In the spell of suspended motion – Shimmer somehow feeling as if they were still moving – K’azz stepped quietly to Cole’s side. ‘Check the hull,’ he murmured.
The short barrel-shaped swordsman flashed a smile of assent and headed for the companionway. Rutana snapped her fingers for Nagal’s attention then waved to the bow. The unnaturally large man – perhaps, Shimmer speculated, carrying a touch of the ancient Thelomen blood – actually crouched and edged forward as if wary of attack. The sight of that wariness sent a thrill of fear down Shimmer’s spine. What is it they dread?
Cole emerged from below and Shimmer glanced to him then could not look away. The swordsman, almost always ready with a smile or a joke, now stood as if bewildered, confusion and unease wrinkling his face.
‘Yes?’ K’azz urged the man.
‘Hull’s gone in the bottom,’ he murmured, and he rubbed his brow. ‘Looks like it rotted away long ago.’
‘How then—’ Shimmer began but a hiss from Nagal silenced her. He then cast a scathing glare to Rutana who winced and clamped a hand on the amulets tied round her arm and squeezed there, as if massaging a wound. Shimmer dared a step towards the bow and Rutana let out a low snarl of warning: she ignored it and took one more. Closer to the pointed bow she could see that the Serpent had fetched up on some sort of sandbar or bank. Though what such a feature was doing here near the middle of the river she had no idea.
She blew out her breath in disgust. Gods! What are these two on about? She turned to K’azz. ‘It’s just a—’ she was silenced again, this time by Nagal snapping up a hand. He eased the hand down to the water as if inviting her to peer closer. Shimmer leaned out over the side. She squinted to see past the dazzling glimmer of the light on the waves and it seemed to her that the sandbar curved downward, disappearing into the darkness of the river rather than shallowing at its edges. In fact, the obstruction now struck her as the shape of a submerged cylinder, like an immense log of titanic scale, fully as large around as their ship itself. Yet pale as if carved of marble. More detail reached her and she backed away, her hand going to her throat. She turned a mute stare of awe on Rutana.
A smile of savage satisfaction crept up the woman’s lips and she nodded. Oh yes, fool! she seemed to gloat.
For the log or cylinder was not smooth. It was scaled in serried rows and those plate-sized scales pulsed opalescent. It was alive and it was easily of great enough girth to swallow the entire ship.
Slowly, step by step, she eased her way to K’azz’s side. They had all gathered around him. Gwynn’s white hair now stood up as if in utter fright and he carried his staff readied in both hands. Lor-sinn had thrown off her robes and now stood in a thin white silk blouse, the sleeves pushed up her arms. Her Warren was raised, for Shimmer could make out the aura of cobalt mage-fire dancing about her hands and in her eyes. Cole, Turgal and Amatt had ranged themselves before K’azz. Turgal had readied his broad infantryman’s shield. Amatt held his two-handed blade, sheathed, in one hand.
‘What is it?’ Shimmer asked of Gwynn.
‘It is a Worm of the Earth,’ he answered grimly. ‘A scion of D’rek.’
‘Older than D’rek,’ K’azz answered as if distracted, gazing over the river.
Gwynn frowned at this and eyed his commander as if troubled. Shimmer resolved to question the mage later as to why – should there be a later for any of them. For here was a foe before which even they, Avowed of the Crimson Guard, were helpless.
Nagal urged Rutana forward. Clutching at the mass of amulets that clacked and swung from her neck, she gingerly crossed the littered deck. The Serpent’s foredeck couldn’t really be called a forecastle in that it was quite low, rising less than Shimmer’s height. It narrowed to a long steeply raked bowsprit. Past this, Shimmer caught movement far upriver: a swelling bulge sweeping the waters as of something immense beneath shifting sluggishly. A sudden bizarre thought struck her then and she almost laughed aloud at its insanity. How long was this beast and did it follow the entire course of the river – or did the course of the river follow it?
Nagal, his long hair hanging free down nearly to his waist, grasped Rutana’s wrist and lowered her out over the side of the Serpent. The Avowed crowded the side as he did so. Shimmer could not speak for her fellow Guards, but she felt a sort of shamefaced embarrassment that this woman should be the one to have to act on their behalf. That, and enormous relief.
Leaning far out and showing almost inhuman strength, Nagal gingerly lowered the sinewy woman into the water until she came to rest upon the back of the colossal beast. Up to her waist in the waters she bent over, hands extended. She murmured and whispered as she rubbed the beast’s back.
Shimmer shared an awed glance with Lor-sinn who blew out a breath, suitably impressed. K’azz’s angular, bony face revealed only a calm detachment, as if he were merely a disinterested observer and none of this had any bearing upon them.
After a time Shimmer noted another of the unaccountably large waves disturb the surface of the river. It wove up and down towards them until it reached their position and Shimmer caught her breath as the monstrous girth shifted, rolling, and taking Rutana with it. She disappeared into the murky rust-hued waves. Shimmer looked to Nagal, but the man did not appear dismayed; rather, he scanned the waters as if confident of her reappearance.
A grating and scraping shook the decking beneath their feet. The Serpent shuddered. Shimmer imagined shield-sized scales gouging wood as they shifted. The bow fell, rocking, and it was apparent to her that the ship had sunk far lower in the water than before. They now had no more freeboard above the waves than the length of her arm.
A splash sounded followed by a gasp and there was Rutana. She threw back her head, her thick mane of kinky hair tossing spray. She swam for the Serpent. Nagal reached out again and they clasped wrists and he lifted her up on to the deck. She stood in her sodden layered dresses, water pouring from her. She lifted her chin to them as if in defiance. Her lips were tightly clenched, utterly colourless.
K’azz inclined his head as if to say, well done.
She tossed her hair again, her eyes flashing, and Shimmer’s disquiet grew. For the witch’s eyes had shone a golden yellow at that instant, and it seemed to her that the pupils were slit like those of a serpent as well.
‘And what was that?’ Shimmer asked, her voice hoarse with disuse.
The wiry woman shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘You could call it a guardian, I suppose. Some say they are drawn here by our mistress. Or perhaps they have merely been driven out of all other regions.’
Like you, Shimmer suddenly realized. Like these creatures, you and Nagal are worshippers of Ardata and no more human than they. You don’t want us, you said. Why do you resent K’azz? Is it because he is human? Are you afraid of losing your goddess, Rutana?
The woman clamped her lips tight once again, as if regretting even these few words. A shudder took her bony frame, perhaps from the cold, and she lifted her pointed chin upriver. ‘We are close now.’ She turned away.
Shimmer looked to her Avowed brethren. Cole blew out a breath as if to say, thank the gods! Amatt drew off his great helm revealing his scarred cheeks and ragged beard. He sent a scowl to the waters. Turgal likewise began unbuckling his rusted armour. The cerulean flickerings of Lor-sinn’s Warren energies died away and the woman sat heavily on a hatch-cover as if her legs could no longer support her weight. K’azz had already turned away and now stood facing the waters once more, his sinewy hands clasped behind his back. Gwynn met Shimmer’s gaze; somehow the man appeared even more unfriendly and gloomy than usual. She gestured him to her. He raised a snowy brow then came to her side.
‘Yes?’
She turned away to face the passing waters and reaching jungle branches. Shapes undulated just below the murky waves alongside the vessel. From their spiked back-ridges she knew them as giant sturgeon. ‘Good eating, those,’ she said, motioning to the fish.
The mage pursed his lips, his eyes ques
tioning. ‘So I have heard.’
Shimmer tried to recall her last meal, failed. She spoke as if distracted. ‘You say you never came to the interior?’
He straightened, nodding. ‘Yes.’
‘You heard no rumours? No hints of what we might be facing?’
The older mage’s lips drew up as if the questioning amused him. ‘I heard many rumours.’
‘What were your duties, then, during the time you were here?’
‘As I said. We were in the south. Skinner ordered a port city built.’
‘So it was his plan to open the country to trade and travel?’
‘Yes … Eventually.’
‘Eventually?’
He shrugged his rounded shoulders. ‘The coast is a treacherous swamp. There are no suitable quarries. The fever of chilling-sweats is rampant – people died in droves. These beast Soletaken raided us, dragging men and women into the jungle. We lost many workers and constantly had to raid the villages to procure more.’
Shimmer stared despite herself. She had no idea Skinner’s rule had been that terrible. ‘I didn’t know,’ she breathed.
The old mage winced, hunching even more. ‘I’m not proud of it.’
‘You refused to return.’
‘Yes. I couldn’t go back.’
She then asked, swiftly, in an effort to catch an unguarded reaction, ‘What is it about K’azz that makes you uneasy?’ The man blinked, surprised. His gaze skittered aside. Too guarded, this one. Serves me right for trying to get the drop on a mage.
‘You have known him for longer than I,’ he began tentatively. ‘Did he ever show any, er, talent? Any access to the Warrens?’
‘No. None that I know of. Why?’
He frowned in thought. ‘I cannot place it. But I feel a dim aura around him. It is as if he were connected to a Warren, or a source of some sort. It is like a faint scent in the air. One I cannot identify. And he knows things. Things he shouldn’t know.’
‘Oh? Things you do not know, so how could he? Is that what you mean?’
A crooked twitch of a smile from the man. ‘You are too direct, Shimmer.’ He tilted his head as if reconsidering. ‘Still – a blustering reaction could have betrayed the truth. But no. Things he ought not to know.’
‘Such as?’
Again a shrug. ‘Many such instances. Just now, when he remarked that these Worms are far older than D’rek. As soon as he said it I recognized the truth of it. Yet it had never before occurred to me.’
Shimmer grunted, disappointed. She’d hoped for something more. Something pointing to an answer to the mystery that the man had become. ‘He has … changed,’ she remarked, her voice low.
‘Yes. He is now closed to me.’
Closed. Yes. He has walled himself off from the rest of us. Why? What is he afraid of? Or hiding? Or protecting us from?
‘Look there!’ Rutana called, pointing, her voice shrill.
Stone humps stood from the river ahead. As the Serpent drew closer they resolved into statues and architectural features – a bell-shaped stupa, a cyclopean lintel over a submerged entranceway. All were gripped in the fists of trees and hung with flowering lianas. All were eroded to shapeless forms. The statues might have once carried human, or even beast, characteristics. All elements of faces or forms had been scoured away. Time and the relentless probing tendrils and roots of the flowers had ground the rock away as if it were mere sand.
‘We are close,’ Rutana reaffirmed. ‘Very close now.’
Close to what? Shimmer wondered. All I see is a gulf of time. An immensity I cannot even begin to comprehend. Yet is it so? Perhaps it has been only a few brief centuries or decades and that is all that is required to wipe away all remnants and signs of human existence.
Perhaps this is the true lesson Himatan presents here.
* * *
The first hint Pon-lor had that something was going on was when the weasel-thin Thet-mun rushed to Jak’s side and whispered excitedly to him. The column had halted and Pon-lor stood breathing heavily, his legs leaden and aching – he wasn’t used to so much walking. His arms were tied tightly behind his back. His robes now hung from him sodden and torn, no better than rags. At night he was left lying in the rain. For food, scraps were thrown in the dirt before him; so far he’d refused them all.
It was, he decided, the harshest test yet of his Thaumaturg training in the denial and mastering of the demands of the flesh. Should he survive he might even suggest instituting it as a sort of final examination. Any normal man, he knew, would have succumbed long ago: to starvation, exposure, or any one of a number of sicknesses.
Jak snapped out a series of low orders then swaggered over to stand before him. As he always did, he reached up and made a show of running Pon-lor’s jade comb through his long hair. Finishing his ministrations, he knotted the hair through itself then looked him up and down and sniffed his disapproval. ‘You’re a mess, spoiled noble boy,’ he said. ‘Want a drink?’
Pon-lor knew a drink wouldn’t be forthcoming but his ferocious thirst demanded he nod the affirmative. Jak signed for a skin of water. He took a long drink then stoppered it and handed it off, all the while holding his laughing gaze on Pon-lor’s eyes. He edged a half-step closer.
‘I’m going to break you, noble brat,’ he purred, his voice silky with pleasure. ‘In a few days you’ll beg to drink my piss.’
‘I’ve had worse,’ Pon-lor managed to grate, barely.
The youth’s arrogant twist of the lips pulled back into rage and his right arm came up. His fist exploded against the side of Pon-lor’s head and sent him to the ground. Darkness and bursts of light warred in his vision. Myint’s hysterical hyena laugh sounded over him. Her knee pressed into his stomach, cutting off his breath. A gag was wrestled over his mouth. He was dragged through the mud and slammed against a tree. More ropes secured him to it.
When his vision cleared and he shook his loosened hair from before his face the troop had disappeared into the jungle. One guard remained. The least of them, a kid named Heng-lon whose appearance had so far evoked only sympathy from Pon-lor: beneath his bristling brush-cut hair the left side of his skull was flattened and pushed in, the eye on that side stared off permanently to the left, he breathed through his mouth, and he had the mental age of a five-year-old.
The youth clutched his spear in both hands, scanning the jungle, obviously terrified to be alone. Seeing Pon-lor awake he wet his lips and sidled over. Grinning, he set his spear against the tree then fumbled at the ties of his short trousers.
Pon-lor quickly lowered his head. A warm stream hissed against his crown then splashed over his shoulder and down into his lap. The kid giggled. ‘Always wanted to do that,’ he said. ‘No one c’n top this story!’
This is proving quite the test indeed …
I could give you a story no one could top. ‘How my head got to be on this shelf’ perhaps. Or ‘How I lost all my limbs’. But that would be too easy.
Pon-lor struggled instead with keeping his hands, tied behind him, in the meditative position of forefingers touching thumbs.
‘What’cha doin’?’ Heng-lon asked.
Pon-lor looked up, raising his chin and the gag tied there. The youth reached for the gag then stopped, thinking better of it. He took up his spear and backed away. While Pon-lor meditated, the youth set to starting a fire.
It took a great deal of effort to force himself to slow his breathing, but Pon-lor finally managed to isolate all the tension, locate the suppressed rage, and mentally uncoil it to ease his flesh into the requisite degree of relaxation. From this point he was able to concentrate upon separating his spirit – the Nak – from its fleshly housing.
What are they up to out there? Well, we shall soon see.
But he’d forgotten the psychic storm that was Ardata’s aura. The punishing stream snatched him and cast him spinning. He knew he was an instant from wandering lost forever when he remembered his lessons and forced himself to re-imagine his presence no
t as a solid entity but as downy fluff, as dust, as a handful of drifting motes. Now the storm raged on but passed through him, like wind through a tree.
He searched for Jak and his band of pathetic cast-off bandits.
Before he could track down their auras a blazing presence in the psychic landscape screamed for his attention. For an instant he felt himself shrinking in fear: was this her? The Queen of Monsters herself?
But the essence was entirely different. In fact, it was so entirely different it appeared almost alien. What was this thing? Was it a denizen of this jungle? Yet such awesome power. If he were a candle flame of presence flickering in the half-spirit realm then this thing’s projection here towered as a coruscating sky-high pillar. He dared to drift closer to the presence and cast a greeting.
‘Who are you?’
‘Who are you?’ a voice answered in his consciousness – a child’s voice, unbelievably.
‘What are you?’
‘I do not know. What are you?’
‘A mage. A traveller here.’
‘A mage? Ah – a manipulator of interdimensional leakage.’
A what? Pon-lor wondered.
‘The flavour of your art is oddly familiar to me. Why should this be? I must examine you.’
A bulge swelled the side of the towering white-argent pillar. A mountain of puissance descended towards him – enough to scatter his atoms.
Pon-lor snapped away. His chest swelled reflexively, drawing in a panicked breath. He opened his eyes expecting a firestorm about him, the trees drifting away in motes of soot. His palms tingled with sweat and his heart was pounding as if he’d just completed a full course of muscle isolation.
All was quiet. Heng-lon glanced back to him from where he sat poking at the fire, his spear across his lap. It was night. A light rain had begun. They were not alone; someone was approaching. A large party. He sensed them but the kid hadn’t yet. Presently, the lad sprang to his feet, spear levelled in both hands. He jerked the iron point left and right. It trembled in the firelight. The youth backed up until he stood level with Pon-lor. He drew a short-bladed knife from his sash.
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