviathan’s side. All of their eyes glowed with evil hunger and all of them swept towards him with deadly intent. These monsters were huge, their tentacles long and strong, their beaks sharp as a steel blade.

  His heart raced. His mouth went dry. He was going to die here, his armour shredded by this unstoppable army. He would drown while they feasted on his soul.

  Amid the flood of panicked thoughts a small part of him noticed how unusual this fear was, so much more intense than anything normal.

  From force of habit, he took a deep calming breath and reached for his blade.

  He envisioned an Elder Sign, recited the protective prayers he had learned on Mount Aethelas. The great horde of sea demons became wraith-like, all except one. It floated in front of him, reaching out with long muscular tentacles, intent on wrapping his helmeted head in an obscene caress.

  He drew his blade. With the resistance of the water it came clear of the scabbard more slowly than normal.

  It did not matter. Sharper by far than any razor, the blade sliced through the tentacle, sending it dropping to the sea bottom.

  A cloud of black ink swirled out from the Quan, obscuring the blood, making the monster invisible.

  He aimed at where the Quan had last been but hit nothing.

  He forced himself to advance through the inky murk, worried that if he used the armour’s full speed he would smash headlong into the side of the Leviathan and crack the faceplate.

  Every second he feared that a long tentacle would enwrap him from some unexpected direction. Visions of armies of translucent Quan still filled his mind. The fact that he saw them in the murk emphasised their unreality.

  The cloud thinned out. Ribbons of clear water gnawed at its edges. He emerged into the phosphorescent shadow of the Leviathan. Something strong and serpent-like looped around him, immobilising his sword arm.

  A heavy weight pressed against his back.

  Suckers attached themselves to the crystal of his faceplate, obscuring his vision.

  Fear returned, amplified by the fact that he was in the grip of his foe. He struggled with all his strength, trying to break the monster’s hold. The thing that he fought flexed but did not give way.

  The armour creaked. Panic clawed at him. If the Quan succeeded in damaging the armour…

  He twisted h
is legs, arched his back. The armour changed direction, heading for the wall of the Leviathan. He turned so that the Quan cushioned the shock of impact. Its body distorted from the pressure and its grip slackened on his sword arm. His blade bit into the Quan’s flesh. More inky stuff filled the water but this time it was blood. The dye reservoirs within the creature’s body must have been drained by its previous efforts.

  The Quan let him go and he twisted to lash out at it as it fled. His blade penetrated the creature’s eye and it ceased to move.

  Another Quan floated in the water. Rhiana hovered near it, along with her dolphin familiar. He caught the merest flicker of what was projected. The rituals that protected his mind against the Quan’s psychic attack made it impossible for him to hear her at this range. He did not care. He was not about to let himself become vulnerable once again.

  She swam over and placed her mouth against the crystal visor, a gesture of peculiar intimacy. “I am surprised you managed to fight at all. My foe almost overwhelmed me with its visions. That thing was very strong.”

  Kormak said, “Can you find the Kraken?”

  She shook her head. “Something is waking inside the Leviathan. I am guessing that if we head towards it, we will find him.”

  They swam into the grotto from which the Quan had emerged. Semi-translucent pods barnacled the walls. Within each huddled a Quan. All of the creatures’ eyes were closed and all of their limbs drooped within their integuments. Here was the army he had seen in his vision made flesh, if a way could be found to unleash them.

  As they swam through the long spiralling corridor, moving inwards, they passed hundreds and hundreds of the monsters. They were everywhere, on the walls, on the ceiling. Some of them were larger, some of them were smaller.

  “Are they sleeping?” Kormak asked. He relaxed his mental defences for a moment.

  Not sleeping. Waiting to be born.

  An image flickered through his mind. Of all those thousands of eyes opening at once. Of all those thousands of tentacles stretching out to enfold him.

  He felt a pressure in his mind, a sense of something vast and horrific waiting ahead of them. The lights intensified, slowly.

  The Leviathan is waking. The Kraken is rousing it.

  They emerged from a pool. Water streamed from Rhiana’s mouth. She coughed. The dolphin flipped itself into the air.

  The resistance of the water around Kormak vanished as he waded up onto the floor of air-filled chamber. Something sticky sucked at the boots. More of the Quan pods hung on the walls, but these ones looked dried out and dead.

  “What is this?” Kormak asked. His words reverberated inside the helmet and echoed around the cavernous chamber.

  “The air is breathable here,” Rhiana said. Kormak did not remove his helmet.

  They pushed on into the cavernous chamber filled with statues. Most of them depicted a creature partially human and partially Quan, with a squid-like head super-imposed on a web-footed and web-clawed humanoid body.

  Kormak studied their surroundings. “I believe these are the chambers of Dhagoth, grown out of the living flesh of the ship. Maybe the Leviathan filters air out of water the way that armoured suit does. Or like your gills.”

  “Why would an Old One need air?”

  “To work magic? To speak spells? Or for reasons we will never understand. They do not think like we do.”

  Kormak raised the visor of the ancient armour and sniffed. The air smelled fusty and damp. Something stank like rotten fish. It made him feel nauseous but he was still glad to feel the air on his face. He closed his eyes from moment and dismissed the image of the huge weight of water above his head. Standing inside this enclosed area, squinting into the odd luminescence created by the huge living organism, he felt further from safety than he ever had before.

  “Are you all right?” Rhiana asked. “You look a little strange.”

  Kormak grinned. “It’s this place that is strange. I am still trying to get my head around where we are and what we are doing here.”

  “Then you’d better do so quickly—you can’t go wandering around with your eyes closed in a place like this.”

  From force of habit Kormak’s hand moved to where his Elder Sign should have been. After so many years he felt naked without it. At least, he still had his sword. He glanced around the chamber and noticed cloth hangings, covered in delicate embroidery. They depicted scenes similar to the ones seen back in Triturek. These ones depicted the triumph of the Quan over their amphibian adversaries, showed them in positions suggestive of reverence floating around their human-bodied, squid-headed deity.

  “I don’t like this place,” Rhiana said.

  “That just shows you’re sensible,” Kormak replied.

  He inspected the tapestry. The weaving was intricate, the creation of more than human patience and skill. He had seen such work in other times and other places. It was very definitely the work of an Old One.

  He let go of the cloth. He was putting off their advance. He dreaded the prospect of meeting the Kraken.

  He squared his shoulders, touched the hilt of his blade and said, “Let’s go.”

  The corridor became even larger, the ceiling three times the height of a man. There was an organic quality to their surroundings. The walls were ridged as if ribs lay beneath. He reminded himself that he was not looking at stone but at the carapace or skeleton of a living thing.

  More of the Quan pods appeared on the walls but they looked flabby. The translucent membrane had collapsed. The things inside were decayed.

  “Are you sure we are going in the right direction,” Kormak said.

  “We are moving towards the strongest source of magic,” she said. “That will have to do.”

  The corridor emerged onto a balcony looking overlooking a massive cavern. Long ramps flowed down to the floor of the chamber. They had the same organic look as the rest of the internal architecture of the Leviathan.

  In the centre of the chamber the Kraken waited, standing beside something that resembled a cross between a coral reef and a human brain. Driven into its centre was a large gem that looked like the Teardrop of Leviathan only much larger.

  Mounted on the breastplate of the Kraken’s armour the Teardrop itself glowed with a brilliant light that was absorbed by the brain-like structure. It dimmed and brightened with a regular rhythm as stable as that of a heartbeat.

  “He’s using that gem to bring the Leviathan to wakefulness,” Rhiana said, her eyes wide with wonder and horror. The sorcerer gave them a mocking wave, welcoming them like old friends. In his hand the lightning rod Kormak remembered from the encounter in the pirate’s palace sparked.

  “You may as well come down,” the Kraken said. His voice filled the space, echoing through all the nooks and crannies within the chamber. “I’m glad to have somebody else here. You will be witnesses to the dawn of a new age. Hell, if you’re not too much trouble, I will even spare your lives.”

  Kormak wondered whether this was part of some scheme to delay them until his sorcery was complete. In any case, the Kraken’s invitation was not to be declined. It might give them a chance to get within striking distance without being blasted by a spell. Without his amulets he could do little to prevent that.

  Rhiana took the left hand ramp and Kormak took the right. At least that way they could not both be struck by the same spell.

  The glow of magic underlit the Kraken’s features. His lips drew back in a ghastly smile that made his face skull-like. The greenish luminescence of the gem reflected in his eyes so that they seemed to be lit from within by evil magic.

  He went on speaking, a man wanting to share his triumph. “It has taken me a lifetime to get to this place. You have no idea of the sacrifices I made.”

  Kormak said nothing. He did not want to break the spell of recollection that the sorcerer wove around himself.

  “Some of the sacrifices you made I knew,” Rhiana said. “My sister Mika, for one.”

  There was a world of
pain in her voice.

  The sorcerer laughed. “I won’t lie to you. I won’t tell you that I am sorry. I did what I needed to do to achieve my destiny.”

  “And what would that destiny be?” Rhiana said. “What was worth torturing and killing all those people?”

  “I am the rightful King of Siderea. I will have my throne. And once I have that throne I will lead Siderea into a new age of glory. You don’t understand what is happening here. You have no idea of the power that I am waking.”

  “You’re bringing the Leviathan out of its long sleep,” Rhiana said. The sorcerer nodded, a teacher showing approval to a student who would prove to be brighter than he expected.

  “Sleep is perhaps the wrong word. As is death. The Leviathan is in a state between the two. She no longer had the power to wake. She was crippled when Tritureon struck her with the stolen weapons of the Angels. The backlash drove her into a death-like slumber. She has had long strange aeons in which to heal.

  “Dhagoth trapped the Leviathan’s soul within the gem and bound her with pieces of resonant aether embedded in her hide, all slaved to the power of the Teardrop. Tritureon took the Teardrop as his spoils but he did not live long enough to enjoy them. The strain of using the forbidden weapons killed him not long after his hour of triumph. The secret of the Teardrop was preserved by Dhagoth’s priestesses, of whom my mother was the last. She knew that with it she could wake Leviathan and control her. That secret was her legacy to me and I will make the best use of it.

  “It will make me master of the world.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “YOU DON’T SERIOUSLY think you can control this monster?” Rhiana asked.

  “Dhagoth did. By means of these gems. My mother taught me the rituals. She had been studying these things her entire life. I only regret that she did not live to see me achieve this goal. She never quite recovered from the poisons that my father’s assassins used on her.”