by Tim Lebbon
They started across the cavern, and as they passed below the rents in the ceiling, they saw where the smells were coming from. Several corpses lay across the ground—sheebok, wild goat, and something that could have been a foxlion. A couple were little more than hide and bones, but the foxlion body was fresher, still rotting away and giving home to a legion of larvae and flesh-crawlers. The creatures must have ventured into Throats on the cliff tops, explored down, then slipped, falling through the openings above and dying there in the weak light. Their demise and rot was a hidden affair, and Kel felt like an intruder.
“There’s something else,” Namior said, and Kel knew what she meant. The red smell of exposed meat did not issue from there.
There were mosses growing across the cavern floor, pale green plants that huddled in the few patches where daylight from above splashed across the rock. There were also several pools of water, deep, black and rippling from small, unknown things moving beneath their surfaces. Kel tried to imagine what could exist down there, and he felt that flush of wonder that had left him so many years before.
They entered the new tunnel, and their senses were immediately assailed afresh. The roar of the sea was much louder, its smell stronger, and they could taste brine on the air. And that other smell, as well. Sickening, heavy, rich.
The floor sloped steeply again, none of it smooth or easily negotiable, but the light from the knife was supplemented by a vague glow creeping up from below. They must have been closer to the bottom of the cliff than the top, and Kel felt much more at ease.
They climbed down, helped each other past fissures in the floor, ducked under sharp protrusions pointing down from the ceiling, and all the while Kel feared reaching somewhere impassable. A narrowing of the tunnel, perhaps, through which they could not pass. A drop into a deep hole, sides too smooth and sheer to climb. An unfordable chasm, a flooded part of the tunnel… but all his fears were contradicted by the growing light from ahead. The brighter it grew, the louder the sound of the sea.
But the terrible stench also grew stronger. And rounding a corner, Kel saw the boat, and what they would have to do to launch it.
I CAN’T DO it, Namior thought. No matter how dangerous it would be to go back, I can’t do it.
The smell was appalling. Kel had tried to attribute it to the animal remains they had found in the large cavern, but she had seen the lie in his eyes, and he couldn’t have thought she was naïve enough to believe that. She had lived in a fishing village all her life; the smell of insides was known to her.
I don’t know what he thinks of me anymore. She looked at him, her lover, the soldier, and she was glad she saw the same doubt in his eyes. Maybe he can’t face this either.
The tunnel ahead of them was straight, sloping slightly downward and opening up into a wide cave that disgorged onto the rough shale-and-rock beach below the cliffs. Water dripped from the ceiling, and for the last thirty steps of their descent the rock around them had been wet and slick, draped here and there with things of the sea: seaweed, slime, the rotting bodies of fish. But the smell did not come from them.
Directly before them was a rowboat, probably snatched from one of the wrecked Pavmouth Breaks trawlers by the sea. It was wedged in the tunnel. Two paddles were still clipped along its gunwales, and it appeared to be seaworthy. One of the waves must have driven it in there, the water powering past it and forcing up the tunnel behind them, depositing the seaweed and fish that had made their final descent so treacherous.
Beyond the dinghy, dead people covered the cave floor. They were swollen, exposed skin pale and gray and split, puffy flesh gray and bloodless. Some still wore shreds of clothing, torn and tattered by the violence of being driven into that narrow place. She saw faces and looked away, because she would know some of these people. There were men and women, and here and there she saw the slight form of a child. She guessed at twenty dead, though perhaps there were more beneath.
Dead for just over a day, the decay was taking hold, the many wounds they had received quickening the process and allowing what remained inside to leak out.
I can’t walk across a floor of dead people.
She tried to look away—at the walls, to see if she could climb across; past the cave mouth at the beach; beyond, out to sea, where she could see the southerly tip of the strange new island—but her eyes were always drawn back to the dead.
“Pushed in by the sea?” she whispered, glad when Kel took her hand and nodded.
“We can take the boat,” he said. “Oars are still clipped inside. Can’t see any holes. It’s barely noon, we can—”
“I can’t walk across there!” Namior said, aghast.
Kel held her upper arms, pulling her close until their foreheads were touching. “We can’t go back,” he said.
And she knew he spoke the truth. There was no way they could go back, and it wasn’t only that the visitors might still be looking for them. It was that place they had come through. Her skin crawled thinking of it, and she wondered whether whatever was in the darkness back there still roiled, excited by the unexpected visitors it had received and let slip through its grasp.
I’ll get in the boat, she wanted to say. You can climb over, pull it across the bodies and down to the beach, and I’ll sit inside and unclip the oars and get ready to start… But there was no way she could say that. She was strong, she had come with him, and she had to be willing to help.
“They’re dead people,” Kel said, holding her tight.
“I’ll see faces I know.”
“Just flesh and blood.”
“And their wraiths? They’ll be lost, wandering, I have to try to—”
“There’s no way to chant them down now, Namior. Even if you can, we don’t have the time. They’ll be found. We’ll send Mourner Kanthia this way, and they’ll be luckier than those lost to the sea.”
Namior closed her eyes and nodded, trying her best to see the sense in what Kel said. If they were to get out to the island and back before darkness fell, they had to leave immediately. The fact that they had found a seaworthy boat was miraculous, but that miracle was terribly balanced by what they must do to get it to the sea. It was like one of the ni and noy philosophies of the life-and death-moon worshippers, people who believed in the balance of their gods: caring and uncaring, good and bad, omniscient and blind. Namior did not ascribe to such beliefs—her own faith was earthbound and buried deep—but she knew what her friend Mell would say. You’ve been given a gift and a curse.
“I won’t look down,” Namior said.
Kel smiled and hugged her tight. “Neither of us needs to look down.” He let her go and went the final few steps to the boat, climbing in, ducking low to avoid the cave’s ceiling, and testing its integrity as he walked to its stern. Then he lowered himself onto the carpet of corpses covering their route out to the beach.
Namior closed her eyes, but she could not deny the fresh waft of rot.
And when she opened her eyes again and looked past Kel, she saw the metal man.
KEL WAS STARING down at his feet. His left boot had found space between the head of one body and the knee of another, but there was nowhere for his right foot to go, so he placed it on a chest, closed his eyes, and relaxed his weight from the boat. The corpse exuded a bubbling belch, and Kel breathed out slowly through his mouth to try to avoid the stench.
They’re not people, he thought, seeing the hollow where a woman’s eye had been picked out by something from the sea.
He heard the scrape of metal on stone. He frowned and looked to his waist and arms, trying to make out where his weapons were touching rock. He did not move, and the sound came again.
The light around his feet changed, and Kel turned and looked up. Something had moved into the mouth of the tunnel, fifteen steps away across the mass of bodies. It was shaped like a person, but there was little human about its movements, its sharp silhouette, or the way its knees and elbows flexed as it crouched into a fighting stance.
Wh
at in the Black… ?
It was a metal man, its outer shell a dull, dirty gray, movements as fluid and unnatural as those of the machines the Komadians had brought ashore. As it came for him, the only sounds it made were the soft squelch of footsteps on dead bodies, and an occasional scrape as spikes on its metal shell touched rock and drew showers of sparks.
“Kel?”
“Stay back.” Kel drew his sword. There was no doubt in his mind whence this thing came, and no hesitation in drawing the weapon. He recognized the way it was coming at him, and it was not to hug and offer a friendly greeting. So where’s its controller? he had time to think, then the metal man drew a short, stubby tube from a cavity in its leg.
Kel drifted to one side, stepping lightly, ignoring what was beneath his feet. Something gave beneath his left foot and he shifted right, countering before he fell.
A sound thumped at his ears, a terrible blast that left him deafened for a beat, the sounds of the sea and Namior’s scream drifting back in from a vast distance. He felt shards of rock speckling his head and right shoulder.
The metal man was five steps away, holding out the short tube. Steam rose from it in a small spiral. The thing’s face was a confluence of curved metal plates, small deep holes where its eyes should have been, and for an instant Kel was sure he saw an expression of confusion flit across its solid features.
Kel plucked a throwing knife from his belt and launched it at his metal attacker. It glanced from its face, scoring a deep scratch, and as the thing’s head flipped back Kel ran, driving forward with his sword and searching for a weak spot. He could see none.
The thing deflected the sword with its arm, bringing the other hand around in a wide, high punch. Kel ducked just in time to avoid receiving a metal fist in his face, but it passed over his head and struck his left shoulder, driving him down and back. His feet went from under him and he fell, wincing at the terrible softness of his landing. He kicked out, both heels connecting with the thing’s right knee.
The metal man grunted.
Kel’s eyes went wide with surprise. He glanced at the mouth of the cave, searching for the Komadian with his or her controlling box, but there was no one else there.
His attacker came again, aiming the steam-spewing tube, and Kel realized at last what he was looking into. Its circular end pointed at him like the mouth of a tunnel, deep and black. It was a projectile weapon, more complex than a simple crossbow. And he was looking directly into its business end.
He delved into his pocket and threw the acid pouch in one fluid movement. The pouch hit high on the thing’s forehead and burst, scattering acrid dust across its shiny face. Kel squeezed his eyes closed and exhaled, but when he looked again a beat later the metal man was before him, closer than ever, coughing slightly, but otherwise seemingly unaffected.
The weapon’s barrel was three steps from Kel’s face.
Something blurred through the air above him, knocked the steam-tube aside just as it fired, and struck the metal man across the face. The projectile hit the tunnel ceiling, and chunks of rock pattered down across the trampled corpses.
“Kel!” Namior shouted. She’d dropped the oar, but she already had the second one in her hand, ready to throw.
The metal thing staggered back. It had dropped the tube, and both hands went to its hips, drawing small throwing stars, which it lobbed at Namior. She fell into the boat, screeching slightly as one found home.
Namior! Kel braced his wounded left hand against the body beneath him, tensed himself and pushed, shoving hard with both feet. He held the sword before him, aiming it at the thing’s throat where the metal was lined with joints.
The metal man turned just in time to take the sword in its neck. It grunted again, driven back against the tunnel wall. Its hands came up to knock the blade aside, but Kel leaned on the handle with all his weight, digging both feet into whatever lay beneath them and pushing.
Metal screeched against metal, the thing’s throat plates parted, and a startlingly red gush of blood pulsed between folds.
Kel paused for a beat, then pushed harder. He heard choking as blood bubbled between the sword and the metal suit. And then the stricken thing let out a terrible, familiar screech.
Kel gasped. He let go of the sword and stumbled back a few steps, barely keeping his footing on the uneven surface of corpses.
The metal man fell to its knees, both hands clawing at its throat, scratching long scars into the suit’s surface. It tipped forward, then steam trickled from two rows of holes on its back, metallic sounds snicked and whined, and a series of plates folded back to reveal what lay inside.
Two long, thin limbs rose from the body, flexing as though glad at their release. Blue fire sparkled along their lengths, sizzling the air and countering the stench of rot with the tang of burning. As they curved in toward each other, ready to touch and form the perfect arc, Kel swallowed his shock and acted.
A throwing knife in each fist, he raised his hands over his shoulders, took one step forward and launched them both. His aim was perfect. One limb flipped away, completely severed, while another slumped broken to one side.
“Run, Namior!” He heard her struggling over the side of the boat, landing on the bodies and dry-heaving. “Up and run, out, now!”
Kel never took his eyes from the Stranger. He no longer saw its metal suit… all he saw were its limbs, and the blood still pulsing from where he had stabbed it in the neck. As he went forward, he kicked the metal tube it had been firing at him. It was surprisingly light.
He grabbed the sword handle in both hands. The Stranger squealed. Kel lifted, bringing its head up so that he could look at its metal mask, searching out the eyes. “You may be here at last,” he said, “but it’ll never be easy for you.”
The Stranger growled, or laughed.
Kel pushed on the sword, shoving it through the Stranger’s neck and severing his spine.
Then he turned and ran.
NAMIOR WAS OUT onto the beach before she saw her own silhouette thrown before her. The blast of light was brief, but staggering, and the dull thud that accompanied it sounded like something rearranging itself in the land.
She resisted the urge to turn and look, because she heard Kel coming after her. She knew it was he because with every pounding footstep on the shale beach she heard him saying Run, run, run. She was not sure whether he was talking to her, or to himself.
She turned left, instinctively heading away from Pavmouth Breaks as the pounding sea forced her to make a choice. Fear prevented her from registering anything of her surroundings: only the need to flee.
“Namior!” She slowed and turned at last, and Kel was reaching for her. “Down behind this rock, this should be safe enough.”
“Safe enough from what?”
“One of them,” he said, explaining nothing. He carried a golden tube in his hand, the same thing she had seen the metal man firing at him, and she flinched away. “Don’t worry,” Kel said. “It’s dead.”
They slipped behind a huge rock that had tumbled down from the cliffs above, and Kel was up leaning against its face, looking over the boulder and back the way they had come.
Namior stood next to him, for comfort more than anything, and that way she saw what emerged from the cave. A dark thing thrashed out onto the narrow beach, spinning, hissing, sizzling, crunching rocks beneath it, sending shards spinning through the air to splash in the sea or ricochet from the cliff face. She had the terrible impression that it was searching for them, but it flitted this way and that, as though possessed of a terrible indecision.
“Stranger’s wraith,” Kel whispered.
Namior reached out to him. He was right, she thought, and the idea was terrible. What evil had touched Noreela at the very place she called home?
“Can we run?” she asked. With the little Kel had told her about the Strangers, she assumed that to be the end.
“No,” he said, ducking down and pulling her with him. “No, but it won’t last for lo
ng. They never do.”
They sat there behind the rock, squatting on pebbles and smashed-up wreckage deposited by the terrible waves, and listened to the thing raging behind them. Namior had sensed many wraiths in her life, and she had even seen some, when the light was just right and there was a cool, calm mist in the air. But she had never imagined anything like that creature.
A Stranger. A mad wraith. This can’t be of Noreela. And they claim no magic, though their steam things astound me. She leaned in close to Kel. “They’re from somewhere else, aren’t they?”
“We’ve been sure of that all along,” he replied, touching her face with one hand. “We just don’t know where.”
The sounds of violence lessened behind them, and Kel stood slowly to peer past the rock. He slid back down, landing with a gasp, and his head dipped forward, sweaty hair hanging on either side of his face. He was holding the metal tube in his hands, but he seemed not to notice it.
“Kel?” Namior stood slowly, and when Kel did not reach to stop her she knew the wraith was gone. The air on the beach seemed to shimmer before the cave, as though a great heat was issued from the opening, but of the raging dark thing there was no sign. Patterns of disruption scarred the loose shale. The sea came in, hushed against the shore and pulled out again, unconcerned, eternal.
Kel stood quickly, reaching into his jacket pocket for the small bag of things he had shown her before. “I have to call the Core,” he said.
“Will it work here? Through stone?”
He smiled and shook one of the nutlike objects into his palm. He handed it to her while he tied the bag and put it away. Namior ran her fingertips across the thing in her hand, feeling the ridged shell spiked with delicate fronds, and touching the coiled tail that protruded from one end.
“One way to find out,” Kel said, and he took the nut from her. He stared at it for a moment, his face going slack. “I’ve dreaded ever having to do this.” Then he leaned forward and breathed out directly into his palm.