by Scott Hale
The Crossbreed, R’lyeh thought, teeth slicing into her tongue. She closed her eyes until her tears got the hint and went away. Serra. She opened her eyes, turned her head slightly. Shit, shit. Now that she knew they were there, she saw the Crossbreed’s roots everywhere; coming out of windows, coming out of wells; parks and churches, and the town hall, too. Why’s it still alive?
She called out Serra’s name in her mind. Maybe because he had been mute, and a spellweaver, she expected him to somehow respond. But if he had responded, he responded silently, and most likely from the grave. Deimos and Lucan had left Geharra to join with Penance. Vrana and R’lyeh had been sent back to Caldera, to inform the elders of what had happened. Serra… She could still see the final image of the Piranha. They had followed him to the waterworks in the Western District. Before they could follow any further, he set the doorway on fire and disappeared behind the smoke. He was supposed to burn the Crossbreed; kill it for good.
Teeth clenched, she strained herself to stop from shaking. R’lyeh hadn’t known Serra well, but he had saved her. Deimos was an idiot to send the Piranha in alone, and she and Vrana were dumbasses for letting him do it.
The Crossbreed. Holy Child, it really was everywhere. At this point, she didn’t care if the Skeleton knew she was awake. From the smallest stalks to the tree-sized roots, she searched the city for any sign that the plant was nearby. Of course, last time, it had been in the waterworks, but maybe it had moved. It owned Geharra now. And that taste that was in the air? That itching smell that made her eyelids heavy? She knew what it was. It was the Crossbreed dousing the city in its fluids. If she hadn’t been immune, and the Skeleton hadn’t been immortal, they wouldn’t be standing here. They’d be lying in the streets without a will of their own, waiting for someone or something to come along and whisper to them the new meaning of their sad, pathetic lives.
Serra, R’lyeh called out again with her thoughts. There was no response. She wasn’t about to fool herself with ideas of saving him. If he was here, he was dead. And if he wasn’t dead, then he might as well be. She had failed Vrana. She would fail him. In the history of Night Terrors, she barely registered as a bad dream.
“Back when I was a boy,” the Skeleton said, “we called Death’s home the Garden of Sleep. All these roots round here got me thinking Death might want a change of residence.”
“How long was I out?”
“Long enough to start snoring. About five minutes, actually.” The Skeleton readjusted her weight. “Herbert warned you about following me. Should’ve listened.”
R’lyeh said through her teeth, “Did you see anyone else?”
“Bunch of flesh fiends that were picked clean. Nothing living. Dead City’s going to have to work hard to keep its claim to the name with Geharra the way it is.” The Skeleton ran his fat, black tongue over his teeth. “You alright?”
“Better than I thought I’d be.”
The Skeleton’s glassy eyes met hers, and he said, “You’re strong, Vale.”
“What?”
“How many times you been here?” the Skeleton asked, ignoring her.
“A lot,” R’lyeh said, catching his meaning. Not a day went by that she didn’t visit this place in her mind.
“I used to see the Membrane a lot. Got old after a while.”
“You went so much you got immune to it.”
R’lyeh tipped her head back and made the city upside-down. The sky became stained stone and crumbling brickwork. The clouds hardened over into the tops of buildings, pointed and blunted. From out of space, the Crossbreed’s roots twisted, puncturing everything they came into contact with, and binding it together. There was blood, too, behind the green. It was dried now, and some of it had faded, but it was there, like stars that had long since died and yet shone all the same. And vermillion veins. Yes, there they were here. Nests of them, in the gutters and sewers of heaven. Parasites preying on a paralyzed sky, waiting for the eternal night.
Upside-down, Geharra made sense. It stopped being a puzzle her mind couldn’t solve. It turned into a tapestry weaved by the Crossbreed’s needle-like roots. Each thread was a piece of the past forever immortalized in the amber of greed and gore. But the tapestry didn’t start here, nor would it stop here. It ran clear across the continent, to Eldrus, to Penance, and to all the places in between, doubling back and forth upon itself, each layer growing tighter and tighter, and harder to break.
There was a place for R’lyeh in the tapestry. Even though she was above ground, she could see it. A tiny black spot in Geharra’s depths. A hole she had fallen into, and then torn herself from.
She wasn’t meant to die here, because she was meant for something else. There was something waiting for her in the Dead City. She could see that now. She couldn’t before, not with Vrana’s belongings weighing her down, or the octopus mask blinding her. Elizabeth and Miranda… had done their best to convince her she could be good, but they just wanted her to be what they couldn’t have.
R’lyeh lifted her head up and shed one last tear for Serra. She hadn’t tried to, but it happened all the same.
The Skeleton grunted. He turned onto a large, windy boardwalk. Geharra’s outer walls grew before them. Not far from where they were, but farther away than it looked, was the Eastern Gate—the actual gate completely demolished, reduced to debris.
“You can put me down,” R’lyeh said, wiggling her legs.
The Skeleton nodded, said, “I know.”
He didn’t put her down.
And R’lyeh didn’t bring it up again.
Inside, Geharra was dead, but outside the city, there was more life than R’lyeh had seen in a while. The fish-like, humanoid Mer creatures were not only still here, but they had expanded their scaly kingdom across Geharra’s two rivers and the marshes in between. Their homes were spheres—large, hollowed-out orbs of mucus that floated upon the bodies of waters weightlessly. There had to have been about sixty or seventy of the orbs, and the way they trailed off into the ocean made R’lyeh think there were even more of them, and the creatures, in the sea.
The Mer, sometimes crawling, sometimes slithering, were in a state of alarm. They moved quickly through the waters and atop the glassy pleating they’d drooled and molded onto it. They spoke, too, in high, reptilian hisses, and low, watery growls. It wasn’t R’lyeh and the Skeleton they were concerned about. Not yet, at least. It was something else. Something in the mist that surrounded the outskirts.
R’lyeh knew this, because she’d seen a village under attack. Twice now. In Alluvia, they went willingly, because of the Crossbreed in their bellies. In Rime, the people had been much like the Mer were today: angry, stiff; constantly pacing back and forth, while their attentions were fixed on the unseen threat. Alexander Blodworth’s soldiers; vermillion veins; the Winnowers’ Chapter; vermillion veins; and that caustic bitch, Isla Taggart—and if she had stayed in Gallows, she might’ve even met King Edgar and his Arachne, or the Holy Child and his Mother Worm… No, it was all too much to take. Too many violent strangers she couldn’t sell violent ends. The Mer had helped them once, by weaving the illusion of Corruption onto Deimos and Lucan, but this time, they were on their own.
R’lyeh dropped out of the Skeleton’s arms. Her legs were weak, half-asleep. She steadied herself on the road. The places where his shielded body had touched her were hot, as if the Black Hour had been trying to burn through the leather and cloth to get to her.
She started to say something to the Skeleton, but as he pointed to the mist, the words were lost to her.
Out of the mist, Corrupted came. Dirty and emaciated, and clad in crookedly cut leathers, they shuffled and shambled through the marsh. There were too many of them to count, but every age and sex seemed to be represented, even on that saw-toothed front. Because they looked so pathetic, R’lyeh thought they might have been refugees—escapees, possibly—from Geharra finally returning home. But then she saw the spears and the torches, and heard prayers on the air, and knew bett
er.
“Scavengers,” R’lyeh whispered.
Though the great, achromatic tower was days away, she swore she could see it in the mist, looming; a vaporous silhouette, overbearing and enduring, that trailed the Scavengers and their not-so-good name. One didn’t seem to exist without the other. If the Scavengers were here at the gates of Geharra, then surely their object of obsession was, too. If Worms could be born, why couldn’t towers move? In a world as insane as R’lyeh’s, what was impossibility if not a minor challenge on the road to greater, terrible things?
“Don’t know much about them,” the Skeleton said. “Herbert might’ve mentioned them before we left. Can’t say for sure. Old man talks a lot once you get him going.”
R’lyeh pressed herself closer to Bone Daddy, not for his warmth, because he hadn’t any to share, but for the warmth of his cloak. “They’re from south of here—”
The Scavengers continued to amble through the mist, their broken bodies like breaking waves upon the Mer’s newfound shore.
“—and they worship this big metal tower. All they do every day is dig around its base, trying to find a way in.”
Groups of Mer, on their hands and stomachs, clawed and slithered to the Scavengers. The creatures cut through the marsh in stiff, hate-driven movements. Scales sparkling, they looked like beautiful shards of glass speeding towards all that flesh. Where they passed through, be it in the grassy shallows or depths of Geharra’s outskirts, spikes shot out of the ground. Subtly sentient, they waved like reeds and clicked out insectile chitters.
The Skeleton nudged R’lyeh, signaling her it was time to go on. “What’re they worshiping in that tower of theirs?”
“God,” she said.
The first of the Scavengers stopped just outside the Mer’s village, where the land gave way to the river, and the spherical homes were suspended. The approaching Mer hadn’t made it to this point, and yet the spikes shot out of the ground all the same.
“They think god is inside the tower.”
The spikes arched backward. Thin, glistening tubes worked their way up each spike and emerged from the tip. They weren’t traps, R’lyeh realized, but artillery. And they weren’t weapons. The movements… the sounds. These strange growths were alive.
The Skeleton marched onwards, going to where the road from Geharra split and veered north.
“Guess if someone looks hard enough, they can see god in just about anything,” he said.
R’lyeh was having a hard time tearing herself away from the sight of the Scavengers and their standstill on the edge of Mer territory. The mist had started to break. More Scavengers waited farther back, not with supplies or the makings of future homes, but killing tools.
How’re there so many? To call them walking corpses would be an insult to walking corpses. They were malnourished, malformed; sunburnt, and scarred. Their clothes were sacks, and their hair nests. The Corruption on their arms was such a bright red that it had taken on the color and texture of a seething wound. The closest thing the Scavengers resembled were flesh fiends, and now that R’lyeh had made that connection, flesh fiends were all she saw.
The Mer met the Scavengers outside their village. The humanoids puffed out their chests and started spitting out words that hit R’lyeh’s ears like wet punches. The Scavengers stood their ground, all the while shoring up their ranks.
“R’lyeh,” the Skeleton said, frustrated.
R’lyeh faced the Skeleton, his impatience having broken the scene’s spell over her.
He went for the northern road, and then: “Maybe they’re on a pilgrimage. Like everyone else these days.”
Pilgrimage. R’lyeh’s thoughts lurched as something deep in her subconscious hit the brakes. Pilgrimage. A word she had never heard or said before in her life, and yet now couldn’t shake. Hex had said it first, when she’d lost her shit and tried to shank R’lyeh. Then Ghelys in Rime had said the Children of Lacuna in his village were on a pilgrimage, and Deimos had told her later they were trying to get Angheuawl… Angheuawl. Hex’s hometown. And where the Skeleton had just sent his family and most of the Marrow Cabal. Did he know? He said Hex was better, but he had to have talked to her. Holy Child, did he know and send them there, anyway?
“Might be their god told them to go to Geharra to get something,” the Skeleton carried on.
Shit, shit, shit. I have to tell him. Maybe he doesn’t know. Fuck. If they get there and the Witch and the Lucanans… Vrana could be… I could still do something to save…
“Don’t know what those fish creatures are doing outside the city,” the Skeleton said, “but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the Scavengers came for this.”
The Skeleton’s disturbing grin seemed to stretch as he dug into his cloak and, briefly, flashed the object he held in his hand. It was a red stone with jagged marks etched into its surface. R’lyeh had noticed him carrying it when they came out of the pit. But this wasn’t the first time she’d seen something like it. Vrana had one, too, except it was blue. She had used it to put to sleep the Blue Worm.
“Summon a Worm, and it leaves a stone behind to seal it away again,” the Skeleton said, pocketing the object. “Kill a Worm, and it leaves behind a necklace to summon it again. We got it all now.”
“Who… who has the necklace?” R’lyeh asked, suddenly wanting it more than she had ever wanted anything else in her life. “Who has it?”
“Herbert. One of the God’s minions buried a similar necklace in his neck once, but he lost it. Guess he’s trying to do penance.”
“Is that why we’re here?”
“We were coming here all the same. Stone was a bonus. Don’t worry.”
R’lyeh trembled. “You’re not going to try to summon it again, are you?”
The Skeleton looked at her like the idiot she felt.
“Were you going to say something?” he asked her.
“What?”
“Just now. Looked like you were thinking about something.”
R’lyeh didn’t answer him, nor did she look away. Instead, she stared into his crazed eyes and saw the world reflected on their glassy, vein-choked surface. Surrounded by creatures that could kill her, she felt immortal at his side. Angheuawl didn’t hold answers, only bitter reminders and battles she couldn’t win. She had given up on saving Vrana. Maybe the Skeleton had given up on saving his family.
So when the Skeleton asked her again if she had something to say, R’lyeh didn’t say anything at all.
“We have a lot of ground to cover,” the Skeleton said. “Let’s be on our way before your fish friends stop being so friendly.”
Friends. Choking down her secret, she remembered that day she and Vrana had watched Deimos and Lucan from Geharra’s walls. They had gone to the Mer, and in exchange for their armor and masks, the creatures wove a spell of Corruption onto each man’s arm, so they could infiltrate Penance’s approaching convoy.
R’lyeh squeezed the corners of her eyes, to stem the tide of tears. Deimos’ and Lucan’s masks were probably still in the marshes, in one of the Mer’s caches for safekeeping. They were never going to get them back, she thought, just like she wasn’t ever going to get her octopus mask back. Without Deimos or Lucan, or herself, the masks were nothing more than pieces of dead animals. Someone would find them one day, and they would think nothing of them. It hurt R’lyeh to think something so meaningful could be, at the same time, so meaningless.
R’lyeh and the Skeleton walked for hours without stopping, talking, eating, or drinking. By the time they had reached the highlands northwest of Geharra, the moon had usurped the sun from the sky, and there was blood in R’lyeh’s boots. Her feet were sore and calloused, and her ankles had been rubbed raw. Her stomach sounded like a symphony of dying frogs, and her shoulders hurt so badly, it felt as if they were tightening inward, as if to pop her head off her body, like a cork from a bottle. She wasn’t carrying anything, and yet her muscles burned as if they had reached their limit. And maybe they hadn’t, but sh
e had. She kept this to herself, though. Any sign of weakness, or mortality, and the Skeleton just might shake her.
It was midnight when the Skeleton put a stop to R’lyeh’s stubbornness. She knew it was midnight, because the Skeleton’s chest started to glow. Even without a clock, the Black Hour’s heart had a job to do. The Skeleton parked them on top of a hill surrounded by mountains. He didn’t prepare camp, because like the Scavengers, he hadn’t brought supplies to do so. By foot or horse, the Skeleton had intended to make this journey alone, and without stopping. He didn’t need to eat or drink or sleep, or simply take in his surroundings. Without flesh, he was beyond all earthly distractions.
R’lyeh lay on the ground, the grass her blanket and roots her pillow. Exhaustion was a poison for which she had no natural immunity. She could feel her body filling up with something that felt like water. Second after second, she was sinking into herself, succumbing to weakness.
“I can… keep… watch,” R’lyeh mumbled, looking past her toes at the Skeleton.
“Shut your mouth and sleep,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s better this way. More time to think.”
“About… what?”
“What needs to be done.”
R’lyeh went to respond, but when she finally did, a few hours had already passed. She jerked out of her uninvited sleep. A blanket, a real blanket, slid down her body, while her grasping hands closed around the pillow, a real pillow, her head had been on.
The Skeleton was where she had left him: on the side of the hill, staring off into the mountains that circled them. The moon was higher now. From their lonely rest, R’lyeh noticed where the mountain chain had been cleaved in two; there was a pass there, and beyond that, the lowlands that twisted towards the Dead City’s diseased peninsula.