by Alexis Hall
He made an odd burbling noise, the emotional timbre of which I was unable to discern. “I can go to three, what with you being a pair and all.”
“I will give you two rials, which you know is more than these beasts are worth, and I shall select them myself. This is my final offer.”
“Moonlight robbery is what it is, but I’ll take it.”
Ms. Haas handed the gentleman his payment and, in return, he gave her the two small grey tablets that we would need to take in order to destroy the worms before they took control of our minds entirely. Then she spent some time considering, and poking at, the contents of the barrel before plucking out two of the slick, eel-like creatures and transferring them into an oilskin bag.
Our next order of business was the commissioning of a submersible, a task that would prove somewhat more straightforward, as Ms. Haas appeared to be on quite familiar terms with the captain whose services we eventually engaged. The gentleman in question went by the unlikely name of Saltpetre, and his dress and manner were no less outlandish than his moniker. He was clad in rough and dusty leathers of a design I had never seen before, and his face was concealed partly by a set of aviator’s goggles and partly by a pattern of intricately inked tattoos. His vessel was distinctive even amongst the idiosyncratic craft of the submariners in that it appeared to lack a name and several aspects of its design suggested that it had been intended to function amphibiously. Of greater concern was the vehicle’s obvious state of disrepair. Its armour was scored and shell-marked, and its hatches—although they appeared watertight—were mottled with altogether too much rust to inspire confidence.
As our pilot set about his preparations for departure, I took the opportunity to draw Ms. Haas aside and convey, with as much discretion as could be managed, the extent of my reservations.
“Your point is well made, Mr. Wyndham,” returned Ms. Haas, as she idly checked the action on her harpoon gun. “But our options are limited. Few captains will venture into the deeper reaches of Ven, and fewer still can be trusted.”
“You trust this . . . this”—my descriptive powers failed me—“personage, then?”
“Insofar as I would trust anybody in his line of work. We have travelled together before and he has conveniently few ties in the city. Half the pilots on the docks are in the pay of some power or other and while Saltpetre has his own loyalties they are not relevant to our present endeavour.”
“If I might ask, to what are they relevant?”
“To a conflict that shall not take place for approximately eighty-four thousand years.”
And, with that, she climbed nimbly up the side of the submersible and disappeared inside. I followed, still uncertain but undeniably curious; a state of mind that, alongside abject terror and absolute bewilderment, would come to characterise a significant fraction of my acquaintance with the sorceress Shaharazad Haas.
A few moments later, we were joined by Mr. Saltpetre, who dropped through the hatch with a certain feral agility and slammed it closed behind him. He elbowed me out of the way and took his place in the one available seat—a tattered chair, surrounded by a disorderly array of dials, switches, levers, and wheels. These he operated in some arcane sequence, causing the whole machine to shudder tumultuously into life. I was conscious of a sensation of motion and we began our descent.
Whatever strange energy animated the vehicle had bathed the interior in a sickly green light that appeared to emanate from a dusty glass jar set into one wall. While I was glad not to be in total darkness, the scene it illuminated was far from prepossessing. Between the metal tubes and the humming boxes and the devices that scribbled undecipherable data onto ever-unspooling rolls of paper there was barely room to think, let alone to stand. There could be no doubt that the vehicle into which we had sealed ourselves was primarily military in function, for I had seen similar machines in my time at the Unending Gate. Some swam, some crawled, and some flew, but all were designed for the same purpose—to ensure that death came sooner to one’s enemies than to oneself. In truth, I was not entirely delighted to find myself within one again, although I was able to bear the experience without complaint.
Once the engines had been primed and the course set, Mr. Saltpetre turned to address us. His accent was not one I had heard before, and his voice gruff and throaty, but I have done my best to capture the gist of his speech here.
“Okay, Shaz, Shaz’s mate,” he said, “we’re running low, and as quiet as this bucket of bolts can get. We’re going to have to go the long way round the pearl farms, steering clear of the Colossus and the Coral Towers. We’ll take a shortcut through the Unremembered Gardens and I should have you in Keeper’s Shallows within the hour. When we get there, you’ll need to hop into the torpedo tubes, and remember to swallow your worms before you get fired out, or you’ll probably drown. If you’re not back at the boat by dawn, I’ll assume you’re dead and leave without you.”
He did not say “leave.” He used an idiomatic phrase ending with the word “off” that I am certain my gentle readers shall not have heard.
The journey itself was uncomfortable but uneventful, and we passed it mostly in silence. When Mr. Saltpetre indicated that we had arrived at our destination, Ms. Haas passed me one of the creatures that she had purchased earlier in the evening. I had never used a Surfeiting Worm before, as I had always restricted myself to the aerated sectors of Ven, but I was familiar with the principles of their use.
The Surfeiting Worm is, from a scientific perspective, a remarkable entity. The product of millennia of careful breeding and sorcerous manipulation, it enters through the mouth and crawls into the trachea, where it secretes certain chemicals that permit it to interface with the host’s lungs, larynx, and central nervous system. A form of mystical hybridisation then occurs, permitting the user to filter life-giving airs from the water, much as a fish or eel would, and also to communicate with other worm-users and subaquatic entities, the creature’s tail supplanting some of the functions of the user’s own tongue. Regardless of the academically fascinating opportunity before me, I confess that, holding the animal in my hand, long, lithe, and wriggling as it was, I did not relish the prospect of giving it access to my person. Nevertheless it was, for the sake of our client, necessary that I do so.
I shall spare the reader a precise description of how it felt to have the worm squeeze its way down my windpipe and infiltrate itself securely into my bronchial tubes. There was a brief sensation of choking and a strange awareness of alien thoughts impinging gently against my own. Should you ever visit the great city of Khelathra-Ven and feel the need to explore the sunken ruins of Ven you may perhaps have cause to make use of the worm yourself. I would be remiss in my duty as a chronicler of adventures were I not to remind you of the paramount importance of selecting a healthy specimen from an accredited wormerer and of being certain to take the exfiltrating toxin as soon as your work under the sea is concluded, lest the creature solidify its hold on your nervous system and suborn your brain for its own inscrutable purposes.
I hunkered down into the torpedo tube and waited for Mr. Saltpetre to fire.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Eternal Empire of Ven
Before I proceed with the central thrust of my narrative, it behooves me to ensure that the reader has an adequate understanding of the history behind the lost and marvellous place to which we now journeyed. My editor is not in agreement with me on this matter and has requested on several occasions that I excise these elucidating passages in favour of scenes of a more sensational or salacious nature. For those amongst you who share my editor’s predilections, please rest assured that following this necessary digression there shall be a sequence in which we fight a shark, another in which we are suspected of murder, and a third in which we are drawn into intercourse with several members of the city’s vile criminal underworld.
Any exegesis on the history of Ven must inevitably begin with an acknowledg
ement that the vast gulf of history between the collapse of its empire and the present day, combined with the extratemporal nature of both that realm and the enemy which ultimately destroyed it, makes all historical speculation circumspect. Much has been written on the subject, and very little agreed. My somewhat biased opinion is that the most reliable authority on the matter is Professor J. R. Donahue-Kishen, with whom I was acquainted at university, who has made this subject zir life’s work, and of whose researches I have made liberal use in the following passages.
For those who would prefer to “skip straight to the action,” as my editor puts it, you need only know the following: that Ven was once the heart of a mighty empire that stretched across time and space, that the empire was destroyed by a terrible enemy, and that it has since sunk beneath the waves. You may now turn to the beginning of the next chapter, in which Ms. Haas and I fight a shark, although if you are reading this in the serialised edition you shall be forced to wait until next month’s instalment of The Strait magazine to hear of this diverting incident. For the remainder of my readers, I present my inadequate summary of the decline and fall of the Eternal Empire of Ven. Should you wish to read more on this subject, I direct you to Professor Donahue-Kishen’s excellent treatise The Eternal Empire of Ven: An Analysis of Its Origins, Descent, Dominion, and Destruction, presented in detail, and illustrated with woodcarvings by Lady Quinella Thrumpmusket.
The Eternal Empire of Ven was so named because its provinces and colonies extended not only across the known world but to distant stars, distant galaxies, distant realities, and even distant times. At the height of its power, a Vennish Lord could reach out his, her, their, or zir hand and pluck fruit from the crystal trees that grew on the mountains of burning wax at the dawn of all creation and then cast the pit into the great and sucking void that shall swallow the cosmos at the end of all things.
During their ascendancy there existed no army, no nation, no world, and no god that could challenge the Eternal Lords of Ven and this fact may, at the end, have proved their undoing. Having achieved dominion over everything that was, they turned their attention to that which was not. To the uncountable infinities encompassed by the antiworlds and unlands ruled over by the Empress of Nothing, that terrible mistress of all that never was, nor would never be.
Where the real had bent easily to their arcane technologies and limitless magics, the unreal legions of the Empress of Nothing were an enemy beyond reckoning. They unmade the patterns that bound the empire together, unmooring the Eternal Lords of Ven from time itself and consuming their works in water or fire or oblivion. The great nexus city itself crashed beneath the waves and was drowned, its masters imprisoned within their towers, where they remain, their once boundless power folded in upon itself into a fragile, local omnipotence. As the millennia passed, the seas changed them, and they the seas.
Over time other creatures from the fathomless depths of the oceans have crawled or swum or slunk into the ruins of Ven, and scholars are divided as to whether these beings are intruders who the Eternal Lords tolerate or if, from within their Coral Towers, the once- mighty sorcerers have reached out and gathered about themselves new subjects and new servants. A tiny datum in support of the latter interpretation is that when the Eternal Lords made their overtures to the Council of Interested Parties during the secession of Khelathra from the Uthmani Sultanate their interests were represented by one of the piscine hybrids now native to the strait.
Today surfacers venture into Ven to view its unique sights, to indulge in certain vices that I shall not name, to trade in pearls and other, more esoteric materials, and to access some of the remote pathways that connect the underwater city to distant realities. Occasionally somebody from the upper city will be permitted audience with one of the Eternal Lords and will often take this opportunity to negotiate for access to or even the creation of a specific gateway. Such encounters abound with both opportunity and danger, for while the masters of Ven are not easily stirred to action, once roused, their capacity to offer aid or injury to those who catch their eye is near limitless.
Persistent rumour holds that an emissary from one of the Ubiquitous Companies once slighted a Vennish Lord by the name of Nine Opals. The individual in question worked for the Ubiquitous Company of Skrive Makers. That nobody now knows what a skrive is, or what any such thing may ever have been, or what purpose manufacturers of such things may have had in negotiating with an Eternal Lord, but everybody nonetheless agrees that this was, indeed, the name of the company may serve to illustrate quite how absolute is the peril one faces when trifling with matters Vennish.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Keeper’s Shallows
I emerged from the torpedo tube with such velocity that I did not notice the shark until we had already collided. It was a large specimen, of Carcharodon marvosi, a terrible and justly reviled predator once native to the planet Marvos before the industrial excesses of that world’s people drained its oceans and scoured its lands into a red desert.
Underwater combat had not formed part of my training with the Company of Strangers, but I had, on occasion, been called upon to defend myself in environments that lacked air or gravity and so I was not entirely without resources when the voracious beast rounded upon me, its mouth wide and displaying countless rows of razor-like teeth. In such a circumstance the instinct to flee can prove both overwhelming and fatal. Large hunting animals will naturally pursue anything that attempts to evade them. I did my best, therefore, to remain calm and resolved, where possible, to answer aggression with aggression. I did my best to strike it a forceful blow upon the nose as I often read of people doing in adventure stories, but the drag of the water, combined with the infelicitous angle, meant that I did little but graze my knuckles on the edge of its snout. If I wished to put the monster to flight, I would need more precisely to target its areas of vulnerability.
I was, in this respect, fortunate to be so close to the beast, since its bulk—roughly equivalent to that of a locomotive carriage—was such that it had difficulty manoeuvring round in order to bring its jaws to bear. Thus, I was afforded the opportunity to dig my fingers into its gill slits as it passed, my twofold aim being to discommode the creature enough that it might retreat and, failing that, to give myself some purchase whereby I might hold my body out of its reach. I soon learned, to my dismay, that the skin of a Great Marvosi Shark has more in common with scree or shale than with the soft epidermis of more wholesome animals, and I fear I cut my palms rather badly.
My stratagem nevertheless proved partially successful in that I was most certainly able to excite the shark, and was momentarily able to keep it from either devouring or dismembering me. Regrettably, the creature soon pulled itself free of my grip, taking more skin from my fingertips with it, my blood curling through the water in dark red wisps. As I sought in vain for some form of shelter, the dreadful fish circled around for a second attack. I was, in this moment, conscious that I might very shortly die and was, in all candour, quite sanguine about the fact. My encounter in the Mocking Realm had haunted and disturbed me, for it represented something quite beyond my prior experience. A mere gargantuan killing machine, by contrast, was an eminently comprehensible danger and my time at the Unending Gate had quite inured me to the risk of impending annihilation.
It was some comfort to me that the shark seemed at least a little cautious about coming for me again. I had, if nothing else, given it something to think about. And this hesitation perhaps saved my life, for it allowed my companion, the sorceress Shaharazad Haas, to swim into a position of vantage, take aim, and loose her harpoon into the creature’s left eye. I am relatively certain that sharks are, under normal circumstances, silent, but, owing to my peculiar, and hopefully temporary, symbiosis with the Surfeiting Worm I distinctly heard what sounded like a scream of pain as my erstwhile attacker thrashed about in an ever-growing cloud of its own blood and humours.
Perhaps deciding that easier prey lay els
ewhere, the shark turned away and slunk off through the murky depths. I watched it depart with a sense of mingled relief and wonder. Now that it was no longer attempting to do me harm I was able, briefly, to appreciate it for the marvellous specimen that it was—a study in grace and ferocity that seemed to embody the indomitable spirit of Marvos.
Ms. Haas, meanwhile, reached into her bandolier and reloaded her weapon. “Well handled, Mr. Wyndham. I have had several companions eaten by sharks in similar circumstances, and I’m sure at least three of them would be alive today had they shown your wherewithal.”
I was somewhat at a loss as to how to reply to this. While it was always gratifying to have one’s competencies acknowledged, I could not help but wonder about the fates of those other unfortunates. I settled on, “Thank you, Ms. Haas.”
“Now come along.” She executed a flawless subaquatic somersault and began swimming downwards.
Our ultimate destination was an overgrown ruin, a once-splendid quarter of Ven fallen long ago to rubble and rebuilt in the intervening years into a haphazard, many-tiered shanty. I trusted that my companion had at least some inkling of the location of our quarry as we made our way through twisting corridors of ancient stone and rotting driftwood, past the tarnished hulls of steamships and starships, and deeper still into tunnels with walls neither concave nor convex, and slick with luminescent algae.
My companion paused by a primitive statue of some bloated, blasphemous deity. “You know, I really should have written down his address. Non-euclidean street maps can be so difficult to navigate.”
“Forgive me for asking, but are we lost?”
“A sorceress is never lost. However, on occasion, her path will show her vistas unfamiliar to her conscious mind.”
“How is that different?”