by A. L. Brooks
6
The carrack drifted away from the jetty with no deliberate heading; the binnacle compass swung around and pointed northways while the boat were veering east. That were until Gargaron and Hawkmoth managed to work out a way to raise mainsail. It seemed no easy task even for them who claimed to have sailing knowledge behind them. Gargaron had to stop and laugh. ‘By Thronir, we have come so far only to be halted by this simple task.’
‘We are but weary from our travels,’ Hawkmoth offered as explanation for their apparent ineptitude.
‘Of course,’ Gargaron said laughing again. ‘I’m glad that is all the matter be. Though, if we cannot operate one simple sail, how is it we hope to cross this sea at all?’
Hawkmoth gave a wry smile, gazing thoughtfully up at the mainmast.
Locke, although not from a sailing community himself, claimed to have some rudimentary understanding of roping and the like and it were he who brought on the solution.
Once their sail were hoisted, it caught the wind, billowed and the carrack shunted forward, catching its crew off balance. Gargaron rushed to the wheel to bring the vessel around before it careered off into shore.
The boat tilted as the giant steered its prow north to wide open seas and it were here he realised he had no clear idea where this Empty Tower lay. ‘Where be this place exactly?’ he called out to Hawkmoth who had wandered off to the foredeck, surveying the way ahead of them.
Hawkmoth took a moment or two to answer. ‘Well, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I have absolutely no idea. I have only the Ghartst cave paintings to go on. They suggest a large island lies north of here. How far I cannot say. How many days? Who can tell? For now we would do well to simply follow the compass on a northways heading toward the distant horizon. In the meantime I shall consult my maps to see if anything of this ocean be marked upon them. We shall require a spotter though. I have not witnessed them myself but there have long been tales of troughs opening up on this sea and swallowing ships whole.’
Melai turned and looked around at Gargaron before turning her eye on the sorcerer. ‘Troughs?’ she asked. ‘What do you mean, troughs?’
‘Great dark trenches that appear in the grass without warning,’ Hawkmoth answered matter of factly. ‘They regularly take unsuspecting ships down into the grave of this sea. Fortunately they are relatively easy to spot during the day. So we should not fear.’
‘You did not think to warn of this before we took to this boat?’ Gargaron asked with a questioning look.
‘It has only just come to mind,’ Hawkmoth said.
‘And what about night?’ Melai enquired. ‘If this voyage should take us through the dark hours, how might we spot one of these troughs once the suns fall?’
Hawkmoth nodded, as if considering this. ‘Well, I have a trick or two to light our way of course. Let us worry about that when we come to it, shall we?’
Gargaron sighed. Boom shakes and now troughs. Were nothing ever simple?
SEA SCAR
1
IT were Melai who volunteered to take to the crow’s nest. Just as well for she were the only one able to climb the mast and fit up there. Except for perhaps Locke. And instead of the prospect frightening her she found the position exhilarating. She remembered her first days away from Thoonsk, how the vast, open and unbreached sky terrified her—that fear of falling upwards with nothing to contain her had been almost too much to bear. But now here she were, perched in a small housing at top of ship, with nothing above her but the entire unending sky. It should’ve terrified her. But instead she breathed deep the air, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her green skin.
From there she could watch the patterns of the wind move across the grass ocean. Long lines of waves rippled across the surface… ones that altered direction as quick as the wind. The patterns were beautiful, she thought, mesmerising. For as far as she could see, she watched them, entranced.
Some fifty feet below her, Gargaron bore similar thoughts. He marvelled how quiet it were out here. The sound of the breezes on the grass, the occasional whip and tug of the sail, the subdued creak and groan of the ship and its ropes. He turned and eyed the small port from where they had launched. Rith Gartha were already a distant sight behind them, the jetty almost indistinguishable from the shore line. The lighthouse, the most prominent feature, were almost lost to the haze. And all around them this strange, shifting, waving, ocean of grass; grass the colour of old dried peas. Yet every now and then there emerged a break in the colour with a bloom of red atop the grass. At first Gargaron thought these were blooms of flowers. But up close they looked more like meaty snags of tendrils, curling and writhing. An irrational fear warned him that they might detach, wriggle up the hull of their carrack and make lunch out of its crew.
‘I believe, they be the staple food of the giant turtle,’ Hawkmoth said, leaning over the side of the craft to watch one such writhing bloom go by. ‘And a delicacy of those who fish these waters.’
2
On went their voyage all that long day. And sight of land were long swallowed up beyond horizon. From time to time Gargaron searched the sky. He kept a keen eye open for any discoloration that might indicate a coming shockwave. But it were Gohor and Melus he pondered. While he could not look upon the two suns directly, it did not prevent him from pondering their course. He could not help recalling the cave paintings. Were it true they tussled for possession of Cloudfyre? It were unsettling to consider such a notion. Frightening. And could the orbit of Cloudfyre have brought on the Ruin? Triggered the boom shocks? Awakened the Dark Ones?
He engaged Hawkmoth in conversation on the topic. And it were Melai who asked what the paintings had told them. ‘I have no knowledge of this thing you call celestial mechanics,’ she said to Hawkmoth.
So Hawkmoth explained it to her, that the moons swung about Cloudfyre, and that Cloudfyre circled Melus; Cloudfyre and her eighteen sister planets. And that the cave paintings had suggested that Gohor were wanting to wrestle Cloudfyre from the grasp of Melus.
‘But why?’ she asked.
Hawkmoth shrugged. ‘If it be so, I could not tell you.’
‘You do not believe this be what the cave paintings depicted?’
‘It seemed as such,’ he said. ‘But they were ancient and their original meaning might well have been lost to all but their creators.’
Gargaron prayed that were the case.
3
The afternoon drew on and they began to see the surfacing of several turtles in the distance. This caused some measureable excitement.
It were Melai who spotted the first. And the second. Calling them out, pointing; the first several hundred feet off the starboard bow, and the second, considerably closer, off port. They were a marvel to watch, these ocean giants, surfacing, even floating for a few moments, as if watching the passing ship.
‘They ought not bother us,’ Hawkmoth called. ‘They be weary of those who hunt them, and, I would think, know this boat to be a threat.’
Thus far, Hawkmoth’s prediction proved true. The creatures would simply surface and ultimately swim away into the depths of the grass, showing no more interest in the ship, much to Locke’s disappointment for he longed to view them at close quarters. Once or twice Gargaron turned the ship in their direction. But the turtles sunk into the depths before the ship strayed near.
Aside from turtle spotting, Hawkmoth maintained a diligent survey upon of the sky for possible Boom shakes, and also upon the “waters” that abounded the carrack. He were pleased that so far, he had spied no perilous troughs.
It were at dusk however that the first danger struck.
4
It had been mid-afternoon when Melai had spotted the first scar. At first she thought it were a cloud shadow cast long and narrow across the grass surface. But aside from dark thunderheads amassing in the eastwun skies there were no clouds to be seen.
Melai alerted her crew. Hawkmoth strode eagerly to starboard bow, gazing keenly out across the rolling
grass waves. The scar were difficult to spot from his vantage. He deployed his spyglass and brought it into view, a great gaping trench in the grass. It were as if the clawing fingers of two opposing winds had pulled aside a pair of enormous walls of grass, raked them aside like a barber combing a part in someone’s hair; the “part” in this instance being depthless and dark.
Locke were at the helm by this stage, happy to assume role of captain for a short while. Hawkmoth called for him to adjust their heading slightly. ‘Track north-north east for a while,’ he called to Locke, ‘open up some ground between ourselves and that anomaly.’ And up to Melai in the crow’s nest he called, ‘Keep us abreast of its movements.’
She frowned. ‘Is it likely to move?’ she called back.
Hawkmoth were not entirely certain. Nearly all he knew of this Grass Sea were from text books. He’d had no extended firsthand experience of this place. ‘I’ve heard some say these scars can shift as swiftly as the wind.’
As their ship rose and fell on the gentle swells, Gargaron could see the dark gash three or four hundred feet off their starboard bow. His eyes shifted to the waving, whispering grass below their hull. No matter how many times he stared at it, he thought how dense it looked, like close packed brush bristles, and it seemed impossible for a vessel as large as this to sink down amidst its long waving stems. ‘How deep are we here would you say?’ he asked Hawkmoth.
‘Your guess is as good as mine, good giant,’ Hawkmoth replied, not removing his spyglass. ‘But I’ve heard it told that at its deepest, the Grass Sea may be as much as several hundred fathoms.’
That idea unsettled Gargaron. Grass so tall and deep. There would be no sunlight down there. Perhaps little air to breath. No room to move.
They watched the scar as it suddenly swept southwards like a blade and vanished on the horizon behind them.
It were relief to see it go its own way.
They saw their next at sundown.
5
The suns were low in the sky, setting behind clouds and haze and the atmosphere was turning pink, orange, red. By then Locke had somehow managed to climb his way to crow’s nest; his serpent coiled about the mast’s base, gazing up at him, tongue flickering.
Locke had been enjoying the solitude, the fresh winds tingling the horns on his head, when, close to nodding off, he detected a dark shape appear to their north.
He sat up, watching it keenly, whipping out Gargaron’s spyglass (which admittedly were a tad large for him) and scoured the way ahead. It were only a few hundred feet from them and he saw it clearly, a chasm cut down in the surface of the grass. A strange but awesome thing to behold.
‘Hawkmoth,’ he called out. ‘I see another of your scars. Dead ahead of us. Five hundred feet, angling out to the north-west. I’d recommend a directional change to the north-east.’
Gargaron and Melai had both been snoozing on the foredeck, watching the distant stars begin to twinkle into existence out there in the late afternoon sky that were still blue but slowly darkening, and watching what looked to be the moons of Syssa and Noo Ka, begin their. Hearing Locke’s call they rose and hurried to forward bow.
‘Aye, take us north-east,’ Gargaron called to Hawkmoth, pointing out a projected heading.
But that proved almost their undoing.
The wind had picked up in the last little while, and the Grass Sea were beginning to kick up with some chop. The carrack had become harder to control, but eventually it took the heading that Hawkmoth had asked of it as he spun the wheel to port side. There were a momentary slackening of the sail as it swung round, before the wind billowed up into it and thrust the vessel off on a north-eastern tack.
But as Locke watched, he noticed with dawning concern the scar moving, the Grass Sea parting, and the great chasm spearing rapidly in their direction. ‘Oh sorcerer, the scar is on the move,’ he yelled. ‘On course to intercept us! Ten sunflares!’
‘Mooring ropes,’ Hawkmoth called. ‘Tether yourselves!’
There were but one course of action to take now. If they continued on their current course they would meet the fast moving trench and spill down into eternal dark. If Hawkmoth spun them on a south-westerly course, a similar fate might befall them. All he could do were spin the craft back on a sharp north-easterly direction with the hope that the scar would slice right by them. He had heard that these scars moved like arrows, in straight lines. He had to hope that would ring true.
Hawkmoth and his crew tethered themselves to mooring ropes, and the crevasse bore down on them like some vengeful creature. It were here Locke noticed something else. Another dark scar. This one out to port. Though, this one vanished just as soon as he’d spotted it. His focus were now split: keeping an eye on the scar racing toward them and keeping a watch for the new one.
When he glimpsed the second anomaly again he were surprised how different it appeared. And as he watched it, he suddenly realised it were no scar.
‘Hawkmoth!’ he called. ‘Other than turtles, what beasts swim these strange seas?’
‘None I know of,’ the sorcerer called back, straining on the wheel. Gargaron had dashed back to help the sorcerer haul the ship about, dragging his long mooring rope behind him.
Locke’s eyes were on the new menace swimming their way. He managed only small glimpses of it as it surfaced and dove, surfaced and dove, but some monster it were, serpentine, with a head full of teeth, and arms and legs folded back against its body.
‘We have another threat,’ he called out, ‘off the portside bow.’
Gargaron left Hawkmoth with the wheel, stumbling over to the portside gunwale. When he laid his eye upon the new threat a chill went through him. ‘Hawkmoth,’ he called. ‘Locke be right. Some sea beast comes for us!’
Hawkmoth nodded, as if to say, Right then, a scar and some beast. Two problems be better than three. ‘So be it,’ he called, ‘brace yourselves!’
6
Two things happened then at once.
Firstly, the scar met them. Until the end of his days, Gargaron would remember standing there on the forward port side bow, gazing down at the mighty trench below them. It were like staring down into a deep, dark mouth, a vast frightening cleft; something that existed it seemed only to swallow them. And for a few moments the ship rode the very edge of it, as if their evasive manoeuvre had been enough to steer them from harm’s way.
However, ship’s momentum slowed dramatically on the swell, pushing its passengers from their feet, and the vessel began to tilt over to port. The moving trench seemed to beckon the vessel, pulling it, Gargaron, Melai, Hawkmoth sliding across the deck toward the gunwale, Locke clinging tight to the rails of the crow’s nest.
And just as the ship began to topple over the lip and into the waiting deep, the sea beast roared up out of the ocean, slamming ferociously into the ship, shunting it back to starboard, saving the vessel from being swallowed up by the scar.
But the force sent Gargaron toppling overboard.
7
For some moments as he fell, all Gargaron saw were the gaping maw in the grass below him, a gaping crevasse that dropped away into the deep dark depths. Then the mooring line which he had looped and cinched around his waist, gave up its slack and he swung and smacked heavily into the hull.
For a sunflare he dangled there, grimacing, the ship riding the very edge of the crevasse, his feet dangling above the pit. But the swells heaved the vessel high, and the upsurge tossed Gargaron back into the air, and as the ship dropped back to ocean’s surface, Gargaron felt truly weightless for a moment. The ship smacked heavily into the grass swells, and yanked Gargaron’s mooring line, pulling him downwards with great force, and as his line ran out of slack, this time it did not hold. There came a cracking sound as the line severed under the giant’s weight and Gargaron suddenly found himself screaming as he fell into the depths.
8
Waves of grass crashed and slapped over the portside gunwale, its long hissing fingers sliding off the decking, snari
ng Melai in its grasp and dragging her with them. She were gone in a flash, squealing and then silence, her mooring rope held taught over the side of the ship, and sliding back along the gunwale.
Hawkmoth were running, bringing his staff around, chanting some incantation. He reached the edge where he had last seen both Melai and Gargaron. He looked over the side and saw Melai hanging there, her wings flapping, the grass coiling about her ankles. Quickly he grabbed hold of her mooring rope and yanked her upward, arm over arm, until she were near enough for him to grab. He reached down, snatched hold of her and hauled her back onto the vessel. But there were no time to waste here. He took up his staff, swished it down upon the deck, dropping to one knee as he did, his robes billowing out at his sides.
‘Reliss temporass!’ he whispered harshly. ‘Reliss temporass, vun temporass britheess! Bring iss buk!’ Hawkmoth felt his mind falter. He lurched forward but with his free hand stopped himself falling flat on his face. His thoughts had turned fuzzy, he felt faint. He felt an unwanted sensation surge through his limbs, a hardening, parts of him converting to rock, a sensation he despised. But this time he had acted quite without thinking, as if some other force had hold of him.
The boat rocked beneath him, he could hear the squeal of the sea monster off the bow, or somewhere upon the ship, he knew he needed to arrest his faculties to help fight it off.
With enormous force of will he pushed himself to his feet. Yet he staggered and fell to his knees. He could hear Melai screaming, yelling, warning him that some monster were attacking, he could see Locke through blurred sight, blow flute firing rapid-fire darts.
‘Reliss temporass!’ Hawkmoth whispered again.
He were operating in a state out of mind now, using all his thought to push Lancsh to open a dark temporal doorway, a passage leading into the past. It appeared suddenly in the form of a shimmering cave mouth, an anomaly born of pure energy, sparkling with light pulses that looked like tiny stars. They surged inwards, as if trailing some dark passage. And then appearing there all of a sudden, at the opposite end of this temporal corridor, were Gargaron, back there in a time already passed on, on deck just before he were dragged overboard.