by J E Feldman
Maybe it too was tired of the deception. Or perhaps the voice was a figment of his over-active imagination. When those clicks grew further away, Damos swam out of the cave. The Watcher was heading north along the mountain range, not westward where legend claimed he needed to go.
“Come and see. Oh, come and see.”
In case his luck had an expiration date, Damos swam as quickly and quietly as he could away from the Watchers. He just hoped he was heading toward the Veil and the change he so desperately wanted, not away from it. The lore had been a little sketchy on its location.
Ropes creaked as the anchor rose and silhouettes dashed as the deck raised black sails for the wind to catch. It was finally blowing in the right direction. Tyrgard lowered his spyglass as one last bolt of lightning lit the heavens and, way off in the distance, their goal—a shimmering wall of starlight and darkness.
“The Veil,” Tyrgard muttered to the staccato tapping of a wooden peg. He shook his dark head as the captain approached. “I thought it was just a myth.”
“And I told you it wasn’t,” Captain Arnel said from somewhere in the shadows.
“You’ve told me a lot of things over the years, and not all of them were true.”
Arnel brushed that comment off. “This is different.”
“I’ll believe that when I hold the proof in my hands.”
“Then prepare to believe it.” The captain spat his quid over the side. He tended to chew when he rattled on about something. “Quit lollygagging and trim those sails.”
Conversation over, the captain stomped off, shouting orders as he went. Tyrgard collapsed the spyglass and returned it to his pocket just as another lightning bolt crashed into the rising sea and a shadowy wall appeared for a split second on the horizon before vanishing.
Tyrgard rubbed his eyes. It was just a trick of the light and his tired mind. There was no magical gateway in the middle of the ocean. That was impossible. A man couldn’t sail west beyond west to the Lands of Ever, where all souls find rest. Life didn’t work like that.
But if it did—no, he couldn’t think like that. Hope was a disease he’d long ago recovered from. Truth was his buckler and logic was his scimitar. Tyrgard touched both with shaking hands. They were secured to a thick leather belt riding low on his too-lean hips. A muscle spasmed in his chest. Just touching those gifts made his heart ache with loss. But he knew better than to hope his lost love would return. The sea took what it wanted and some never returned from its watery depths.
If only that Veil was real, then he could cross over and see all those he’d lost. But it didn’t exist and thinking such insane things would only lead to more heartache and a return of the black despair he’d crawled out of to win a bet to prove his longtime friend wrong. Hence this voyage, which had no end in sight. He’d only come along to say, “I told you so.”
Tyrgard swallowed over the lump forming in his throat and the hunger cramping his gut. He should swing by the galley and grab a bowl of gruel and a mug of grog while he could. A hungry sailor was a sloppy one and the sea was a demanding mistress. Arnel was courting enough calamity on this voyage for everyone. Tyrgard refused to add to that.
An albatross cried and startled Tyrgard out of his black thoughts. It, too, was alone out here. We have that in common, my feathered friend.
“Tyrgard!” the captain called. “Where are you?”
“Here, sir!”
Tyrgard couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom as he hurried carefully across the heaving deck. It was a cold weight oppressing him and he shivered despite the balmy, tropical night. This just might be his last voyage, but there was nothing he could do about that now. His ship had sailed and the mainland was a thousand miles away as the albatross flies, getting farther away every hour.
“Wait for me on the other side, Cair-Lyon. I might grace death’s shores before this voyage ends,” he whispered to the crashing sea, and those words lifted the darkness smiting his soul.
It would be poetic justice if he, a lifelong privateer, died while chasing another man’s treasure, and the possibility hurried his steps because he wasn’t going down as a shirker.
As he crossed the deck, a shadow separated from the sea and grabbed hold of a trailing line. Since the ship was running silently with its oil lamps shielded and burning low, no one saw her. All eyes were either trained on the distant horizon or the task at hand as the captain paced the deck, shouting orders.
Svetalia couldn’t believe her luck. The ship was real! She held the proof tightly in her hands. And lest that rope vanish and leave her stranded, Svetalia tied it about her waist and gave her tired caudal fins a break. She didn’t care if it was a ghost ship crewed by the damned. It was going her way—west beyond west, where the sky supposedly fell into the sea and two worlds kissed.
Svetalia settled in for the ride. It wasn’t comfortable to be dragged in the wake of a ship that was almost six times as wide as she was tall. At the moment though, the ship wasn’t moving all that fast since the wind was changing directions. She adjusted her makeshift harness and settled in for the ride.
The multi-deck ship rode high on the sea, which meant it was traveling light. Svetalia scanned the darkly painted hull of the wooden vessel, but none of the alternating blue swirls or swashes meant anything to her. They probably meant something to the doomed crew though. Maybe they represented its name.
Hopefully, no one would glance out any of the portholes above and notice her, but she kept an eye on the deck far above for fishing gaffs or harpoons. Either one would end her quest and probably her life. Getting here had been tiring work, but no obstacles had thrown themselves into her path. In fact, she hadn’t encountered any creatures except the usual schools of fish, and they’d ignored her as always.
If fate was planning to stab her in the back, now was the time. Because from here on out, it should be a straight shot to her goal. Her nerves jangled and her heart beat too quickly in her chest, but the ship sailed on, making little headway with the contrary winds.
Time crawled by while Svetalia rested. This was the last respite she’d get until the end of her quest and she made the most of it. An hour rolled by then two, but no shadows pointed at her from the deck. No one shouted, “Kill the siren!” No alarms sounded, and no harpoons rained down on her.
Maybe this truly was a ghost ship. Svetalia relaxed a little and unslung her makeshift sack. Exhaustion still clung to her like a second set of scales, but she could move her arms without wincing, so that was a plus.
Her quest might actually be possible and that realization made her scales tingle with excitement. Though, that could be the aftereffect of all the swimming. Not that it mattered. Someone must do this. Since no one else would, it had fallen to her. She was sick of living in two worlds and being part of neither.
“Make me one or the other, not some bizarre amalgamation of a woman and a fish. Give me gills or give me legs, but make me whole,” she said into the uncaring wind and it threw her words away.
If what she’d heard was true, beyond the Veil lay the Gray Between and the transformative power of its sandy beaches. And that was where everything had gone so spectacularly wrong in the deep past. Soon, she’d put that theory to the test.
But first, her ride needed to move faster and Svetalia had just the thing to fill those slack black sails. She unslung her makeshift sack and removed the cork from the bottle. One fulgurite should do it. She didn’t need to brew up a storm, just a strong west wind. Svetalia tilted the bottle and out slid a rough tube of lightning-fused quartz and two pieces of sea-smoothed glass.
She dipped the fulgurite into the sea then held it to her lips and blew a sustained note. The two coin-sized pieces of sea glass vibrated in her hand and the energy the sea had expended to erode their sharp edges was released in one burst that strengthened her call.
“Come to me. Oh, come to me. Unleash the west wind; let it blow.”
A strong current shoved Damos into a band of frigid water. He
gritted his teeth and swam on as the seafloor leveled off from its nose-dive. Was that a good sign?
The collected lore of his people didn’t exactly contain a detailed map and the sea was rather deserted here. Was he still swimming westward? Damos listened hard, but heard only the sound of his passage. No Watchers were about, nor had any crossed his path in a long while. Was it safe enough for a little echolocation?
Yes, because he was tired of swimming blind. Damos whistle-clicked like a dolphin then listened for the echoes as they bounced off the seafloor. When they reverberated back to him, they vibrated the bones of his skull and sketched a surprising picture inside his mind.
Either he was interpreting the sound all wrong or the seafloor was climbing upward at a staggering rate. Damos swam on, mystified by what he sensed. Apparently, the seafloor could rise to meet whatever was above the sea, which raised all kinds of other questions.
Too bad there was no one around to answer them. This one time, he might have welcomed a Watcher. But it was better that none were present because said Watcher would have been honor-bound to stop him.
As Damos paralleled the seabed’s long ascent, excitement bubbled up inside him. He must be swimming in the right direction. No one swam west of the Darotrian Trench because, really, they had no reason to. All the Holds were two miles east of the deep volcanoes beyond the Trench.
According to legend, he must travel west beyond west, until the sun and moon traded places to where the starry night fell into the sea. Then, and only then, he’d reach the Veil, if it existed. How would he prove it if it didn’t? Damos slowed as that question beat in his brain. Nothing would change if he didn’t find some way of proving that Veil was a hoax.
His quest felt futile. Damos rubbed his eyes. His tail sagged and his muscles ached as exhaustion mauled him.
“Cross the Veil. Travel beyond Dreams. Come to where all souls find rest,” the voice of the sea quoted, but he was probably imagining that because giving up wasn’t in his nature.
A strange lethargy spread to every muscle as Damos floated there. He suddenly felt very tired. How long had he been swimming?
Without the Andurai about, he couldn’t tell, which probably meant it had been quite a few more hours than he’d planned on. The Andurai’s activity level went in cycles because even a bunch of glowing motes needed their rest.
Damos stared at his hand. He could see it even though there were no Andurai about to light anything. How strange. The sea must be shallower here than he’d realized. Perhaps this was another sign his quest wasn’t hopeless.
The urge to dive deep swelled within him, but Damos ignored it and the old Darodreds’ prattle about the dangers of shallow waters and the men who fished them. Damos had no idea what a ship or a fisherman was, and he didn’t particularly care. They wouldn’t be interested in him, but they might know how to prove a negative if the Veil didn’t exist. And if it did, well, he’d worry about that later.
Curiosity battled exhaustion and won. Damos swam upward until the top of his head broke the surface. Water ran in rivulets down his face as he tilted his head back to take in the dark expanse above. It was frightfully cold up here and a breeze swept across his face, drying it. Damos submerged again and floated on his back, keeping a centimeter of water between him and that dry substance above it. Thousands of pinpricks sparkled in the darkness overhead, and he marveled at them.
“West beyond west, night beyond day, when the sun and moon transpose themselves,” he said into the water, feeling it run pleasantly into his mouth and down his throat. The lore about the Veil was riddled with nonsensical words and concepts, so he floated on his back, hoping to decipher them.
When his hand encountered something warm and slimy, he gasped. Stupid eel. Damos was about to smack the offending creature when he realized it wasn’t an eel. Oh no! He’d forgotten to check for dolphins! His eyes lit up and cast a blue glow on everything as the parley spell smacked him upside his foolish head and burrowed into his tired mind.
“Ouch. A little warning next time, please?” Damos rubbed the bridge of his nose to ease the ache stabbing him between his now glowing eyes as that telepathic bridge connected his mind to Kurago’s. Just the Watcher he’d hoped to avoid.
“Damosocletes, what are you doing out here?”
“Looking for landmarks. Would you believe I took a wrong turn and got woefully lost?”
Kurago just glared at him with those liquid eyes and Damos felt his resolve weaken. Kurago wasn’t just any Watcher. He was a friend and more of a father figure to him than Arosities ever had been. That Darodred probably hadn’t fathered him, but it was impossible to know which of the breeding males had because an illness had culled many of them when Damos was quite small. There had been several outbreaks since then and there would be more if things didn’t change.
“Why don’t I believe you?” Kurago gave him a gimlet stare.
“Because you know me too well?”
Kurago shook his head. “Go back, Damos.”
“Which way is back?”
Damos made an elaborate show of searching for landmarks, but there weren’t any, just the endless rolling of the sea. Of course, he couldn’t go back. He hadn’t yet reached the spot where the Veil supposedly stood and he wouldn’t if he didn’t find a way to escape from Kurago.
Dolphins always looked like they were smiling even when they weren’t. Damos had a devil of a time trying to decipher not just the look Kurago was giving him, but the Watcher’s mood too. Something seemed off about him, which was strange. Kurago was the most levelheaded of all the Watchers.
“Don’t do this thing you’re set on doing.” As Kurago swam in a circle around Damos, his liquid eyes glowed a fierce blue and implored Damos. “This isn’t some shipwreck or ancient ruin. You’re messing with the Divine and that always comes with a hefty price.”
“You worry in vain. It can’t really exist.”
There was an odd look in Kurago’s eyes as the dolphin treaded water with his powerful tail flukes.
“Then doesn’t that make your quest impossible?”
Damos adopted his most innocent grin. “Maybe, but I won’t know until I’ve swum off the edge of the ocean’s floor, now will I?”
Would that be enough to prove the Veil wasn’t real? Damos tried to hide his growing doubts behind a bravado he didn’t feel. Fear had taken root in his heart like the fin-rotting disease killing the Darodreds. If they found out what he’d planned, not even Arosities could protect him from the matriarch’s wrath. She’d remove his fins so he couldn’t swim off, and he’d end his days a bitter and broken captive like Arosities. Damos shuddered at the thought.
“Are you all right?” Kurago asked.
Sometimes, more than words telepathically passed through the parley spell.
“Yes, I’m fine. Point me in the direction of that Veil. I have a lot of swimming to do to prove my point.”
Kurago blew an impatient breath out of his blowhole. “You’re impossible, Damos, utterly impossible. You would really swim until you cracked your stubborn head open on the edge of the world, wouldn’t you?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Damos answered it anyway as a little hope crept in. Kurago hadn’t threatened to return him to the Hold.
“Could I really do that?”
Kurago didn’t answer in words. A mix of emotions shot across the link between their minds, but Damos couldn’t identify them.
“Well? Can I do that? I have a reputation to maintain. They don’t call me ‘Damos the Daring’ for nothing.”
Okay, no one called him “Damos the Daring” except the adulating masses inside his mind, but a little ego never hurt anyone. It was better than the crushing depression most of his people lived with. If he did pull this off, he’d be the savior of the Darodreds.
That had a nice ring to it and Damos wasted a few minutes fantasizing about that. His caudal fin tingled in anticipation of those accolades until the silence stretched taut between their minds
. The parley spell strained to hold the telepathic connection open.
“You really are impossible,” Kurago said.
He gave Damos one more pleading look before exhaustion clawed its way back up his spine. Kurago stopped his circling and moved only his tail to stay afloat. The look in his blue-glowing eyes had changed.
“Sleep and dream and upon waking, go home, Damos, where you belong,” Kurago said.
“But I don’t want to.”
Damos felt his eyes growing heavier with each passing moment. He relaxed and floated there, moving with the gentle, rocking motion of the waves.
“Dream, Damos. Dream deeply,” Kurago said.
He watched as the young Darodred passed out. Every generation of them bred one hard-headed rascal, but Damos wasn’t like any of the others. They’d all possessed a healthy fear of the unknown and that had prevented mad things like this blasphemous quest. But with Damos, there was nothing holding him back, just an insatiable curiosity propelling him forward.
But it was more than that this time. Either Damos had changed since he’d last run into the youth or the Damos he’d dealt with for the last few years had just been a façade. But for a moment, there had been a secret pain in Damos’s blue-glowing eyes, then it had vanished behind his usual bravado. Who had put that pain there?
Asleep, Damos couldn’t regulate his buoyancy—something he did without a thought when awake. So he floated and Kurago circled him. This time, he looked for fresh wounds, but found only old scars.
“Why are you really out here, Damos?” Kurago asked in the whistle-click language of dolphins. This wasn’t his kind of quest.
The air had an ill feel to it even though that strange storm had blown itself out. Perhaps that storm had unhinged Damos. It was unnatural after all. But that explanation didn’t sit right with Kurago. Darodreds dwelled on the seafloor far away from where the storm had raged. Damos probably hadn’t even known about it.