From the Deep of the Dark j-6

by Stephen Hunt

  As the ancient monarch had grown in power, she was no longer content to seep through Charlotte’s blood and bones, whispering inside her mind. Now Elizica was appearing as a translucent blurred silhouette composed of shifting planes of light. Nobody else could see Charlotte’s ancient visitation, of course. The seanore coming into the hall walked right though the apparition, no more than a mirage.

  Will you stop haunting me if I give away the Eye of Fate?

  ‘When you went to so much trouble to obtain it?’ said Elizica, her voice veined with mischief.

  Charlotte guiltily remembered pilfering the gem from Madam Leeda. A burst of shame for stealing from the one person who had looked after her, indelibly mixed with the sadness of the first time she had used the amulet on her mother’s doorstep. That was the only time the Eye of Fate had failed her.

  ‘Its power is limited,’ said Elizica, speaking of the amulet. ‘You can make people believe in trivial things, you can make them see things that aren’t there. But you can no more make them love you than you can compel them to leap into a chasm and kill themselves, for that matter.’

  I wasn’t thinking of hypnotising you into jumping into a chasm, Charlotte lied.

  ‘It would make no difference if you did,’ said Elizica. ‘We leave our mark on the world as we pass through the years: in the lives of others, the action of our lives, in the reactions of the world. The children we have and the children we don’t. I’m just an echo, Charlotte, burnt into the Eye of Fate and the bones of the land. You can’t push an echo into a chasm.’

  I bloody well can if I throw the Eye of Fate over the edge.

  ‘You cannot, girl-child. You have been using the Eye of Fate for too long. It’s bonded to you now, as you are to it. Do you remember how sick you were during your last days in Jackals and on board the u-boat? That wasn’t a reaction to being attacked in the pie shop; it was a reaction to the crystal activating. When the Eye of Fate shielded you from Cloake’s strike, it reset to its true purpose. As your body is locked to the crystal, the changes are mirrored in your flesh.’

  No!

  ‘You should have listened to Madam Leeda,’ said Elizica. ‘She suspected the truth. Why do you think she kept the Eye of Fate locked away in the back of her caravan and removed the gem only when she had real cause to make use of it? She knew enough to use the amulet, rather than the other way around.’

  I don’t want this. Charlotte looked around the water-filled chamber. Jared Black and the old woman Maeva stood with other air-breathing nomads in one of the membrane-sealed annexes, arguing over some matter. The cavernous space of the dome filled with clan leaders and tribal wise-women, dozens of the underwater races represented. Charlotte sat on a bench of polished stone against the wall, the others like Vane and Tera keeping a respectful distance from her. Why? This was as much their fault as hers. Vane’s for letting himself be bested in the arena, Tera flapping around like fox-frightened poultry at the words of a prophecy the wise women were guardians for. What kind of fools were they? Charlotte could have stolen knowledge of the prophecy from one of them, couldn’t she? She could have used the Eye of Fate to do that easily enough. Now seanore tribes were flocking to the grand assembly. What a caper this could have been. There we go, honey. Just swim over to the Advocacy and raid their crystal fields for me. That’s all the chosen one wants from you, a nice pile of boulder-sized diamonds. What do I need them for? Oh, I’ll think of something. It wouldn’t be so wrong, would it? The money helps, it always helps.

  ‘Not this time,’ said Elizica, intruding on her thoughts.

  If you want to do something useful, go and possess the commodore and Vane and the others. Get them to stop tiptoeing around me as if I’m the angel of death.

  ‘For the seanore, I’m afraid that’s more or less exactly what you are. The herald of dark tidings is always to be feared. And as for the commodore, well, the last time he heard my words was through his daughter, and she gave her life saving the Kingdom. It cannot be easy for him to feel my presence again.’

  His daughter died? I thought you said you couldn’t mesmerize someone into hurting themselves?

  ‘Her choice,’ said Elizica, with a mixture of pride and sorrow. ‘Not my enchantment.’

  Charlotte sighed and looked up. She could see the Purity Queen anchored above through one of the net-covered gaps in the dome that allowed the sea water to circulate. I’m not going to get myself killed for you. Don’t you think I will for a moment.

  ‘I am glad to hear it. A corpse isn’t going to be much use in helping me fulfil the prophecy of the shadowed sea.’

  Charlotte glanced around the chamber. The gems that the seanore traded from the Advocacy were put to good use among the nomads, whittled by diamond drill-bits into intricate gemstone carvings of cephalopods and dolphins mounted on chains hanging around the nomads’ chests. There was nothing to match that level of artistry and craft back in Jackals, and each of the pieces would be worth a small fortune based on its uniqueness alone. This was Charlotte’s preferred class of pilferage — small, transportable and practically begging to be sliced off its chains during a chance collision in a crowd. She looked over again to where Maeva and the commodore were talking. They seem to be arguing.

  ‘I can channel what they are saying to you, if it will help you understand the people you fight alongside.’

  All right, then. Let me hear them.

  ‘You should have said something before you left,’ Maeva was complaining.

  The commodore shrugged. ‘I couldn’t and that’s all of it.’

  ‘Why not? You never seemed to have a problem with speaking honey before you disappeared. You loved to hear yourself speak. It was a problem ever getting you to stop.’

  ‘I couldn’t, Maeva,’ said the commodore, ‘because if I had seen you one last time, I never could have left you. I wouldn’t have had the heart for it. And then you and all your people would have died trying to protect me.’

  ‘You were one of our clan. That’s what we do. Then. Now.’

  ‘Ah, not for me, never for me. I’ve enough on my conscience. That particular hold is full.’

  ‘You could have taken me with you. I would have left the seanore with you.’

  ‘For what, a life on the run, on the surface, away from your family and friends and everything you loved in the sea? I ended up in Cassarabia with other survivors of the royalist cause. Sucking up to the caliph there in return for the guns we needed to fight on. That’s no country for you. Heat like a furnace, sands that’ll sup the sweat from you with a vampire’s thirst, nothing but enemies and plotting and sorcery as evil as any you’re ever likely to see in this world. None of the countries and intrigues that followed after were any better. Just death and treachery and a cause that was lost long before I was even born. Taking you away from the oceans would have been dragging an angel down into hell.’

  Maeva frowned. ‘It’s not a choice you should have got to make alone. I’m not some weak-willed surface-dwelling maiden. I am a warrior-born, free and unbound. It was my decision to make, not yours.’

  ‘I’m a pirate, remember? I stole it from you. And that was my decision.’

  ‘I thought I had made a seanore of you. Well, damn you for a pirate. Damn you for a privateer.’

  Enough. Charlotte felt guilty she had even agreed to the royal spectre’s suggestion.

  The shape was beginning to fade away, the planes of light glowing translucent as they seeped into the water. ‘As you wish. We have more important matters to focus on than the life they lost together. We have more important things to worry about than the weight of your purse.’

  More important things won’t put food on my plate when I get back home. Charlotte didn’t need to sound the silent if in that train of thought.

  ‘I grow tired. I’ve slept for so long. I will return when you have need for me.’

  Come back, I need you for this now.

  ‘For this jabbering mass? No, I have you for that.’ Eli
zica’s laughter faded into the chamber. ‘So many of the underwater races here, yet so much hot air beneath the waves.’

  Underneath the shell plates, interior surfaces daubed with frescos of legends and battles and creatures of the sea, Tera stepped forward and raised her arms. The wise-woman’s voice carried loud in Charlotte’s helmet speakers. ‘It is time for the grand congress of the seanore to convene.’

  Many floating in the water took their seats on the simple stone benches, as did the commodore and the air-breathing nomads behind the membrane. Those of the assembly without legs angled their bodies at neutral buoyancy, tails and fins holding them at anchor, waiting with expectant faces. One of the visiting nomads had stayed on his webbed feet, half his body armoured, the other half bare muscle with a gladiator’s physique. ‘Why are we here, Tera of the Clan Raldama? Why do you waste my time and all the chiefs of the water by bringing us here to a grand congress to stand before this-’ his hand jabbed towards Charlotte, ‘-surface dweller?’

  Tera grew incensed. ‘You are here, Korda of the Clan Coudama, because your wise-woman reminded you of your obligations under the songs of the shadowed sea.’

  ‘Where is the prophecy here? I do not see it?’ The angry clan chief indicated the Purity Queen drifting outside the tribal hall. ‘Only a crew of surface-dwellers, the gas from the outcasts’ engines fouling the great forests.’

  ‘The signs and currents flow true,’ said Tera. ‘Are we not arrived at a time when the people of the water are at the throats of the surface dwellers? The time of madness is close, when demons shall emerge from the scars of the world and claim us all in the confusion.’

  ‘Demons from the deep of the dark,’ Korda sneered. ‘The only devils I see are these surface dwellers. Is this the time of the shadowed sea? I think not. The Advocacy is habitually in dispute with trespassing surface dwellers.’ The clan chief pointed at the commodore standing behind the membrane. ‘And that one is the worst of all. A u-boat privateer notorious for his avariciousness. Do you not know him? You sheltered the silver-beard once, and here he is back again, full of tricks and lies and false words.’

  Vane joined the wise-woman in facing down the rival clan chief. ‘There are more than words at work here. This girl beat me in the ceremony of admittance and then sang words from the songs of prophecy.’

  ‘Pah!’ Korda’s contempt filtered through Charlotte’s helmet. ‘Words can be stolen as easily as crystals. You stupid weakling, you let the commodore’s fancy-piece best you in combat and now you seek to cover up your embarrassment by placing credence in ancient lore that Jared Black has pirated from us and whispered in her ear.’

  Another clan leader stood up as Vane stepped forward, boiling to challenge his guest to combat. ‘The peace of the grand congress be upon you both. Let us hear what this girl has to say. Speak, surface dweller. Were you the bearer of the lion trident in ancient times?’

  Charlotte looked at them all uncertainly. Now would be time for you to speak through me. Nothing, empty silence within her, the Eye of Fate as inert as a useless piece of coal.

  Korda’s sarcastic laughter filled the water. ‘For this I have dragged hundreds of the Clan Coudama’s finest warriors away from our territory, away from the hunt and the gathering. And what are we fed with here? The confidence tricks of surface dwellers.’

  ‘The one who gave you your prophecy has spoken through me,’ said Charlotte, ‘although by the Circle, I wish it was otherwise.’

  ‘On your wishes, we can at least agree,’ said Korda. ‘Speak now, then, surface-dweller. Sing the secrets songs of the prophecy. Let the grand congress echo with your wisdom.’

  ‘I am not a dancing monkey to caper to your whims, honey. I only know what I’ve seen and heard to bring me here,’ said Charlotte. ‘There are royalist rebels from my nation scheming with the Advocacy alongside highly placed officials inside the Kingdom, and the whole filthy conspiracy is swirling like a whirlpool around the twisted monsters appearing in my dreams.’

  ‘Bad dreams have carried you here? Not just you, surface dweller girl, your foolishness has called thousands of seanores to stand in this congress.’

  ‘I think the monsters in my dreams are the chasm-demons of your prophecy.’

  ‘You think — ’

  The commodore’s voice interrupted the clan leader’s outburst. ‘You want proof, lad, then here it is!’ Charlotte turned. The commodore was clutching King Jude’s sceptre, unfurling the staff from a stretch of canvas where he had concealed it. ‘This is what the dark-hearts chasing us are really after.’

  ‘And she shall return with a staff of gold and a crystal from outside the world,’ pronounced Tera.

  ‘A bauble made to order by you, Jared Black,’ accused Korda.

  Commodore Black pointed at the wise-woman. ‘Tera only told me of your prophecy yesterday. I knew blessed little of until then, though I recognized the description of the sceptre well enough when I heard it.’

  ‘Am I a fool? You’ve ordered that gaudy rod manufactured to lend credence to your schemes. I don’t know what you are here for, but I do know it will cost seanore blood spilled in the water if we listen to you. Let the squabbling surface dwelling factions and the Advocacy murder and war and plot against each other, but let it not involve us.’ He struck his way out of the waters, turning his back on Charlotte. There were murmurs of agreement echoing throughout the clan leaders’ assembly hall, many rising from the stone seats and ready to begin following the Clan Coudama out of the grand congress.

  The nomads’ outrush was interrupted by a company of rotor-spear wielding sentries urgently pushing against the surge of leaving leaders. ‘They are coming!’

  Vane shouted down the crowd to hear his warriors. ‘Who is coming?’

  ‘Darkships, we have seen darkships approaching over the forest.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Vane.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘You fools!’ Tera yelled across the clan leaders. ‘You wanted proof of the songs of prophecy, here it is. Did the old silver-beard manufacture the darkships, too?’

  Before the words had sunk into Charlotte, there was a rush of panicked nomads speeding for the exits out onto the seabed, a flurry of hidden weapons — forbidden at the congress — emerging in nomad hands.

  Elizica’s disembodied words whispered in Charlotte’s ears. ‘I think you will be glad I rested, girl-child.’

  What are darkships?

  ‘What the prophecy was intended to warn against, girl-child. Demon chariots, the chasm’s seed.’

  Charlotte didn’t need to ask what they had come for. They had come for the sceptre. And they had come for her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘Are you deaf?’ bellowed On’esse as Sadly and Daunt hesitated in climbing off the harvesting raft, snorkel spiders circling the boat with an eager, hungry intent.

  ‘This is inhuman,’ Daunt called out. ‘I must protest.’

  ‘Protest all you like,’ laughed On’esse, ‘but protest from the water. You have just as long as it takes my soldier here to reload his gun. All of you, restart your cropping!’

  ‘Cracked old arsehole,’ cursed Morris, now moving down the tree, but as slowly as he could. Obviously hoping someone else would get to the water first and attract the remaining snorkel spiders’ attention. ‘He’ll do for us all.’

  Dick Tull could only agree. He’d had the luck to be on the tree strap, cutting down fruit when the attack started, otherwise he’d be taking part in this slow-motion race to see who would survive. Just so long as On’esse doesn’t notice I’m no longer holding my machete and orders me down too. Commandant On’esse had lost his patience waiting for his raft’s big tripod mounted gun to be reloaded with a fresh shell. He pulled out his pistol and waved it threateningly towards the nearest guard station. ‘You there, push the surface dwellers off your platform — those stands are for us, not these vermin.’

  Something moved behind the commandant’s launch. At first, Dick thought that what
he was watching was one of the snorkel spiders attracted to the commandant’s still humming engine, but the shape kept on rising and rising. Not a flurry of mandibles, but an orange-coloured carapace mottled with camouflaged yellow stripes, a long flat curve of armour wider than the commandant’s launch and balanced by two huge serrated claws.

  ‘Tiger crab!’ warned Dick.

  ‘Not just any tiger crab,’ muttered Morris, abandoning any pretence to be heading back into the water. ‘It’s Old Death-shell back again.’

  Now Dick saw what the heavy bore weapon on the front of On’esse’s boat was for. Unfortunately for the camp commandant, he’d already wasted its shell on a hapless Jackelian victim. Desperately trying to reload, the soldier on the bow was near decapitated when Old Death-shell brought down its two claws onto the boat. Struck amidships and stern at the same time, the boat crumpled into three pieces under the tiger crab’s touch, On’esse discharging his pistol as he was flung back by the collapsing craft and the impact of the man-sized claws. His pistol shot rebounded off the shell close to Old Death-shell’s eyestalks, a new black scar of explosive residue joining a hundred others. Old Death-shell wore its previous encounters with the guards and their prisoners of war like medals on its armour, a constellation of scratches and lacerations speaking of how hard it was to kill. Trampling the boat, fair dancing across it in triumph, the tiger crab’s eight legs carried it over the debris and towards the thrashing form of On’esse. Old Death-shell’s left claw lazily swung around into an upper cut, smashing the commandant and sending him flying out of the surface before landing with a splash and a thump towards the bottom of Dick’s tree. Rifle fire from the soldiers on the guard stations raked the tiger crab from behind, and it swivelled around, slamming both claws into a wooden platform and cracking it asunder. The gill-necks that weren’t flattened by the claws tumbled off with the cowering prisoners of war who had reached the trunk’s elusive safety. All around the trees, the guards and convict labour were scattering — perhaps the snorkel spiders too, as Dick couldn’t see any sign of their previous attackers’ bony periscopes. All fear of the water was gone now among the harvesting party. There wasn’t an inch of sentient flesh in the Everglades who didn’t know what to fear now… the most vicious armoured predator on the island had come to dine, and there wasn’t any creature that was off the menu. Old Death-shell danced towards Dick’s tree, trampling over Sadly and Daunt’s raft as if the flatboat was nothing more than a waterlily, the two of them leaping out into the water before the raft splintered into pieces, hundreds of gillwort fruit sent flying.