Mother of Slag

by Timandra Whitecastle

  He was running out of options.

  A strong current was pulling him downwards, towards the rocky foundation of what once had been a magnificent domed harbor, a wonder of the world. Perhaps the undertow was simply the drag of the sea around the islands. Perhaps it was the firm grip of one of the gjalp, pulling him downwards to his doom.

  Diaz tried to calm himself. He exhaled through his mouth, and the rush of the air bubbles around him was the only sound he heard besides the beating of his heart.

  He was still alive.

  He sank a little deeper, hanging as though suspended in the water, and tried to focus. Though the salt burned in his eyes, he managed to make out the lithe bodies of gjalp surrounding him, below him, their soft white bellies bright in the murkiness of the sea.

  As he had guessed, one of them had slung a tentacle around his wrist and was studying his face intently. Her large mouth was open, lush lips parted, the gleam of teeth behind them a promise of pain. She sang out to her sisters and tugged him towards the wall of rock. Another small breath escaped his lips.

  Involuntary.

  Don’t panic, he told himself. Stay calm.

  So far they hadn’t attacked. He was still alive.

  Still alive.

  But already, his blood was pounding in his ears, and his vision was darkening around the edges.

  Another tug. She was dragging him farther down, towards a yawning black hole in the side of the rock. There must be a tunnel branching off there, he thought, leading into the island, into what used to be the harbor.

  He swam with her, feeling himself dragged along by the current, fighting the growing need to breathe. He could hardly see anything now. He pulled himself along blindly, trying to dive deeper, muscles aching.

  An agony was building up in his lungs, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus on reaching what must be a tunnel. It must be. He resisted the urge to look up and see how far he was from the surface, how far he was from air.

  He had to get to the tunnel. Quickly. That must be the way onto the island. Beneath the ruins.

  More gjalp gathered at his side now, webbed hands and tentacles grasped him, pushing him onwards. They dragged him into the tunnel, and he saw no more. A rushing sensation made him think they were moving him upwards, rapidly, their powerful swishes rippling the water against him. He moved his legs, but knew that he’d never manage by his own strength.

  Still alive. Still alive.

  But he was failing.

  And suddenly, no matter how resolved to death Diaz had thought he’d been, right now, in the dark cold water, his fingertips numb, his sides aching—he didn’t want to die.

  He exhaled a bit more, feeling the restraint on breathing like a weight pulling him down.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Not now.

  Just a little bit further.

  Not now.

  He inhaled. Seawater flooded his lungs, burning them with cold and salt. His throat hurt, clenched tight. Half conscious, he made feeble strokes, but the realization that he would never be able to fight his way back up to the surface flooded his mind with sudden, all-encompassing dread.

  The grip of the gjalp had loosened. He was alone. He was dying. He squeezed his eyes shut, and he could see pure white light.

  Just a little bit farther.

  Towards the light.

  Fight the panic.

  Fight the urge to breathe.

  The pain in his lungs made him spasm. It hurt not being able to breathe. Hurt really bad.

  He went limp.

  His mind went blank except for one single blazing thought.

  He was going to die.

  He was going to die.

  Something grabbed his outstretched hand as he scrabbled to find another hold. Terror held him in a tight grip as he felt himself moving faster and with more force than before.

  His head burst through the surface, and he was yanked violently onto a rock. His side scraped open, hot blood pouring out of him.

  The trill of gjalp echoed in a chamber around him.

  A rattling, wet inhale.

  That was him!

  He was still alive!

  Still alive!

  He felt like screaming.

  Instead, he retched, coughed, choked as life pressed into him. He rested his forehead against the warm stone, and lost himself in the darkness.

  Chapter 21

  Diaz dreamed.

  He dreamed he was making his way through the lost lands of the wightingerode, inundated by water that reached up to his knees. He was wading, wading, wading through the warm waters though they dragged at his calves so that for every step he made forward, he fell three steps back.

  He grit his teeth and pushed ahead while the water rose around him. Steadily it rose, slowly and with determination, as though it were a living thing to keep him away from his destination.

  The world around him was empty and silent, as though newly born, nothing but water as far as his wight eyes could see.

  But there was a presence, like a scent, a fragrance he could snatch on the air at times, as though someone he knew had just passed by. He tried to remember who the scent reminded him of, but this was a dream and he couldn’t remember clearly, except that he knew it belonged to a woman.

  As he walked on in the now chest-high water, pushing the water to the side in powerful strokes of both arms, he saw his own reflection rippling. A dozen wights looked back at him from the broken mirror surface, whole in one moment then fragmenting into shards.

  The ground rumbled beneath his feet; the earth rose beneath him, lifting him out of the water every so often, only to sink again. Steadily, slowly. A living, breathing thing.

  Above him, the harsh cry of a albatross pierced the silence.

  He gazed into a sky the color of the water and saw a winged creature fly overhead. Its head and breasts were like those of a wight maiden, bald and black-eyed. Its arms became wings folded around its body as it dived towards the water’s surface, its tail trailing behind in long billows like … like … again there was a memory here, something he should recognize but it eluded him.

  As he watched the creature swoop downwards, he saw its distorted reflection glide across the water, making it look like one of the gjalp rushing underneath the surface to meet it.

  They were the same, he thought. The bird woman. The gjalp. His reflection. They were all the same in the water.

  The bird hit the water’s surface and vanished with a last shriek that shook the heavens and reverberated against the rolling cloud blanket. The bird took the image of the gjalp to the depths with it, and for a moment Diaz was alone again.

  His hands were stretched out on the water, his body wrapped in the warmth, his heart slowly beating in rhythm with the push and pull of the moving earth beneath him.

  Then, a tidal wave rose. Growing higher and higher, until it towered over him, casting him in shadow, the scream of the bird woman equally growing in strength.

  Diaz turned to run.

  Run through the water.

  But this was a dream, and try as he might, he knew there was no outrunning the wave.

  He stopped and turned, arms stretched wide to embrace his fate. Welcoming the end.

  It crashed over him and he …

  … swallowed water. And came up spluttering, heart hammering in his chest. He had fallen off of the rock, back into the briny sea.

  Diaz swore, coughed up some water, while his hand searched frantically for a new hold, so that he could pull himself back up.

  He was in a cave. The roof of the cave had collapsed, but where he paddled and splashed, a tongue of rock rose above the sea level, a small space to breathe. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, he could make out the even shapes of the rocks and boulders surrounding him, revealing that they were man made. The rock he was holding onto was the last tip of the remains of a pier, and he had been dragged onto it via the steps that had been hewn into it. His side ached, and as he lo
oked down, he saw several deep, crusted gashes. But the knot the fisherman had made held, and so the bundle of his coat and boots were still fixed around his chest. And his single blade was still at his side.

  He had survived the sea and been spat out again with all his belongings, but only because he had had help.

  Grimacing, he swam around the edge of the rock until he could put a knee on the submerged first step to hoist himself up.

  A trill sounded close by, too loud for the small space.

  He felt the water fall around his hips as he was lifted out of the waves and dumped unceremoniously onto the stone pier. He lay flat on his back for a moment, to catch his breath, before he sat up and saw the gjalp lingering in the water at his feet, her large black eyes so reminiscent of his own.

  He put his hand on his chest and bowed his head toward her.

  “Thank you.” He said it with heartfelt gratitude.

  She cocked her head and then sank below the surface so that only the top half of her face remained visible. She seemed familiar. Maybe she had been one of the maidens around the boat yesterday? The one who had dragged him down into the tunnel?

  Had that even been yesterday? Or only a few hours ago? In this cave, he had no way of knowing.

  “You don’t happen to know the way out of here?” he asked her.

  Her eyes widened, and she bobbed her head in the water before diving back down, her long tentacles splashed water over him.

  She came back up and dived again. When she came back up the third time, close to the rock wall, she wore an expression as if to ask why he wasn’t following her already.

  “Yes,” he said. “I understand, but no, not the tunnel. A different way. A way inside the temple?”

  He rose on his trembling legs, feeling the drag of the ocean in his muscles even on the spit of rock.

  She came closer and, with a webbed hand with sharp crablike claws, pointed at the heap of rubble at the end of the pier.

  “That’s where I want to go, yes. The temple. I want to meet the ladies again. You know? The bloodwitches. The priestesses. You and your kin guard them, I think.”

  She gave him a look, then shook her head and pointed at the heap once more.

  “Fine,” he said, and walked over to the heap of smaller rocks and boulders. “There’s no way through, though. I want to go through to the temple.” He mimed walking with two fingers.

  She blinked at him owlishly, then dropped beneath the surface.

  Diaz sighed and studied the rocks in front of him. A few he could push aside, but he was worried if he did so, the rest of the collapsed harbor would come down upon him.

  He passed his hand before the rocks and felt a breeze coming from between them. So there was a chamber of air on the other side, too. He went down on his knees and started to shovel away some gravel.

  A splash.

  He turned around.

  The gjalp was on the stone steps, slithering and dragging herself across the rock with her hands. Her pointed teeth were showing as she grimaced, scraping her abdomen across the pier towards him like a thing from a nightmare.

  She hissed at him impatiently when she finally made it to where he knelt transfixed by the heaving coiling mess of tentacles behind her.

  She pushed him aside and tapped a larger stone blocking the way.

  “You want to help?” he asked. “Go ahead. I can’t move that one.”

  He tapped his mangled shoulder.

  She made a number of trilling noises at the stone, digging around it, loosening gravel and pebbles at its base.

  “You want me to clear it?” He reached over and made a small opening through which he could stick a hand.

  He lay flat on his stomach to peer through the hole and saw a small tunnel beneath the tumbled rock. It was dark within but he saw gray light at the end, which meant daylight in the chamber beyond.

  “There’s a way at least,” he told the gjalp. “But I need a bigger hole.”

  She nodded once and pushed her tentacle past him into the hole. She wrapped herself around the stone, and then crawled back towards the water, heaving the stone with her.

  It inched forward, and he marveled at her strength.

  The movement of the stone loosened a few other smaller rocks and pebbles, and gray dust coated Diaz, making him cough.

  He kept on moving the rubble out of the way, sweeping it into the water.

  As the large stone was cleared, the whole stone heap groaned and shifted. But it held, and the opening was now just large enough that Diaz could wriggle through it.

  He gave a low chuckle and turned back to the gjalp who had dropped back into the water.

  “Thank you again,” he said, bending over the edge of the pier to bow his head before her. “And thanks to yours sisters, too. You have saved my life twice over, and I have no way of repaying you.”

  She cocked her head and pulled herself up the pier so that their faces were so close the tips of their noses would touch, if she had had one. Her hand came up out of the water and she gently clamped her pincers to his jaw to study first this side of his face, then the other.

  He held his breath, not daring to move under her intense scrutiny.

  She let go abruptly and dropped back into the water, leaving him puzzled, his hand half-raised to his jaw.

  “Well…” was all he could say.

  The gjalp spun in the water and let out a series of high-pitched whistles that might have been … laughter? Other pairs of eyes bobbed up at the far end, where the tunnel led out to the sea, and she swam over to them. They all vanished into the depths without another sound.

  Diaz waited for a moment, until he was sure he was alone. Then he picked at the fisherman’s knot of his bundle until it finally came undone, and he threw the bundle ahead of him into the narrow tunnel. With a prayer to the Dark One on his lips, he got back down on his stomach and started to crawl into the dark toward the light.

  Chapter 22

  The tunnel was narrow, and dust rained down on Diaz as he dragged himself forward, one arm’s length at a time. The rocks scraped him on both sides, his hips twisting where the passage was too narrow. He could hardly move his legs but pressed his bare toes against the smooth floor and heaved himself another yard forward. Progress was slow.

  His breathing was the only sound in the tight space, no scent but that of salt-crusted coat ahead of him and the faint smell of damp stone. At one point the rock’s jaws tightened around his skull and he could neither go farther nor retreat. Fear took him then. It felt he had been trapped between the stones for hours, and he became increasingly worried that he might end up wedged in here, unable to even turn his head to check how far he had come, the gray light ahead taunting him until he slowly died of thirst. His breathing became rapid and shallow, and a voice in his head berated him for his stupidity, telling him in no uncertain terms how he’d die alone down here, entombed. The voice sounded a lot like Bashan’s.

  Pain stung his temples as he wriggled his head free, and a warm drip of blood itched on his cheek.

  He gritted his teeth and pressed on. There was nothing else he could do.

  Finally, after an eternity, the collapsed rock heap released him and he crawled into a wider space, weeping with exhaustion and relief. He levered himself up and sat against a wall, cradling his knees.

  He sat in the mouth of a long corridor, leading away from what had once been the harbor cave. It was lined on one side with arches, giving a view of a rectangular courtyard whose groomed symmetry had been broken by the wild, unrestrained growth of vines. Daylight fell down through a shaft in the roof high above, but when Diaz looked up at the square patch of sky, he saw only clouds. No way of knowing what time of day it was.

  He rooted around in his memory, trying to remember the layout of the temple from when he had visited it. But that was more than five decades ago, and only the one time. He remembered being led up some stairs into another airy courtyard higher up, one with a huge stairwell that caught the
rainwater.

  But the way up was blocked by another collapsed wall, and the way down had been flooded with saltwater, so that after an hour of walking up and down the corridor, Diaz found himself back where he had started.

  In the overgrown rectangular courtyard he drank away his thirst from a shallow pool in a fountain that had long ceased to bubble forth yet had filled with rain. He splashed some of the cool water onto his face, too, and after a short rest, he put on his wet boots and set out to find a way.

  Silence surrounded him.

  He passed through ruins. A battlefield. In a corridor overgrown with brambles, he passed the scattered bones of several people who all showed the tattered remains of the same gray robes but had seemingly fought to their deaths without leaving any trace of weapons.

  Land and sea warred with each other, warped doors opening on to sunken ruins, salt water eating away at the stone. In one part of the temple he came across a small waterfall cascading out of what used to be a window. As he climbed higher, he found a stairwell, open to the gray heavens and nearly filled to the rim with rain water, spilling at the seams. On another level, he found a small overgrown garden overlooking the large bay. It seemed peaceful, an open space filled with light, until he saw the skeletons huddled in a corner as though they sought shelter, sought comfort and animal warmth from their entangled, sun-bleached bones. Hiding, perhaps, behind rose bushes now wild and outgrown? A slight jawbone with a double set of teeth whispered to him of young children once brought to the temple to nurture their healing talent. Now, in their final rest, they were guarded by a solitary, crumpled heap of bones of a grown person who had put up a fight against vicious attackers. It didn’t surprise him much to find another group similarly laid out as all the others, scraps of gray cloth hanging from broken ribcages, no weapons to be seen, though they were cut down with power.

  This temple hid a tragedy.

  It had torn itself apart for some reason that Diaz could not fathom, though he walked through the ruins for cold, wet hours, a death shroud settling on his shoulders as he made his way through the quiet, disturbed only by the occasional cry of sea birds and the crash of waves.