by Ashley Capes
The walker did not falter, simply striding on, tearing the blade from Ain’s grip.
“Sands take you,” Ain cried, diving after the thing. He hit at the waist, dragging the corpse down. His head smacked against the walker’s back. Blood welled in his mouth – he’d bitten his lip.
Ain grasped for his sword, wrenching it free before the creature could find its feet. He swung down, aiming at the neck. Steel met dead flesh and the head rolled free. Like the hand, no blood followed. The body was still. Ain knelt beside the head, nudging it face-up with his blade.
Sand peppered the man’s face but cactus filled the eye-sockets, bulging forth. Ain shuddered. The plant had even taken the place of the man’s tongue, green visible in the gaping mouth. A tendril curled from an ear.
Who or what could create such creatures? The dark magic of Vinezi and Marinus was gone – and so were the darklings. Wasn’t that enough? If there was a connection, or if something new had risen, then the Cloud had to be warned.
Ain stood – and something caught him from behind. Strong arms wrapped around his throat, squeezing. He dropped his blade, clawing at his captor. Yet whoever held him did not react. Ain’s fingernails tore into skin but it had no effect, bright white lights were sweeping in.
His chest tightened.
Darkness.
9. Notch
The taste of brine was heavy on the spray where it slashed at Notch.
He sat near the masthead, waves breaking across the Hawk’s prow, sun beating down from the spotless sky. The silver bracers taken from the catacombs were still hidden beneath his sleeves, but he had not seen the white witch since – nor had he felt any sense of her in the bite marks in his neck. The bites were only starting to fade now, four weeks after Melosi had set sail once more for the Land of the Sun’s shoreline ‒ the final leg of their journey. There, according to Alosus, they’d reach the crown of Ecsoli, the King City Paradisum. The way he’d said it left no doubt in Notch’s mind what the Tonitora thought of the idea that the place was any sort of paradise.
Before then, Notch had hoped to unlock the secret of the bracers. The carven lion revealed no clues. A clear symbol for strength, but what else did it represent? The warning from the witch rang in his memory. Be careful with those bracers; they might change you in ways you find alarming. But what did that mean? They had not changed him so far, had not granted strength, speed, or any manner of mastery. They simply existed.
A cry echoed down from the lookout.
The man in the crow’s nest pointed west, his arm like a black stick against the sky, sun beaming behind him.
Still distant, an eruption of water speared into the sky. The spout shimmered beneath the sun as it disintegrated. It was difficult to judge accurately, but the height suggested a mighty explosion... nothing any whale might create. Notch spun to the bridge. The helmsman was already shouting for Melosi, and Gappilo stood at the rail, his own spyglass raised.
“It shimmers more than it should for water alone.”
Notch joined him as other members of the crew appeared.
By the time Melosi and Alosus arrived, the sea had settled but the glittering waves were rolling, spreading outward. But before the disturbance hit the ship, another shining geyser surged into the sky. It was close enough to rock the Hawk. Notch gripped the rail with a shudder. Something dark and immense had passed below – he couldn’t explain how he was sure beyond a glimpse in the water, it was more a sensation. And it chilled him; reminded him just how insignificant he really was.
“Eyes above,” Melosi shouted.
Glittering shapes were hurtling down from the spout.
Notch leapt back. Something bright smashed into the rail. He crouched beside two water barrels as someone cried out in pain. Shining objects continued to fall, even as the spout died away. One piece tore a hole in the mainsail, another smashed through the decking – but far more were bouncing from the decks like hail stones. Yet others appeared to flutter down ‒ glimmering, rainbow-coloured shards.
One bounced across the decks to settle nearby. He scooped it up.
A scale.
Hand-sized and a finger’s-width in thickness, the surface was hard, like iron but with a pearlescent sheen. More like an opal. Beautiful. But how, and from where? Notch stood. Other crew members were nursing bruises or climbing the rigging to examine holes and tears in the sails. Yet more, including Melosi, examined the scales themselves.
After a moment, the captain’s head snapped up. “Collect each and every scale.”
“Do you think they’re valuable, Cap?” Gappilo asked, hefting one of the larger pieces.
“I mean to find out,” Melosi said with a grin. “Repairs next. I want to know what damage we’ve taken. And someone wake Tersi. Send him to my quarters.”
Notch joined Melosi at the bridge. The captain was staring across the waves, toward the direction the vast shadow had disappeared. “Did you feel it?”
The man frowned. “Feel what?”
“You did. Something colossal... passed beneath us – it was probably responsible for the scales bursting into the air.”
He sighed. “I fear another Sea Beast. But not a word of it to my men, understood?”
“If they’re already thinking so, they’re not speaking of it.”
“Aye,” he said. “And that’s just how I’d prefer it, so we’ll finish this in my cabin.”
Notch set off, waking Alosus and gathering in the captain’s cabin with Tersi and Gappilo. They crowded around the captain’s table, charts burying the surface, weights and tiny skulls holding them down. Marlosi lifted a chart only thinly drawn.
“By the calculations we’ve made from information Alosus has given us, I estimate we’ll reach the shores of Ecsoli by sunset. There we will fly a peaceable flag and await whatever response follows.”
Alosus nodded. “I will help prepare the message.”
“Assuming we have a chance to share it,” Gappilo said. “A land full of Greatmasks... I still worry about that.”
“I believe that is a small risk,” Alosus said. “We will draw much curiosity and that will stay the hand of even the most rash of Ecsoli.”
“And the shadow in the sea?” Notch asked.
Marlosi looked to Tersi, who shrugged and spread his hands. “I will be ready to sing if it returns... and if it truly is another Sea Beast, of which I cannot be certain, I will be ready for that too.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Notch said. If Tersi was as powerful as his father he’d be able to soothe any Sea Beast with his songs.
“So there’s little else to do but rest now,” Marlosi said. “I want you each alert when we dock. I’d wager this is the greatest risk any of us has taken and I don’t want any mistakes. Understood?”
Notch returned to his cabin and lay across his hammock, ignoring the clink of empty glass against glass in his pack, and closed his eyes.
When he woke, it was to the sound of feet thumping across boards.
Trouble? He rose and left, checking on Alosus, finding the man’s own large hammock empty. Notch paused. There was no shouting or cries of alarm. Had they reached Paradisum already? “Another step closer, Sofia.” He left the cabin and climbed the ladder, emerging into cool evening air. Orange light dusted the boards of the Hawk and once more, hushed murmuring came from men lining the rail.
This time they stared across at Paradisum.
Notch joined Alosus.
The King City was a nation unto itself. Glittering walls stretched along a shoreline that had to have been five times that of Anaskar. And the walls themselves, some manner of precious stone caught the light and set a soft orange flame running along them.
A crowd of masts and sails filled the harbour – again, far, far larger than home, but it wasn’t the maze of ships that kept him speechless but the way the city kept rising... thousands upon thousands of people had to live within. More. Tens of thousands even.
And atop it all, what he took to be th
e palace – a place that seemed to sneer down on the rest of the city. An enormous lion’s maw admitted entry and domed rooms cascaded down in a mane on either side of the entry. Giant windows made for blazing eyes of pure white light and above the eyes sat what appeared to be a vast viewing platform, resting at the peak of the mane.
“It is enormous,” Notch said. “And even that seems like a small word.”
“Yes. A world of the deepest corruption and parades of despair,” Alosus replied.
He glanced up to the big man. “No need to make it sound so good.”
A wry smile. “Very well, Notch. Let me say this then, from the moment we dock we will be very much alone in a nest full of vipers.”
“That’s not much better.”
He nodded.
10. Nia
Nia knelt beside the body.
The warm scent of pollen and the sharp chatter of waxwings filled the forest clearing, sunlight falling freely across the ragged collection of bones and blackened cloth. There was no skin or flesh to speak of, merely the gaunt suggestion of the former ‒ a murky green, an ancient rot. Hanging around the neck was an ivory carving shaped as an arrow-head.
She did not remove her glove to reach for it, to be sure, for she did not need to – yet a sigh still escaped.
“Then it’s true?” Lord Protector Danillo stood behind her in his red Mascare robes, his voice echoing from behind the Greatmask Argeon. His presence was stern, even forceful and it seemed to her that such qualities were innate to the man and only amplified by his mask of power. He was taller than she remembered which was saying almost nothing, since her memory was still a thing of patchwork even now, months after her recovery. But Father had expected as much, warned her it might be so. Yet sometimes, a mere moment before her eyes registered Danillo, an image of him as somewhat shorter appeared, only to flicker away. It happened with other people, other places too.
She stood. “Yes. The skeleton bears an ivory arrow-head, just like in the old stories.”
“Not stories, Nia. Both our peoples died to stop the Ulag Clan.”
“Of course.” She shrugged. “But this is no new Ulag; it has obviously been dead for centuries.”
Argeon glowed, a flicker of blue in the dark eye-sockets. “Preserved in the marsh beyond the ruins, perhaps. And so the question is, how did it come to be here?”
“A twisted idea of a joke?” she asked. But it didn’t seem likely.
Danillo shook his head. “No. This... thing pulled itself from the grave.”
Nia nudged it with the toe of her boot. “This sorry heap of bones?”
“With help. I fear you do not recall the darklings, they were most active after you and Notch defeated Efran but before the Oyn-Dir restored you.”
“I see.” Notch. The name was familiar, yet no face came to mind, no memories attached to the name when she heard it – and she’d heard so many speak of Notch since awakening in the cold stone of Father’s cavern. He’d saved her yet Notch had become another missing piece of her memory, so little remained of the time immediately before and around her supposed defence of her people... it was past time for them to return.
Danillo continued, explaining the darklings. “Though this is a little different, since it’s not so much reconstitution as whole reanimation. Who saw it walking?”
“Silvya. She’s part of the group helping tend the groves. She said it was coming from the direction of the river.”
“I’d like to speak with her.”
“Of course.” Nia led him away, circling the amber groves, beautiful and deadly as they were, and to low stone buildings with their leaf-stained rooves that had once housed Efran’s Sap-Born. Yet of all those that had given themselves over to the strange magic, few remained. Father had one prisoner, a sullen young man who was being kept for study. The others had long-since fled, though trackers were hunting them throughout the forests.
Inside the common room, Nia searched the tables for Silvya – finding her by her bobbed hair and cheery laughter. “Let me introduce you,” Nia said, waving to the younger woman.
“Can you tell me exactly what you saw?” Danillo asked after the introductions were done.
Her cheerful expression faded. “I can. It was nearing dusk and I was gathering my tools when I saw the figure approaching from the south. It wasn’t moving very easily. I called out, in case they needed help but when I came close enough to see how thin it was...”
“And it collapsed by itself?”
“Yes. Like whatever dark force driving it had been spent.”
“And you saw no-one else?”
She shook her head. “No, but we followed its trail far enough to guess it came from the Wilds.”
“Its trail?” Danillo asked.
“Not footprints, more... pieces of itself.”
He nodded. “And at the edge of the Wilds?”
“That’s why I asked Lady Nia to send for someone from the North,” Silvya said.
“The bone altar I mentioned,” Nia added.
Silvya shuddered. “Everybody is trying not to talk about it. They think the Ulag are going to return.”
“In such a remarkably unlikely event, you would have the might of Anaskar on your side,” The Lord Protector said. “Thank you for talking to me.” To Nia he said, “If there is enough daylight, I would like to see the altar before I depart.”
“If we travel swiftly. The horses are nearby,” she said.
Outside, they took mounts from the stable then started along the southern path, bypassing the trail that led to the site of the old slave buildings, which had been burnt to the ground, and started toward the Sarough River. Dappled light fell across the path and the loam muffled the hooves.
At the silver banks of the river Nia turned them south along an overgrown trail. Once, it had been a highway to the coast farther south, or the ruins of the watchtowers in the south east – but now it was a path of buried stone, shoulder-high thistles with vibrant purple flowers. Clumps of spiky weed and ancient fences overcome by age and rampaging blackberries that stood like deep green walls – a lost land.
For after the Ulag were defeated, centuries past, all trace of their settlements were destroyed – though all was an exaggeration. She’d travelled the Wilds in the past, searching for something she couldn’t remember anymore, but she did recall coming across the occasional weapon and once, a bone horn. Deeper into the wilds, where the trees were twisted and black with leaves of crimson and brown, there lurked hints of homes. A wall and a half here, an arch there, sometimes a crumbling chimney slowly being dragged to the ground by vines and ivy.
Nothing she’d cared to examine in any detail.
“What do you think is happening?” Nia asked when they stopped to eat some brown bread and cheese.
Danillo replaced the lid of his flask. “I do not know for certain. Argeon shares ideas, fragments with me. There is something stirring – or something that has been stirring for some time. Does it bring these unnatural things up with it, like the Ulag corpse or the darklings? Before, it was easy to consider Vinezi and Marinus as driving most of the events but every day after that struggle, I have monitored the fragments Argeon gives me and I suspect something greater at play. Something that can conceal its activities even from Argeon.”
“You make it sound like some fell God.”
“Perhaps. There is much unknown about our own past, our own world.”
“But someone human made the altar.”
“Indeed.”
“Good, because I don’t want to have to protect my people from a God.”
“An unenviable task,” he said, and it seemed he was smiling by the tone of his voice.
“There’s still too many unanswered questions,” she said. “Why only one Ulag?”
“Agreed. And why send it north, only for it to collapse in the grove – presumably before it achieved its purpose?”
Nia glanced around at the uneven earth. The ground was littered with dips and mounds
, small hills between the stands of trees and rolling patches of blackberry and occasional pools of stagnant water. It could have been a verdant plain. “Many of the mounds are burial mounds. Half of the Wilds are a grave for your people and mine. And the Ulag.” She paused. “Which is only to say that whoever sent the corpse had no shortage of bodies to choose from.”
They rode on but did not have to travel too much further to reach the altar site. A hill rose up beside the road, a cleft around the back led inside to darkness.
“Easy enough to find,” Danillo said as he dismounted. “Even without a trail – though I suppose few come here anymore.”
“We felt the same. Father wonders if it isn’t too easy?”
“A prudent concern,” Danillo said. “But I sense no danger – no bones of any living creature that would do us harm nearby. If it is a trap to lure us in, it is not an obvious one. Perhaps it is, rather, an opening gambit. Something to get your attention – or, something to create a more potent adversary than any with sword or bow.”
“Such as?”
“Fear,” he said. “It had not taken hold in the grove, but you heard Silvya mention that people are already talking about it. Lend too much credence to a wild fancy and it takes on its own power.”
“The Ulag are not coming back,” Nia said, her voice firm. If her recent memories were merely sketches or absent altogether, there was nothing wrong with her memories of horrific stories told of the Ulag – the worst being the claim that the raiders stole children to cook within giant cauldrons in their ceaseless ships.
“A truth I hope to reassure everyone of when we return,” he said as he pulled a lantern from his saddlebags. He lit it and led the way into the barrow.
The scent of earth lay strong within, a welcome scent; Nia breathed in deep as she stooped before entering a large, open cave. Danillo lifted the lantern and light spread around the earthen walls, tendrils of root systems hanging down like pale fingers. Beneath, the bone altar waited; yellowed with age and smeared with dried mud.
It was a complex creation. The base had been set in a triangle; it looked to be made of human thigh bones and other large pieces. It rose up in tiers with successively shorter pieces, until at the top, no higher than Nia’s chest, stood a headpiece: a blossoming rose of bone.