by D. P. Prior
“Head for the sea?” Weasel suggested with a shrug.
Nameless strained to hear the lapping of the waves. It was there, sure enough, away to the right, but another sound almost obscured it: a sound he’d first dismissed as the pounding of blood in his ears.
“What the shog is that?” Shadrak said, listening attentively.
It could have been a distant earthquake, except it was too regular, too rhythmic: deep rumbles that sent answering tremors through the hull they stood upon.
That wasn’t the only sound. In among it was the roar of storm winds gathering, syncopated like martial drums. And beneath that, the sizzling rush of molten metal, same as from the foundries. Or was it the rasping exhalation of some monstrous beast?
“It’s all around us,” Shadrak said, fingers stroking the handles of his flintlocks.
“This way.” Nameless headed toward the almost subliminal rush of the surf.
Their footfalls clanged and echoed across the surface of the plane ship, but Nameless put speed ahead of stealth. His feeling of anticipation had swelled into a clump of dread, not just for the dwarves of Arnoch, but for himself and his three companions. If only he could see more than a dozen yards in any direction. If only there were some way to gauge the threat.
Paxy’s twin blades exuded a soft golden glow that limned the clouded darkness. As if she sensed Nameless’s burgeoning fear, she suddenly flared incandescent, and projected a beam of light through the fog.
Nameless started to run, and behind him, he heard Weasel panting to keep up.
The plane ship’s hull began to rise in slopes and steps that took them into denser clouds of smoke. The air smelled rotten, of eggs or sulfur, and it was laced with the metallic scent of ozone you got after a thunderstorm.
He had to slow due to the burning in his lungs, the need to cough. Behind him, Weasel was hacking and gasping for every breath. Nameless turned to wait, and saw Shadrak buried beneath his hood, the hem of his cloak held across his nose and mouth. The husk girl almost seemed to glide through the miasma as expressionless as before, and completely untroubled.
Nameless looped his arm through Weasel’s and helped him up a ramp. At the top, the hull leveled out like the summit of a mesa. They were above the ash cloud here, and cobalt skies blazed down upon them. A stone’s throw to the right, he could see the rocky shoreline of the inland sea. The churning surface of the water glimmered across the bay, and in the far distance he could see the vanishing cliffs, perpetually crumbling and re-forming.
“Always said it was as big as a city,” Shadrak said, coming up beside him.
He was referring to the plane ship, but at the same moment, Nameless realized exactly where they were; where they’d landed.
“We must be right above Arnoch, laddie,” he said with hushed awe. “You landed us where the city used to be.”
“That ain’t good,” Weasel said. He was backing away, though to shog knows where.
The plane ship shook beneath their feet, and a low growl sounded from far below. Black smoke belched up to once more smother them and take away their brief snatch of vision.
“Keep moving,” Nameless said, heading along the flat toward where he’d seen the sea.
When Arnoch had resurfaced before, it was into a vast ring of rock, the perimeter of a hollowed-out island. The thought sent waves of sickness through his stomach. That meant there was water on every side, with no way to shore for a dwarf who couldn’t swim.
“Shog this,” Shadrak yelled from behind. “Let’s get back inside. I’ll try jumping the ship.”
“You can do that?” Nameless said, stopping and turning to face the midget.
“Best idea I’ve heard all day,” Weasel said.
The husk girl just stood motionless, as if none of it concerned her.
“Has to be a hatch up here somewhere,” Shadrak said. He got down on his hands and knees to look. “If I can get us a mile or so back, we can scout the area and—”
A wave of heat rolled over them. Sweat dripped into Nameless’s eyes, soaked his beard.
“What the shog?” Weasel said.
A red moon penetrated the smog. But it can’t have been a moon: wrong time of day, and it was slitted down the middle with black. Not a slit, Nameless realized as it vanished for an instant and then reappeared. An elongated pupil.
Shadrak pulled out a pistol and fired. Thunder cracked, and the great eye blinked, and arced away to the side.
Another red eye appeared a dozen yards from the first. Then they both rose higher into the air. Beneath them, darker, denser smoke billowed, and tongues of flame flickered and danced. Fangs as big as trees, wreathed in fire, seared through the fog. There was a sound like the splitting of a mountain, and impossibly huge jaws opened upon a churning conflagration.
Nameless sprinted back toward the ramp, dragging Weasel with him. A colossal roar sounded behind, and heat scorched the seat of his britches. He dived. Weasel screamed as they were struck by a wave of force that sent them flying from the mesa and tumbling down the ramp.
Shadrak was already at the bottom, black cloak smoldering around him.
“The girl?” Nameless said, looking back up top.
She walked down the ramp toward them, wreathed in flames, and none of them touching her.
From the ocean side, violet eyes as huge as the red ones soared into view. A sinuous neck as broad and long as a river swayed in silhouette against the cobalt skies.
Shadrak led them back they way they’d come, down slopes and steps, but emerald eyes loomed up to block their retreat. On the side opposite the ocean, two more eyes appeared, these ones amber, and then, directly above them, ice-blue orbs burst from the smog, expanding at an alarming rate as they dived.
Nameless threw Paxy with all his might. She arced across the space between them and glanced off an eye. Instead of returning to his hand as usual, she veered away to the left, streaking a trail of gold behind her. The blue eyes took the bait and swerved in pursuit.
“Here,” Shadrak yelled. He tapped on a panel, a hatch slid open, and he dropped inside.
Nameless ushered Weasel and the girl ahead of him, then held out his hand to catch the returning Axe of the Dwarf Lords. Blue eyes zoomed toward him, and frost spewed from a cavernous maw. Nameless jumped into the hatch, as hail and spikes of ice clattered against the hull. The others below scattered as he hit the silver floor with a grunt. Pain lanced through his ankle, but Paxy shot heat through his body and soothed it away.
“Lassie,” Nameless said. “Don’t spend yourself all at once.” She’d done it before. He knew she had her limits.
This is too important, my Immortal, she said. She always called him that when she was scared. Her special one. Her Dwarf Lord. We cannot let them perish.
“You’ll get no argument from—”
The corridor rocked, and stalactites of ice burst through the ceiling.
“This way,” Shadrak said, setting off at a run.
Heat surged from the left, and the walls that side started to glow red.
Every frantic step was punctuated by hammering from outside. They were jolted from wall to wall with each blow, and a cacophony of shrieks echoed about the plane ship.
Shadrak bundled them into a cubicle, and he took them up to the control room. He went straight to the console and started swiping symbols and cursing.
“What are you—?” Weasel started, but Shadrak shushed him with a raised palm.
The husk girl was watching Nameless, her face still blank, but her eyes glistening with moisture.
The room careened, and they all tumbled toward the wall. No sooner had they struck, than the room pitched again, and they rolled back the other way.
Shadrak caught hold of the control plinth and pulled himself up. Nameless snagged the stem of a half-egg chair with his axe and clung on.
“Scut it!” Shadrak cried, thumping the console. “Shogging screen’s dead.”
There was an earsplitting screech, followed
by a tumultuous crash. The ceiling buckled. Another hammer blow, and it began to split.
Shadrak kicked the console in frustration, and in response, a klaxon sounded, and red lights flashed. The room that had been converted into a stable revolved, and where its back wall had been there was now a gaping opening onto a sloping silver shaft.
Weasel looked from Shadrak to Nameless, shrugged, and said, “As a gambling man, I’d say that’s just increased the odds in our favor.” He ran for the shaft and threw himself into it.
Nameless grabbed the girl and did the same, and with the flap and flurry of his black cloak, Shadrak came after.
They slid, rolling and bouncing, round and round a tube of perfectly smooth metal. Nameless’s guts flopped and tossed like a pancake. Weasel screeched from up front, and then he vanished with a yelp. Nameless clutched the husk girl to him and they shot from the end of the shaft and tumbled over and over each other on rocky ground. Shadrak seemed to hang in the air a second as he fell from the tube, then he flipped and landed on his feet.
Nameless stood, brushing himself down. He was cut and grazed in a dozen places, but he’d had worse. Weasel was even more bruised and bloody than he’d been when he arrived in Brink, but the husk girl was completely unscathed.
Waves crashed against the promontory they’d alighted on, and ocean spray showered Nameless’s face, left its salty tang on his lips. The rocks they stood upon looked melted, like hardened lava. In between them, blackened glass was contorted into jagged patterns, where once there had been sand. Along the water’s edge, charred skeletons of dwarves stood in a fossilized tableau, axes raised to strike, crossbows aimed high. Beyond them stood the remains of a funeral pyre, no more than ash heaped upon a huge slab of granite.
A shadow fell over the scene. Then another, and another.
Five dragon heads swayed above the mountainous hull of the plane ship, all of them large enough to swallow a house. They were scaled with granite, each with its own color: crimson, coal, jade, purple, and white, dusted with hoarfrost. One after the other, gigantic maws opened and unleashed torrents of fire, ice, lightning, gas, and noxious spew that corroded the hull where it fell.
The tabletop mountain that was the plane ship sagged and sank in on itself, and the lower levels began to buckle and crack.
In unison, the five heads of the dragon soared upward, necks coiling about each other. Nameless caught a glimpse of where they sprouted from a single trunk that suggested a snake’s body, only as thick as the central tower that ran through Arx Gravis. He started to wonder how long such a beast could be, but then a splash out to sea drew his gaze to where the waters foamed and churned, and scaly humps surfaced, writhing and undulating, all the way around the island that had once housed Arnoch. Higher up the trunk, wings snapped open and plunged the plane ship into a deeper dark. One beat of the wings stirred up a hurricane that drove waves toward the crumbling cliffs, and had the companions clinging to rocks lest they were blown away.
The five heads roared like a thousand thunderstorms and dived toward the floundering plane ship. Their spew combined into a murderous brume that disintegrated every last scrap of metal and sent up roiling clouds of poisonous gas.
In spite of his fear of water, in spite of not being able to swim, Nameless ran for the sea before the churning smog could touch him. Weasel got there first and started to wade away from the island. Shadrak dived, and as the brume billowed toward Nameless, the husk girl grabbed his arm and pulled him in with her. Water closed over him. Even with her help, Nameless began to sink in his armor. He spluttered and thrashed, but then the girl yanked him above the waves for a snatch of air.
He tried to tread water and bobbed under again, but this time, she clutched a handful of beard and coaxed him onto his back.
Calm, my Immortal, calm, Paxy whispered in his mind.
He grasped the axe tight, drew what strength she had to offer.
The husk girl slid through the water with effortless grace, pulling Nameless with her. Through the choppy peaks and troughs, he glimpsed Shadrak like a seal in his waterlogged cloak, and Weasel struggling like a half-drowned rat.
Something big broke the surface in front of them. Weasel squawked and tried to back away.
Nameless’s heart thumped erratically in his ribcage. Back behind, one of the dragon’s heads had spotted them and was swooping in for the kill. The great wings flapped, and the waters surged higher. They were between a rock and a hard place.
Only, it wasn’t the dragon’s serpentine body that had risen above the waves. It was the head of an enormous fish, and as its mouth began to open, Nameless saw beams of light where teeth should have been.
He recognized it and cried out, “Swim for it! Into the fish’s mouth!”
It was the living craft the homunculus Abednago had used to rescue him when he’d fallen from the crumbling cliffs on his first fateful trip into Qlippoth.
Taking him at his word, Weasel headed straight into the waiting maw. The husk girl dragged Nameless toward it. Shadrak climbed from the water onto the fish-ship’s black tongue. The husk girl reached the lip and turned Nameless so he could hold on with his free hand, while retaining Paxy with the other.
She looked him in the eye and nodded, then lithely left the water. She reached down and grabbed his wrist. Her strength belied her lissome frame, as she pulled him inside.
Crossing the threshold, he felt a warm, tickling sensation beneath the skin. The instant he set his feet upon the tongue, a roar came from behind. He spun and slipped, pitched back toward the sea, and into the path of the black dragon head surging toward him.
CITY BENEATH THE WAVES
Nameless fell from the fish’s mouth toward the waves. The dragon’s black head swooped, and the four others were closing fast, sinuous necks whiplashing through the air.
Shadrak drew both guns and let rip with a barrage of bullets, but in the same instant, he knew it was no good. The thing had scales tougher than steel, but more than that, the dwarf was wearing armor, and he couldn’t swim.
The husk girl’s hand lashed out and caught Nameless by the boot. As the dragon’s jaws yawned and lightning arced between its fangs, she whisked him inside, as if he were no more than a rag doll she’d dropped.
The fish snapped its mouth shut and lurched into a dive.
Nameless went tumbling head over heels toward the back of the gigantic throat. Shadrak cannoned into Weasel, and then the three of them were plummeting down a slime-coated gullet.
When they hit the floor at the bottom, Shadrak’s ears popped, and his stomach churned. The fish was still diving, and diving fast. Turbulence rocked them from side to side. At any second, he expected the dragon’s head to rip through the fleshy walls and blast them apart with its lightning breath. But then, the fish leveled out, and it grew calm.
Shadrak reached down and helped Nameless to his feet. The dwarf did the same for Weasel.
They were in a glistening corridor that stank like the Abyss, and before them, completely out of place, stood a round wooden door with a brass handle.
The husk girl descended the fish’s throat like a sleepwalker. All trace of her sudden activity, and her show of strength that would have put Big Jake to shame, had now gone. Shadrak watched her intently, filing away what he’d seen her do.
“I don’t like it,” Weasel said, staring at the door. “There’s something—”
“Don’t,” Shadrak said, switching his gaze from the girl and reaching for a razor star. He wasn’t in the mood. “Don’t say it.”
“Fishy about—”
The razor star thudded into the wood of the door, barely missing Weasel’s head.
“Oi!” came a voice from the other side. “Cut that out!”
Weasel’s shock at nearly getting a razor star through the back of his skull gave way to the shock of recognition.
“Stupid?”
“Who you calling—?” Shadrak started.
“Abednago,” Nameless corrected.
Nameless nodded his agreement. “Fair do’s, laddie. Fair do’s.” The tension of the last few minutes seemed to fall away from him like water off a duck’s back. It was as though he were on familiar turf.
The door creaked open, bathing them in greenish light, and a homunculus stood there, the same height as Shadrak, yet wiry and olive skinned. Long gray dreadlocks hung almost as far as his waist, and he was robed in white.
“Laddie,” Nameless said. “You arrived in the nick of time.”
“As I meant to,” the homunculus said. “What took you so long?”
“Took me?” Nameless glanced at Weasel. “Thought I wasn’t supposed to come.”
“You weren’t, officially,” Abednago said. “Cordana will have my guts for garters when she learns you’re here. But the way I see it, I had no choice. And, let me tell you, I have a plan.”
Well, that was an improvement. Shadrak never did anything without a plan, least, not if he had a choice. But the plan of a homunculus… The shifty shoggers couldn’t be trusted. It didn’t help having learned he was one himself, that he wasn’t just a stunted and sickly human no one wanted to raise, save for an old Dreamer wise woman. Knowing his true nature did nothing to assuage a lifetime of stories and rumors concerning the devious homunculi.
And he recognized the trait in himself, more and more: he might have been a master of self-justification, but where profit was concerned, or survival, he had no doubt he’d do whatever it took to come out on top. Only, with the rest of his kind—and he still wasn’t comfortable admitting that’s what they were—deception was second nature. They couldn’t help themselves, and would often mislead you just because they could. But with a genealogy like theirs, you could hardly blame them.
“Where are Bark and Goffin?” the homunculus asked Weasel.
“Didn’t make it out of Qlippoth. Only got through myself by the skin of my teeth. Told you, you could count on me, Abednago.”
“And you’ll be handsomely rewarded, as we agreed.”