by Sam Sykes
“If it’s nothing, then why shouldn’t I come?”
“Gariath might come back, just stay here.”
“Gariath doesn’t need me to wait for him.”
“It could be a Shen ambush.”
“We haven’t seen the Shen in ages.”
“Maybe a carnivorous fish or something.”
“What?”
“The point is I don’t know.” She growled. She bared teeth. Her ears flattened against her head. And still, she did not look at him. “Just stay here.”
The fish had scattered. The purple kelp swayed. Silence settled over the reef as she trotted off.
Thus, when Lenk shouted, she could not pretend to not hear.
“NO!”
His voice echoed. Across sky. Across sea. Across shadow. It fell into the chasm, rose up again on voices not entirely his own. Kataria didn’t seem to notice that as she turned around to face him.
Not when Lenk had his sword drawn and pointed firmly at her chest.
“No more of this,” he said, solid as his steel. “No more leaving. No more listening.”
Her gaze did not waver from his. Her ears did not lower. Her bow did not drop from her hand.
“Let me explain,” she said softly, as though she spoke to a beast she did not dare flee from.
“Lies.”
“Reasons.”
“Excuses.”
“NO! None of that!” he screamed. “No more lies. No more silence.” His blade trembled in his grasp. “I. . I need to know, Kat.”
“Traitors.”
“Lied to.”
“Pain. Blood.”
Kataria’s hands lowered to her sides, slowly. And she did not look away.
“No,” she said, all trace of soothing gone, “you don’t.”
“Don’t say that. It said you’d say that, so don’t. Say that.” His eyes were quivering in his skull. “I need you to tell me. Why you abandoned me. Why you want me to die.”
“I don’t,” Kataria replied calmly.
There was no great conviction behind the words. She did not scowl at him for the accusation. He did not apologize for saying it. Everything she was seemed to bow at once, a heaviness setting upon her with such force that it threatened to break her.
“But,” she said softly, “I did.”
“TRAITOR!”
“DIE!”
“BLEED!”
“Why?”
Lenk couldn’t hear himself talk. The voices howled, roared, smashed off one another, off of his skull, crushing, crashing, echoing, screaming. And beneath all of them, running through his thoughts like a river, it spoke on a calm, icy whisper.
“I told you.”
“I don’t know,” Kataria whispered.
“What?”
“I DON’T KNOW!”
Her head snapped up, teeth bared in a snarl, ears folded against her head threateningly. But these were lies, betrayed by her eyes wet with tears.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “Because I couldn’t hear the Howling, because I didn’t know what my father would say, because I didn’t feel like a shict, because you’re a human.” She thrust a finger at him. “You’re supposed to be a disease, Lenk. It’s supposed to be easy to hate you.”
Her breath staggered. Her body shuddered. Tears fell down her cheeks.
“But. .”
A silence hung in the air. Lenk waited, shut out the voices, shut out everything, as he waited, waited for her to say something.
“But you still left me,” he whispered. “But you still wanted me to die. You. You wanted to kill me.”
“I wanted one of us to die.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think, Lenk? Do you think the ears are the only thing that makes us different? I am a shict. You’re a human. To look at you the way I looked at you. . to stand over you like I did, to. . to. . have done what I did, it was sick. It was diseased. I was infected. They don’t have words for what I feel.”
“And,” he spoke softly, sword lowering a hair, “what do you feel?”
She did not answer. Not with words. She looked at him. With tearstained eyes, with grief, with pain, with anger, with something else. She looked at him.
And he knew.
And he lowered his sword.
“And now?” he whispered. “Why do you want to go away now? Why do you want to leave again?”
“Because I’m afraid.”
“Of what? Of this?” he snarled, gesturing to himself. “Of me?”
“Of you, yes,” she snarled back. “Because I hear the way you talk and I see you talking that way to people that aren’t there. So yeah, I’m afraid of you. And whatever’s wrong with you and of whatever it’s going to do if I’m not there to protect you.”
“I don’t need protection.”
“You do. If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be trying to do it all the time. I wouldn’t be keeping one ear out, listening to you talk to whatever’s inside you while I keep the other ear out for them.”
His sword lowered farther. He stared intently at her. “Who?”
“Them,” Kataria said. Her ears twitched, rose up. “The greenshicts. My people. They’re close. I can hear them. I don’t know how close, though, and that’s why I have to-”
“TRAITOR!” he screamed, taking a step forward.
“Lenk.”
Someone spoke. Outside of his head. Outside of his air. Outside of everything. Close, familiar, so much so it made him ache that he could only barely hear it over the din inside his head and heart.
“Don’t.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t.”
The voices said nothing. None of them.
Kataria said nothing. Kataria did not look at him.
“Tell me how to make it stop.”
He tried to heft his sword, found it too heavy. He tried to breathe, found his throat closing. He tried to look at her, found his vision swimming.
“Tell me.”
No answers. No lies. No truths. No voices.
“Please.”
Only Kataria. Only her tears. Only her stare that he could no longer bear.
He turned away from her. And then, and only then, did someone speak.
“No.”
It reached out of his skull, into his heart, into his blood. It clenched at him with icy fingers, twisted his muscles, sent his fingers tightening against the hilt.
“She must die.”
He opened his mouth to protest, to scream, to apologize to Kataria for what was about to happen. But he had no voice outside his head.
“If you cannot. .”
His arm rose of its own accord. His foot turned him. His eyes went wide as he felt himself, his blade, pointed at Kataria.
“I will.”
Kataria did not back away, did not look away, only whispered.
“Lenk. .”
“Kataria. . I’m so-”
He paused, saw the shadow falling over him, growing larger.
And then he felt the stone.
It struck him from above like a boulder, smashing him to the road beneath him. He felt them: large, powerful hands pressed into his back, hopping off. He saw them: landing before him on five fingers, green as poison, walking away. And when he looked up, he saw the long, lean legs they were attached to.
From beneath a green brow, between ears long as knives and marked with six ragged notches to a lobe, two dark eyes burned holes in his forehead. From down on the stone, she seemed to rise forever, body like a spear with muscles drawn tight behind bared green flesh covered only by a pair of buckskin breeches. Her mohawk crested above her shaven scalp, exposing the black tattoos on either side of her head.
“Greenshict,” Lenk whispered.
“She betrayed us! KILL THEM BOTH!” the voice howled.
“Get up, Lenk! GET UP!” Kataria cried.
All of them were silenced. Kataria by the elbow that lashed out and caught her in the belly, drivin
g her to her knees with a grunt. The voice by the sudden rush of fear that seized Lenk. And Lenk himself by the sight of two large, sharpened tomahawks sliding into the female’s hands.
“Stay still, kou’ru,” the greenshict said calmly. “I can make this quick.”
“So can we,” the voice growled inside him. It seized him once more, forced him to his feet, forced his blade to his hand.
The female smiled, baring canines that would look more fitting on a wolf than anything on two legs, as though she had been hoping this would be his answer. She slid smoothly into a stance, hatchets held loosely, as though she had been born with a blade in each hand.
Something inside him tensed, raised his sword, forced him into a defensive posture. Something inside him forced his eyes to search her stance for weaknesses, tender points to jam a sharp length of steel into. Something inside him smiled.
It never came to blows.
For as soon as either of them took a step forward, the road quaked beneath them. The rock shook, granite shards skittering across the pavement as something struck the stone.
Something below.
Something big.
It struck again, pounding against the road’s supports. There was a crack of stone, a groan of old rock. Cracks formed beneath their feet, growing to tremendous scars in a single breath. In one more breath, Lenk looked at Kataria. She looked up, reached a hand out, said something.
He couldn’t hear her over the sound of stone shattering. And in the next breath, he fell into darkness below.
“LENK!”
Her voice was swallowed up by the chasm, as it had swallowed him. Her reach was woefully short. And her eyes, tearful and useless, could not see him.
“Do not look, little sister,” someone whispered, far away and far too close. “Inqalle will handle it. Avaij will protect you. I will watch you.”
She heard him, knew where he was immediately as she looked up to the coral. Naxiaw stood, face set in a blank, green expression, arms folded over his chest. He watched her, impassively.
She could not think to send the Howling back at him. She could not think to scream at him, to beg him to recall Inqalle, to ask him for anything. She let him watch her.
As she stood up.
As she walked to the edge of the chasm.
As she jumped in.
SEVENTEEN
THE FURNACE
Asper stared at her hand.
Twenty-seven bones, seventeen muscles, five fingernails, all spackled onto a wrap of flesh and fine hair with what she had convinced herself was a grand design stared back. She stared at it with the kind of anticipatory intensity that one awaiting a visitor might stare at a door, as though her hand would simply open up and show her what else was dwelling inside it.
Her hand was not answering.
“What,” she whispered, “is wrong with you?”
No matter how many times she asked.
“Hurt.”
Fortunately-in the absolute loosest sense of the word-she had more than enough to keep her occupied from such thoughts. Nai lay beside her, unmoving but for her lips.
“Hurt,” she whimpered again.
Asper rushed to her side, as she had every time the girl had opened her mouth. But with no blankets, no water, not so much as a stray bandage with which to even pretend to be doing something useful, there was little the priestess had to offer her.
“Please,” she whispered, “not now.”
Except prayer.
“Just a little more,” she whispered, uncertain to whom. “Not yet. Not yet.” She received only one answer.
“Hurt.”
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” Asper cursed. She forced trembling eyes to trembling hands, looking from her left to her right and back again before shaking them. “Do something!”
“Hurt.”
Medicine was absent, Gods were lacking, cursed arms from hell were surprisingly unhelpful. Asper looked around her cell, trying to find anything that might have the barest chance. She found nothing but a pair of unmoving bodies. No help. Nothing but a single thought.
What would Denaos do?
“Hey! HEY, UGLY!” she screamed as she pulled herself to the cell door.
The netherling appeared from the gloom, long face staring between the bars with either incomprehension or anger; it was hard to tell with them.
“Listen, heathen, we need help,” Asper said, gesturing wildly to Nai. “She’s about to die. I need water, cloth. . something.” The female stared back blankly. Asper snarled, pounding a fist against the bars. “You filthy purple stool-sucker, listen to me.”
The netherling’s milk white eyes drifted to Nai. “Sheraptus?” she asked.
“Hurt.”
“Yes, yes,” Asper said, nodding vigorously. “Sheraptus! You know what-”
“Lucky,” the netherling said, turning to leave.
“What? No, wait! Get something! HEY!”
The netherling wasn’t listening. She simply turned around, pausing momentarily to regard the creature that had suddenly appeared before her. Tall, lanky, and possessed of a broad smile, he gently laid a gloved hand upon her shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, just a breath before a loud clicking sound.
By the time she had grabbed the hilt of her blade, blood was already weeping from her neck in great gouts. She didn’t make a move as he jerked his hand away, the metal spike protruding from his wrist glistening with her blood. She stared, speechless from shock. Also the hole in her throat.
And then she fell.
“Huh,” Denaos noted as the netherling’s blood pooled beneath her corpse. “That actually worked.” He pulled the blade’s hidden latch, drawing it back into his glove. “Should have said something more impressive.”
“Denaos!” Asper cried from behind the bars.
“Hello to you, too,” he replied, walking over. “Hey, if I had said ‘you’re working too hard,’ would that-”
“Open the door! Hurry!”
“Well, fine,” Denaos replied with a growl, kneeling over the netherling’s corpse. “If you’re in such a damn hurry. Just let me find the keys.”
“No time! Just pick the locks!”
The rogue looked up at her with a resentful glare. “Why would you assume I can pick locks?”
“I just thought. . well. . you’re a-”
“A man who is not a locksmith,” Denaos said, rifling through the netherling’s belt. “What’s the big hurry, anyway?”
“It’s-”
She suddenly realized that Nai hadn’t said anything for some time. She turned and saw a pair of glassy eyes staring up at her above blackened lips that no longer drew breath. She looked from Nai’s body to “her” lying nearby and saw the other prisoner also gone, as though she had simply been waiting for someone to leave with her.
Asper swallowed something foul.
“Nothing.”
The lock on her door clicked, the bars creaked as it slid open. Denaos stood in it, smiling broadly as he twirled a crude iron key around his finger.
“Granted, it would have been a lot more impressive if I had picked the locks,” he said, “but then again it would have also been more impressive if I had come riding on the back of a steed that travels by shooting fire out its. .”
His voice drifted as he saw her, died completely when he met her eyes. She was quiet, still, barely breathing. And he saw the tremble, something held within her that seemed like it might burst if she did anything more than breathe.
So he held out his hand. She took it, stepped closer to him.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
“I know,” she whispered back.
“We can’t stay.”
“I know.”
He looked over her, to the two unmoving shapes in the shadows of the cell. “But if you want to. .”
She squeezed his hand before stepping past him. “I don’t.”
Denaos nodded. “Then we need to be careful. There weren’t a lot of netherlings
out when we snuck in here, but there’s a guard force left behind.”
“They’ve left, then,” Asper muttered.
“To Jaga.”
“To Lenk and the others, assuming they made it.”
“Right,” Denaos said, nodding. “It’s a big fleet, though, and Hongwe has a small, fast boat. We can still make it before they do.” He pointed down a corridor. “Now, just head that way, Dread should be standing-”
“Where? Here?”
“No, back at the. .”
He didn’t even bother once he saw the wizard come walking up the corridor. No urgency was in his step, no breathlessness, nothing to indicate anything was the matter with anything but him. Dreadaeleon’s brows were knitted, his face set in a frown as he walked up to the cell.
“What is it?” Denaos hissed, reaching for a knife. “Are they coming?”
Dreadaeleon did not reply. He briefly pushed between them, peering into the cell. Without so much as a blink for the two bodies inside, he turned and walked back to the center of the room.
“Dread?” Asper asked, reaching out for him. “Are you. .”
He warded her off, holding up a single finger for silence. Pursing his lips in thought, he cocked an ear up. In a few moments, a scream echoed out of the darkness. The boy smiled.
“Ah, there we are,” he said.
And, with a rather morbid spring in his step, he took off exactly the opposite way from the exit, disappearing into the darkness. Asper looked expectantly to Denaos. The rogue looked offended.
“Well, how am I supposed to know?”
With little choice but to indulge this particular madness, they followed, finding him walking resolutely into the chamber ahead. Asper kept her eyes on him, trying hard not to look at the blackened wall of the chamber with a woman-shaped outline.
“Dread,” she urged quietly, “we should go. I mean really go. You don’t know what’s down here.”
“That’s why I am down here,” the boy replied, looking around as if searching for something in the round chamber. “It’s not so much calling to me as just sort of sending out a thousand messages to anyone who will listen. I’m surprised you haven’t heard it. Though I guess it would be difficult, what with-”
Another scream, this one frightfully close, echoed through the darkness.