The Atomic Sea: Volume Nine: War of the Abyss

by Jack Conner

  “You know about my deal with the delegates in Salanth.”

  “Of course. We all do. And that’s why you’ll be the guest of honor at dinner tonight. But first, would you like to meet Lady Jivini?”

  Avery had to catch himself from listing backward. His knees still felt as if they were about to betray him, but for a different reason. This was not how it was supposed to go, not at all. He no longer had Sheridan or the sap. “Sure,” he said. “But only if she’s not hungry.” He tried to smile to show that this was a joke, and Hurisvecta’s half-smile in return was chilling. That smile said, She might be.

  As they started off down the corridor, Avery made himself ask, “What’s to become of Colonel Sheridan?”

  Hurisvecta gave a facial shrug. “She’ll be questioned.”

  “I’m sure I can answer any questions you have.”

  The colonel eyed him askance. “Not trying to save your captor any pain, are you?”

  “She’s a human being, after all. I wish no one pain.”

  “I don’t mean to suggest anything, sir, but that attitude would seem suspicious—to some, anyway. I’m sure you have your reasons.”

  “Well. Of course. She may have captured me, may have meant to deliver me into the hands of my enemies, but … she had her reasons, too.”

  “Which were?”

  “Well … I think she meant to get back her good name. If she gave me to you, she would be proving that she was still loyal to Octung.”

  “I think she dispelled any notions on that score when she stole the Codex and left Lord Uthua to die aboard the Flying Fortress.”

  Avery hid a sigh. “I’m sure—”

  Hurisvecta raised a hand, forestalling him. “My lord, I am very curious about how you arrived here, and what this is all about, but the truth is I’m very busy and don’t have time for this sort of intrigue at the moment. Besides, it’s not my call, not really. The decision rests with Lady Jivini—and, to some extent, Triarch Thisinc. He’s our host, after all, and it’s his host we’re forced to deal with on a daily basis. I’ll let you explain matters to those two, and they’ll decide what’s best from there on out.”

  Avery imagined Sheridan being tortured and suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

  “Are you all right, my lord?”

  “I … think I need a drink.”

  Instead of offering him one, the colonel marched him up several flights of stone stairs. These weren’t already lit by lanterns, and soldiers had to produce flashlights to show the way. The beams played strangely off the tight, twisting angles of the black staircase. Outside, thunder shook the night. Just great, Avery thought. Another fucking storm, and just when my nerves are jumpy enough. The Octunggen didn’t seem bothered by the creepy, crypt-like atmosphere of the pyramid, nor did they jump or flinch at the cracks of thunder, but that didn’t mean they seemed at ease. Rather they looked too emotionally worn out to be bothered by such trivialities. Their whole way of life was ending, or at least their great cause. Their holy cause. It had crumbled right out from under them and now it was threatening to take them down with it, plunging them into the abyss.

  Avery cleared his throat. “Colonel, you said you have a functioning intercontinental transmitter.”

  “That’s correct, Your Highness.”

  “As a hero of Octung, do you mind if I use it? I need to let my people know that I’m alive, receive progress reports and give orders.”

  “Of course, Your Highness. I’ll make our transmitter available to you. But first you must meet Lady Jivini, then the Triarch.”

  Col. Hurisvecta showed the way out of the stairwell and down a maddeningly tight corridor, also not illumined, though there seemed to be vague lights ahead; Avery couldn’t tell for sure as several soldiers had gone ahead. This whole place, after what he was coming to think of as the lobby, seemed made of strange, small chambers and tunnels, and the angles were wrong, making it seem as if he moved through a dream, or nightmare. Surely people didn’t live here. The Eberlins are small, but not this small. Were these pyramids houses of the dead, then? He’d heard of such practices elsewhere in the world.

  The Octunggen reached an archway and hung back while the colonel took Avery by the arm and led him through it, into a broad, low-ceilinged room lit by purple alchemical lanterns in the corners. The Octunggen had brought a good supply of lanterns in that color, Avery thought, and didn’t have to wonder why; it was the color preferred by the Collossum. And indeed, the violet light bathed the face of one now. She sat cross-legged on the floor facing a group of robed priests and priestesses, and she seemed to be leading them in a prayer. The eerie cadences echoed off the close-set stone of the room, magnifying it and distorting it at the same time.

  Lady Jivini didn’t look up at once, but when she did her beauty struck Avery like a fist. Raven hair framed a pale, oval face inset with haunting dark eyes with purple glints. Her full lips issued a word to her priests, and they rose and poured through tight doorways in the rear of the room, doubtless into whatever sinister warren they had claimed as their own in this place. Were they keeping prisoners there, future sacrifices for Lady Jivini? Avery would have been surprised if they weren’t. Even now there are people waiting to die back there. A terrible thought struck him. Was Sheridan among them, or would she be brought here soon? Was she even now being force-fed diseased seafood?

  “This must be Lord Avery,” Lady Jivini said, as Hurisvecta brought the doctor forward. Obviously word had gone ahead.

  “It’s he,” said the colonel, bowing his head to the goddess. “Or so he claims. He was brought here by Jessryl Sheridan.”

  Jivini nodded, as if this made sense, though Avery didn’t see how it could. Jivini seemed to be waiting for something, and only belatedly he realized she expected him to bow as the colonel had done. It must have been some time since she’d met someone who didn’t worship her. Except maybe the Triarch. That must have been an interesting meeting.

  “At any rate, it’s good to meet the benefactor of Octung,” Jivini said at last, realizing he wasn’t going to bow. “You’ve done the Lightning Crown a great service. Or at least you will.”

  Only in order to destroy you and all your kind, you bitch. “It was my pleasure,” Avery said, aiming at pleasantness.

  Something flickered in her eyes. To the colonel, she said, “You may leave us.” Hurisvecta bowed again and withdrew, and Avery could hear the cracks of the troops’ bootheels as they filed away. Suddenly he felt very alone. Thunder detonated outside, almost completely muted by the stone, but loud enough for him to jump, and alchemical purple lanterns throbbed in the corners of the room. Gooseflesh prickled below Avery’s navel, and his balls contracted as the oil-dark eyes of Lady Jivini regarded him intently. She was so close she could have reached out a hand and caressed his face. Or used a tentacle to rip him in two.

  “I can smell her on you, you know,” she said softly.

  “Colonel Sheridan?”

  She began moving, walking in a slow circle about him, and he first thought to rotate with her, then realized how ridiculous that would be. She circled him like a shark.

  “No,” she said. “The Lady Layanna. The Black Bitch. You reek of her.”

  He wondered if she meant this literally, or if she sensed Layanna on him by some extradimensional means. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sure, I was with her for a time—a long time—but I lost her recently.”

  “Oh? How? Where?” Stalking, pacing, her shadow shifting with the lights. Sometimes she seemed to have two shadows, or four.

  “She … perished near Xicor’ogna.”

  “You went to the Holy City?”

  “We followed a Muugist there, or at least to the Great Mound. We stopped him, but at the cost of Layanna’s life.” It wouldn’t be good for Jivini to become aware Layanna was on the island; surely Jivini would immediately set out after her if she knew, and then there would be no chance of Layanna establishing some sort of rule amon
g the ngvandi. Jivini would launch her attack with overwhelming strength, and Layanna would fall. Layanna’s only hope to have killed her was by ambush, and even that was unlikely; Avery believed the islanders would more likely have sided with Jivini over Layanna. At any rate, Layanna couldn’t survive a direct assault.

  “A Muugist,” Jivini said, tasting the word, or at least the thought. “Who?”

  “Davic.”

  “Layanna’s Davic? Interesting. Go on.”

  “They slew each other, but not before we wrung some information out of him. His ally, Thraish, was heading here and bringing the pirate armada with him. The same armada that had been serving your people until they turned against you.”

  Jivini brought herself to a halt, her face mere inches from Avery’s. “I’ve heard of the pirates’ advance, yes. But why are they here?”

  How much should he tell? Should he reveal that the Monastery was here? “I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is that when I arrived Colonel Sheridan was waiting for me. She caught me and dragged me here.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Redemption. She’d hoped Octung would forgive her. At least I think that was her plan.”

  “She must have realized that was impossible. No, she had some other motive for penetrating the pyramid, I’m sure of it.” Jivini’s gaze roved up and down him. “What was it?”

  “I-I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.”

  Jivini narrowed her eyes. “I think you’re lying. I think you know more than you’re saying.”

  “I promise you, I don’t.”

  “Why did you come here? To stop the pirate fleet from invading an island you likely had never heard of? I don’t believe it.”

  The air blurred around her, and Avery stumbled back, tripped over a stone set slightly higher than the others and fell on his rump. Sharp pain shot up from his tailbone.

  She stepped forward, the air blurring even more violently around her. Any moment now and she would bring her other-self over and scoop him up in her tendrils, possibly to torture him with her otherworldly acids, poisons and fire, then to devour him.

  “N-no!” he said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know!”

  The rippling faded, just a bit, and he saw satisfaction in her eyes. “Why did you come here, little lord?”

  “I'd heard of the islands. Ghenisa means to annex them.”

  “Annex?”

  He nodded, sweat dripping down his forehead. “Don’t you see? The whole world is going crazy after the war, each country trying to grab up as much territory as it can while so many other countries are weak. Now is our time, our chance. We can make Ghenisa a world-class power, finally. It’s never had a seat at the table of nations before. Never been respected. Feared. Never had any say in how the world was run. Well, now it will.”

  The air faded even more around her. Greed was something she understood. “Why would the king himself come, alone? No. You were after Davic for a reason. You got it and came here for it.”

  “We pursued Davic because the Muugists had some plan, and they still do. I came alone because I had to. I couldn’t get to my ships in the Salanthan harbor. I’d hoped to treat with the Triarchs here, to offer them Ghenisan protection against the pirates. Don’t you see? We could use the Muugists’ plans to bolster Ghenisa!”

  She took a step back, the air normal now. Avery sucked in a deep breath, then another. For a moment he feared he’d urinated in his underwear; it proved dry, however.

  Jivini didn’t look convinced, but she looked weary. Casting a doubtful glance at him, she said, “Well. You’re here now, and the Octunggen are grateful to you. You surely have motives of your own, but, as long as you don’t move against us, I suppose they can stay your own. Just don’t fuck with me.”

  The words lashed Avery like a whip, and he nodded. “I-I won’t.”

  She sniffed. “You can stand.”

  He tried. He didn’t have the strength. Sniffing again, she stalked forward and helped him up, and he almost jumped at the contact. He was glad when she withdrew her hand.

  “The Triarch will want to meet a king of Ghenisa,” she said, starting back toward one of the rear exits to the room. “Even a regent. You’d better get cleaned up for supper.”

  She vanished, and he wondered what he was supposed to do. Follow her? His skin shriveled at the idea.

  Shortly a priest emerged, bearing an alchemical lamp—purple, of course. “I’m to show you to your room, my lord, help you get ready, then escort you to dinner, if that’s all right with you.”

  Avery stared at the far archway, half expecting Jivini to reemerge with her pseudopods and tendrils about her. When she didn’t, he gulped and said, “I hope there’s liquor in this place.”

  Chapter 5

  Avery knocked back a sip of whiskey, ignoring a peal of thunder overhead. It was getting louder, he realized, audible even over the noise of the dinner around him. There were no windows in the stone room, but he could imagine the lightning ripping down from the clouds that drove in from the sea; there was no doubt the storm drove inland—a storm infected by, even bred by, the worsening violence of the sea. How much longer did they have before the R’loth created their Atomic World? Or how much time left before the R’loth’s attempts to do so destroyed the world?

  “Hear hear!” said Triarch Thisinc, and Avery blinked, shaken out of his musings. He couldn’t remember what the Triarch was gabbing on about. The issue certainly wasn’t distance. Avery sat at the right hand of the Triarch, who occupied the head of the table, and his family, beginning with his wife, then his eldest son and so on, streamed down from his left side, just as with Hi’il’ichi. Avery hoped this night ended better than that one had.

  Avery raised his glass along with the others, going along with Thisinc’s toast, whatever had instigated it. Everyone clinked glasses and drank, even Lady Jivini, who reclined at the foot of the table with her high priests on her left and her officers on the right. The enlisted Octunggen, or at least some of them, stood along one wall, while the Triarch’s soldiers were arranged along the facing wall. All were armed, and Avery didn’t miss the tension between the two sets of soldiers. Again he wondered about the power dynamic between the two forces. They seemed more like enemies now than allies.

  “It’s an honor to have you with us,” Thisinc said to Avery.

  “It’s an honor to be here,” Avery replied, as graciously as he could. He wouldn’t have been so out of sorts if he’d known they would be eating out of cans—he was used to making do—but to have been led to expect a feast and then to be served canned beans and bread with chunks missing where the mold had been removed was something of a let-down. Still, it was understandable. The pyramid was clearly not a place meant for humans to live. There were no bathrooms, and there certainly were no kitchens. When the Triarch had decided to occupy this place, he’d had to bring whatever portable foodstuffs he could with him, and he had left his chef behind, more to the pity.

  “Will you regale us with the tale of how you came to be here?” said the Triarch. He was a normal-looking man, or seemed to be by local standards, but his golden skin, amber eyes and silvery chestnut hair marked him out as exotic and beautiful to Avery, despite having seen many such specimens over the last day or two.

  “Please, another time,” begged Avery. He doubted Lady Jivini would appreciate him going into details such as his journey to Xicor’ogna; she likely wanted to keep such things secret. And he certainly didn’t want to say anything differently if forced to repeat his story. “I’ll tell you all about it later. Suffice it to say that I wanted to make contact with your government, to offer you Ghenisa’s protection.”

  A ripple of interest ran through the Eberlins at the table, and Thisinc’s lady wife leaned forward to say, “Do you mean you’re interested in us becoming a protectorate of Ghenisa?”

  “I …” Avery hoped he wasn’t getting himself or his country in trouble with this conversation. “It was a thought that occurred
to us. We thought we’d bring it up with your husband and the other Triarchs. I … didn’t realize I was running into a warzone.”

  Thisinc’s expression soured, and a hush fell over the table. Avery wished he could retract the statement. Obviously, the war, and its dismal failure, was the last thing the Triarch would want to talk about.

  But the Triarch surprised him. “Those bastards. Those fools. How could they be so blind?” As he said the words, he gripped his fork so tightly the implement trembled in his fist. “The Blue Ghosts have spoken. Now is the time. The Old Masters are returning.” Furor glimmered in his eyes. “I’ve heard it from the Blue Ghosts themselves. They say to prepare, to remember the old ways. They say to brace ourselves for the coming of the Great Ones!”

  Avery took a breath. “Is that why you allied yourself with Octung—with the Rim?”

  Thisinc nodded shakily. Gesturing to Jivini, whose eyes had taken on the watchful quality of a cat’s, he said, “They offered me the tools I needed to bring my people back to the old ways in time for the Masters’ return. A Blue Ghost spoke to me over a year ago. He told me to get ready, that it was coming. I told him the other Triarchs, and most of the people, had long since abandoned the worship of the Ghosts and their Masters, that I had no way to bring the islands back into line. And then she came.” Again Thisinc indicated Jivini. “She would lead the people of the Rim to take the island, with my help, and set me up as overlord under the rule of the Collossum. Then, when the Masters come, the two sets of gods can treat with each other.”

  “I look forward to it,” Jivini said, but her voice was dry, scathing. She clearly didn’t believe in the Blue Ghosts or any of this Master business. To her, Thisinc was just a fanatic to take advantage of. The idea that his Masters were the Ygrith her people had sought for so long was obviously something she had never entertained.

  Thisinc smiled knowingly. “You doubt, madam, but you will see tonight. Tonight he comes."