But none of the maps Gorel saw mentioned Goliris.
They sailed for days through endless water until there was no more land. Only sea remained. Beside Jericho’s crew there was the ship’s: a motley assortment of humans; Avians who flew over the ship and maintained its sails and lookouts; a lone Nocturne who haunted the cargo hold; a white-face cook whose only method of food preparation was boiling it until all flavour had departed. Gorel kept to himself. He smoked cigars and oiled his guns and bided his time.
On the seventeenth day out of port, they saw two dark-green islands rise on the horizon. Gorel felt the sudden tension as the lookout cried land. He sought out Jericho, who was huddled with the captain over maps. The captain, a leathery old man with matted hair, kept shaking his head with some force. “No, no,” he said. “There is no land here.”
“Perhaps we made good speed? Or drifted off course?”
“No, no. Not unless... but no.”
“Not unless what?”
“Oh, shit,” the captain said. He raised a shout, and an Avian rose from the deck and took swiftly to the air to scout ahead. The captain said, “Do you two have any enemies?”
Jericho and Gorel exchanged a glance. “A few. Why?”
“Does anyone... know about the purpose of this journey?”
Gorel thought of Vinay-Rim, and how it was full of people paid to listen to rumours.
He said, “Why?”
The captain said, “Because those aren’t islands. They’re—”
There was a shout. Far ahead on the horizon they saw a burst of smoke, followed by the unmistakable sound of gunfire. The Avian scout dropped from the sky. He fell into the waves and vanished in the foam. The captain raised a spyglass and stared. The islands were larger, and closer now. Weirdly, they were also wider apart. He swore again, softly.
Gorel snatched the spyglass. He looked through, adjusted the sight, looked again. He saw the islands, thickly forested; no beaches ringed them but smooth black stone. He looked closer. He could see buildings now, installations, gun towers. He stared at the shores. Not stone.
A shell, it was a fucking shell!
He moved the spyglass and saw a giant head peek out of what he had at first mistaken for a cave. Two reptilian eyes stared at him with dispassion.
He lowered the spyglass. The two islands were coming closer, converging now on the ship, one on each side.
He said: “They’re giant turtles?”
The attack was short and quick and merciless, with the sort of well-practiced efficiency Gorel rather admired. The two islands sailed close, locking the Albatross between them. He no longer needed the spyglass to see the giant turtles, their flippers moving in the water, their huge eyes staring at the ship as at an unappetising snack. Their shells were covered in earth and on this earth grew trees, and in between the trees moved people. Each floating island had its own small town or garrison, and Gorel noted gun emplacements and canons. He also noted they were now aimed at the Albatross.
“Do they want to negotiate, or—”
Cannon boomed. The ball arced across the distance and hit the deck, shattering the wood and sending out an enormous cloud of dust and smoke.
“I don’t think they do!” Jericho screamed. He and his men lined up and began shooting at the wave of approaching pirates with long blue-green tubes that fired canisters of white phosphorous. The spectacular explosions drove the pirates running back, and the turtle withdrew its head back into its shell and now remained to float there without further motion.
“Who are these people?” Gorel shouted.
The captain, reaching for an ugly looking sword, said, “The Yug-Nossah. Well, not the people. The turtles. Or rather, both, I suppose. They have a semi-symbiotic relationship. And not people, really. Well, it’s complicated. Shit. They shouldn’t be this far away from land! Unless somebody sent them.”
“Who would send giant fucking turtles!”
The captain glared at Gorel. “You tell me,” he said.
“Shit!”
They were being shelled from both sides, now. Gorel looked around for Jericho’s men, but they were gone. The whole deck felt eerily deserted. Then he saw one tiny figure, for just a moment surfacing out of the water, near the eastward island. It looked back at Gorel and waved.
Which was when the giant turtle exploded.
That attack was short and quick and merciless too, with the sort of well-practiced efficiency Gorel rather admired.
It occurred to him, later, that it was almost as though Jericho and his men had expected to face something like the Yug-Nossah.
The eastward turtle had exploded in a huge cloud of shell and flesh and trees. The smell of cooked meat filled the air, and it made Gorel’s stomach growl. A scaly claw as large as a house grazed the side of the ship and landed with a burst of salt water and foam. When Gorel recovered his vision he saw that Jericho’s men had risen out of the water onto the westmost—now only remaining—turtle. Two dove back into the cave hole of the shell. What they did there it wasn’t clear, but they soon shot out of there, and out came the head of the turtle. It tried to snap at them unsuccessfully. Then Jericho, with a shout of triumph too weak to be heard over the distance, jumped onto the turtle’s long neck and drove two metal spikes through the tough skin, directly at the back of the turtle’s skull. Eldritch energy crackled between the two spikes. Jericho grinned in savage satisfaction.
From the direction of the island, all fire immediately ceased.
Gorel reached in his pocket, returned with a soggy cigar. He lit it up as the captain came and stood beside him, and together they watched as the Yug-Nossah sedately drifted their way.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the captain said.
Gorel drew on the cigar and blew out smoke.
“Yeah,” he said. “But how does your cook feel about turtle?”
5.
The sun set, as always. The sky was painted in red and purple hues. The sea was calm, and gentle waves washed against the turtle-shell shores. Gorel of Goliris sat by the fire and watched the pirates bustle.
The island was small. Well, it was small for an island. Rather large for a turtle. The layer of dirt was relatively shallow but enough to support the roots of several species of trees. Birds lived in the branches, and there were snakes and ants on the land. There was no natural water source, but several small lakes and pools that formed from ancient dents in the turtle-shell filled up with fresh water whenever it rained.
The pirate-things were weird. They were, or had once been, people. Or at least, they had looked like people, from a distance. Up close, they had too many things growing on and, well, in them. What they really looked like, Gorel thought, was rocks that somehow resembled people, the sort of old sea rocks you got in the shallows, that were covered in hundreds of hairy barnacles and molluscs which grew over the years.
They were pretty handy with guns, though.
The pirate-things lived in a shanty town and took care of the cannon, and Gorel might not have known much about, well, things like the Yug-Nossah, but he did know about arms, and these were new, and well-maintained. Someone had to have been supplying the Yug-Nossah.
He bit into a chunk of turtle steak. Beyond the shore, in the distance, a whole swarm of sea monsters had risen to the surface and circled the remains of the exploded giant turtle.
“You knew they were coming,” he said, accusingly.
“Not... this, exactly,” Jericho said. “But something, sure. Maybe.”
“Why? It’s not Kett—the Lord of the Black Tor. If anything, he has too much of an interest in Goliris.”
“I know he has an interest in one thing that came from Goliris,” Jericho said, and smirked. “But you’re right, no.”
“Then who, you fucking fish?”
“I told you, not a fish! Mammal.”
“Stop trying to change the subject!”
“Fine! It’s just that, well... it might be cursed.”
“What might be c
ursed?”
“This shipwreck.”
“So what!” Gorel yelled. “You brought a mage, right?”
“Sure, standard operational brief.”
“So they could just un-curse it, right?”
“Not... exactly.” Jericho pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, what do you know about the Drowned God?”
Gorel chewed thoughtfully. “I know he’s dead.”
Jericho Moon made a strange gesture. Gorel had seen him do it before. Like looping a hanging rope over a neck and... pulling.
Gorel knew gods. He needed gods. He needed faith the way others needed water or wine. He needed the gods’ black kiss. And gods needed followers to live. A god lived, like a symbiotic parasite, through its believers.
But that was the thing about the Drowned God.
He wasn’t, in any sense, a real god. He was dead.
They called it the Drowned God’s Heresy. That he was a god from Above, who went to the Down Below, and had to die in order to be re-born. His followers were many, and they believed that one day he would rise again. In all the World, no one else believed in gods who weren’t there—that, Gorel thought, would just be crazy. “It’s easy to believe in what is actually there,” Jericho had once told him. “It takes real faith to believe in something that isn’t.”
Gorel did just think he was mad, though. But he figured maybe the rules were different for those who lived underwater.
“Down there, the legend says,” Jericho said, and he gestured to the dark sea, “the Drowned God first descended into the infinite depths. This is where he drowned.”
“And you only thought of telling me this now?” Gorel said.
Jericho shrugged. “Would it have mattered?” he said. “You wouldn’t have come?”
Gorel inched his head, conceding the point.
“This part of the World is taboo for my people, Gorel. It’s under several protections. I’m afraid it’s only going to get harder from here on.”
“By protections, you mean sorcery.”
“I do.”
“I hate sorcery.”
“I know you do.”
Gore reached for his twin guns. He stared at them in the firelight. The seven-pointed star of Goliris shone on the handles.
He said, “Whatever it is, it can’t outrun a bullet.”
“That’s the spirit,” Jericho said, though he didn’t look convinced.
6.
“Mmmmf!” Jericho said. He was sitting in a chair and his mouth was full. His gills opened and closed helplessly.
“I told you so,” Gorel said.
“Mmmmf!”
“Told you.”
Two days after the Yug-Nossah attack they had spotted the island. It jutted ominously into the sky, its peak a concave mouth belching smoke and steam. A thick layer of clouds lay around the volcano, and below, the island was covered in dense evergreen trees. Ringing the island was a shore of dazzling white sand, and beyond lay the shallows, their water a beautiful green-blue, until they reached the depths of the sea and the floor dropped abruptly beyond the black rock breakers.
They had anchored the turtle some distance away from the island and used the Albatross to come ashore. When they landed on the white sand beach, the island seemed like paradise. Fish were to be had in the shallows just by plucking them out, and coconuts were lying on the sand, filled with sweet fresh water or, even better, the spongy white flesh of fermented coconut meat.
Gorel, his mouth full, said, “This doesn’t seem too bad.”
It rained. The rain was hot, the drops large and heavy. The Merlangai danced under the drops. Tiny insects scurried in the roots of the trees, and tiny crabs popped out of holes in the sand as the tide came in. Gorel found shelter under a natangura tree and Jericho came to join him.
“Tomorrow we dive,” he said.
“So what are we talking about here?” Gorel said. “Giant monsters? Re-animated corpses? Flesh-melting ghosts?”
“Let’s hope so,” Jericho said. “I’d hoped to avoid the island entirely but we need a base from which to start the search. I couldn’t find much out. They do say it’s haunted, though.”
“Haunted by what?”
“Excuse me,” a voice said. It was a polite, apologetic, yet strangely determined sort of voice.
They both turned.
A small brown-robed creature stood under the trees holding an umbrella. Water dripped down from the canopy above and fell around him in a circle.
The creature wasn’t one Gorel had seen before. It was small and rather thin, with a rodent-like face, a pair of spectacles, slicked-forward hair, and in one bony hand it was holding a sort of official-looking satchel.
“Yes?”
“You are here on the Drowned God’s business?” the creature said, officiously.
“What’s it to you?”
“I am the Mid-Level Mogg of the Directorate of the Down Below,” the creature said. “Please state the nature of your business.”
The rain had ceased, or, in any case, somehow wasn’t there anymore. The beach, which had seemed so close a moment ago, was gone as well. Gorel blinked, but the sounds of the surf and of the rain and the merry shouts of the Merlangai had all faded, and the trees grouped around him in such a way that they resembled nothing more than a grey, drab corridor. The mulch on the ground now resembled a grey, dull carpet.
“Salvage operation,” Jericho said.
“Did you fill in the requisite forms?” the Mogg said.
A look of confusion filled Jericho’s face. “I’m sure I had them here somewhere just a moment ago...”
“If you don’t have the requisite forms, you must speak to the High Mogg in the Sacred Halls of Mogg,” the creature said.
“So how do we do that?” Jericho said.
“Follow me,” the creature said. “But there is rather a queue, of course, one does not simply get to see the High Mogg—this way, left at the next corridor, then a right, please don’t touch that, this way, left at the next junction...”
Gorel’s nose twitched. A fog had descended on his mind, and he trailed after Jericho and the creature, down the endless corridors of the Maze of Mogg. Sorcery, he thought. He hated sorcery.
“Let me shoot him,” he said.
“Shooting me won’t do any good,” the Mid-Level Mogg said, apologetically. “Just think of the paperwork.”
Gorel’s fingers itched for his gun. He drew it and put it to the creature’s forehead. “Make this stop,” he said.
“Not without Form 74-Sag,” the creature said. “Accompanied by a signed Form 17-Ud—”
Gorel fired.
The creature’s head exploded, and bits of brain and skull smudged the grey walls and spattered the grey carpet.
“Oh, dear,” someone said. Two further Moggs materialised beside them. “A Code 32-Musen.” He stared at Gorel accusingly. “You can’t shoot someone without filling in an Ud-72/ae-23 first,” he said. “Or you’d have to fill in a triplicate Incident Report Form available from Level 19, Sub-Level 3 West. Which is closed for lunch.”
“How long is lunch?” Gorel said.
“It is always lunch in the Sacred Halls of Mogg,” the Mogg said.
“Of course it is,” Gorel said.
The dead Mogg, he saw, was already fading into the carpet and the walls, becoming just another stain. The corridor stretched ahead of them.
“This way, please,” the new Mogg said.
Defeated, Gorel and Jericho followed.
7.
How long they’d been trapped there, in the hallowed halls of Mogg, there was no way to tell. There were no days or nights in that place, only the same unchanging, unending twilight, the endless corridors, the grey carpet, the grey-dirty walls. Their feet trod endlessly along the endless floors. The voices murmured all the while, “For spells cast underwater see form 12-72-Ga as pursuant to Treaty 109 point seven—” until at last, days or hours later, Jericho and Gorel found themselves in a vast waiting room
, and there they sat on benches.
There was one food stall there. It was never open. Jericho munched inconsolably on a piece of a dried fish.
“Mmmmf!” he said.
“I told you so,” Gorel said.
“Mmmmf!”
“Told you.”
They waited to see the High Mogg. There were no doors and no windows. Whenever they tried to escape they merely found themselves back in the grey corridors. Sitting now, Gorel could see the other men from the Albatross, Jericho’s team, each sitting alone, at other benches, waiting. They did not acknowledge their leader or each other.
Gorel stood up. If only he could clear his mind... guns were no use here. He’d lost count of how many Moggs he’d shot. With each new one there was just more paperwork. He could no longer remember the Yug-Nossah nor the Albatross nor the smell of fresh air nor the taste of food.
He glanced at Jericho, who had taken a long thin blade out and was using it to scrap away at the piece of hard dried fish. Gorel stared at the blade.
“What is that?” he said.
“Knife?”
“You need form 8-73 Musen for knives,” Gorel said. “Sub-Level 15 West.”
“They were closed for lunch.” Jericho scraped at the fish some more and then put it back in his mouth and chewed without enthusiasm.
“Can I see that?”
“Sure.”
Gorel took the blade. He traced a finger over the seven-pointed star etched on the metal.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a cold clear peal cut through the fog.
He had seen that star somewhere. The metal felt so cold in his hands. It sucked away all light. The Halls of Mogg faded around him and he was a child again, holding his mother the queen’s hand, walking through the ancient docks of dread Goliris.
Lavie Tidhar - [BCS314 S02] Page 2