Mother of Slag

by Timandra Whitecastle

  She spoke no more and he finished his bowl.

  “So,” she broke the silence after he had pushed his bowl away and leaned back. “You full?”

  “For now, yes.”

  “You looked like you needed it.”

  “I did. You mentioned Mari and Jeska earlier. Where are they?”

  “Mari’s probably in a library poring over the books. She likes to keep to herself. And Jeska? Who knows? She always finds something to keep her occupied though never for more than a few hours.” She smiled. “What about you? Had a rough night?”

  He straightened, awake now and wary.

  “Why do you ask?”

  She tapped the side of his head gently. “You have a pretty nasty welt right there. I assume you weren’t trying to brain yourself?”

  “Not actively,” he mumbled, rubbing the bump where his head had met the stone step beside the pool of black water.

  “Where were you yesterday?” she asked.

  “Swimming,” he answered.

  “You went swimming,” she repeated, gently mocking him. “In the open sea with only one arm.”

  “I was with the gjalp.”

  She stiffened next to him.

  “Say that again?”

  “The gjalp. The mermaids. The daughters of Neeze. I went for a swim—”

  “Say the word you just used for them again.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned closer to him to hear better. “Please.”

  “Gjalp.” He pronounced it carefully, baffled by her reaction. Instead of veering into the taxing, semi-concealed interrogation he had expected—where he had been and why he had been gone for so long and whether or not he had secretly sought and found a different way into their temple’s Most Holy Altar—everything about Lin’s body language said that she was excited, nearly gleeful about the word gjalp. “It’s a wight word that describes—”

  “Did I ask you to explain it?” she teased. “I just wanted to hear it again.”

  He shook his head. “Why?”

  She shrugged, and turned her head away to look out across the sea.

  “Gjalp,” she echoed, as though tasting the word, savoring it. “Gjalp.”

  She hummed a few notes at the back of her throat, and the similarity with the gjalp song made the hair on his arm rise.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “It sounds like … have you ever heard the mermaids sing? There’s a ring to their songs, not the melody, but pieces of broken sounds that might be their language, I guess? Words they’re able to articulate with their mouths that can be so unlike ours, so they make this clicking sound with their tongue.” She trilled an alarmingly good impression of a mermaid call. “Sometimes I think they’re talking, but I’ve never been able to understand what they say. It was just a feeling that I knew what they were trying to communicate.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “I’m not crazy.”

  “No,” he replied. “No, you’re not. I was surprised when I first heard them, too. It seemed to me like an old nursery rhyme I heard as a child.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Really? All my life people have been laughing at me for singing to the mermaids. Especially here. Before.

  “We never listened to them, you know? We were taught to be blind and deaf, to hate and kill them because they would hate and kill us. But I always thought … they were singing something I should be able to understand but never quite could. Perhaps it’s just that we were speaking different languages. Wightish, you say?”

  “Perhaps it was a dialect of wightish a long time ago. Maybe a seafaring tribe of wights began to speak with the gjalp thousands of years ago.”

  He thought of something his father had said last year when they had been in Gimmstanhol. We used to share our lives, our selves, with other races, creating and co-creating. There was a connection between gjalp and wights, between his father’s kind and that of many other sentient creatures who had once peopled the world. Now they were stuff of myths and legends. Yarns sailors spun in taverns after a few beers. Tales of black-eyed lizards in the desert, who spoke with forked tongues, that the nomadic merchants of the south told around their waterholes. The Furies, vulture-like women who tore lone male travelers apart if they ventured too close to their rocky homes. All those unnaturally clever talking beasts of folktales. Once there had been many.

  Half-wights like him.

  She placed a hand on his forearm, jarring him out of his train of thought.

  “But you understand them?”

  “I think so. Sometimes I think they understand me as well.”

  Lin nodded, her eyes seeking something in his face, lingering on the inky black of his own eyes. He wondered what she saw there. She opened her mouth but then stopped herself, and just as suddenly as she had gripped him, she now let go and withdrew.

  “Not many are like you. Like us.” She pressed her lips together as though trying not to say more.

  “Not many hear them sing, you mean?”

  “Oh, many people hear the maids singing, all right. They just don’t give a damn. Look at Mari and Jeska. They have Neeze’s gifts for water manipulation, but they don’t see a connection between us and them. The maids are merely watchdogs to them. Guardians of this island. They say the maids are here because their breeding grounds are nearby. But I don’t think so. I always thought …” Lin paused.

  He waited for a heartbeat.

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “We’re outside the kitchen,” Lin said, and made a sound that strummed against Diaz’s bones and pierced his eardrums.

  “What was that?” He winced.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Jeska’s coming.”

  Diaz strained his ears but heard nothing but the breakers crashing against the rocks below. He gave Lin a puzzled look.

  “You didn’t hear her click?” she asked with a mischievous wink.

  “No.”

  “Well, I say click, but it’s more like a note that makes the blood … sing,” Lin continued, putting down her net. “It’s like a … a brain tickle that tells us where we are. It’s a trick we picked up from the gjalp. Helps us find each other in the dark, caved-in tunnels, not to mention when we’re out there on the water, wrapped in mists.”

  “I see,” he said, but he didn’t see at all. However, now he could hear the soft patter of feet on the stone, approaching rapidly.

  Chapter 28

  Jeska barreled through the open door at breakneck speed and came to a halt against the cliff-side fence. Her cheeks were red and puffing, but she radiated an exuberance that made her seem much younger than Diaz had originally guessed. When he had caught sight of her shoveling away the rubble, he had had an image of Nora, and thus took the young woman to be around the same age. In her late teens. Not yet twenty. Now he wasn’t sure. She could be on the edge of fifteen.

  “Lin! Where’s Mari?” Jeska panted. “I need to show you something I found. Oh hey! You’re back.”

  Jeska did a double take that would have been comical if it had been genuine. Diaz got the impression that she knew full well that he had been sitting there before she had arrived, undoubtedly his heart beat had given his presence away. Her eyes shone with joy. He nodded in greeting; however, before he could even open his mouth to respond, she disregarded him and turned back to Lin.

  “I think I’ve found a way in. It’s pretty deep down, I had to clear a path, and part of the way is submerged, but I was walking through rooms that were filled with bodies and blood on the walls and that kinda creeped me out so I thought I’d come back and—”

  “A way into what?” Lin asked, one hand waving at Jeska for her to slow down.

  “The Most Holy.”

  Diaz sat between them as they stared at each other for several breaths.

  “No,” Lin spoke first.

  “But Lin! I was there, right there. The amount of power down there is unbelievable.”

  “I said no.” Lin rose. She gave Diaz a sidelong glance. “It’s dangerous to
go down there. Especially on your own, Jeska. You could have died and we wouldn’t even know, wouldn’t be able to find out what had happened.”

  “But it’s not that dangerous. I mean, yeah, there are cave-ins, but it’s mostly structurally sound. I bet if the three of us would go down together—”

  “I said I didn’t want anyone to go down there. I remember telling you quite expressly that I don’t want you looking for a way into the Most Holy.”

  Jeska didn’t like remembering, and pulled a face.

  “But Mari says—”

  “Mari has no authority here while I am alive.”

  Lin raised her voice, but for a moment she seemed to Diaz to grow dark, pulling a stormcloak of wind-whipped seas around her shoulders. Her silver hair waved to and fro in a breeze that Diaz could not feel. As though in a flash of lightning, her features were distorted. Elongated. More wight-like than human. No, more gjalp-like. The white in her eyes had vanished to make room for an all-encompassing deep-ocean blue, nearly black.

  It was an expression of Lin’s powers. A threat. An intimidation.

  And just as suddenly as it had come over her, she calmed it and was back to her normal self.

  Diaz found that he had half risen from his place at the table, hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  Lin smiled.

  “I have been in this Temple for far longer than any of you have. It is not yet the time to open that door, Jeska.”

  Jeska stepped back instinctively, but stood her ground, her chin held high. After a brief hesitation, she bowed her head in deference.

  “Yes, Lin.”

  Lin stepped over to the girl and hugged her.

  “Thank you for telling me. I appreciate you sharing your news with me.” Lin glanced over Jeska’s shoulder at Diaz and his ears were filled with a high-pitch whine that drowned out whatever she next whispered into Jeska’s ear.

  It lasted a few seconds, but left him disoriented and dizzy. He sat back down heavily.

  “I need to talk to Mari.” Lin’s voice was loud and clear once more. “Look after Telen for today and see him out in the evening.”

  “Yes, Lin.”

  Jeska was nearly back to her former exuberant self, and seemed excited to chaperone him. Lin left with a wave and a smile.

  “So,” Jeska turned to Diaz, pulling a face. “I guess we’ve been grounded while the adults talk. What do you want to do today?”

  Rest. He really wanted to rest. Lie down in a comfortable bed and just sleep for a while. But suggesting this to the girl was probably out of the question. So he shrugged.

  “What was that outburst just now?” he deflected. “‘While I’m alive,’ she said. So is Lin your leader and will Mari take over the Ladies when Lin dies?”

  “Oh. That.” Jeska waved as though discussing the delicate balance of power within the Temple was very boring. “The two of them argue a lot. They’re both very good friends who see some things very differently, that’s all. Here at the Temple, though, we’re all equal, we’re all daughters of the goddess, and so we all have a voice with which to speak.”

  “Does Lin say that?”

  “Every day.” Jeska stressed every syllable dramatically and then leaned her elbows into the fence, looking out over the bay.

  Diaz tried not to smile. “So Lin is your leader?”

  “She’d say we shouldn’t have leaders.”

  “And what does Mari say?”

  “That if we don’t appoint a leader for ourselves, someone else will do it for us. That we need a voice, a spokesperson who will speak for all of us.”

  “All of you? You’re just three people, aren’t you?”

  Jeska turned back to smile at Diaz, leaning against the railing casually.

  “We are four with you. And more will come.”

  “More?”

  “Yes!” An excited flush came over Jeska’s face. “Don’t you feel it? There has been an awakening. Something has shifted in the world, and the sleeping goddess wakes beneath this temple. She stirs and her heartbeat calls us here. Didn’t you say that you had the feeling you were meant to be here? More Chosen will appear, those who can hear her call. It has started, Mari says, and it will not be stopped.”

  Diaz’s hair rose with the chill of her words. His mouth felt dry so he took a long sip of water while Jeska rattled on, with youthful confidence, that she understood how the world worked, that she knew everything there was to know, and the answers were so simple and laid out before her, even though the adults couldn’t see them. But to his ears, it sounded as though whatever it was that Mari was telling the girl weighed much heavier than what Lin was trying to communicate.

  And besides, he knew what lay sleeping at the heart of the temple, and it wasn’t the Sea Goddess Neeze.

  He thought about the pain that the mere touch of the inky water had given him, the feverish visions, and then shuddered.

  “Since when have you been here?” he interrupted Jeska’s train of thought.

  “I came here about a year ago.” Her usual run-on-sentences faltered and she closed her mouth.

  “Did you hear the call yourself?” he asked.

  “Well, no,” she admitted slowly. “I hadn’t had any training but I definitely felt something.”

  “Tell me.”

  She stared at the ground before her feet, deep in her memories.

  “My family,” she started, then hesitated before continuing. “We lived in a small village near Woodbridge. You know it? My father owned livestock, six cows and a few pigs. I used to play with my sisters near the stream that ran by our house. I remember them making fun of me because I said I could hear the water talking to me. They teased me with it a lot.” She gave him a lopsided smile full of pain. “But over a year ago, two young girls with golden daggers came to our village saying they were priestesses of the Fire God and we should all repent.

  “So I hid in the woods because I didn’t like this talk of a fire god and then the spirit of the stream spoke to me. Our eldermen did not like what they heard either, but they couldn’t do much about it since the priestesses had come with a large band of wild men who then attacked us in the night.

  “I hid by the stream and no one found me, so I am alive while so many are not. My sisters … I heard them screaming.”

  She met his gaze.

  “Afterwards, when the priestesses and wild men were done and had moved on, the survivors went west. They wanted to get to the Temple of the Wind, and for a few days I traveled with them. But I felt … strange. So I turned back. I walked past my burned-out village and kept on walking.

  “I walked every day, following the stream. I walked until it became a river. And finally I stood by the sea and for the first time, it felt right. I felt right. Like I belonged here, on the Nessan Sea. Like I was going home. My proper home.”

  “Jeska, I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged and pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You’ve been on the Wards. The people there all have the same kind of stories. The world is changing for the worse. And now they say the Living Blade has returned, so things will only get worse before they can get better, don’t you think?”

  He pressed his lips together, unwilling to let a word about the Blade escape. His heart beat harder at the mere mention, and a dull ache coursed through the remains of his shoulder. He winced, massaging the sensitive flesh. Nora was still out there. She was still the Living Blade.

  She needs my help.

  No.

  Who was he fooling? He needed help. He was in no position to give any.

  “Those scars look fresh. You’ve seen trouble, too.” Jeska was watching him carefully.

  “Yes. Too much.”

  She pushed away from the railing and stepped up to him.

  “I could take a closer look and see what I can do to relieve the pain a little. I’m not as good as Lin or Mari, but I’ve learned a thing or two.”

  He let his hand drop.

  “Maybe some other
time.”

  “Sure.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Wasn’t it the same with you? Didn’t it feel right to come here rather than stay wherever you were?”

  “It did feel right to come here,” Diaz said.

  But he did not feel he belonged here amongst this trinity of women, here with that black pool of dread deep below. This place did not feel like home. His heart tugged in a different direction.

  Chapter 29

  And yet, although it didn’t feel like home, Diaz settled into a comfortable routine over the next few days. In the early mornings, Lin invited him in to break fast together and talk a little about the merfolk. In the afternoons, Jeska helped him build a tent-like shelter on the promenade. He saw Mari only once in that time, and she hissed at him. An icy grip held him then, and he found himself turning around sharply, and his feet walking back out of the temple as if of their own accord.

  He watched the sun set on the bay, and he watched it rise. And he healed by the waters, inside and out.

  Two weeks went by in this manner, and he started to gently go through his paces once more, first with trepidation, but then easing more and more into the movement of his changed body.

  It was awkward practicing with his left arm, and making that his main hand. The problem was that, in his head, his right arm was still there. He could feel it right there, swinging along, messing up his balance as he moved, but of course, nothing was there. After a while, though, the switch to the left hand started to feel more natural.

  He was painfully aware of how awkward he fought left-handed. It was exasperating … and he couldn’t pretend that the early morning sessions didn’t leave him drenched in sweat and shaking. If he were to take up arms against another, he could not be sure to win. And that, more than anything else, wore him down.

  “It’s the confidence,” he complained to Lin. “I used to go into a fight knowing that I was the more skilled swordsman, the more accomplished fighter. And now? I’ll lose.”