“Every legend has a kernel of truth,” the priest said, unruffled. They swam over a fleet of dreadnaughts, turned at a burst whaling ship, proceeded into the horizon, over seaweeds and canoes. Another volcanic eruption lit up the false sky.
“Who is the Drowned God?” Gorel said. “And where did He come from?”
“What is so funny, man of Goliris?” Enoch said.
“We did not have gods, in Goliris.”
“Everyone has a god.”
Then they saw it.
A break in the sea of ships. Nothing but fine sandy ground, not even weeds growing there. A clearing. As though some unholy power had kept the sunk ships from ever sinking... here.
All but the one.
It sat there all alone, majestic, lost, and broken. A black ship, with the white, seven-sided star on its side.
A ship of Goliris.
Everything happened rather fast after that.
They pulled Gorel to them and shoved him ahead. The priests, these spiritual renegades—whatever they were or thought they were—followed behind. As nervous as little boys.
Gorel thought of the story Jericho had told him. The old whaler—a fake, he must have been a fake—and the last people who had found this place. What had he said?
“What happened to the others?”
“Dead.”
“What killed them?”
“Things.”
“What kind of things?”
“He didn’t say.”
Gorel walked slowly on the sand. With every step he rose into the water slightly, floated. He didn’t care. A ship. A real ship. No name on the hull. Only that star.
Something whispered in the water.
He thought he saw a shadow, but there was nothing there.
The nearest man behind him stopped. Clutched at his head.
“I don’t...” the man said.
It wasn’t clear what happened next. The man just... was both there and not there. He stared around but it looked to Gorel like he couldn’t see any of the others. He was somewhere else. The others reached for him but their hands just passed through him. “What is this place—” the man said. Then he began to scream.
Another whisper. Another priest or acolyte was taken. This time he just vanished. Gorel thought of red-fire prisons, of hells where the souls of the condemned were doomed forever to a suffering so terrible it could not be set in words.
Another, then another. Then Father Enoch jumped Gorel, his breath in water hot on Gorel’s skin. “Stop, make them stop!”
“So this is it?” Gorel said. “You thought I’d be your insurance? This was what you had in mind for me?”
“I’ll kill you now!” Father Enoch said. His knife was at Gorel’s throat.
Gorel just felt so tired. “I cannot stop them now,” he said. “I wouldn’t even know how to—”
Another whisper, and Enoch was gone. The remaining ones scattered, tried to swim straight up.
Were taken.
Gorel took a step toward the ship, and then another and another. Then rose. Then swam up the hull and onto the deck. Landed, gently.
The guards materialised before him then. And he remembered for the first time the story he’d heard at the No Way Inn, back in Vinay-Rin, at the start of journey. About that small and insignificant outpost called Stingbite, and of the shadows that had come out of nowhere, killed the Apocrite and their gods.
No, no, it couldn’t be—
He stared at them lined up before him as though standing to attention at a military parade. There were five of them; vaguely humanoid, featureless, mute. Automatons, golems, call them what you will.
Soulless, faithless, mindless.
They knelt before him, for he was Gorel of Goliris.
He ignored them. Went into the hold.
And found nothing.
Nothing but rot and bones, floating in the murky waters.
He saw the cargo hold, the prison bars that had been torn in rage, the burned remains of maps and weapons, the skeletons of crew members.
Something had been imprisoned here and had escaped.
It was a prison ship.
There was nothing here! Nothing to point him on his way back home.
He started to laugh. All this, in vain. He laughed and laughed, until he was crying.
But tears aren’t visible under the sea.
12.
Gorel left the featureless guards there to their useless guarding. He stood away from the ship, his back to it, watching that silent graveyard. A new explosion lit the false sky, and far in the distance he could see a pod of whales swim past.
“Well, that didn’t go as planned.”
He didn’t turn. Jericho Moon swam up and stood beside him, and together they watched the dance of underwater sunrise.
“No,” Gorel said. “No, I suppose it didn’t.”
“You all right?”
“I’m still alive. You?”
“Same.”
“So I see.”
“I hate ghosts,” Jericho said.
“...me too,” Gorel said.
“Come on,” Jericho said. “I’ll help you up.”
“You’re coming too?”
“I thought I might avoid the Down Below, if only for a little while.”
Gorel nodded. Fleetingly he wondered what it was that’d been imprisoned on that ship, and where it had gone. Gorel missed home. He had been searching for it for a long time, and it seemed he was destined to keep searching. Would he ever see Goliris again?
He kicked and rose into the sky. Jericho swam beside him. Two tiny figures, fired like twin bullets from a wrathful gun, shot up into the heavens.
Two tiny figures, slowly climbing that enormous gulf from the deeps to air and light.
Two tiny forms, ascending.
In memory of Gardner Dozois, for his encouragement, support, and faith throughout the years. I’m glad I got to write you one last story.
© Copyright 2020 Lavie Tidhar
Lavie Tidhar - [BCS314 S02] Page 4