The Skybound Sea

by Samuel Sykes

  There was a floor beneath him again, but it was sticky and writhing and reeking and shifting violently beneath him as the beast pulled back. He felt himself flying on a cloud of fine red mist, chased by a wailing, anguished howl across the sky that crashed into the sea behind him.

  He was aware only of the water pressing in around him, of the need to breathe. He tore through it, finding the surface. When he broke, it was with a wrenching gasp.

  Around him, the mist settled. The water lapped. The foam hissed and dissipated. Gentle sounds. Poor companions to the thunder of his heart and rasping of his breath.

  “Lenk!”

  The voice, too, was gentle and distant.

  “Lenk!”

  A poorer match to the sight he saw as he turned in the water and found Kataria, far away upon the ship, soaked to the bone and bow in hand. Her voice was far too soft for the frantic gestures she made.

  “GET OUT OF THE WATER, MORON!”

  That was more like it. Even better when he followed her pointing finger over his head and saw the great fin sweeping out of the mist and bearing down on him.

  “Hopeless” was the word that kept echoing in his head as he kicked and pulled against the water, flailing more than swimming toward the woefully distant ship. He didn’t have to see the shadow in the water behind him to know his escape was futile; Kataria’s arrows, flying over his head in a vain attempt to slow the beast, did that well enough.

  His body went numb with the effort, the exertion too much to keep going. He was tired, far too tired to scream when the water erupted in front of him.

  Gariath, for his part, didn’t seem to mind. He barely even seemed to notice the young man as his massive arms and wings began to work as one, pulling him through the water toward the ship. Lenk thought to cry out after him, had he the voice to do so.

  The sensation of a tail tightening as it wrapped about his ankle removed the need.

  He was pulled behind the dragonman, feeling rather like a piece of bait as his companion moved swiftly through the water despite the added weight. He sporadically bobbed up and down, gulping down frantic air and misplaced salt as he rose above and fell below the surface with each stroke of the dragonman’s arms. He tried to hold his breath, tried to shut his eyes.

  Because every time he opened them, he could see the gaping, toothy cavern of the Akaneed’s maw drawing closer, the vast column of its body lost in the depths behind it, the fire of its yellow eye burning as it bore down upon them. After the third time, he stopped trying to ignore it and simply waited to feel giant jaws sever him in half.

  As it was, he heard only the sound of them snapping shut. He was hauled violently from the water, sputtering and coughing as Gariath hauled himself and his frail cargo onto the ship.

  The dark shadow swept beneath them, the great wave following in its wake sending their vessel rocking violently beneath them as it vanished into the sea. Lenk strained to keep on his feet as the deck settled along with the sea, waiting for the beast to return.

  After a moment of silence, he dared to speak.

  “Is it gone?”

  “No,” Gariath replied.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because it hasn’t killed me yet.”

  While certain it made sense to Gariath, Lenk had neither nerve nor intent to ask him to explain. Instead, he looked to Kataria, breathing heavily and pulling wet hair from her face. She turned a wary and weary gaze upon him.

  “You all right?”

  “Relatively,” he muttered, sweeping an eye around the deck. “Did we lose anything?”

  “One of the bags of supplies.”

  “Which one?”

  “The big one.”

  “Oh, good. Just the one with all the food and the medicine, then.” He rubbed his neck, easing out an angry kink in his spine. “I assume we don’t need those. Not with your plan to guide us.”

  “For someone who wants to find an island no one knows the location of, you’re awfully picky about how we get there,” Kataria replied, glaring at him. “We’ve still got that.” She pointed to the spear, tangled amidst the rope upon the deck. “That’s all we need.”

  “Maybe it’s the concussion affecting my reasoning, but I can’t help but suspect that one needs slightly more than a rusty spear to kill a serpent the size of a tree.”

  “How would killing it help us?”

  His face screwed up. “I’d love to answer, but I don’t think I was prepared to hear anything quite that insane today.”

  “The fact that we are not trying to kill something is insane?”

  An unsettling question, he noted, one that would be far less unsettling had it not been accompanied by her stare. Eyes like arrowheads, hers jammed into his, hard and sharp and aimed at something he could not see in his own head.

  Something cold and cruel that didn’t want to be seen.

  “I need you to trust me.”

  “I can’t.” The answer came tumbling out on a hot breath, on his own voice and no one else’s. He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  “I know.”

  She flashed him a smile, something old and sick and full of tears. She walked toward him slowly, hands held up before her, as though she approached a frightened beast and not the man she had kissed, not the man she had betrayed.

  “I’m not going to apologize for it,” she said.

  “I don’t want apologies.”

  She was before him. He could feel her warmth through the chill of water. He could see her clearly through the haze of the fog. He could hear her. Only her.

  “Then let me give you what you want,” she whispered. “Lenk, I—”

  Her voice was drowned in the crash of waves and thunderous roar as the sea split apart before them. They cowered beneath the railing, a great wave sweeping over them and sending their vessel rocking violently. Lenk looked up and beheld only the writhing blue column of the creature’s body, the rest lost to the mist as he stared upward.

  And, like a single star in a dead sky, a yellow eye stared back at him.

  Absorbed as he might have been in the creature’s stare, Kataria shared no such fascination. He could hear her bow sing a mournful tune as she let an arrow fly into the fog, aiming for the eye.

  “The spear!” she screamed over her shoulder as she drew another arrow. “The spear! Hit it! Hit it now!”

  The deck trembled with Gariath’s charge, arm drawn back and splintering spear in hand as he rushed to the bow and hurled the weapon. It sailed through the air, rope whipping behind it before it bit into the beast’s hide with a thick squishing sound.

  Undeterred by the length of wood and rusted steel jutting from its hide, the beast began to crane toward them, the eye growing larger. A curse accompanied each wail of arrow as Kataria sent feathered shafts into the mist.

  And still, the beast came. Each breath brought it closer, taking shape in the wall of gray: the great crest of its fin, the jagged shape of its skull. Within three breaths, Lenk could almost count the individual teeth as its jaws slid out of the fog and gaped wide.

  He wondered almost idly, as he brought his impotent sliver of steel up before the cavernous maw, how many it would take to split him in half.

  If the answer came at all to him, it was lost in a fevered shriek of an arrow flying and the keening wail of a beast in pain. The missile struck beneath the beast’s eye, joining a small cluster of quivering shafts in the thin flesh of its eyelid.

  “Didn’t think I knew where I was shooting, did you?” Kataria shrieked, though to whom wasn’t clear. “Did you?”

  The Akaneed, at a distinct loss for replies that didn’t involve high-pitched, pained screeches, chose instead to leave the question unanswered. Its body tipped, falling into the ocean where it disappeared with a resounding splash.

  “See? See?” Kataria’s laughter had never been a particularly beautiful noise, though it had never grown quite as close to the sound of a mule as it did at that moment. “I told you it w
ould work! Damn thing’s not going to risk its only eye just to kill you.”

  “I should have killed it,” Gariath muttered, folding massive arms over massive chest. “It deserved better than you.”

  She sneered over her shoulder at him. “Maybe it just thought I was prettier.”

  “What …” Lenk had hoped to have something more colorful to say as he stared out over the waves, “what was that?”

  “That,” Kataria replied, “was the plan. To lure the thing out and then send it running. Any wounded animal will always flee to its lair.” Her ears shot up triumphantly. “In this case …”

  “Jaga,” Lenk finished for her. His eyebrows rose appreciatively. “That … almost makes sense.”

  “Almost?” she asked, ears drooping slightly.

  “Well, what was the spear for?”

  A faint whistling sound brought their attention to the rope sliding across the deck.

  “Oh, right.” She bent down, plucking up the rope and sturdying herself against the bow. “Pick that up.” She looked past Lenk to Gariath, “Mind grabbing the rudder? This is the part I didn’t really think out.”

  Lenk plucked up the thick rope. He opened his mouth to inquire but found reason to do so lacking. Everything became clear the moment he felt the tug on the rope and felt the boat move.

  Questions did tear themselves from his mouth, though: noisy ones, mostly wordless, mostly curse-filled. If any answers came back, he didn’t hear them, what with all the screaming.

  It was funny, he thought as he was jerked violently forward, but he had never before thought of arm sockets as a liability. As he was pulled from his feet and slammed upon the deck, though, he wondered if it might not have been easier if his arms had just been torn off and gone flying into the mist with the rest of the rope.

  That thought occurred to him roughly a moment after he skidded across the slick timbers to crash against the railings and a moment before instinct shouted down rational thought.

  Get up, it screamed. Get up!

  He did so, staggeringly. And even when he found purchase, it didn’t last long. Even as the vessel tore through the water, pulled along by its unwilling, bellowing beast, the deck slowly slid beneath his feet. He was dragged forward, skidding across the timbers until he came chest-to-back with Kataria.

  The shict stood her ground, bracing with her legs spread and feet firmly against the bow as she leaned back and held on tight. He slid into her stance as he collided with her, the rope slipping out of his hands briefly.

  She let out a sharp cry as she was jerked forward, looking as though the thing would pull her over at any moment. He snatched up the rope again, feeling it gnaw angrily at his palms as he struggled to regain his grip.

  “Hold on!” Kataria shrieked to be heard over the roar of waves beneath them and the bellowing of the Akaneed before them.

  “I am!” he cried back, seizing the rope and holding it tightly.

  “Hold on!” she screamed again.

  “I said I was!”

  “HOLD ON!”

  “That’s not as helpful as you might think!”

  “LEFT!”

  It became clear she was talking to Gariath about the same time it became clear that they were about to die.

  A great rock face, jagged and gray, came shooting out of the mist, seeming to have risen out of the very ocean just to stop them. It passed them with a breathless scream as Gariath snarled and jammed hard on the rudder, angling them out of the way and denying stony teeth a meal of more than a few splinters.

  More came out of the endless gray on stony howls and wordless whispers as they sped past, until it came to resemble less a sea and more a forest, with granite trees rising up around them in great, reaching number. Kataria continued to cry out commands, Gariath continued to grunt and to strain against the rudder.

  And in the shadows painted ashen against the mist, Lenk thought he could see things other than the stone faces. Great, man-shaped things that rose from the water and extended thick hands as if to ward off the mist. Thin, skeletal arms reaching out of the sea with tatters of flesh hanging from their knobby and broken fingers.

  What are those? He squinted his eyes to see more clearly. Masts? Ship masts?

  “Down!” Kataria shrieked as she fell to the deck.

  Yes, he thought as a yardarm yawned out of the fog directly in front of him and struck him squarely against the chin, ship masts.

  The rope tore itself from his grasp as his hands became concerned with the matter of checking to see how many pieces his jaw was in. One, fortunately, albeit one with a few splinters jutting from it.

  “Up,” a voice urged him through gritted teeth. “Up!”

  He looked to Kataria straining against the rope, barely holding on. He scrambled for it, but as he rose to his feet again, something stopped him from reasserting his grip.

  “Let go,” the voice whispered inside his head. “Let her fly. Let her die as she let you die.”

  “Lenk!” Kataria cried, pulling hard against the rope.

  “Let her go. Turn upon the other traitor.”

  “Lenk!”

  “Kill.”

  He began to miss the silence.

  And yet the voice was soft. His muscles were burning, his head was warm. He felt no chill. The voice didn’t command. It had seen her betray him, heard him call out to her, watched her turn her back on him. In some part of him, free from the voice, he wanted to let go.

  Such a flimsy thing, so weightless. It would be such a trifling matter to let go. And who could blame him?

  The voice did not repeat itself. It didn’t have to.

  The ship buckled under a sudden pull. She hauled herself backward. He felt her crash against him, felt her muscle press against his, felt her growl course from inside her to inside him.

  He felt her warmth.

  “I won’t let go,” she snarled, perhaps to him. “Not again.”

  She didn’t.

  Neither did he.

  Not that he wasn’t sorely tempted to as another great rock came shrieking soundlessly out of the fog.

  “Right,” Kataria screamed as the rock grew closer. “RIGHT!” She screamed as the ship drifted into its path. “GARIATH, YOU—”

  In a wail of wood, her curse was lost. The rocky teeth bit deeply into the vessel, smashing timbers and sending shards screaming. They cowered, but did not let go, holding onto the rope only narrowly keeping them from flying off in the haze of splinters and dust.

  When they cleared the rock, they had left the railing and most of the deck with it. Water began to rise up onto the deck as the boat shifted awkwardly with its new weight.

  “What the hell was that, Gariath?” Lenk cried over his shoulder. “She said ‘right!’ ”

  “I know,” the dragonman snarled, as he rose up and picked his way across the slippery deck. “I chose to go left.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve just been choosing which way to go on my own.”

  “Kataria’s been calling out—”

  The dragonman stopped beside him and held a hand up, the rudder’s handle clutched firmly in it … the rest of it somewhere else. Lenk looked up, bulging eyes sweeping from the shattered rudder to the violent mess that had once been the vessel’s stern. When he looked back to Gariath, the dragonman almost looked insulted.

  “Oh, like I’m not justified in ignoring her,” he snorted, tossing the useless hunk of wood overboard. His snort turned to a snarl as he reached out and seized the rope. “This was getting obnoxious, anyway.”

  His strength was all that allowed them to hold on as the vessel, without rudder or hope, went sweeping wildly across the sea. Rocks flew past them, some avoided, most not, each one claiming a piece of their ship.

  Yardarms and masts of dead ships cropped out of the water with increasing frequency. Statues of great robed figures rose up around them, hands outstretched before them. The mist began to thin, giving sight to something in the distance.

&nbs
p; Vast.

  Dark.

  Jaga, he thought. It worked. He could hardly believe it. Kataria actually managed to—

  He should have known better than to think that.

  Where the crop of rock had come from, he had no idea. Unlike its massive and braggart brothers, this one rose shyly out of the water, extending just its jagged brow above the surface as if to see what was going on.

  As it happened, that was more than enough to completely ruin everything.

  The boat all but disintegrated beneath their feet, the rope torn from their hands as they came to a sudden and angry stop. Three voices cried for it, six hands scrambled, trying to seize it, trying to seize anything but air as they went tumbling haplessly through the air alongside planks and splinters to crash into the water.

  What followed was a confusion of drowning voices, sputtering commands and flailing limbs all centered around a singular, urgent need.

  “Out!” Lenk cried. “Out of the water!”

  His vessel bobbing haplessly around him in pieces, his attentions became fixed on the distant outcropping of rock. It rose up from a base so jagged and insignificant, it might as well not be there. But he stood a better chance on land than he did flailing in the water.

  As good a chance as one typically stood against a colossal sea serpent, anyway.

  He kicked his way to the great pillar rising stoically out of the sea, scrambled around its base as he searched for a place to hoist himself up amidst the jagged rocks.

  And yet, he found no jagged rocks, no insubstantial footing. Slick, sturdy stone greeted his wandering grasp, a small landing, more than enough for a man to stand comfortably upon, grew out of the rock’s face. It was smooth, too smooth to be natural. Someone had carved it.

  He might have wondered who, if a clawed hand wrapping around his neck hadn’t instantly seized his attentions. Gariath didn’t seem to care, either, as he callously threw the young man out from the water and onto the landing. He hauled himself up afterward, spreading his wings and shaking his body, sending stinging droplets into Lenk’s eyes.

  “Watch it,” Lenk muttered.

  “If you said less stupid things, you’d have credibility to resent me when I called you stupid,” the dragonman replied crisply, folding his wings behind him.